Chengdu 19-20-21-July
End of Studio wrap up.
So as it stands, this post might turn into several, and it might jump back and forth between the past few days like a boring, non-violent Tarrentino movie. I have been off of our project for a few days, and as Amy can attest, I usually go through a bit of a funk after everything has been finished and turned in. I get so involved in a studio project, that when the deadline passes, I dunno, I call it my own silly little version of post-studio-partum depression. It usually hits a few days into finals week, and only lasts a couple of days, but none the less, I think it has been compounded by the fact this crazy pirate ship of a studio has finally come to an end, and some of the Chinese students, hell let’s be realistic, most likely all of them, I will never see again. Be that as it is, I haven’t been blogging, one day out of not wanting to, the other of not wanting to have to face the end of this trip.
My impressions of China were fantastic and amazing. The people here, man there are a lot of them, but the ones with which I came into contact were awesome. All the SU students were so helpful. They wouldn’t leave us alone. Not in a bad way, either. They all wanted to show us the city, make sure that we understood everything that was being said, dealt with many moments of akward silence of two people who do not speak the same language stumbling around their home town.
I have to say I have a new found fond spot in my heart for the city of Chengdu. As I said, I haven’t been writing for the past few days, but I‘ll summarize, and when I get around to it, I’ll finally get all the notes in my head out on to the blog. We have been in Chengdu, and from Friday, when we arrived, till Monday morning, we had been working on our final paper presentations of the research we collected in Taoping. That was a quick eight hours working, so roughly 40-48 man hours of work to put together a 33 page document on the hydrology and human impacts on the watershed in the Taoping area. I really got to know a few of the students well over the trip, and then back in Chengdu.
Okay, looks like I got time on my hands, stuck in Chengdu, bad weather in Beijing has us grounded. So as I mentioned, on the 18th we worked and had hot pot. On the 19th we met again to finish up our hydrology work, and then Nan, Chen, Xiao, and I all went to Sichuan food to celebrate. I know that I may have mentioned it to a few of you, but sweating is a common tableside occurrence at Sichuan food. The food is spicy. The strange thing is I think I have really gotten used to it.
So after hot pot, Dana, who had dropped out of the program, was in Chengdu, but only for a night, then she was travelling with some newly found friends to Beichuan. We met up for a couple of beers, and she had been in contact with Lindsey via email over the course of the trip, but wanted to hear first person about some of the crazy times in Taoping. So we chatted, and called it an early night, since she had to catch a bus at 6:30am the next morning and still needed to pack.
Monday morning had our final meeting in store for us. We were to turn in our reports and reflections on the trip and visits to the different villages. After the reports were turned in, we had beers, at 10 am on a Monday. Now, normally I wouldn’t think anything of drinking a beer after a deadline, but these were school purchased beers, at 10 am, on a Monday. Dan Abramson had said they wanted to put together more of a party, but the timing didn’t allow it. So anyway, we drank beers, and took pictures and traded email addresses, and we all had fun.
So I have been in Chengdu for two extra hours waiting for weather to clear, and it looks like it is going to take a little longer than expected to get home. I think I got a voucher for a hotel when I get to Beijing, but again, it is all in Chinese, and I have no idea what it says.
So as I was saying we had a good time drinking beers at ten am, and then someone got the idea to go to karaoke. The Chinese take their karaoke very seriously. It is kinda like that scene in “lost in translation” when Bill Murray sings “more than this.” You rent a booth, and you friends stare at you while you sing. It is much more intimate than the American version. The Chinese also seem to know all the lyrics to all the songs anyone picks, even the English songs. Anyway, I will disavow any knowledge of singing in falsetto Celine Dion’s “my heart goes on, “ or Air Supply’s “I’m all out of love.” This is the last I will mention of those two artists in any sort of written work for the rest of the blog’s history, promise. It was good fun, the kids love their singing, and some of them actually can hold a tune. There ended up being enough students to rent two booths. It was fun to run between them and sing with different groups. As I said, this is a serious endeavor. We arrived at about two-two thirty, and they rented the booths until seven pm. That is a marathon. I am not totally ADD, but even that is a long time to sit and listen to mediocre at best music. But we sang and sang, and by then Josh, J-bo and I all ended up at the Western style restaurant, Peter’s Tex-Mex. After dinner, Josh and I went back to the dorms, it’s hard work drinking beer morning, noon, and evening.
Oh my, I just realized that I haven’t even mentioned the “Thumbs Up, Two Thumbs Up” grading system. After we turned in the reports, the instructors gave out scores of our design solutions from the twenty four hours worth of work in Taoping. I should preface this all with the fact that the students in Chinese schools always know what their position is in school. They are ranked, and the rankings are public knowledge. Needless to say this creates a crazy bloodthirsty competition in the classroom, and one they were happy to have left behind while all the group work with the American students was happening. Anyway back to the grading, so in the meeting they announced the “grades.” And I should also mention that there were groups that received “no-thumbs.” So the groups that received one or two “thumbs up” received a gift. It was really weird. And if you must know I was in a “two thumbs up” group.
I woke up on Tuesday, and I had this listless feeling, that end of studio feeling. So I decided to sleep in. I woke up a bit later, and my stomach wasn’t feeling so great. I spent quite a bit of time near the toilet that morning. Josh had a bunch of stuff to take care of, and some of the students to see, so I ended up napping most of the day away. He came back around 3pm-ish, and we had some instant noodles in the room. He had another meeting with students, but he mentioned the Opera. I felt I needed to get out of the room, so I asked if I could tag along, and we found Jason and Yiran, a student that had been helping him get a plane ticket to Kathmandu. So Jason, Yiran, and I met up with Josh and Dai Xinchen, and the five of us went to the Sichuan Opera. Now, this isn’t quite what you would think of when hear opera. It was more like traditional and folk music, acts and performances. There is also a traditional act of changing clothes in the blink of an eye. Now that I write that, it sounds far more kinky than anything could ever be in China. The act gave the appearance of the performers’ entire clothing changing colors instantaneously. It was actually pretty nifty. So, we didn’t have time to eat before the opera, and we ended up back over at the Uygur restaurant, which is the first place I ate at in Chengdu, with Tiger. Fitting way to end the day and time in Chengdu.
That reminds me, I never was able to find Tiger again. I went by the coffee stand for the last three days I was in Chengdu, and the store was closed. I don’t know if that was because of the school calendar, but, to no avail, I wasn’t able to give him my thanks, and say good-bye. If I had any regrets from this trip, that would be the biggest.
I am on day two of trying to get home, and still need to finish all of this. The flight to Beijing was over three hours late leaving. So I got to Beijing and there was no flight to the USA until tomorrow.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
"Cherish Life Apart From Drugs"
so much to talk about, so little sleep. I promise, tomorrow, sometime after sleeping in and witnessing a total solar eclipse, I will update you guys and regale in stories of school sanctioned beer at ten a.m., karaoke, the "thumbs up, two thumbs up" grading system, and many more.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
“And we only soiled our shirts and not our shorts!”
Chengdu 18-July
Back in Chengdu, we started today with a quick breakfast, then to the presentations of the design solutions we had come up with in Taoping. Our group produced some great material, and I over heard one of the UW students say, “This group produced a lot of material.” At least our work into the night showed and paid off. I have to give a shout to Zhao Nan who rocked the presentation as well. She said after wards she was really nervous, but it didn’t show at all. After the presentations we met back up with one of our original groups, and we are responsible for producing a document of all our research done in Taoping. So we set a time and broke for lunch. Josh and I ended up back at Peter’s Tex-Mex, knowing that we were going to Hot Pot that evening.
Hot Pot, this is something that really has no American equivalent. Well, maybe fondue, but that would be a stretch. The broth of the Sichuan hot pot is full mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns, hot as hell red chilis, and more Sichuan peppercorns. The premise is you go up to a buffet, grab plates, and then take them back to you table and cook the food in the hot broth. It is pretty tasty, but man you get a pretty good sweat going, and if you are a gringo like me, your face gets all red. I haven’t had any indigestion this whole trip, save that little episode of illness, but this might just do me in. Josh and I went to a great local place with Dia Xinchen, Liang Xaio, and Zhao Nan. Here’s the list of food stuff we got from the buffet line; eel, river fish, bacon, marinated bacon, pork skewers, flank meat, beef tenderloin, chili rubbed beef, duck tongue, duck feet, shrimp, lotus root, potatoes, two types of noodles, lettuce, pumpkin, enoki mushrooms, beef lung, tripe of some unknown ungulate, quail eggs, shrimp dumplings, and one mystery vegetable (it looked like Chinese long bean, but wasn’t) and fried banana and fried sweet potatoes for dessert. The food was good, really hot temperature wise as well. I don’t know if I’ll be back, but it was sure worth doing once in my lifetime.
After that, we headed home, tomorrow is a long day, we will go to a few parks around town, and then our group will meet up to finish up our report. It shouldn’t be a long night, hopefully, but since the reports are due on Monday, who knows.
Back in Chengdu, we started today with a quick breakfast, then to the presentations of the design solutions we had come up with in Taoping. Our group produced some great material, and I over heard one of the UW students say, “This group produced a lot of material.” At least our work into the night showed and paid off. I have to give a shout to Zhao Nan who rocked the presentation as well. She said after wards she was really nervous, but it didn’t show at all. After the presentations we met back up with one of our original groups, and we are responsible for producing a document of all our research done in Taoping. So we set a time and broke for lunch. Josh and I ended up back at Peter’s Tex-Mex, knowing that we were going to Hot Pot that evening.
Hot Pot, this is something that really has no American equivalent. Well, maybe fondue, but that would be a stretch. The broth of the Sichuan hot pot is full mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns, hot as hell red chilis, and more Sichuan peppercorns. The premise is you go up to a buffet, grab plates, and then take them back to you table and cook the food in the hot broth. It is pretty tasty, but man you get a pretty good sweat going, and if you are a gringo like me, your face gets all red. I haven’t had any indigestion this whole trip, save that little episode of illness, but this might just do me in. Josh and I went to a great local place with Dia Xinchen, Liang Xaio, and Zhao Nan. Here’s the list of food stuff we got from the buffet line; eel, river fish, bacon, marinated bacon, pork skewers, flank meat, beef tenderloin, chili rubbed beef, duck tongue, duck feet, shrimp, lotus root, potatoes, two types of noodles, lettuce, pumpkin, enoki mushrooms, beef lung, tripe of some unknown ungulate, quail eggs, shrimp dumplings, and one mystery vegetable (it looked like Chinese long bean, but wasn’t) and fried banana and fried sweet potatoes for dessert. The food was good, really hot temperature wise as well. I don’t know if I’ll be back, but it was sure worth doing once in my lifetime.
After that, we headed home, tomorrow is a long day, we will go to a few parks around town, and then our group will meet up to finish up our report. It shouldn’t be a long night, hopefully, but since the reports are due on Monday, who knows.
Friday, July 17, 2009
“Bizarre Must Awesome Should”
Chengdu 17-July
We made it back to Chengdu. Travel days are always a beast. The bus ride was about four hours and we did a little drinking last night to celebrate leaving Taoping, and Lindsey’s birthday. The bus ride was uneventful, which for Chinese traffic is amazing. We are now staying at the dorm I originally stayed in when I first arrived, which doesn’t seem as dingy as I remember it being before. Anyway as we arrived, we came across Fong. I must confess at this point, I am guilty of forgetting about mentioning her and what was going on. I mentioned that Ching had a bit of a fever, and then it moved along to Fong, and she got it a little worse than Ching. She ended up coming back to Chengdu with Bob and Manesh. She was staying at a hotel, and had a few Sichuan students looking after her, but not really. It was good to see her on her feet again, but she still isn’t up to snuff.
Josh and I are sharing a room here at the dorms, and it is really nice to have our own bathroom and shower. And not one that stands over a Turkish toilet either. After we checked in, Josh and I headed out to get a late lunch. We started walking, and just about as soon as we were out the door of the dorm, it started to rain. We had both brought our rain jackets, so no problem. Our current living quarters are on the opposite side of campus from all the amenities with which we are familiar, so we had a good twenty minute walk across campus. The rain let up, and we finally decided on eating at this place that caters to the expat crowd called Peter’s Tex-Mex. Josh had a hamburger, and I had a Philly Cheese Steak, and they were damned good. Josh and I were discussing how we felt we hadn’t eaten much protein in our time in Taoping. We had a lot of bacon fat, plenty of veggies, rice, potatoes (new crop of ‘em harvested while we were there), and noodles. So, lots of simple carbs, but no protein. Big meat sandwiches hit the spot.
