Beijing is so rad

We've been in Beijing since July 21st. It is a radical city with an astonishing identity crisis. The 6 nights we were booked for morphed into 14 and we still won't be ready to leave when our time here is up. I didn't have lofty expectations for this place and they have been hugely exceeded.

The neighborhood we stayed in for the first part of our trip was Xicheng, near Ping Anli. We were at the Red Lantern House, which I highly recommend if you are looking for quaint, friendly, hip Beijing. The West building, where we stayed, is nestled off the main drag
(though not in a hutong) behind large painted wooden gates. Some rooms face an interior courtyard with a glass ceiling, a bridge over a little koi river, and cosy couches. Ours faced an exterior courtyard covered in potted plants and crawling vines. Incidentally, 600 ml beers are 500 yuan/70 cents.

Our first full day we wandered from our hotel through countless, ancient hutongs and wound up in Tiananmen Square. I think this first walk sums up my impression of Beijing; it is so rich in history (the really old kind, not like our few hundred years in the US), but the
evidence is being paved over in the interest of progress. The obsession with modernity can be seen in nearly every aspect of Beijing life, from the cult status of name brands to the leveling of historical courtyards to widen the boulevards. When you glimpse the
ruins of the dynasties, it breaks your heart a little to think of whats been lost to ugly block soviet-style architecture. To consider the wooden temples and marble statues that met with the wrecking ball to make Tiananmen Square the size of several football fields. But
that's Beijing. Each dynasty leveled much of what was built by the prior. All that's left of the imperial palace of the Mongols is one lousy jade vase. The Communist party took down the dynastic and ornate walls around the city. Hundreds of blocks of hutongs were
destroyed in preparation for the Olympics. This is just how these guys roll....

The result is that Beijing is like an onion. Every block and every sight is built atop another site that it has usurped. Proletariat slogans from the 70s can be glimpsed in one of the oldest hutongs in the city; which has now become a hipster haven for artists and expats.
You could spend ages peeling back the layers, looking for the real Beijing, but I think its a place that exists as the sum of its history. You have to just eat the onion.

travelin' reading list

Since leaving work and the country, I've had quite a bit of time for reading. Not so much with the consistent electricity or internet access but books, yes. From the list I've embarked on, I have a few recommendations and am always looking for suggestions if you've read anything worthwhile. The magic eight ball sees many hours of train
travel in my future...

The Girl... with the Dragon Tattoo, Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Who Played With Fire. By Steig Larson. I think by now everyone with an Amazon account has polished these 3 off, so you know they're perfect, mindless, beach/travel reads. Not very well written, yet strangely addicting.
Sag Harbor: A Novel. By Colson Whitehead. This guy is too smart for the good of this novel. He should relax a little.
The Genghis Trilogy. By Conn Iggulden. These were recommended to me by Pete, a client at my old gig. I thought based on his review that they might not be for me (he gave full disclosure on the war-yness).  Surprise literary hit of my lifetime, I totally loved them and plowed through all three. The story of Genghis Khan is amazing and since these are fictionalized somewhat, you learn the history without feeling like you're studying. Reading the first 2 in Mongolia while sleeping in gers and drinking airag was especially excellent. And
learning about the relationship with China provided a lot of context for our visit to the Great Wall. More on that soon!
A Visit from the Goon Squad. By Jennifer Egan. I found this book depressing, for no particular reason. I think it made me miss New York. There are a lot of unlikeable characters but overall its still totally worth the read.

And now, onto China posts!

INHTMF

One of the things that kept Ed and I amused during those long stretches in the van was back to back "This American Life" podcasts, 100s selected and downloaded prior to departure. Molly intro'd me to this show about 9 years ago (I know! We're getting old!) and its one of those particular flavors of which I never tire. Like Saltines, kind of.

Ed had never heard the episode "Frenemies" and I was more than happy to re-listen. Fans will recall the interview with Rich Juzwiak who talked in-depth about the line "I'm Not Here to Make Friends" and its over-usage on reality TV. His annual montage of these moments can be viewed here:
http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/07/happy-im-not-here-to-make-friends-day.html
Why do I bring up INHTMF? Because the evening after we listened to the ep, the 3rd traveler on our tour arrived. She had visa conflicts and joined 1 week into the 3 week tour. We'll just call her A, which is short for Asshead, which is what we actually called her. She is a Danish pastor in her 50s and that's all I'll reveal about her identity lest her offspring stumble upon my blog. Although I don't think I'm going to say anything that would surprise them.

