Yongding and the Tulou Earth Buildings

On the second day of my trip, I did a day trip to Yongding, which is a rural area about two hours outside of Xiamen. I was more nervous about this trip than any of the other places I went. Since it is in the countryside there would be few English speakers and I had very little information about what to do once I arrived. To plan the trip I had been using a combination of my Lonely Planet book, www.wikitravel.com, and any local resources or tourist maps available when I would arrive in a city. For most places, that was plenty, but for Yongding all I had was the name of the city and some basic information. It was really just a sidebar in my book with no maps or anything too useful. Traveling alone there with shaky Chinese skills was certainly going to be a challenge. The main draw of Yongding is what they call tulou, "earth buildings", or Hakka houses. The tulou were mostly built by the Hakka tribe, which still live there today. The tulou are basically large circular structures with an outer ring with rooms where the residents live and an interior circle that is a common area. They are literally built of out "earth" or, according to wikipedia, earth, sand, and lime. The tulou contained an entire community and often were essentially self-sufficient, with some crops, livestock, wells, and even temples all inside. This would allow the residents to live their lives without leaving the safety of the tulou. Since a lot of the tulou are around 300-500 years old, it is easy to imagine how this type of protective structure would be popular in the country that sealed itself in with the Great Wall. While the tulou can vary in size, the largest can hold over 600 people, so you can imagine how large they can be. Without giving away the ending of the story, here are some pictures to give you an idea of what they look like.

Tulou from Outside

Tulou from Inside

Well inside Tulou

Livestock in Tulou

Cooking and Cleaning

Family Eating in their Room

Temple inside Tulou

Taking the bus to the countryside from Xiamen was an interesting experience. I have not spent too much time in the countryside and you definitely start to see a lifestyle there that does not exist in the big cities in China. There were some other foreigners on the bus in the beginning, but they had gotten off at an earlier stop than I did, so I was basically left alone to fend for myself. The bus finally arrived in a small city center and the remaining people all got out. It seems everyone besides me knew where they were going and immediately dispersed. Soon I was left alone in this small city with no map or any clear signs of where to go, not even in Chinese. I started walking down a road that looked like it might have something, but to be honest, I really had no idea. As very few foreigners go to this area, the local people were staring at me even more than normal in China. They seemed to be quite shocked to see the presence of a "Laowai", or foreigner, walking confusedly down the dirt road. The people all seemed to congregate in small groups outside, often around a small fire since it was a little bit cold that day. There were chickens, cows, and other livestock just wandering around. I would have to say at this point I was probably further outside of my comfort zone than I have ever been. There are definitely more seasoned travelers than myself who have been in a lot crazier situations, and I found at as the day went on how friendly of a place Yongding is and how many Chinese tourists go there, but in those first moments I really had no idea what was going on and I wondered what I had gotten myself into. After a short while walking, a local guy on his motorcycle pulled up and asked if he could help me out. As the roads were pretty narrow and rough, most everyone was riding on motorcycles in this area. The man had a map and said he'd take me to some tulou for a small price. Now, I'm not normally in the habit of going with strange men who ask me if I want to take a ride on their motorcycle, but in this situation, it seemed I had no choice. So I hopped on and he took me to a group of smaller tulou. They were definitely interesting to see in person and since this was a less frequented tulou, some of the people living there were again pretty surprised to see me there.

Tulou from the Top Floor

Tulou Side

Some Dude

After that first group, the driver offered to drive to some of the better ones. I ended up riding with him the whole day, for around 6 hours or more. The only fee he required was around $25, which is probably more than he normally gets. To be honest, I couldn't have gotten luckier with my driver. He was very good-natured and spoke quickly in a series of staccatos. He basically served as my tour guide and helped me all day long, even helped to buy my bus ticket back home since I had no idea where to get it. I could tell he was somewhat happy to be driving a foreigner and took any occasion to show me off to his friends or other Chinese people we met.

Riding on the Motorcycle My Driver

There was a traffic jam through the center of town, so my driver took me on a shortcut and we stopped by his tulou. He beamed with pride with a big smile on his face when he pointed out which tulou was his. His tulou is unique in that it's a square instead of a circle. While he was taking care of a few things, I chatted with an old women living there who was saying how her room was very large and let me take a look. She asked what country I was from and then started listing out all the countries she knew. The room was actually relatively small and I didn't even see a bed around. I didn't know whether to pity her for her humble situation or to feel jealous about how happy and proud she is with what she has, when I need an ever increasing quality of life to be happy it seems.

