Man, the Great Wall is amazing. last night, the girls wanted to be adventurous, so we decided to take the 10km hike on the great wall from Jinshanling to Simatai (just two different areas of the great wall). it was actually a really tough hike. you were basically just climbing enormous numbers of stairs, and then descending enormous amounts of stairs. and... that happened maybe 30 or so times ( i believe we hiked through 32 towers). yeah, and believe me, they weren't easy. there were many times when the climb would be at 70 degree angles - that's really steep! i'm somewhat surprised that the girls got through it all, but i'm actually really proud that they did! for myself, i really enjoy canoeing/portaging/hiking, so i had a really fun time doing it. the scenery was amazingly beautiful. i'll post pics when i get the chance. i just forgot the cable that connects my camera to the computer upstairs in my room, and i don't have enough time to get it before my hour ends at this internet cafe. we were lucky too 'cause it wasn't too hot and there were barely any other tourists on the wall with us, so it seemed like we had the whole wall to ourselves.
so, immediately once we entered the gates, we got swarmed with local mongolian people. this one woman just ran straight towards me and began following me... trying to talk to me in english (asking me where i was from, telling me about her...etc), and trying to help me up the stairs to the great wall. i was warned from another guy at the hostel in Shanghai that this would happen, so i knew she just wanted me to buy stuff from her. she literally followed me for 4 km's on the wall. i couldn't believe it. she looked about 40-something years old. at the end of the 4k's, she asked if i wanted to buy something from her. i bought some post cards just because i felt bad that she had to walk all this way. actually, it was more because i knew that she was only doing this to feed her family... it's crazy that these people have to work so hard just to earn 15-20 RMB (approx $2 USD). i'm guessing that they do the walk with the tourists maybe 3-4 times a day... which is honestly CRAZY. i can't even imagine what it would be like in july ... or what they do when it snows in the winter time.
so yeah, just got an e-mail from Liang, Amy, and Kathy.. and they'll be in Beijing tomorrow night. so it'll be cool to see them again before i leave on friday.
getting excited about teaching and going to kunming too.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
updated pics
ok, so at this internet cafe, i can upload pics onto this blog... i added a few for my old posts, so you can check them out if you want.
here's a pic of me and Dr. Chang from Zhejiang university. he's the head of the biology department at Zhejiang. he's a really REALLY funny guy... just the way he acts is hilarious. i'll have to explain more later 'cause it's just too hard to explain in words.
oh let me say a word about this university. it's the 3rd best university in china.. which is HUGE. i recently found out how the university system works here. since china really wants their universities to be top in the world, they pour all their money into the top 3 or 4 universities. So, Zhejiang, being #3, gets a ton of money.. that's why their campus is so incredibly new and beautiful. To get into these schools is crazy... before they apply to universities, each high schooler has to take a test which ranks them among all other chinese students in China (ie, ranked 5 out of 300,000). The #1 university gets to pick however many students first, and then the #2 university goes.. and then #3 (Zhejiang university gets to pick from what's left... etc. on top of that, these universities may sometimes only pick one person from each province in china. so, we had a few chinese partners in our group who were the only people from their respective provinces. that's insane to me, these guys are brilliant.
May 30, 2006 (updated)
in beijing now. we almost missed the train at 7pm! lauren, christine and i ate dinner with luke and terrence... and when we finished, it was about 5:45 pm. we got on a taxi and were on our way to the train station, but we ran into some MAJOR traffic. by 6:15, we barely got anywhere. so i told the taxi driver to drop us off at the nearest subway station because i knew that it was only going to be a few stops away. this ordeal turned out to be harder than i thought, 'cause lauren's suitcsae was massively huge and heavy! i forgot that the subway stations here don't have escalators going down, so i had to carry my suitcase and lauren's suitcase everywhere! had to go down the stairs.. buy the subway tickets.. pass the luggage over the "entrance blockers"... go into the subway... go down another flight of stairs... it was definitely a memorable experience though. the girls were pretty stressed that we would miss our train. so we sprinted most of the time. luckily, the signs leading to the train station were pretty good.. and when we finally reached the train, we were actually 15 minutes early :P
the 12 hour train ride turned out to be amazing. we were in a luxury-class train and our room had 2 bunk beds in them (which were really clean and nice). there was one other lady in our room - her name was May. She was from Beijing and just went to Shanghai to get her passport. she was so nice... really fun to talk to and she gave us a bunch of places to visit in Beijing.
our hostel that we booked turned out to be right across the street from the shanghai train station. it's called the Beijing City Central International Youth Hostel. because they dont' allow co-ed dorms, i have to stay in a room with 3 other guys. i just met one, but haven't met the other two yet.
we went to the temple of heaven and it was pretty cool.. except the place is MASSIVELY HUGE. nearly 300 hectares big... so it was really tiring. after that, we just walked around in the city.. came back early 'cause we were really tired and i really needed to do laundry.
Monday, May 29, 2006
may 29, 2006
i'm at the Shanghai Library right now. this place is huge - probably 4-5 times the size of Stauffer. it's so big that it's actually a tourist attraction :P anyways, i thought i could upload pics here at the library, but the security guard caught me with my mp3 plugged into the computer (apparently that's not allowed here), so, yeah..next time. i have tons of pics i gotta post up.
so the last 2 days have been really fun. yesterday, about half of our class left (some to go to beijing, some to go to an island near shanghai). so, the night before that (two nights ago), we all went to a party/club and we all had a really great time. they gave us a VIP room and yeah, just a really great way to end off.
last night was so much fun. we went to see a chinese acrobatics show called "Era: intersection of time". IT WAS AMAZING. AHHHHHHHHH!!! i can't even describe how incredible it was. it's almost like Circque du Soleil. They did some crazy things.. they had 7 motorcycles driving around super fast/in circles in an enclosed, cage-like metal ball... they did some crazy jumps through hoops... flew around on scarves that came down from the ceiling... yeah, i know my description is really bad, but there's no way i could ever describe it!! and it was all for only 80 RMB, translating into about 10 bucks american.
