I’m going to relax a while from the blog.   Who wants to hear about the daily routine in the US?   But, if you’re interested in climbs, be sure to check out my Alpine Adventures in the Cascades, or whatever I call my climbing site.   I will hopefully be leaving the country again in late August.   Check back then!   And thanks for visiting!

I landed in the US at 9:30 AM. With jet lag, a new little cold picked up along the way, and a junky hotel to stay in (yeah, I’m ruined by these gorgeous Asian hotels), I picked up a case of reverse culture shock. Lots of cars, lots of big portions of food, big people….but nice fresh air and lots of green!

So, my China trip is over.   I’ll spare readers from any summary of my trip since I’d be writing on and on, paragraph after paragraph.   It suffices to say that I’m very happy I made the choice and am hoping that I return someday…

Back in the US…

I tried to hook up with Robert for a hike, but my alarm clock (a GPS sort of thing) changed time by itself sometime in the night. I ended up oversleeping by an hour, Robert forgot his cell phone and couldn’t call. So, he went home and I went out to meet him…and ended up going alone. Was nice to get out and smell some real fresh air. Just going up to the lake, Melakwa Lake, was enough for me. I didn’t really feel the urge to scurry up the scree slopes to the peak and just hung out around the lake:

(above) Panorama of Melakwa Lake

(above) Big ole Northwest Slug, Denny Creek is a popular place to hang out.   Bring your kids!

Also, some of the China packaging team is in Redmond now. They got a recommendation on a Chinese restaurant in town and so we went down together Friday after work. I was really excited when we found Hunan Cai on the menu, but when the waiter brought it out, I proclaimed to my tablemates, “Bu shi Hunan cai!” No, it wasn’t anything like we could get in China so, my hopes were dashed.   Just a rather bland dish of sliced pork with onions and green peppers and smothered in something akin to that nasty sweet and sour sauce.   At least the fish was pretty good, but atypical:   completely boneless.   That was welcomed modification.

I embarassed the waitress and myself by calling her a “liang nu” (“pretty girl”, a common way to refer to waitresses in southern China).   She actually was a little too old to be called that (plus you never see any old waitresses in China) and I could see in her reaction the embarassment.   Dang.

We also practiced some American table manners, hearkening back to my training to the team in China on that.   These guys did much better than the others I accompanied to Steak and Ale…they were abject failures.   A refresher course for them!

(above) Despondent at false advertising

Right before leaving China, I figured I’d go buy a couple of electronic items in Hua Qiang Bei, one of them being a new mp3 player. Since my iPod myseriously vanished from the back pouch of my backpack within a 15 minute period around Da Ju Yuan, I’d been using my cell phone as an mp3 player. Well, it lacked in many areas, so I figured I’d invest in a cheap Chinese one. What would it hurt to look?

Well, I checked a couple out, was most impressed by one by “Meizu”. It obviously borrowed heavily from the iPod. The graphics looked nicer, a little more crisp and some nice intensity fades add pizzaz. Instead of a wheel though, there’s a touchpad running up and down. Slide your finger up to turn the volume up, down to turn it down, etc.

The thing is riddled with bugs though. Some of them were totally tolerable, like menus ending up nowhere, some settings randomly resetting. Some were annoying, like tracks skipping and repeating at the very end a few times before moving to the next file. But, then the worst kicked in about a week later: the player could not shut down! I’d always get a “Auto Shutting Down…” message after the device was inactive for 5 minutes or so, but it would just hang the player. The only thing you could do was reset the device. Basically, it was impossible to turn off!

(above) Not a bad looking player, eh?   Can you see the “shutting down” message?

A couple of weeks later, I bought another iPod – what a relief! For many things, you can beat the rule of “you get what you pay for” in China, but not this time.

I’m studying Chinese characters now. I have an ambition to study Chinese (how cool to be trilingual) and I’ve decided to make the valiant effort to learn it all – listening, speaking…and reading and writing. I’ve received several warnings however: “Oh, Chinese is too hard for foreigners to learn to write. You can just learn to speak maybe.” What kind of attitude is that? Full speed ahead!