Driver's Tulou

Tulou Hall

Old Woman's Room

Child in a Crib

One of the highlights of all the tulou is the Chengqi tulou. It is the largest, with over 400 rooms and as mentioned could house over 600 people. It was pretty loaded with Chinese tourists and had a market inside selling souvenirs, but was still really great to see.

Chengqi Tulou (World Heritage Site)

Inside Chengqi

Chengqi Side

While driving between the different groups of tulou, I was able to see a lot of the countryside. Since it is China, even in rural areas there are still a lot of people walking around in the villages and farms. They had a lot of terraced farms and old buildings everywhere. While driving around, people were all quite curious and were always staring at me. As often happens in China, the people will say "Hello!" to you wherever you go, then run away shyly, since they're a little unsure about foreigners and that's all the English they know. It's so funny sometimes to see Chinese mother's advising their kids to say hello when they see me.

Larger Village along River

Terraced Farms

Probably the best tulou grouping is Tianluokeng cluster. Basically, there is a group of five or so tulou altogether on a hillside in the midst of terraced farms. There is really a dramatic view from above and below.

Tianluokeng from Above Tianluokeng and Me

Tianluokeng

Tianluokeng from Below

My Driver and I

With very few foreigners in the Yongding area, there were, of course, a lot of Chinese people trying to talk with me. Normally, when I said that I am able to speak a little Chinese, they would get so excited and start speaking so quickly that it was impossible for me to understand. A lot of them wanted to take pictures with me, which is another pretty common thing in China. After this trip I have a very simple barometer to determine how many foreigners have penetrated the area. It's based on the number of people staring at you and how many people ask you to take pictures with them. In Hangzhou, I've only had people ask to take pictures with me two or three times after living here around six months, but in Yongding in one day I had at least 10 people ask. I sometimes asked them to take a picture for me as well.

Some new "pengyoumen (friends)"

At the end of the day, the driver asked me to eat dinner with his family. It was pretty interesting, but once they started speaking the local dialect, I couldn't understand anything. They poured some concoction from a Sprite bottle that ended up being some kind of moonshine as far as I can tell. Try turning down some people as eager to please as they were, even with the obvious health concerns of drinking some mysterious alcohol from a sprite bottle. They invited me to stay the night and had a nice room for guests that even had a western style toilet! It is possible to stay inside of the tulou and I wanted to try that, but I ended up staying in the guest room that was in another building as to not disappoint my driver. I know this blog ended up to be pretty long, but I wanted to write as much as I could remember since it was one of the most interesting travel experiences I have had. To be honest, there are a limited number of years left for people to still have a similar experience. Currently, there are still a fair number of people living in the tulou, but with each passing year there are fewer and fewer. Most have lived in the tulou their whole lives and don't really know any other way of living, but as the older generations go away so will the lifestyle. These days, young people will leave the villages to go to the big cities for more opportunities and who can blame them. While the living situation is interesting, I don't know a lot of people who would be content living that lifestyle the rest of their lives. Most of the people remaining are old people and young children, since as the parents will be so busy working in the cities, the grandparents will watch the children until they are old enough to go to school. It is truly one of the last generations to live that lifestyle. I imagine that in the future it will turn into a purely tourist attraction and you can already see tourism has cleared out most native people at the most popular tulou. Probably it will end up being like some of the pioneer villages, mining towns, or old colonial towns we have in the US, where people dress up in old clothes and pretend to live the lifestyle, but in reality it's just a show. It is sad, but as they say, there is no progress without change. Now I will step off my soapbox. To lighten the mood, here are a few more pictures of Chinese people doing what Chinese people do:

It is Necessary to Use an Athletic Stance to Take Pictures

Young Boy Lighting a Firecracker with a Lit Cigarette

Some More Enthusiastic Photographers

For those interested, here is a link to all my pictures on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/Tulou

Chinese New Year 2009 and Xiamen

Each year in China during their New Year, or Spring Festival, there is a massive migration of people leaving the cities to go back to their home towns or villages. Chinese New Year is roughly comparable to Christmas and New Year thrown together. It's a very family oriented holiday, with the giving of gifts, eating a lot of food, and other things similar to Christmas. At the same time, it is the celebration of a new year with a lot of fireworks and other celebrations. Normally, everyone in China has one or two weeks off of work for the holiday. Since Hangzhou is a relatively large city with a large migrant population, the city was kind of deserted at the beginning of the holiday. All day and night, the people that remained were setting off fireworks all over the city. There wasn't a centralized park or square where a big fireworks show would take place, but just individuals setting off fireworks. It was pretty non-stop and I would often get woken up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a huge string of fireworks.

