Apologies to anyone who was waiting with bated breath for my weekly update last week but I’ve been a little tardy. Mainly because there’s not a lot in my day to day life at the moment that warrants blog space. I’ve been going to class, taking care of visas and passports and watching a lot of Desperate Housewives. By now I seem to know people at the German embassy by name and I ran into a familiar couple at the translation place. In the morning on my way to class I always seem to walk behind the same lady as she takes her dog out for a walk. Following the big balled bulldog as he waddles down the street I realise that maybe this is what normal life might be like. Routine. Knowing what next Wednesday has in store for you. It’s what I wanted this break but I’ve had enough, 2 weeks of settled life seems to have satiated that curiosity and now I’m looking forward to moving out at the end of the lease, heading to Dalian and exploring a bit before taking the train across to Kashgar to meet Brett again.

We’re off to Kyrgyzstan first (and we have the visas to prove it). Next up is Tajikistan but I’m still working on getting those visas. They needed a letter from our embassy saying that, like our passport states, we are American/Australian. So off I toddled to the respective embassies and I have the letters but have to wait until my Chinese visa is extended before I can hand in the Tajik application. This time I jumped through the ridiculous hoops and opened a bank account. To extend a tourist visa for 1 month they needed me to open a bank account at the Bank of China and deposit 25,000 kuai (US$3,675). It’s a useless account, I can’t take money out anywhere but Beijing and it can only be closed in Beijing. Just perfect for someone who’s travelling around the country, as I will be again as soon as these visas are taken care of.

In other news facebook is still blocked and I was told by a teacher at my school that Central Asia is “about the same” as China so why am I bothering to go there? When I asked if Japan and China are “about the same” he said I had misunderstood his point. My Chinese may not be perfect but I know ignorance and arrogance when I see it. My usual teacher is great so hopefully I won’t have to sit through another class with this schmuck.

Tags: Beijing, China

Nothing overly fascinating to report this week, or so I thought until I tried to post this update to find my website blocked. Yep, the government of China has taken offense at my personal travel blog. And I was starting to think that there was rhyme and reason to their blockage of sites. After all, sites like Faceb00k, Tw1tter and Y0utube (all still blocked) can be used to spread rumours and false stories like those that have already led to the loss of too many lives in the Urumq1 “inc1dents”. But I can count on my fingers and toes the number of people who read this blog and let me assure you there are no terr0r1sts, separat1sts or people otherwise intent on the downfall of the glorious motherland amongst them. There is something paranoid about a government feeling in any teeny tiny miniscule way threatened by little old me. Thankfully where the front door is locked I know the back way in and so, for now at least, i can stay up to date on my scintillating weekly updates.

I’ve moved into the room, have been going to classes and catching up with some friends. I also spent a whole afternoon searching for the Kyrgyz embassy and organising our visas. There were two addresses listed on various websites but I went to the one listed on the official embassy website. Mistake, they’d moved. I was the second in line when the embassy opened at 3pm and managed to finally get out of there at 4:30 having given in Brett and my forms, passports and a formal letter explaining our purpose for visiting Kyrgyzstan. I should be picking up the visas on Friday as well as the translations which I ended up having to get at the 664 kuai babelfish place. This time though I was told they could be done in a week at that price instead of having to pay double to rush them through. They were going to charge me more but talked them down, that’s one thing about China, things change depending on who you ask.

On Saturday I went to a mixed martial art event where fighters from a variety of disciplines get in the ring with a minimum of rules. I’ve heard about these fights and was pretty excited to go but in the end a little disappointed at how few stand up fights there were, most of them ended up down on the mats wrestling, which I find pretty boring really. About half the fighters were Chinese and the rest South Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Polish, Uzbek, Swedish, French and Bulgarian. We saw 11 fights in total and the only one won by a Chinese fighter was when two Chinese were fighting, much to the dismay of the majority Chinese crowd. It wasn’t the most sportsmanlike crowd with some boos thrown out there when the young Uzbek fighter beat a much more experienced Chinese favourite. It was one of the quickest fights we saw and I’m still not really sure what happened; the starting bell rung, a flurry of action and the Chinese guy hit the mat. It was incredible. The fight between the Polish guy and a Chinese guy took longer – 10 minutes in the first round and a 5 minute second round. Mr Polish must have had a past injury because within about 30 second his right eye was almost closed up and very bloody. He was patched up and went back to the fight with only partial vision, insisting he was good to go. Not a guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley, he’ll probably go from fighting straight to being the bodyguard for the Russian mafia. Seriously scary.

