(This entry is actually from early August, in the last few days of my China trip. I’m in Reno now, and I’m finally getting around to finishing this and posting it.)

Hong Kong came and Hong Kong went. A large Asian city with an even denser forest of even taller buildings than we had been used to, it also retains the British qualities of everyone speaking English, signs that were easy for me to read, and traffic that not only is supposed to be on the left side of the road, but stays on the left side of the road. As we moved toward home, things were becoming more comfortable and familiar. We even had a map! It became easier to figure things out and to find places, but at the same time, easier to feel OK about not doing much of anything besides waiting for the trip to be over.

Especially, when you’re feeling like that, how can you even hope to scratch the surface of a city like Hong Kong in two and a half days?

When in doubt, I look for yoga classes.

Wednesday afternoon, after arriving at the guest lodging of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Patti, who was feeling increasingly unwell, and I had afternoon tea at the staff lounge (grilled ham and cheese and samosas!), then explored the campus. It was not as huge at it first seemed, though as hilly. Then we made a conscious decision not to run off into the city, but to rest. I searched for yoga classes on the internet while Patti skyped with her husband. We had gotten so used to switching off with the one data cable in Shenzhen, having two connections was a novel luxury. As there was still no wireless, my iPad continued to sit in my bag. Good thing I got a new (used) laptop two days before I left!

Classes that sounded interesting and appeared to be quite close to a metro station went on my list. There were many to choose from. I nearly got motivated to run out right then and try to catch one, but I really had no idea how long it would take to get anyplace, and, in truth, I had already settled in for the evening. Acroyoga does value accurate self-assessment.

So Thursday morning, armed with a list of classes and a general idea of when it would make sense to split off from the pack to get to one, I joined the rest of our group to visit Lantau Island, where we could see a Big Buddha, a fishing village, and the pink dolphins. (For the sake of my sister, I feel I need to point out right now that I did not go to see the pink dolphins. Sorry, Katie.) Of course it was nearly noon by the time all of us got going, but I was mostly done being worried about that. No matter how much I saw of Hong Kong, it would only be a tiny bit, and no one but myself was going to keep me from getting to yoga later in the day. I wouldn’t make an afternoon class, at this rate, but I had a list that ran quite late into the evening.

We took the metro, changing trains several times, to get to the aerial tram station to get to the Buddha. If I could ever claim to have a superpower, it would be that I read really fast. Traveling by metro with a group of teaching peers was kind of a dramatic illustration of how much faster I attend to and integrate text than many other people. It seemed like some would not have even seen the sign by the time I had figured out where to go. I mean, what else is there to do in metro stations but look for signs? Many people are far more talented than I in many other ways. Someday I hope to always be able to say things in the nicest possible way, for example. But fast reading seems like a good skill for a traveler, at least, to have.

I would have gone along with it, but I was not sad that our group did not choose to pay extra for the glass-bottom tram. These were the enclosed ski lift hanging from the cable sort of cable cars, not the San Francisco trolley sort. Several times on the twenty-minute trip up, we stopped and swung in the wind, even sliding backwards once or twice. Holley, who had grown up practically on the slopes of Lake Tahoe, was delighted to feel so at home. I have been working on managing a fear of heights for years now, so it was not horrible, but it was not my most fun thing ever.

The tram brought us only to the bottom of the top of the hill. At the very top sat the eight-story Buddha, in the middle a temple and a monastery and a bus station, and at the tram egress, a tourist village strip mall of restaurants, gift shops, murals that you stick your head through to have your picture taken, and afternoon demonstrations of Shaolin (which was not the monastery on this hill) kung fu.

Tourists "training" with the Shaolin.

Patti found a refrigerator magnet and we had noodles for lunch. We made some remarks about how this blend of the sacred and the profane seemed incongruous. I certainly have refrigerator magnets from some large historical churches I’d visited in Europe, too. Perhaps the theme park village atmosphere was a practical function of an isolated (for all its proximity to Hong Kong, it was on the top of an undeveloped small mountain) place that many people wanted to visit. But I could also imagine this reflected a greater integration of spirituality and modern culture that I, at least, do not usually experience. Less distance between what something is and what it is not. A pilgrimage is, after all, a sort of vacation.

Notice the stairs leading up to the Big Buddha.