Hangzhou Fireworks

Hangzhou Fireworks

I decided to do some traveling during the holiday, despite some people advising me that it can be too crowded during this time of year. I figured I would travel for about 10 or 11 days. Without too much planning, I made a tentative itinerary and bought a train ticket out of Hangzhou without knowing for sure if I would be able to find hotels and all the trains or buses I would need. I was also going to be traveling alone since most my friends either had plans with their significant others or preferred not to travel during the heavily traveled New Year period. I've never traveled alone and there were definitely some questions about how the trip would go, but I thought I might as well give it a chance. Before I go on, I should mention that the next 5+ blog posts will be about this trip, so hopefully it doesn't get repetitive for my loyal readers. I decided to head to southern China as the weather would be more favorable there. The first city would be Xiamen (pronounced roughly "sheeah men"). I took a night train from Hangzhou to Xiamen. The train wasn't too crowded, but since I was pretty much the only foreigner, everyone wanted to talk with me. It was a really good chance for me to practice my Chinese as most of the people spoke no English, so I had no choice but to speak Chinese. I would notice people crowding around and listening to my conversations, even if they weren't participating. Riding on the night trains probably isn't recommended for the tall or non-Chinese speakers. I'm sure that it could be done, but the beds are probably only comfortable for someone who is a max of 5'10", unless you can sleep tucked in or don't mind your feet hanging over the edge of the beds. At the train stations it's not guaranteed they will have English signs or speak much English, so it could be pretty frustrating if you spoke no Chinese at all. However, I do know some people who will have a Chinese friend or the people at their hotel write some Chinese characters on a paper so they can buy their train tickets or things like that. There were a lot of young people or young families on the train, since a lot of them will be going back to their parents and grandparents in the countryside. All of the families had gifts and, in a way, it seemed it was almost reverse as Christmas with the kids bringing the parents a bunch of gifts from the city for the New Year, instead of the parents giving the kids all the gifts. Another thing I noticed was that Chinese people travel light. I definitely had the biggest pack and I felt that I was packing light with my smaller rolling luggage, but most Chinese people just had a small bag. Upon arriving in Xiamen, I immediately went to Gulang Yu, which is this island next to the city. I found a hotel there and then took the ferry back to Xiamen to see the sights that day. For the most part I would say that Xiamen is a typical Chinese city. It has a nice Buddhist temple, a pedestrian shopping street, and some other sites. The majority of medium-sized to large Chinese cities have the same.

Dragon in Park Temple Garden

Temple Garden Buddhist Temple

The cool thing about most Buddhist temples in China, though, is that they're often built on mountains and you can hike to the top of the mountain and see several smaller temples along the way. Unfortunately, it started to rain a little, so it wasn't too clear at the top. On the way up, this temple had an interesting collection of small Buddha statues. I overheard an English tour guide say that it's considered disrespectful to throw away old statues, so people will bring them here on the mountain.

Statue Collection View from the Top

That night for dinner, I went into a random restaurant in the main pedestrian street without really knowing what kind of food they had. After I looked at the menu, I quickly realized that it was a Chinese version of a western restaurant. The menu had entrees such as a steak, spaghetti, and a fried egg all together on one plate. If that's not western food, I don't know what is! I have to say that it was close to the worst food I've had in China.

Pedestrian Street

Xiamen from Across the Bay

While the first day exploring Xiamen was a pretty standard day, fortunately there are some interesting day trips that are possible from the city. Gulang Yu, where I was staying, also has some interesting sites. So, in summary, the best is yet to come. I will leave you with a couple people of Chinese people doing what they do:

Old Man Doing Tai Chi

In the mornings, old Chinese people are always in public squares and parks doing some kind of exercise. Normally, it's tai chi or "shadow boxing". Basically, it's a set sequence of slow martial art moves. The position of the legs, feet, arms, hands, and everything is set and the transitions are very important, as far as I understand. I think one full sequence takes about 20-30 minutes and you have to memorize each position and transition. Maybe some day I will learn.