today, me and lauren went to a market that sells a ton of fake stuff.. but it looks so good. and yeah, i had to buy stuff. it was realy fun trying to bargain with them. for example, if you asked them how much a Polo t-shirt would cost, they would say something ridiculous like 200 RMB. this was my strategy: i would just tell them that i was willing to pay 30...right after, they would start yelling and telling me i'm crazy and that i'm "so joking". i would just say "ok, fine, i'll go to another store"... and then, EVERY TIME, as i'm walking out, they'll grab on to me and say "OK OK!" haha. it's pretty fun. sometimes i would just offer a price that was really ridiculous .. like offer 5% of what they're asking..a nd they would curse underneath their breath in chinese. heh.
yeah, so i'm heading on a 12 hour train ride to beijing tonight at 7pm. should be interesting. turns out that i'm not heading to beijing on my own anymore, because lauren and christine wanted to stay in shanghai for another day as well. i'm actually really glad that they're coming. originally, i was going to go with lauren, christine, and 3 other girls. and.. there was one girl in the group of 3 girls that i didn't really want to go with :P so.. yeah, turns out that everything worked out in the end. thanks to all of you who told me to stay in shanghai longer than beijing... 'cause if i hadn't stayed, i woudl have missed out on the chinese acrobats and the xianyan (sp?) market. gonna see tian an men square, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven... all that stuff tomorrow. the day after, probably going to take a whole day to go to the great wall and the ming tombs... and then on friday, i'm heading off to kunming.
ok, well, gotta go find luke. he was supposed to meet us here at the library, but we waited around for half an hour and didn't show up.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
may 27, 2006
ok, correction: the name of the hotel is the metropole hotel. it's pretty nice, we got this place for like half price. tomorrow we're going to have to move out and find a hostel though. partly because they're a bit cheaper, but mostly because we want to explore a different part of the city.
today, went to the Shanghai museum, and it was awesome. really great place. admissoin for students was only 5 RMB, translating into less than a dollar canadian. it's actually a really nice museum. they had this one gallery that displayed a collection of gems from this one guy named Michael Scott. he used to be the president of Apple like 30 years ago. anyways, they had some crazy gems there but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.
then we went to the shanghai urban planning museum. nothing too special, but it was cool to see what shanghai will look like in 20 years.
all in all, shanghai is a really cool city. sort of reminds me of toronto because there's chinese people, french people, indian people, and well... no black people yet. but it's cool walking around and hearing some different languages around. but a lot of people can speak english.. so that's really helpful (e.g. in stores, restaurants). and we finally got to see the blue sky today. probably only see that like 3-4 times within the past 4 weeks. usually there's just a huge cloud of pollution above every city. so yeah, it was a good day. probably going to check out a cheap market tomorrow that my friend told me about to pick up some gifts for ppl.
today, went to the Shanghai museum, and it was awesome. really great place. admissoin for students was only 5 RMB, translating into less than a dollar canadian. it's actually a really nice museum. they had this one gallery that displayed a collection of gems from this one guy named Michael Scott. he used to be the president of Apple like 30 years ago. anyways, they had some crazy gems there but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.
then we went to the shanghai urban planning museum. nothing too special, but it was cool to see what shanghai will look like in 20 years.
all in all, shanghai is a really cool city. sort of reminds me of toronto because there's chinese people, french people, indian people, and well... no black people yet. but it's cool walking around and hearing some different languages around. but a lot of people can speak english.. so that's really helpful (e.g. in stores, restaurants). and we finally got to see the blue sky today. probably only see that like 3-4 times within the past 4 weeks. usually there's just a huge cloud of pollution above every city. so yeah, it was a good day. probably going to check out a cheap market tomorrow that my friend told me about to pick up some gifts for ppl.
Friday, May 26, 2006
may 26, 2006
ok, so today was the last day of the trip, and right now we're in shanghai. a bunch of us were supposed to stay at this hostel here, but when we tried to book it, it was all full. so yuxiang, with all his connections (he's so popular here :P), hooked us up at an awesome hotel - the metropolis hotel. it's right next to the Bund here.. and very close to Nanjing road (really famous shopping street) and yeah, in the middle of downtown. haha, there was one catch though. we had to say we were interns for a software company in california named Futureway. OK, so, today, luke, lauren and i just walked around everywhere and just got to know the city a bit. tomorrow, we'll have a full day, but we havne't planned it all out yet.
and.. i think when i go to beijing, i'm going to go on my own.. 'cause after these past 3 and a half weeks, i need some alone time. it'll be an interesting 2-3 days :p
oh, btw, for those of you who are asking if i started to pick up chinese... well, my chinese friends here have really been trying to teach me chinese. and back in the first week of the course, one of my chinese friends - eunice - actually bought me a book to help me learn mandarin :P the book was kind of hard to learn from (had really random phrases such as "Hi, i'm part of the friendship tour to china"), so today, i bought a Lonely Planet phrase guide. ok, so that's it for now.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
OH YEAH
AND, today i finally got to watch an NBA playoff game! the heat vs the pistons!! i was so happy. these are the best playoffs ever in the history of me liking basketball since grade 5.... and i have to miss them :( they don't really have sports bars or anything here, so they're hard to catch on tv.
yeah, and actually, last night i had a dream that i was coming back to toronto the next day. and i was so happy 'cause i could finally catch up on Lost, 24, THe Office, and Prison Break. dang. then i woke up.
yeah, and actually, last night i had a dream that i was coming back to toronto the next day. and i was so happy 'cause i could finally catch up on Lost, 24, THe Office, and Prison Break. dang. then i woke up.
