China Take 2 - States Review

 August 1, 2022

hi all....i am getting in touch from my mom's place in the US.....i have been here for my summer break....it was a stressful trip to get here, and it is proving to be a stressful trip to get back to china for another year of teaching....due to all of this stress, I will be finishing my contract in china this year and then not returning....."where will I go?" you ask...."your guess is as good as mine", I respond :) 

I do not know if it is time for another teaching break, as this teaching gig I have had in china has been ok, not awesome....some great things about the school, some not so much....i do have great science colleagues and am glad I will get to work with them one more year....but china's stance on zero covid has shadowed everything about this post....from school, to life, to china....so it might be time for a break.....again....

the month I have spent in the states has been restful and restorative...just what was needed by me....so that is a great thing....i have enjoyed seeing some people (although not many due to trying to stay negative), going to the jersey shore for a few days (eating my favorite pizza), daily walking in nature and reading, reading, reading.....i have taken a complete break from school....which was necessary.....but now I am getting ready to return, as long as this flight I am scheduled to take does not get suspended like my last flight.....keep those fingers crossed that this will happen....

i will include one or two pictures here from my trip to the states...plus, some pictures from last summer....because I never did a real update for my trip to Yunnan province....which was one of the best trips I have taken in china....ever!!!! i was on a food tour with folks i knew and folks i now consider my friends...it was amazing....pictures will be below.....

thanks to all of those who checked in with me in February, when i wrote a short update about my frustrating times in china.....now that i have been outside of the country, i am in a much better space about returning and finishing my contract....i just needed to reset my china filter.....i am hopeful that i will be allowed to at least travel IN china this year....people did that over the summer, but we'll see what happens during the school year....they will not change their zero-tolerance covid stance, so i am not really expecting there to be much different from last year in the upcoming year...but i will do my job and then leave on good terms, i hope :) on with the pictures....enjoy & as always, feel free to contact me to say hi or ask questions.....happy summer/winter :)

we started our food tour in Dali, a town in the Yunnan Province of China.....there were lots of fresh food markets along the way and I was so excited to see mangosteen for sale...plus, I loved the way this woman measured my fruit to determine how much I owed her...if you have not mangosteen...you should...it is amazing (nothing like mango by the way)!

this food dish was for 7 people....it was humongous and we did not finish it...you ate the things on this tray with your hands and would take some of the rice and eat it together....there were mushrooms and tofu and peanuts and noodles and three kinds of rice and fresh veggies....and much more...it was a ridiculous amount of food and so very tasty!!!! we knew at that point that this trip was going to be amazing!!!!

we did a breakfast tour the next morning and went to a special coffee shop in dali....where we had yunnan coffee as a pour over....the barista was a pro and made an incredible cup of joe 😀 the town was quite cute and I really liked this wall of one of the buildings.....

from dali we traveled around the lake it was on, Erhai Lake, to a farm to go make rose pastry....this is a delicacy of the area, and yes, it is made with rose petals.....i had a small amount, but one of the secret ingredients of the pastry was lard....not really something I eat....i of course had to taste it though...the farm was our first glimpse into the phenomenon of selfies in china....most tourist places or places trying to attract tourists, have now set up tableaux to take your selfie with....the a-frame you see above is one of those places.....but the scenery here was spectacular, so I can understand why they do it....

here is another view from the farm...the mountains are the cangshan mountains to the west of the lake...it was a spectacular day and we came to realize that the scenery in the yunnan province is simply amazing!!!

the next town we stayed in, just north of dali, but on the same lake, was xizhou...this town was quaint and filled with amazing food, especially xizhou baba - which is a bread you have with breakfast, plus it had a famous cultural center....this town was populated by the Bai people, another group within china....this was the view over the rice paddies from the cultural center....wow!!!

this is a drawing of the famous Bai round building in the middle of this town, along with the character for double happiness, used when discussing love & marriage....it was everywhere in this town :)

as we were wandering around xizhou, after our incredible dinner, we ran into this woman...she of course asked us if we had eaten, as is customary in china....most people ask that before they even say hello....it is a way to be gracious and to ask how someone is doing....she had so many textiles and was quite a lovely lady.....

this is what the buildings looked like in the center of xizhou....you will always see the color red in towns, because red is the lucky color of all of china....

in order to leave xizhou, we had to cross this bridge...this is called a moon bridge, and is used by pedestrians only....they can have one, three, five, etc, half moons to cross over....never an even number...the reflection of the sky in the water was just perfect....you can see my friend shannon walking over the bridge...

from xizhou we went on a bike ride around part of erhai lake...it was an amazing day, as you can see from the picture.....this was a place I stopped and chilled for a bit because of the wild flowers, clouds and the mountains...i loved it....