A had at least 2 personalities. These two were the strongest, there may have been more. #1 was an engaged, neurotic, bookish, manic, know it all. The second personality was withdrawn, brattish, obsessive. We guessed bi-polar, which I imagine is a real treat when she's christening your baby. We can ignore the second personality because, well, we ignored it. But when A was manic, she was hard to overlook.

Like all tourists, she took a lot of photos. And like some tourists, she had no qualms about racing up to a nomad child or wild animal and snapping away in its face. Or, about walking through center stage of the Nadaam festival so she could photograph the wrestlers (during a match) from 3 or 4 feet away. And, like all tourists, she didn't want
to miss a photo-op because of an uncharged battery. She hadn't figured on the whole no-electricity thing and therefore didn't bring backup batteries. So on the nights we stayed in ger camps with generators (used only at night), she would jet from the van to an employee and harass them about what time the electricity would be made available to her. If the generator went on 12 minutes after she was promised, you could hear the rant from across the camp.

One powerless evening, her camera battery actually did die just before we headed to see the yak-herder family. She cursed the entire way (Armageddon had come), and then asked if we would email her our not-yet-taken-photos from the evening. Of course we would, and please shut up about your camera. What we didn't bet on was her shadowing us so she could helpfully point out photo ops. As you might imagine once I was holding the camera this behavior ended.

There were several other incidences involving the camera/battery/electricity paradigm, but I think you get the gist.

I've mentioned before that our tour guide was a freaking dolt, yes? A picked up on this pretty quickly as well, and yet, personality #1 chose to inundate Undraa with questions, firing squad style, at least a few times a day. Did Undraa have the answers to these questions? No. Did she understand the questions? Only after they were repeated at least twice. Did the questions even have answers? Let's review....

Sample questions actually posed by A to Undraa. When each inquisition began, Ed and I could be heard muttering "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" to mark the beginning of another Q&Q sesh.
- When will the rain stop?
- Where is that nomad going?
- Does that cow [pointing to solo cow in field] belong to the family
we saw earlier?
- How long until this road becomes pavement?
- What will they serve for lunch?
- How many people will be staying at the camp?

Completing the triumvirate of A's worst traits was her role as Hector-the-Corrector. Anything that Ed or I said was immediately and summarily corrected or contradicted. Topics ranging from the mining industry to whether the tent was big or small to what kind of fruit was in the jam at breakfast were open for debate. Usually, the conversation would go something like this:
A: Do you know how much the ticket is for tonight?
R: I believe its 10 thousand Mongolian
A: So what is that?
R: Around 8 US
A: NO, that's too high.... Undraa, how much is 10 thousand Mongolian in US? Undraa, of course, goes to ask someone at the restaurant.
U: About 7.50 US
A: See? I knew that was too high.

And thus a dinner would conclude and Ed and I would pretend to go to bed only to circle back to the restaurant at the ger for big Mongolian beers and card playing without her. We would remind ourselves that we went on this tour to see Mongolia, not to make friends, and that soon enough we would be rid of A.

And though I loathed her, the day we headed back to UB, a little seedling of generosity sprouted in my heart. We knew that A hadn't yet been to the capital and we warned her of the pickpockets and theft we had seen and heard of and cautioned her to take care of her stuff.  We ran into her in the hotel restaurant the next day where she let us know, triumphantly, had been out for hours, hasn't seen any pickpockets, and that UB was perfectly safe. We were, obviously, wrong again.

The day after that we saw her in the lobby. Red faced and panting, she had just been robbed. Her camera, with all the photos from the trip, was gone. And could we please email our photos to her?

Beijing, but first more on Mongolia

The combination of blogger and other google crap (like docs) being unavailable and Beijing being blindingly awesome has really set me back on the blogging. I have so much to say about China-so-far. And I'm going to, but there are a couple more Mongolian gems that I want to offer to the universe before I do so.

