Visited the Golden Temple 金殿 with my class this weekend. More photos here.
I used Skype to give the family a call on Thanksgiving. My grandma’s 80th birthday was the day before! It was so nice to hear everyone’s voices. Makes me miss home so much. Still trying to figure out how my parents can visit us here. Plane tickets are so expensive.
I bought a bike a couple weeks ago from Johnathan (johnathaninchina.com). It’s a racing bike and a little too big for me, but it’s really great to be more mobile. It’s yellow.
Wikipedia is still completely inaccessible. “Host Not Accessible” when you type in wikipedia.org or wikipedia.com.
I can confirm that I was able to access Wikipedia on Thursday night (from Kunming, Yunnan Province in China), and then Friday afternoon it was blocked. (“Host not accessible” error.) Bummer.
Also… all blogs at blogspot.com are inaccessible. However, you can log-in to blogger.com and update your blogspot blog. Weird.
And… the number of google searches is limited. After a dozen or so, it just returns an error.
I’m still happy with Marvelon two months and two days after starting on this new birth control pill. Since I’ve had quite a few emails about this subject, I thought I’d follow up.
I spotted two clowns on bikes yesterday. Their bikes are really hard to miss — like two-storey bicycles — and they were packed with their instruments and luggage. I’m not sure what happens if they get stopped at a red light. Anyway, they must be members of the Clyclown Circus featured on Even Pay’s blog. (She heard about them from this online account of their recent visit to Beijing.) How exciting! They really did make it to Kunming!
This photo is from the Cyclown Circus website — not my actual siting. I saw a woman and a man just before noon on Friday headed east on 文林街 Wen Lin Jie crossing 建设路 Jian She Lu. Unfortunately, since I didn’t run after them, I’m not really sure where they’re performing or if they’re even still in town. Anyone out there know?
Oh my god! I just read on Richard’s blog at expreference.com (Oct. 30, 2006) that Wikipedia is available from the mainlaind! This is really the best news. My life without Wikipedia has been seriously lacking. When I first arrived and I was having troubles getting to Google, Gmail, and Wikipedia I thought I would die, and I was certain that I couldn’t live here for long. But wonders of wonders we can now access Wikipedia in all it’s wiki glory. Wow! Well, maybe not. Some reports say that it’s only a partial unblock, but I’m still grateful.
Beginning from October 10, 2006, conflicting reports came in from different parts of China about a possible lifting of the block. The first report of a change was by a blogger in Liuzhou, Guangxi, who posted his finding to an online forum at about 6 pm on October 10, 2006, Beijing Time. However, access appears to differ depending on location and internet service provider as a result of more fine-grained blocking. [...] Posters to the Slashdot online forum who stated that they were in Beijing further noted that while they could access the English language version of the article on Tiananmen Square, which includes a brief description of the 1989 protests, the article Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 remained blocked. There was a similar report that the article democracy is available on English Wikipedia, while Falun Gong is unavailable. In contrast, Reporters Without Borders stated on 12 October that English Wikipedia appeared entirely unblocked, including the article on the 1989 protests, but that the Chinese language version was unaccessible for most Chinese. The advocacy organization criticized the government shift as meant “to appease its critics abroad while continuing to censor the information available to its own population,” while congratulating “those in charge of Wikipedia, especially Jimmy Wales”. Wikipedia users state that other language editions, including German, Japanese, and Korean are available at this time.
Yes, it’s crazy that it took almost a month before I finally heard about this. Check out Andrew Lih’s blog on the topic.
Speaking of limited internet access, however, I still seem to have a limit on the number of google searches I’m allowed. It just shuts down on me (“host not found”) after a dozen or so searches. Also, I was having problems accessing blogs hosted on blogger.com/blogspot.com recently. Anyone else notice this?
I was just browsing other people’s Kunming photos on flickr and found this lovely photo from a Kunming teahouse. Check out the rest of the photo set — they really capture the feel of the tea ceremony. Very cool.
Jeremy and I live just up the road from 师范大学 (Yunnan Normal University) off of 建设路 (Jian4 She4 Lu4). Lately, a huge number of buildings being demolished along my walk to and from school. Days before a site is knocked down, you’ll see a big “拆” (chai, the character for demolish) inside a circle painted in red on the side of the building. Then guys come with sledgehammers and knock it down piece by piece, salvaging what they can, and hauling it all off in enormous dump trucks.
