Return from the Great West

Hello everyone, I have returned safely from China; however Mao still got his revenge and I was sick all the way home and for the first few days in Washington. Otherwise, time has been spent on writing the research paper and trying to get on a normal schedule. I find it difficult to leave China and not be able to go straight home. Washington is nice but I sort of want to leave. Anyway, here's why I couldn't update:
a) China blocked most blog sites
b) Internet was not provided in any hotel we stayed in
c) Internet cafes were very few and far between
d) The one place we were in for a large chunk of time that had internet didn't want foreigners going there
e) The other place we were in for a large amount of time that had internet had police following us around (which made me feel uncomfortable)
f) And I know the government was carefully reading all emails leaving western China (due to the incidents in Xinjiang) because some of my friends' email accounts were shut down. I didn't want to risk writing something slightly offensive or questionable and get in trouble -
As one Chinese driver yelled as he almost ran over my friends with his taxi, "Welcome to China!"

So after we sadly left the beautiful city of Xining, we hit the road for more remote areas out west. First we took a five hour drive to see Gangcha county (the place we were originally suppose to conduct surveys). It ended up taking a long time so we only stayed for lunch. This area was amazingly beautiful and untouched by the western world. Everywhere we walked wide eyes stared at us in amazement and children would point and ask, "what is that?" As rural as it is, everyone there seemed to have a cell phone and I know this because they were all out pointed in our faces to take a picture of the da bizi or "big noses" as they like to call foreigners. Eventually we had people following us around to every store we went to, it was slightly entertaining and slightly eerie.
After lunch in Gangcha we drove three hours to see Lake Qinghai. We saw it all right but we didn't get to go close to it because it cost 120 RMB per person to pass through a gate (now in America, it's no big deal because that is about 15ish dollars, but in China this is a rip off and one must not give into that kind of treatment of people who want to see something of the natural world). Instead, we were dropped off two miles away from the lake in the middle of the desert. Not just the desert but a sight of current desertification. It's one thing reading about it in a book or in an article about finding sand from China in California but actually seeing it is... nuts, beautiful, insane, scary, and breathtaking at the same time. We spent a few hours climbing sand dunes, pointing to skulls and plants trying to make it. Then we were able to see the line of where desert meets grassland. It was unforgettable. I'm glad we spent time in the desert instead of at a lake.

Plants meet desert


Notice in the right corner where the desert meets the sky you can see Lake Qinghai


After a long day at the desert we stayed a night at a hotel and left the next day to visit a Tu village. The Tu are a minority in China whose roots can be traced back to the Mongolians. It was a very interesting experience. They welcomed our group with dances and songs and invited us to lunch. Before entering their living quarters everyone had to drink a bowl of Tibetan barley baijiu, I don't know how else to explain baijiu other than it tastes like complete shit and my dad can attest to that. I had luckily gotten away with never tasting it the past two trips to China but this time there was really no way to get around it. So I drank it, gagged a little, but was glad it was over with. To refuse would've been a huge insult. Once we were seated we all ate bread, mutton, noodles and then were informed that we had to drink another bowl of baijiu to honor the oldest person in the room. After that was over with they told us they wanted to have a singing competition with us, the Tu people against the foreigners and the Chinese students and professors we were with. The losers would have to drink three bowls of baijiu each, so who really wanted to lose? The rules were to take turns singing a few lines until one team can't think of a song to sing. It was a fierce competition, so fierce that people were jumping up to sing and trying to go so fast that the other group would stall and not know what to sing. Turns out we all were too good so instead of declaring a loser everyone had to drink. Let me tell you all it was 11 am and we were about four bowl of baiju into the morning. We all left a bit tipsy and glad to get away from that heinous beverage.
We then boarded the bus to go to Xunhua county to actually start our research and I will write about that later, maybe this weekend. For now, here are a couple pictures of the canola and rapeseed fields we saw on the way to the Tu village and one of the biggest Tibetan monasteries in China we visited outside of Xining.




More later!

Out West

Hello from Qinghai, one of China's largest minority centers. This is where our group's real work is going to begin.

Since my last entry, a lot has happened. Our last days in Xi'an were nice. I got to see the Terra Cotta Warriors again and it's still just as amazing. We also toured what I believe was a Qin Dynasty palace. Sometimes these palaces seem all the same so a small group of us chose to take a cable car up the mountain next to the palace to take some pictures of the view. What we didn't know was that once you take the cable car you cannot enter back into the palace (where we had to meet up with the rest of the group), so we had to sweet talk the guard ladies to let us back in with what little Chinese we know.