Hmmm…I’m now wondering if I’m in over my head. These characters are nuts. Imagine each simple word in the English language is represented by a letter of the alphabet. You’d have to expand the alphabet by…how many thousands of letters? That’s right; there’s no such thing as an alphabet in Chinese. I’m not exactly sure what the approximate number is for all Chinese characters. Twenty thousand? Thirty-five thousand? Ug. OK, that is not possible for me to learn. But, guess what! If I learn about four or five thousand, I’ll be able to read a newspaper. I think the average literate Chinaman has a written vocabulary of not much bigger than that. All those extra characters are mostly reserved for literature. Don’t forget the other challenging thing of this monosyllabic language: combinations of these characters is what forms more complex words.

I’ve learned maybe 120 characters so far. I’d say about 70 or 80 of those I know very well and can recognize and write easily. Still working on the other 40. Plus, I just finished another lesson where I learned about 25 more. I’ll need to write them each about 15 times to learn them well, and I have to revisit them or use them in the real world or I forget. Also, I find that if I want to recognize a character, the best way to do that is to learn to write it. However, the ability write fades pretty fast if I haven’t really drilled it in, but fortunately, the recognition stays. Reading is more important than writing.

Another neat things is that by writing I’m starting to recognize the structure of the characters. Though I don’t understand the vast majority, when I do see a new one, I can recognize the structure, the individual components, and I’m pretty good at figuring out the proper order of strokes. Plus, it seems like to really know Chinese, the language and the culture, understanding the characters makes a lot of sense.

For example, this character:

ç”·

is “nan” (tone 2). It means “male”. This character is actually made up of two other basic characters:

田 力

The first is “tian” (tone 2) meaning “field”, basically. The second is “li” (tone 4) meaning “strength”. See the idea? “Strength for working in the field.” Pretty cool, eh? But, then again, there’s not much sense, that I’ve learned anyway, from the character for “female”:

女

This is the character “nv” (tone 3), the “v” is just symbolic of a special pronunciation of the letter “u”.

There are many characters that are combinations of simpler characters. Then there are these things called “radicals” which are like mini characters (though they can sometimes be more complex than regular characters) which basically indicates a “theme”. For example, you can have a “water” radical which expresses liquids, or another radical that indicates certain types of animals. But, sometimes, more often than not, it seems like there’s no logic to it at all.

Check these out:

猪 猫 猩

Notice the symbol on the left is the same in all? This is the “radical” expressing types of animals. But, I have yet to understand the classification. And, I haven’t asked because I have so many more pressing questions. These are the characters (l-r): zhu (tone 1) or “pig”, mao (tone 1) or “cat”, and xing (tone 1) which, when paired with another “xing”, means “gorilla”. :-o

OK, that’s enough confusion now. I’m starting to get mixed up again.

Since it was planned that I’d come back to China (even though it’s still not officially determined), my team decided to have a very small farewell party for me. We picked having a typical Chinese breakfast in a restaurant somewhere in Nanshan. Xiao Liu and I went to pick up Michael and we all met up for a breakfast at 8am. I rarely eat Chinese breakfasts mainly because it’s just not convenient for me. This one had it’s high points and low points. I took a bite of the bull’s stomach on Xiao Liu’s recommendation, but…I wasn’t so crazy about it. I really enjoyed the little semi-sweet cakes though.

After the breakfast, we headed over to Judy’s apartment, which is located in the Ke Ji Yuan, the High Tech Park. It’s a very nice complex. I wonder how well I describe the apartment complexes in China. Obviously, they are so much bigger than ones in the US. Many of them feature a few 30 story buildings. Then, the complexes repeat one after the other. This particular one is on the upper end, featuring nicely manicured grounds, good security, a beautiful pool (lots of big beautiful pools in China), and attractive accomodations. Here are some pics of some of the buildings. Note the gap in the bottom of the building (风水, or “feng shui”, homes):

Inside we participated in the typical late morning/early afternoon Chinese socializing: chatting, fruits, and tea. Hiddy, Judy’s husband, prepared an elaborate version of tea called “Kung Fu tea”, but I was told it had nothing to do with “Kung Fu”. I didn’t follow up on what that meant exactly. We also had the TV on watching a follies show of various popular Chinese performers.

Kung Fu Tea:

The group:

Here’s a leftover movie from when I was in a market Fengdu (along the Yangtze). It’s a short video of a vat of squirming small eels. Imagine sticking your hand in there and picking some up for dinner tonight.