As we were finishing up dinner, we had noticed the rain had come back, and this time it was really coming down. We decided to go to the grocery store since we were only four blocks away, and then the rain started coming down harder. By the time we arrived at the store, Josh’s shoes were soaked through, and our pants, not waterproof, were drenched. We bought some food stuff, yogurt for breakfast, some beers, and chocolate, silly Americans. When we got back outside the rain was letting up, but that was short lived, as the rain came down even harder. The walk back was long and wet. We were thoroughly soaked by the time we got back to the dorms. I haven’t seen rain like that in a long time, and then the claps of thunder started. It has been a long day with the travel, so early to bed for this trooper.
We made it back to Chengdu. Travel days are always a beast. The bus ride was about four hours and we did a little drinking last night to celebrate leaving Taoping, and Lindsey’s birthday. The bus ride was uneventful, which for Chinese traffic is amazing. We are now staying at the dorm I originally stayed in when I first arrived, which doesn’t seem as dingy as I remember it being before. Anyway as we arrived, we came across Fong. I must confess at this point, I am guilty of forgetting about mentioning her and what was going on. I mentioned that Ching had a bit of a fever, and then it moved along to Fong, and she got it a little worse than Ching. She ended up coming back to Chengdu with Bob and Manesh. She was staying at a hotel, and had a few Sichuan students looking after her, but not really. It was good to see her on her feet again, but she still isn’t up to snuff.
Josh and I are sharing a room here at the dorms, and it is really nice to have our own bathroom and shower. And not one that stands over a Turkish toilet either. After we checked in, Josh and I headed out to get a late lunch. We started walking, and just about as soon as we were out the door of the dorm, it started to rain. We had both brought our rain jackets, so no problem. Our current living quarters are on the opposite side of campus from all the amenities with which we are familiar, so we had a good twenty minute walk across campus. The rain let up, and we finally decided on eating at this place that caters to the expat crowd called Peter’s Tex-Mex. Josh had a hamburger, and I had a Philly Cheese Steak, and they were damned good. Josh and I were discussing how we felt we hadn’t eaten much protein in our time in Taoping. We had a lot of bacon fat, plenty of veggies, rice, potatoes (new crop of ‘em harvested while we were there), and noodles. So, lots of simple carbs, but no protein. Big meat sandwiches hit the spot.
As we were finishing up dinner, we had noticed the rain had come back, and this time it was really coming down. We decided to go to the grocery store since we were only four blocks away, and then the rain started coming down harder. By the time we arrived at the store, Josh’s shoes were soaked through, and our pants, not waterproof, were drenched. We bought some food stuff, yogurt for breakfast, some beers, and chocolate, silly Americans. When we got back outside the rain was letting up, but that was short lived, as the rain came down even harder. The walk back was long and wet. We were thoroughly soaked by the time we got back to the dorms. I haven’t seen rain like that in a long time, and then the claps of thunder started. It has been a long day with the travel, so early to bed for this trooper.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The meeting was a bust. We didn’t get the job. We drank anyway
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 16- July
So, in the meeting, which was very similar to the government meeting in Lijiang, we basically were told there was likely to be no chance that any ideas we provided would be approved, let alone applied to Taoping. Bummer. I felt as soon as we left the room, this whole trip was a bust. We spent a lot of money, spent a lot of time, burned a lot of energy, lost a lot of sleep, and sunk too much work into this effort for them to just brush us out the door. A few other students shared this opinion, but I started to re-evaluate this frame of mind. It is short-sighted to think that all was lost from one meeting. We at least got in the door. They heard us out. They could have kicked us out when we mentioned community participation, let alone never even let us in the room, but we were heard. And then I started to think of the real world. You can’t expect to get every job you go after. We did our best in the time allotted, and that is all I have to say about that. I am proud of the work we did in the past ten days, and seeing as all the actual design work was done in twenty-four hours, I am DAMNED pround of what our group brought to the table.
So after dinner, we were told there was a chance of a presentation for the villagers in the morning, and the instructors would present the material we created. This was somewhat of a relief, and we decided to have a few beers to celebrate the end of the project in Taoping. We had a couple of beers in the court, told some stories, cracked some jokes, commiserated over the defeat at the hands of the Chinese Government, but all in all, we blew some steam. And at midnight, Lindsey turned twenty-one.
Breakfast came early. Lack of sleep made me want to skip breakfast, but there is usually important daily instructions that come down the pipe at breakfast. That, combined with having a TA for a roommate doesn’t help. We heard, last minute of course, there would be a presentation at 8:30am for the village leader, who didn’t commit until the last minute, in hopes of not having a large crowd turn out. We broke from breakfast, met up in the courtyard, and headed over to the meeting hall to hear the presentation. The instructors presented the material, and then asked to hear what the local residents thought of what we had done. There was some hesitation to comment on their part, but then the flood gates opened. Everything from lack of confidence in the government, local on up, frustration from lack of leadership and delayed rebuilding schedules, the fact that we were the first group to talk to them and ask them their opinions since the earthquake happened all came up. We can only hope that some of our ideas can stick in their minds and cause them to repeat them over and over to the officials, and hope something changes.
After the meeting, we headed to lunch and pretty much have a free afternoon. Seeing as it is our last full day here in Taoping, I am off to buy some true local handicrafts. And I probably won’t bargain or haggle either. Next stop; back to the heat, humidity, and smog of Chengdu.
Taoping 16- July
So, in the meeting, which was very similar to the government meeting in Lijiang, we basically were told there was likely to be no chance that any ideas we provided would be approved, let alone applied to Taoping. Bummer. I felt as soon as we left the room, this whole trip was a bust. We spent a lot of money, spent a lot of time, burned a lot of energy, lost a lot of sleep, and sunk too much work into this effort for them to just brush us out the door. A few other students shared this opinion, but I started to re-evaluate this frame of mind. It is short-sighted to think that all was lost from one meeting. We at least got in the door. They heard us out. They could have kicked us out when we mentioned community participation, let alone never even let us in the room, but we were heard. And then I started to think of the real world. You can’t expect to get every job you go after. We did our best in the time allotted, and that is all I have to say about that. I am proud of the work we did in the past ten days, and seeing as all the actual design work was done in twenty-four hours, I am DAMNED pround of what our group brought to the table.
So after dinner, we were told there was a chance of a presentation for the villagers in the morning, and the instructors would present the material we created. This was somewhat of a relief, and we decided to have a few beers to celebrate the end of the project in Taoping. We had a couple of beers in the court, told some stories, cracked some jokes, commiserated over the defeat at the hands of the Chinese Government, but all in all, we blew some steam. And at midnight, Lindsey turned twenty-one.
Breakfast came early. Lack of sleep made me want to skip breakfast, but there is usually important daily instructions that come down the pipe at breakfast. That, combined with having a TA for a roommate doesn’t help. We heard, last minute of course, there would be a presentation at 8:30am for the village leader, who didn’t commit until the last minute, in hopes of not having a large crowd turn out. We broke from breakfast, met up in the courtyard, and headed over to the meeting hall to hear the presentation. The instructors presented the material, and then asked to hear what the local residents thought of what we had done. There was some hesitation to comment on their part, but then the flood gates opened. Everything from lack of confidence in the government, local on up, frustration from lack of leadership and delayed rebuilding schedules, the fact that we were the first group to talk to them and ask them their opinions since the earthquake happened all came up. We can only hope that some of our ideas can stick in their minds and cause them to repeat them over and over to the officials, and hope something changes.
After the meeting, we headed to lunch and pretty much have a free afternoon. Seeing as it is our last full day here in Taoping, I am off to buy some true local handicrafts. And I probably won’t bargain or haggle either. Next stop; back to the heat, humidity, and smog of Chengdu.
The Hair Brained Adventures with the Illustrious Mr. Pu
*posted by Amy*
Lixian 15-July
So yesterday was crazy, we had an all day charette, which means come up with an entire plan for a problem in a short amount of time. For us, this was twenty four hours. We had to basically develop along the guidelines assigned to our group, but our group managed to find a way to do what we wanted by claiming we were sticking to the guidelines. We were supposed to develop the new town of Taoping using as much of the current existing infrastructure as possible. Well, that’s another story that didn’t follow our team’s agenda. The rest of the day was a blur, with a pin up of all our materials presented after dinner, where several instructors told us that we had the most well developed design, and succeeded in thinking outside the box.
That was at 9pm, then we had until 8 am to turn everything into a power point presentation. So a lot of people didn’t get to sleep until late, and I wasn’t to bed until 4:15. Then up by 7:30 for breakfast. The presentations were turned in, and we found out we won’t be presenting until tomorrow. The instructors instead have arranged today a meeting with the county officials in charge of the development of the new Taoping, and they are going to present a series of the student group suggestions. I know that our groups’ ideas were a little bit hippie, focusing on the environment more than others, but hey, do what matters most, and get them thinking about things outside their comfort zone.
So in the morning, after three hours of sleep, we turned in our presentation, and then ate breakfast. I tried to go back to sleep, but that was no use because outside in the courtyard, people were milling about, chatting, so I decided to just stay up. I rolled out and there was talk of going to another village, but there were only limited seats on vans to get there, and I claimed one of them. The village is called Puxi, and we were leaving at 9:30, and then grab lunch on the way to a 3:00 meeting in the county town.
I think I have mentioned our delegate from the county, Mr. Pu, and if I haven’t I’ll briefly recap. He is a good old boy, and he loves Li County. He also loves to talk way too loudly on the phone, and has a silly cadence to his speech, not that I can understand anything he says anyway. So we were in one van, students mostly, and the instructors in another. We got to the village center, and there was a considerable amount of damage, but there was even more reconstruction happening. It was a different experience then we had on our hike in the mountains earlier in the week. The place had energy, where as the mountain village had an air of apathy. We took some photos, and talked with the town head, who said there were only two killed in the earthquake, but this is perhaps what they have been told to tell foreigners. We piled back in the vans, and when I say piled, I mean piled, and when I say vans, I mean Ford Escort sized vehicles with high ceilings. We started up the road to visit some of the village in the high valley, and about two-thirds of the way there, our van, aka the gutless wonder, couldn’t make it up the hill with all the passengers on board. So we got out and had to hike. This was fine, except the other van was ahead of us, and we still had to get up the hill. There were seven passengers, and we started up the hill. We saw some trails that went up the hill, through the farm land terraces, instead of following the switchbacks. There were some steep sections but we made it to the road, and four of the group decided to follow the road, and Josh, Mr. Pu, and I kept going through farm land. We hiked, and Mr. Pu started this crazy yelling, to let others know where we were. I thought it would be fun to mimic him, and so I yelled, and he laughed and made some noise in an approving manner, and then Josh followed suit. We crossed some roads, rolled through more farmland, yelled some more, and kept going up the mountain until we hit a village.
This village was new, and had very little earthquake damage. The town was more than a year old, but the damage was limited by technology, steel rebar and concrete mortar. This made me feel as if the trip wasn’t all hopeless. I had been feeling like another village completely collapsed by the earthquake was going to be one too many. This town had survived fairly well. The people working were smiling as well, and we soon had a crowd following us. It’s not everyday that the people of Puxi see two white kids with light hair. After walking the town, and Mr. Pu videotaping most of the town , we headed back to find the rest of the group. We started the crazy yelling again, and found the rest of our group at an old portion of Puxi. We hoofed it over to meet up with them, and they were meeting with a Shibi, a Qiang version of a shaman. We was talking to the group, and Josh and I got there just in time to take pictures with him. We got in the vans, and the nice thing is you don’t have to push them down hill. So we headed off to Lixian for our meeting.
Driving in Li County is something that is more akin to a video game than an actual human activity, compares to western driving. The horns on cars rarely get a rest, you feel like you are getting kidney damage from all the bumps, and the road is so narrow at spots from landslides and construction, cars back several deep to wait for traffic to move through. Anyway, imaging a dirt road about 12 feet wide, barreling in a van that is way overcrowded, and hurtling head long towards a giant truck full of stone, to only swerve in the right side at the last possible moment, all while being bounced around haphazardly by potholes that could swallow a house. And to think this is the road that the Li county government wants to use to grow the tourism industry in Taoping.