After the fight we went to the best Ethiopian restaurant in Beijing. Not a difficult feat, but even if there were more than one the food here was fantastic enough to make it the best. We ate a sampler of dishes served on a huge round pancake of sourdough bread. I have no idea what any of it’s called but it was all amazing. The flavours and spices they created in a stew of lentils that looks like something I wouldn’t want to step in was unbelievable and we stuffed our faces as we watched two dancers in traditional costume convulse on the stage. Ethiopia is now firmly on the list of places I must see.

It’s a bit hard to summon motivation to go out and do much apart from the admin stuff I need to get done; the weather is just so hot and humid. Thankfully the apartment is down on the ground floor so it’s usually pretty cool, only in the past few days have I actually needed to use my air-con. It often rains in the late afternoon, sudden downpours that send torrents of water rushing into the street, hopefully washing away all the kids’ piss. I looked out my window in a break from studying the other day to see a little girl squatting on the steps where people from the compound hang out near a couple of trees. Mum was sitting right next to her. When little darling was done she put her undies back on, wiped her hands on her dress and went back to playing with the other kids. What a charming little princess.

The classes have been really good but make me realise just how much vocabulary I’ve forgotten. Since the end of 2004 when I stopped studying and started working I haven’t really used my Chinese all that much, only basic conversations that use minimal vocab. I’m now in the process of trying to learn it again but I’m not sure how much progress will be made before I leave again. And then there’s the question of whether there’s any point to me trying to keep my Mandarin? Anyway, for now I’m enjoying studying again so I’ll just keep working on it and see what happens next.

Tags: Beijing, China

Brett and I parted ways on Monday for the first time since we got married in March and he jetted off to Norway to work north of the Arctic Circle. It’s his first stint since December last year so we’ll be happy to get some inflow into the bank account again much as we’d prefer to just keep travelling together. I’m spending the time Brett’s at work hanging out in Beijing, doing a bit of Mandarin study, getting us Kyrgyz and Tajik visas and (still!) trying to sort out my a new German passport in my married name.

Instead of staying in a hotel the entire time I’ve found myself an apartment where one of the tenants is moving out before her six month lease expires. The timing is perfect and it’s cheaper than any comparable hotels. Currently my main issue is trying to get the landlord to come to the police station to register me. Usually if a foreigner stays at a hotel the hotel does this but for rental accommodation or even if I was to stay at a friend’s place technically I need to register with the local police within 24 hours of arriving. Most of the time I wouldn’t really be too worried about it but I have to get one more visa extension before I leave China and the last one was painful enough without something like being off the official radar for the past month coming into play.

I haven’t actually moved into the room yet, the girl whose room I’m taking leaves tomorrow and at the moment I’m sleeping on the couch and littering the living room with my exploding luggage. It’ll be nice to move in properly, have my own key and play at having a routine for a month or so. The grass is always greener and when I’m travelling part of me craves things like getting up at the same time every morning, knowing where my next meal is coming from and having some consistency in my daily experiences. All the same things that I find dull and monotonous after a few months of settled living, when my feet start itching again.

As for the German passport… Well. Maybe its best not to get me started? In Tokyo we were missing Brett’s divorce papers and my birth certificate; in Beijing they wanted Brett’s birth certificate and an apostille of our marriage certificate. Through a combination of courier mail, hand delivery and express post we managed to get all the pieces together (with the help of long suffering families at our respective homes) and went to the embassy before Brett left as they needed his signature too. However they now also need translations of key documents which at the first place I checked take 2 weeks and cost 664 kuai (about US$100). They don’t have anyone who can translate directly from English to German and so it will go via a Babelfish-like process from English to Chinese to German (and I pay for each translation plus a myriad of other mysterious fees). God only knows what the Germans would think of the Babel-iscious outcome. Tomorrow I’ll try to find a better option but the chances of me getting a new German passport before I leave are slim, I’ve resigned myself to just getting the official name change document so I can organise the actual passport somewhere down the line. Maybe in Kyrgyzstan?

The class I’ve found seems like it’s going to be perfect. I went for the first time today and it’s a good combination of material that I know, material that I need revision on and new vocab and grammar. Much as I hate to bare my inner geek I’m really looking forward to hours on end copying out characters over and over again in the laborious process of trying to remember them. Somehow I find it soothing, like a masochistic form of meditation.

