Written last night (I'm drunk again, though, so it still applies):

Wow. First night in Asia and already I am decidely unsober. Chalk that one up to a pair of expatriate relatives who left the States well before the drinking age became 21 and who are willing to pay HK 100 (about 18 bucks) for a liter of locally brewed Stella Artois. So, needless to say, China's pretty great so far. TGhe plane ride from Newark was the longest, and yet easily the best I've ever been on. The route goes upward through the Canadian arctic, skirts the coast of Greenland, passes withing 100 Km of the North Pole, descends through the blasted tundra and vast evergreen forests of Siberia, and finally whizzes above the dunes of Mongolia and the urban wasteland of modern China to an exciting just-over-the-water landing in Hong Kong. But more on Greenland. Wow. That rocky barren stretch of land, overflowing in the most literal sense with glaciation, is possibly the coolest (haha, get it?) landscape I've ever seen. In spite of the flight attendant heckling me to stop causing glare on the other passengers' video screens (for some reason we spend the whole flight in a darkened cabin with all the window shades down [saving fuel for heating, maybe?] ). Screw that, I say, there's a world out there beyond Friends reruns, and it's a great deal more exciting. So anyway, Greenland is magnificent. As we approached, I began to see little blotches of white in the blue-black distance of the ocean that at first appeared much like small clouds. As we approached closer, however, it became apparent that they were, in fact, honest-to-god icebergs. Too cool. So the frequency of icebergs picked up as we approached the shore (even at 35 thousand feet, their details were readily apparent, they seem like they'd be a ton of fun to climb on), until eventually we came upon the source of the icebergs. Why the Viking explorers named it Greenland I have no idea, since even in the perpetual sun of the Arctic summer, it's nothing but the dead brown of the rocks that jut out of the ocean and the pure bright white of glacial ice. Greenland starts off as rocky crags rising out of the ocean depths, and after a short dark stretch of coast, the land becomes more and more enshrouded by ice. The only exceptions to this rule are the areas where the coastal elevation is slightly lower, causing the ice to pour forth into the Atlantic like a river frozen in time. There are ripples, waves and patterns of flow, just like a liquid river, though significantly altered in temporal perpetuity. These features persist until they reach the edge of the glacier, where they eventually fall off to begin their new life as icebergs. I didn't actually witness this process, regrettably. Moving further inland, thbe brown snowless peaks become less and less frequent, until eventually, the land is a blank, faceless white, disrupsted only by the dune-like features of windblown snow and the occasional pool of glacial meltwater (which, by the way, have the absolute best color of sparkling azure I've ever seen in undyed water [sorry Disneyland, you lose]). Conclusion: I like Greenland. A thought: I really want to invent an extreme sport that consists of putting on a drysuit and air tank and ruding the tunnels the glacial melt lakes make on their way to the sea.
So, the rest of the plane ride wasn't as good. I finished a book and got a couple hundred pages into another (Danila, it's called The Singularity is Near, and it's your assignment in exchange for my having read Ishmael. I'll give it to you when I'm done) and slept a bit. Skipping ahead, we landed in Hong Kong with only a minor amount of skidding on the runway (it was pretty exciting). Customs was lightning fast and we arrived at the Kowloon train station at around 20:30. Next up was the adventure of finding our (super sketchy) lodging for the night. So having taken some airport lady's advice and riding the shuttle from the Kowloon station to the Tsim Sha Tsui region of Kowloon, we found ourselves on a bustling city street surrounded by jewelry shops and hawkers who, seeing that we were newcomers, tried their best to sell us what they could. Eventually, using the excellent map in my guidebook, we found the building in which we're staying: the world-famous Chungking Mansions, which is an absolutely anarchic mash-up of budget (read: really cheap) hotels, curry shops, money changers, and immigrants. It's kind of sketch. I love it, though. When we arrived, we wandered around trying to shake off the Pakistani guys doing their best to lure us to whichever hostel was paying them, until we finally found the one we were heading for. As we didn't have reservations, they didn't have room. No matter, though, we just went to the one next door (this place is full of them), and it's a pretty nice room. So once we got settled, I called Dee and Celso (said expatriate relatives, who live quite close to the Mansions [for some reason, districts here aren't divided economically, and our super-sketchy building is right next to the nicest hotel in Hong Kong]) and they invited us out to a nearby restaurant for drinks. So we talked and had a jolly good time, and were pretty overwhelmed by the amount of money they were willing to spend on us, and eventually said goodbye and wandered back to the Mansions at about 23:30, where we promptly fell asleep (after writing the first portion of this post, of course) after our first, busy, 36-hour day.