We are currently in the meeting right now, and seeing as it is all in Chinese, and the person translating for me is giving me updates every minute, I’m not catching much. I had better turn off now, the typing is annoying some folks.
Lixian 15-July
So yesterday was crazy, we had an all day charette, which means come up with an entire plan for a problem in a short amount of time. For us, this was twenty four hours. We had to basically develop along the guidelines assigned to our group, but our group managed to find a way to do what we wanted by claiming we were sticking to the guidelines. We were supposed to develop the new town of Taoping using as much of the current existing infrastructure as possible. Well, that’s another story that didn’t follow our team’s agenda. The rest of the day was a blur, with a pin up of all our materials presented after dinner, where several instructors told us that we had the most well developed design, and succeeded in thinking outside the box.
That was at 9pm, then we had until 8 am to turn everything into a power point presentation. So a lot of people didn’t get to sleep until late, and I wasn’t to bed until 4:15. Then up by 7:30 for breakfast. The presentations were turned in, and we found out we won’t be presenting until tomorrow. The instructors instead have arranged today a meeting with the county officials in charge of the development of the new Taoping, and they are going to present a series of the student group suggestions. I know that our groups’ ideas were a little bit hippie, focusing on the environment more than others, but hey, do what matters most, and get them thinking about things outside their comfort zone.
So in the morning, after three hours of sleep, we turned in our presentation, and then ate breakfast. I tried to go back to sleep, but that was no use because outside in the courtyard, people were milling about, chatting, so I decided to just stay up. I rolled out and there was talk of going to another village, but there were only limited seats on vans to get there, and I claimed one of them. The village is called Puxi, and we were leaving at 9:30, and then grab lunch on the way to a 3:00 meeting in the county town.
I think I have mentioned our delegate from the county, Mr. Pu, and if I haven’t I’ll briefly recap. He is a good old boy, and he loves Li County. He also loves to talk way too loudly on the phone, and has a silly cadence to his speech, not that I can understand anything he says anyway. So we were in one van, students mostly, and the instructors in another. We got to the village center, and there was a considerable amount of damage, but there was even more reconstruction happening. It was a different experience then we had on our hike in the mountains earlier in the week. The place had energy, where as the mountain village had an air of apathy. We took some photos, and talked with the town head, who said there were only two killed in the earthquake, but this is perhaps what they have been told to tell foreigners. We piled back in the vans, and when I say piled, I mean piled, and when I say vans, I mean Ford Escort sized vehicles with high ceilings. We started up the road to visit some of the village in the high valley, and about two-thirds of the way there, our van, aka the gutless wonder, couldn’t make it up the hill with all the passengers on board. So we got out and had to hike. This was fine, except the other van was ahead of us, and we still had to get up the hill. There were seven passengers, and we started up the hill. We saw some trails that went up the hill, through the farm land terraces, instead of following the switchbacks. There were some steep sections but we made it to the road, and four of the group decided to follow the road, and Josh, Mr. Pu, and I kept going through farm land. We hiked, and Mr. Pu started this crazy yelling, to let others know where we were. I thought it would be fun to mimic him, and so I yelled, and he laughed and made some noise in an approving manner, and then Josh followed suit. We crossed some roads, rolled through more farmland, yelled some more, and kept going up the mountain until we hit a village.
This village was new, and had very little earthquake damage. The town was more than a year old, but the damage was limited by technology, steel rebar and concrete mortar. This made me feel as if the trip wasn’t all hopeless. I had been feeling like another village completely collapsed by the earthquake was going to be one too many. This town had survived fairly well. The people working were smiling as well, and we soon had a crowd following us. It’s not everyday that the people of Puxi see two white kids with light hair. After walking the town, and Mr. Pu videotaping most of the town , we headed back to find the rest of the group. We started the crazy yelling again, and found the rest of our group at an old portion of Puxi. We hoofed it over to meet up with them, and they were meeting with a Shibi, a Qiang version of a shaman. We was talking to the group, and Josh and I got there just in time to take pictures with him. We got in the vans, and the nice thing is you don’t have to push them down hill. So we headed off to Lixian for our meeting.
Driving in Li County is something that is more akin to a video game than an actual human activity, compares to western driving. The horns on cars rarely get a rest, you feel like you are getting kidney damage from all the bumps, and the road is so narrow at spots from landslides and construction, cars back several deep to wait for traffic to move through. Anyway, imaging a dirt road about 12 feet wide, barreling in a van that is way overcrowded, and hurtling head long towards a giant truck full of stone, to only swerve in the right side at the last possible moment, all while being bounced around haphazardly by potholes that could swallow a house. And to think this is the road that the Li county government wants to use to grow the tourism industry in Taoping.
We are currently in the meeting right now, and seeing as it is all in Chinese, and the person translating for me is giving me updates every minute, I’m not catching much. I had better turn off now, the typing is annoying some folks.
Warm prompt: Boards when meets carefully!
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 13-July
Breakfast, congee, meet with group, build power point presentation, repeat. It seems all we do is meet in groups and eat. I think that’s why after breakfast Josh and I decided to get out and hike a little bit. We hiked up the valley to the west of town and back down, maybe five miles or so round trip. It was good to get out for a walk, and we also stopped and picked some peaches and plums from a local orchard, mostly wind fall, but a few off the trees. The peaches are just starting to hit full ripeness, and the plums are going off. We walked for about an hour and a half, and took some photos, but we ended up having to turn around because a landslide had fallen on the road, and there was heavy machinery out cleaning it up. Besides, it was almost lunch time, and we had a presentation to present this evening.
We got back in time for lunch, and afterwards, our groups started their work. The format, called pecha-kucha, was actually the most interesting part of the presentation. We had only 3 minutes to present 9 slides; 20 seconds each slide. It was very liberating in the brevity of the presentation; cut the fat, keep the lean. We ended up fitting 14 presentations inside of two hours. That is unheard of in the normal school setting.
I ended up having to present in two different groups, both focusing on ecology. One was water ecology, and the other was terrestrial ecology. It’s fun to the crunchy tree hugger from time to time. Everyone had a lot of info that was squeezed into the presentations , and all in all it was a very productive way of listening to presentations. Afterwards, we were told the format for the following days events, and we would find out who we will be working with tomorrow. That group will probably be the last group I will work with in Taoping, if not China. It is bizarre to think in ten days I’ll be home. It feels like there is so much work to accomplish, yet so little time. Such is life in the design world I suppose. I don’t know if there will be an update tomorrow, as we will only have about 24 hours to present a full site plan of our design for the entire city.
Taoping 13-July
Breakfast, congee, meet with group, build power point presentation, repeat. It seems all we do is meet in groups and eat. I think that’s why after breakfast Josh and I decided to get out and hike a little bit. We hiked up the valley to the west of town and back down, maybe five miles or so round trip. It was good to get out for a walk, and we also stopped and picked some peaches and plums from a local orchard, mostly wind fall, but a few off the trees. The peaches are just starting to hit full ripeness, and the plums are going off. We walked for about an hour and a half, and took some photos, but we ended up having to turn around because a landslide had fallen on the road, and there was heavy machinery out cleaning it up. Besides, it was almost lunch time, and we had a presentation to present this evening.
We got back in time for lunch, and afterwards, our groups started their work. The format, called pecha-kucha, was actually the most interesting part of the presentation. We had only 3 minutes to present 9 slides; 20 seconds each slide. It was very liberating in the brevity of the presentation; cut the fat, keep the lean. We ended up fitting 14 presentations inside of two hours. That is unheard of in the normal school setting.
I ended up having to present in two different groups, both focusing on ecology. One was water ecology, and the other was terrestrial ecology. It’s fun to the crunchy tree hugger from time to time. Everyone had a lot of info that was squeezed into the presentations , and all in all it was a very productive way of listening to presentations. Afterwards, we were told the format for the following days events, and we would find out who we will be working with tomorrow. That group will probably be the last group I will work with in Taoping, if not China. It is bizarre to think in ten days I’ll be home. It feels like there is so much work to accomplish, yet so little time. Such is life in the design world I suppose. I don’t know if there will be an update tomorrow, as we will only have about 24 hours to present a full site plan of our design for the entire city.
It’s not rocket science, it’s social science; or I have never seen a goat slaughtered before.
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 12-July
Today, breakfast and then off for a hike. We got our gear ready last night, and got to sleep nice and early. We got started on the hike around 8:30 and the trail didn’t waste any time going up. People had very little time to get warmed up, and they were already sucking wind. The trail continued its ascent, and we moved at a slow pace. There was around fifty of us, and so that caused some spreading out along the trail. A group of younger students set the pace, and with them was Jeff Hou and one of the TA’s, Jewel. Josh, Yue, and I moved along the group to make sure people were doing well, staying hydrated, things like that. It was a slow slog up, as some people were not in hiking shape, and we are about a mile up to start. The trail was exposed, and this morning was the first morning we had some sun. We were able to get some great photos over the valley of Taoping and the Zagunao River.
The trek carried us up to some other villages, and no surprise, the 5.12 damage was catastrophic. Whole villages were laid to waste. I am constantly amazed in the indefatigable spirit of mankind. The first village we came to was utterly destroyed and day to day life continues. There was a funeral happening. I don’t know if I could handle even trying to pick up the pieces, the flee response becomes so overwhelming. We also walk through these towns and see the same construction techniques being used that were on the receiving end of so much damage, and the Government tells the villagers to rebuild using “traditional techniques.” One of the students in our group is a civil engineer, and she has said several times over the construction practices cause her to feel ill. The workers make minor changes, using cement mortar instead of the traditional mud mortar, but in some of the construction we don’t see and steel reinforcement. It almost seems as if they forget they live in a seismically active area, or have chosen to ignore this notion entirely. And as far as repairing the historical structures, the villages we saw today looked beyond help.
Our trek made it to a ridge line, and we moved east along to the next village. This was the turn-around point, and the site of the tombs Professor Li Wei had mentioned yesterday. Yesterday we were told of these tombs and heavy rock slabs that covered the fronts. The story was no one knew how these heavy slabs made it up here, and they were from a race of people that were defeated by the Qiang people. I want to say that this was one of the largest let-downs of my life. The “slabs” were thin rock, maybe 2 foot squares each. Don’t get me wrong, rock is heavy, but when you say you don’t know how a heavy rock. I tried to imagine how these were actually discovered as tombs, they were so tiny. I’m not trying to take away from the credence of anyone’s anthropological research, but these “tombs” were not very impressive.
At this point the slog had gone on for far too long, and Josh Marijean, and myself, we decided to head back to town. The return trip ended up taking about 45 minutes, and we were back just in time to catch the end of lunch, and a quick nap. We then had a short round up to talk about a presentation of the inventory of our studies that we will give tomorrow. At this point, the groups will be redistributed, and we will prepare solutions from here out. It is amusing, the syllabus and tentative schedule had us working on research to use for a studio next fall at UW, but it looks like we will e producing document ts on the trip. So not what I was expecting, but pretty cool, that we may be able to influence the local point of view, hopefully.
I should mention at this point, J-Bo has moved to another guest house in town, so now Josh and I are sharing a room that is ten by ten. This may not seem like much, but by now, after the water system crapping out on us three or four times, I feel like we are in the f-ing Hyatt. Dinner was no different then any other, not bad, just nothing to write home about, except I am writing about it. But we had a Goat roast afterwards. On the way to dinner, we had seen two of the men of the family slaughtering the goat that would be turned into our feast. I say feast, but it was more like an hors d’oeuvre. The goat holds cultural significance for the Qiang people. It is one of the few animals they raise as livestock, has carried there people through hardship, and has also destroyed the Qiang people’s religious scriptures. I don’t know if this is true or fiction, but makes for good stories.
The goat roast was a hoot. There was dancing and eating and then the singing started. Our hosts started by singing some Qiang folk songs, then the Chinese students kicked in, and then J-Bo and I gave a stunning rendition of L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. It was pretty funny and we got a lot of laughs out of it. After lots of laughs and more singing for our hosts, we called it a night, except as I type, the Chinese students are working away on their presentations. Josh was joking with me that they consider me a TA by proximity. After about an hour of chatting, one of the students came over and asked me to check out their work. It was an outline for our presentation, and it looked good, but from their voices, they sounded as if they may work long into the night. Don’t get me wrong, I have pulled all nighters, even recently, but not for a 3 minute power point presentation. We’ll see what they have accomplished by tomorrow morning. I can only imagine what it will look like.