Chinese Men Chilling

Here are some more pics of Xiamen: http://picasaweb.google.com/wallred10/Xiamen

Hiking Near the Tea Fields

Lately in Hangzhou the weather has been quite warm, reaching the high 50s and low 60s during the peak of the day. It was colder before and I think it's going to get back down to the 30s and 40s later, but for right now, the weather has been great. When I was living in Chicago, we'd get about 5 days all year with weather this nice, so I figured I should take advantage of the sun and warmth while I can. One of my Chinese friends named Master knew about a hike that takes you around the tea fields and ends up at a university's campus in Hangzhou, so last weekend we went. It was a relatively short hike, but it was cool because I had never seen the tea fields so close. What I think was most interesting about the tea fields is that they're grown on the hillside on terraces, which made them look pretty cool. Apparently Hangzhou's climate is very favorable for green tea leaves, which is why the Longjing tea is one of the best in China. Because it never gets too cold in Hangzhou, my friend said they are able to harvest the tea leaves twice a year. It surprised me, though, how much like a normal bush or shrub the tea plants looked. I honestly could see the tea plants being in someone's front yard in American suburbia. But then again, my eye is very untrained in horticulture and I am probably dead wrong. Here are some of views we saw:

Tea Fields

View From Above

Master

Besides the tea fields, we were also able to see some of the surrounding hills of Hangzhou. Hangzhou definitely has some of the best nature of the mid-size Chinese cities. By mid-sized, of course I mean about 6.7 million people in the total urban area (although that number is a bit hazy depending on how they measure it). By China's standards, though, that is not even in the top 20 largest cities. The hike we went on is only a 30-45 minute bus ride away, so most of the hills, gardens, etc. are very accessible from the city. While there are not what I'd consider mountains in Hangzhou, it's still nice to be able to do some hiking.

Hills Near Hangzhou

Hills Near Hangzhou

As you can see from the pictures, many things are still green during the winter, although a lot of the trees have lost their leaves. I'm not sure if it was a foggy day or if that is pollution floating around, but Hangzhou normally has pretty good air quality. After we finished the hike, we got some excellent lunch at the university campus, then walked to the big river just outside of Hangzhou. The river connects eventually with the ocean and my friend said that every year, due to some natural occurrences with the ocean tide, the current of the river reverses and a huge wave goes down the river. Everybody gathers to watch it and somebody always gets injured watching at some of the places closer to the ocean where the wave is biggest. I'm pretty curious to check it out.

The River

There were also a lot of people fishing in the river. Each person would have anywhere from 5-20 fishing poles placed just a few feet apart. Mostly the guys seemed to just be sitting around and I have a hard time believing that they catch many fish from that river. They must, otherwise they wouldn't fish there. The water definitely doesn't seem too clean, though. I hope that's not the fish I am eating at the street vendors here in Hangzhou. They have these fish grilled on kebab sticks with this spicy seasoning that is so good. I suppose sometimes you have to sacrifice dubious cleanliness for delicious street food.

Fishing in this River?

It's always nice to see some new areas around Hangzhou and there are still a lot more places I haven't seen. Come spring time I'll have to see as much as I can before it's 95 degrees and extremely humid. By that time I'll turn back into sweaty foreigner mode and will be confined to A/C controlled buildings. (By the way, being an extremely intelligent person with a computer engineering degree, I just noticed there is this feature that allows me to make my pictures "Large" instead of "Medium". Who woulda thunk it? Surely this is the bleeding edge of technology. It only took me around 20 blog posts to figure this out. D'oh! By increasing my photo size, this should boost the effectiveness of my blog in conveying information to the public at large by at least 57%.)