As totally radical as the Mongolian landscape is, its museums are that lame. The score between indoors and outdoors in Mongolia is, like, zero to 1 million. So when visiting a museum (whether voluntarily or during some sort of tour company death march), I'd set the bar super low. Or maybe just don't set a bar. Just pretend you've never been to
a museum before, and your expectations may be exceeded.

Nowhere was the lameness more on display than at the Natural History Museum in UB. In 1920, Roy Andrew Chapman (an American explorer) went on expedition to the Gobi to dig up dinosaurs. He discovered, like, 8 kinds of dinosaurs there, and tons of fossils and other archeological goodies. He and his crew dug it all up, trekked the loot through the
desert on camel back, and shipped it home.

Now, one has to give the Mongolians credit for co-opting this story and kind of making it their own. Because the story goes that the Mongolians knew the bones were kicking around but thought they were dragons. And, since dragons are nasty mythical things, they just left them there in the rock. A less generous people might therefore have been kind of pissy that some foreigner came and rediscovered the artifacts and stole them and got crazy famous. But the Mongolians seem, at least on the surface, pretty pleased that the excavation was from their very own Flaming Cliffs and proudly show a documentary
about the expedition at meal time. 

Chapman eventually gave Mongolia 1 of the dinosaur skeletons he had found there and this formed the entire business case for creating the Natural History Museum.  Besides that one specimen, the rest of the dinosaur room is a hodgepodge of leftover scraps; a pelvis here, a left forearm there.  There is a donation box in front of one incomplete skeleton asking visitors for a contribution so more of the remains can be restored.  Sadly, the most complete and prized skeletons that were taken from the cliffs were shipped to New York.  There they can be seen in a much larger dinosaur room in a much
grander Natural History Museum.

Test blog

Hey-o.
The google suite of products isn't beloved by the government round these parts, hence the lack of posting since our arrival in Beijing.  Now, thanks to Marely I'm trying email to blogger on hopes I can work it this way. Let's see!!!

Undraa and the Blue Mongolia Collective

When you're planning a trip to Mongolia, 2 things become clear very quickly. 1. That you're going to need to go with a tour operator or at the very least a driver/translator because if you don't you'll probably die in the desert looking for a shelter from the wind or a meal and, 2. The information available online about the various tour operators is conflicting, confusing, and sparse. The best comparison I can draw is to real estate brokers in Manhattan; a large percentage are bogus and you know they're shifty as hell, but you probably have to deal with one if you want an apartment.

After much research and to-ing/fro-ing with several companies, we landed on Blue Mongolia. Things got off to a winning start with our guide, Undraa. Laughy laughy, jokey jokey, tell us about Mongolia, now you tell me about America, let's make friendship bracelets, etc. What became clear by Day 4 was that her knowledge of the sights we were visiting was limited to a small blurb memorized each morning from the Blue Mongolia Tour book. Also, that she was being heavily bossed about by the non-English speaking or understanding driver (let's call him Driver #1). #1 was surly and rude and lost most of the time. That last attribute was particularly frustrating and when we would inquire as to why a stretch of driving took 10 hours instead of the scheduled 5, he would angrily fall back on the Mongolian superstition that its bad luck to predict how long something should take or to give arrival times. Our suggestion that he ballpark it for us went down like a lead balloon and thus the triangle of conflict between us, #1, and Undraa had begun.

Undraa annoyed us in the initial days when she was trying, ineptly, to lead us. I've charted our experience with her thusly:

What happened on July 10^th, you ask? Why such low scores? Well, my trend-spotting friends, that was the day that #1 decided to test the Delica's 4 wheel prowess by gunning us through a flooded clay desert. We knew of the poor road conditions from other tourists in the camp who had complained of long detours to avoid it. So when we came to the vast expanse of foot-deep puddles we assumed there we'd go around. When #1 started to plow on through, we insisted we go around. At that point, however, #1 was no big fan of ours and we didn't go around. We got stuck.

That was the day that the balance of power shifted. It was clear that no thought or preparation had been given to an emergency. That, stuck in the middle of the desert with no humanity in sight Undraa, #1 and Blue Mongolia combined had no plan. Undraa was out of her depth and panicked. No chains, no satellite phone, no GPS, no compass, no flares, nada. At #1s instruction we collected rocks and pulled mud from under the tires. We dug and we levered and we pushed. We were covered in mud, soaking wet and sunburned, and sinking.