We climbed the stairs to the base of the Buddha. If there is one thing China means to me, it’s stairs. I thought taking the stairs to my fifth floor room in Shenzhen rather than the elevator would just help me stay in shape while I was off my regular routine for the month. Instead, it prepared me for being in China. These particular stairs, though still steeper than most stairs in the U.S., were paved and regularly spaced, unlike many of those I had climbed recently in more natural settings.

The Buddha was lovely and it was big. Statues of the bodhisattvas surrounded the base, and as these were larger than a person but not 80 feet tall, they made an easier to photograph background for acroyoga pictures. I hadn’t taught all the teachers on the trip to fly like I’d hoped. At a meeting in the spring when we were still preparing for this trip, Holley and Jesse had expressed interest in doing yoga with me, but between the heat, the working and the exploring China, we never got around to practicing together. But Holley was game to try it now. It’s hard to be relaxed when you haven’t tried flying before, you’re wearing a skirt, and there’s lots of people watching, and she’s pretty strong, but I wrestled her into bird and we got the picture.

We stopped at the temple on the way back down. It was beautiful and they had a great sound system. It was difficult to tell the powerful chanting was not live. We lit incense. “There go your troubles,” said Susan as we tossed the incense sticks into the fire. Not a bad way to think about it.

Inside the temple

It was about four o’clock, and as we headed to the bus station to go to the fishing village, I realized I wouldn’t be able to get there and still make it to yoga at 7:30, so I found the bus for the metro station and went there on my own instead. Susan wanted to make sure I had ID with me, just in case. I assured her I had that and a credit card and a map on top of that. A few others looked pretty concerned that I was about to go off all alone, but by myself I went.

I was surprised that the bus trip back to the metro station took nearly a whole hour, but we were on the other side of the island, and we had to go around and over, including pulling over many times so other vehicles could pass as we climbed. The metro trip back to Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon, the northern Hong Kong island, moved faster, but also took a while. I still arrived with about an hour and a half to spare. I located my building, then walked around a few blocks to see what there was to see. Mostly shopping for expensive purses and jewelry. I was about a block from the waterfront, where there appeared to be several museums, one with a large dome that glowed pink from the inside as it got darker outside. I popped into a boutique that didn’t seem too spendy and tried on dresses to kill time. I found one I liked, of course. Many clothes in China have more asymmetrical shapes and interesting cuts that really appeal to me. Plus, I’m a sucker for dresses with functional pockets.

As I gathered my things from the store, I realized it had starting raining. I hadn’t brought my umbrella when we left much earlier in the day. I should have known better! It was quite a downpour. The streets were cleared, as people stepped inside stores and under awnings to stay out of the rain. I only had to get to the end of the block and across the street, and I wanted to get to the studio early, and I had no idea how long this might last, so I made a run for it. I was completely drenched from head to toe by the time I made it to the lobby of the Peninsula Building. Someone followed me with a mop as I dripped my way to the elevator. (We had long noticed that, for a place that gets so much rain, China sure had a lot of slippery floor surfaces, indoor and outdoor, and Hong Kong was not different.) At the desk upstairs, someone ran and got me a towel as I dripped on the familiar “I will not sue you if I hurt myself in at this yoga studio” paperwork.

(This is where I left off writing at the time. The rest I am finishing today.)

So there were at least five people working at the front desk of this yoga studio. It had twelve rooms on several different floors of the building. The locker room was bigger than the apartment I lived in for seven years, and in the room where my class was to be held, there were about 25 Manduka black pro mats laid out on the floor, which are pretty much the best and most expensive yoga mats you can get. No wonder, when I later figured out the exchange rate, I had paid forty dollars for this class!

As I waited outside the room for the teacher to arrive, I chatted with a woman who was also there for the class. We commiserated about the rain, and she said, “At least there are blow dryers here.” I replied that that was nice, but my hair was so short. “No, for our clothes,” she said. Genius! After class, after a lovely shower, I spent at least half an hour blow drying my soaked clothes at the twenty-station make-up table.

As for the class itself, there were only maybe six of us, due to the weather. We were on the 14^th or so floor with a big picture window, so there was an amazing view of the city illuminated with lightning strikes. The teacher was Indian, from India. He decided to have us try more difficult arm balances, since it was a small group. There were at least three poses I had never seen before, and I’ve been doing yoga for over a decade. It was cool. No one, including me, had much success with these poses. At the end, the teacher basically berated us for not having good basics, so of course we couldn’t do these challenging postures. I later read somewhere that it is considered a traditional Indian teaching style to never compliment your students so that they don’t develop an inflated ego.