may 24, 2006
today's our last day of the field course... well, our last day of doing work. we did a super long genetics/pcr lab today. i kind of like it, but it's just annoying 'cause there's times when you have 2 hour breaks in between (to wait for the reaction to happen), and our dorm is like 15 mins away. so today, in total, i walked 5 times back and forth. it's ok though. ya, so today's the last day of our field course. tomorrow, we're going to fly from here (Chongqing) back to Hangzhou (where Zhejiang university is). we're going to have a final dinner with all the profs and students from that university, and then the next day, we're off to shanghai!! so for the next week, i'm going to be touring in shanghai and beijing... then next friday, i'm flying to kunming to teach for a few weeks. pretty excited about that. my chinese friends here tell me how beautiful a city it is.. and that there's a rainforest there with lots of cool animals.... like elephants :p
ok, here's a funny story i forgot to mention last week. back when we were in Wuhan, Charles got up one morning and his stomach was really hurting him. at breakfast, he told Dr. Lougheed that he thought he had appendicitis (pfffft lifesci's). so they took him to a doctor, and he told them that he thought he had appendicitis... and so the doctor's thought he had appendicitis. so usually, with acute appendicitis, it hits you REALLY hard out of nowhere, and then you have to go to the hospital right away to get surgery. so Yuxiang had to take Charles all the way to beijing to a hospital there 'cause charles didn't want to get treated in Wuhan. So they went all the way to beijing, and when the doctor at the hospital did a check up, they found that all he had was a sore stomach. ok, not really a funny story for yuxiang, i think he was pretty pissed, but it's just funny that it happened to charles.. 'cause he's always the one driving the profs crazy. so yuxiang came back the day after, but charles didn't... he stayed in beijing ('cause his grandparents live there)... and last i heard, he was heading back to canada soon.
ok, so.. things have been going pretty great. can't believe the course is already over... and i can't believe my stay here isn't even half over yet. getting pretty home sick, but that's ok 'cause i keep reminding myself that i might not come back here for a really long time... so i should just make the time worth it.
ok, here's a funny story i forgot to mention last week. back when we were in Wuhan, Charles got up one morning and his stomach was really hurting him. at breakfast, he told Dr. Lougheed that he thought he had appendicitis (pfffft lifesci's). so they took him to a doctor, and he told them that he thought he had appendicitis... and so the doctor's thought he had appendicitis. so usually, with acute appendicitis, it hits you REALLY hard out of nowhere, and then you have to go to the hospital right away to get surgery. so Yuxiang had to take Charles all the way to beijing to a hospital there 'cause charles didn't want to get treated in Wuhan. So they went all the way to beijing, and when the doctor at the hospital did a check up, they found that all he had was a sore stomach. ok, not really a funny story for yuxiang, i think he was pretty pissed, but it's just funny that it happened to charles.. 'cause he's always the one driving the profs crazy. so yuxiang came back the day after, but charles didn't... he stayed in beijing ('cause his grandparents live there)... and last i heard, he was heading back to canada soon.
ok, so.. things have been going pretty great. can't believe the course is already over... and i can't believe my stay here isn't even half over yet. getting pretty home sick, but that's ok 'cause i keep reminding myself that i might not come back here for a really long time... so i should just make the time worth it.
Monday, May 22, 2006
may 22, 2006 (updated)
WHOAH, ok, it's been a long time since i've had access to the internet or to a phone! sorry to any of you who have e-mailed me recently... i'll try to reply asap (probably not today though). i'm sitting in my chinese friend's friend's dorm room right now. it's crazy, they have 5 ppl living in this one room :P anyways, lots of stuff has happened in the past week.. so i'll try to sum it up real quick right now.
Wednesday may 17, 2006
ok, so we travel for 5 hours from Wuhan to Yichang. but i think i'm getting used to the long bus rides now.. it didn't feel long at all. We visited a sturgeon "zoo" which was amazing. these stugeons can get up to 3 metres long!!! just imagine fishes that are MASSIVE. wow. they live in the yangtze river. anyways we got to see a live one which was pretty cool. we got back to the hotel and i had to do my seminar. i was a bit nervous, but luckily, i had already learned about what i was going to talk about in my seminar in a lecture last term.. so it went pretty good. after the seminar, i felt so good. so me and a bunch of other ppl went out for a drink and a snack... and man this area was so sketchy. we walked down the street and there were all these "hair salons" still open... and these stores had bright pink fluorescent lights eminating from them... with lots of girls just waiting around... haha. it was pretty sketchy. we ended up going to a restaurant. amy and jerry ordered a turtle to eat. it was actually pretty gross looking, but they said it tasted like chicken. oh, and to add to that... we got back to our rooms, and then our room got a phone call with a woman on the other line... but we couldn't understand anything 'cause neither of us speak chinese. haha..um, ya, i'll leave it at that.
Thursday may 18
- we did some surveys in Yichang.. just around the city... asking ppl what they thought the benefits and negative effects were of the Three Gorges Dam. then we visited the 3 gorges dam, which was amazing! man it's huge. we got to go up to the top of the dam too.. so we got a really good view of everything. after that, we got on our cruise at around 8 pm.. had dinner, then went to the top deck and just chilled there for a while.
Friday, may 19
- we got on a cruise boat the night before. today, we went to the 2nd gorge along the yangtze river. after the 2nd gorge, we got off the boat and got on a smaller one... and we toured the mini gorges.. and those were BEAUTIFUL. i took like 50 pictures... and then we got off to see this temple. we climbed all the way to the top of the mountain to get to this temple, and there wasn't really anything special about it. but the cool thing was that we found a waterfall to the right of the temple. so me and some other ppl trecked thru the woods to get there .. and it was so amazing... we stood at the base of the waterfall, and i could have stayed there for hours..but we had to rush back 'cause we were already late for our boat.. ahh i gotta post pics..
