Christopher

Likely some truth in that; whether it was directly or indirectly. I place a lot more value in the words directly from the people of China, and certainly in Joanne, who actually lived here and experienced that time. It's pretty freaky when you've got a group of Americans that seem to know more about the events of China than the Chinese people themselves. It wouldn't be hard for the CCP to edit the national memory of the Tianamen Square. They control the the mass media pretty effectively. As a matter of fact, as part of their current crackdown on dissent, they are commemorating this anniversary of Tianamen Square by closing thousands of student web forums and blogs, arresting dissidents and transporting them 1000's of miles from where they live and so on. None of which is being reported in Chinese media, AFAIK, but all of which is being reported all over the Western media. In other words, the normal state of affairs is that everyone in the West knows more about the recent history Chinese internal affairs than the Chinese people themselves, excepting the persons actually involved in and witnessing that history. They would have to turn the the PRC into the giant economy size version of North Korea for the situation to be otherwise. PS. This is not unusual. I find that European coverage of the US is more insightful than American mass media.

Google Chrome seriously rocks. Much faster than Firefox, the most secure browser you can use. Uses much less memory if you are like me and are looking at 20 or 30 pages at once.

toilets are easy to find, just follow your nose This was the main reason I took care of #2 before leaving the hotel. #1 is ok out, #2.... no way Very nice posts. I appreciate your detail. When will you return? Actually I am back. I don't think it will work out with this girl, although I think she is very nice and would make someone a suitable wife. I think it's more a case of me not being suitable for her, and she has a lot to lose by moving to the US.

Sweet and sour red cabbage --------------------------- 1 small red cabbage 2 tbsp bacon drippings 1/2 apple salt 1/4 c. sugar 1/2 c. apple vinegar water 1. chop up the apple into really small bits, 1/4 inch or less 2. quarter the red cabbage, cut out the stem and slice up into 1/8 inch strips 3. heat bacon drippings in big frying pan, saute cabbage and apple with salt to taste until everything is soft 4. add sugar and vinegar, and barely cover with water 5. cook it down for a while until the pectin in the apple makes the sauce less watery

The last 4 days have been a whirlwind. I forget what we did Wednesday, but Thursday we went to see the Pandas, had dinner and went for massage afterwards. The highlight of the trip was going to Mt. Emei which should be on everyone's must-see list. We took a bus to Leshan, then switched to a bus that took us to a town close to Wan-nian temple, where I got camera happy on the architectural detail, urns and sculptures (pics when I get them all sorted out). Then we got on another smaller bus that took an hour and a half to grind 36 kilometers uphill to Long Quian where the cableway is. This bus had a huge turbo diesel engine that that was screaming in granny gears most of the way up a slope that is probably tougher than anything the Tour de France has dished out since the 60's. We got there after the cableway had shut down for the day, so we had to walk up to the top of Mt. Emei, about 7.5 kilometers up the mountain on a walkway paved with slate in really bad shape and irregular sized steps. Between the thin air and being a complete lardass, it was the most brutally tough thing I have done since about 1995. We rented a coat for me which I did not need as I was sweating like a pig in about 10 minutes. Anyway, but the time we got to the top it was 8:30, and getting really dark and I was having a hard time walking in a straight line. We had to poke around here and there until we found out where to check in, and then we had to rush to the restaurant before it closed, where we we had to put up with attitude and lousy food. Ni ordered something spicy for herself and was mighty displeased because it did not have that radioactive look. I can't really recommend the hotel at the top of the mountain. The beds are rock hard, the sheets were slightly discolored, the employees had a terrible attitude, we had to run the heater on high all night (all concrete construction is colder than a witches such-and-such). Plus Ni did not get a good nights sleep because I was snoring, plus she got pretty bent out of shape because I forgot to flush (twice! ouch!). On the plus side, breakfast was free and the hot water was endless, and the shower had a massage setting, which I really needed. After getting up early, walking around the temple at the top of Mt. Emei, we ate breakfast and lollygagged in the room for an hour, then went down to the cableway station, which turned a 2 hour death march into 5 minutes of standing around looking out the windows. Getting back to Leshan, we had our first decent meal in 24 hours, spent about an hour poking around a temple, and then got on the bus back to Chengdu. I filled 2 SD cards with pictures I need to sort out, but for now I am taking a shower and going to bed.

