Odds and Ends
17 November 2005
It's been hard to put a cohesive blog together for the last couple of weeks. Our jobs suddenly interfered with our recreation and forced us to apply ourselves to teaching. We're finally catching up after administering 300 midterm exams each and then grading them. All of the teachers here at the Lijiang College of Culture and Tourism have been huddled over stacks of papers, looking wistfully toward the sunshine streaming through our apartment windows, as we corrected grammar and interviewed oral English students one by one. But we have emerged (!!) and plan to head into the mountains this weekend for a fall hike. In the meantime, I've thrown together some miscellanea from the last month or so to keep the blog from getting too stale.
First, so as not to mislead, this is what it really looks like around here.
Yulong Xueshan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) at sunrise from our apartment window. The mountain dominates the valley were we live and the town of Lijiang. Every morning I wipe the condensation off the window and look north to see if the mountain is out. Now that the rainy season is over, it almost always is.
Another sunrise shot taken from our living room window.
New town Lijiang is much less charming than Old Town, but the mountain lends some atmosphere. The road sign conveniently identifies the feature in case you aren't sure what you are looking at.
Just throw a couple of things on your bike and head into town.
Bei and I decided to head up the Xueshan last Sunday. A tram carries visitors from the base to 4,600 meters (about 15,000 ft.) where one follows a boardwalk along a fractured glacier to eventually gain a view of the cirque below the main peak, which is over 18,000 ft. high. Chinese tourists stumble along the boardwalk huffing oxygen from little aerosol cans that they sell at the base. Bei and I opted to make the trip "without O's."
Extreme alpinist Bei relaxes along the boardwalk.
But...the altitude turned on her and put her to bed. Thanks to my alpine experience I knew what to do...descend. I carried the sleepy Bei from our high point (4680 m) back to the tram and successfully descended to base camp where Bei quickly recovered. Our mission now: figure out how to reduce the atmospheric pressure in Bei's bedroom at 8:00 p.m. every evening.
The snack bar menu at the base of the mountain. Anything look good to you (if you click on the photo you get a higher rez version up that you can read)? They were out of hot dogs.
Fall lingers here for a long time. At least by Wyoming standards. It's mid-November and still far from feeling like winter though we huddle around our electric space heater. This view is looking south from the town of Shuhe just east of our campus.
The highway that heads west from Lijiang towards the first bend of the Yangze River.
Yunnan is famous for it's plant diversity. This flower (What is it?) is common in the hills around campus.
The Lijiang markets are eternally interesting. This woman steams baozi early one morning.
A technique that would make Tim Allen (Home Improvement) proud. Cooking with a blow torch. Actually, burning the pesky hair off a pig leg with a blow torch. Scenes like this one warm the hearts of carnivores like myself.
A scene from the market in old town. All around these guys, meat was being chopped and singed by busy vendors, but nothing could disturb their cool as they maintained their poker faces.
An older customer makes his way home from market back when the rainy season was still sputtering.
Blues Brothers watch out. When this gentleman wraps his waxy brown hands around the neck of a guitar and plays the baddest blues this side of Earl Johnson, the competition shivers...well...maybe not. In reality he was content to watch the comings and goings in the market through a remarkably stylish pair of mirrored dark glasses.
And for you climbers out there--yes there is potential here. This cliff is in a canyon that extends for several miles north of our apartment. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new Bosch drill and wondering how, after 3 months of virtually no climbing, I'll ever be able to haul myself up a piece of stone. Stay tuned.
Happy Halloween from China.
Any advertising gurus out there? Can you think of a slogan for this company?
DVD shops flourish here and all over China. Bei just watched this film as I worked on the blog. Any chance that it might not be a legal copy?? Whose the fairest of the mall? [sic]. To find out just view this "Latinum Edition."
And finally--at risk of censor, the bird flu issue looms. A recent rumor of 2 bird handlers from a nearby lake dying in the Lijiang hospital had everyone talking, but to the best of my knowledge this was never a confirmed rumor. It certainly never appeared in any news that I could find. But does that mean anything in China? Our attention is focused on the issue though and, like many people here, we've (regretably) eliminated fowl from our diets.
The recently opened KFC in Lijiang has suffered from the rumor. It was absolutely packed with customers two weeks ago and now is sparsely visited.