- at night, the cruise boat stopped at another tourist site. i can't remember the name of this place.. but it was something like "the white temple"... nothing too special about it. we just walked up a ton of stairs and got to see a pretty good view of the gorges. the thing i don't like with all these temples is that they're all reconstructed (e.g. re-made) because they were all destroyed during the cultural revolution. so, they don't look or feel as real... and the environment just feels like it's a tourist attraction because everywhere you go, people are trying to sell you things. you can't walk 5 minutes without someone getting into your face and nagging you to buy their stuff. even in the temples, there's tons of souvenir stores.
Saturday
- went to Fengdu (or Fongdu) and we were supposed to do surveys there as well. but when we got there, we found out they were doing tons of construction on the roads to get ready for the rising of the water level of the yangtze river. um... just to explain that a bit, one of the reasons why they built the three gorges dam was to generate hydroelectricity... and to get more power, you need more water passing thru the turbines. so they're raising the water level in the upstream regions of the yangtze to accomodate this. and since the water level is rising, many cities have to relocate to higher regions int he mountains... and Fengdu was one of these cities. they've already reaised the water level by a lot. for example, at the surface of the river, you can see the tops of bridges that used to connect the mountains together... right now, they're destroying bridges and building higher ones because the water level is supposed to go up another 25-30 m by august.
Sunday
- finally done the 3night/4 day cruise and we got to Chongqing. this city is massive... 32 million ppl in this place. dang. bigger than the population of all of canada. anyways, today was fun. this place eats super spicy food. at lunch, we went to this pretty fancy restaurant. i sat with the profs, so we the restaurant gave us a better lunch than everyone else. we drank this white wine that yuxiang calls "jet fuel".
- at dinner, we had hotpot.. authentic hotpot. and ... when i saw the hot pot, i almost peed in my pants. It looked like super hot, red bubbling lava... with some hot peppers and peppercorns floating on it... seriously, it was crazy. we had a bunch of raw stuff on our table (brain, intestines, kidneys, beef, fish, etc), and it was funny.. luke was like, "will, i've eaten everything on this trip.. but i think this is the first time i won't be able to try it". he thought that we just dipped the raw food into the hot stuff and ate it raw.
Monday
- in the morning, we had a long lecture by one of the profs here at southwestern university. then we had lunch with the vice-principal of the university and some other university heads (which was pretty neat). after that, went to a water treatment plant, the national history museum here in CQ, and then we went to speak to some fishermen.
- at night, we had an iron chef competition. it was really fun. we used a real restaurant kitchen. the stoves are crazy! they're not like our stoves in canada.... they're just big holes in the counter with gas coming out of them.. so when they're lit on fire, they sound like a jet engine. and they literally look like the back of the batmobile... they put a massive wok on top of it .. and yeah, it was cool. i cooked on it!! hahah. it was scary though... i was scared i would burn my face off. yeah, so they gave us our special ingredients we needed to cook with.. and my group was against luke and jenna's group. it was actually really fun.. all of us had a really good time.
Tuesday
- went to see the Baoding rock carvings. that was pretty neat. it was basically this canyon where there's tons of rock carvings.. pretty neat. after that, visited a fish farm that used hot springs as their water source to harvest tropical fish.
Wednesday may 17, 2006
ok, so we travel for 5 hours from Wuhan to Yichang. but i think i'm getting used to the long bus rides now.. it didn't feel long at all. We visited a sturgeon "zoo" which was amazing. these stugeons can get up to 3 metres long!!! just imagine fishes that are MASSIVE. wow. they live in the yangtze river. anyways we got to see a live one which was pretty cool. we got back to the hotel and i had to do my seminar. i was a bit nervous, but luckily, i had already learned about what i was going to talk about in my seminar in a lecture last term.. so it went pretty good. after the seminar, i felt so good. so me and a bunch of other ppl went out for a drink and a snack... and man this area was so sketchy. we walked down the street and there were all these "hair salons" still open... and these stores had bright pink fluorescent lights eminating from them... with lots of girls just waiting around... haha. it was pretty sketchy. we ended up going to a restaurant. amy and jerry ordered a turtle to eat. it was actually pretty gross looking, but they said it tasted like chicken. oh, and to add to that... we got back to our rooms, and then our room got a phone call with a woman on the other line... but we couldn't understand anything 'cause neither of us speak chinese. haha..um, ya, i'll leave it at that.
Thursday may 18
- we did some surveys in Yichang.. just around the city... asking ppl what they thought the benefits and negative effects were of the Three Gorges Dam. then we visited the 3 gorges dam, which was amazing! man it's huge. we got to go up to the top of the dam too.. so we got a really good view of everything. after that, we got on our cruise at around 8 pm.. had dinner, then went to the top deck and just chilled there for a while.
Friday, may 19
- we got on a cruise boat the night before. today, we went to the 2nd gorge along the yangtze river. after the 2nd gorge, we got off the boat and got on a smaller one... and we toured the mini gorges.. and those were BEAUTIFUL. i took like 50 pictures... and then we got off to see this temple. we climbed all the way to the top of the mountain to get to this temple, and there wasn't really anything special about it. but the cool thing was that we found a waterfall to the right of the temple. so me and some other ppl trecked thru the woods to get there .. and it was so amazing... we stood at the base of the waterfall, and i could have stayed there for hours..but we had to rush back 'cause we were already late for our boat.. ahh i gotta post pics..
- at night, the cruise boat stopped at another tourist site. i can't remember the name of this place.. but it was something like "the white temple"... nothing too special about it. we just walked up a ton of stairs and got to see a pretty good view of the gorges. the thing i don't like with all these temples is that they're all reconstructed (e.g. re-made) because they were all destroyed during the cultural revolution. so, they don't look or feel as real... and the environment just feels like it's a tourist attraction because everywhere you go, people are trying to sell you things. you can't walk 5 minutes without someone getting into your face and nagging you to buy their stuff. even in the temples, there's tons of souvenir stores.
