Terry's Adventures In China - Issue 5

Xin nian kuai le! (Happy New Year)

Dear Friend's and Family,

I wish you all the best for 2007 (er ling ling qi in chinese). I stayed in China for Christmas and New Year.

China has their own calendar and the chinese new year is in February, but they do recognize the western Christmas and New Year and there were some decorations and a few christmas songs (then again the street sweeping machines play jingle bells and happy birthday all year round, so it could just be a coincidence). SGMW (the company where I am working) held a Christmas party. They asked us Laowai (foreigners) to sing some Christmas carols and do a skit. We were dressed as Santa, Mrs.Santa, Frosty, elves, reindeer, a christmas tree, toy soldiers, etc. We sang traditional christmas songs and even translated some into Chinese. It was a fun evening!

Well, issue 4 was at the beginning of November, so you would think I would have a lot to tell you. We can basically ignore November though because all I did was work. The weather was beautiful and warm and I continued my quest to climb every karst hill in Liuzhou. I also bought a new bicycle. It is really cute. It folds in half and would fit in a car or on a bus or in your office. It was expensive - it cost $40! Of course it only has one gear like most chinese bikes.

The weather in Liuzhou has gotten colder (today it is 13C about 55F, and it has gotten down to 7C or about 45F). In the southern half of China they do not have heating in the houses except for little wall mount air conditioners which kind of heat but not real well. Most people don't have these though, so they are very cold in winter, but they don't complain. They are used to it.

I worked a lot of hours in November and December, and thought I was going to be working at Christmas too, so I didn't plan to go home for Christmas. But our program had some last minute delays and I actually found that I could take some time off at Christmas, so I took 2 weeks to go travel a bit in China. I love spicy food, so I decided to go to Sichuan Provence. One of the few direct flights from LiuZhou goes to Chengdu, the Capital of Sichuan provence. I told some friends I was doing this and they said "we have a friend named Ray who lives in Chengdu, he will show you around. Well, Ray is about the sweetest man I have ever met.

I expected he would meet me in the city somewhere and take me for a tour, help me find a hotel, maybe recommend a few things to do in Sichuan. But, he met me at the airport, took me to his home, spent two days showing me the city, took me to some excellent Sichuan hot pot restaurants. We celebrated Christmas eve having a traditional American Christmas dinner. Ray studied English in college and speaks excellent english. He is a sales manager for a company that sells construction equipment - they are also John Deer reps in China.

He also loves to travel in China, so he arranged to have a business meeting in a city that he knew was very beautiful west of Sichuan called Kangding. On Christmas day he got us bus tickets and off we went. After 5 hours on the bus, we went through a long tunnel and came out on the other side of the mountain. It was amazing! The clouds and mist and fog that seem to be a fact of life in most Chinese cities were gone. The sky was blue and the views of the mountains were fantastic. It was cold, but the scenery was wonderful.

Kangding is inhabited by Tibetan people (near to Tibet but still in Sichuan) and the people are very different. They look different, wear different clothing and have different religion, food and customs.

We did some hiking one day and visited several tibetan monasteries. Saw prayer flags strung on the hill sides, dressed up in local dress to have our photos taken, relaxed in a hot spring, ate a tibetan meal and local barbecue. We also visited some lakes in the mountains and saw snow capped mountains. One of the lakes was covered in ice and made really erie noises when you threw rocks onto the ice. We visited a hot spring on the mountain where the water is 90C and they boil eggs and you eat them while you soak your feet in the water.

Ray found out he had a meeting in Chongqing, a city that I wanted to visit as well, so we took a night bus back, then a train to Chongqing. I believe Ford has a plant there but didn't try to find it. Ray set me up with his friend Nina and her friend Cindy who were also perfect hosts. Chongqing is a very hilly city and I'm told, the largest city in China with about 34 million people. It was very foggy and grey and rainy when I was there, but at night it is lit up beautifully with neon lights. It sits at the intersection of two larger rivers, the Jialing and the Chang jiang (or Yangzi river). The Yangzi river is very famous. According to the Lonely Planet travel guide, it is the longest river in China and the 3rd longest in the world. It has always been famous for the three gorges or steep mountains next to the river with a narrow opening through which the river flows. There is a 3-day cruise down the river which Nina helped me book. Thank you to Nina and Cindy for their help and friendship. I hope we meet again soon.

