some combination of the good, the bad, and the fairly amusing:
- christmas day: eating a dinner of wild mushroom fondue and local delights such as tiny mangoes, a strange fruit called mangosteen, and albino pomegranates.
- the weather: i miss it already, dammit...sitting in this arctic bedroom it's hard to believe i deluded myself into thinking it was spring for a few days.
- it's true: there actually is only one time zone across all of mainland china, which means that in the southwest the sun doesn't rise until 8 am, and sets close to 7 pm, whereas here in shanghai it rises almost at 6 and sets before 5.
- the tour bus: we got awoken at the rude hour of 6 am every day (remember, 2 freaking hours before sunrise)...but to make up for it, our first guide was an absolute storytelling machine. i'm pretty sure i never heard the word "um" come out of his mouth. major props.
- jade dragon snow mountains: not only were they above 15,000 feet in elevation (there was a stand selling mini oxygen tanks and everything), they were damn beautiful and the weather was perfectly sunny for pictures, which will come tomorrow hopefully.
- the terrible food: for some reason, along the way, the trip planners decided to save money and take us to restaurants where they would order some seriously uninspired junk...not joking, i could probably make a better lunch if you gave me some vegetables, a pot of boiling water and salt. as of our travelling mates complained: "we wake up earlier than chickens and eat worse than pigs!"
- the rampant commercialism: another reason i think it would significantly less lame just to plan your own trip to kunming - after a few days of being fed thinly veiled advertisement to buy overpriced silver, jade, tea, medicines, and whatever else they had the opportunity to pitch, it just got old. i mean there is something seriously wrong with a trip where you get herded through the historic district of Dali on little cars in like half an hour, missing any opportunity to take good pictures, but then stay in an obscenely huge gift shop for 3 hours full of things you don't need to buy.
- the old cities: one of the nights we weren't being taken to bad restaurants or advertised to, we got to roam around the historic district of Lijiang, which was really quite picturesque, with a merry street full of pubs that you get to by taking tiny bridges across the characteristic moats that run through the historic streets of old Chinese cities. unfortunately my family has become a little too lame to go prowl the night with, but this would definitely be one of the places i would come back to if i were to visit the province again.
- the tea garden: some beautiful and exquisite architecture and fine art was on display at this private estate in the Dali prefecture that apparently cost 80 million RMB to make, one of the few places we visited where there weren't any blatant attempts to sell us shit. the tea was also really fun, served in three courses, one full-bodied and bitter, the next milky and sweet, and the last filled with the most confusing combination of spices. also pictures to come soon.
- the rock forest: one of china's national "geoparks," full of interesting stone structures left over from an age of being part of the sea bed. again, this would have been more fun if we hadn't been hurried along with a giant gaggle of people but we did manage to get some good pictures in.
- the flower market: the culmination of trying to sell us shit was the last day, where we were brought to Kunming's local "market..." at first I was thinking "oh cool, we're getting a tour of the local artisan trades" or whatever...but it turned out to be another giant gift shop arranged like a maze so that in order to get out, you literally had to pass by every single product that they were selling.
- and of course, the awesome english translations on signs...including gems like "no burning," "please don't fall in the water," "do not tock the gondola," and "be careful of landslide."
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Eleven in Twelve: a year-end list in song
Well, I’ll admit to jumping on the bandwagon: I made a year-end list and everyone is about to see it. Being a former radio DJ with fingers itching to make another mixtape to share with the world, I figured I’d let some musical memories speak for me this year.
So I put together twelve songs (one for each month of the year) that were loved, mulled over, sung out loud at random, and put on replay for weeks at a time. They bring back memories in a way that no words could, in a year full of change.
These songs span a year of mercurial relationships, friendships, and alliances, and saw my transition from college life to graduate school. They were listened to obsessively in two cities across the United States I called my home, and culled while sitting in a tour bus in the middle of China. Push play below, or on this nifty website, and enjoy.
P.S. The cover art was nabbed from Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence, and was taken in 2009 by Martin Cathrae.
Playlist:
1) The National, “Runaway” (High Violet, 2010)
A warm companion to a long nighttime drive through snowy nothingness.
2) Deerhoof, “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness” (Deerhoof vs. Evil, 2011)
My favorite spaz-rock band calms down a little with some profound musings about love. I’m still pondering that very subject, as well as wondering why the chorus riff sounds so damn familiar.
3) Local Natives, “Cubism Dream” (Gorilla Manor, 2009)
A few shivers hit me as I contemplate the words of this song while staring out the airplane window on my second or third foray across the nation, on my way to visit new places where my future life might be led.
4) The Strokes, “Under Cover of Darkness” (Angles, 2011)
Part of me ached to leave everything behind for some worthy, far-off pursuit, exuberantly shaking off the dust of former friends and foes. But meanwhile I suppose I could be satisfied with just hitting play on the iPod and singing along like an idiot.