Saturday
- went to Fengdu (or Fongdu) and we were supposed to do surveys there as well. but when we got there, we found out they were doing tons of construction on the roads to get ready for the rising of the water level of the yangtze river. um... just to explain that a bit, one of the reasons why they built the three gorges dam was to generate hydroelectricity... and to get more power, you need more water passing thru the turbines. so they're raising the water level in the upstream regions of the yangtze to accomodate this. and since the water level is rising, many cities have to relocate to higher regions int he mountains... and Fengdu was one of these cities. they've already reaised the water level by a lot. for example, at the surface of the river, you can see the tops of bridges that used to connect the mountains together... right now, they're destroying bridges and building higher ones because the water level is supposed to go up another 25-30 m by august.
Sunday
- finally done the 3night/4 day cruise and we got to Chongqing. this city is massive... 32 million ppl in this place. dang. bigger than the population of all of canada. anyways, today was fun. this place eats super spicy food. at lunch, we went to this pretty fancy restaurant. i sat with the profs, so we the restaurant gave us a better lunch than everyone else. we drank this white wine that yuxiang calls "jet fuel".
- at dinner, we had hotpot.. authentic hotpot. and ... when i saw the hot pot, i almost peed in my pants. It looked like super hot, red bubbling lava... with some hot peppers and peppercorns floating on it... seriously, it was crazy. we had a bunch of raw stuff on our table (brain, intestines, kidneys, beef, fish, etc), and it was funny.. luke was like, "will, i've eaten everything on this trip.. but i think this is the first time i won't be able to try it". he thought that we just dipped the raw food into the hot stuff and ate it raw.
Monday
- in the morning, we had a long lecture by one of the profs here at southwestern university. then we had lunch with the vice-principal of the university and some other university heads (which was pretty neat). after that, went to a water treatment plant, the national history museum here in CQ, and then we went to speak to some fishermen.
- at night, we had an iron chef competition. it was really fun. we used a real restaurant kitchen. the stoves are crazy! they're not like our stoves in canada.... they're just big holes in the counter with gas coming out of them.. so when they're lit on fire, they sound like a jet engine. and they literally look like the back of the batmobile... they put a massive wok on top of it .. and yeah, it was cool. i cooked on it!! hahah. it was scary though... i was scared i would burn my face off. yeah, so they gave us our special ingredients we needed to cook with.. and my group was against luke and jenna's group. it was actually really fun.. all of us had a really good time.
Tuesday
- went to see the Baoding rock carvings. that was pretty neat. it was basically this canyon where there's tons of rock carvings.. pretty neat. after that, visited a fish farm that used hot springs as their water source to harvest tropical fish.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
may 16, 2006
today, we met the president of the institute of hydrobiology... he gave us a talk on his research and what they do at the institute. it was pretty cool because he's a really really famous scientist - Ding Wang. anyways, that was cool.. and we checked out some museums and saw some live porpoises swimming in one of his research sites..
then we went out for dinner on our own.. so jerry, luke, and i went out with 3 chinese guys from our group.. and they took us to this local restaurant. it was pretty good food.. got 5 plates plus this awesome sticky/fried rice bowl.. for like.. $1.50. crazy. it's pretty cool 'cause each different region in china has different types of food.. and they prepare food differently.. so.. it was good to have some variety today.
- another thing i keep noticing but forget to post on this blog is how nearly every single piece of available land is used either for farming or for fish farming. it's pretty crazy... and you won't believe me until you see it yourself. just believe me when i say that it's rare to go on the highway for more than a kilometre without seeing a farm... or land being used for some type of agricultural purpose. even if it's just a little 5 foot wide by 10 m long strip of land beside the highway, they still grow stuff on it...
ok, tmw we have a long bus ride to another city.. then the day after, we're going on a cruise boat for a few days to get to another university... it'll be cool 'cause we're going to stop off and do fun things like dragonboating and having a cooking contest... seeing the three gorges dam.
-will
then we went out for dinner on our own.. so jerry, luke, and i went out with 3 chinese guys from our group.. and they took us to this local restaurant. it was pretty good food.. got 5 plates plus this awesome sticky/fried rice bowl.. for like.. $1.50. crazy. it's pretty cool 'cause each different region in china has different types of food.. and they prepare food differently.. so.. it was good to have some variety today.
- another thing i keep noticing but forget to post on this blog is how nearly every single piece of available land is used either for farming or for fish farming. it's pretty crazy... and you won't believe me until you see it yourself. just believe me when i say that it's rare to go on the highway for more than a kilometre without seeing a farm... or land being used for some type of agricultural purpose. even if it's just a little 5 foot wide by 10 m long strip of land beside the highway, they still grow stuff on it...
ok, tmw we have a long bus ride to another city.. then the day after, we're going on a cruise boat for a few days to get to another university... it'll be cool 'cause we're going to stop off and do fun things like dragonboating and having a cooking contest... seeing the three gorges dam.