zomg disoriented pre-orient post

i'm going to totally ruin the import and style developed by jorgen's first post by frantically typing for about 10 minutes before leaving for the airport. after compressing 2 weeks worth of packing and preparation into about 20 hours of frantic scrambling, it's a ready-or-not sort of feeling. here we come, China. 

the upcoming 6- and 15-hour plane rides should be good training for what will be a borderline-preposterous travel schedule for the next 3 weeks- hitting 6 major cities in 19 days, with the longest train ride being a solid 25 hour shot to Chengdu from Guilin. 

My elderly great-aunt asked my mother to relay a message to me- first and foremost, "you go, girl"; secondly- travel is 80% confidence (and 20% money). I don't know that we've got the second, but

being yelled at to leave. more from the other side.

On the Doorstep

So the idea of a travel blog has appealed to me for quite a while now. I made an abortive Xanga-based effort at one during my first international journey away from my family, to Costa Rica (no, you can't see it), but failed to keep up with it, largely due to lack of computer availability and my discovery of bash.org. Hopefully this one will be better maintained, have an audience of more than myself, and maybe even serve as a lasting reminder to myself of the period starting today and ending in about a month.

For those of you don't know what this is all about, next Tuesday at about six in the morning, Christine is going to call me exasperatedly and tell me to get the hell out of bed, cause we've got to go to China. Why go to China? Well, we've been talking about going to the Beijing Olympics for a couple of years now, and in spite of outside difficulties and being generally ineffectual people, it's actually happening. I've gotta admit, I didn't see that one coming. But on a less immediate level, why go to China? Adventure, mostly. The kind of adventure that you feel within you when you know you're a part of something mysterious and big, something that's changing the world in so many intricate ways, both subtle and profound. They say this Olympics is going to be the most important one in decades. And in many ways, it is. This is China's debut on the world stage. Anyone who's ever seen the 'Made in China' stamp that appears on almost every accessory of modern life knows that China's a big deal, but until recently, the country has remained barely audible to international ears. The Olympics will be the window by which the world gets a look inside, at the resounding successes and the harsh realities of the people of the Middle Kingdom. Look at how where once the fate of Tibet was an issue that a few hippies would protest every couple years, but is now being discussed at the highest levels of government around the world. Look at the saber rattling many in the US are engaged in against China, and it's clear that many around the world are uncomfortable with the nascent new world order China's Olympic ambitions herald. But this isn't just about China, for though China is the first, they certainly won't be the last. This is merely the first of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations flexing its newly developed political muscles. This is but the first shot in a geopolitical revolution that threatens to destroy the centuries-old East/West, North/South divides in economic development. These four new great powers are enormous, controlling vast amounts of the world's land area and human capital, and they are different, promoting cultures, ideologies, and beliefs radically different from what the traditional European and North American rulers of the world are used to. But this is by no means just a test for the world at large, this is just as much a test for China itself. With the newfound openness and international attention garnered by the Olympics, will the Chinese people be content to remain under the yokes of the corrupt Communist bureaucrats? The ghosts of Tiananmen have been largely forgotten in favor of explosive economic and technological growth, but will this same growth plant the seeds for a new generation of revolutionaries? With increased wealth, Chinese will begin to import goods from abroad, and, inevitably, these goods will bring foreign cultural products with them. What would they Chinese think of a Saturday Night Live sketch lampooning American government officials, or news of the people of France rioting for change? Perhaps for now, they're too busy clamoring over one another chasing the wealth pouring into the country, but maybe one day soon there will arise the sentiment that something's missing. Now I ask you, what greater adventure could there be than that? To have a front row seat as the tapestry of history unfurls, and to better understand the world that we will all soon be living in. For that reason, I named my blog 冒险, maoxian, Chinese for adventure or dangerous activity, both in homage to the excitement of being where the action is, and the extreme overuse of the word 'adventure' by Christine and myself in reference to this and many other activities.