our next stop was a place where we did indigo tye-dying of batik....we each were able to make our own kerchief.... this older woman was intrigued by me and my hips....she did not speak any english, but made it a point to poke me in the hips....so of course I had to take a picture with her....her embroidery on the pieces of batik was incredible....you can see some of the batik behind us.....

from making batik we headed off to shaaxi ancient town....most of the town has been refurbished and they are building a huge highway to get there easily.....i am glad we were there before that happened, because that will increase Chinese tourism one hundred-fold....shaaxi was a huge trading hub on the yunnan-tibet tea horse road....its main plaza had this incredible open-air theater....nothing was being performed, but the structure was beautiful....this town was known for all of the coffee places...so we enjoyed some yunnan coffee while here....

here is another one of the moon bridges to get in and out of shaaxi ancient town....the name of this bridge is the jade ford bridge....i am not sure why....

on our way out of shaaxi, we visited a library in the next town over....it was a bit random and had been built by a foundation...not really sure why they chose this town to build it in, but it was definitely a lovely library....

from shaaxi we headed to tiger leaping gorge....i was soooooo excited about this part of the trip, mainly for the place we were spending the night....it was in the gorge, with an amazing view....BUT unfortunately we were not allowed in the gorge (my friends shannon, josh and myself), because of somewhere we had traveled to previously, that was having a covid outbreak...luckily we were able to go to a hospital and get negative covid tests to see the gorge, but we were not able to get the results in time to be able to spend the night in the gorge....damn covid 😒

at least we were able to get to see the gorge...and it was crazy how much water was rushing past in the gorge...it was rainy and that increased the amount even more than normal...it was wild....

many places in china, like tiger leaping gorge, the Chinese will write wishes and prayers and dreams on these tags and hang them up so they will happen...i thought this was a great way to frame the river.....

they also had created these metallic wings in the tourist area for selfie shots...you can see the gorge better behind me in this shot...

the last stop on this tour was lijiang....the craziest thing we kept experiencing in these small towns in yunnan was all of the over-sized stuffed teddy bears....they were everywhere....you can see a bunch of them in this picture....who knows why????

while in liajiang we visited the largest local market and then went to cook some yunnan food that was famous in the area...here you can see some of the local vegetables....all very tasty, except the bumpy one on the right....this is bitter gourd....to this day I do not know how to make this taste good....soooooooo bitter 😂

I felt I needed to show the meat section of the market....here I am with some pork ribs....not something I would eat, but others on the tour did have the meat and fish along the way....my tour was vegetarian.. although I did taste some of the fish that were native to erhai lake and when they were the main dish of the houses we ate at....

i loved this picture of the women discussing the topics of the world...sisters??? friends??? relatives??? neighbors??? who knows....but I love their hats and that they did not pay the crazy foreigners any mind while discussing the stories of the world 😊

this is where we had a cooking class....with a woman named fancy....here I have a dessert that is composed of shaved ice, milk, fruit and sugar....very tasty....and she was a great instructor...we all really enjoyed the time with fancy 😋

this was the restaurant where we had our last night's meal in liajiang....again - lots of red lanterns for luck...the meal was super tasty and we were really sad the tour was coming to an end....if you are in china...the name of the tour group is the lost plate...it was incredible and if I get a chance to do another with them before I leave china, I feel that would be super lucky 

here is a shot of our entire crew.....these folks made this tour amazing....and it was so much fun sharing the different meals and many of us ended up in the same book club...such good folks 

we made it!!!!! josh, shannon and I made it to tiger leaping gorge after all of the covid testing stress....it was an amazing visit....just to see the raw force of nature and the water going through this gorge...i will miss these folks in china this coming year and feel very lucky to have gotten 18 months with them in Beijing....

this is a shot from my mom's birthday and the main reason I came back to the states for the summer...we had a great time celebrating my mom....happy birthday!!!!

where I live in Pennsylvania gives us pretty amazing sunsets....i watched many of them from my mom's place where much of my time was spent.....thanks for a restful and rejuvenating summer...i think it has been just the right amount for me to make through another year 😉

and it wouldn't be a post without me and beer....this is a beer from one of the brew pubs in Beijing I go to - jing-a - they have been in Beijing quite a while....this beer is one of their spring specialties - hawthorne sour - it was quite tasty....

so there you have it...my trip from last summer and a few pictures from my trip to the states this summer...again, I apologize for not sending this before, but it was a challenge for me to stay in one city for almost an entire year....it made it even more challenging to want to write this blog....i am hopeful I will at least see a bit more of china in the coming year, but am not sure I will get the chance.....fingers crossed

i hope you all have a lovely rest of your summer/winter....and keep those fingers crossed that my flight goes next week and that I am on it....hoping to not get covid between then and now.....remember to reach out if you have questions or just want to say hi!!!!

thanks for reading and have a fab day 😀😀

dani