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.

Back on the road again

Back when we were still in South America, we talked about going to
China next. Since a number of my young cousins are of marriageable
age, we thought we would pick a wedding to make our next trip.

A couple of weeks ago when we were given a wedding date of 12/18, John
declared, "our easy days are over." For a second, I took him to mean
that we needed to be go back to work :( This summer we have been
indulging in reading, bicycling, gorging on home cooked food, and being

hermits in general, while there is much reading, studying Spanish,

and more blog writing leftover from our South America travels. I
shrink from the prospects of piling on more. Bagging countries may
have been some kind of objective before. It is no longer a concern,
though we do love covering new territories. So, we decided to only go
to China and Taiwan, putting off the staggering research and

sweltering heat of Mainland and Maritime Southeast Asia for another time.

We are flying to San Fransisco 11/29, then to Shanghai 12/5. After
the wedding, we will fly to Taiwan 12/24 and be back in Shanghai 1/21 for Chinese
New Year. After Chinese New Year, we will fly to Kunming. We plan to
travel around in western Yunnan and then into Sichuan. We will fly
back from Shanghai to San Fransisco 4/12. After that, our plans are
still open.

Typical Day

A friend asked me the other day "So, what's a typical day like when you are traveling?" I had to think about it for a few seconds. Actually, there are three types of typical days for us.

First, travel days. On the last trip of 230+ days we had about 100 travel days. A typical travel day means getting up early, but not too early, eating breakfast, packing, checking out of the hotel, walking if at all possible to the bus station, getting on the bus and riding 4 to 6 hours to our next destination. We like to travel during the day; somewhat for safety, but mostly to enjoy the scenery. On arriving in the new town (sometimes in a new country) we check out onward connections at the bus station, find the local tourist office, search for the perfect hotel (Wi-Fi, private bath, and hot showers required), then locate places to to get food: vegetarian restaurants, traditional markets, and supermarkets.

Second, day trips. The point is to get out of of the town  preferably by walking, taking a local bus or train, or some mix of each. The day trips we like the best are either all day hikes that start from the hotel, or short bus rides to a nearby small, walkable town with a lively local market - arriving on market day is the best.

Third, urban wandering in which we set out from the hotel with a walking tour and/or map in hand and precede to see all the local sites with a break at noon for the set lunch menu in a vegetarian restaurant. On the best day we also eat street food, see an unexpected awesome Art Deco building or two, encounter some real religion, visit the best museum in town for free, and ride public transportation.

It's a rare day that we just cool our heels in our hotel but it did happen on election day in Ecuador.