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Me-go Mix: Track 5 This song was everywhere during my first trip to China in Phase I. It was blasting from every other storefront, sung by teenagers walking down the street and playing every time I turned on the TV. S.H.E., a Taiwanese trio formed from the winners of a singing [...] Me-go Mix: Track 3 If there’s one song that reminds me of my recent travels in China it’s Ji Xiang San Bao. During 2004’s Phase I, a handful of pop songs were constantly [...] So much time and effort has gone into my visa planning, particularly for Central Asia, that I’m surprised it’s finally time to start applying for them. Thankfully, the first two countries I am visiting—South Korea and Mongolia—give US citizens free visas on arrival. China isn’t quite so easy, and because I will pass through it [...] I really cornered myself in the Yunnan Province. The province’s main city, Kunming, is quite large but outside of the main highway between Dali and Kunming the roads are rough and slow. The area I was in was much closer to Laos and Myanmar than the Vietnamese border I wanted to cross. My options were [...] It’s hard to believe that I’ve been travelling for two months straight. In the grand scheme of things it hasn’t been long at all, but I imagine that it must seem like an eternity to most people back home (especially my mom). Halloween passed with no fanfare this year. People who know me well will [...] After a bumpy 12-hour night bus from Kunming to Jinghong I had finally arrived in my last destination in China–the Xishuangbanna Region. My main reason for coming here was to see the ethnic minorities in the smaller towns. Jinghong, a ‘modern’ Chinese city, was my base since most buses originate from there. It’s streets are [...] I can now say that I’ve traveled by hard seat in China. Hard seat is basically the lowest class of travel by train. The seats aren’t terribly hard–they could be wood. But 7 hours sitting on a bench in-between two middle age Chinese men and across from a couple that fought the entire trip was [...] Dali wasn’t somewhere I really wanted to see but it seemed like a good enough place to stop. Only 3 hours from Lijiang, the minibus passed large fields with people working, picking crops by hand. The actual town doesn’t have much to see, only a few town gates which are being recreated (along with the [...] Lijiang is a smaller town dubbed “the Venice of China” because of it’s many canals, stone bridges and cobblestone alleys. The journey here was interesting–a 12-hour train ride from Emei into the Yunnan Province followed by a breathtaking and often terrifying 8-hour bus ride over the mountains. The usual bidding war over me, the only [...] It’s not really getting any warmer as I head south. I’m still carrying around the coat I bought in Xi’an and the scarf and hat I bought in Xiahe. My first short stop from Chengdu was Leshan, a town which is overpriced and moving as fast as it can toward Westernization. Towns like Chengdu and [...] |
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