It’s very strange because they haven’t chosen empty buildings to get rid of. In fact, they targeted all kinds of thriving businesses — barbers, clothing boutiques, copy shops, and restaurants. Sadly, one of our favorite restaurants was among the casualties: Guo Zi Lou (锅子楼?), a three storey building that was almost always packed for lunch and dinner. They recently opened two other branches, probably in anticipation of this loss, but nevertheless it’s pretty upsetting.
The street vendors have also been getting harassed by the police, forced to clear from the sidewalk and streets. This started at the beginning of this semester when Jeremy arrived. So now, it seems that only certain times of day are acceptable. After 10 a.m. for example, almost all of the vendors that sell breakfast have disappeared from the stretch just before the school’s side gate. I don’t know. It seems stupid to arbitrarially enforce whatever laws exist against street vendors. I know the people that own the shop fronts aren’t always happy to have people selling stuff on the street, but it doesn’t seem fair to randomly crack down. Actually, one day the police were patrolling the shop fronts as well. Most shops use a fair amount of space just outside their entrances to display merchandise, and the police were asking them to remove freezers and shelving that had spilled onto the street. I watched them madly stuffing it all back in their shops.
Well, they’ve certainly succeeded in changing the face of 建设路 these days. Jeremy tells me that the University is under some kind of governmental evaluation right now and all of these nearby “improvements” are likely related.
I wonder if/what they’re going to rebuild on these demolition sites. Maybe they’re making way for “green spaces.” One of my teachers last semester was telling me that it’s been a trend to knock down buildings and replace them with gardens and trees. That’s kind of a nice idea I guess. Well, we’ll see what appears from the rubble over the next few weeks.
On a rare visit to Wal-Mart (or was it Carrefoure? — they’re all the same) Jeremy and I found a curious product. Among the cheeses — and there aren’t many — we briefly considered a package of those terrible American cheese slices. “Ah, reminds me of home!” But then we found a thing that was truly horrifying. It looked like the normal individually wrapped American cheese-food slices, but it was the wrong color. It was a deep brown. Was it some kind of meaty cheese perhaps? No. In fact, it was was clearly labeled (in English) “chocolate cheese slices.” Spectacular as that sounds, we didn’t buy any.
I really hate shopping, especially the crowds and noise. And then with the additionaly burden of having to check for shoddy production and trying to haggle for better prices, I generally avoid the entire fiasco. But today I braved the masses. I went down to the bike market just behind the Wal-Mart. I hate the bike mart. It’s suspiciously empty with rows and rows of shiney new bikes and a handful of sleepy looking salespeople. They are terrifically overpriced. One guy started his price at 880RMB ($110) for a three-speed. Kunming is overflowing with bikes and I doubt anyone but the most posh asshole would pay that much for a bike — the exception being bike people that go to specialty shops. My friend Shannon was telling me that you could have a very, very, very nice bike custom built for that kind of money. Sigh. It only hurts because Jeremy’s has a great bike and he got such a good deal on it because he was in the right place at the right time. He found a foreigner leaving town desperate to sell a nearly new bike. People have told me to check out the secondhand bike mart but I have no idea where it is. I guess I’ll have to figure that out if I want to buy one.
Actually my failed attempt to buy a bike is fairly typical of all of my shopping experiences here. That day we went to Wal-Mart and saw that terrible cheese, it was the same: I’m sure we spent hours trying to get up the nerve to go out and then we didn’t buy a thing. So exhausting! Yes, it’s quite a shopper’s paradise here. I think I need to recruit my friend Angels next time. She doesn’t have any trouble spending money. Heh.
Oh my god! I just read on Richard’s blog at 
On a rare visit to Wal-Mart (or was it Carrefoure? — they’re all the same) Jeremy and I found a curious product. Among the cheeses — and there aren’t many — we briefly considered a package of those terrible American cheese slices. “Ah, reminds me of home!” But then we found a thing that was truly horrifying. It looked like the normal individually wrapped American cheese-food slices, but it was the wrong color. It was a deep brown. Was it some kind of meaty cheese perhaps? No. In fact, it was was clearly labeled (in English) “chocolate cheese slices.” Spectacular as that sounds, we didn’t buy any.![Expat Women—Helping Women Living Overseas](http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://expatwomen.com/expatblog/"http://www.expatwomen.com/images/expat-logo.gif"){kind=logo}