On the Road Again

We finished harvest yesterday (we were lucky to get done--it rained hard today), so tomorrow I will be returning to Portland after nine days in Dayton. To come back, I'm going to take the bus from Walla Walla to Portland. I had planned to catch the train in Pasco, but two things made me change my mind. The first is that the train leaves Pasco at 5:35am, which means that I would have to leave Dayton by 4am to make it on time. No thanks! The bus, on the other hand, departs from Walla Walla at 11:45, which means I don't have to leave Dayton until 10:45. Much, much better. I can use the extra sleep.

The second reason I decided to take the bus is that I think the bus will be more interesting than the train. As my friend Dave Schreck said today, when you ride the bus you get to see an "interesting slice of Americana." I agree. The people that ride the bus are a different crowd than the people who take the train, and I hope to run into someone with a fascinating story that I can share with you. Until then, happy Friday.

Coming back from China

When I passed through security and walked into Terminal 3 at the Beijing International Airport, it struck me that my adventure was coming to an end. The terminal was cool, clean and quiet, three adjectives that have little to do with the China I experienced. I sighed deeply, preparing for the journey ahead. I was excited to return home, but not necessarily looking forward to the next 24 hours on the move.

The trip had started out well. After a couple more difficult farewells, I hopped into a taxi to the airport.. There were no traffic jams and not even a line at the check-in desk (for a full flight on a 747!). The only thing that almost went wrong was when I got to the airport, I didn’t know what flight I was supposed to be on, and I couldn’t find any  flights to San Francisco on the monitors. For a minute, I thought maybe I was supposed to fly out at 4am instead of 4pm and had arrived 10 hours late. My fears were premature, however. The flights to SFO did show up on the monitor a few minutes later. Whew! Crisis avoided.

I had arrived at the airport two hours early, so I wandered around a little, checking out some of the luxury good for sale in the duty-free shops and eating an overpriced dish of fried rice that wasn’t half as good as what you could get in the shops in the city center. I knew I would miss good Chinese food, but I was also excited to get some good home cooking. Living without a kitchen was hard and with all the walking I did, I probably lost 10lbs on the trip.

My last meal in China...could have done better

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Harvest!

My apologies for being a little inconsistent with the posts. When I got back to Portland, I found out that my family still had a week of harvest left. I don't know how many read my earlier post about harvest, but I couldn't pass up the chance to go home to help finish. We have been working hard because  the end is in sight, so there has not been much time left over to write. If the weather holds, we'll be done tomorrow. Here are a couple of pictures from the last few days.

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Can you Find Good Dim Sum in Beijing?

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to search for new, interesting and delicious foods. As my time in Beijing was wound down, I wanted to see if I could get a couple more good meals before I came home. I had never eaten dim sum in China, so I decided to see if I could find a good restaurant in Beijing. Southern China is more famous for dim sum, but I assumed that you could find some if you knew where to look. I asked my Korean classmate Sangchul, who had been in the Beijing longer than I had, where to find some good dim sum restaurants in the city. He recommended Din Tai Feng (鼎泰丰). It was located on the 6^th floor of the Xinguang Tiandi (新光天地) shopping center, one of the best in the city. The restaurant was a little expensive, he said, but it was worth it.

Because she didn’t have anything better to do and because she knew she would be hungry, Roberta agreed to go to Din Tai Feng with me. We planned to meet at 7:45 at BLCU’s south gate, but by the time we got in the taxi to leave, it was closer to 8:15. We ran into a huge traffic jam, so it was after nine o’clock by the time we finally arrived at the shopping center. The taxi driver dropped us off in front, and we headed for the front door.

Entering through tall glass doors, we slipped into one of the elevators immediately to the right, only to realize that the elevator traveled exclusively between the ground floor and the parking garages. Oops. Embarrassed at our recklessness, we hopped off the elevator one floor below and caught a return elevator back to where we started. We knew there had to be a different way to the restaurant, so we made our way into the store in front of us.

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The Silk Street Market (Last Day, Part 2)

The second part of my great last day took place at the Silk Street market. At one point, if you had asked me if the market was a must-see place for travelers going to Beijing, I would have told you that it’s interesting, but not that great. After visiting the market this time, I would say that it’s a great experience and you should go. I recommend spending a couple hours there, especially if you aren’t tired from walking for hours before you get there.

The Silk Street market is a multi-story version of a street market. Inside you will find every type of Chinese souvenir that you could possibly want—fans, statuettes, key chains, t-shirts, etc. The market is also well-known among tourists as a good place to buy false luxury brand goods including clothing, electronic goods and jewelry. You can purchase tailor-made suits, custom-fit and ready to pick up within three days. You pick out the material you want, get measured and the suit will be ready in three days. Be sure to not pay more than half up front in order to make sure that the suit is ready when you come back. Express orders can be made, for a price.

 When you go to the market, be sure to bargain hard. The vendors won’t sell you anything at a loss, so don’t feel bad about walking away after offering a price that seems ridiculously low. You will be called back if they can make even a little money. The next stall has the same stuff and each vendor is under intense pressure to survive. The game can be fun, and it is easy to spend hours there if you enjoy negotiating.

As you walk in the front door of the market, there is a large red sign that gives you a general idea of what is sold on each floor. These are useful if you know what you’re looking for. If not, it’s fun to just wander into the aisles and just get a feel for the market. You can use the elevators near the main entrance to change floors and there are also escalators in the center of the market.

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Small-Town Beijing (Last Day, Part 1)

Have you ever had a day that you still cannot believe happened? My last full day in Beijing was like that. After finally getting to bed at 5am the night before, I woke up at 10am with big plans for my last day. There were still a couple of things I needed to buy for my family so I decided to go to the Silk Street market, a famous place in Beijing where foreigners go to bargain for cheap knock-offs of luxury brand goods. My second goal was to get a haircut. I hadn’t been to the barber in a while, and I figured that between my mediocre language skills and the natural flair for creativity that most hairstylists have, I might end up with a haircut worth writing about.

BLCU is in the northwestern part of Beijing, and the market is about an hour away by metro, a couple miles east of Tiananmen Square. (I always reference Tiananmen, because on a map of Beijing, Tiananmen sits at the center of the rectangular city that surrounds it). By taxi, it is about 15 miles (22km +/-) and I was too cheap to get a taxi by myself (A taxi costs about $10 US, and the train, $0.30). So I took the train.

There were seventeen stops between me and my destination, plus two transfers, so the trip was going to take a little over an hour. I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning, and there was only one stop after the second transfer, so I decided to skip the last stop and walk to the market. That way I could get something to eat and see a new neighborhood (another opportunity to wander). Including the subway ride, the walking and lunch, I expected to be at the market by 1pm.

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Two Observations about PDX

After a 24-hour voyage, I made it back in Portland on Friday evening. I have a few more stories about China to share with you over the next couple days, but I will also be looking for other adventures around the Pacific Northwest. More on that in the future. For now, these are my first two impressions about Portland: it has better air and is much more polite than Beijing.

The best thing about arriving back in Portland, other than seeing friends and family, is that I can breathe easily again. You cannot see the air in Portland, and that is a wonderful thing. I enjoyed my run yesterday morning because when I took a deep breath, my lungs did not feel like they were under siege. If you breathe the air here all the time, you might not realize that Portland air has a smooth, velvety finish, similar to a fine whisky. Beijing air is more like a cheap bottle of convenience-store gut-rot. It makes you cough and sputter if you try to breathe too deeply.

A common sight, until the rainy season. . .

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