An Interesting Massage

This past weekend I went out with a few Chinese friends. After the night was pretty much over, one of them suggested that we go get a foot massage. The massage places normally stay open pretty late and they are also quite cheap, at least compared to massages in the US. A 90 minute foot massage, including some tea and fruit, cost a little less than $10 (60 RMB). I've had a few massages in China, but don't get them that often. However, when invited, I like to go. The masseuses are normally girls in the 18-30 age range. It also seems that a lot of times most of the people getting the massages are men. Perhaps this is no coincidence as I have heard that some massage parlors offer multiple "services," if you catch my drift. Fortunately, though, the place we went was one of the more well-known parlors in Hangzhou and was legitimate. Normally when they give a foot massage, they'll first bring out some boiling hot water for you to soak your feet in. After that they'll spend considerable time massaging your feet. For the unaccustomed, foot massages can be pretty ticklish, but after you've had a couple, they're pretty good. Don't underestimate these skinny girls, though, as they will give you some deep tissue massages that will leave you sore the next day. After they finish with the feet, sometimes they'll do your back for a short time. However, this time they presented us with an interesting alternative. Basically, they have these glass globes that are a little larger than the size of a baseball. They will light a fire inside the globes to make it hot and then suction the globe to your back, which indeed is a little painful. After the globes are firmly suctioned, they'll leave them on for about 10 minutes. At the time they just said that the suction is "good for the health" without providing many details, which is a typical Chinese response to some kind of action that doesn't make sense to a Westerner, but is supposed to have some health benefits in Chinese medicine. After some research online, I found that the suction is supposed to be good for "detoxifying" your body. Those ubiquitous toxins always seem to be causing trouble. Despite the potential health benefits, the side effect of this suction therapy is of course some huge hickeys on your back. Try to look cool when you have nine large, dark circles on your back. I think I will get this massage therapy before the next time I plan on going to the beach. That way I can demand the respect of everyone who sees me. I took these pictures when I got back that night. I'm pretty sure you've never seen a physique as nice as mine is before, so just focus on the suction marks. You will have to pardon the crooked pictures, as they were taken by me standing backwards to a mirror.

Suction Marks Still Clearly Visible

This is a True Mark of Manliness

They say that the marks will last about one week, but mine are still quite visible after 5 days. Maybe it will take almost two weeks for them to completely go away. I took a few more pictures the day after when it was light outside so that it would be easier to see.

I found a video on youtube that is pretty much exactly what I got. This guy got a few more cups than I did, but the process is exactly the same. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ5jkOVFh8 . See how the skin gets sucked up into the globe? This type of massage might be worth trying, but to be honest, I don't feel any health benefits now that a few days have passed. I think next time I'll just stick with the usual massage.

Christmas 2008

For all of those readers who are mainly interested in my posts about China, you are going to have to endure one more family oriented post as I wrap up my time spent at home over Christmas. My time back in the US was spent doing two main things: spending time with my family and eating as much food as possible. Since all my family and extended family lives in Utah, I was pretty much able to see everyone while I was home. I even found out that my technology savvy grandma reads my blog. I was pretty happy to hear that, so I have to give a quick shout out: "Hi Grandma, hope you're doing well". One of my favorite parts of going home is being able to spend time with my brother Kyle and his family. He and his wife Amy have two sons, so that makes three nephews total for me. I don't need to say too much about them, besides the fact that they're awesome kids and are a lot of fun to hang out with. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many picture of their family, but I have a few.

Parker Enjoying a Bagel

Parker and Kyle

Gage and Parker with the Remote Control Car

As I mentioned, I also ate a lot of food while I was in Utah. With all the family parties and eating out, I must have gained back at least some of the weight I've lost being in China. It was great to eat some American food that I can't get in China. My lust for delicious burritos was sated by making a trip to Chipotle, satisfying my addiction for the time being. I even made some vintage Wes-Allred-style bean dip.

Bean Dip a la Wes

While I was in Utah it snowed and snowed. We definitely had a white Christmas and I enjoyed seeing that much snow. The great thing about Utah is that when it snows, everything becomes more beautiful and the mountains look even better. When I was living in Chicago, snow meant a double drive time commute, salt stains on the bottoms of my slacks, and a general level of filth with the black slushy snow that would eventually materialize on all public sidewalks.

Snowy Mountains

My House

Snowy Mountains

My Dog

Those are the basics of my time home for Christmas 2008. It was great to be home for a couple weeks and to see all my family there. In closing, here a few pics from the plane ride back to China when we were flying over Alaska and meeting the ocean. Unfortunately, the pictures don't do justice to how beautiful it was in real life.

Alaskan Mountain Range See Anything Interesting (See Close-up Below)? This Looks like a Face's Profile, Right? Where the Ocean Meets the Land

Clouds and Frozen Ocean