After spending a little over 3 months here, its gratifying that we can finally start to order food that actually tastes good. And I don’t mean like I can physically eat it without throwing up, but that actually tastes good. Lately we have been eating a lot of Xinjiang food, from the western province of, uh, Xinjiang. The same place where the delicious lamb on a stick comes from. The have this kick-ass wrap that is diced grilled lamb, onions, carrots, and other vegetables. It’s mind blowing. They also have a dish that roughly translates as “Big Pot Chicken”. It comes in a gigantic mound on a plate and is mostly chicken and potatoes. Also amazing. It’s reassuring that we can now tell people what we want and read at least some of the characters on a menu.

While speaking of eating, I will also speak briefly about the end result of the process. While I have mentioned on this site about the instantaneous pooping that results from eating Chinese meals, this does not happen nearly as much as it used to. People often ask us if we are becoming accustomed to China. Well I think I am, but I know that my bowels are.

And I finally found out the name of my favorite squishy faced white dog. It is Xiao Bai, 小白, literally “small white”. Since it has gotten colder he now wears a yellow dog shirt with a paw print on it.

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In case this is just a passing thing I will try to take advantage of this the best I can. Typing and grammatical errors be damned! (as if that would be that much of a difference) It’s amazing how accustomed you get to have constant information and entertainment available, and without it how lost and scared you feel. At least I do. For entertainment yesterday I imitated a weenie dog that I saw pooping on the street and hurt my back. And took pictures of myself in long underwear.

A word about Chinese long underwear, its not the thermal kind that I am used to seeing during the frigged winters of upstate. It’s just cotton. Since people barely heat their houses here I’m not sure why they don’t make the upgrade to thermal. And everyone here wears long underwear. You can see it poking out from the sleeves of their sweaters. One thing I do know. When I move back to the states I am wearing long underwear every day during the winter. Every god damned day!

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As you may have noticed, this blog hasn’t been updated in a few days. Due to the recent earthquake in Taiwan, I can’t access this site or any other American server based site. For now I can only check my gmail and read the China Daily site, making me feel quite crazy. This post is being done by proxy (thanks Ashley). So unless something ridiculously awesome happens, I won’t be updating this for a week or two.

Please come back to me Internet, I miss you so much!

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After getting the awesome Prince greatest hits collection, I realized that I now have to ability to translate these songs into Chinese. So below is the translated titles of some of my favorite Prince (王子) songs.

和平鸽哭得时候 （he2 ping2 ge1 ku4 de shi2 hou4)
When Doves Cry (dove literally means “peace pigeon”)

紫色的雨(zi3 se4 de yu4)
Purple Rain

一九九九 (yi1 jiu3 jiu3 jiu3)
1999

小红的汽车 (xiao3 hong2 de qi4 che1)
Little Red Corvette (actually little red car, but I can’t find corvette)

狂热巴 (kuang2 re4 ba)
Lets Go Crazy

I might work on whole songs next. And yes, I realize this is important to no one but me.

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Just as I was thinking that Nanjing didn’t seem to be in the Christmas spirit as much as Chengdu I was proven totally wrong.

We took the taxi downtown to Xinjiekou to see what new lights they had put up and the place was totally mobbed with people. They had put up a lot of decorations, but the decorations seemed to mixing up Christmas, Chinese New Years and, uh, Easter I think. There were light up pigs, pumpkins, rabbits, angels, people, corn, snowmen, Christmas trees made out of cds and other crazy crap. Jenn took a bunch of pictures of stuff with her new lens and they are up on her flickr page. This up coming year is the year of the pig, so that explains all the pigs I think. Everything else I really don’t understand, especially all the rabbits. But everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves, especially the little kids. Chinese people aren’t afraid to act silly in order to have fun. And in a way it helped us feel better about missing Christmas at home.

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After a rather long wait at the Lhasa airport (there was a large gap between our checkout time and our flight) our flight took off with no problems. Luckily I got a window seat, as the view was amazing. It was mountains as far as you could see, and as we got closer to Chengdu, the clouds looked like water flowing into the mountains.

The cab ride from the airport was probably the closest that we have come to an actual accident in china. The cab driver had to slam on the brakes and skid out around two cars that had crashed into each other. However after narrowly avoiding this crash it made him seem to drive the rest of the way with reckless abandon. Then of course he dropped us of at the wrong hotel, a super fancy five star place. Two hours and four cab rides later we found a hotel that was more then we wanted to spend but quite nice.

The next day we went to the main attraction here in Chengdu, the panda breeding and research center. It was pretty cool. Highlights:

1.All but one of the giant pandas was sleeping when we went there. And the one that was awake was eating. That is pretty much all they do. That and look ridiculous. Awesome.
2.There is a giant panda nursery that had two pandas in it that were about 15 pounds each. One of them was curled up in a ball and completely asleep. The other one wanted to play. At first he was trying to pounce the sleeping panda, then he tried to climb out of his cage. After being picked up and held for a while, he started to beat up a green plastic horse they had put in his pen. Then one of the handlers picked him up cat style and took him outside I think.
3.The red pandas are also damn cute. They are much more active, and about the size of raccoon that has increased its mass three times. The best part is that every three minutes or so they stop to rub there butts on something. Apparently they have a gland that sprays out some liquid, that if i had to take a guess is foul smelling. Here is one in action marking up a stump with his backside:

This stump was soaked with the anal juice of twenty red pandas.
4.This was one of the Chinese tourist places that was actually worth coming to and lived up to the hype.

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While I had some vague understanding of the importance of yaks to Tibetans, it is clear to me now that there is an almost religious significance to the yak. Not to mention that yak butter is used to fuel all of the candles in the Buddhist temples. And there is even a 20 foot tall statue of two golden yaks in Lhasa. Yak also seems to be the primary source of meat around here. You will see three-wheeled carts around the city pilled high with slabs of Yak. Here is a list of Yak related foods that I have eaten during my time here:

1.Yak and Potato Curry
2.Yak Butter Tea
3.Yak Burgers
4.Yak Momos
5.Yak Cheese (I think)
6.Deep-Fried Bread with Yak Inside

And I’m not sure of how many ways they use the fur and the bones. On a related note, yesterday I was buying some french fries on the street from an old lady near our hotel. Street french fries are plentiful here, and delicious. The old lady has a table next to her hot oil pot on which she butchers slab of yak. So she was slicing of chunks of meat, wiped off her hands on her apron, and then scooped me some fries in a plastic bag. The fries were really tasty.

Yak appears 15 times in this post. Beat that!

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As my cold has progressed into a deeper, bronchitis-like thing, I have now resorted to the local pharmacy.

They had this and some herbal Chinese cough medicine. I went with this as it had ingredients in English. Result: it was quite helpful. And it is has a nice sugary taste to it.

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When the massive headaches from adjusting to altitude sickness had finally started to dissipate, I was then blessed with a lovely seasonal head cold. So for the past two day or so I wake up with gallons of yellow crap coming out of my nose and throat. I think my body is rejecting scenic mountains.

A couple of observations. A surprising number of pilgrims bring their dogs with them. Like these very Buddhist dogs:

Also, I was in a grocery store and they were playing a Christmas song that had some guy rapping in English. And right now on CCTV 5 there is a guy figure skating to an instrumental medley of Metallica. Bizarre.

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