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…
Getting a cab back was tricky—we had to downgrade to a three-wheeler. It was probably the jankiest car I will ever travel in. It only had three wheels and the motor groaned when it tried traveling faster than 30 miles per hour. When you are in China, you usually want to avoid these “unofficial” taxis like the plague, but since I was with my Chinese friends I figured I was in safe hands. We arrived…
After visiting the Great Wall in Dandong, we took the bus back to town. The bus didn’t have any seats left, so we sat in the bus-equivalent of a trunk, behind the last row of seats. I’m not quite sure if that’s legal, or safe, but I chalk it up to a “when in Rome” sort of situation. Apparently the ticket taker asked my friends if I was American. Most of the people on the…
We left the hotel to go to the train station to buy tickets to Dalian. We also bought 6 kuai tickets (roughly one dollar) to get to the Great Wall. Dandong is the start of the Great Wall in China, and it was especially cool for me to visit there because 1) I’ve now seen the Great Wall in five different places; 2) I’ve visited the farthest west part of the Great Wall (the fort…
(There are four blog posts to Day Nine…feel pumped) I might as well mention what I talked about in my presentation on Chinese music. I talked about the importance of music in Chinese history (in case you didn’t know, it’s very important). The characters that make up the word music in Chinese mean “tone”(aka the essence of music) and “happiness.” Throughout Chinese history, music has been used mainly for entertainment and ritual. Music has been used as a…
My blog has been quiet for a while, as I waited to come back to Beijing for Internet, and get settled in. Many more blog posts on the Silk Road to come. Stay tuned and enjoy! Day Eight: Today has been rough, to say the least. This morning I woke up to discover that the high altitude did not agree with me, and my body retorted with painful cramps lasting a large portion of the…
Today we checked out of the hotel at 6:30am. I had gotten about six and half hours of sleep, which sounds like a lot to a typical college student but is not enough to survive the heavy activity that is touring China. Luckily, I was able to nap on the bus after breakfast—a 4-hour-turned-5-hour bus ride to Xia’he. Breakfast this morning was especially special since we met up with Group A (the other half of…