More funny Engrish for you fans out there who have been requesting more.   This is from my season 2 DVD of “Prison Break”.   I think this translation was done by a Perl script that some Chinese nerd wrote in an afternoon.   Don’t worry; if you haven’t seen season 2 yet, this synopsis is clever enough not to give anything away:

Seven run away birth day level of felons to become the object whichthe national police forces captures and to launch newly turn perishesthe life journey, in becomes a fugitive in the process they to faceall sorts of situations, thereupon the story then develops.   Moreoverbecause Lincoln is framed with a government plot related, thereforefrom a second season start, Michael Schofield Brother emphaticallycarries on the investigation, hoped can open behind the plot the darktruth.   But succeeds runs away separately runs away to the jail 5prisons friend middle US, in which can have reis arrested, also canhave dies to run away on the way.

[sic...]

Yesterday, I left work “early”, at 4pm, because I came into work at 6:30AM. Also, my folks were in town and I wanted to spend some decent time with them. Thirty minutes after I left, the announcement went out that we’d take a group photo the following day. So, with less than 24 hours notice, nearly the entire office was out in the middle of the grassy area of a highway exit ramp, posing for a group photo, while the photographer stood on the edge of the bridge above. In the US, getting a group of employees together for a photo like this would be next to impossible. It’s refreshing how open Chinese people are to these sorts of things and how much fun they have with it.

Here’s a shot of one of the poses. We’re spelling out words to stitch together with Photoshop:

Whenever I talk up the fantastic scenery around Guilin, I always express my disbelief that the Hollywood has never used this scenery for some of its fun fantastical films. At least I hadn’t seen any evidence. The karst towers around Guilin would have been a great setting for a movie like King Kong, for example. Well suh, after seeing a couple of scenes recently of the Chinese version of one of the great films of all time :-p, I suddenly realized, “It has been done!” Check it out:

Though I was away from the tour group for a week or so, I decided that I wanted to be at the farewell dinner, just across the border in Hong Kong at the Shangri-La hotel, a place I’ve stayed many times. I had to come to Hong Kong anyway to pick up my folks and bring them to Shenzhen, but it was an easy choice, despite the high price tag, to enjoy the farewell dinner with my fellow excellent travelers. What a great send off it was to an amazing trip. I participated in about 10 days of the trip, which felt like a couple of months because of the quantity of sites we saw and events that we experienced.   The others enjoyed an additional week. I enjoyed hearing about the remainder of the trip from my companions, which consisted of more days in Shanghai, Guilin, and ending on a high in Hong Kong, despite the rain.

Here are some pictures:

After going to Shanghai and seeing the buildings that Tom Cruise jumped between inspired me to go make a purchase of Mission Impossible III and watch that scene again.   A couple of weeks ago, I read something in the newspaper about China trying to crack down on the rampant pirating of DVDs.   Well, I went to the usual spot in Dong Men, but it was gone; only CDs were there.   (I did find a sweet recording of a bunch of obscure Paganini pieces by Salvatore Accardo on the Gramaphone label).   One of the store attendants came up to me and asked if I was looking for DVDs.   I said, “dui” (“right”), so he put my Paganini CD in a bag and beckoned me to follow him.   We went a few stores down where he opened a large storage door which lead to a large closet (at least that’s how it felt) which was packed with DVDs.   I wonder if the business is simply hiding out while the police or whomever is enforcing this is at large.   I found MI3 and then headed out.

I’m back in Shenzhen. It’s good to be back, and a little weird. Seems like you can see the best of China here and some of the not-so-best.

My iPod was stolen somewhere around the Di Wang building. I have no idea how they did it. It was in the little pouch in my backpack, zipped up. The next time I looked at my backpack, the backpack was wide open and the iPod was gone. How?? Hats off to their skill, but I would have loved to have caught them in the act. Guess I’ll by the 30 dollar rip off iPod or just use my cell phone which has a pretty bad user experience for playing MP3s.

Here’s a shot of some of the madness around Hua Qiang Bei (taken with a cell phone). The cars are blocked because the people started crossing the streets in mass. Actually, I took this shot after a majority of the folks had already crossed.