It's been hard to put a cohesive blog together for the last couple of weeks. Our jobs suddenly interfered with our recreation and forced us to apply ourselves to teaching. We're finally catching up after administering 300 midterm exams each and then grading them. All of the teachers here at the Lijiang College of Culture and Tourism have been huddled over stacks of papers, looking wistfully toward the sunshine streaming through our apartment windows, as we corrected grammar and interviewed oral English students one by one. But we have emerged (!!) and plan to head into the mountains this weekend for a fall hike. In the meantime, I've thrown together some miscellanea from the last month or so to keep the blog from getting too stale.
First, so as not to mislead, this is what it really looks like around here.
Yulong Xueshan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) at sunrise from our apartment window. The mountain dominates the valley were we live and the town of Lijiang. Every morning I wipe the condensation off the window and look north to see if the mountain is out. Now that the rainy season is over, it almost always is.
Another sunrise shot taken from our living room window.
New town Lijiang is much less charming than Old Town, but the mountain lends some atmosphere. The road sign conveniently identifies the feature in case you aren't sure what you are looking at.
Just throw a couple of things on your bike and head into town.
Bei and I decided to head up the Xueshan last Sunday. A tram carries visitors from the base to 4,600 meters (about 15,000 ft.) where one follows a boardwalk along a fractured glacier to eventually gain a view of the cirque below the main peak, which is over 18,000 ft. high. Chinese tourists stumble along the boardwalk huffing oxygen from little aerosol cans that they sell at the base. Bei and I opted to make the trip "without O's."
Extreme alpinist Bei relaxes along the boardwalk.
But...the altitude turned on her and put her to bed. Thanks to my alpine experience I knew what to do...descend. I carried the sleepy Bei from our high point (4680 m) back to the tram and successfully descended to base camp where Bei quickly recovered. Our mission now: figure out how to reduce the atmospheric pressure in Bei's bedroom at 8:00 p.m. every evening.
The snack bar menu at the base of the mountain. Anything look good to you (if you click on the photo you get a higher rez version up that you can read)? They were out of hot dogs.
Fall lingers here for a long time. At least by Wyoming standards. It's mid-November and still far from feeling like winter though we huddle around our electric space heater. This view is looking south from the town of Shuhe just east of our campus.
The highway that heads west from Lijiang towards the first bend of the Yangze River.
Yunnan is famous for it's plant diversity. This flower (What is it?) is common in the hills around campus.
The Lijiang markets are eternally interesting. This woman steams baozi early one morning.
A technique that would make Tim Allen (Home Improvement) proud. Cooking with a blow torch. Actually, burning the pesky hair off a pig leg with a blow torch. Scenes like this one warm the hearts of carnivores like myself.
A scene from the market in old town. All around these guys, meat was being chopped and singed by busy vendors, but nothing could disturb their cool as they maintained their poker faces.
An older customer makes his way home from market back when the rainy season was still sputtering.
Blues Brothers watch out. When this gentleman wraps his waxy brown hands around the neck of a guitar and plays the baddest blues this side of Earl Johnson, the competition shivers...well...maybe not. In reality he was content to watch the comings and goings in the market through a remarkably stylish pair of mirrored dark glasses.
And for you climbers out there--yes there is potential here. This cliff is in a canyon that extends for several miles north of our apartment. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new Bosch drill and wondering how, after 3 months of virtually no climbing, I'll ever be able to haul myself up a piece of stone. Stay tuned.
Happy Halloween from China.
Any advertising gurus out there? Can you think of a slogan for this company?
DVD shops flourish here and all over China. Bei just watched this film as I worked on the blog. Any chance that it might not be a legal copy?? Whose the fairest of the mall? [sic]. To find out just view this "Latinum Edition."
And finally--at risk of censor, the bird flu issue looms. A recent rumor of 2 bird handlers from a nearby lake dying in the Lijiang hospital had everyone talking, but to the best of my knowledge this was never a confirmed rumor. It certainly never appeared in any news that I could find. But does that mean anything in China? Our attention is focused on the issue though and, like many people here, we've (regretably) eliminated fowl from our diets.
The recently opened KFC in Lijiang has suffered from the rumor. It was absolutely packed with customers two weeks ago and now is sparsely visited.
posted by Ken, Ellen and Bei | 6:00 PM
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