I feel like I learn something new every time I go to Dinah’s class in San Diego, which I have been attending for over ten years, so I was happy to get this teacher’s insights. Getting new perspectives from different teachers is one of the reasons I like to do yoga when I travel. I asked him what he thought I could work on. He gave me some pointers about getting my weight more into my feet in downward dog, and a modified Baddha Konasana to work on. Between being at the swankiest studio I have ever seen and having a demanding but helpful teacher, this class was a great experience. It was also a good balance compared to the class in Shenzhen where the teacher was very complimentary of my practice, and it turned out that I had been practicing years longer than he had. A good reminder of why doing yoga is referred to as “practicing!”

The next day was to be our last in Hong Kong, and my last in Asia. I was leaving feeling there was so much more to experience there, but not disappointed at all. Being present and involved in what I was doing felt much more enjoyable than worrying about what I wasn’t able to accomplish.

Haven’t spent much time browsing aimlessly for pretty much a month. Here’s an article I am liking: Eat, Pray, Spend. Recommended by my favorite blog of all time, mimi smartypants.

I needed the break. The sightseeing will still be there tomorrow.

I slept late, and Patti came back up to our room to tell me she was going on a boat ride in 15 minutes if I wanted to join the group. There was still much confusion about what kind of boat on which river, but I hopped out of bed. I had missed the agony of the group decision-making process, and now all I had to do was show up. Perfect!

Scenery along the Li

We had been hoping to get to a less populated area of the river to see more uninterrupted landscape. Apparently, we left a little late, so the van driver drove with a vengeance. We gripped the seats as he passed trucks on a bridge with visible oncoming traffic.  He honked furiously. Being in any vehicle in China has been an adventure pretty much every time, but this upped the ante. He did refrain from passing in a tunnel, but just barely.

The boat we were not on.

When we arrived, there was not actually a larger group waiting for us, wondering where we were. There seemed to be many available boats, though two boat drivers seemed to be expecting us. The boats were the style of the traditional bamboo rafts, but made of PVC. Instead of a pole, they were driven by small, noisy, moveable outboard motors. Each boat sat four, with two bamboo benches, which were not attached to the floor, as I found out when Patti leaned back at the same time I looked down to get something out of my purse. I still have a sore spot on my forehead. There was a little awning over the benches so we would be out of the sun. As we moved down the river, we passed a large tour boat that we thought we might have ended up on. With a big crowd standing on an uncovered top deck, we thought our set up was probably more comfortable.

Traffic on the river.

As we motored through the countryside, we were no longer in town, nor along a road, but we were not out of traffic. Boats like ours were coming and going with family after family out cruising for the day. Many waved, and some attacked with water guns. Heather and Melody, from our group but on the other boat, found the water gun on their boat (the kind that is basically a long pipe that suctions up water) and started shooting happily back. They got soaked, standing on the front of their raft. They quickly figured out the etiquette that you only shoot at armed boats, basically, and leave the others alone, especially if they are pointing a camera at you.

Waterfight!

After a while, we anchored at a rocky sandbar with some pop up shelters on it. We had passed several, but I think your driver stops at the one he has a deal with. They’re basically all the same—someone with a cooler with cold drinks and ice cream, hooked up to a generator or a house across the shore, one or two ladies with small stoves frying fish or sweet potato pancakes on a stick, a few people selling souveniers, and a few racks of costumes to have your picture taken in.

Potato pops and river creatures on sticks fried in beer, a regional specialty.

See! We're not the only ones dressing up!

Patti and I went straight for the costumes. When we showed the pictures to our translators later, they said we had chosen garb from Inner Mongolia. This time we also got to pose with two cormorants. Cormorant fishing is a traditional method in this area of China. The cormorants wear a collar which prevents them from swallowing the fish that they catch, and then the fishermen take the fish from the bird. We heard you can also go on a tour to watch them do this.

Patti, Inner Mongolian princess, and the cormorants

Susan joins the fun. Patti and I are really starting to master the skirt holding pose.

After our little sandbar excursion, we turned around and headed back to our starting point. Once again, we would have liked to have a little more information about the mountains. On maps, many of them have very interesting names. But it was still a pleasant way to spend the day.

Of course, there were water buffalo.

The ride back to our hotel was only marginally less scary, since we were not hurrying. Some of our group of seven were all fired up to go to lunch together.
Another reason Patti and I make great roommates is that we are rather skeptical about going everywhere in such large groups, and we were also both starting to feel like it would be nice to have an actual rest on this vacation. That led to about a 4-hour nap for me. Lovely. Later, Patti and I went out for dinner and some shopping on West Street, the crazy main visitors area. We worked our way all the way down to the end of the street, where it seemed we could bargain the prices down lower.

