Second Tea House on the Left: Fourth Airport of the Day

After a brief sojourn home for the holidays, I am on the road again! I am currently in Terminal 2 of the Beijing Airport (interestingly essentially a different airport than Terminal 3, where I arrived) after the long flight from Chicago (and before that from Richmond). I am waiting for my flight to Changsha, where I will take another flight to Taipei, arriving a full 34 hours after I left. Now that is a journey!

As my second semester does not start until late February after Spring Festival, I will spend the next month and a half travelling around China and Taiwan. My first stop is Taiwan, where I will spend a eight days and then return to China in time to avoid renewing my China visa.
After that, I have many plans and no tickets. I hope to travel to Harbin with my friend Michelle to see the Ice Festival there when I return to Beijing. After that, I have Hangzhou, Guilin, Yangshuo, Chongqing, and a return to E'mei mountain (near Chengdu) on my to-visit list. Following whatever I am able to visit in that time, I plan to go to Dali in Yunnan Province, where I will spend Spring Festival with Michael, my friend from previous travels. You can see these places in blue on the map below.

Although this would usually be relatively easy to pull off, with Spring Festival around the corner, China's transportation system will be absolutely packed with people returning home for the holidays, so I am less certain about being able to buy cheap train tickets with ease and leisure, so I will likely have to choose fewer places so I can plan and buy tickets ahead of time.

I will put up posts and pictures as I go.

In the meantime, below you will find pictures (lots of them!) from the study trip that we (the China Studies Institute) took following our final exams and right before I left to go home for the holidays. In about two weeks, our group went from Beijing to Luoyang, Xi'an, Xining, Lhasa, E'mei Mountain, and Chengdu. You can see the route in red on the map above.

We took sleeper trains, flights, and buses during the trip

My friends Jake and Michelle and I (in the reflection) at the White Horse Temple, China's first Buddhist temple, in Luoyang

Shaolin Monastery (where martial arts were invented) and school near Luoyang

Martial arts performance

The point of that spear was about the size of a dime

He broke the metal bar over his head

Students practicing everything from handstands to boxing

The Longmen Grottoes, a riverside cliff-side carved with hundreds of Buddhas, near Luoyang

Many statues had their faces chipped off during the Cultural Revolution, while others were stolen by Western explorers during the Qing Dynasty. Many still remain in Western museums.

My friend, Stephen, and I at the Stelae Forest (I still don't know how to pronounce that) in Xi'an

Spectating Mahjong in Xi'an

The Great Mosque in Xining - during Ramadan tens of thousands of Chinese Muslims pack the streets around the mosque to pray

View from the train on the way to Tibet

Our home for 23 hours on the way to Lhasa

Mountains of Tibet

Oxygen outlets were stationed throughout the train to help passengers suffering from altitude sickness

The Potala Palace, the former religious and political center of Tibet and where the Dalai Lama was raised, in Lhasa

Jake and I in front of the Potala Palace

So many stairs and so little oxygen

The road surrounding the palace was a pilgrimage circuit (going clockwise) for Tibetans, who circled the Palace with prayer beads in one hand and sometimes a cane in the other

The pilgrimage circuit surrounding Barkhor Temple in the older part of Lhasa

Tibetans prostrating themselves in front of Barkhor Temple

The police presence around Lhasa (and especially around places like the Potala Palace and Barkhor Temple) was very obvious. Police substations stood every 20 meters or so around the Barkhor street circuit armed with riot shields, fire blankets, and fire extinguishers to stop and protests or people setting themselves on fire