Talent Show [Yangtze Cruise]

The evening cabaret featured the crew orchestra playing music, including that traditional Chinese tune Red River Valley,

plus traditional Chinese dances

plus the occasional random fusion of step dance and break dance…

Porne Houses [Beijing]

Along the Sacred Way outside the Temple of Heaven is a wonderful path with stone statues to either side, matched people and animals.

Each of the animal pairs appeared both standing and lying down/prone, quite perfect for kids to climb around.

Hence the best Chinglish of the trip thus far: the porne houses:

And at the end, a giant turtle. If you touch the head, you get wealth; if the tail, heath/longevity. Which would you pick?

Don’t Tell Iggy! [Yangshuo]

Tom, Aaron & I slipped away from the group today while we were in yet another tourist street market, and found a local farmer’s market.

An amazing place – vegetables fresh from the field

and meat so fresh it was still quacking

– or, in some cases, barking.

Tom reports it was delicious.

For Eric

I lit this candle for Eric Underwood, in a 400 A.D. Buddhist temple in Feng Du.

Xi'an

It’s bigger than New York, with about 9 million people, with what is becoming the familiar Chinese contrast of skyscraper

and street market.

It was the capitol of at least three dynasties, the Chin, Han, and Tang, with a history going way, way back to pre-Stone Age times.

It feels like a saner pace than Beijing, yet still has plenty of the national bird around: the construction crane.

Thinking of H.B. in Bejing

Riki, Jeff, and Aaron insisted on a picture of this wall in a teen hangout in the hutong because it reminded them of H.B.

The Dynamic Duo

Tom and Aaron have had a blast together, going out clubbing in every city after the rest of us go to sleep. What happens in Beijing — or Xi'an, or Chongqing, or Guilin — stays in China — but my understanding is that they have been thrown out of at least one bar, Tom has taught Aaron how to deal with bar girls, Chinese students love to practice their English, there's been a certain amount of karaoke, and people keep buying them drinks. (Aaron is legal drinking age here.)