On the way back to the hotel, we missed our turn and got lost. We kept thinking there would be a place to turn left to hook back in to the main street as we walked farther and farther down a dark and rather desolate street. There wasn’t. Eventually we reached the end of the road and turned around. Walking down a strange, dark street felt way safer than driving in a taxi in China. And, once again, though we had gone quite a ways out of our way to no avail, it made our navigating the next day much easier, as we had a better understanding of how the streets were organized. And it reminded us to pay better attention.

The bus took us as far as the border crossing. After going out through China customs, walking across a foot bridge over the border, and then going in through Hong Kong customs, we were to get on the Metro to the university where Ann had used her connections to book us guest rooms. This was with all of our luggage in tow.

As we stood in line at China customs, we said goodbye to Lulu, one of our translators. Jake, one of our music teachers, pulled out his video camera to film the goodbyes, pretty much right beneath the “No Photography” sign. He was immediately approached by a uniformed official asking him to erase the pictures. Instead of complying, Jake and his girlfriend started arguing and insulting the Chinese official, and refusing to step aside when she asked him to.

Apparently he thought she was being stupid because, technically he could not “erase” the picture since it was a video camera. She threatened to take the tape. He was like, “No way, that’s our whole trip.” She could have taken the whole camera if she’d wanted.

Finally, he calmed down and rewound the tape and she let him go. After a few minutes, he could see that arguing may not have been the wisest course of action, and we managed to leave the country without leaving any of our teachers in Chinese custody.

We lugged our luggage onto the Metro, and only three teachers missed our stop. They had to get off at the next stop, navigate several flights of stairs, and come back one stop. That didn’t take too long, and luckily we had a van picking us up from the university guest house. Our accommodations turned out to be quite close to the Metro stop, if you walked up a steep hill first.

Patti and I signed up to be roommates again, and we opted for recovering and blogging rather than diving straight into Hong Kong. Ann, one of our directors, went directly to bed, as she is not feeling well at all.

We’re expecting a very busy day tomorrow!

Yangshuo

Yangshuo is a vacation town. The scenery is straight out of a Chinese watercolor. The Li River runs by, and there are caves and mudbaths and hiking and vanishing tribes shows.

This morning we had western-style breakfast at our hotel—salty scrambled eggs, fake orange juice, and white toast. The Chinese-style breakfast looked better, but I think we’ve been signed up for the other. The directors of our program were really excited about it.

Many teachers were making plans to spend the day together, but Patti and I were not particularly interested in the cat herding project, so we just took off walking to find a bank and get our bearings. We walked probably a mile in the direction we did not think we were going, but we did get sun hats from one of the many roadside vendors. When someone finally helped us figure out where we were on a map, we saw that we were a lot further in the opposite direction than we had hoped to set out, we headed back towards our hotel to go the other way. As we got close, basically in front of a bank with a big orange sign, but where our ATM cards did not work, we decided to rent bikes to cover more ground. There were many corner bike rental places, and tandems are very popular here.

We hadn’t biked in Shenzhen partly because we took a chartered bus back and forth to school every day, and partly because it’s a busy city, and no one follows traffic rules. There are tons of cars, most with relatively new drivers, as well as motorbikes and bicycles zooming everywhere. It was a little sketchy to walk near roads. Here the roads are a little bigger and a little less crowded, and with a lot of people who don’t really know here they’re going. But there’s also tons of tourists riding bikes, so we decided we could do it too.  Since they were basically cruiser style bikes, I figured I could captain a tandem reasonably well, and Patti agreed to put her life in my hands. I mean, ride one with me.

The first five minutes were probably the sketchiest. Not because we were getting used to it, but because we immediately encountered the busiest turnabout in probably the whole town. After we didn’t get killed with motorbikes, bikes, buses, trucks and golfcart-style taxis merging from all sides and not necessarily staying on their side of the road, I figured we’d be fine.

We headed out of town in the other direction, where we now believed the Li River to be. We stayed on the main road, and there were many, many Chinese people riding bikes heading that direction too—a good sign! We stopped at a bridge to try to figure out where we were on a map. We had a good view of people on the river going over a small rapids on bamboo rafts. The bridge seemed to be a major in and out spot for this tourist activity. But as we stood there looking at a map, instead of helpful people stopping to see what we needed, two Dutch people stopped to ask us for directions! Because we looked like we knew what we were doing! (We think it must have been our hats.)

