Thanksgiving 2015

We made our annual pilgrimage to Lanark with good weather and boys that are less restless in the car than they were a year ago.

As usual, Thanksgiving dinner was spectacular with too much good food. After dinner, we played a rousing game of cards until the Bears/Packers game came on.

We opened up the bottle of Ditka wine we've been sitting on and everyone raised a toast to The Coach. (I rooted for the bears this year)

Speaking Out

The boys are off and enjoying the LSW speech team. CP is doing a humorous piece about how to be a dictator, and GP is still doing the one about the cop that let one Jeffery Dahmer's victims return to be butchered. The morning after I got back from China, the boys had to leave @ 6:15 AM to catch the bus at LSW. Fortunately they can transport themselves now.

The next weekend, they hit an event at Pius. CP took 3rd by himself and 2nd with his team presentation. GP didn't place, but he's not letting that get him down.

Homeward

The Beijing airport is HUGE! The return flight from Beijing to Chicago was also empty in the economy plus section, and I ended up with three seats to myself for the 12 hour return flight. I texted JP at 9:30 PM (Nebraska time) when we boarded the first flight from Hangzhou to Beijing. She picked me up 24 hours later at the Lincoln airport. A three-hour flight across the US doesn't seem that long any more. And two hours of jet lag? Mere child's play.

Due to the record early snow and cold weather, the government let everyone turn on their heat a week early. Most of the electricity comes from coal, so the northern cities got hit pretty hard with smog. It didn't seem to bother me while I was there, but now, two weeks later, I still have a frog in my throat.

We complain about not being able to see the stars from our metro areas. Imagine growing up and never even seeing the moon.

Hangzhou

Our last hotel was in the city of Hangzhou; it's another super-city that you've never heard of (21,000,000 people). Where we were it wasn't as densely populated as where we were in Chongqing. The part of town we were in used to be more industrialized and is now being converted into a normal high-rise metropolis.

The hotel gift shop was full of carved stone: jade, onyx, and marble. The piece below is about four feet wide and has a price tag of 5,800,000 Yuan. At six yaun per dollar, that comes out to just under a million dollars!! It was more like walking thru a museum than a gift shop. Even the small fist-sized pieces were out of my price range.

Chinese Food

No travelogue of China would be complete without a discussion of the cuisine.

With the exception of the breakfast buffets in the hotels, every meal we ate was at a large round table with a humongous Lazy Susan in the middle. Sometimes it was motorized so that the food coasted by like at a sushi bar. The tables were each located in their own private rooms and had two or three attendants present to serve food. Each meal lasts forever, and there is at least five times more food served than the group could possibly eat. By the end, there is no room remaining on the Lazy Susan.

I got by well at the breakfast buffets - bacon, fried rice, hash browns, omelettes, and smoked mackerel. All of the hotel buffets had three distinct food setups: Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Western.

The food in Chongqing was heavily influenced by Sichuan cooking (hot & spicy). One night, as the steaming bowls of unrecognizable food cruised past, I noticed a bowl of green beans and diced chicken approaching. How exciting!! Something recognizable, and one of my favorites. I took a huge helping and before I could taste it, the woman next to me took a bite of the chicken and opened her eyes wide with a grinding CRUNCH as she bit into a mouthful of bones. She leaned over and warned me to watch out - the meat is full of bones. Not chicken - just a diced up rabbit. That's OK - I can eat around bones. I dug into my green beans and returned to the woman the same wide eyed look she had given me. The beans weren't really beans - they were very hot chili peppers that looked like green beans.

Above is the standard lunch in a Chinese diner. In the lobby, there's a side room full of fish tanks and sample food so that you can see what looks/smells good and pick out your fish.

One of our hosts is a septuagenarian that has been running his own factory forever. He makes 30% of the split lockwashers used in Asia. In China, it's bad form to drink by yourself at the dinner table, so if/when you want a sip, you must toast someone at the table and have them drink with you. We each had glasses for beer, wine, and shots in front of us. The old man loved to do toasts with his favorite baijiu (sorghum-vodka). He would come over, fill your shot glass, proclaim something wise, and then clink the glasses and yell "Gambei!" which means "Bottoms Up!!" I quickly learned that you don't ever want to fill your glass more than half full of beer lest someone across the table catch you and hit you with a "Gambei!!" Fortunately, the beer was deliciously weak (2.5%) and the shot glasses were small and the food was awesome, so we didn't feel too bad the next day.

Presentation is key with Chinese food. This delicious dish that looks so tempting is a cup of duck tongues. I didn't try it then, but now wish I had. I tried everything else and found that most of the new foods were yummy. 

Chongqing

We spent a few days in Chongqing - the largest city you've never heard of. We were told that the metro area holds 32,000,000 people. Kinda makes Chicagoland look like Lincoln.

The city sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers a few hundred miles upstream from the Three Gorges Dam. In the photo below, you can see the muddy Yangtze coming in from the right and mixing with the darker Jialing on the left. I was expecting a broad floodplain, but the rivers are deeply entrenched in narrow courses and the city sits on high hills.

The city center is on the peninsula between the two rivers. It extends forever in all directions. Most of the buildings are 20+ story high rise apartment buildings. We didn't see any four-flats like you'd see around Chicago. Even at the edges of the city, high rise buildings are the norm here.