5) Sleigh Bells, “Rill Rill” (Treats, 2010)
The excitement of an unfamiliar and wondrously dark world, of love affairs entangled in mind-blowing and sinister drug plots, of driving through the Nevada desert in a Cadillac with the top down...obviously not exactly what I was doing, but this song calls these things into mind and sometimes it’s fun to live vicariously.
6) Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues” (Helplessness Blues, 2011)
I often long to sit leisurely in the car alone with a friend, moonbeams palely illuminating our faces and the sound of crickets saturating our ears. i would just pour my soul out while those harmonious voices ring in my ears, delivering verse that reads like philosophical prose but sounds like pure poetry when sung.
7) Jhameel, “THC” (The Human Condition, 2011)
Not that I spent much time toking up last year, but it was at least more than I had before (which was basically zero). Jhameel also became an unexpected, unofficial summer favorite and that wicked beat conjures up the best of impulsive trips to the beach and basking in the precious Wisconsin summer.
8) Cee-Lo Green, “Fuck You!” (The Lady Killer, 2011)
It’s a wonder that I’m not as tired of this song as everyone else seems to be, considering how many instruments I’ve played it on, of course belting it out in that ridiculous yelp at the top of my lungs every time. A popular singalong at many a raucous summer party on top of my favorite slanted balcony, and I'm pretty sure we even got applause from the porch across the street, dammit.
9) R.E.M., “Ignoreland” (Automatic for the People, 1992)
Fun fact, I apparently got into R.E.M. approximately one day after their breakup. They were the soundtrack to a new home, a new school...and "new," cheap-ass furniture fresh from our local Goodwill! This probably didn’t actually save me from any road rage, pounding through the speakers of my rented pickup truck as I begrudgingly helped my new roommates haul a ton of semi-necessary secondhand shit across the interstate.
10) Sufjan Stevens, “Now that I’m Older” (The Age of Adz, 2010)
Woozy from a weekend of last-minute concert planning, strutting around in a toga and general Wisconsin-style Halloween debauchery with my favorite people, I was startled by the weird beauty of the stuff Sufjan has been doing recently while stumbling through Chinatown on the way back home.
11) Belle & Sebastian, “I Want the World to Stop” (Write About Love, 2010)
These guys make some fantastic rainy-day music, in my opinion, which was perfect for the rainiest month of the year in Seattle. I wondered quite often why I’d never gotten around to getting a decent pair of rain boots.
12) Deftones, “Minerva” (Deftones, 2003)
When there are lots of things in life to be bitter about, I find that listening to ridiculous heavy metal helps a little bit. These guys have the talent of fulfilling that urge, while still being able to make some earnestly beautiful music as well.
...so God bless you all, for the song you saved us...
And a happy 2012 to everyone!
So I put together twelve songs (one for each month of the year) that were loved, mulled over, sung out loud at random, and put on replay for weeks at a time. They bring back memories in a way that no words could, in a year full of change.
These songs span a year of mercurial relationships, friendships, and alliances, and saw my transition from college life to graduate school. They were listened to obsessively in two cities across the United States I called my home, and culled while sitting in a tour bus in the middle of China. Push play below, or on this nifty website, and enjoy.
P.S. The cover art was nabbed from Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence, and was taken in 2009 by Martin Cathrae.
Playlist:
1) The National, “Runaway” (High Violet, 2010)
A warm companion to a long nighttime drive through snowy nothingness.
2) Deerhoof, “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness” (Deerhoof vs. Evil, 2011)
My favorite spaz-rock band calms down a little with some profound musings about love. I’m still pondering that very subject, as well as wondering why the chorus riff sounds so damn familiar.
3) Local Natives, “Cubism Dream” (Gorilla Manor, 2009)
A few shivers hit me as I contemplate the words of this song while staring out the airplane window on my second or third foray across the nation, on my way to visit new places where my future life might be led.
4) The Strokes, “Under Cover of Darkness” (Angles, 2011)
Part of me ached to leave everything behind for some worthy, far-off pursuit, exuberantly shaking off the dust of former friends and foes. But meanwhile I suppose I could be satisfied with just hitting play on the iPod and singing along like an idiot.
5) Sleigh Bells, “Rill Rill” (Treats, 2010)
The excitement of an unfamiliar and wondrously dark world, of love affairs entangled in mind-blowing and sinister drug plots, of driving through the Nevada desert in a Cadillac with the top down...obviously not exactly what I was doing, but this song calls these things into mind and sometimes it’s fun to live vicariously.
6) Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues” (Helplessness Blues, 2011)
I often long to sit leisurely in the car alone with a friend, moonbeams palely illuminating our faces and the sound of crickets saturating our ears. i would just pour my soul out while those harmonious voices ring in my ears, delivering verse that reads like philosophical prose but sounds like pure poetry when sung.
7) Jhameel, “THC” (The Human Condition, 2011)
Not that I spent much time toking up last year, but it was at least more than I had before (which was basically zero). Jhameel also became an unexpected, unofficial summer favorite and that wicked beat conjures up the best of impulsive trips to the beach and basking in the precious Wisconsin summer.
8) Cee-Lo Green, “Fuck You!” (The Lady Killer, 2011)
It’s a wonder that I’m not as tired of this song as everyone else seems to be, considering how many instruments I’ve played it on, of course belting it out in that ridiculous yelp at the top of my lungs every time. A popular singalong at many a raucous summer party on top of my favorite slanted balcony, and I'm pretty sure we even got applause from the porch across the street, dammit.
9) R.E.M., “Ignoreland” (Automatic for the People, 1992)
Fun fact, I apparently got into R.E.M. approximately one day after their breakup. They were the soundtrack to a new home, a new school...and "new," cheap-ass furniture fresh from our local Goodwill! This probably didn’t actually save me from any road rage, pounding through the speakers of my rented pickup truck as I begrudgingly helped my new roommates haul a ton of semi-necessary secondhand shit across the interstate.
10) Sufjan Stevens, “Now that I’m Older” (The Age of Adz, 2010)
Woozy from a weekend of last-minute concert planning, strutting around in a toga and general Wisconsin-style Halloween debauchery with my favorite people, I was startled by the weird beauty of the stuff Sufjan has been doing recently while stumbling through Chinatown on the way back home.
11) Belle & Sebastian, “I Want the World to Stop” (Write About Love, 2010)
These guys make some fantastic rainy-day music, in my opinion, which was perfect for the rainiest month of the year in Seattle. I wondered quite often why I’d never gotten around to getting a decent pair of rain boots.
12) Deftones, “Minerva” (Deftones, 2003)
When there are lots of things in life to be bitter about, I find that listening to ridiculous heavy metal helps a little bit. These guys have the talent of fulfilling that urge, while still being able to make some earnestly beautiful music as well.
...so God bless you all, for the song you saved us...
And a happy 2012 to everyone!
Sunday, December 25, 2011
merry christmas from kunming, china!
for those of you not savvy (this included me up until a short time ago) that's in southwest yunnan province, close to tibet. winter is much milder here and there are no icicles coming out of my nose which is pretty sweet.
also a fun fact i didn't really know, chinese people also celebrate christmas and this hotel is decked out right now in the lobby. it's not quite the same, though, and i'm of course missing you all at home.
i will post more later. have a great day, everybody! :)
also a fun fact i didn't really know, chinese people also celebrate christmas and this hotel is decked out right now in the lobby. it's not quite the same, though, and i'm of course missing you all at home.
i will post more later. have a great day, everybody! :)
Friday, December 23, 2011
greetings from china! / past-blasting pt. whatever
helllllloooooo there, denizens of the commonwealth of livejournal!
so remember when jason left livejournal for greener pastures? how's that working out for him? well, not so well because jason doesn't really post habitually anymore but he bets that if he did then he would have a readership of like 5 million because blogspot is a happening place.
however, being behind the times does have one benefit, as it seems, which is that china decided that livejournal is apparently irrelevant enough to be let through its great firewall. for those of you behind the times, the great firewall means no facebook or youtube, some weird chinese version of google, and next to nothing allowed from the blogosphere except dear old LJ (and tumblr because i guess half the shit on there is pictures of ryan gosling and LOLcatz and whatnot, and actually trying to filter all the content would just be brain-numbing). i'm half-tempted to post something on here about freeing tibet or the falun gong just to see if anyone will notice. in the end, this means that any postings from the next two weeks as i spend my christmas break in fun places in the far east will be here. perhaps i'll try to import them over to the 'spot later.
anyway, i've only been here for a few hours, and all i can say is shanghai is fucking cold in the winter. i mean, probably at the same level or even warmer than seattle, and definitely warmer than madison, but the thing about shanghai is most buildings don't have central heating, so it's like a constant battle with the elements. the same AC unit sweating it out against the oppressive heat in the summer is now futilely trying to beat back the cold in my bedroom, and i'm pretty sure the floor will still be freezing when i wake up tomorrow.
oh well, it'll be just like the good old days. i haven't actually visited china in anything but summer since i was the ripe old age of four. i'm waiting for the rest of my family to get in tomorrow, and then on christmas we'll be journeying west to yunnan province, which is just north of tibet. i'm pretty stoked for that, since i feel like i'll finally have gotten some semblance of breadth when it comes to places visited in china.
