Cupping

OK, so several weeks back I included a posting on the very cool and eclectic Nanluogo Xiang Street in Beijing, which is not that far from the Forbidden City. In passing I mentioned the story of my friend Craig who, unintentionally, ended up getting a cupping as part of a massage. Again, this is where, after a thorough skin scraping, heated glass bulbs are placed on the back, which, allegedly, helps to remove impurities. It is very popular. On a flight in western China I saw the tell-tale marks on the back of a stewardess. Anyway, I was sitting on a rooftop bar enjoying a Tsingtao Beer and french fries while Craig, Susyn and Kathy went over to the massage parlor. Craig stumbled back after his cupping, and I was finally able to track down a picture (thanks, Kathy). Notice the blissful picture of the man drinking Tsingtao Beer and eating fries and compare it with the horrible disfigurement of Turtle Boy. What can we learn from these pictures?

Silk Road

I thought I would post a map, which I found on the net - thanks, Google - of the actual Silk Road and some of the cities that played a part, both in the ancient trade route and also in my travels this summer. You can also get a sense of where the entire adventure started, Beijing - I spent a week and a half there presenting at a conference before heading out on the actual Silk Road CIEE professional development tour. The old Silk Road started in Xi'an (which used to be called Chang'an, which was the capital of a series of Chinese dynasties), and that's where I flew after leaving Beijing. Then we essentially followed the Silk Road west, passing through some of the major cities along the route - Turfan (or Turpan), Dunhuang, Urumqi and finally all the way west to Kashgar (also known as Kashi) - before heading back and ending up on an off-shoot of the Silk Road in Xining and then Lanzhou where the trip ended. As you follow the route west you can see it split just beyond Dunhuang - this is to get around the Taklamakan Desert, which is supposed to be the world's most inhospitable desert - and it certainly looked like - before coming back together around Kashgar. I would have loved to continue the journey west, moving out of China and through a whole series of countries before ending up at the Mediterranean - maybe someday, insh'allah.

Journey to the West - for a burger

OK, here is an epic tale of one man's quest for a burger, and the extraordinary obstacles he overcame to stuff his face - and how it all related to the Silk Road and the classic novel Journey to the West - or maybe I'm just making too much of the story. Anyway, it began in western China. Even though the food was extraordinary from the beginning of the trip to the end, there are times when you do crave a cheeseburger - and this was especially true when one of our guides mentioned a Chinese McDonald's copycat fast fast place called Best Food Burger. This put the thought in my head that I'd have to get a Best Food Burger cheeseburger. So, the quest began in the city of Turfan. We were on a CIEE professional development tour and we were learning about the old Silk Road that ran from China all the way to the Mediterranean. Our leader, Yanfeng Li, was also fascinated in the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West, which has its origins in an actual famous journey of a Buddhist monk who went on a journey along the Silk Road until and down into India to bring back real Buddhist manuscripts. The story was eventually blown up into a wonderful novel, which featured the monk, a character named Pigsy (a name which I've now bestowed upon my nephew Eli) and Monkey (who is a wonderful character who is always getting into trouble - a bit of a trickster - and has to help the monk to make up for his crimes). So, when we'd be bumping along in the bus or sitting down for a beer in the evenings we'd take turns reading passages from the novel - again, it's a professor thing. Anyway, we were in Turfan, which I'll talk more about later, because it was one of the stops along the Silk Road. Yanfeng (my donkey wine brother), my friends Randy and Marcie, and I set out one night to find a Best Food Burger (mainly because I had pestered them into it). However, along the way, Yanfeng spotted this little hot pot place and talked us into eating there, and it was fantastic, but it was the first in a number of obstacles to me getting my burger (and I began to envision myself as the monk in the story) - and turned it around so that Monkey was trying to keep me from getting the burger - and my friends, being nerds like me, were happy to play along as we developed this mythology. So, then the next day we moved on to Urumqi, before the ethnic violence broke out, and I browbeat the entire group into walking across the street to the local Best Food Burger. So, even though they wanted to go someplace nice, they relented in the face of my constant badgering. Well, we make it to the restaurant - which looked exactly like a McDonald's - and I pointed at the sign and said I wanted to have the cheeseburger. The girl behind the counter, who didn't speak much English, said that they didn't have burgers. I replied, "Yes, but, not only is there a burger on this sign, but the name of your establishment is Best Food Burger." She asked the manager to come out, who explained to me that they didn't serve burgers, and had never served burgers, and no Best Food BURGER restaurant had ever served burgers, ever. The others, at this point, gave up and went in search of another restaurant, but my good friend Randy hung around and placated me by eating a chicken sandwich, and fries and ice cream. Once again, Monkey had foiled my planes. So, fast forward a couple more days and we've now moved as far west as Kasgar, which is just about as far west as you can go in China. After an amazing day exploring the old market, which I'll talk more about later, we had a huge meal and we had separated to do some exploring before getting together in the evening for some performance. So, although we were stuffed, I cajoled Randy into going with me to the local Best Food Burger as I continued my quest. We walked in and ordered a burger, and the girl behind the counter asked if I'd rather have a chicken sandwich. I said, no, I'd really prefer a BURGER, and they sadly agreed - and twenty-five minutes later I had my burger. Of course, in the process we were really late to meet the others, but I proudly walked onto the bus with my hard-won cheeseburger - much to the shock and chagrin of the others. The rest of the trip everyone was worried about Monkey's vengenance.