Taoping 12-July
Today, breakfast and then off for a hike. We got our gear ready last night, and got to sleep nice and early. We got started on the hike around 8:30 and the trail didn’t waste any time going up. People had very little time to get warmed up, and they were already sucking wind. The trail continued its ascent, and we moved at a slow pace. There was around fifty of us, and so that caused some spreading out along the trail. A group of younger students set the pace, and with them was Jeff Hou and one of the TA’s, Jewel. Josh, Yue, and I moved along the group to make sure people were doing well, staying hydrated, things like that. It was a slow slog up, as some people were not in hiking shape, and we are about a mile up to start. The trail was exposed, and this morning was the first morning we had some sun. We were able to get some great photos over the valley of Taoping and the Zagunao River.
The trek carried us up to some other villages, and no surprise, the 5.12 damage was catastrophic. Whole villages were laid to waste. I am constantly amazed in the indefatigable spirit of mankind. The first village we came to was utterly destroyed and day to day life continues. There was a funeral happening. I don’t know if I could handle even trying to pick up the pieces, the flee response becomes so overwhelming. We also walk through these towns and see the same construction techniques being used that were on the receiving end of so much damage, and the Government tells the villagers to rebuild using “traditional techniques.” One of the students in our group is a civil engineer, and she has said several times over the construction practices cause her to feel ill. The workers make minor changes, using cement mortar instead of the traditional mud mortar, but in some of the construction we don’t see and steel reinforcement. It almost seems as if they forget they live in a seismically active area, or have chosen to ignore this notion entirely. And as far as repairing the historical structures, the villages we saw today looked beyond help.
Our trek made it to a ridge line, and we moved east along to the next village. This was the turn-around point, and the site of the tombs Professor Li Wei had mentioned yesterday. Yesterday we were told of these tombs and heavy rock slabs that covered the fronts. The story was no one knew how these heavy slabs made it up here, and they were from a race of people that were defeated by the Qiang people. I want to say that this was one of the largest let-downs of my life. The “slabs” were thin rock, maybe 2 foot squares each. Don’t get me wrong, rock is heavy, but when you say you don’t know how a heavy rock. I tried to imagine how these were actually discovered as tombs, they were so tiny. I’m not trying to take away from the credence of anyone’s anthropological research, but these “tombs” were not very impressive.
At this point the slog had gone on for far too long, and Josh Marijean, and myself, we decided to head back to town. The return trip ended up taking about 45 minutes, and we were back just in time to catch the end of lunch, and a quick nap. We then had a short round up to talk about a presentation of the inventory of our studies that we will give tomorrow. At this point, the groups will be redistributed, and we will prepare solutions from here out. It is amusing, the syllabus and tentative schedule had us working on research to use for a studio next fall at UW, but it looks like we will e producing document ts on the trip. So not what I was expecting, but pretty cool, that we may be able to influence the local point of view, hopefully.
I should mention at this point, J-Bo has moved to another guest house in town, so now Josh and I are sharing a room that is ten by ten. This may not seem like much, but by now, after the water system crapping out on us three or four times, I feel like we are in the f-ing Hyatt. Dinner was no different then any other, not bad, just nothing to write home about, except I am writing about it. But we had a Goat roast afterwards. On the way to dinner, we had seen two of the men of the family slaughtering the goat that would be turned into our feast. I say feast, but it was more like an hors d’oeuvre. The goat holds cultural significance for the Qiang people. It is one of the few animals they raise as livestock, has carried there people through hardship, and has also destroyed the Qiang people’s religious scriptures. I don’t know if this is true or fiction, but makes for good stories.
The goat roast was a hoot. There was dancing and eating and then the singing started. Our hosts started by singing some Qiang folk songs, then the Chinese students kicked in, and then J-Bo and I gave a stunning rendition of L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. It was pretty funny and we got a lot of laughs out of it. After lots of laughs and more singing for our hosts, we called it a night, except as I type, the Chinese students are working away on their presentations. Josh was joking with me that they consider me a TA by proximity. After about an hour of chatting, one of the students came over and asked me to check out their work. It was an outline for our presentation, and it looked good, but from their voices, they sounded as if they may work long into the night. Don’t get me wrong, I have pulled all nighters, even recently, but not for a 3 minute power point presentation. We’ll see what they have accomplished by tomorrow morning. I can only imagine what it will look like.
“I very love it”
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 11- July
The water came back on!
Other than that, however, today was not too exciting. Breakfast, more congee, break off into groups after a small group meeting. Since I have been volunteered to organize this group, I decided to work on an analysis of the vegetation of the new town compared to the old town. We received some plans for how the town was supposed to be built, and there was a large number of trees to be planted, so that gives me hope, but as I said before, the new town wasn’t able to be completed, so it doesn’t have much tree canopy, and consequently feels much warmer than the old town. I tried to do a little work on the computer today, but I have found myself emotionally drained from being here. This town, as charming as the town is, and all of its inhabitants, gets me down. Walking through rubble, seeing the damage daily, seeing the blame game and the lack of planning in the plans, the propaganda about the old town not being damaged; it gets to be too much. I felt today was a good today to be kind of sluggish. So I sat around the courtyard and drank coffee and talked to the TA’s and professors about design suggestions we can over the villagers. I’ve been getting some good feedback, and I think our group can offer a lot of positive ideas for the villagers. Again, I won’t bore you not design-heads with the nitty-gritty, all you others we’ll talk ad nauseum when I get back.
Today marked the end of the trip for two of our faculty members; Manesh and Bob. They took off today after lunch, and already I miss them. Those two are like the Odd Couple. They are great friends, but they are always arguing about something. I really like talking with them as well on solutions to the problems Taoping is facing. Bob’s specialty is natural hazard planning, and Manesh focuses on more cultural aspects of cities and towns. They really were hilarious to watch bicker and knit-pick over words. We’ll miss there endless banter, to be sure. The day seemed to roll by, with people in my group checking in with me to make sure they are working in a “right” direction. The model for Chinese students is, I admit could totally be wrong on this, to ask what they should do, get the response, and then regurgitate the design using what they were told. This is kind of weird, because in our classes at UW we are constantly taking info and bending it into something unrecognizable from whence it started, constantly questioning everything we’re told along the way.
Another interesting fact of our American education is we take for granted environmental planning. We are immersed in thinking of ways to reduce, if not try to reverse, the human impacts on a site, that these concepts don’t exist in other places, for example Sichuan University. Yesterday, I mentioned maybe we try to reduce the overall footprint of the streets, to allow more open spaces, and more rainwater not to wash straight into the river. Later that day, the students want to break up the concrete and plant grass in between paving stones. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to get these kids thinking about removing dams from rivers, restoring vegetation to streams, instead of having poured concrete walls, and even thinking about suggesting the village use green roofs in new construction. We will have to see how it all shakes out, but it seems promising.
Late in the afternoon, Josh and I decided to go for a walk up the road that leads out of town, and follows the smaller of the two rivers, up the valley. We hiked only for a half an hour or so, but as we did, we came across some amazing farms and orchards, we even found some fabulous white peaches that had fallen off the tree, super ripe, super sweet, and super tasty. We turned around because I had to get back to meet with my group, and that meeting ended up falling through, since no one had remembered it, or others were busy interviewing locals.
After dinner, one of the Sichuan students stood up, and sang a song. He did a great job, and then the cafeteria turned and started shouting “Jason, Jason…” He was stumped, and then some announcements were made including tomorrows agenda. We will be going on a hike, optional, to the top of the ridgeon the opposite side of the valley from Taoping. The hike will probably take two to three hours up, and then we will visit an historic tomb site dating from the Han Dynasty. It should be fun, and the views should be spectacular. After that, we are going to have a traditional lamb roast, with Qiang dancing and song. Now I should say, we were told lamb, but in Chinese the words “lamb” and “goat” are the same word, so it might end up to be goat. After these announcements, Jason stood up and said he would sing Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” and he did a good job, only having to stop at the part when he sang “…and kiss me” because all the Chinese students started to giggle. He did great, though, and I have a feeling we might be singing more at dinner.
Taoping 11- July
The water came back on!
Other than that, however, today was not too exciting. Breakfast, more congee, break off into groups after a small group meeting. Since I have been volunteered to organize this group, I decided to work on an analysis of the vegetation of the new town compared to the old town. We received some plans for how the town was supposed to be built, and there was a large number of trees to be planted, so that gives me hope, but as I said before, the new town wasn’t able to be completed, so it doesn’t have much tree canopy, and consequently feels much warmer than the old town. I tried to do a little work on the computer today, but I have found myself emotionally drained from being here. This town, as charming as the town is, and all of its inhabitants, gets me down. Walking through rubble, seeing the damage daily, seeing the blame game and the lack of planning in the plans, the propaganda about the old town not being damaged; it gets to be too much. I felt today was a good today to be kind of sluggish. So I sat around the courtyard and drank coffee and talked to the TA’s and professors about design suggestions we can over the villagers. I’ve been getting some good feedback, and I think our group can offer a lot of positive ideas for the villagers. Again, I won’t bore you not design-heads with the nitty-gritty, all you others we’ll talk ad nauseum when I get back.
Today marked the end of the trip for two of our faculty members; Manesh and Bob. They took off today after lunch, and already I miss them. Those two are like the Odd Couple. They are great friends, but they are always arguing about something. I really like talking with them as well on solutions to the problems Taoping is facing. Bob’s specialty is natural hazard planning, and Manesh focuses on more cultural aspects of cities and towns. They really were hilarious to watch bicker and knit-pick over words. We’ll miss there endless banter, to be sure. The day seemed to roll by, with people in my group checking in with me to make sure they are working in a “right” direction. The model for Chinese students is, I admit could totally be wrong on this, to ask what they should do, get the response, and then regurgitate the design using what they were told. This is kind of weird, because in our classes at UW we are constantly taking info and bending it into something unrecognizable from whence it started, constantly questioning everything we’re told along the way.
Another interesting fact of our American education is we take for granted environmental planning. We are immersed in thinking of ways to reduce, if not try to reverse, the human impacts on a site, that these concepts don’t exist in other places, for example Sichuan University. Yesterday, I mentioned maybe we try to reduce the overall footprint of the streets, to allow more open spaces, and more rainwater not to wash straight into the river. Later that day, the students want to break up the concrete and plant grass in between paving stones. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to get these kids thinking about removing dams from rivers, restoring vegetation to streams, instead of having poured concrete walls, and even thinking about suggesting the village use green roofs in new construction. We will have to see how it all shakes out, but it seems promising.
Late in the afternoon, Josh and I decided to go for a walk up the road that leads out of town, and follows the smaller of the two rivers, up the valley. We hiked only for a half an hour or so, but as we did, we came across some amazing farms and orchards, we even found some fabulous white peaches that had fallen off the tree, super ripe, super sweet, and super tasty. We turned around because I had to get back to meet with my group, and that meeting ended up falling through, since no one had remembered it, or others were busy interviewing locals.
After dinner, one of the Sichuan students stood up, and sang a song. He did a great job, and then the cafeteria turned and started shouting “Jason, Jason…” He was stumped, and then some announcements were made including tomorrows agenda. We will be going on a hike, optional, to the top of the ridgeon the opposite side of the valley from Taoping. The hike will probably take two to three hours up, and then we will visit an historic tomb site dating from the Han Dynasty. It should be fun, and the views should be spectacular. After that, we are going to have a traditional lamb roast, with Qiang dancing and song. Now I should say, we were told lamb, but in Chinese the words “lamb” and “goat” are the same word, so it might end up to be goat. After these announcements, Jason stood up and said he would sing Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” and he did a good job, only having to stop at the part when he sang “…and kiss me” because all the Chinese students started to giggle. He did great, though, and I have a feeling we might be singing more at dinner.
Even the living weary become a happy dream when I’m with you”
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 10- July
Just to make sure everyone is clear on the following news, there has been a riot, and two earthquakes in China, and none of them have been close to our activities. We hear different things through the Chinese press, but we don’t really know what to believe, and we take it all with a grain of salt.
