Maoxian International

... then going to Pudong by myself I decided to car-pool with when since it would be cheaper in a taxi. We were all ready to leave at 5:00pm but all the bad luck to could have possibily happened, did. We could not find a taxi. This is definitely because it was rush hour in Shanghai, the worst possible time of the day. Robbie and Jared started asking random people in vans if they would take us to Pudong for a fee. We thought about paying people to get out of taxis but then ...

... fails to hold talks with him on his plan of Tibet's autonomy within a year, he will have to change his stand of compromise with China; many young Tibetans stand for the use of force. On April 4, 1991, the Dalai Lama said in the Tibetan language program of the Voice of America, "All matters shall be further strengthened for Tibet's independence." Again on October 10 the same year, he tried instigation in a similar program, "At present, so large a number of Hans ...

... to see them arresting monks, see groups of soldiers with weapons patrolling village markets, that sort of thing. The control of Tibetan China is very tight, even tighter than before the March riots. In Zhongdian, we saw a huge parking with maybe 50 army trucks ready to set off. T: OK, let's start from Lijiang where we posted our last entry and prepared for trekking the Tiger Leaping Gorge. When we disembarked our small bus after a trip longer than assumed, we followed the ...

... I had absolutely no idea what it was. What is face changing, and how can it be that spiffy? After a pair of fire breathing scary mask wearers took the stage, the face changers arrived. They walked around and then, with a flick of the fan or a swish of the cloak, their mask would suddenly be different. For the girls with the cloaks it was easy enough to assume that they changed their masks with a flick while their faces were behind the cloak. But it was still ...

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... nothing. Kind of similar to me here, actually. At least I have an excuse, though - all the people that have come through the hostel recently. I don't know if it's something about Chengdu, or something about Sim's, but there has been an abundance of interesting people here. 1 or 2 years of travel seem fairly common, but the way in which people are travelling is different as well. To give you a broad cross section of people I have come across here: many ...

... assumed that they were flying in from the US on holiday. We soon learnt from Peter Snow (owner of Bike China and organiser of this trip) that they all lived in Beijing and one of them had made it to Chengdu ok, but the other two had missed their flight. Peter informed us the missing two were expected to arrive in Chengdu around 2-3 am. We met Peter in the Bookworm bar that night and he briefed us on all the final arrangements and got us ...

Today I broke the news that I'm leaving 4 days early. Most seemed to careless, but a few did make some good comments. There was of course the standard will you come here next summer? One girl replied that she would welcome me with open arms if I return. Another asked ...

Only more day until the weekend! And all of us Americans have invited our Chinese teaching assitants to supper. I must confess to you, as I did to them, our motive: We wanted to eat hot pot and do it properly and we figured we'd some folks who were experienced and new the language well. Hot Pot is a apparently a creation of this province (Sichuan). If you've eaten fondu then you get the gist of it, but it's not cheese or chocolate that you're dipping ...

Thought today would be a good day to take a few snap shots of Joy. It will be a tad difficult to say goodbye to her. She has been so nice and so helpful. If I should return to Xin Jin I would definitely try to locate her. She's great!