Ed and I user our outside voices with Undraa that day. We informed her that we were taking over the leadership of the tour and that she now reported to us. We took her phone and #1s, ordered her to ferry our belongings and lunches through the mud to shore, and taught her Chapelle-style cursing. Standing on the roof of the sinking van to get service, I gave the tour manager back at HQ some tips on how this day might have gone better. We demanded a new driver be delivered by morning, that a hotel be booked for the night, and that she remain available via cell 24 hours a day should anything else go wrong. All of this was agreed to and, thus, Undraa was demoted from tour guide to translator, cell phone holder and waitress.

Nomads were eventually contacted and came to our rescue. In total, we were stuck in the mud for 10 hours but the van was salvaged and we were on our way by dark. In the end the new reporting structure with Undraa worked well for all involved and Driver #2, who arrived the next morning, was just the best ever.

For Yelena

A freshly-born-earlier-the-day-this-was-taken yak.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

The terrain in Mongolia changes rapidly as you drive through it. You're staring out the window of a Mitsubishi Delica van. Bouncing over pot holes because you're stuck in the jump seat. Hours pass. Mongolian pop music changes from novel to grating. And outside turns from forest to prairie to steppe to bald-faced desert.

When the van finally abruptly stops and guide exclaims “we're here,” its hard to know what to do with yourself in the space available. What came naturally to Ed and me was climbing to the highest point of whatever was around. By day 3 some basic human need to be on top of the world, lookin' down on creation took hold and we found ourselves scurrying up rock faces, sand dunes, grassy mountains, and red cliffs. The views were great, but we climbed for the sake of it. Just so we could stand atop, panting, covered in dirt/sand/dust/bugs and feel like we'd conquered one tiny bit of the wild open. You know, like Genghis would have done.

And thus, a sampling of shit we climbed up:

(this last one looks super tame but was probably one of the hardest hikes we did - in Hustai national park.  its so ginormous that it looks flat, leading Ed and I to foolishly go "we can do that!"  blergh)

Delightful sidebar; we've both shed quite a bit of weight. Mongolian food is edible at best, you sweat like a gallon a day, and you exercise like you're at training for something. An enterprising soul (Oprah, can you hear me?) should start a fat camp here.

Possible names (help from Ed on these):

“Mutton & Muscles”

“Girls Gone Gobi”

“Thin Blue Sky”

“Yoga with Yaks”

“Skinny Nomads”

The Mongolian Empire Strikes Back

The bummer about history is that when something really terrific happens, other stuff happens afterward that's maybe not as terrific. And recency trumps greatness and young people don't learn/retell/give a shite about the important moments of yore. And that's sad for old people and veterans and former presidents because they accomplished something noteworthy and how could we all forget so fast?

Not in Mongolia. Any Mongolian of any age will swell with pride as they recount the great battles that won them a stronghold in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. They will point you to maps where the Mongolia blob (usually Blue, that's their color) covers most of the continent and surrounding islands. They'll talk about the empire like this was last Christmas that they held it when, in actuality, it was the 13th century.

Our tour guide (more on her later) spun us a tale of when the Mongolians were about to conquer Japan but the Japanese monks prayed for a hurricane to stop them. It worked and the Mongolian warriors couldn't get across the sea to beat their asses. The tone of this story was like how you or I would talk about someone getting totally robbed on “American Idol” or like maybe how you once wrestled outside of your weight class in high school. But this story she's telling, which in the worst case is completely untrue and in the best case is pretty irrelevant, is a huge deal to her. And everyone else. And it happened 900 years ago.

There isn't a new story for Mongolia just yet and so the burden of pride still falls on Genghis. On the time when the bow and arrow were the bleeding edge of modern weaponry and Mongolia was a force to be reckoned with. And while its easy to be caught up in the retelling, ultimately its like hearing your Grandfather sing “Bless 'em All” and tell war stories; its just a little bit sad.

You can see the Mongolia Blue Blob in this monument to the former glory of the empire:

Dude Looks Like a Lady

A trip through Southern Mongolia is heavy on the nature. We knew this going in, but weren't 100% prepped for the total lack of modernity out there. What was even more surprising to us both was that the inner dude in me seemed to have been waiting for this moment all his life.