Today started out the same as most days, wake up, go to breakfast, have a meeting until lunch. But the meeting today fell into three parts; power point presentation, structured chaos, then reorganization of student groups. This is somewhat frustrating, since the groups we formed were only two to three days old. This is not to say I don’t think the new groups are better. I am in a group focusing on the environmental and ecological functions, or sometimes lack thereof. So after this meeting, and after lunch, we broke off and decided some topics to look into; hydrology, vegetation, building placement and ecological awareness, hardscape, wild life, river corridors, etc. We paired off and looked into these subjects as smaller teams. We did some research by informally interviewing locals in the street, and also by just rolling around and taking pictures. I have to say that there is one great way to get some good information by interviewing local people, especially the older folks in the town.
We walked all over town, and are starting to be seen as a presence, and I think the locals are just expecting to be bombarded with lowai asking questions about their town. I am in a group looking at the water and river corridors. One of the nifty things of Taoping is its series of channels that convey water and criss-cross all over the town. We did some exploring, and rolled around following channels and ended up at the top of the village, where the mountain and the buildings meet. From this vantage point you could see all the village. I should give a little context here. The town of Taoping is somewhat split into two towns, old and new. Old sits up on the hill, on a rock outcropping, just south of a mountain, and the new town sits to the east, on the lower area, that before the damming of the valley was a flood plain. I’m not trying to give you guys a detailed geography of Li County, it just helps to explain how different the two areas look. The new town is vacant because the buildings have been deemed unsafe by the government and are going to be torn down. The weird thing is the new town wasn’t even finished being built. So it becomes hard to tell what was earthquake damaged, and what hadn’t even been finished. Then to boot, the information we had before we came said the old town was relatively unharmed by the earthquake. Not true. A great majority of the buildings are damaged. It was amazing to see the damage; it seemed to contradict everything we had been told previously.
We met up a few times through the course of the day to see what is going on, and people keep coming to me, treating me like the group leader. I suppose it is good practice for the future, and I don’t know if it comes with my being older than everyone, but they look to me for answers to questions, next steps to follow, and projects for tomorrow. At dinner, Professor Dan said there would be a movie, and it was filmed in the area of China where we are. The movie’s plot was see through, but it did showcase the area, and was somewhat demeaning of the local Qiang people. It portrayed them as somewhat slow minded, and always dressing in their traditional garb. Tomorrow has more research in store, and hopefully, a little rest.
Taoping 10- July
Just to make sure everyone is clear on the following news, there has been a riot, and two earthquakes in China, and none of them have been close to our activities. We hear different things through the Chinese press, but we don’t really know what to believe, and we take it all with a grain of salt.
Today started out the same as most days, wake up, go to breakfast, have a meeting until lunch. But the meeting today fell into three parts; power point presentation, structured chaos, then reorganization of student groups. This is somewhat frustrating, since the groups we formed were only two to three days old. This is not to say I don’t think the new groups are better. I am in a group focusing on the environmental and ecological functions, or sometimes lack thereof. So after this meeting, and after lunch, we broke off and decided some topics to look into; hydrology, vegetation, building placement and ecological awareness, hardscape, wild life, river corridors, etc. We paired off and looked into these subjects as smaller teams. We did some research by informally interviewing locals in the street, and also by just rolling around and taking pictures. I have to say that there is one great way to get some good information by interviewing local people, especially the older folks in the town.
We walked all over town, and are starting to be seen as a presence, and I think the locals are just expecting to be bombarded with lowai asking questions about their town. I am in a group looking at the water and river corridors. One of the nifty things of Taoping is its series of channels that convey water and criss-cross all over the town. We did some exploring, and rolled around following channels and ended up at the top of the village, where the mountain and the buildings meet. From this vantage point you could see all the village. I should give a little context here. The town of Taoping is somewhat split into two towns, old and new. Old sits up on the hill, on a rock outcropping, just south of a mountain, and the new town sits to the east, on the lower area, that before the damming of the valley was a flood plain. I’m not trying to give you guys a detailed geography of Li County, it just helps to explain how different the two areas look. The new town is vacant because the buildings have been deemed unsafe by the government and are going to be torn down. The weird thing is the new town wasn’t even finished being built. So it becomes hard to tell what was earthquake damaged, and what hadn’t even been finished. Then to boot, the information we had before we came said the old town was relatively unharmed by the earthquake. Not true. A great majority of the buildings are damaged. It was amazing to see the damage; it seemed to contradict everything we had been told previously.
We met up a few times through the course of the day to see what is going on, and people keep coming to me, treating me like the group leader. I suppose it is good practice for the future, and I don’t know if it comes with my being older than everyone, but they look to me for answers to questions, next steps to follow, and projects for tomorrow. At dinner, Professor Dan said there would be a movie, and it was filmed in the area of China where we are. The movie’s plot was see through, but it did showcase the area, and was somewhat demeaning of the local Qiang people. It portrayed them as somewhat slow minded, and always dressing in their traditional garb. Tomorrow has more research in store, and hopefully, a little rest.
“Special for You, Safety and Green”
*posted by Amy*
Dave: I have been avoiding the internet cafes, secondhand smoke and all, there not the most fun places to hang out. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting next to our tour bus driver and he's playing some online version of strip poker with avatars that undress, this country is weird. That, and even facebook is now being blocked, we think because of the unrest in the east of China."
Taoping 9-July
After dinner last night, we decided to buy some beers from the restaurant we eat at, and then sat and drank them after everyone left the restaurant. I should have prefaced all this by saying this restaurant is more a cafeteria, then a restaurant. Anyway, we were sitting there drinking some beers, and the son of the owner came over and started pouring some house made barley wine and giving us cheers for coming to his town. He was pretty lit up, but still coherent and said that we, Chinese and Americans, were all of one family, one town, one planet. Needless to say, we drank to that several times over.
We woke up this morning and went to breakfast, and we were supposed to have an informal meeting about the towns we visited yesterday. The meeting turned into an all day discussion about trends and patterns of development seen throughout the Zagunao river valley. This then rolled into lunch, which turned into an afternoon conclusion of the top ten or eleven points of change in the valley. We discussed things from changing architecture to development regulations, all the way down to culture being lost because of native people of the valley leaving. It was a long but positive session for the students to express all they had seen and heard through the past few days.
Between lunch , dinner, and sessions of discussing what we’ve seen, I was able to go out and do some sketching. I should also have started that yesterday, around three pm, it started raining and didn’t stop until sometime after midnight. The amount of rain has forced the town’s water supply to be turned off, because it is full of silt. We have no running water. So I went to sketch the local fresh water spring around the corner. It is amazing to see how the town adapts to this. I guess I can’t really call it an adaptation, since it seems to be par for the course. But the villagers come out and fetch water, and wash vegetables in the spring. No other activities are allowed, and if people are seen washing clothes, shoes, or feet in the spring, the villagers will let you know this is unacceptable. I even saw the policemen carrying water buckets. It is medieval, but it works for them.
So this, this is where I sketched. I spent an hour or so there, over two visits, and each time, had at one point at least ten people staring over my shoulder, watching me draw. One person said he’d take a photo because it was more lifelike. Not the point of sketching, but funny nonetheless.
Like I said, eat, meeting, eat meeting, eat. After dinner, the plan was actually, well there was no plan. We had the evening to do group work, or not. We opted for not, as did most of the students, okay, all the students. A little game of soccer broke out, and it was fun to kick the ball around, get some exercise. First exercise I’ve had since the sprint trail run down the mountain after horseback riding. It felt good to exert some energy in a non-academic way. Then Professor Bob came back, and mentioned some of the faculty dancing with some locals. We had to check this out. We got to the little shop, and it was about eight of the village’s elder women, teaching some how to dance, and then they asked us to sing for them. We hesitated, and the village women broke out into a folk song in their non-Mandarin dialect, and clapping out the beat. The sun had set and it was the last few moments of dusk in front of a little store front, sitting on the step watching these women sign for us. It was one of those moments in life where you think to yourself, there is no other place I could possibly want to be then right here seeing, experiencing, living in this moment, right now. The women stopped singing, which I never wanted to end, there was such a simplistic, natural beauty in their voices, and we were floored. We came up with the first verse of Amazing Grace, and we felt like they got the short end of the deal. After a few more songs, a few of them left, and we came back to the guesthouse. These are the memories that I will keep of China. Not all the griping, but these timeless memories of two completely different groups of people accepting and welcoming each other, having fun with song and dance.
Dave: I have been avoiding the internet cafes, secondhand smoke and all, there not the most fun places to hang out. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting next to our tour bus driver and he's playing some online version of strip poker with avatars that undress, this country is weird. That, and even facebook is now being blocked, we think because of the unrest in the east of China."
Taoping 9-July
After dinner last night, we decided to buy some beers from the restaurant we eat at, and then sat and drank them after everyone left the restaurant. I should have prefaced all this by saying this restaurant is more a cafeteria, then a restaurant. Anyway, we were sitting there drinking some beers, and the son of the owner came over and started pouring some house made barley wine and giving us cheers for coming to his town. He was pretty lit up, but still coherent and said that we, Chinese and Americans, were all of one family, one town, one planet. Needless to say, we drank to that several times over.
We woke up this morning and went to breakfast, and we were supposed to have an informal meeting about the towns we visited yesterday. The meeting turned into an all day discussion about trends and patterns of development seen throughout the Zagunao river valley. This then rolled into lunch, which turned into an afternoon conclusion of the top ten or eleven points of change in the valley. We discussed things from changing architecture to development regulations, all the way down to culture being lost because of native people of the valley leaving. It was a long but positive session for the students to express all they had seen and heard through the past few days.
Between lunch , dinner, and sessions of discussing what we’ve seen, I was able to go out and do some sketching. I should also have started that yesterday, around three pm, it started raining and didn’t stop until sometime after midnight. The amount of rain has forced the town’s water supply to be turned off, because it is full of silt. We have no running water. So I went to sketch the local fresh water spring around the corner. It is amazing to see how the town adapts to this. I guess I can’t really call it an adaptation, since it seems to be par for the course. But the villagers come out and fetch water, and wash vegetables in the spring. No other activities are allowed, and if people are seen washing clothes, shoes, or feet in the spring, the villagers will let you know this is unacceptable. I even saw the policemen carrying water buckets. It is medieval, but it works for them.
So this, this is where I sketched. I spent an hour or so there, over two visits, and each time, had at one point at least ten people staring over my shoulder, watching me draw. One person said he’d take a photo because it was more lifelike. Not the point of sketching, but funny nonetheless.
Like I said, eat, meeting, eat meeting, eat. After dinner, the plan was actually, well there was no plan. We had the evening to do group work, or not. We opted for not, as did most of the students, okay, all the students. A little game of soccer broke out, and it was fun to kick the ball around, get some exercise. First exercise I’ve had since the sprint trail run down the mountain after horseback riding. It felt good to exert some energy in a non-academic way. Then Professor Bob came back, and mentioned some of the faculty dancing with some locals. We had to check this out. We got to the little shop, and it was about eight of the village’s elder women, teaching some how to dance, and then they asked us to sing for them. We hesitated, and the village women broke out into a folk song in their non-Mandarin dialect, and clapping out the beat. The sun had set and it was the last few moments of dusk in front of a little store front, sitting on the step watching these women sign for us. It was one of those moments in life where you think to yourself, there is no other place I could possibly want to be then right here seeing, experiencing, living in this moment, right now. The women stopped singing, which I never wanted to end, there was such a simplistic, natural beauty in their voices, and we were floored. We came up with the first verse of Amazing Grace, and we felt like they got the short end of the deal. After a few more songs, a few of them left, and we came back to the guesthouse. These are the memories that I will keep of China. Not all the griping, but these timeless memories of two completely different groups of people accepting and welcoming each other, having fun with song and dance.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
“I get it, a lot of sh!t got messed up…”
*posted by Amy*
8-July
We started out today eating breakfast at our restaurant/cafeteria at 6:30 and then off to catch our buses and go up the valley to Ganbao, then further up to the county seat, Lixiang, and then back down the valley to see a few other villages. The idea was to originally visit about two or three villages, but it turned out to be more. I don’t know if I have explained this or not, but when we got to Taoping, our group size more than quadrupled. We are now roughly sixty people. The whole feeling of the trip has changed. It is impossible to keep track of where we are visiting, and where we are going to go next, and the historical significance of the sites we are visiting. This is very frustrating in the long run, and is taking its toll on troop morale. People are restless, and we feel as if we don’t we don’t have time to process what we are seeing. We visit village after village and the more we see, the more destruction we see, and the more jaded we become to the situation, which I CANNOT stress how awful and impressive the damage has been. Every village has buildings that still look as if the earthquake hit yesterday. Then again, the Central Government has also proclaimed several buildings uninhabitable, and then started to demolish them, so some of the destruction is indirectly from the earthquake.