This is last day on the trip. I’m heading back to Shenzhen in the afternoon. The last meal covered by the trip was breakfast and I was sure to eat a big one. Stickin’ it to the man, you know. Our first stop was the famous Yu Gardens, which are massive convoluted rock garden with an extensive goldfish pond. Most of the plants are different varieties of trees. Apparently, the guy that built it did so because he was so ashamed for taking bribes. There are a few reminders of this throughout the garden, basically reminders to live a good and honest life. Good good.

Some cool dragons here too:

We spent some more time shopping in the area near here. There’s fun bargaining to do and a nice variety of things to look at. It’s much more pleasant than the madness of Luohu in Shenzhen. I’ll be heading back there soon (wanna get some tailored stuff).

When the rest of the group went to an expensive lunch, I headed back looking for the pedestrian mall. I never found it, but I did stop by and get a little snack for lunch (McDonalds :-o). I then made my way back to the hotel to do some last minute emailing and packing.

I took the “Magnelev” train to the airport. It’s one of the futuristic trains that somehow runs on magnets (“Magnelev” is a mix of “Magnet” and “Elevated”) and rips the air at 270 miles per hour on the quick journey to the airport (7 minutes). The train is only at its top speed for 30 seconds or so because the trip is so short. But, it’s quite a thrill. What was really exciting was when another train passed us going in the opposite direction at the same speed. These are long trains and it flashed by in less than a quarter of a second, no lie!

Check out the movie of the Magnelev.

Compared to the great scenery of yesterday, today was more modest. Also, it was a travel day, where we caught a flight from the river city of Yichang to Shanghai.

We spent the morning checking out the Three Gorges Dam. We had a hilarious guide for this – Max. He kept referring to himself as “Max” as in, “Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t forget that Max told you to be back at the bus in 30 minutes.” Also, he was a great joke teller. His demeanor reminded me of my friend and climbing partner Michael. Here’s ole Max telling us about the dam:

And here’s a panorama of the dam:

There’s a mountain that overlooks the dam. It has an eerie resemblance to Chairman Mao lying down. “They say” that since Mao approved of the dam idea but died before it was even started, that his resemblance lies on the mountains above, sort of overseeing the whole operation. Here’s a shot (see the head on the left and the beer gut?):

We then went through the easter portion of the Xiling Gorge, which was enjoyable of course, then we came upon another dam (whose name escapes me) in the city of Yichang. This dam was wider than the Three Gorges Dam (just by a little), but not nearly as tall. We had only one lock to go through then were on our way. The town, or city, of Yichang is scenic. Beautiful Chinese architecture clung to the edges of the cliffs and there were some neat pathways cut into the cliffs.

We had a great farewell lunch of hamburgers. As we left, low paid Chinese workers came and hauled our luggage out on sticks balanced across their shoulders. Sturdy folk.

I also had to say goodbye to “Apple” and have my picture with her. She was our waitress essentially and had a great sense of humor and smile. I love the name “Apple”.

I’d long been wanting to see the skyline of Shanghai and it was exciting to finally land and see it. We went to our comfortable hotel, had an excellent (but long) Sichuan dinner, up on the 39th floor of the hotel. From here, we got a good panorama of the city at night. In the distance I could see Pudong; I had to go down to the Bund tonight to see it at night and take pictures, no telling when I’d be back.

My folks and I headed down and enjoyed a stunning walk along the river looking at the modern buildings of Pudong and the gorgeous colonial buildings of Shanghai. More street vendors and beggars to deal with, not to mention the smell of pee now and then. But the view was great. Both sides of the river were lit up like Christmas. It’s hard to say what city has the best skyline: Shanghai or Hong Kong. I guess, if I had too, I’d give the nod to Hong Kong still. The view across Victoria Harbor is bigger (though Hong Kong is much smaller than Shanghai), but what keeps Shanghai in close competition is the awesome colonial buildings on the old side of the city. Check out the pics:

This morning started early, around 6am as we approached the first gorge along the section of the Yangzi known as the “Three Gorges”. The morning was cool and a few low clouds hung around the entrance to the first gorge. The sunrise was nice through the clouds. The gorges reminded me of the a bit of Diablo Lake in the North Cascades, another large body of water surrounded by towering mountains. While the Yangzi lacks the impressive snowcapped peaks high above of Diablo Lake, the lower ramparts of wooded cliffs are more dramatic. Here are a cupla pics:

Around mid-morning, we pulled into the town of Wushan where we hopped onto a smaller boat and went up the Daling River through an area known as the Little Three Gorges. Three more gorges awaited us, though they were by no means little. I suppose the “little” comes from the smaller river.