For illustrative purposes, a bit of context. There was a lot of camping. In tents, in the middle of nothing. No people, no lights, just some barking dogs and herd animals wandering around our tents. One night there was a horse so close to the wall of our tent that I could feel his breath through the nylon. Running water and electricity were rare; mouse-sized bugs swarming around my book light were not. We had been told we would use “natural toilets” and assumed this would be a quaint sort of outhouse. What a natural toilet actually means is the outside. Like, anywhere except in the van or your tent.

I've always enjoyed the trappings of being a girl and have gravitated toward the estrogen-fueled things in life; handbags, mani/pedis, the occasional juice cleanse. My childhood nickname was “Lady Flash” because I would sincerely pose questions to my Mom like “how many bangles should I wear to T-ball practice?” Never, not once ever, was I described as a Tomboy. So, when I found myself refusing available showers, instructing others on how to use the wind in the natural toilet environment, gathering a following of maybe-wild dogs, and forcing a semi-broken Mongolian pony to gallop along the lake, I was, um, surprised?

Now that we're back in the city with a bed and private bath and flatware at every meal, I regret ever wishing to be back in civilization. Eggs just taste better when you eat them with your hands.

Let's kick it off right with the Nomads...

Mongolia is, above all, frozen in time.  The countryside is so beautiful it hurts your eyes a little.  Traveling through it, riding on it, looking at it is all there really is because there is almost no development outside the cities.  There's nothing do, per se.  You look, and it let's you, and there you have it.

The horizon never ends and the sky is its own stage, actor, story and key grip. This is Mongolia's best feature, its Betty Davis eyes, and it takes some will to zip your tent flap at night or slam your ger door against it.  Everyday it trots out blazing sunsets, infinite stars, blowing storms seen from miles away, perfect 3-D movie clouds, and dawns you want to wake up for (even if you don't).  The headliner though, is the full arch of rainbow that appears more often than seems natural.  Its like some compulsive director in back is screaming from his chair "stop the rain on my count.  now, cue the rainbow.  no, the big one.  RAINBOWS RAINBOWS NOW!"  Rainbows so big and so lasting you can hear the leprechauns chuckle.  Or perhaps its the Nomad kids.  I gave them too much candy and they're bouncing off the ger walls. 

The reverence for nature is evident everywhere you go; the fence less grasslands, prohibited ownership of land, roaming herds, tiny carbon footprints left by the Nomads who still live in movable felt tents, eating and wearing what is provided by their flock. The lifestyle is extreme by any measure; the country is covered in ice 9 months of the year and its not uncommon for significant numbers of the herd (also known as their entire livelihood) to die off during a cold winter.  The Nomadic lifestyle is a source of pride for Mongolians and it is fascinating to hang with these people who live on very little, survive by the land, and seem pretty contented doing it.  For the Westerners, though, its impossible not to consider the other side of the pro-Nomad argument.  Alcoholism is rampant and incest is not uncommon.  Children work from the time they can walk (mostly collecting dung for fires) and education is, of course, secondary to survival.  Its hard not think 'how have you been left here, in the 13th century? why hasn't progress reached you? is struggle so embedded that alternatives aren't discussed? are you lonely out here?'

Its impossible for us to comprehend but, like everything else in Mongolia, unreal to see.

Back in UB!

Hieee!!!!!

I have a million things to say and post and blather on about and will do so shortly.  Our trip through the steppe and the Gobi was bananas.  Mongolia is breathtaking, infuriating, amazing, indescribable, backwards, awesome - its own goddamn planet.  We're back in the capital for a few days to launder ourselves and our belongings before heading to China. 

This evenings plans include shamelessly monolpolizing the 1 ethernet connection in the hotel.  Stories and pictures coming soon!

We oot.

100% correct answers to the quiz from the singular guesser, Yelena!  Who needs a lock on their door when you have a heated towel rack?? Well done, Miss!

And for all you former colleagues who I know are reading, I'm expecting a bit more commenting interaction.  I know you guys are multi-tasking....