We had no idea where the Dragon Bridge they were looking for was, and we just kept going on our main road. Next we came to a parking lot full of tour buses and tandem bikes in front of a small mountain with a huge butterfly statue in front of it. Was this something we should see for 75 yuan (about 10 dollars)? We went to the information window and got a brochure. Only in Chinese. But it looked like a rather involved project, where you followed a rather lengthy path to several different areas, all mysterious to us. And was it uphill? Or through a cave? We decided to give it a pass, as we weren’t ready to make an all-day commitment to a mystery tourist attraction.

We rode on. Though these amazing small, triangular mountains were rising all around us, the road continued to be flat. Next we came to the Big Banyan Tree Natural Scenic Area. Only 20 yuan (3 dollars) and enough signage in English so we had an idea of what we were getting into. One of the top ten scenic attractions in China, the sign told us!

Patti (in her new hat) in front of the Banyan Tree.

The Banyan tree was big. And there was another opportunity to dress up in Chinese costumes and have our pictures taken. We found out later we chose Miao attire. Even though it was still hot and I was dripping with sweat, I wasn’t going to pass it up this time!

Patti and I in dress of the Miao people in front of the Banyan Tree

There were also monkeys in adorable monkey suits with which to be photographed. Ethically questionable, but cute. We sat for the pictures. There is not much about traveling in China that is not either ethically questionable or the very least unsafe to an American mindset. From no bike or motorcycle helmets or adherence to the appropriate side of the road to lack of free speech rights to our Chinese teachers being expected to supervise children from 8 to 5 with no actual breaks, there could be something to object to at every turn. As a first time visitor to China who did not manage to do even the most cursory research into what I might experience here before I arrived, I think the best role for me here at the moment is that of a polite guest, rather than a conscientious objector. Even now I do not feel I have collected enough information to make a really informed opinion about this culture.

Monkeys in monkey suits!

Then there is also the quandary of wondering if I want to visit certain places here in Yangshuo or not because they are too “touristy.” Well, I am a tourist. And even though there are parts of this town that could remind you of a place like Ybor City in Tampa or even Garnet St. in PB, it’s all new to me. Is it tacky, or not the most accurate representation of Chinese culture? Maybe, but it’s hard for me to make that distinction. I can mostly tell if some places are more crowded than others.

Also at the Banyan tree area were bamboo rafts. After watching for a while, we determined that you get to paddle them yourselves! Once we got out on the water, we realized we were in a blocked off part of the river, like a kiddie pool.  Good thing. The long bamboo poles were tricky to maneuver. We couldn’t quite figure out if it was more effective to push off the bottom or paddle more like a canoe. Most of the Chinese families floating around seemed to not be much better at it than Patti and I, though for the most part we were able to avoid colliding. One time we used our poles to push a family’s boat away from ours, so we wouldn’t crash, as we all smiled and waved good-naturedly at each other.

You can also see in this picture how hot and humid it is.

Though we had been warned repeatedly against “street food”, we got a fried cake and a leaf-wrapped sticky rice from a vendor. Both were tasty and neither of us got sick. We’re all avoiding the tap water, as it seems to be common practice to boil it first. (And we’re going through what at home I would find to be an unconscionable amount of plastic bottles. Ugh.) There are also many other safety warnings posted in our hotel. While I’m not going to leave my laptop sitting in the lobby, danger from the Chinese people seems less than minimal. When we tried to leave the hotel housekeeping staff a tip at our last hotel, they chased us down the hall, concerned we had left some money in the room.

So we rode on from the Banyan Tree on the tandem, nominally heading for a café that had a big English billboard that we’d passed earlier. As far as we could tell, it was at the foot of Moon Hill, a hill with a big arch at the top that had been recommended to me by one of our Chinese teachers. At the café, they offered Western-style food, and also “farmer food,” which referred to more local fare. I might have called it Chinese food. We chose a combination of both—mango milkshakes and pumpkin chips, both delicious! We did not eat the snake, nor drink its blood.

Moon Hill from the cafe.

