Zai jian

I leave China in a few hours.  I have been here for almost a year and I think it would be impossible for me to articulate the experience in writing.  What I can say is that it has been a not-so-gentle reminder that life is good.

Thank you all for reading.

And . . . SCENE!

Last Hurrah

My friends and bandmates, Peter and Elliott, and I decided to take a few days off from work to travel to a part of China called Yunnan.  It is a province in the southwest that borders Tibet, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar.  It is home to China's largest minority populations.  Yunnan has a varied terrain, but is famous for its gigantic mountains.  The pictures below will explain this epic and final travel during my time in China.

10 hour sleeper train from Kunming to Lijiang.  Unfortunately, we didn't get much sleep.

Pictures do not do the Tiger Leaping Gorge hike justice.  The trek took us about 7 hours spread out over 2 days.

You don't want to fall in that.  

Cooking class in Dali.  

Food market in Dali.  The produce and meat comes fresh from the outlying village farms.  

Me playing at the Bad Monkey.  In exchange for our musical servies over the course of 3 evenings, we were given free drinks and food and were encouraged to come back anytime.  

Peter and Elliott trying to be funny.

Erhai lake during our bike ride.  

Peter and Elliott with traveling musician and current house performer, Carlos, at the Bad Monkey.

Minority woman selling produce in Dali market

No trip would be complete without a photo of me with a cute animal.

I anticipate that this will be my final post while a resident of the PRC.  I suppose I'll wrap things up during my 2 days of travel back home June 18th.  Till then . . .

Picture Diary

Here is another photo entry.  Captions provide explanations.  Enjoy!  (Only 5 more weeks in The Middle Kingdom)

Girl vs plastic, inflatable alligator

I'd hate to live there, but it looks cool

Good thing I'm not pregnant because I love pepper bovine tuberculosis

Here ya go, Juan

Shenzhen

I only purchase produce from the back of pick-up trucks at night

Chinese people really like to drink.  He is, indeed, chugging a bottle of Jim Beam

Me with unintentionally orange hair in front of a Lamborghini

I mentioned before how Chinese people really like to drink

You know you're in a Walmart in China when . . .

Spongebob waffle-makers that make mini waffles in the shapes of moons and happy faces are on sale.

there's an entire aisle of rice cookers.

there's a live fish on the ground.

the aisle displays are of gigantic jugs of oil and 40 pound bags of rice.

I truly do not understand this one

Instead of working 5 days and then having a 3 day weekend, China makes its citizens (questionable noun) work 7 days straight and then have 3 days holiday.

I am boycotting China for this and going to Hong Kong for holiday when this is over.

Good day and zi jian.

Curiosity and Cats

CURIOSITY 
Dialogue between Howell, my most intelligent and hilarious fifth grade student and myself:

Howell:  Miss Shelby, what are you?
Me:  Huh?
Howell:  You know, no Christmas.
Me:  Oh, I'm Jewish.
Howell:  Yes, that's it.  And where do you all live?
Me:  Do you mean Israel?
Howell:  Yes.  My mother's friend went to Israel and said that everyone there had tall noses.  Do you have a tall nose?
Me:  No.

While I was somewhat offended, I appreciated his genuine curiosity.

CATS
There is an area of Shenzhen called Da Fen and is known as the oil painters' village.  The streets are lined with gallery after gallery selling every kind of art you can imagine, and thanks to China's zero regulations policy, you can purchase or commission anything and for reasonable prices.  Yesterday, I picked up my 24x36 oil painting of Charlie the XIV.  Photos below.

Such a handsome gentleman

The artist

Mental Accommodations of What Is Unusual and the best/worst show my band has ever played

It's amazing what the human body and mind are capable of.  I have realized that things in China that I used to think were extraordinary are now, simply, normal.  Yesterday I saw a bicycle pulling a cart piled high with flattened boxes and trash bags full of unknown items and a man sitting on top of the heap riding down the street.  What fazed me was that I was completely unfazed by this sight.

Moving forward.

I have mentioned in previous posts that a) I am in a band here and b) Chinese people stare relentlessly at foreigners.  Put the two together and my all-foreigner band has become quite popular in Shenzhen.  Saturday night may have been the pinnacle of all of this.

We were asked to play a show.  OK.  The day of the show we find out that the show is outside, in the farthest regions of the city, it will be broadcast on television and they will provide no sound equipment.  Great.  We arrive at the "staging area" which was surrounded by approximately 300 Chinese people.  I have witnessed a Chinese man staring at another Chinese man who was staring at a few Chinese people digging a hole so I'm not sure if these people actually knew we were coming or were just curious as to why there was a roped off section of the area.  Their faces were completely expressionless as we unloaded and set up our equipment.  The television cameraman turned on his camera and suddenly we could see ourselves on a huge LCD screen across the square.  We were having issues with the power supply because we could only find ungrounded electricity sources.  I actually stopped playing guitar early on in the set because I was being shocked constantly.  I couldn't hear myself sing.  It started to rain, but the people were smiling and taking pictures and dancing so we kept on playing.  While this was the worst sounding and conditions of a performance I have ever experienced, it was also the most fun I've ever had playing a show.

The short video below slightly captures the essence of the evening.

Everyone should have a 5 week holiday in January

I decided that the best way to sift through a month of traveling was to do a top 10.

In some particular order:

10.  Monks n Wats and that amazing incense smell in Thailand

9.  Fun transportation

13 hour train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.  This was actually not that fun, but comparatively more fun than the 17 hour bus from Bangkok to Khao Lak.

Befuddled by the bamboo raft headed to Malapascua Island, Philippines

Tuk Tuks in Bangkok

Florescent pink cabs in Thailand

Inside a tricycle ( a motorbike with a hooded cab attached) in Bohol, Philippines

8.  The beer

Chang Beer in Thailand

San Miguel in the Philippines

7.  The beaches.  Good lord, the beaches were gorgeous.  All the photos below are from Malapascua Island, Philippines.

6.  Thai food

5.  Creatures

Moth-eating gecko in Khao Lak, Thailand

Random alligator in Bangkok

One of the four puppies who lived under our bungalow on Malapascua Island, Philippines

Dog vs. crab in Bohol, Philippines

Butterflies in Bohol

Me and a passed out kitty at the bar on Malapascua Island, Philippines.  I'm refraining from posting any of the other 50 cat pictures I took.  

4.  This creature gets a number of its own:  the Tarsiers in Bohol, Philippines.  Some Tarsier facts:  they are suicidal.  If they are unhappy, they'll bang their head against a tree until they die.  They have sex for about 3-8 seconds.  You can only find them in Bohol and Indonesia.  They've been around for over 40 million years.  They are crazy looking.

3.  Snorkeling at Malapascua Island, Philippines.   I don't have pictures to prove it, but there's like a whole other universe down there.

2.  The Thai markets

Night Market in Chiang Mai

There is literally an entire market dedicated to amulets

1.  The people I met along the way

Back to the grind . . .