This was a video I made last October when I visited Dandong, a Chinese city on the border of North Korea, during the National Holiday travel period. I included some footage from Beijing–the shots of Tiananmen Square, the reverse cars in Sanlitun, the beginning shot of the female student trying to pass the guards to go sit with her friends. I included these shots because they were relevant with both the lyrics and message I…
(Haven’t read “Conversations with Chinese Part One?” Start at the beginning.) “All done,” he said. It was over. We talked about what I was doing in China and Andrea’s relation to me. “She is quite an amazing person,” he said. I agreed. He asked me if I could speak Chinese and I said yes. We then had a conversation in Chinese without me making a mistake (quite a feat). I was sent home with Ibuprofen…
Andrea told me she was studying at Loyola Chicago this summer and would make a short trip to DC. I told her I would be in DC in July and we agreed that we should meet up. I was so surprised by our conversation. I had written Andrea off long ago for reasons now unknown and not worth remembering. Yet this entire time she had kept a stellar opinion of me, but I had never…
(Haven’t read the “Conversations with Chinese Part One”? Click here) We entered the United Family Hospital, which is a fantastic hospital in Beijing where the doctors speak English (Western medicine with Western prices). Andrea tried to push me in a wheelchair but couldn’t tackle the hill, so her fiancée took the reigns and ran me up to the entrance. We wheeled down the hall to the emergency room and everyone stared, probably because they had…
(Originally I was just going to write about my stupid knee injury. But as I wrote it, it turned into a reflection on my stay in China so far (seven months). I had so much to say, so I broke this post into four separate ones. Enjoy!) At first this post was going to be an all sad and “happiness is fleeting” type of thing. I woke up this morning and thought, “Everything is going…
We left Beijing and headed to Kunming—about a 3 and a half hour flight. The plane was a little delayed so we ended up arriving around 5:30pm (an hour later than planned). We collected our suitcases and headed outside, immediately greeted by the not-so-frigid air (like we had experienced in Beijing). Three buses, 20 people per bus, and we were off driving through the capital city of Yunnan Province. That night we watched the “Dynamic…
From January 15th to January 29th, I travelled through China’s southernmost province: Yunnan. Yunnan borders Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar (formerly Burma). I travelled all over the province, racking up more than 60 hours of bus time. We started in the provincial capital of Kunming, drove south to the border of China and Myanmar, drove north to the Tibetan autonomous region, and finished the trip with an overnight train back to Kunming. Yunnan is incredibly diverse…
This post was written on January 7th on the plane (somewhere over Russia). I’m currently on hour 3 of my 14 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing, heading back to China because I just couldn’t get enough of it the first time. I spent a three week hiatus from my Chinese life in good ole’ Des Moines, Iowa. There I was kept perennially busy by a confluence of family and friends. I had a few…
Anastasiataber.com has been silent for two months. The silence ends now. I have a few posts for you, one I wrote on the plane ride over from China on January 8th and another introducing you to my 16 day excursion in Yunnan Province that took place January 15-29. It is my goal to write posts for every day experienced on the Yunnan trip, which was amazing just in case you were wondering. As always, I…
I am writing this post before I travel during the National Holiday. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the National Holiday is an annual government-sanctioned holiday that occurs every October. Usually the holiday lasts seven days, but the dates aren’t ever clear until about a month before, and this year the government surprised everyone by giving nine days off, not seven. The number of days off supposedly corresponds with how well…