Ni gave me notes to hand to the taxi drivers, and so I went to the Jinsha Site Museum. She was really firm with me and wanted me to make sure the taxi drivers didn't try and screw me. She said if the taxi cost more than 23 yuan I was to take the ticket and she would get my money back. Well, the taxi there cost 16 yuan, so I am a bit amused, since the same ride in the US would have been more like 20 dollars, with those gas guzzling Crown Vickys they have. Heck, what's a dollar more or less to me at that rate. At Jinsha, yhey have taken the entire archaeological dig and put it under a climate controlled glass roof, and then constructed a separate building about 100 meters away to show the artifacts. The rotten shame of the matter is that for what they are putting on display, the buildings are about 5 times too large. But they are very nice buildings, and the only problem I had with the presentation is that there wasn't nearly enough light to take pictures without a flash, which was also a problem because everything was behind glass. At Sanxingdui, there was mostly enough light to take decent pics at ISO 400, which is where my camera reaches its limits. But I did get some nice pictures: stone sculptures, jade daggers and a gold mask. While I was there I met a sweet kid on holiday from some university in Shanghai who is the first person in Chengdu to actually engage me in conversation. Her English speaking skills are excellent, and she already has a job lined up with the Starwood hotel group in Shanghai. We talked about a lot of things, politics in the US vs. China, the financial crisis and so on. I took her photo, wished her good luck, and went on my way. Heck, I didn't even ask for her email address. I must be getting old. Afterwards I went to a restaurant called Asijen Ramen, and had some twice cooked pork over rice. Now I am at the hotel, writing this post and waiting for Ni to come over from work, and then we will 5 days to play in the city. Tomorrow, we has pandas!

I made a mistake in a previous post. I said we had gone to the Jinsha Site museum, when we had actually gone to the Sanxingdui ruins. Today I am going to the Jinsha Site museum on my own. Ni has to work today, and has to work late since she has been transfered to the Nissan dealership in hopes of a promotion. Last nights dinner was the best so far. Ni admitted that the vegan restaurant was a mistake, but she made up for it last night. She told the waitress no spice, but the food was still hot enough to drain my sinuses. I am getting pretty damn good with chopsticks, though still not up to a level of a four-year-old here. I have figured out how to hold them so my fingers don't get tired. The big problem now is that the food at theend of the chopsticks is twice as far from my fingers as with Western utensils, so droplets of sauce tend to fly off every which way. As we say in my family, "you can't take me anywhere". Also, I posted a bunch of pics in CFL travelogs, enjoy!

Actually, next time I come over here I'm bringing my own coffee, a French press and a hundred or so Splenda. Then I just need to score some 1/2 and 1/2. Maybe if I am really lucky I can find some unhomogenized whole milk and skim off the cream (yum!). Ni has an office meeting to go to tonight at 6:00 pm so I am going to go down and ask the front desk to help me order some noodles with chicken and veggies from the place next door. Something else that struck me when I went to the Starbucks was seeing about 30 skinny guys with outlandish hair lined up in 3 rows infront of a hair salon with a manager reading to them from a piece of paper. I didn't have my camera out, I just hope I see it again tomorrow. One other thing that impresses me are the old people here. There are more of them out and about, and they are quite beautiful in a way I don't notice in the USA, having immense dignity, but on the other hand you see a spark of humor too. I see a lot of female laborers. This morning I snapped a pic of some women shoveling concrete, and I see the occasional woman porter as well. I think in the last 2 decades I've seen exactly one woman working construction in the US, and she was a skilled worker swinging a hammer.

After breakfast I went on my Starbuck's run. I see more westerners at the Starbucks than anywhere else. For me, when a westerner comes into view, my "what's wrong with this picture" reflex springs into action. It's natural for my eyes to be drawn to them, but I think it's funny the way they are staring fixedly ahead instead of making "yeah, I see you white boy" body language. It's not like anyone is mistaking them for natives. On the way back snapped some pix of street scenes. There was a skinny little girl pushing pamphlets into girls hands, I liked her sparkle and attitude. She finally got in the swing of things and started using natural choke points in the side walk made by garbage cans, trees and signs to force her targets into walking single file and going for eye contact on her approach and started disposing of her pamphlets pretty quickly. To the left as I go out the hotel door there is an "Entertainment District" with shops and restaurants. Also a temple to go check out. I will spend a few hours this afternoon there. Christopher

Ni had to work today, then she got on the bus from work to the hotel. When she got to my room, she was rocking the sexy librarian look: hair pulled back, glasses and pantsuit. I liked it very much and told her so. We went to the vegan restaurant in that weird mall like space across the street from the Starbuck's. Mostly it was OK, but kind of flavorless. Except for the stir-fried cauliflower with flower-pepper sauce. That stuff sort of numbed the tongue and put it on fire at the same time, neither Ni or I cared very much for it. Then we went to a massage place and got worked over from head to toe at the same time in the same room. Neat! I fell asleep a couple of times, got ticklish a couple times, watched TV some. We ordered the usual + chinese medicine foot massage, it went on for 90 minutes or so, and I liked that the woman working me over really put her weight into it. Overall she did a good job, I just wished she'd slow down in certain places so I could work with her and give her a nice exhale. The nice thing was looking over and seeing Ni all relaxed and happy.