-will
Monday, May 15, 2006
may 15
yesterday, we took a really early flight to get to Wuhan... but the flight was pretty quick - only about one hour. we're now staying at this really nice 4 star hotel... our room is so nice.. and the lobby looks really fancy. we sort of had the day off yesterday 'cause the last couple days were really intense for us... so me and a few other ppl decided to go sight-seeing. the bus dropped us off in downtown Wuhan. we decided to go to this place called the yellow crane pavillion, so we took a ferry boat over the Yangtze river to get there. it was pretty neat. it's this really old chinese-looking temple/tower .. i can't really describe it, i have to show a pic. it had a really nice view of the city..then the girls wanted to go shopping, so we shopped for a few hours. after that, i was dead tired so we took a bus back to the hotel and that was my day.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
May 14, 2006
so, just finished a really really long day. we did a water quality analysis lab from 8:30 - 4:30 .. with a half hour break for lunch.. and then a bunch of us guys played 3 on 3 on the outdoor courts on campus. the courts are soo nice!! they have two main outdoor courts... with about 20 nets at each place. they're always really packed too... we were lucky to find an empty court. anyways, it was good times... and then we had to come back to the lab to hear 2 more seminars tonight..
it was funny.. after the seminars, Yuxiang was briefing us on what was going to happen tomorrow for our flight to Wuhan... and then he started to talk about returning our room keys and bke keys. then he started to get really serious and told us NOT to sell our bikes.. because apparently, Charles (for those of you who go to Queen's, you probably know this guy) sold his bike for 20 RMB, the equivalent of 3 dollars... we couldn't stop laughing, but yuxiang was pretty mad because Zhejiang university paid like 250 RMB for each bike... and he just sold it. anyways, charles is quite the character... there's just tons of stories i could say... like the other day when we did a habitat assessment, for no reason, he just started throwing rocks/small boulders straight into the lake beneath him... and he did this for like 15 minutes.. Dr. Lougheed was going crazy. and then during our labs, he keeps touching things he shouldn't be touching and taking things that he shouldn't be taking... I find it hilarious, but other ppl are getting a bit impatient :P haha, here's my last story about charles... so we've had two 2-hour shopping times so far.. and we always walk as a big group.. but charles ALWAYS runs ahead of the group (like until we can't see him anymore)... and he runs from store to store.. and always comes back with tons of stuff. anyways, the other day he bought this pink t-shirt .. witha huge "v-neck".. that went down to like the middle of his chest... lol.. it's great!! and he wears it all the time.. it's so funny. all the chinese students keep asking if it's a girl's shirt... anyways, it's funnier than it actually sounds..
ok, so for the next 10 days.. we're going to be in Wuhan.. and at SouthWestern University.... doing different things.. going on a cruise boat (where i have to give my seminar!).. i'll try to keep this blog updated...
oh i just thought of something i should add (to remind myself of my experiences here..).. the washrooms here are generally pretty nice.. in most places, you'll be able to find a toilet seat.. but sometimes when we have to make a washroom break during our trips on the bus, we have to stop off at gas stations to go to the washroom... and the toilets are literally just troughs that you pee and poo in... the other day, i walked in.. and there was a guy right there pooing in front of me... i idn't know what to do.. but.. i just went to pee beside him anywyas..
ok that's it for now.
it was funny.. after the seminars, Yuxiang was briefing us on what was going to happen tomorrow for our flight to Wuhan... and then he started to talk about returning our room keys and bke keys. then he started to get really serious and told us NOT to sell our bikes.. because apparently, Charles (for those of you who go to Queen's, you probably know this guy) sold his bike for 20 RMB, the equivalent of 3 dollars... we couldn't stop laughing, but yuxiang was pretty mad because Zhejiang university paid like 250 RMB for each bike... and he just sold it. anyways, charles is quite the character... there's just tons of stories i could say... like the other day when we did a habitat assessment, for no reason, he just started throwing rocks/small boulders straight into the lake beneath him... and he did this for like 15 minutes.. Dr. Lougheed was going crazy. and then during our labs, he keeps touching things he shouldn't be touching and taking things that he shouldn't be taking... I find it hilarious, but other ppl are getting a bit impatient :P haha, here's my last story about charles... so we've had two 2-hour shopping times so far.. and we always walk as a big group.. but charles ALWAYS runs ahead of the group (like until we can't see him anymore)... and he runs from store to store.. and always comes back with tons of stuff. anyways, the other day he bought this pink t-shirt .. witha huge "v-neck".. that went down to like the middle of his chest... lol.. it's great!! and he wears it all the time.. it's so funny. all the chinese students keep asking if it's a girl's shirt... anyways, it's funnier than it actually sounds..
ok, so for the next 10 days.. we're going to be in Wuhan.. and at SouthWestern University.... doing different things.. going on a cruise boat (where i have to give my seminar!).. i'll try to keep this blog updated...
oh i just thought of something i should add (to remind myself of my experiences here..).. the washrooms here are generally pretty nice.. in most places, you'll be able to find a toilet seat.. but sometimes when we have to make a washroom break during our trips on the bus, we have to stop off at gas stations to go to the washroom... and the toilets are literally just troughs that you pee and poo in... the other day, i walked in.. and there was a guy right there pooing in front of me... i idn't know what to do.. but.. i just went to pee beside him anywyas..
ok that's it for now.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
May 13. 2006
argh... internet still isn't letting me upload pictures onto this blog... i tried uploading them to yahoo photo, but that didn't work either.. i'll try imagestation...
gmail still isn't working.. and only today, i've been able to access my hotmail... so sorry to those who have e-mailed me and i haven't e-mailed them back. but qlink works.. so if you want to e-mail me, send it to 3wc3@qlink.queensu.ca
so, for the past 2 days, we've been on the other side of Hangzhou... Across the Thousand Island lakes. These islands were formed 50 years ago... originally, the land was just a bunch of mountains... and ppl lived in the areas below the mountains. but the government wanted to build a dam, so they evacuated all the villages in taht area... and built a dam.. because the dam was built, water just "accumulated" on one side of the dam... and the peaks of the mountains formed the "islands". to give you guys an idea of what a dam can do... one side of the dam is 70 metres higher than the other side... which is a huge difference.
ok, so 2 days ago we went inside this dam and got a tour. after that, we got on a boat to cruise over the thousand island lakes. we also had lunch on the boat. then, we got to hangzhou.. some of us dissected fish ... and then we had seminars at night. the funny thing was that we had to do the seminars in a karaoke bar... and so we could hear really bad chinese ppl singing in the room beside us the whole night.