For lunch that day we had China's version of America's version of Chinese food. It was pretty hilarious. That evening a couple of us went out with our professor-mentors and had some good bonding time. We had a new mentor join our group from Xinjiang. This is exciting for me (even though he's an economist) because he is a Uyghur, a Turk-muslim minority native to Xinjiang that I wrote a research paper about last semester.

Last night we left Xi'an for Xining of Qinghai province by train. Fortunately, our group got to have hard sleepers for the 13 hour journey; however, our Chinese grad students had to stay in the hard seat car (if you read my last blog about Wuhan you know how excrutiating that can be for a journey over night). I think they had a good time even though they got no sleep. Our group had a fantastic time on the train. It might've been the best part of our trip so far. In the hard sleeper car it is divided into sections and each section has two bunk beds each with three beds.

The section I was in was the most fun. One of the harmonica players in our group started playing some blues, my roommate sang and made up songs about being broke in China, and I created a percussion section and before you knew it we had our very own "Chinese Train Track Blues Juke." Everyone in the car loved it (pictures will be provided later). That evening I also got to know our sociology group's mentor on a more personal level. I am glad our mentor is a Chinese woman because not only can we learn more about China from her but I got to learn about career building as a woman and how to balance a career and family. She's an amazing and intelligent woman and I feel lucky to know her.

So far, Xining is the most interesting Chinese city I've been to. I think it's incredible that it is the capital of Qinghai but the Han ethnicity is small (Han is the major ethnicity in China). Another aspect of the city I enjoy is that it isn't crowded. There's a lot of space and you can walk on the sidewalk without worrying about getting run over by a motorcycle.

Our group got to check out the Qinghai University of Ethnic Minorities and attended a lecture given by one of our mentors. Tomorrow we attend lectures on topics that completely pertain to all of our research so I am very pumped.

This evening I just ate the best meal of my life (no offense mom), seriously, the Hui people really know how to make mutton spare ribs like no other.
More later!

China blocked my blog so... here's the skinny

I know most wouldn’t believe me if I said not much has happened between my last entry and now, so I’ll just think of the more exciting details and get back when more happens.
We all departed Seattle Saturday afternoon and took a ten hour flight to the Narita airport in Japan. The flight was lovely, probably the best international flight I’ve ever taken. For the first time, I did not sleep during the whole flight mostly because I was watching movies the whole time (there was a huge exciting selection).
When we arrived in Tokyo we basically had two hours to do whatever and surprisingly, the airport there didn’t seem any different that an American or Chinese airport. The only thing that I did notice were that the toilets had many, many buttons to press to customize your bathroom experience. My favorite was the water sounds button that played flushing I guess to get you in the mood or in case you have stage fright. It was pretty hilarious.

I almost forgot. Here are two pictures of the Swine Flu Squad a friend took while they pointed lasers at our foreheads and took our temperature before letting us off the plane.

We were all advised to take Tylenol before landing and thankfully nobody had to be quarantined and all who have been sick so far were sick after the flight.


We arrived in Shanghai Sunday evening and passed out at an airport hotel. Next morning we flew to Xi’an and arrived there at dinner time. We attended a banquet with all of the Chinese professors who are going to work with us. It was pretty fun, a lot of toasting… a lot of toasting. A fat stack of 57 big bottles of beer left empty all had us in bed pretty early.
The next day we met our Chinese grad student counterparts. They don’t seem to know much English at all which is a bad and good thing. Good because we can practice our Chinese (for those who actually know Chinese) and bad because we were counting on them to translate interviews with minorities whose accents will not be understood by us, the wai guo ren (foreigners).

Now my sociology group is in a bigger mess because we just found out we will not be allowed to conduct surveys at Gangcha county (the Tibetan area) because the region is too sensitive and having a bunch of Americans going around and handing out sheets to fill out would look really… sketchy and questionable. Technically we could just do interviews; however, like I said, the Chinese grad students don’t know much English and we feel a lot of information would be lost in translation. So today my group is going to meet up and change our research question so that we don’t rely on doing a comparison of the Tibetan and Salar people.

Some ideas being tossed around are to do a comparative study of people in remote villages (like Xunhua as originally planned) and villages outside of urban centers (like villages outside of Xining). Nothing is certain yet, but I will update as soon as I know.

I guess this is the nature of research in China, but our group mentor, Dr. Xiao, says that this is the nature of all research because in America, it is also difficult to get an “okay” to conduct research projects especially containing sensitive topics.
Aside from that I’m still jetlagged and cannot wait to get out of Xi’an to go on a 24 hour train ride to Qinghai province.

Thanks to my Mom and Dad for posting my blogerations