returned from china on sunday and am now back, battling jetlag at school again just like last year. after chengdu we ended up visiting the leshan biggest-ever buddha. then michael and i parted ways: he went to cruise the yangtze (and listen to rats fight as he slept), and i sought warmer climes in lijiang, yunnan.
lijiang was pretty, but the "old town" has almost completely been taken over by densely-packed souvenir shops, more than you'd think the place could sustain -- how much jewelry, yak jerky, and tea does a person need anyway? it also seems to be a fashionable destination for the new moneyed classes from the east (shanghai), whom i hadn't seen as tourists much before; they were there in large number, taking pony rides through the old town dressed in local naxi minority garb, snapping photos with their fancy cameras, drinking and dining at prices higher than my china budget allowed. but i'd still like to come back to yunnan sometime to do the tiger leaping gorge trek, see dali, and xishuangbanna in the south (then over to laos!).
i've got more to write about the trip but for now i'll just link to some pictures; i haven't gone through all my photos yet, but was playing around with apple's new iWeb program and put a bunch of photos into the site it generated. i only have a trial .mac account and don't plan on paying for it, so expect these photos to move to my site's gallery later.
we've arrived in Chengdu this morning in record time, thanks to a chance encounter with a sleeper bus from Lhasa to Chengdu. we were lucky enough to flag it down yesterday morning as it wound its way past the toll booth outside Xiahe, and hitched a ride for its last 24 hours. i'm sure michael's blog has more detail.
now i'm about to get a spicy Sichuan lunch and plan out the last week of my time here. is it worth it to see the biggest Buddha ever? climb the sacred (and freezing cold) mountain Emei Shan? sit on a tour bus all day for a photo of me hugging a panda? fly to Lijiang, Yunnan before heading back to Beijing? fly to Shanghai or somewhere else instead?
finally, some time to sit at the wangba ("internet bar") and mention that i'm in china now. after flying into beijing, then catching a flight to meet up with michael in korla, then taking a 36-hour train down to lanzhou, we've finally arrived (by 7-hour bus) in Xiahe, a Tibetan town in Gansu province, home to "the largest Tibetan lamasery outside of Lhasa" (according to the guidebook). this wangba in particular happens to be full of monks surfing the web and playing videogames.
so far the weather has been pretty harsh. it wasn't as cold as i thought it'd be in Korla, but the train ride through gansu's "hexi corridor" looked forbiddingly blustery and snow-covered -- evidenced by the neat pile of snow that blew in onto our train's windowsills. we arrived after midnight in lanzhou only to sleep a few hours and catch a morning bus here. luckily, the long underwear and fleece-lined jeans (courtesy of L.L. Bean) have really been helping in this regard.
the itinerary seems to include more long bus rides until we can make it to Chengdu, in Sichuan, where at least things will be spicy enough to distract us from the cold.
i have to run now, but i'll end with this lovely video of monks playing videogames (with michael talking to them).