Assorted Pictures from Around China

These are some assorted pictures that never really made it into my current albums. Enjoy!

The grass at this museum was so excellent. We had to make grass angels.

This is the group at the Xi'an Opera, after the show.

We all went to a Halloween party. I found a "scream" mask at Carrefour, which unfortunately broke on me. The picture to the right has the group - some masked folks, some dead people, a devil, Vin Deisel, and yes, a sack of rice.

Matt Olsen and I on a bus in Hangzhou.

The Forbidden City. Click on this picture and look closely.

We went to a birthday party for one of our Chinese friends.

Cana, Me, and Andrew at the Terra Cotta Soldiers.

Me, in front of the museum of the Terra Cotta Soldiers.

I saw these furs and I just had to try them on. Don't worry, I didn't buy.




This is from the beginning of the trip. We spent an afternoon with schoolchildren on a farm, having lunch, fishing, and playing games.

Riddle Me That, Batman...

No Way News. Dum, da dum dum... No way!

The China Daily is an English-language newspaper out of Beijing. Every so often, they run a full page of short clippings translated from regional Chinese newspapers.

These two articles are from the November 11 edition of China daily. I read them on the plane en route to Lasa, and I couldn't help but take a picture of them. They merely affirm my suspicion that China is weird. So I guess that makes me right at home.

Qinghai-Tibet Railway

Railway Pictures

My trip to Tibet went by quickly, but the journey home was long. Our mere 4-hour flight to Tibet was mirrored with a 4-day return trip to school, by train.

Completed in Summer 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet railway is the highest railway in the world. Just last month, a Lasa-Shanghai route opened up, which accompaines the routes from Beijing and other Chinese cities closer to Tibet. The train was spanking new and clean; our soft sleepers were comfortable and warm. I enjoyed the oxygen on this 28-hour trip!

We deboarded the train in Lanzhou, a city about halfway between Lasa and Beijing. Matt and I spent one day in Lanzhou to stretch our legs; unfortunately, the city was rather dull. We boarded a train the next day, bound on a 25-hour trip to Shanghai, where we met our friends at a youth hostel. This train was old and dirty; no soft sleepers were available, so we had hard sleepers. I didn't enjoy this leg quite as much, but I rested and survived just fine.

The sights from these two train rides were incredible, particularaly those from the first train. Snow-capped mountains, tundra, yaks, and rivers populate most of the pictures. The train ripped through the landscape - most of my 1.4GB worth of pictures didn't even come out - but a few pictures came out nicely. Occasionally I saw a truck driving along the Tibet highway, and I frequently saw makeshift homes in the middle of absolute nowhere.

The second train plowed through China's farmland, with amazing terraced hills. But no more snowcapped mountains; we were clearly back in China.

The pictures from these train rides are really cool. Check them out.