Today turned into a marathon. Left at seven, and we didn’t get back to the guest house until six-ish. IT was a long day on a ridiculously under maintained road, on a bus that the driver, when the bus is empty, cranks the radio, and doesn’t turn it down until the bus is full and someone asks for less volume. This makes for some deafening situations. The grumbling among the UW students has started. People feel as if they are paying a lot of money for this studio, and so far there has been one project, which involved minimal preparation, and was underwhelming in the response and feedback we got from the faculty. Since this presentation, we have had one day to do research on our new group assignment, and the amount of actual analysis being done is rather informal. Don’t get me wrong, interviews are the best way to get personal feelings on a certain aspect of daily life, but there is no other data we can really get a hold of, except from the information that Mr. Pu provides us, and he is singing the central government’s song.
Tomorrow it sounds like we might actually get some time to do some work on our project topics, but then again, we’ll see how that all shakes down tomorrow.
8-July
We started out today eating breakfast at our restaurant/cafeteria at 6:30 and then off to catch our buses and go up the valley to Ganbao, then further up to the county seat, Lixiang, and then back down the valley to see a few other villages. The idea was to originally visit about two or three villages, but it turned out to be more. I don’t know if I have explained this or not, but when we got to Taoping, our group size more than quadrupled. We are now roughly sixty people. The whole feeling of the trip has changed. It is impossible to keep track of where we are visiting, and where we are going to go next, and the historical significance of the sites we are visiting. This is very frustrating in the long run, and is taking its toll on troop morale. People are restless, and we feel as if we don’t we don’t have time to process what we are seeing. We visit village after village and the more we see, the more destruction we see, and the more jaded we become to the situation, which I CANNOT stress how awful and impressive the damage has been. Every village has buildings that still look as if the earthquake hit yesterday. Then again, the Central Government has also proclaimed several buildings uninhabitable, and then started to demolish them, so some of the destruction is indirectly from the earthquake.
Today turned into a marathon. Left at seven, and we didn’t get back to the guest house until six-ish. IT was a long day on a ridiculously under maintained road, on a bus that the driver, when the bus is empty, cranks the radio, and doesn’t turn it down until the bus is full and someone asks for less volume. This makes for some deafening situations. The grumbling among the UW students has started. People feel as if they are paying a lot of money for this studio, and so far there has been one project, which involved minimal preparation, and was underwhelming in the response and feedback we got from the faculty. Since this presentation, we have had one day to do research on our new group assignment, and the amount of actual analysis being done is rather informal. Don’t get me wrong, interviews are the best way to get personal feelings on a certain aspect of daily life, but there is no other data we can really get a hold of, except from the information that Mr. Pu provides us, and he is singing the central government’s song.
Tomorrow it sounds like we might actually get some time to do some work on our project topics, but then again, we’ll see how that all shakes down tomorrow.
The little bus that didn't want to
*posted by Amy*
7-July Taoping
We started today by waking up early to get breakfast, and catch a bus to go to Ganbao, and then to Xuecheng, two ancient villages in the same valley as Taoping. We finished up breakfast and headed to bus pick up location. When we got there, we piled on to our two buses, and one of which decided to break down. We waited for about ten or fifteen minutes, and the bus wouldn’t start, so we got out and had an impromptu meeting with one of the Taoping development company’s representatives. Lip service. We hear the things that they think we want to hear, and there is a constant blame game about responsibility for all the damage in the new village area. Government deserves the blame for shoddy plans, while the villagers deserve blame for hiring unskilled laborers and changing the plans. This goes back and forth ad nauseum.
After this, we had a lecture by Professor Li Wei, and then followed up by Mr. Pu about the cultural history of Taoping. The two provided a pretty intense and relatively all encompassing view of the region. I’ll get into more of it later, and if you have specific questions, email me, and we’ll chat.
We had lunch, and after broke into our groups that are focusing on different topics in Taoping for the studio project. Jason, Nathan and I along with six Sichuanese students are looking at hazard prevention in historic preservation and restoration. The topics of our group are landslides and earthquake hazards, architectural safety, and flooding hazards. I am in the flooding group, and we are going to look at the connections between the town and the Zuganao river. We looked around town and watched a front end loader rip trees out of the river banks, and then further downstream watched a crew of thirty or so building big armored river banks. So much for restoring ecological function to the region.
We hiked back into the old town, and had dinner, then broke off for our nightly meeting. We were informed that the bus’ mechanical issues have been resolved, and we’ll try to do our visits to the other towns tomorrow. No guarantees on how well that is gonna work, but we’ll see.
7-July Taoping
We started today by waking up early to get breakfast, and catch a bus to go to Ganbao, and then to Xuecheng, two ancient villages in the same valley as Taoping. We finished up breakfast and headed to bus pick up location. When we got there, we piled on to our two buses, and one of which decided to break down. We waited for about ten or fifteen minutes, and the bus wouldn’t start, so we got out and had an impromptu meeting with one of the Taoping development company’s representatives. Lip service. We hear the things that they think we want to hear, and there is a constant blame game about responsibility for all the damage in the new village area. Government deserves the blame for shoddy plans, while the villagers deserve blame for hiring unskilled laborers and changing the plans. This goes back and forth ad nauseum.
After this, we had a lecture by Professor Li Wei, and then followed up by Mr. Pu about the cultural history of Taoping. The two provided a pretty intense and relatively all encompassing view of the region. I’ll get into more of it later, and if you have specific questions, email me, and we’ll chat.
We had lunch, and after broke into our groups that are focusing on different topics in Taoping for the studio project. Jason, Nathan and I along with six Sichuanese students are looking at hazard prevention in historic preservation and restoration. The topics of our group are landslides and earthquake hazards, architectural safety, and flooding hazards. I am in the flooding group, and we are going to look at the connections between the town and the Zuganao river. We looked around town and watched a front end loader rip trees out of the river banks, and then further downstream watched a crew of thirty or so building big armored river banks. So much for restoring ecological function to the region.
We hiked back into the old town, and had dinner, then broke off for our nightly meeting. We were informed that the bus’ mechanical issues have been resolved, and we’ll try to do our visits to the other towns tomorrow. No guarantees on how well that is gonna work, but we’ll see.
Taoping, at long last
*posted by Amy*
Taoping 6 July
So we arrived in Taoping today. On the ride out here, we stopped by Duijiangyan, the ancient, but updated in the eighties water works. The dam system diverts water from the Min River, across to the Chengdu plain. The system seemed pretty ingenious, inasmuch as it only needed dredging in one of its three channels. The other ones were cleansed by releasing water across the shoals at various times of the year. After that, we had lunch at a restaurant in the town of Duijiangyan. Lunch was nothing spectacular, and then we piled into the bus for another four hours out to Taoping.
On our way out, we came up the Min river valley, and the most amazing part of the drive, aside from the close resemblance of Chinese drivers to WWII Japnese Bonzai Pilots, was the all the rock slides from last year’s earthquake. Josh, J-bo and I were talking and Josh mentioned something like 30% of the land slid in the valley. You can think about it, and you can try to imagine it, but it will never compare to the sight of seeing it all first hand. I don’t even know how to describe the amount of earth that moved, and the size of boulders that had come down on the road were the size of small houses. And the only other thing that was equally as disturbing was the fact that all the reconstruction is happening here in the same areas that the major slides happened, with the same materials. Everywhere we have been today, we keep passing these blue roofed shed/tents. These are the Chinese equivalent to the FEMA trailer. Every time you see a swarm of the blue roofs, you knew it was displacement happening from 5.12.08. We also saw those numbers, the date of last year’s earthquake, painted on some of the giant boulders that had rolled into the road.
We followed the Min up to Wenchuan, the city closest to the epicenter. Wow. The piles of rubble that were all around town were overwhelming. I mentioned before I was around Seattle for the Ash Wednesday quake, and I saw some of the building damage in Pioneer Square, and that was small potatoes compared to this stuff. You try to take it all in and remember all the images, take pictures, but with each corner you turn, the destruction just continues. You find yourself wanting to take pictures of it all but there has to be a cut-off point. Who am I to pick and chose what get documented and what doesn’t because of convenience? It’s so amazing to see the fact that people are still trying to clean up and rebuild. It seems like a huge effort in futility.
We didn’t stop in Wenchuan, just rolled through and followed the Zagunao river up to Taoping. The road up to Taoping was even worse off than the highway to Wenchuan. To start, our bus almost got high centered on pile of rubble at the beginning of the road. The road got a little better, but not by much, I think it took us close to an hour or so to get twenty kilometers. Slow moving. The village of Taoping is old. The average age of the buildings in the downtown is five hundred years old. Some of them even date back further like two thousand years ago. We also are with the Sichuan University students, who outnumber us three to one. That is silly. But wait there’s more. They are all undergrads, so they look to us to tell them exactly what needs to be done. Their school culture is a little bit different in the fact they don’t question the judgment calls, either. They accept what has been said by the teachers, and that is that. One of several reasons we are here is to study the architecture, and how these buildings have been able to withstand the test of time and and the forces of nature so well. We will visit some other villages tomorrow and see if we can glean some information on what the main differences are/were in the building techniques of different towns. And with that, we are starting tomorrow nice and early, and we’ll be visiting a few towns tomorrow to start the research.
Oh, in my blabbering on ad nauseum about stuff you guys probably don’t care about, Ching has fallen kinda ill. We’ll keep an eye on her, but she had a fever and I heard she was up to 102. That and Prof. Bob had a little intestinal distress, but he only arrived two days ago. I’m not so worried about him, but I’ll probably check in on Ching before bed.
Taoping 6 July
So we arrived in Taoping today. On the ride out here, we stopped by Duijiangyan, the ancient, but updated in the eighties water works. The dam system diverts water from the Min River, across to the Chengdu plain. The system seemed pretty ingenious, inasmuch as it only needed dredging in one of its three channels. The other ones were cleansed by releasing water across the shoals at various times of the year. After that, we had lunch at a restaurant in the town of Duijiangyan. Lunch was nothing spectacular, and then we piled into the bus for another four hours out to Taoping.
On our way out, we came up the Min river valley, and the most amazing part of the drive, aside from the close resemblance of Chinese drivers to WWII Japnese Bonzai Pilots, was the all the rock slides from last year’s earthquake. Josh, J-bo and I were talking and Josh mentioned something like 30% of the land slid in the valley. You can think about it, and you can try to imagine it, but it will never compare to the sight of seeing it all first hand. I don’t even know how to describe the amount of earth that moved, and the size of boulders that had come down on the road were the size of small houses. And the only other thing that was equally as disturbing was the fact that all the reconstruction is happening here in the same areas that the major slides happened, with the same materials. Everywhere we have been today, we keep passing these blue roofed shed/tents. These are the Chinese equivalent to the FEMA trailer. Every time you see a swarm of the blue roofs, you knew it was displacement happening from 5.12.08. We also saw those numbers, the date of last year’s earthquake, painted on some of the giant boulders that had rolled into the road.
We followed the Min up to Wenchuan, the city closest to the epicenter. Wow. The piles of rubble that were all around town were overwhelming. I mentioned before I was around Seattle for the Ash Wednesday quake, and I saw some of the building damage in Pioneer Square, and that was small potatoes compared to this stuff. You try to take it all in and remember all the images, take pictures, but with each corner you turn, the destruction just continues. You find yourself wanting to take pictures of it all but there has to be a cut-off point. Who am I to pick and chose what get documented and what doesn’t because of convenience? It’s so amazing to see the fact that people are still trying to clean up and rebuild. It seems like a huge effort in futility.
