Shunhua International Hotel Xichang

this was the start of our journey. Perhaps I should have known something like this was coming. The night before I had gone to dinner with some of the dorm mates and then a few of us went to the foreign bar "pan am" where we drank absinthe. So on my way home I was feeling pretty good. Eric called to confirm I wanted in on traveling to yading. This trip was supposed to be fairly cheap minus the 600 kuai plane ...

The on-going obsession with matriarchy in China among ethnic minorities, with a hint of curiosity about 'open relationships' . . . Matrilineal Chinese tribe strives to maintain 2,000-year-old tradition WengJici Erqing and Ruheng Cirenduoji grew up in households where grandmothers had absolute authority. Raised by their mothers and their uncles, neither knew his father well. This unique matrilineal family system followed by the Mosuo people for ...

So the journey continues...down in Xichang...and its actually warm!!! yey! I've been freezing like crazy every since I got to China but now it is definately t shirt weather....I'm so happy! Xichang is a great little city (well little for China) with everything you expect from a Chinese city: bright lights and swish hotels, big markets with local farmers selling their crazy produce, litter in the streets, pollution, and lots and lots of people ...

... Yesterday was our first full day here , well we arrived at 9am after another fun sleeper train (i love them!) We spent this first day walking around exploring and soking up the vibe ......stumbling across amongst other things an ace slightly crazy intense street market (see Pics), at around 6pm we had sat down for a 20 minutes break to soak up the atmosphere when we were approached by an 18 yr old student ............after he brief chat with him ...............he ...

... that make me do a double take, but I rarely remember them when I am typing here. I should carry a notebook around for a memory aid. Also it is now the last day of the Spring Festival (I started writing this quite a while ago) which is know as the Lantern Festival. Tonight we are going to Wentao's house to learn how to make jaozi (which are pretty much the Chinese version of perogi). But yesterday, as well as everyday for the past... well forever, there have ...

... to the day and time to leave, but when we went to buy our tickets, they only had standing room only left on the train. We decided on leaving New Year's Eve and spending the night sleeping on a train instead of standing for 8 hours. This means we missed the firework extravaganza that happens at midnight in the major cities, but honestly the fireworks had been going on since I had been back and in fact are still going on. Our plan was to take a overnight sleeper train ...

... communities of the Mosuo ethnic group, dotted around the pristine and beautiful Lugu Lake, set high up in the Xiaoliang mountains, on the border between northwestern Yunnan and southwestern Sichuan. Mosuo is not called 'Women's World' for nothing-it is, after all, the only surviving matrilineal community in China. Every tourist has a sketchy idea of how this "country without fathers and husbands" has existed for thousands of years. You learn from the guidebooks that ...

... Yuan (approximately USD 2.2 million) in aid have been allocated to the quake areas in Sichuan. The Yunnan provincial government will allocate 30 million Yuan for quake relief apart from tents and quilts. The Jet Li One Foundation, initiated by Chinese film star Jet Li, earmarked 2.5 million Yuan and donated materials worth 250,000 Yuan on 31 August to the affected areas in the two provinces. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db9 00SID/FBUO-7J4DUW?OpenDocument

... here on my own by train yesterday. Do you remember the 'chinese fire drill' from high school? If so that's what the train is like at the moment. I hopped off with my bags and did what I normally do in such a situation.....I look completely lost! I've found that eventually someone will come along offering to help. This time it was four Locals, one of which I helped get down their bag from the overhead compartment on the train. I said I was ...

... are the "real" China, and that it's a shame to tear down the original parts. I wonder what the Chinese think, of all this modernization going on around them. I wonder if they are happier to have straight, wide boulevards instead of the hutong, the narrow, dirty alleyways, where people live on top of each other. What happens to all the people, when these buildings get demolished? A lot of housing is torn down when they raze neighborhoods (they're currently destroying ...