I’ve made it back to Shanghai, after an August busy with travels in the US.  It was good to be able to catch up with family and friends there, as well as to do some traveling in Alaska and Texas.  It’s good now to be back on this side of the world, catching up with friends in this home, and enjoying the bustling urban life that is Shanghai.

In the spring, I really enjoyed the To the End project that allowed me to see different aspects of the city here.  It seems like a lot of people who read this blog enjoyed that too, judging by the comments I’ve received here, at Facebook, and in person.  So, I am looking at doing a similar project this fall.  I might do a series of walking trips around the city or something like that.  It’s a good season for it, and long walks in Shanghai are always fun.

In the mean time, I’ve been drafting up some more solid notes on the To the End travels I did, with an eye toward compiling them into a short book.  Any input on the notes I made on that project here on this site would be welcome.

It’s good to be in Shanghai after a lengthy absence, and do look for more regular updates here now that I am back.

I actually included a little section on squatting toilets in my book Suzhou Basics I hadn’t seen this video at the time, or I might have included a link.

When one of my Singaporean friends saw that I’d included this in the Suzhou book, she just rolled her eyes and said, “I just don’t get what the big deal about squatting toilets is.”

Maybe there will be some comments left here that will help explain it to her…

ooops…. seems my recent trip to Alaska kept me from posting here a little longer than I expected.  Apologies!

I’m back and hope to be posting more regularly now.  In the meantime, I’ve put a few pictures of Alaska at my main blog.  You can view them there if you’re interested.

Watch for more China-related posts here coming up soon!

When I was visiting with my new friend at the little noodle shop outside of the grounds of the Terra Cotta Warriors, I asked her what this character displayed on the wall was:

She told me it was “biang” — or maybe “bian” or “bang,”  she wasn’t quite sure.  She only knew it was read  as “biang” in her dialect, and that was really all anyone would need to know.

When I asked her what it meant, she just said, “It’s the biang we use in biang biang mian.”  She went on to describe the local specialty, a type of noodles called biang biang mian.  They are handmade noodles, and very thick.  There’s not much to the soup the noodles are cooked it — just vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil, I think — but it is a local favorite.

For me, I didn’t get to try the noodles, being that I was too full at the moment and left the city early the next morning.  But I did notice, after she’d told me what the character was, that I saw it all over Xi’an at the little noodle shops lining the roadside.

So there’s a local specialty I missed.  Perfect excuse to go back.

When I was preparing for my first trip to Xi’an, everyone told me to try the local specialty, Shaanxi pao mo. It is a different dish from the Lanzhou version that I like so much at little shops in Shanghai, but I liked the Shaanxi version as well.

I didn’t eat at one of the big, famous spots for pao mo.  Instead, I took the advice from a Xi’an native who I met on the plane and tried it at a little hole-in-the-wall shop, right outside the grounds of the Terra Cotta Warriors.

The dish is a thick soup with bread broken up in it.  The bread gets all soggy sopping up the stew, but the inside remains a little bit firm.  It’s a little spicy, and quite rich. Just the way I like it.

Shaanxi Pao Mo

My recent trip to Beijing and Xi’an with friends was fun all around.  I had great traveling companions, and got to visit a city I’ve not been to in a long time (Beijing) and a city I had never been to before (Xi’an).  None of my fellow-travelers spoke Chinese — which is a big part of how our trip came about.  I was there as translator and guide.

Being a guide in Beijing was pretty easy, as was the Shanghai leg of the trip.  Xi’an was a little different, but not because it was the only of the three cities I’d never visited before.  What made it odd was the fact that many of Xi’an’s members of the tourism industry didn’t seem to like the fact that I spoke Chinese and could find my way around without a guide.  We did hire a driver, and he seemed to enjoy my ability with the language and comfort in the culture, but all the guides I met along the way as we visited the sites in Xi’an were less congenial when they learned that we could manage without their services.

That attitude was the only disappointment I found in Xi’an, and I loved nearly everything else about the place, especially the rich history that is hidden underground in the area  around the city.  The Terra Cotta Warriors are, of course, the most famous, and are every bit as amazing when visited in person as you’d expect from the pictures you’ve seen.  There is an air of mystery about them, and it makes for a very nice place to visit.