We didn’t stop in Wenchuan, just rolled through and followed the Zagunao river up to Taoping. The road up to Taoping was even worse off than the highway to Wenchuan. To start, our bus almost got high centered on pile of rubble at the beginning of the road. The road got a little better, but not by much, I think it took us close to an hour or so to get twenty kilometers. Slow moving. The village of Taoping is old. The average age of the buildings in the downtown is five hundred years old. Some of them even date back further like two thousand years ago. We also are with the Sichuan University students, who outnumber us three to one. That is silly. But wait there’s more. They are all undergrads, so they look to us to tell them exactly what needs to be done. Their school culture is a little bit different in the fact they don’t question the judgment calls, either. They accept what has been said by the teachers, and that is that. One of several reasons we are here is to study the architecture, and how these buildings have been able to withstand the test of time and and the forces of nature so well. We will visit some other villages tomorrow and see if we can glean some information on what the main differences are/were in the building techniques of different towns. And with that, we are starting tomorrow nice and early, and we’ll be visiting a few towns tomorrow to start the research.
Oh, in my blabbering on ad nauseum about stuff you guys probably don’t care about, Ching has fallen kinda ill. We’ll keep an eye on her, but she had a fever and I heard she was up to 102. That and Prof. Bob had a little intestinal distress, but he only arrived two days ago. I’m not so worried about him, but I’ll probably check in on Ching before bed.
Bus Leaving Chengdu
*posted by Amy*
Bus Leaving Chengdu 6 July
We had a good time at the barbeque on the fourth. We had a the reception before hand, and they put out a huge spread for us. They were doing a la minute foie gras, which of course I ate, fried rice, and fried chicken. Quite the culinary combination. After, we had the party for all the UW students, and we were told it was in a “farmhouse,” which ended up to be a guest villa in the suburbs. There were about fifty people and we had a good old time. The food was pretty good, but I had ended up eating too much at the reception.
The next day, the 5th, we didn’t have any commitments in the morning. This finally gave us time to work on our presentations for that afternoon. I was in a group with Jason and Rachel, and we chose to look at the water system in Lijiang. All and all, the presentation came together pretty well, and we were polishing the presentation up until the last minute, which paid off. We then had dinner, broke up into our teams for Taoping, and have dinner. Dinner was at the XLY MoMA in Chengdu. The exhibits in the museum were pretty interesting. There was a display of some beautiful dining room sets and a display of alcohol bottles that were designed by a Chinese design firm.
The dinner was fine, nothing memorable, and then we broke into our teams again to meet each other. The team I am in is lead by Bob Freitag, a professor specializing in hazard planning and mitigation through natural systems. Our TA is Josh, and then J-bo, Nathan, who was in the seminar in the spring, but just joined us here in Chengdu two nights ago, are the Americans. We then have seven Sichuanese students on our team, only one of which I had met before, Zhang Di, one of the two that picked me up at the airport. I’m pretty sure I spelled his name wrong a few different ways before, but now I’m positive this is his name. Each team has two student leaders, a point person if you will for the instructors to give assignments, and a person to relay the info. How I became one of our team’s leaders, with Zhang Di, remains to me a mystery. The joke was the decisions were based on Mandarin understanding, so that has been a source of a joke between J and I. It’s pretty fortunate that J and I have been getting along as well as we have, seeing as we end up in groups together. I hope that doesn’t intimidate other students and, I hope they will see us as being approachable, and not reproachable.
We are now on the bus to Taoping, and we will first make a stop at an ancient water works project, of which I cannot remember the name. We will visit the area, have lunch there, and then off on the bus again to Taoping by tonight. I’ll let you guys know how that is, and I have a feeling we won’t be seeing a whole lot of internet access out in the hill. At least in won’t be as hot and humid as it is here in Chengdu.
Bus Leaving Chengdu 6 July
We had a good time at the barbeque on the fourth. We had a the reception before hand, and they put out a huge spread for us. They were doing a la minute foie gras, which of course I ate, fried rice, and fried chicken. Quite the culinary combination. After, we had the party for all the UW students, and we were told it was in a “farmhouse,” which ended up to be a guest villa in the suburbs. There were about fifty people and we had a good old time. The food was pretty good, but I had ended up eating too much at the reception.
The next day, the 5th, we didn’t have any commitments in the morning. This finally gave us time to work on our presentations for that afternoon. I was in a group with Jason and Rachel, and we chose to look at the water system in Lijiang. All and all, the presentation came together pretty well, and we were polishing the presentation up until the last minute, which paid off. We then had dinner, broke up into our teams for Taoping, and have dinner. Dinner was at the XLY MoMA in Chengdu. The exhibits in the museum were pretty interesting. There was a display of some beautiful dining room sets and a display of alcohol bottles that were designed by a Chinese design firm.
The dinner was fine, nothing memorable, and then we broke into our teams again to meet each other. The team I am in is lead by Bob Freitag, a professor specializing in hazard planning and mitigation through natural systems. Our TA is Josh, and then J-bo, Nathan, who was in the seminar in the spring, but just joined us here in Chengdu two nights ago, are the Americans. We then have seven Sichuanese students on our team, only one of which I had met before, Zhang Di, one of the two that picked me up at the airport. I’m pretty sure I spelled his name wrong a few different ways before, but now I’m positive this is his name. Each team has two student leaders, a point person if you will for the instructors to give assignments, and a person to relay the info. How I became one of our team’s leaders, with Zhang Di, remains to me a mystery. The joke was the decisions were based on Mandarin understanding, so that has been a source of a joke between J and I. It’s pretty fortunate that J and I have been getting along as well as we have, seeing as we end up in groups together. I hope that doesn’t intimidate other students and, I hope they will see us as being approachable, and not reproachable.
We are now on the bus to Taoping, and we will first make a stop at an ancient water works project, of which I cannot remember the name. We will visit the area, have lunch there, and then off on the bus again to Taoping by tonight. I’ll let you guys know how that is, and I have a feeling we won’t be seeing a whole lot of internet access out in the hill. At least in won’t be as hot and humid as it is here in Chengdu.
Independence Day
*posted by Amy - Dave has very limited internet contact*
4-July Jouzhaighou
We woke up, had our Chinese breakfast of congee and soy milk, which by now is leaving something to be desired. I could go for some oatmeal, or a bowl of cereal. Anyway, there ended up being nine students and faculty, about half of us, going back to the park to help look at the problems the visitor’s center is facing. As we started looking, Manesh, one of our faculty, asked us to break up into groups, Dan, Jason, and I wanted focus on the connection between the buildings and the landscape around them.
This was a great opportunity to visit the park and see what was happening when the begin crush of tourists is not at the gates. We only had a limited amount of time to scope the grounds, so back on the bus to head back to the hotel, grab a quick bite, catch our bus, and fly back to Chengdu. Tonight in Chengdu, we are supposed to go to a reception, play like we are not hungry, and then head out to the suburbs where the real barbeque will be, a real July 4th party for the Americans in China, fireworks and all. I’ll give you guys that update, because I’m sure that’ll be fun.
4-July Jouzhaighou
We woke up, had our Chinese breakfast of congee and soy milk, which by now is leaving something to be desired. I could go for some oatmeal, or a bowl of cereal. Anyway, there ended up being nine students and faculty, about half of us, going back to the park to help look at the problems the visitor’s center is facing. As we started looking, Manesh, one of our faculty, asked us to break up into groups, Dan, Jason, and I wanted focus on the connection between the buildings and the landscape around them.
This was a great opportunity to visit the park and see what was happening when the begin crush of tourists is not at the gates. We only had a limited amount of time to scope the grounds, so back on the bus to head back to the hotel, grab a quick bite, catch our bus, and fly back to Chengdu. Tonight in Chengdu, we are supposed to go to a reception, play like we are not hungry, and then head out to the suburbs where the real barbeque will be, a real July 4th party for the Americans in China, fireworks and all. I’ll give you guys that update, because I’m sure that’ll be fun.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The ralnables deposies place
Jouzhaighou 3-July
After a good day and a half of feeling like complete garbage, J and I were actually feeling well enough to be a part of activities. On our agenda for today was another visit to the park, a meeting with the management bureau, and then a musical performance of Tibetan music and culture. Breakfast started at 7:30, and we finished up and were to the park by 8:45. We had a park staff member guide us to various villages inside the park. We toured several of the Tibetan areas, and had a chance to interview some of the village officials, and elders. They would give us a little insight into their lived, but being a group of westerners, it is hard to get them to fully open up.
After a couple of visits to villages, we broke for lunch. We were invited to lunch at the park cafeteria, which was one of the worst meals I’ve had in China. I don’t know how you ruin corn on the cob, but somehow they managed to do it. Most of the food was just above room temperature, not very comforting after the past two days of sickness, and the rest was so full of MSG, it became intolerable. Fortunately, we weren’t paying for it, so that made it almost tolerable. I was joking to one of the professors, “This is like a Chinese Old Country Buffet.” He disagreed and said he would have been able to stomach the OCB.
After Lunch, we headed to another village to look at new versus old construction techniques, and then visit a with bureau officials about their plans for expanding the number of tourist the park sees yearly. It was an informative meeting, and these officials were the most open to listening to our ideas, and have actually invited us back in the morning to look at helping redevelop and reconstruct their visitors’ center. The center as it is now sits near the front gate with very little signage and seems closed of the public, not the best idea for guest relations. To help with the redesign is a huge compliment to our group, and I feel like we can provide a lot of solid ideas to help improve visibility, improve on green building techniques, and make the visitors’ center useful to the daily users. After the meeting, the leader of the Chinese delegation invited us to dinner, which was just around the corner, in one of the park facilities.
Dinner with delegates hosting has turned into an interesting event. This time the air in the room was more lively, and less of a strategic affair then our dinner with the Lijiang officials. Our hosts kept the wine flowing and kept toasting gam bai (bottoms up). The food was delicious, and I was finally happy to have had an appetite. It has felt good to get back on our feet as far as the whole gut issue is concerned. I knew it was going to take a few days to feel better, and sure enough, today was the day. By the time dinner rolled around, I was up for trying anything that rolled out on to the table. The festivities would have gone long into the night if we hadn’t had to head off to a performance in town.
When we arrived, we were a few minutes late, and the performance, which I can best describe as a blend of one part Tibetan dance and song show, one part River Dance, and one part Britney Spears concert. I say all this, not to be disrespectful, but to give the show the scale of the show, and effect the dancers had. Most of the pieces were large choreographed pieces with no fewer than 20 dancers on stage at a time. The interesting component was how large an influence religion was on the performance. The fact that China is a secular state, the heavy religious component was allowed to be such a large part of a state sponsored something not to be trivialized. At the end of the performance, which, for as much as I may sound critical of it, was quite good, we headed back to the hotel and hit the sack for the next morning.
After a good day and a half of feeling like complete garbage, J and I were actually feeling well enough to be a part of activities. On our agenda for today was another visit to the park, a meeting with the management bureau, and then a musical performance of Tibetan music and culture. Breakfast started at 7:30, and we finished up and were to the park by 8:45. We had a park staff member guide us to various villages inside the park. We toured several of the Tibetan areas, and had a chance to interview some of the village officials, and elders. They would give us a little insight into their lived, but being a group of westerners, it is hard to get them to fully open up.
After a couple of visits to villages, we broke for lunch. We were invited to lunch at the park cafeteria, which was one of the worst meals I’ve had in China. I don’t know how you ruin corn on the cob, but somehow they managed to do it. Most of the food was just above room temperature, not very comforting after the past two days of sickness, and the rest was so full of MSG, it became intolerable. Fortunately, we weren’t paying for it, so that made it almost tolerable. I was joking to one of the professors, “This is like a Chinese Old Country Buffet.” He disagreed and said he would have been able to stomach the OCB.
After Lunch, we headed to another village to look at new versus old construction techniques, and then visit a with bureau officials about their plans for expanding the number of tourist the park sees yearly. It was an informative meeting, and these officials were the most open to listening to our ideas, and have actually invited us back in the morning to look at helping redevelop and reconstruct their visitors’ center. The center as it is now sits near the front gate with very little signage and seems closed of the public, not the best idea for guest relations. To help with the redesign is a huge compliment to our group, and I feel like we can provide a lot of solid ideas to help improve visibility, improve on green building techniques, and make the visitors’ center useful to the daily users. After the meeting, the leader of the Chinese delegation invited us to dinner, which was just around the corner, in one of the park facilities.
Dinner with delegates hosting has turned into an interesting event. This time the air in the room was more lively, and less of a strategic affair then our dinner with the Lijiang officials. Our hosts kept the wine flowing and kept toasting gam bai (bottoms up). The food was delicious, and I was finally happy to have had an appetite. It has felt good to get back on our feet as far as the whole gut issue is concerned. I knew it was going to take a few days to feel better, and sure enough, today was the day. By the time dinner rolled around, I was up for trying anything that rolled out on to the table. The festivities would have gone long into the night if we hadn’t had to head off to a performance in town.