Happy Birthday - Welcome to the Desert

I've been swapping emails with several of my friends from my first trip to Jordan, so I guess that trip is just on my mind. It was part of a Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), State Department funded grant to study Middle Eastern and Islamic culture (and, as I said before, mosaics). The trip was amazing from beginning to end, but some days really stood out. The trip began in late December 2004 and then stretched up through the first three weeks of January 2005, which left my birthday, 7 January, right in the middle. Naturally contrary and introverted by nature I didn't tell anyone on the trip that it was my birthday. As it turns out we were heading down to Petra on the night of my birthday and the bus broke down in the desert, so we had nothing to do but wait around a few hours for help to arrive - in this case, another bus. Here's a picture of me and my two friends, Faith, who teaches at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, and Julie, who teaches at Thomas Moore University, outside Cincinnati, walking around while we waited for the bus. As you can tell, it was a pretty cold night out in the desert. After a while I left the bus and walked a couple hundred yards out into the desert, laid down, and looked up at the stars - I wanted to remember what the sky looked like (and it was spectacular), and also to remember that particular birthday. Of course, if I had any sense, and it's pretty well-documented that I don't, I wouldn't have been laying out on the cold sand anyway because I was already sick, and came back from Jordan with a pretty nasty bout of pneumonia, which beat me up for the rest of the spring semester. Again, a small price to pay for a life-altering experience.

The Glamorous Life

As part of my continuing series designed to dispel the notion that my travelling is one long romantic getaway.

When it was time to fly out of Kasgar - and make it back to Urumqi for a night in a five star hotel, which we were all looking forward to - it turned into a night of disasters. The flight was delayed and it was delayed, which meant that our precious time in the five star hotel was dwindling, and we didn't end up taking off until close to 11:00 p.m. (Beijing time, not the unofficial Kasgar time). Once on the plane we sat and sat, and I fell asleep, which I have a tendency to do, and when I woke up we still had not moved - and so I fell back asleep. And when I woke up we had moved about a hundred yards out onto the tarmac, and we just stopped. And then the pilot asked us to leave the plane because of a problem - and the plane did not return to the gate, so we just stumbled out onto the tarmac. Essentially, we were told that there was a problem with the electrical system and they were going to reboot the plane - turn it off and turn it back on. I laid down on the tarmac and took this self-portrait.

Eventually I fell asleep, and one of my friends took a picture of me sleeping on the tarmac. After the plane was rebooted we wearily climbed back on it and completed the flight to Urumqi, but it was too late to go to the five star hotel, so we slept on the bus - and I slept on the floor of the bus - before getting back on a flight to Xining. So, instead of sleeping in a soft, comfy bed in a far star hotel, I slept on the tarmac of the Kasgar airport and the floor of a bus. And I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.

Ultimate Nerd Moment

OK, so I have a life dominated by amazing nerd moments, but through careful examination I have been able to identify the single, greatest shining nerd moment. This happened back in early January 2005, long before I started the blog or even before I started writing a travel journal. It was my first visit to Jordan and I was fortunate to go with a group of eleven other professors on a state department grant to study Middle Eastern and Islamic culture (although I think we probably spent more time studying mosiacs than anything else - our leader, Pierre, who at the time ran the American Center for Oriental Research, was a nut for mosiacs and I think we saw every one in Jordan). The group was extraordinary - not only because they were all great teachers and scholars (with the obvious exception of me), but they could not have been nicer - I will never, ever have such an amazing experience again. For some time I've been meaning to go back and talk about some of the early travel experiences, and it would be a pity to not discuss that trip, so expect more posts in the future. We spent three weeks travelling around Jordan and hearing lectures from other professors. On one of our trips we ventured out to the desert castle of Azrak, which played a role in the adventures of T.E. Lawrence. I had been reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom (and, in the picture, you can see the book sticking out of my pocket), and I took the opportunity to read to the other professors the actual account that Lawrence wrote of sitting in that very room - mainly about a miserable cold rain and ghosts. Now, in the real world, I would have been beaten savagely, but in the bizarre other world that academics live in there was tremendous excitement.

Making Friends in China

Here is a picture that my Champlain friends took of me as we walked the backstreets of Beijing near the Forbidden City. As is always the case, the best way to learn about a city is just to get out and go exploring, and as far off the beaten path as possible. Here I am making friends with some folks and their dogs. Kids and dogs always sense my inherent goodness - it's only perceptive adults who immediately dislike me.

International Ambassador

Here is a souvenir t-shirt that is very popular in Beijing (BJ). I tried to cajole my friends from Champlain into buying it for me, figuring that if they did then I'd have a definite shield of plausible deniability when asked by my bosses why I was wearing it to commencement. You see, even I have enough sense not to buy that shirt for myself, although not enough sense not to post the picture.

If only they had something I wanted . . .

I loved the vending machines in the Barcelona metro stations. I suppose they're common in some parts of the world, but I had never seen one that big before.