The three gorges river cruise is very scenic and now very historic because they have just finished building the world's largest dam downstream from the gorges. By 2009, the dam will raise the water level upstream by 175 meters. The dam was finished in 2006, so I wanted to go see the gorges, thinking that it would be the last time before the water levels rose and drowned all the villages and cities that had previously existed at the water's edge. But it was too late. The water has already raised 155 meters with only 20 meters to go. Many villages and temples and thousands of years of history have been drowned. 1.5 million people have been moved to higher ground.

It was the really the wrong time of year to visit as the boat was not heated and it was way too cold to be on deck enjoying the scenery. Many of us caught colds. It was foggy and my pictures didn't turn out very well, but software can do some amazing things, and I bought a book and DVD which shows it before the dam was built. We did stop a few times to visit local temples (many of which have been moved to higher ground) and to take side trips into the little three gorges and mini three gorges tributary rivers. I met some very nice people (chinese and foreigners) and we even celebrated new years eve with a hot pot meal and really good chinese traditional fireworks. Good memories!

I had a bit of an extra adventure at the end as my flight back to Chengdu was cancelled due to fog. I was miserable with a cold and tired. But Ray came to my rescue again helping me sort out a plan to go back to the nearest city an hour away, get a hotel, and take a bus the following day to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei provence, to fly back to Chengdu. Knowing I was sick and being the gentleman that he is, Ray carried my backpack across town to yet another hotpot meal he had arranged with his friends. After that we went to a dance club called MIX and I got to see the young and hip elite of Chengdu having fun chinese style. Not so different to an american club really - not that I go to many of them either.

The next day we all went skiing. I was the only person in our group of 6 that had ever been skiing before. It was quite a trip to get there several hours on buses and a long cable car ride. But finally we saw snow. We rented skis and snowboards and for some it was the first time they had seen snow.

After that, I had a day to rest and recuperate and a day to do some more touring of temples and shopping. Before I went on this trip, I had been on one city bus in Liuzhou. With Ray, I took many city buses every day, took intercity buses to other cities, took a train, car and minivan taxis, motorcycle taxis, and even bicycle taxis. I also have many new favorite Sichuan foods. He gave me many memories that I will never forget, and he made my first travel exerience in China incredibly easy and extremely fun. Thanks Ray!

I returned to Liuzhou and noticably warmer weather. Today the sun is even shining in Liuzhou which is rare. Tomorrow it is back to reality and work.

Leaving Ford in June was the hardest decision I've ever made - but only because I was afraid I would regret it. I hadn't really been happy at Ford since I returned from the UK in 1999 and had a strong desire to travel again. Seeing and experiencing Asia first hand was my dream. I am so happy that I took that step. I just got a note from a friend in the UK saying that my big step inspired him to make a life change of his own - that made my day! I know that others at Ford are facing big decisions about whether to leave or not. I hope that if you have dreams as well, you give serious thought to making them come true. Life is short. Live it to the fullest. Make your dreams come true.

Till next time.
Zai Jian
Terry Pinkerton
Liuzhou China

Terry's Advenures in China - Issue 4

Wan shang hao (good evening)

I've moved to Gmail. So please add this address to your address book. I hope I haven't missed anybody when I set up my new distribution lists. If you want me to use a different address let me know.

I'm sorry I haven't written for a while. October has been a really busy month here in China. The last time I wrote, my friend's bicycle had just been stolen. I did give her money to buy a new one, the gift made her very happy. Actually, I have kind of adopted her as my little sister (mei mei). I'm her jie jie (big sister). She has just moved in with Joel and I this week to help us with interpreting. More on why we needed an interpreter later.

Joel's wife Jami came over for a month and we were just about to leave for Vietnam on our one week holiday when Joel found out that Jami's China visa was a single entry visa. That meant that if she went to Vietnam, she couldn't get back into China. So, we decided to stay in China for the holiday.
We went to the largest mountain in Guangxi province, Sheng Tang Shan.