1. Air Conditioning
2. Warming Towel Rack in bathroom
3. Sauna
4. Twin beds
5. Flies
6. A bedside console that controls the lights and electronics in the room
7. 3 course breakfast
8. In-room safe
9. Chain lock for door
10. An individual water boiler
11. Internet access

So, folks, our brief and muted tenure in Ulan Bator is ending in about a half-hour and we head to the steppe.  We're super psyched to go and have already seen where the "city" ends which is fascinating and hilarious.  Basically at the outskirts there are large, ornamental one-car wide open gates that you pass through on to a single lane dirt road that heads for the hills.  And thus, you're on your way.
 
I decided last night that Ulan Bator is more like Detroit than like Vegas, perhaps more on that during our second stop here after the trip through the countryside.  We aren't sure how much access we'll have in the next couple of weeks, but if the other smaller cities are anything like here, I suspect we'll be riding our camels past a few internet cafes.
 
Wish us luck!  Mostly with the drinking of the fermented yak's milk without barfing in front of the nomads, please.

Ulanbaatar, Mongolia

The capital city of Mongolia is kind of what you'd expect... Mostly dirt roads, some heavy soviet-era influence, and a moral code not dissimilar to Vegas.  The booze, the ladies, and the karaoke are unbelievably popular here.  I suspect thats due in large part to the number of years that Russian troops policed this place like the bouncer at the Continental.  The products and the tradition feel much more Eastern European than North Asian, which was unexpected.  As soon as we can post pix, I'll shoot through a few of the city. 

On Wednesday (Wednesday? I've lost track in the haze of jet-lag), we saw the main squares and walked the majority of the city.  Yesterday we visited a well-known and amazingly beautiful temple.  The grounds also contained a monastery and a Buddhist University.  Photos, from someone else who was there once:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/ae.middlemarch/1/1277146510/the-huge-golden-buddha.jpg/tpod.html

When we first arrived at our hotel, we thought the place was kind of a dump but have now had a sec to understand the broader context.  The city hasn't been on its own for that long, and still owes much of its progress to its big bros, China and Russia.  So while there is rampant construction (like, 8 story communist-style architecture going up about every other block) the infrastructure hasn't caught up.  So, certain luxuries have been provided here, but of the sort that seem unbelievably random and somewhat ill-contrived.  For illustrative purposes, let's play "guess which of these things can be found in Rodney & Ed's hotel" - ready?  Feel free to make your selections as a comment.  Answers manana.

1.  Air Conditioning
2.  Warming Towel Rack in bathroom
3.  Sauna
4.  Twin beds
5.  Flies
6.  A bedside console that controls the lights and electronics in the room
7.  3 course breakfast
8.  In-room safe
9.  Chain lock for door
10.  An individual water boiler
11.  Internet access

We're about to head out for the day to see the Natural History Museum and maybe the Winter Palace.  Its super hott here and there is minimal breeze/shade, so our walks outside have been limited to a few hours at a time before we seek shelter.  On the plus, the people are SUPER friendly and the tour guide we head off with tomorrow seems nice and speaks English.  Also, she's a she.  Another surprise there.

Darlings, we are off to scavenge for culture and something edible. 

Hi, I'm in Mongolia

Hey team,

We are here, yo!  And let me tell you it was a bitch of a trip.  The construction at JFK screwed us and we missed our connection through Beijing.  Luggage was misplaced, complicated gestures were performed, confusion abounded.  Couple highlights from the first 36 hours of our trip, which was all travel all the time... 

Another passenger from JFK who missed her connection sort of got lumped in with us as the foreigners that the Air China staff were trying not to lose.  She was older and kind of tough/pretty but in a hard-living way.  She and her husband now live in Thailand and based on our interactions and several comments from passing Asian business men (who knew her name, though I couldn't catch it) I'm pretty sure she was in porn at some point.

Also, on the mini-bus to the airport hotel we stayed in a young women on our had a full-on melt down.  Like, hysterically crying and rolling about in her seat.  She was seemingly alone and the bus driver tried to talk her down.  I'm not sure what he said but his tone wasn't all that empathetic.  Anywho, at the hotel she had to basically be carried, hysterical, through the lobby by an Air China dude who was sent from the airport to keep her on the reservation.  Bananas.

These experiences really added to the surreal nature of our evening.  At that point, we basically hadn't slept in 24 hours and were pretty loopy anyway.  Not to mention that the Beijing airport is fucking Gattaca....

Anyway, we made it to planet Mongolia and have been here for about 36 hours.  More to come on that topic...