Xinjiang pics and other updates

I'm back! I hate that I get stressed out if its been over a week and I have not posted anything. My excuse was that I was traveling, then I was getting over being sick (food poisoning ruined the amazing Xinjiang food I ate), then I was getting back to my life in Harbin, then my internet connection was not good. And, well, a lot was going on.

I promised pictures. I tried to load some on here but they did not work too well (slow connection). Here is a link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=112465&id=721517517&l=bf1bb9fc7e

In other news, just this week the New York Times reported this article about China's plans to rebuild the ancient city of Kashgar. This was where I was (see pictures). I'm glad I saw it when I did. When the government gets involved to 'help' or to turn an area into a tourist destination, the result seems to be Disneyland. Not to mention that there are real people living there.

www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28kashgar.html

I have so much more to write about. I will keep it short.

1) Swine flu is a huge scare here. Taxi drivers in Beijing were scared of us when I told them my friend had just come from the US. People moved away from us on airplanes and airports. Newspapers are reporting Chinese students in the US are urging their fellow students not to return to China for fear of spreading the disease. They were criticizing the US for not being as concerned as in China. I found it a bit ironic, after China ignored SARS for so long when it was here.

2) Showing a friend China is fun (and tiring). What I like about it is the fresh perspectives and observations they bring. It makes me think about my own interpretations of things happening here. One of my favorite lines from Betsy came after she had been here about a week. She had always wanted to come to China and had an idyllic vision in her head of what China would be like. Two years ago she had spent 3 months in Japan and she said "Wow, being here really makes me appreciate Japan!" Japan is orderly and people observe some kind of social etiquette. In China, however, cars drive on sidewalks, in the wrong lanes, and they honk at anything and everything in their way. People rarely wait in lines, pushing, shoving and spitting on the sidewalk is common practice, and its quite acceptable to yell to the waitress across a crowded restaurant to get the bill. To the outside observer, Chinese society can appear to be chaos.

3) Rice is being planted in the fields now! We just had a bunch of rain here. Pictures to come soon.

4) I'm definitely much more of a football fan than a hockey fan, but I have to show some home-town support. Go Penguins!

Change of plans

Saturday morning, as planned I was at the airport with my friend Betsy en route to Mongolia. We had already gone through customs and were waiting to get on our flight to Mongolia. Then we were told there was a snowstorm in Ulaan Bataar and it was delayed 12 hours. Rather than waiting all day in the Beijing airport and missing a day in Mongolia (which already felt rushed anyway for only 6 days in the vast country), we found out we were able to refund our tickets. We went backwards through customs and the next question was: where to go?

We were in the capital airport of China with all our money refunded. The options were endless, except that I have already been to many places in China. When Betsy said she wanted to go west, I said 'let's look for tickets to Xinjiang.'

We were here by Saturday evening. Xinjiang is the large province in the northwest of China, home to the Muslim Uighur population. Since I first came to China in 2001, this is the one place I have always wanted to visit, but never had the time to get here since its so far away.

I am now in Kashgar (Kashi in Chinese) now, a city in the far west of Xinjiang. We visited the big Sunday market/bazaar in town on Sunday and strolled through the old town. We spent the past 2 days driving through the mountains visiting Tajik and Krygy villages. We were really close to Afghanistan. We stayed in a Krygy (sp?) family's yurt at about 3,500 m high and then woke up and climbed a 4,200 m mountain (with the help of motorbikes) to see a glacier. We rented bikes today to get around the city. Heading back to Xinjiang's capital Urumqi soon, and then back to Harbin by Friday night (if all goes well).

Stay tuned for pictures of this amazing place. Its a completely different world from the Han Chinese (the majority) parts of China. Its definitely the refreshment away from China that I needed as I head into my last chunk of research time in Heilongjiang.

Asian Adventures

I am in Beijing, waiting for my friend Betsy to arrive. Two years ago, Betsy and I spent a week in Japan hopping trains, climbing mountains, chasing volcanoes, and bathing in hot springs. Now its tome for our Asian Adventure #2.

Its her first time to China, so we are heading to the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and the Olympic park in the next few days. But then we are heading to Mongolia (the REAL one-not China's Inner Mongolia) for 6 days. We are hoping to repeat our Japanese adventure, Mongolian-style. Horses, mountains, lakes, grasslands, gers, etc. all await us.