After lunching among large groups of Dutch and Australian tourists, we set off to hike up the hill. On the road, we had been momentarily surrounded and then passed by a several groups of non-Asians following guides, and we felt pretty proud of ourselves for having such a great tour without the need of our own guide. (As everything was right on the one main road, it wasn’t that dramatic of an accomplishment. But many people did not attempt it.) At the gate to Moon Hill, we ran into Susan from our group on her way down. She had started out with Ann, who didn’t feel well and turned back. But Susan was having a terrific time being out on her own. Sticking with the group (or more accurately waiting around for the group) can get awfully tiring. She advised us to stay to the left, and be sure to follow the steps past the arch when you think you’re at the top for a better view.

More steps was not what I necessarily needed the day after hiking up the 2,000 steps of Nan Shan in Shenzhen, but it was the only to get there. We went up through the bamboo forest surrounded by very noisy insects and followed by an old Chinese woman trying to sell us postcards and water. The formation looked very much like those at Arches National Park in Utah, if it were a green jungle rather than a desert, and it was made out of dripping clay rather than slickrock. Patti and I wondered what the story behind the name Moon Hill was. Was it from the shape of the cutout of the arch, or a fairytale, or what? We were also very excited to get some information from the internet about how these amazing mountains were formed. Where is an English-speaking geologist when you need one!

The view from Moon Hill

After this full day, we tandemed back to the hotel. It was so much quicker returning than it had been going, once we knew where we were! Patti online long enough to get a synopsis of the story of the performance we were going to see that night. Then we lost the internet connection. Still no geology information!

So our whole group boarded a bus to head to this performance that is famous for the town. We heard it was performed on the river, with boats, fire, and over 600 performers. This being China, they couldn’t just hand us all tickets. We were supposed to stay in a group from the bus to the theater, and be led to our seats by a woman holding a long stick with a stuffed animal on the end. With our group of Americans, we barely made it in. On the one hand, the rugged individualist American mindset seems to make this type of activity more difficult. On the other hand, it made feel awfully proud of the students at Xara who spent a lot of time discussing whether things worked for them, and noticing that things that work for one person don’t always work for the group, and how to problem solve around those issues.

The performance was big, but not tremendously compelling, especially after a long day in the sun. The theater could hold up to 10,000 people, and seemed to be about half full. The show didn’t seem to follow the storyline Patti had looked up, about the third sister who was kidnapped by a warlord and rescued by her sisters and her lover. But there were some very impressive effects with light up suits causing large numbers of people to appear and disappear very suddenly. They weren’t even spinning the fire, just holding torches. There was a very cool effect with red fabric and people on boats, but we couldn’t tell what it was supposed to mean, narrative-wise. Maybe the warlord marching through, leaving bloodshed in his wake. But it didn’t seem like it.

These performers are on rafts on the river.

What a fun day! And there was still a lot to do in Yangshuo, but I was also starting to remember that, sometimes, on vacation, you just need to rest.

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes! I appreciate it so much! It is so great to have little notes from home while I am here. I am not much of a “It’s My Birthday!” person. I just mentioned it to my roommate, and I was surprised when a few other teachers here wished me Happy Birthday, until someone pointed out that it was posted on our school marquee. So much for keeping it quiet.

I did have a very nice birthday. I nearly bit off a colleague’s head when she was fifteen minutes late to a meeting this afternoon, but it turns out she was finishing up a birthday card which they had all of our A-group students sign it. Oops. They all wrote their English and Chinese names, so it’s a pretty great memento.

Patti, Nikki, Susan, Ann and I went to dinner at the restaurant my host family had taken me to over the weekend. It had been so delicious, and since I’m not much for cake, I thought their fried bread would be a terrific substitute. (I had Joe’s mom write out the Chinese words for fried bread just in case I made it back there.) I warned the group there was the possibility we would only be able to order fried bread for certain, because the only menu I had seen there was only in Chinese. Everyone agreed to a mystery meal if necessary, but they had a copy in English, which was almost disappointing, though not quite.

Unlike in the U.S., the Chinese servers hand you the menu and then don’t leave. They (2 servers for five people) stand there with their pen poised, making us feel like there must be something wrong with us for not having our order figured out already. While I was flipping through the vegetable dishes in the back, one of them impatiently grabbed the menu from me and flipped back up to the front, pointing to the picture of the roast duck, like stupid foreigners, here’s what you’re looking for! I did know it was a Peking style restaurant. It turns out many people do come there especially for the duck. We saw at least three other tables having it.

I showed the hovering servers my fried bread note, which gave everyone a breather while I pointed to “sweet” and “salty” and gestured for one of each. We also ordered fried rice, tomatoes with sugar, eggplant with garlic, and mushrooms and vegetables. The thing about this place is that all of these dishes are pretty much the same as what we regularly eat at our hotel, but way, way tastier. The vegetables are fresher, more tender, and not overcooked or too oily.