Found the Starbucks. That felt like an accomplishment. Next job is to get Ni to drill me on essential Chinese phrases, like: I need to use the toilet, right now! Damn near got caught out about a mile from the hotel this morning after breakfast. Also, I keep losing stuff. Need to get another tourist map, and to replace the electronic dictionary I lost (stat). There's much to like about Chengdu. The town reminds me of Buenos Aires in many ways, but mostly with all the trees, small sized cars and how people turn their balconies into gardens. Also all the skinny hotties walking around, not the least of whom't like is Ni. I'll upload a picture as soon as I figure out how to make the gallery work (figuring it doesn't like 2.5+ MB images)

So today we went to the Jinsha Site Museum and looked at the stuff from the Shu kingdom thy dug up: bronze masks, other bronze sculptures, jade daggers, earthenware pots and so on. You have to get on this little dinky bus, and ride for about an hour through the countryside to gert to a village, then you get on a taxi and ride anoth 10 km or so and you get deposited by the front gate. They want 80 yuan to let you in, and they give you a bar coded ticket they scan in at every door, so you can't enter the same building 2X. We inadvertently left one building without seeing all what was in it, and my girl totally dominated the other woman tending the door into letting us through. I spent most of the time getting snap-happy with my kickass digicam, and made sure someone got a picture of both of us together. When we got back to Chengdu proper, I took a nap for about an hour,vand then we went out to dinner. I deferred to her instincts, and we demolished some pickled something-or-other, stir fried celery, a carp, peking duck, and then duck soup with seaweed. All of it was excellent. Today, Ni has to work, so I am left to my own devices, I will try to contact some people from the board who are in Chengdu now. And I really need a decent cup of coffee: there's a Starbucks fairly close by, but I have no clue how to get there, and google maps does not seem to work here. Next time I will bring my own ...

When you get on the plane, you are given a health form to fill out, wanting your name, contact info, where you will be staying, if you've had any contact with people having the flu, any contact with pigs, and if you have any of a list of symptoms. When the plane arrives at the terminal, you are told to stay in your seat until further notice. Then a crew of people in Tyvek bunny suits, masks and goggles go around taking everyone's temperature with a hand held device they aim at your forehead, and some people go through a short interview, presumably because they have symptoms of some kind. What was funny was all the people taking pictures of the health services crew, I think every westerner was doing that. My skin temp seems to be a little warmer than most peoples, so I took a couple of ibuprofen and pointed the aircon nozzle at my head about 30 minutes before landing. After they let you off the plane, you are routed to a quarantine checkpoint where they take the health form. They will insist on full contact info. I did not have the number for my hotel or the young woman memorized, so I wrote my work number in the US down, and the girl waved me through. Christopher PS. I am told that if one person on the plane has flu symptoms, everyone on the plane will be stuck in a nice hotel until they either rule out type A-HIN1 or some period of time passes.

After 25 hours of being half asleep on the planes, I got a good nights sleep, now I need cash machine, coffee and breakfast in that order more or less. I will post more later.

OK, I am all squared away with the hotel business. Thanks for everyone's help.

I have used ctrip many times and have always had good experiences. What you describe is something that does happen occassionsally. It is rare but it does happen. I have had this same thing happen with expedia. When you book through a travel sight it usually says that the hotel/flight, etc will take a dfay or two to confirm. By the way, I have stayed at that same hotel on 3 different occassions. Its a good place and you will like it. I would recommend having your lady call ctrip about this or just have her call the hotel directly to make reservations. Or you could even make the call. If I remember correctly, I did make reservations myself directly with this hotel. They faxed me a reservation form to fill out and fax back to them. So do they really take foreign credit cards, or will I need to prepay w/ cash?

Unfortunately that one also did not have the hotel my girl found for me.

chinahotelsreservations.com says "domain for sale". I tried chinahotelreservations.com, which forwarded to china-hotels.com. However, that site does not have the hotel that my sweetie found for me.

So I booked a room in a hotel with ctrip.com at the "Jinjiang Inn-Chengdu Wenshufang Inn". All was good, or so I thought. So I just went in to my ctrip account to double check, and I am so glad that I did, because it turns out that my booking was canceled less than 2 hours after I made it. I found the cancellation email buried in my Junk folder, and of course the only part that I can read is "Subject : The order has been cancelled. " So now what? Call them all over again? How do I end this endless round of bullshit? Is there someone I can rely on to make a simple hotel booking without drama or making me jump through endless hoops?

I doubt they are screening outbound passengers. Inbound passengers are another matter. I'm flying in to Shanghai on the 15th on my way to Chengdu. I am already avoiding crowd scenes, staying away from coughers and snifflers at work, using my neti pot 2X a day and gargling with warm saline and washing my hands about 10X a day. It would be tragic to spend 10 days quarantined in Shanghai instead of hanging out with my sweetie in Chengdu.

Are we sure we can quarantine the flu? I think the cow is out of the barn already. Just so. It's likely that there are several cases of H1N1 in China that were never reported to the authorities.

Excellent news. Welcome to America, Ting!

Do you know if there is are any online demos of plagiarism detectors? It would be good to let her stuff be reviewed...and flagged to make a point. She does pay attention to what I say, but many times it's in one ear and out the other - just like all kids The essay she showed me last night was very good and straight from her; it was easy to tell. I found this site by googling "plagiarism detection software": http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/lin...shtml#detection I'm pretty impressed, there's a *lot* of activity in the area.

All excellent suggestions. I am going to put the 150 proof rum in a small 3 oz container and put it in the ziplock baggie with the other liquids. I think it will be fine.

I suggest you revisit this later in a less pressured moment. Plagiarism is taken really seriously in the academic world, and kids need to know that they can get tossed out of school, etc, when they get caught. In fact, many schools have special software they use to scan papers students hand in for plagiarism.