After my friends and I spent a whole day visiting the Warriors and the huge grounds — very nicely set up for visitors — we made our way out of the exit and decided to finally grab a bite to eat for our lunch, just as the sun was beginning to hint that it would like to sink below the hills that surround the ancient burial ground.  My friends saw a Subway sign, and thought sandwiches sounded good.  Having not been to Xi’an before, I was anxious to try some local specialties, and so we made our way to separate facilities for lunch.

As I sat down to finally try Shaanxi pao mo,  a very different dish from the pao mo I find in Lanzhou la mian eateries in Shanghai, the shop keeper sat down across from me, and we began to chat.

“You’re a tour guide?”

“Well, for now, yeah.  I brought some friends here to see the Warriors.”

“I could tell.  You don’t look like a typical tourist.”

And from there, we continued on, her telling me about local food, and me telling her a little about my first impressions of Xi’an and the Terra Cotta Warriors.  She gave me a good bit of insight into Xi’an in the 20 minutes or so it took me to eat the pao mo, and I really enjoyed the visit.  It made me glad we’d decided on such a late lunch, when there were no crowds to keep my new acquaintance busy.

As I finished my meal, I began to sort through some things I’d bought for friends back home, souvenirs of the Warriors.  The lady who had cooked my noodles came out to join me and her co-worker as we continued our chat.  After a few minutes, the new arrival asked me, “How long have you been in China?”

“I’ve been living here part time for the past 6-7 years.”

The friend who had been chatting with me for the past half hour looked surprised.  ”What?” she said.  ”With your Chinese, I thought you grew up in China!”

Whoever said food is the way to get to someone’s heart only knew half the story.  Flattery is so much more effective.

I usually enjoy driving more than any other mode of travel.  In Beijing, there were enough of us traveling together to make it worthwhile to get a van and driver for our trip to the Great Wall, rather than taking a bus.  Our driver was reliable and honest, and the price was pretty good by Beijing standards.  (Though quite a bit more costly than the transport in Xi’an, which is to be expected.)

The drive to the Great Wall was an enjoyable one, making for a good day all around.

I’ve recently been working on some essays for language study.  One that my teacher went and found for me, knowing I keep this blog, was about Tai Shan.  I really got into the essay, and couldn’t help looking up more information online.  I came across several nice info sites, but probably what I enjoyed best was this photo collection.

Hope you enjoy too!

Travel to the end of each line in Shanghai’s Metro system has been fun and enlightening.

One thing the project has reminded me is that Shanghai is a huge city (and growing).  I actually completed the project within a month, making the first trip on March 22, and the last on April 22.  And now here it is getting into July, and I am finally wrapping up the series.  And, this time, it’s not just because I’m long-winded, but because the topic — the city — is that expansive.

This metro map (the same one you see in all the stations, minus the dates) shows the days that I made my trips.

I’ve tried, in each post about the stops I visited, to include a little window into that world.  You can find very little in words, with more pictures than written narrative in each post — something of a departure from my normal style, I guess.

I worked quite hard to find a different way to display the name of each station.  The picture of each station’s name was taken inside the station, or on the outside of its structure.  I’ve included the names from various signs posted in the stations, once using the machine where you buy tickets.  It was fun to try to find enough different ways to post the name, so that each method would be unique to that locale.  I think it does something to add to what I wanted to capture in this whole series — the diversity of this city.

At times, I began to feel the project was quite silly, and that it would never end.  But I am glad I did it, as I saw what I wanted to see — the different sides of Shanghai life.  It has definitely caused me to reflect, and for that alone, it was worth the time and effort.

It might seem a little strange to include a short post on Yishan Road in a series of posts about travel to the end of the various lines in Shanghai’s Metro system, because it is not at the end of any line.  It is right in the middle of the action, a place where three different lines in the Metro system meet.

It is not as busy an interchange as People’s Square, but it does give some feel for what I was contrasting each of the ends to.  And, it works better for giving a window onto my own daily experience of taking the train than some of the other downtown stations because it is not too far from my house, my starting point for most of my journeys to the end of the lines.

Here’s a little look at life right outside Yishan Road station, to give a feel of the contrast it provides for the other stations that have been featured over the past few months.