Patti and I stop eating just long enough to take a picture.

Nikki and Ann had stealthily ducked into a bakery on our way and bought a small cake. Susan and Patti and I had stared up and down the street for a few minutes trying to figure out where they had gone. Both of them have a reputation for getting themselves and others lost, and I had been starting to get worried. I found out later that Susan had been in on it the whole time! She totally fooled me.

Anyway, they pulled out the cake a little sheepishly at the end of the meal because I had mentioned while we were eating how I don’t really like cake. How were they to know? It was fun to get it out and celebrate and try to cut it up and serve it to each other with chopsticks anyway. And, there were a few pieces of fancy looking fruit decorating the top of the cake, one of which was a tomato! Who would pass up a cute little Chinese cake with a tomato on top? Not me! It could be my favorite cake ever!

I bit into it just to make sure. Weren't you thinking a tomato with whipped cream was just what you wanted?

It had rained all day, including some tremendously impressive thunder, but after dinner the rain had stopped and it was actually cool and not too humid out! It was lovely to just wander around looking in shops and not sweating uncomfortably.

But the best thing about my birthday could be that I’m in China. Patti asked me how I felt about being away from home on my birthday. Since my family always traveled in the summer when I was a kid, I feel like there’s something wrong if I’m not away from home on my birthday! Here I am traveling, just like I like.

*pictures coming some time from Susan’s camera
Today was a lovely day. I tried to sleep in, but couldn’t, so I just lay in bed pretending to be asleep for as long as I could stand it. Several of us had planned to go to the Fairy Lake Botanical Gardens, about an hour bus ride. A group went two weekends ago and had an amazing experience, so we all wanted to go too.

The last few minutes before we left, I was googling to get any extra information I could about how to get there. There was a webpage that had a card to print out that said “Please take me to Fairy Lake.” If only I had any way to print it out. I briefly considered copying the characters, but that would take too long and I would probably get them wrong. I looked at Patti’s papers to the right of my computer and remembered she had a map of Shenzhen. Even though it was only in Chinese characters, I was getting used to the look of the land and thought it might come in useful. If I had to point to our general area to get us home, I could find it on the map.

Under the map was Patti’s brochure from when she had been to the Gardens! Now I had the name of the place where we were going printed in Chinese characters! We were set! Good thing, because we were double-checking the bus route at the hotel desk just a few minutes later, and it wasn’t going well until I showed up with the brochure. Magic! Express bus K113, we’re on our way.

The desk staff told us they thought it would cost 8 Yuan, so we were all ready with exact change as we headed to the bus stop around the corner. The bus pulled up just as we walked up. Instead of a moneybox, there was a ticket lady to pay, with several books of different colored tickets, since the fare depended on the distance. She looked at us like this was going to be difficult. But I pulled out the brochure and pointed! No problem, message received! And it was only 6 Yuan, not 8! On the bus ride, I tried to pay very close attention to where we passed Metro stops. We were hoping to go to Louhu shopping district after the gardens, and I knew I could get us there on the Metro, since it’s at the end of the line.

The ticket lady told us when to get off, and pointed across the street. We had also heard that we could pick up a shuttle there to get up the hill to the gardens. The other group had walked most of the five miles before they were picked up by and English-speaking botanist who had been to Quail Gardens in Encinitas. We were pretty sure we weren’t going to repeat that bit of luck, so we looked for a shuttle. Two very aggressive beggars practically got in the minivan with us as we made arrangements with the driver. We were also approached by a woman with a bag of live turtles. I believe she was selling them for two Yuan apiece. Leah, a florist from Carlsbad and one of our art teachers, wanted to buy some and release them in the botanical gardens. Worried about non-native species contamination, we prodded her to get in the van quickly.

Susan had looked into the layout of the gardens, and had made a plan to go to the Petrified Forest first, then walk down to the Buddhist temple on the grounds, as well as the orchid and butterfly garden. But the driver took us straight to the temple. So we went there first. It was crowded and beautiful and hot. We bought incense and lit it as we had watched the locals do, then stood like we’d observed in front of a large Buddha statue in a gated room, each making offerings in our own way, then tossed the incense into a fire. “There go all of our cares,” said Susan, as they burned to ash. As we walked further into the temple, we realized there were many different Buddha statues in other alcoves, and people make offerings to either all of them or the ones that stand for certain things, I guess.