in other news, my first quarter at the other UW is over. i did reasonably well considering how much it felt like i'd bombed those finals. also, it sounds so much less significant when i say "quarter" than "semester," even though it was really only 4 weeks shorter and just as freaking tough. but quarter is probably more accurate, seeing as the prof for our statistical inference course (the main reason why the quarter was hard) has already given us homework and reading for next quarter. in fact, the last week of class we started lecturing on next quarter's material and the guy seemed to have forgotten it wasn't january yet and made references to "last quarter."
last but not least, i'm taking it easy on the past-blasting today, so rest easy, you'll still be "winning". this is mostly because i'm in freaking china and i have no old drawings or literature to scan into the computer. be warned though, my dad just bought a portable scanner so whenever i next visit home, it's ON.
i'm just going to upload this MIDI composition i've been working on fixing up. the title is fitting, i suppose, as it's called "somewhere in the past"...it's circa 8th grade, probably my most fertile period of cranking out vaguely smooth jazz and video game music-inspired tunes, but i discovered you could import MIDI into GarageBand the other day and have been using some freeware software synths to give the tunes a little bit more substance and realism.
it was part of a trio of songs, the other two of which are entitled "future dreams" and "present tense." ugh yeah, i'm cringing right now too, but i've decided to embrace the dorkliness instead of trying to change all the titles like i did last time i put a remix of these songs out.
anyway, it's a slow ballad with some cool chord voicings i remember happening upon when fooling around on the piano one day, and features (less fake sounding now) solo viola and bassoon. enjoy!
Somewhere In The Past by R# Major
EDIT: nevermind, biostatistics ryan gosling is also blocked over here. maybe they just hate science.
so remember when jason left livejournal for greener pastures? how's that working out for him? well, not so well because jason doesn't really post habitually anymore but he bets that if he did then he would have a readership of like 5 million because blogspot is a happening place.
however, being behind the times does have one benefit, as it seems, which is that china decided that livejournal is apparently irrelevant enough to be let through its great firewall. for those of you behind the times, the great firewall means no facebook or youtube, some weird chinese version of google, and next to nothing allowed from the blogosphere except dear old LJ (and tumblr because i guess half the shit on there is pictures of ryan gosling and LOLcatz and whatnot, and actually trying to filter all the content would just be brain-numbing). i'm half-tempted to post something on here about freeing tibet or the falun gong just to see if anyone will notice. in the end, this means that any postings from the next two weeks as i spend my christmas break in fun places in the far east will be here. perhaps i'll try to import them over to the 'spot later.
anyway, i've only been here for a few hours, and all i can say is shanghai is fucking cold in the winter. i mean, probably at the same level or even warmer than seattle, and definitely warmer than madison, but the thing about shanghai is most buildings don't have central heating, so it's like a constant battle with the elements. the same AC unit sweating it out against the oppressive heat in the summer is now futilely trying to beat back the cold in my bedroom, and i'm pretty sure the floor will still be freezing when i wake up tomorrow.
oh well, it'll be just like the good old days. i haven't actually visited china in anything but summer since i was the ripe old age of four. i'm waiting for the rest of my family to get in tomorrow, and then on christmas we'll be journeying west to yunnan province, which is just north of tibet. i'm pretty stoked for that, since i feel like i'll finally have gotten some semblance of breadth when it comes to places visited in china.
in other news, my first quarter at the other UW is over. i did reasonably well considering how much it felt like i'd bombed those finals. also, it sounds so much less significant when i say "quarter" than "semester," even though it was really only 4 weeks shorter and just as freaking tough. but quarter is probably more accurate, seeing as the prof for our statistical inference course (the main reason why the quarter was hard) has already given us homework and reading for next quarter. in fact, the last week of class we started lecturing on next quarter's material and the guy seemed to have forgotten it wasn't january yet and made references to "last quarter."
last but not least, i'm taking it easy on the past-blasting today, so rest easy
i'm just going to upload this MIDI composition i've been working on fixing up. the title is fitting, i suppose, as it's called "somewhere in the past"...it's circa 8th grade, probably my most fertile period of cranking out vaguely smooth jazz and video game music-inspired tunes, but i discovered you could import MIDI into GarageBand the other day and have been using some freeware software synths to give the tunes a little bit more substance and realism.
it was part of a trio of songs, the other two of which are entitled "future dreams" and "present tense." ugh yeah, i'm cringing right now too, but i've decided to embrace the dorkliness instead of trying to change all the titles like i did last time i put a remix of these songs out.
anyway, it's a slow ballad with some cool chord voicings i remember happening upon when fooling around on the piano one day, and features (less fake sounding now) solo viola and bassoon. enjoy!
Somewhere In The Past by R# Major
EDIT: nevermind, biostatistics ryan gosling is also blocked over here. maybe they just hate science.
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