When we arrived, we were a few minutes late, and the performance, which I can best describe as a blend of one part Tibetan dance and song show, one part River Dance, and one part Britney Spears concert. I say all this, not to be disrespectful, but to give the show the scale of the show, and effect the dancers had. Most of the pieces were large choreographed pieces with no fewer than 20 dancers on stage at a time. The interesting component was how large an influence religion was on the performance. The fact that China is a secular state, the heavy religious component was allowed to be such a large part of a state sponsored something not to be trivialized. At the end of the performance, which, for as much as I may sound critical of it, was quite good, we headed back to the hotel and hit the sack for the next morning.
Deformed Man End Place
Juizhaighou, 2 July
So we made it to our hotel after our second flight and an hour and a half bus ride. After 14 hours of sleep, J and I still feeling like garbage, but we managed to venture out with the group today. Juizhaighou is a national park in far eastern Sichuan province, and under different circumstances, would have been really fun to visit. Instead, after a few hours, my stomach was feeling like I had gone ten rounds against Mike Tyson. However, food has stayed down, and I am not nauseous, just tired, and a little sore. Yesterday was by far the worst day of the trip. Two flights, vomiting in an airplane bathroom, two and a half hours in an airport, and that bus ride, which by the way was no straight shot on a freeway, it was up and over some mountain roads, and down a bunch of switchbacks.
Anyway, the park scenery was amazing. Unlike anything I have seen before, but the tourists. Chinese tourists are a strange breed: loud, pushy, taking their photos in front of mountains wearing Tibetan clothing. We were at a village in the park, and everyone was eating lunch, and I said to one of the TA’s, Yue, that this place was interesting, but so many people, and his response to this was, “Well, that’s China for you, you can’t get away from people.”
So we made it to our hotel after our second flight and an hour and a half bus ride. After 14 hours of sleep, J and I still feeling like garbage, but we managed to venture out with the group today. Juizhaighou is a national park in far eastern Sichuan province, and under different circumstances, would have been really fun to visit. Instead, after a few hours, my stomach was feeling like I had gone ten rounds against Mike Tyson. However, food has stayed down, and I am not nauseous, just tired, and a little sore. Yesterday was by far the worst day of the trip. Two flights, vomiting in an airplane bathroom, two and a half hours in an airport, and that bus ride, which by the way was no straight shot on a freeway, it was up and over some mountain roads, and down a bunch of switchbacks.
Anyway, the park scenery was amazing. Unlike anything I have seen before, but the tourists. Chinese tourists are a strange breed: loud, pushy, taking their photos in front of mountains wearing Tibetan clothing. We were at a village in the park, and everyone was eating lunch, and I said to one of the TA’s, Yue, that this place was interesting, but so many people, and his response to this was, “Well, that’s China for you, you can’t get away from people.”
Traveling light, or the word yak is both a noun and a verb
Chengdu Airport, 1 July
Today we had an early flight from Lijiang back to Chengdu, and from there we connected to Juizhighou, (pron. Joe-Jigh-Go). Our flight left at 8:50, and we actually got to the airport an hour before our flight. I woke up this morning and I felt a little out of it, but I figured it was from a lack of sleep compounded by drinking beers the night before. Not hung over, but just not quite right. We had packed our bags the night before, so we were all ready to roll at 6:45 from the guest house. We headed to the main square, where we pick up our taxis, and loaded up to head out. I stopped by the store and picked up a canned Nescafe, it isn’t the greatest stuff in the whole world, but it sure does work in a pinch. We rolled out and I drank my “coffee” and I knew things weren’t right in my gut. Now I’m going to warn you, things might be a little, how shall I say, graphic in the coming paragraphs. This is your warning, if you can’t handle talk of bodily functions, or more appropriately, their malfunctions, then you might not want read the rest of this entry.
Okay I warned you. We got through security, and I wasn’t feeling quite right, so I found the bathroom. Not only am I under the duress of intestinal discomfort, but I also need to navigate the perils of the Turkish toilet. If you don’t know what this is, look it up on google or something. I could describe it, but the image will leave nothing to be misunderstood. As I was saying, I had a bout of the runs in the toilet at the airport. I unfortunately felt that this wasn’t going to be the last of it, and the feeling I had, I knew I was going to be sick. Of course for this leg of the flight I’m seated in a window seat, which I quickly changed seats with Prof. Dan, who was on the aisle. The flight started out just fine, except I got the cold sweats. I felt it was only time, but then I started to feel a little better and actually fell asleep for a few minutes. Then it hit, I stumbled the thirteen rows to the front lavatory, and lost my noodles. As if that weren’t bad enough, I had a little anal leakage incident, right there, in the lavatory, on the airplane. Awesome. As I was in the lavatory, for the second flight in a row, the attendant announced we would be landing soon, and return to your seats. Again, awesome. Nothing is as comforting knowing that you are feeling ill, and just want to curl up in bed, yet knowing you still have a layover and connecting flight, and hour long bus ride to top it all off.
We landed in Chengdu, and by now I’m feeling like death warmed over, and J-Bo I found out, had the same misfortune I had endured. Fucking Noodles. We got into the airport, and collected our bags, as there is no direct service from Lijiang to Juizhighou. After collecting our bags, I just wanted to lie down in the fetal position and go to sleep, with a big soft cuddly blanket. That, my friends, is not in the cards for today. I got to lie down on the cold tile floor, with my back pack as a pillow. Ching had some “medicine” that she says she lives by, and it smelled roughly of charcoal and feet. Now we have more than two hours before make our connection. Great. As we are standing around, waiting to find out what the plan is, J-Bo has another incident of the yaks, and I just want to die. As we sit here waiting for our plane, I probably won’t write until tomorrow. But I do have to say the charcoal/foot pills have calmed my stomach for the time being.
Today we had an early flight from Lijiang back to Chengdu, and from there we connected to Juizhighou, (pron. Joe-Jigh-Go). Our flight left at 8:50, and we actually got to the airport an hour before our flight. I woke up this morning and I felt a little out of it, but I figured it was from a lack of sleep compounded by drinking beers the night before. Not hung over, but just not quite right. We had packed our bags the night before, so we were all ready to roll at 6:45 from the guest house. We headed to the main square, where we pick up our taxis, and loaded up to head out. I stopped by the store and picked up a canned Nescafe, it isn’t the greatest stuff in the whole world, but it sure does work in a pinch. We rolled out and I drank my “coffee” and I knew things weren’t right in my gut. Now I’m going to warn you, things might be a little, how shall I say, graphic in the coming paragraphs. This is your warning, if you can’t handle talk of bodily functions, or more appropriately, their malfunctions, then you might not want read the rest of this entry.
Okay I warned you. We got through security, and I wasn’t feeling quite right, so I found the bathroom. Not only am I under the duress of intestinal discomfort, but I also need to navigate the perils of the Turkish toilet. If you don’t know what this is, look it up on google or something. I could describe it, but the image will leave nothing to be misunderstood. As I was saying, I had a bout of the runs in the toilet at the airport. I unfortunately felt that this wasn’t going to be the last of it, and the feeling I had, I knew I was going to be sick. Of course for this leg of the flight I’m seated in a window seat, which I quickly changed seats with Prof. Dan, who was on the aisle. The flight started out just fine, except I got the cold sweats. I felt it was only time, but then I started to feel a little better and actually fell asleep for a few minutes. Then it hit, I stumbled the thirteen rows to the front lavatory, and lost my noodles. As if that weren’t bad enough, I had a little anal leakage incident, right there, in the lavatory, on the airplane. Awesome. As I was in the lavatory, for the second flight in a row, the attendant announced we would be landing soon, and return to your seats. Again, awesome. Nothing is as comforting knowing that you are feeling ill, and just want to curl up in bed, yet knowing you still have a layover and connecting flight, and hour long bus ride to top it all off.
We landed in Chengdu, and by now I’m feeling like death warmed over, and J-Bo I found out, had the same misfortune I had endured. Fucking Noodles. We got into the airport, and collected our bags, as there is no direct service from Lijiang to Juizhighou. After collecting our bags, I just wanted to lie down in the fetal position and go to sleep, with a big soft cuddly blanket. That, my friends, is not in the cards for today. I got to lie down on the cold tile floor, with my back pack as a pillow. Ching had some “medicine” that she says she lives by, and it smelled roughly of charcoal and feet. Now we have more than two hours before make our connection. Great. As we are standing around, waiting to find out what the plan is, J-Bo has another incident of the yaks, and I just want to die. As we sit here waiting for our plane, I probably won’t write until tomorrow. But I do have to say the charcoal/foot pills have calmed my stomach for the time being.
Explodes Bamboo Insect
Lijiang 30-Jun
So we all recovered from the horse incident, and it’s funny to see how many people had posted about the experience on their facebook pages. As for today’s agenda, we were to meet up at 9:45 to head off to a 10 am meeting at the DongBa cultural center, then a visit to Shuhe (pronounced Shoo-huh), and then a voluntary interview with a Naxi family. I ended up missing the DongBa meeting because there has been a group project that J-Bo, Rachel and I have been working on. The visit to Lijiang has been to study a cultural heritage site, look at the systems in place; cultural, social, infrastructure, architectural, and the like. Our group was interested in the water system in Lijiang, and how the series of canals works today, as opposed its historical function. I was also curious about trash and waste removal in the old city. Because the meeting was in the park that contains the current and historic water supply of Lijiang, we opted out of the meeting to explore the headwaters, and get a first hand view of how the water supply is being treated.
To start, we climbed half way up this hill called Elephant hill. From this vantage point we could see the entire park, and somewhat ascertain the flow of the water through the park. We then climbed down and hiked around the park and took some photos. We asked some questions and found out the ponds and lakes are fed by underground streams that originate on the glaciers of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. I love that name. The name is only four syllables in Mandarin, but that is the literal translation. At one point we were walking and we could see some people walk down to the edge, and these two women took a drink for the spring. I don’t know if I would recommend this to anyone, but they weren’t the only two I saw doing this. Theoretically, the spring hasn’t even seen daylight, so it is clean, but in a urban area of nearly a million, I don’t know if I’d trust it.
After thoroughly exploring the park, the whole group went over to Shuhe, another ancient Naxi village up valley from Lijiang. This area was not as commercialized, or as the Chinese say, developed, before the 1996 earthquake, therefore there wasn’t as strict of guidelines for the rebuilding of the town, which, opposite of what you may think, actually worked out to the benefit of the town. The city still is a functioning rural community, replete with vegetable gardens intertwined amongst the village and stream. The commerciality of the village hasn’t overrun the entire core of the city, and it still feels like a gem of undiscovered culture. The Naxi people were prevalent throughout the town ,and not just as token minority figures, it was clear they still lived and worked in the area. We ate lunch at a place right on the river, and then explored a little more of the town. Jewel, one of our faculty, wrote her master’s thesis on Lijiang, Baisha, and Shuhe, the three towns of the UNESCO heritage site, and said when she finished her thesis, Lijiang looked like Shuhe, and Shuhe and Baisha were at relatively the same level of development. That made me fear for what is to come of the Shuhe village, if the Chinese government continues along its same path.
After that, we headed home, and on my way from the drop off to the guest house, I found a little vendor on the street selling these fried donut looking things. They weren’t sugared, but they sure were tasty. At the guesthouse, we had the option of visiting with a Naxi family that lives in the old town, or not. I decided not to go, I needed some downtime. I went up in my room, and slept a little and wrote for yesterday’s blog entry. Around 6:30, J-Bo and I went to round up some supper. We got to the restaurant, we ran into Dana, Tim, and Marijean. J-Bo and I ordered some dumplings and noodles, and made plans with everyone to hang out later in the evening to celebrate leaving Lijiang, and also to bid farewell to Dana. She is an undergrad from the Yale Architecture dept. and she is in China on a research grant. Her mom was one of the organizers of the seminar last spring, and they thought this might be a great way for her to get some research done. Well, last night she told us she wanted to focus less on tourism research and more on actual architecture. So we all went out and got some beers, had some laughs, and wished Dana a fond farewell. She said she was planning on staying for sometime in Chengdu, we’ll most likely run into her when we come back around the fourth of July.
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