Susan spotted a small group of people following a saffron-robed monk, so we followed them. We ended up in what seemed like a 3rd story loading dock, looking out over a roof with animals carved on the corners. People were sitting around eating. We walked up to the building, and a woman we had not noticed before handed three Styrofoam bowls of noodles out through the carved screen that made up most of the wall. Susan tried to ask a man standing nearby who to pay by pulling out her wallet. “No money, no money,” he said. Another woman popped out of a door in the wood screen with a to-go box of bundles wrapped in leaves. She put one in each of our bowls. It was a bun wrapped in a leaf, stuffed with pine nuts and vegetables. It was kind of sweet and very delicious. This vegetarian noodle soup was probably the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in China so far!

Our group had been separated, and Leah and Desiree found us and joined us as we finished eating. We showed them where to get the soup, but it was too late. Lunchtime at the temple was over! The screen was closed up tight!

The petrified trees were interspersed with whimsical topiary trees and picnic tables made out of sawed off, polished-top petrified tree trunks, giving the whole area a very fantasyland look. I would not be surprised at all to learn they petrified trees were not in their naturally occurring spots, but had all been moved there and arranged meticulously. As we wandered among the stone trees, we heard a lot of thunder, but it never did rain.

Staff at the paleontological museum at the Petrified Forest helped us determine that number seven on the map was the butterfly garden. Though we were at the top of the lake and it was at the bottom, we decided to start walking. Not long after, we saw our shuttle driver. We decided we didn’t need to have the most tiring day in the world, so we hired him to drives us there and wait for us to drive us back to the bus stop.

There were not many orchids blooming, but there were many butterflies in a large mesh enclosed garden. You could rub your hand on wet sponges located throughout the butterfly enclosure, and the butterflies would land on your hand, attracted to something like sugar water, I assume.

Our driver took us back down to the bottom of the hill, where Leah and Desiree hopped on the bus to return to our hotel. Nikki, Ann, Susan and I took a taxi to the Louhu shopping area. I’m positive I could have gotten us there by public transportation, but the others didn’t want to risk it. It turns out we were quite close, so a taxi worked fine. Our taxi driver spoke some English, as well.

He dropped us off at the Shanghai Hotel, right across the street from the shopping area. We stopped in the hotel to find an ATM, and used their fabulous western-style bathrooms. Not only did they have western-style toilets, they also had toilet paper, which everyone carries around in their purse. On top of that, they had soap and paper towels! The lap of luxury!

We decided to have afternoon tea there as well. It was lovely, and quite a contrast from our lunch at the temple. Two extremes today! We each had a three-tiered platter. We’d ordered the Asian style, so the bottom was shrimp wrapped in crispy noodles and curry samosas. In the middle was a wonderful muffin, a tiny scone, delicious tapioca pudding, and a small dish of slightly spicy but otherwise tasteless black cubes of gelatin. The black stuff is supposed to be very good for you, so I ate it. The top dish was fruit. Yum! It was all very civilized and snooty. The lounge was full of westerners. It was also a very good thing to have a nice rest before getting back on our feet, and it was nice to get to know each other better. The four of us were a very compatible and relaxed traveling group.

Then we went shopping. At Louhu the bargaining was more serious than at Dongmen. They started higher and would go lower, as long as you attempted to leave. I probably did overpay for a few things, but I got some nice gifts for people. One thing I did not buy was a sequined dress with a stand up collar that would have been entirely appropriate for competitive ballroom dancing, and not much else. I could have had one custom fitted or even made, and I have a hard time passing that sort of thing up. Who knows when you might need one? But I did not even go see how much they were selling for. I just eyed them enviously.

We shopped until Susan and I spent all of the money we had brought, and then we hopped on the metro to go home. This was a route I was now familiar with! We switched to good old number 70 bus, now practically routine. About ten minutes into our ride, the bus stalled just before a bus stop. The driver got on the phone for advice and started turning the engine on and off. It seemed he couldn’t get it into gear. My group started to get a little nervous. It was about 10:00 at night. But we had only been there a few minutes, and we had seen a second number 70 bus in the bus station, waiting to pull around after ours left. We wouldn’t have to try to figure out another way to get home. Sure enough, within another five minutes, the next 70 bus pulled up, and everyone on our bus switched over. They didn’t even have to announce anything.

We got off at our Walmart, and walked the short walk home. The day had flowed quite smoothly.