Photo of the Day

Woohoo! My photo of the Longyang Road Maglev Station is Photo of the Day at Shanghaiist.com:http://shanghaiist.com/2011/12/15/photo_of_the_day_longyang_road_magl.php

Welcome to China Part 2

Banking

We still have some RMB leftover at ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) that needs to be used up; that is, withdrawn at an ATM and spent.  But first we had to move the money from the fixed term to the regular account.  Unfortunately I cannot remember our password to do so online.  Armed with our passports, we made a visit the local branch.  We were immediately told that the ID on file is under John's old passport number and since the old and new passports have different numbers, they cannot be sure that they are dealing with the same person.  No, a photocopy of the old passport is not acceptable.

Upon learning we are not in the habit of cruising around the world with our stack of old passports, the young bank clerk suggested that we visit the branch where we originally opened the account where they may be able to recall the old records from the archive; by the way, the branch now has a new location.  

Fortified by lunch and armed with the addition of a photocopy of the old passport, we found the second branch.  The nice branch manager conceded that the photocopy and new passport are the same person.  However, when all the scanned papers showed up at a remote authority, the remote authority discerned that the account name JOHNMECKLEY is different from the passports, though all parties understood that when the account was opened in 2005, the bank software only allowed 11 characters for names.  So the recall from archive was necessary after all.  Our contact info was noted.  When the recall is completed in about three business days, we will be notified, upon when we can make yet another visit.

Luckily we were allowed to move the funds from fixed to regular, so at least we came away with some spending money.

Welcome to China Part 1

It has been four years since we lived in Shanghai and two and half years since our last visit. While our escape from the Pudong Airport was ultra smooth (efficient immigration lines and no waiting for a taxi), we have since had a thorough review of the '1984 + Catch 22'-esque China.  

The Great Firewall of China

Wikipedia and Flickr are unblocked compared to when we last lived here. Yeah!  Blogspot.com, home of this blog, continues to be blocked. Before, we could easily enter our blog entries at blogger.com, publish, and then use a backdoor in "settings" to view the blog post.  Now, blogger.com is completely blocked.  We have exhausted our geeky gymnastics just to publish this entry.  I must have tried 30 or 40 proxy servers before John figured out how to use blogger's publish-by-email feature.

Our custom maps (My Places) on Google Maps and our spreadsheets and documents on Google Docs are also inaccessible.  There goes all our trip research.  No google+.  No youtube, not to mention Facebook.  John cannot read many of the blogs he regularly follows, including our good friend Kathy's blog on workpress.  No twitter either.  But imdb?!  Just about all my regular visited sites are blocked.

So, unable to make progress on blogging and trip research, we headed out to do some errands. We had no idea that the time we saved by not surfing would be so valuable later. Stay tuned...

China 2011-2012 Trip Begins

We started our trip with a quick home-stay with my brother in Saratoga CA. Hiking around the Santa Cruz Mountains made California seem like a continuation of our South America trip.  Intro to Asia came in the form of delicious Thai restaurants and visiting with my brother and family.  The highlights were an ice cream cake creation for niece Nicole's birthday and niece Cameron's school musical.

John headed uphill in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Nicole puts the finishing touches on her ice cream cake.

Mount Mitchell

After easy summers at home, I fear the danger of rotting away. Our favorite time to go camping is fall. Two years ago we came upon this campground - Black Mountain Campground near Busick, NC - located by a stream, with clean single-stalled, heat-lamped hot showers, and it's the starting point of a 5.2-mile trail, with 3684 feet of vertical gain up to the top of Mount Mitchell. At 6684 feet above sea level, Mt Mitchell is the highest peak east of Mississippi. In the Andes such meager height can only be found in some crevice at the bottom of a canyon. But Mt Mitchell will have to do for now.

We watched the weather for a couple weeks and set out for the Black Mountain campground (3000') on a crisp Monday. To better gauge the degree of rot, the plan was for ascents on consecutive days.

Once we set up camp, we gathered enough firewood for the next three days. Two years ago we took the expedition too lightly. We wanted to be better prepared.

Well, we did it, be it at my tortoise pace. The first day may have been slightly faster than two years ago. The second day was slightly slower. All were well within 10% of each other. The ascent took ~4.25 hours and descent ~3.25 hours. While we fared better than two years ago, we suspect our fitness has declined from our South American peak. Still, we found the expedition so satisfying that we decided to make "consecutive ascents" of Mt Mitchell our biannual fitness test.

Sun-Ling keeps herself warm on our first evening at Black Mountain Campground.


Taking on fuel on the way up. ;-)


A gentle, covered uphill section of the trail which is part of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.


Some snow and ice on a north slope near the summit.


The two of us at the top on the first day.


Looking back to Black Mountain Campground (near the golf course in the near middle) and to Linville Gorge (see the two bumps middle-left-back).


Lots of wild flowers along the trail. Also saw one deer, a ruffed grouse, and many, many chipmunks.