Entry 2: Beijing to Xian, 2010, May 14

Entry 2: Shanghai, World Expo
We later toured the Olympic park, built for the 2008 summer games, making the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics (where we spent the month before coming to China) seem relatively small. My idea of big had to be revised again after visiting the World Expo in Shanghai (where I am now).

(that's the large bird's nest in the background)

Tracy, a native Beijinger and new friend, drove us north of Beijing a few hours where I was surprised to see a sign for a ski resort. We drove up into the mountains and hiked from the road 15 minutes to a section of ruins of what was once the Great Wall. Most of the stones now form the terraces where peasants grow their crops in the field below.


With the weather ski cold and snowy in Mongolia, and the Chinese so surprisingly warm and hospitable (at least the Northern Mandarin speaking ones) we decided to travel three more weeks in East China. Xian, a 12 hour journey west of Beijing was our first destination. Xian is the home of the Terracotta Warriors – only recently discovered in 1981 – a tomb (Mongol style) with clay replicas each detailing individual horses and humans. Thousands of them and no two replicas are alike. Within less than a year after the emperor’s death, the pissed off people enslaved to build the terracotta army, raided the tombs, treasures and smashed most of the statues, leaving the statues buried and undiscovered until the early eighties.





The following two days we hiked up to an area (Huang Shan), a Mountain with 5 sacred peaks and said to be the place where Lao Tze - easily the world’s greatest (philosopher) hung out. Incredibly steep stairs, hundreds of thousands of them, carved right out of the rock, were leading to impossible temples and caves perched on even more impossible cliff faces. (Reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, these steep rock paths are exactly like those described when Gollum leads Frodo and Sam to the spider’s lair.)



Since Lao Tze’s (ideas) are all direct references to his profound observations of nature, there is no culture barrier to understanding him. For those acquainted with nature (or themselves) will love Lao Tze. Lao Tze is the pressure release valve for individuals that are interested in knowing more about life than just standard dogma, such as Confucius propaganda. We Westerners have no equivalent release valve institution built into our system and this absence plays a big role in our insanity. After climbing each peak, light ran out and we began the descent down the mountain looking for a nice lama temple to sleep besides.



With very little sleeping options (all temples turned into store kiosks), the spot we chose to sleep that night was a small section roped off from the main path, but nonetheless used by people to relieve themselves. Sony had to wear a mask to help overcome the overwhelming stench of dried piss. All night the relentless push of hikers went passed us, those that noticed us, shined flashlights in our eyes. I give the Chinese tourists lots of credit though. Most are out of shape city folk that start the climb at 11 pm, reach the summit an hour before sunrise, nap for an hour, and then come back down. By doing this, they avoid the cost of paying the exorbitant price for a hotel room on the mountain.



Our next sight was the Longmen Caves, a super impressive cliff next to a river with thousands of Buddhas. Many of the heads decapitated as they are now a part of private/public collections throughout the Western world. The limestone rock was hewn by hand into large caverns and the Buddha carved in the surrounding walls. It must have been a great place to come contemplate life, but is now, just an “official historical cultural sight”(as decreed by the Chinese government) visited by hoards of Chinese on package tours with megaphone wielding tour guides.






We stayed in several towns, some totally off the tourist route. I am surprised places in China still exist where people never see foreigners.



These are the places where one does not need to worry about “tourist prices.” Of the many great massages we had, the cheapest a mere $1.25 for an hour long foot massage and meals for 50 cents. Mostly we eat steam buns with vegetables stuffed inside for 4 cents each.


I assumed all Chinese ate rice for every meal, but in one month, we only ate rice twice. Food in China is almost nothing of what you might find at a hole in wall in America – the food is tastier and more sanitary to boot. The Xian muslim night market, was my first introduction to the Uyghur- the mixed white/Chinese ethnic minority of the northwest China. Previously, the Uyghur had similar nomadic lifestyle to the present day Mongols. Locals took us around and the variety of street food was astonishing. We visited a very old but still active Mosque, and were there just in time to watch the men rush into the the main hall for prayer - women are prohibited from the inner chambers.

Entry 1: Beijing to Xian, 2010, May 14

We are en route from Beijing to Xian , a 12 hour journey via train traveling at speeds up to 100 mph.