I should have warned you at the start that this update isn’t quite as exciting as the last 15 weeks. Consider yourself warned that the next 6 weeks will be sort of more of the same though I am planning on getting out more and taking some photos once I get settled and get some of the initial things ticked off my “to do” list. Today I checked out the Wal Mart superstore nearby and was amused at the contrast between a well stocked western style store and good old fashioned Chinese “service”. Actually she wasn’t all that bad and to be fair I haven’t seen anyone picking their zits rather than serving customers, so things are changing. That used to be a favourite China moment. It’s probably not often that you see a complimentary bottle of Coke attached to a tube of toothpaste though. In a way it makes sense: drink the Coke and you need the toothpaste, but they’re kind of sending mixed signals aren’t they? Not that “Darlie” toothpaste is overly good at subtleties, they changed the name from “Darkie” in 1985, as if that makes the caricature of a black man on their logo and the Chinese name of “Black man” less racist.

More again next week from Beijing and hopefully I’ll have some photos worth posting (or any at all!).

Tags: Beijing, China

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We spent a little while longer on Jeju before waving goodbye to South Korea to land in Beijing. For two days we hiked along the Jeju Olle trail, a 12 day trail which follows the south coast of the island. It was nice to explore some of the less popular areas of the island and get away from the tour buses, which is exactly how the trail makers planned it. Along the coast we saw columnar jointing where lava had cooled fast when it hit the water and inland we stumbled across a massive area of aircraft hangers where the Japanese had an airport in the Second World War. In the cliffs along the coast long tunnels were their first defence of the Korean mainland as they started losing the war in the Pacific. Another find was a village of abandoned traditional houses typical of Jeju which was overgrown with weeds. Sheltered behind walls made of black volcanic stone the low houses were also built from the local stone. The rooves were made with thatch and securely tied down to stop them blowing away in high winds.

On the first day we ate at a Haenyo house, where Jeju’s famous women divers sell their catch to hungry tourists. On our second last day we watched some of them go out diving with their rudimentary wetsuits and low tech gear. They brought back seaweed, sea urchins, some fish and octopi. Historically men did the diving but in the 19th century women started going out in order to circumvent high taxes on the male divers. While the rest of Korea lived under strict Confucianism where women were subservient to men the Haenyeo of Jeju became the breadwinners in families on the island. These days there are less and less Haenyeo as the daughters of the tenacious divers choose easier jobs on the mainland or in the tourism industry on Jeju.

Another memorable meal was a soup that came out with ice cubes floating in it. We ordered it at a place that had no English or English speakers so we just pointed at something in our price range. We managed to work out that I was getting something with shellfish and Brett would have the same thing but with fish. The soup itself was quite vinegary, had cucumber and radish strips floating in it and my shellfish was both chewy and crunchy in turn. Some parts were so hard I didn’t think I could bite through them. Interesting but we probably don’t need to have it again.

Our last two days in Korea were lazy – on one we just went back to Seongsan Ilchulbong and saw the Haenyeo go out diving and on our last day we went back to Jeju si and ate nearly 2kg of citrus fruit. We left Jeju early on the 15th and flew up to Seoul where we managed to get on an earlier flight to Beijing.

It’s quite strange being back in Beijing, things have definitely changed around here in the past two years. On arrival at the airport there were no shonky taxi drivers hassling for their chance to fleece the new arrivals and when we caught the subway today there were electronic gates and queues! Not only that, but there are now 8 subway lines! It’s hard to believe but when I left China 2 years ago there was 2 lines open and one under construction. Now there are 8 open and 7 under construction. There’s a bridge over the road near where we’re staying that wasn’t there before and even though we know it’s less than 2 years old it looks like it’s been there forever. Online I can look at BBC and Wikipedia (though Youtube is still blocked) and on TV a reporter mentioned “the political incident of 1989”. Admittedly overseas one would call that the Tiananmen Square Massacre but it’s still a step in the right direction. And just as I think that China has changed immeasurably I step outside and see someone mopping the carpet. Aaaaah, the China I remember hasn’t disappeared quite yet.

It remains to be seen whether these changes are restricted to Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympics or whether the rest of China will have changed as much. We’ve decided to head to Xinjiang this time around as Tibet was just too difficult and all the restrictions made the trip ridiculously expensive. We might spend the winter in Central or South East Asia then come back early next year and try Tibet again. It’s going to be great to head back to Xinjiang, I’ve been twice as a tour leader and love it out there. Brett’s never been there before so it’ll be nice to be able to share it with him and spend some good time exploring.

Tags: Beijing, Haenyeo, Jeju, Jeju Olle