It was really nice. Drove up a dirt road for several hours to get to the hotel. From there, it was a two hour climb up thousands of stone steps to the top of the mountain. Steven (our driver) and I got up at 4am and hiked up the mountain in the dark to get to the top for sunrise. It was amazing! We were up above the clouds and we felt as though we were sitting next to God! It was awe inspiring! There are some great pictures on my picasa website. Check it out.



After a couple days at Sheng Tang we went to a hot springs area. It was a very hot day, so we decided to get a hotel with a pool. The water looked very inviting. However, it was fed from the hot springs and not refreshing at all. When it got dark, it did get cool enough to go in the water and then it felt nice. Joel bought a deck of cards and we taught Steven to play "pitch". He caught on very quickly and enjoyed the game.

Next we headed north to an area in the mountains where they farm rice on terraces on the sides of the mountains. This area was very beautiful, even if a little touristy. It was harvest time, so I got to see how they cut the rice and dry it and remove it from the stalks. They work very hard to get a few grains of rice. I did some great hikes through terrace villages. The people were very friendly and the views were fantastic.


Finally, we went back to Yongshuo and did some shopping. I bought a really nice Mah Jongg set in a wooden box and some antique embroidery from the Miao tribes that I want to have framed. We took a tour on a boat on the river which was very nice and I rented a bicycle again and went on another little adventure. I met a farmer and he took me for a little tour of his village. My Chinese is getting a little better and we could hold a very simple conversation. China has many dialects, and I am learning Poutong Hua or Mandarin (the official language of China) and he speaks a local dialect called Guilin Hua. It was very rewarding to have even a simple conversation with a local. At one point, he was trying to convince me that I should backtrack to the big road (da lu) rather than keep riding down the small dirt road (xiao lu) and he started writing Chinese characters in the dusty road. I guess he thought if I could speak the language, I could read it. Reading Chinese is very difficult. It was a great interaction though – a memory I can keep forever.

Alas all vacations end and I went back to work to start my new job – actually the job I was hired for. I am PAC project leader for the second phase of the SGMW engine. It will be built in a city called Qingdao on the coast, north of Shanghai and south of Beijing. I may move there in 9 months or so. It's a real challenge for me, but it should be very interesting. At the moment, it's a ton of work, and have worked almost every day for 4 weeks.

Sadly, our friend and driver Steven has decided to move back to Shanghai. He has been in Liuzhou, away from his family for 2 years and he wanted to go back to be near them. Joel and I really like Steven and he has spoiled us over the past 3 months. We've had some really good times with him – trips, vacations, hiking, shopping, drinking, eating, playing mahjongg and many other things. We all have some great memories of this short time we've known each other.

Steven even gave me my Chinese name – Lin Li Ya. Lin is the family name, which came from my middle name Lynn. Li means beautiful and Ya means elegant. He and all my Chinese friends say it is a really great name. Steven calls me Doctor (like PhD) because he says I am really smart. So I wanted to give him a nickname. I decided to call him baba for daddy since he named me, but he doesn't like that name, especially since he is 4 years younger than me. We will miss him very much! His English skills were invaluable. He did so much more than just drive us around. That is why we have asked my friend Qiufeng to come live with us. She can help us get things done, read things for us and talk to the new driver for us. I'm sure I will learn Chinese a little faster now as I have to do more for myself.

So, the next adventure begins. A week ago, we hired a new car and driver. We met and negotiated with the owners of the car over Chinese dim sum which was great! Then we went to our favorite park one last time with Steven. They just opened a snow garden which is a huge refridgerated building with ice sculptures and a toboggan run and even sledding. I made Steven go sledding with me – he had never done that before, so it was a great last memory of Liuzhou. We also hiked up one of the mountains. It was a wonderful day!

Well, I think that about catches you up on my news from China. I hope you are all well. Love to hear from you. And don't forget to check out my photos and blog.

Zai jian,

Lin Li Ya 林丽雅

(Terry)