Domestics

It's been nice having company in the china lately, because it has spurred me on to do a bit of domestic tourism that I'm quite sure I would have skipped on otherwise.  For example:

The city of Suzhou might not have been on my to-do list, had I not been told it was a place to see 'old china things'.  However, a few hours on a weekend train later I found myself there, soon to walk down a famous historical street (Unesco also-ran - and proud enough of it to leave a huge stone plaque up).

It's a street/canal system nationally famous enough to be officially imitated at other better known tourist locales, and proved a good choice for browsing oddities - and finding food I didn't particularly want to eat:

I actually have no idea how you are supposed to eat an entire fried crab.

The main attraction of the city was the 'humble administrator's garden', which is a legitimately-recognized Unesco site (more on that as we go).  It offered nice walking about in the pre-spring cold - an interestingly brief period of the year as spring is often skipped in this country (spring festival, of course, falling in the late-middle of winter).  Clutching teas, we gamboled around landscapes like this before returning to the 'city' I live in:

A couple of weeks more of faking my way through being a senior science teacher (who knew?) I was ready to launch out of the 'bo again to see a bit of a world-class city: BeiJING (you must go absurdly high on the latter syllable).

After a requisite trip to a bourgeois grocery store (kettle chips; one more thing I'd missed where I live) we were off to see the great wall.  As it's incredibly likely to be the only time I see it, I made sure to take photographs.  This is a big photo-post...whatever:

As you can see we got rather lucky when it came to air quality...we were at a semi-restored section (a scant day before Michelle Obama went there which would have made it tricky I'm sure) and had a great time knocking around the wall.  I absolutely both had a beer on a decrepit watchtower roof (mild climbing required) and a pitstop out a watchtower window (glancing around before required).

I have to say that the wall delivers, really: it's a giant serpentine Mongolian-blocker of the highest order.  I mean, the ancient emperors could have swallowed some pride and addressed the problem of the keshiks with gold or steel...but building a monumental stone edifice that will take a long time and prove ineffective is just so damn much more chinese.  They are experts at that.

It's been nice to go around to these spots (it being crazy to live here for two years and not see them etc etc), and we've got Hong Kong coming up two weekends from now.  It'll be nice to get out of china.  I might even get a suit made...crazy...

Loooooooooooooooook!

'Spring' festival

Just a quick bit of writing to catch up.  It's the beginning of March now, and my stupid blog has been inactive enough to annoy me - as a person who likes to read blogs - so I will say what I did.  Or, more specifically, where I did whatever that was.  Here:

As you can see, I went to the next town to the north for my vacation.  Note the glorious chinese scenery and air quality.

The Philippines is a very nice place to visit on vacation not only because most of the people speak English, but also because there are dogs everywhere:

It's kind of like a paradise for dogs; you constantly see dogs that are on missions....or asleep.  It's hot enough that you don't see any fluffy ones, and perhaps because of the canine abundance there aren't cats lounging around all that much.  But you do see these:

...both in real life and fighting to the death on television.  If you are lucky, you can also see things like:

Giant lizards.  Looking back at these pictures now....I kind of wish I was still there.  The only problem for me was that it was ungodly-level hot.  Siesta-style hot.  Sun-burningly hot.  Plus the food was unspectacular...but:

Scenery!  It was an inescapably beautiful place, made more so by having escaped one of the dreariest times of year in one of the dreariest cities in the china (one assumes).  The Philippines: recommended.