The port of Wushan:

More scenery:

Even higher up stream, we boarded even smaller boats (holding about 20 people) and went up an even more narrow section of the river. Along the way we were able to see the “Hanging Coffins” – coffins that had been lowered in ancient times down the cliff faces and placed in shallow caves high on the cliffs.

There were singers and a strange hermit guy playing a primitive Chinese instrument that we passed by. I caught some video of it.

This section of river also had a few decent waterfalls. Being so accustomed to the Cascades where every valley has a raging creek pouring into another creek or river, the Yangzi was completely different. Whenever there was other creeks, they were tiny. But, this changed once we got higher up stream. Still, they were teeny falls compared to the Cascades, but seeing some of them emerging directly from the walls above was pretty neat.

See the falls to the right?

We also saw several wild monkeys. One section of the river was called something like “The Haunt of the Monkey Lords” Here’s a shot of the dramatic terrain nearby. Of course, having done so much hiking and climbing in the Cascades, as I looked up the steep brush-choked gullys, I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like trying to climb them. Anything like Johannesburg?

Here’s a shot showing the 175 meter mark that the Yangzi will rise to once the river is complete. Many things will be underwater:

Back on the main boat, we had lunch and then cruised through the second major gorge. Around this time we figured out how to get to the really good observation deck (probably weren’t supposed to be there since it belonged to the upgraded suites that no one was occupying this trip, thankfully), but I spent a good amount of time on the lounge chair reading and taking in the scenery. (I haven’t had too many vacations like this…so many years spent raving and suffering in the mountains.) A bit later, we started through the final gorge, the longest section. Before we could finish it, we came upon the huge Three Gorges Dam project. Scheduled to be completed in 2009, it will be the largest hydroelectric project in the world. We went through the lock system (5 locks in all) in about three hours (had dinner in the mean time). It was pretty cool watching the huge gates open and close. I made a small movie of it.

Here’s a shot of the locks (movie link is above):

One interesting thing about the “Three” Gorges is that the third gorge, the Xiling Gorge, is really in two sections. So why not call it the “Four Gorges”? ‘Cause it’s much better luck to say “Three Gorges” and say that the third gorge is divided into eastern and western sections. The word “Four” in Chinese is frowned upon because the sound of the word is very close to the word “death”. The word “four” is “si” tone 4, the word “death” is “si” tone 3. Not cool. NOT COOL.

I kept the balcony door to my cabin open all night. I went to sleep with the sound of splashing water and passing barges and didn’t wake up once. In the morning, the landscape had changed…no buildings now. The river is crowded though. Every few minutes a barge or several small fishing boats would pass by.

Around lunchtime, we arrived at the small city of Fengdu also nicknamed the “Ghost City” because there is a temple on a mountain nearby that pays tribute to the “King of the Underworld” and features numerous interpretations of the Afterlife. The city of Fengdu pictured here, however, is as new as 1992 (though you would never guess that…it looks much older) because the old city has been evacuated in anticipation of the completion of the Three Gorges Dam. In fact, much of the old city is starting to be underwater, but there is a long way to go until the entire old city is submerged. The dam is expected to be completed by 2009; it’s on schedule.

We went up into the higher part of the city and explored around, visiting a store and the storeowner, apparently a fairly well-to-do person, but something that was quite shocking to many of the other tourists. There were some lovely rice paddies nearby too.

Rice paddies and rice paddies through red salvia:

Afterwards we visited a market in the north side of Fengdu.   This was a very large farmers market with all sorts of food.   There was a huge vegetable market where I finally saw the dong gua, one of the mellons that is common in China.   It looks like a huge zuchini – about two feet long!   There were also the usual curious meats too.   Lots of pig snouts, chicken feet, and even rabbit ears submerged in water.

Market in Fengdu: