Its been hard blogging recently - that'll happen when your parents plan activities for every minute of the day. I think a quick summary of the last few days is necessary - I'm posting on Tuesday night.
My dad came in to Beijing Thursday night. See, we're all taking a family vacation, and by family, I mean me, my dad, my mom, DJ, my housekeeper auntie and her daughter Eva. Its a big affair, and personally I think it's ridiculous that they came all the way out here to visit me while I'm just away for the summer, but that's exactly what my parents are - ridiculous. So Friday is July 4th, and suddenly it dawned on me that this was my first ever July 4th away from the US. While not always the most exciting of holidays because like every other time during the summer, my friends are scattered around, I realized how much I did miss my nation's Independence Day. Barbecues, day off from work, walking around town, concert at the Hatshell, fireworks... these seem routine and redundant until you find yourself slumbering through another workday while they're taking place. Well I tried to arrange a dinner for my dad to meet my friends here at an American place, and asked Kate for a place. After an odd turn of events, I instead was bringing my friends to dinner with many of Kate's friends, our party totalling nearly 20, at a Mexican restaurant and my dad fortuanately had other plans.
This July 4th bore some eerie similarities to my last year's July 4th - great plans, close friends, terrible weather and eventually a disappointing night. Crystal and I got to the dinner ok, but soon after we got there things started pouring. Lisa and her friends were coming by taxi and got stuck in traffic. And Lisa was sick and threw up on the side of the room. Then they couldn't find the restaurant and I went to look for them in absolutely DRENCHING rain. Cats and dogs inadequately express the force of this storm. In among the more colossal mistakes of my time here, I went out looking for them sans umbrella and in addition to jumping through the river that San Li Tun road had become, I failed to find them. I returned to the restaurant soaked and pretty pissed. We finally got reunited after the storm passed over, and by this time everyone else was on their way out to party, and I couldn't go with them of course...anyways, after footing 100 kuai more than I should have on the bill because someone didn't pay, I went out for an uneventful clubbing trip before returning home. The only eventful part was the massage I got at a urinal in a club bathroom by a bathroom attendant... I'm not sure if that was the creepiest physical moment of my life but it was definitely top 3.
Ok so vacation time began Saturday. So the rest of our party gathered in Hong Kong, and we are all supposed to meet up in Kunming, a Southern city. From there we'd fly to Lijiang, a small city with a UN World Heritage site (from where I'm currently typing). Well our 11:20am flight from Beijing wasn't at the gate when we got there...turns out it was flying from some Northern city and hadn't even left that airport yet. Boarding finally took place around 5:30 but it wasn't until 7 that we left. Our connecting flight from Kunming to Lijiang departed at 7:40. So we had to crash at an airport hotel for the night before flying to Lijiang in the morning (this flight was only an hour and a half late). Overall I am less than impressed by the Chinese air transit system.
I really should have gotten to this earlier but Lijiang is beautiful. You can wikipedia it (if you haven't already), but really quickly, it's barely east of Myanmar, surrounded by mountains, the home of the Naxi minority, and absolutely scenic. The first day we went to the World Heritage site, which was this old city created by the Naxi that exudes culture. Dainty canals geometrically line the city, with stone bridges everywhere making access easy. The canal water is very clean, deriving straight from the mountain and with very minimal polluting on the way down. This "city" is basically a giant bazaar with tourism souveniors out the wazoo. If you aren't familiar with this yet, most of China, especially all these shops, run on a barter economy, and the general rule of thumb my dad taught me is that the correct response to a salesperson initial price offering is to divide by four and make that your price. Everybody is trying to rip everyone else off. I hope to get into more details later but I mostly bought necklaces, t-shirts, cheap paintings and the like, only breaking the bank for this incredible chess set with the pieces carved in traditional Chinese form. In addition, we also made a trek up the mountain ranges nearby via gondola. I believe the mountains we went to are the foothills of the Himalayas and quite tall - we were at over 4000 meters, 13,000 feet or so and I'm pretty sure thats the highest I've ever been. Perhaps difficult to believe, but there was snow at this level (which wasn't even the peak). Although global warming has definitely hurt the snow and glaciers, even in the summer, this close to the equator, it was still possible for me to throw a snowball at DJ. However I got altitude sickness and really had to take it easy from thereon out.
Vacation time hasn't really been full of stories. Since I've gotten older and learned how to have fun on my own, vacations have been more interesting and insightful than fun. My parents do all the planning and carry the largest weight in decision-making, and their compulsive planning and inability to chill really cramps my style. But I've enjoyed life so far; the weather here at higher elevation is much cooler and cleaner than the polluted microwave that is Beijing, and I would certainly choose all day walking around to all day teaching English.
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