The day we arrived was partly sunny and clear. On top of each apartment building is a penthouse suite with a forest of jungle growth. Chongqing is at the same latitude as Houston and supports tropical trees like palms and bananas. 

The night skyline is spectacular with the ability to look across the river. Each skyscraper is plated in LED lights; at night they turn into ginormous movie screens (or billboards, depending on your viewpoint).

Coolest Urinals Ever

Near the top of the Westin hotel building in Chongqing, there's a glass-floored observation deck that's cantilevered out over the city. It's very unnerving to walk out onto a sheet of glass 500 feet above the ground.

Directly above the observation deck is a glass infinity pool that also sticks out the side of the building. We didn't get a chance to swim in it. I can't imagine the feeling of floating in the water and being able to see thru the bottom to the city below.

Above the pool, on the 54th floor, there's a nightclub that looks down onto the pool. The building above the pool is cut away so that it's open to the sky. The men's room in the nightclub has a commanding view of the city from its row of urinals.

Great Wall

There was no way I was going to sit on a plane for umpteen hours and fly all over China without seeing the Great Wall. We went to a section that has been restored near Mutian, 90 minutes north of Beijing.

The snow made the wall slick (it's steep!), but the storm also cleared out the air so that we could see forever up into the mountains. 

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is at the true center of Beijing. Construction started in 1406. 

The outer wall is ~30 ft thick.

The carved bronze statues were amazing.

All the buildings are made of wood. No nails used anywhere.

The drainage gargoyles reminded me of those on the Aztec pyramids of Central Mexico.

I think we were lucky to be there early on a weekend day with miserable weather. I can't imagine how crowded it would be on a nice summer day.

Tienanmen Square

Our tour of Beijing started with Tienanmen Square. It's smack dab in the heart of the city, next door to the Forbidden City.

Despite the crappy weather, there were a ton of tour groups arriving. We were told that it's a goal of every Chinese citizen to visit the square at some point during their life. Our guide was quite well versed in Chinese tourism knowledge.

Beijing

In each hotel we stayed, there was a little Godzilla-scaled model of the property in its perfect future state. The entire country is under construction, so nothing now is how it will be next year.

We landed late in the afternoon and were greeted with grey skies and a bit of snow. Our hotel was an "airport hotel" only 1.5 miles from the airport. I figured no problem - we'll take the hotel shuttle. After 30 minutes of trying to find it, we gave up and tried to find a cab. As we were loading our bags into the trunk, the cabbie starting telling us something in Chinese. Another guy came up and explained that the cab we were getting into was only a long-distance cab. If we followed him, he would take us to the hotel. He produced something that looked like a cab license, so we followed him for 15 minutes down and around the front of the airport to what looked like a personal car. At that point, we were too tired to fight it, so we got in. 30 minutes later we made it to the hotel. I kept checking the GPS on my phone to make sure he wasn't driving us somewhere else. 1.5 miles took a solid 30 minutes and 480 Yuan ($80).

In the hotel lobby was a cute Santa's Helper, Christmas tree, and poinsettias. Christmas is becoming a big holiday there. No one gets the day off, but they like the thought of giving gifts. 

In China, you can't turn on the heat until November 15th. We arrived on the 7th. The hotel lobby was chilly and all the girls behind the front desk were wearing full-length coats. Apparently this was a record-early snowfall and the government gave the OK later that week for everyone to turn on their heat.

  

I enjoyed the food the whole time I was there. Usually we had so many dishes on the table, you could pick and choose what you wanted. However, in the hotel, we each only ordered one item. What should I get? Sauteed shredded pork and vegetable in spicy fish flavored sauce? or Braised duck blood curd with pork intestines in chili sauce? At least they are up front with the descriptions. I'd rather know before ordering rather than after eating and asking what it was that I consumed.

Flying Around

Finally, after years of working with Chinese suppliers, I got my opportunity to visit their land. I went on a whirlwind 1-week trip that added 16,500 miles to my frequent flyer account.

We started in Lincoln (LNK) and then flew 6600 miles from O'Hare (ORD) to Beijing (PEK). We nearly went over the north pole (we hit 80° north latitude) on the great circle route. It seems weird to fly north from Chicago to go somewhere to the west. From Beijing, we went to Chongqing (CKG) and Hangzhou (HGH) and then back the way we came.

I got a window seat so that I could check out the glaciers and ice along the way, but it was cloudy the entire way. How is that possible?

I had my last real diet coke in Chicago. From there all I could find was Diet Coke Light, which tastes like real Coke. All of the Asian cans have pull tabs. 

Here's what it looks like at mid day at 80° north from 39,000 feet. Before we began our descent, we hit 40,000 feet and -93°F outside. I really enjoy having the map display available on the seat back in front of me.

Brilliant Fall

We've had the most beautiful fall this year. All the maples are on fire with color and the snow and wind have stayed away. Nothing but blue skies.

LSW's Newest Speech Kid

GP joins his brother this year on the LSW speech team. He had a novice-only event where he and all the other noobs got to see what it's all about. He's doing a DI (Dramatic Interpretation) piece about the cop that sent the kid that was running from Jeffrey Dahmer back into his apartment. For GP, it's all just some historical event - he knows nothing of it.