Then we are returning to Harbin where Betsy will accompany me to the rice fields and maybe we will get to plant some rice. Hopefully I will be back in a week with plenty of pictures and stories.

This is what Democracy looks like?

I got a call earlier this week from a professor asking me if I wanted to join him to go to a village to the northeast of Harbin for two days. Sure, I answered before even knowing what he was going to be doing there. I usually go on these trips and spend two or three days being an object of attention for my Chinese-speaking abilities and toasting so-called important people with alcohol I do not want to drink and eating food I do not want to eat. Overall, every last minute of these trips are arranged and I have no free time. We are visiting sites that are growing rice but are not the research sites I have picked. Most of the time the professor is doing the talking and I sit there with a couple other grad students with no real role in the project.

Fun, huh? I go because I have access to amazing things and I never know what is going to happen. Yesterday between our 6 hours of train, bus and car travel, I asked several times why we were going. The answer was that a new program was starting and our professor was asked to attend the opening ceremony and give some advice. Typical Chinese vague-ness. I usually wait and see what happens. We got there and toured the greenhouses and our professor told them what to do better.

Then this morning was the opening ceremony. We walked into a room set up with a long table and were told to sit at it with other important-looking people. Along the back wall were farmers. Some of the village leaders spoke for a while, reading off a document. I spaced out and stopped listening after 20 minutes. Then I heard "tongyi?" (agree?) and everyone raised their hands. Next was "butongyi" (disagree?) and no one raised a hand.

They had my attention. I felt like I was in a town meeting. Then all the farmers in the back were handed papers. For what? To cast a vote for the leader of the organization.

The important people table.The farmers in the back.Giving the farmers the ballot.
Casting the ballot in the red box.
And the winner is? The guy who was the leader of the organization that this one morphed into. His name was already professionally printed on the poster that the organizers waited to hang on the wall until after the election.

PS-for those of you not familiar with Chinese politics, village voting in China has gained attention over the past decade or so. As much as I love the idea of civic participation, I am skeptical for a lot of reasons about the way this system of voting is developing in China. But I just got back from a long day and am too tired to elaborate on it now. Its happening, I saw a form of it this morning, and my skepticism remains.

Lilacs!

My schedule in recent days has been a few days in the countryside followed by a few days back in Harbin to write up and plan my next trip to the countryside. I am here for 2 days before leaving early tomorrow morning for 2 days. Luckily, I caught the lilacs when they are in bloom. I had no idea Harbin had so many lilac bushes. I've enjoyed them so much on my morning runs the past two days that this afternoon I went back with my camera to capture them while they are in bloom.

Preparing the Rice Fields

As I reported a couple weeks ago, rice is being planted in greenhouses now in preparation to go in the fields at the end of May. I spent the last few days in an area south of Harbin known for the 'best' rice in China.
I found more rice seedlings thriving in greenhouses.
I also found farmers in the fields preparing the land to plant the seeds.
The lighter soil where this man is standing is the old paddies from last year that were harvested and let to wait out the winter. The dark soil (in the land that has been tilled) is one of the attributes many people associate with Heilongjiang province being able to produce high quality rice.
There are gas-powered trackers to turn the soil.
And hand-powered ones.
And some people do it by hand.

Happy May Day!

Its a long weekend in China. May 1 is a national holiday to celebrate Labor Day. It used to be a week-long holiday where schools and businesses were closed for a week to travel. Two years ago, this holiday was reduced back to one day, while other Chinese holidays throughout the year were given an extra day to celebrate.

Not thinking about the holiday, I went to one of my favorite spots in Harbin along the Songhua River to run. There is a large stretch of street next to the river that is closed off to cars. If I go in the morning, there are few people and it is a pleasant place to run. But because it was a holiday, everyone else in Harbin decided to go to the river to enjoy the beautiful day.

As a result, my usually quiet running route had turned into an obstacle course of circus events. I found myself ducking under kite strings and dodging young roller bladers. I ran past a choir and jumped over fallen tufts of cotton candy. As I passed each person strolling down the street, I heard comments about the Russian who runs (presumably me).

It wasn't quite the quiet run I anticipated. But it made me happy. Because along with the singing and dancing, there were dogwoods blooming and warm air blowing. People are outside and enjoying the day, a rare occurrence over the past 6 months here.