The trip to this point has been great. It all started after spending one month at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver, after which, the process of packing and getting life in general order to be able to take off for a minimum of one year of travel, began. The end of February to mid April was spent in Seattle getting ready for possibly the most adventurous part of the trip – a four month horse ride across Mongolia. We plan to be the highest tech salmon nomads on the Mongolian steppe: two flexible solar panels will cover our horse’s ass to charge up a GPS unit, rechargeable batteries, cameras, iPods, 1TB external hard drive and a netbook (which is loaded with software to translate Mongolian to English) to boot.

No land ownership, teeming with semi-nomads, the largest animal herds in Asia, shamans, tombs, landscapes ranging from alpine lake regions full of fish (locals don’t eat fish) to old growth Taiga forests to the flaming cliffs of the Gobi desert, Mongolia offers the largest vistas of grass and sky and the most diverse landscapes the world has to offer. In 1994, when I enrolled in the Peace corp , my first choice was Mongolia, the most remote country on their list. With almost no roads, and the lowest population density of any country in the world, what city-raised dweller wouldn’t want to experience such a contrast? And be able to learn more from as different a place as one can experience.

With three weeks before departure to Beijing China, I drove my truck and boat to Los Angeles, where the camper and boat will be stored, with two other travel companions who share my same passion for adventure: Sony, a self-described hedonistic free spirit who will travel the year with me, and Aleth, who was recently released after being diagnosed with clinically acute psychosis (e.g. she speaks to dead people). We took a detour in Oregon to ski at Mt. Bachelor for a week and luckily came across a huge dump of spring snowfall. This mountain made for one of my best ski experiences, which speaks volumes since I bore easily on a mountain without any moguls to ski – and Bachelor has none. What it does offer, however, as an extinct symmetrical volcano, is an almost perpetually sunny mountain, the top of which is above the tree line.

A single chair lift allows access to the peak and one can drop down anywhere in a 360 degree circle into the tree line. Any part of the forest can be entered – there are no designated runs, just pure skiing through the most extensive glade skiing with the largest trees you can ski through in the world (not the largest trees in the world).




We did a stop over in SF to see an ex-boyfriend of Sony’s, who kindly injected $2500 worth of vaccines to my already full yellow immunization card of travel shots from previous years of travel. While rabies and Japanese encephalitis are no longer a major threat, I only have to worry about bubonic plague, which is still alive in the countryside of Mongolia – it’s last breeding ground on earth.


L.A’ s dry heat is the best place to store the camper. Left unattended in Seattle, the camper would become a pile of mold in a matter of months.

Once in LA, we made final preparations during the last two weeks: testing all of the electronics, especially the solar panels, getting last minute fishing gear, cleaning out the camper and prepping all the dry powdered food. We are only packing one set of clothes. Since weight is an issue, one is only allowed one or two non-essential survival items (i.e.luxury items). I’ve chosen to bring my dungeons and dragons’ dice in any we have any down time.

A majority of the gear weight consists of wild smoked salmon, which we caught in British Columbia and smoked ourselves - in anticipation of .this trip. Below, are pictures of salmon we smoked ourselves in July 2008 (!) and August 2009.


After celebrating Sony’s Mom’s birthday, with a traditional Korean dinner, we were dropped off at the LAX airport, with the same parting words that several of our friends and family already issued as part of their farewell, “Don’t do any stupid.” On board on Air China, with the GPS unit in hand, I could trace our flight over Alaska and the Bering Sea. I woke Sony to show her the midnight sun and clear vistas of Alaska’s glaciers, Yukon River, and disappearing ice pack in the form of fragmented icebergs clearly seen floating about the bays.

(Below, on Air China, trying to avoid H1N1 and any other airbornes.)

Upon arrival at the Beijing airport, on our way to collect our bags, we met a woman, from San Diego, who happened to be Mongolian and headed to Mongolia for one month. We would later meet her again in Ulanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia) and she would become one of many friends we met along the way who were of invaluable help with translation, navigation and negotiation to buy our remaining gear for horses and the horses themselves. We actually agonized over Chinese customs (would they confiscate our smoked salmon!) only find no custom officers in sight and breezed through the exit like high ranking officials with major connections.

The Beijing airport, modernized for the 2008 Olympics, is the largest in the world. The interior spaces are enormous, but it was the Chinese military guards who provided the real entertainment – always walking in pairs, with arms swinging in unison.