After the semniars, we were just chilling in the karaoke bar... and then terrence and luke just picked up the mic and began singing "endless love"... haha.. then the song frm the titanic. soon, a bunch of us just stayed and sang backstreet boys ('get down', 'as long as you love me') and old school pop songs from M2M, etc... it was really funny and we ended up staying there for 2 and a half hours..
yesterday, we did a lot of habitat assessments and water sampling... so.. it was pretty boring. but at night, we went to a real tea house. it was cool because all you do is pay for your tea... and they give you a huge buffet of food/snacks (e.g. dumplings, french fries, dim sum stuff, candies, ice cream, fruits, vegetables).. and the place was really nice too..
ok that's it for now. for these next 2 days i'll be here on campus ... so hopefully i'll figure out a way to post pics!!
-will
gmail still isn't working.. and only today, i've been able to access my hotmail... so sorry to those who have e-mailed me and i haven't e-mailed them back. but qlink works.. so if you want to e-mail me, send it to 3wc3@qlink.queensu.ca
so, for the past 2 days, we've been on the other side of Hangzhou... Across the Thousand Island lakes. These islands were formed 50 years ago... originally, the land was just a bunch of mountains... and ppl lived in the areas below the mountains. but the government wanted to build a dam, so they evacuated all the villages in taht area... and built a dam.. because the dam was built, water just "accumulated" on one side of the dam... and the peaks of the mountains formed the "islands". to give you guys an idea of what a dam can do... one side of the dam is 70 metres higher than the other side... which is a huge difference.
ok, so 2 days ago we went inside this dam and got a tour. after that, we got on a boat to cruise over the thousand island lakes. we also had lunch on the boat. then, we got to hangzhou.. some of us dissected fish ... and then we had seminars at night. the funny thing was that we had to do the seminars in a karaoke bar... and so we could hear really bad chinese ppl singing in the room beside us the whole night.
After the semniars, we were just chilling in the karaoke bar... and then terrence and luke just picked up the mic and began singing "endless love"... haha.. then the song frm the titanic. soon, a bunch of us just stayed and sang backstreet boys ('get down', 'as long as you love me') and old school pop songs from M2M, etc... it was really funny and we ended up staying there for 2 and a half hours..
yesterday, we did a lot of habitat assessments and water sampling... so.. it was pretty boring. but at night, we went to a real tea house. it was cool because all you do is pay for your tea... and they give you a huge buffet of food/snacks (e.g. dumplings, french fries, dim sum stuff, candies, ice cream, fruits, vegetables).. and the place was really nice too..
ok that's it for now. for these next 2 days i'll be here on campus ... so hopefully i'll figure out a way to post pics!!
-will
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Monday...May 9
so now i'm in my friend's hotel room. he's got a computer with internet accesss... and it's so much better than the internet cafe i was in 15 minutes ago. ok, so here's some pics...
crap, the pics won't upload.. i'll have to try again later. ok here's just another update that i remembered after looking thru my pics..
- we had a sports night on saturday. me, jerry, and luke played 3 on 3 ... we lost our first game in like, 1 minute. it was up to 5. so ... that sucked, and i was mad. cause one of the chinese guys looked like he was laughing at me. so ... eventually, we got back on the court, and we won like 10 games in a row against different teams... it's not really something i can brag about though, 'cause everyone there is really skinny.. and we were taller than everyone there. and.. on top of that, luke's probably weighs twice as much as any of them. haha.
- we went to an aquaculture (a "farm" for alligators, turtles, fish.. crabs, shrimp) and it was CRAZY. they farm them in these rooms at like 45-50 degrees celsius... we went into these farms.. and i swear.. after 10 seconds, the sweat just starts pouring out... i could barely stand it in there for 5 minutes... and argh, wish i could show pics... anyways, it was cool! 'cause these animals are ectotherms.. so, by increasing the heat by that much.. it will increase their growth rate.. for example, alligators take 3 years to grow to adults..or reproduce.... but by doing it this way, they cut it down to 8 months..
anyways, that's it for now.
crap, the pics won't upload.. i'll have to try again later. ok here's just another update that i remembered after looking thru my pics..
- we had a sports night on saturday. me, jerry, and luke played 3 on 3 ... we lost our first game in like, 1 minute. it was up to 5. so ... that sucked, and i was mad. cause one of the chinese guys looked like he was laughing at me. so ... eventually, we got back on the court, and we won like 10 games in a row against different teams... it's not really something i can brag about though, 'cause everyone there is really skinny.. and we were taller than everyone there. and.. on top of that, luke's probably weighs twice as much as any of them. haha.
- we went to an aquaculture (a "farm" for alligators, turtles, fish.. crabs, shrimp) and it was CRAZY. they farm them in these rooms at like 45-50 degrees celsius... we went into these farms.. and i swear.. after 10 seconds, the sweat just starts pouring out... i could barely stand it in there for 5 minutes... and argh, wish i could show pics... anyways, it was cool! 'cause these animals are ectotherms.. so, by increasing the heat by that much.. it will increase their growth rate.. for example, alligators take 3 years to grow to adults..or reproduce.... but by doing it this way, they cut it down to 8 months..
anyways, that's it for now.
Monday May 8, 2006
ok, well, i'm at an internet cafe right now, and it sucks because i can't check my e-mail! they have some kind of censorship over here. anyways... here's an upate on what i did. unfortunately, i can't put up any pics 'cause i can't get the USB thing to work on this computer.
Sunday
- Visited the Grand Canal and Tai Lake..
- At Tai Lake, we did a habitat assessment... meaning, we described the environment of where we sampled. it was pretty cool, but the only thing was that we spent soo long getting there. took about 4 hours to fnially get there, and then it took 3 hours to get back..
-
Monday
- on our way to Zhoushan Island...
- we stopped off at Shaoxing and took a boat ride in a canal, it was cool. i'll upload some pics soon. We ate lunch at a really expensive-looking restaurant... good food. tried their local wine .. they call it "cooking wine". I was sitting with the profs (Yuxiang and Steve) and some other chinese profs... so we had quite a few bottles of it. i ended up sitting beside steve, and he kept filling my glass.. the stuff tasted like soya sauce! he kept caling me "urbane"... still don't know what that means, even though he explained it to me. and now i call him "dapper/sartarian"... gotta look up those words too.
- so we had to stop in Ningbo for the night because we were having some bad weather... so the profs didn't want us taking the ferry to Zhoushan Island... the hotel is SO NICE and they have a real toilet! again, i'll post some pics later. we have all this food and free socks/underwear in there too..haha. what else... oh ya, tomorrow we might nto be able to go to the island again because there's supposed to be a thunderstorm... and the profs don't awnt us to go 'cause if ther is a storm... we might get stuck on the island for a few days... which is not what they want. but there's still a ton of stuff to see here in the city... we're going to check out some fish farms and take samplse by the ocean shore... sounsd cool.
- oh ya, and today we also went to this ancient chinese library... err, i'll post pics later.
so, that's my update. e-mail me and let me know what's up with you guys!
Sunday
- Visited the Grand Canal and Tai Lake..
- At Tai Lake, we did a habitat assessment... meaning, we described the environment of where we sampled. it was pretty cool, but the only thing was that we spent soo long getting there. took about 4 hours to fnially get there, and then it took 3 hours to get back..
-
Monday
- on our way to Zhoushan Island...
- we stopped off at Shaoxing and took a boat ride in a canal, it was cool. i'll upload some pics soon. We ate lunch at a really expensive-looking restaurant... good food. tried their local wine .. they call it "cooking wine". I was sitting with the profs (Yuxiang and Steve) and some other chinese profs... so we had quite a few bottles of it. i ended up sitting beside steve, and he kept filling my glass.. the stuff tasted like soya sauce! he kept caling me "urbane"... still don't know what that means, even though he explained it to me. and now i call him "dapper/sartarian"... gotta look up those words too.
- so we had to stop in Ningbo for the night because we were having some bad weather... so the profs didn't want us taking the ferry to Zhoushan Island... the hotel is SO NICE and they have a real toilet! again, i'll post some pics later. we have all this food and free socks/underwear in there too..haha. what else... oh ya, tomorrow we might nto be able to go to the island again because there's supposed to be a thunderstorm... and the profs don't awnt us to go 'cause if ther is a storm... we might get stuck on the island for a few days... which is not what they want. but there's still a ton of stuff to see here in the city... we're going to check out some fish farms and take samplse by the ocean shore... sounsd cool.
- oh ya, and today we also went to this ancient chinese library... err, i'll post pics later.
so, that's my update. e-mail me and let me know what's up with you guys!
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Saturday May 7, 2006
so today, we were supposed to go on a boat and cruise along the Grand Canal to take some water samples, but unfortunately, a member of our group (Jenna), got into a little accident… She was sitting on the back of a bike… and she accidentally fell off, broke her tooth and got a few huge gashes in her upper and lower lips… so, Yuxiang and Steve (our profs) had to stay with her and get things sorted out at the hospital. She’s okay though, her lips are just really swollen. Instead of going to the Grand Canal, we had a lecture on conservation genetics… I think we’re going to go there tomorrow though…
So I included some more pics from yesterday. I hope this turns out ok.. I actually can’t go to the “will-chen.blogspot.com” website.. I can only access it thru my “blogspot manager” when I sign in… it’s weird. I think they have 2 types of internet here.. a domestic one and an international one.. and the domestic one blocks certain websites… anwyays, I hope everything works out.
Just to describe these pics…
- my roomie Luke with a coin.. if you put a coin on this globe and it sticks, it means you’ll be rich.
- Us taking samples from the Xi Xi Wetlands…it rained a lot that day…
- Ate this very famous dish in the Lo Wei Lo Restaurant… You take the fat off of this huge piece of meat, put it into a piece of dough, and eat it like a sandwhich… MmMMMmmm…
- My group that I toured with in Hangzhou… Yuxiang and Steve didn’t go with us though.
Thursday May ... 2006
this is the first time i've been able to get onto a computer. and it's kind of hard to navitage 'cause everything's in chinese.. let me just try to do a quick update on what i've done so far.
- the plane ride wasn't so bad. slept most of it. when we got to shanghai, we took the bullet train, and it was CRAZY fast - 431 km/hour !! i attached a picture of it. first thing i noticed was that they're doing some serious construction everywhere (literally). where we would build one apartment, they build 10 replicas side by side.. it's crazy. here in hangzhou, on the university campus, they're building like 20 new residences (that look identical) right beside each other.. ya, so, we're here to see how china's rapidly development affects the environment.. and.. you can already see that.
- yesterday was pretty fun. they bought us these new bikes to ride around on campus. the campus is massive... probably as big as the York Campus.. but sooo much nicer. everything is so clean... there's always ppl sweepign the streets... -in the afternoon, each one of us went with our partners to downtown hangzhou by ourselves... 'cause they didn't want us to stay sheltered on campus. so it was cool 'cause there's all these stories that go with every building in china... and they know all of them. went to a botanical garden and had tea in the park... and then for dinner, we went to a restaurant called Lo Wei Lo for our welcome banquet. apparently, it's the most famous restaurant in the city
- today, we went to a wetland marsh and did some field work.. took samples from different sites..
anyways, bottom line is, it's really cool being here. can't believe i'm in china. i have way more to say, but i don't have much time 'caues this lab closes in 20 minutes! i want to upload my pics somewhere, but again, i can't really navigate in internet explorer 'cause eveyrthing's in chinese. so i just gotta get my partner here with me to show me what to do.
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