济南的景点 (Jĭnán de jĭngdiăn) Jinan's scenic spots (Day 2)

亲爱的日记，

The last two days have really been a lot of fun for a couple of different reasons.  First, I think I am slowly starting to get over jetlag.  Next, the weather hasn’t been nearly as hot as that first day out on the town (still pretty hot, though).  And finally, I feel as though I’ve had enough time to bond with my friends here in Jinan, which makes all the cool stuff we’ve been doing together allthemore enjoyable.  I’ll start with yesterday (Sunday, 06-21 (Happy Father’s Day, Dad!!)) in order to keep things in chronological order.

Yesterday, we spent most of the late morning and afternoon at 趵突泉 Bàotū Quán or something akin to “jumping, rushing springs,” which is the most famous spring of the more than 70 located in the area.  Here is some info on 趵突泉 Bàotū Quán from Wikipedia: 

The Baotu Spring (Chinese: 趵突泉; pinyin: Bàotū Quán, sometimes translated as "Jet Spring" or "Spurting Spring") is a culturally significant artesian karst spring located in the city of Jinan, Shandong Province, China. It is mentione

d in the Spring and Autumn Annals, one of the Five Classics of Chinese literature and was declared the "Number One Spring under the Heaven" (Chinese: 天下第一泉; pinyin: Tiān Xià Dì Yī Quán) by the Qing Dynasty Emperor Qian Long.

The spring itself and the large park surrounding it were stunningly beautiful and very well maintained.  There were all kinds of old buildings and gazebos to walk in and out of, as well as large Koi fish ponds wherever you looked.  The water in all of the ponds was crystal clear and was apparently fed in directly from the various springs.  Between the spring water and fish food for sale at various gift shops, those sure were some lucky fish!

After seeing all there was to see at 趵突泉 Bàotū Quán, Wu Juan, Xiao Peng and I made our way back to a large food court for lunch.  We had Chongqing style hotpot with some sort of sucker fish (perhaps bullhead), baby bokchoy, bean sprouts, as well as chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns (which make your mouth numb).  It was really a delicious meal.

Once we finished lunch, it was back to the hotel for a long read and the usual mid-day nap.  For dinner, Wu Ying rejoined us having recovered from a bit of heat stroke (中暑了 zhòngshŭ le, new vocab word), which I could definitely relate to given the previous day’s heat.  We went to a place that featured Sichuan style cuisine, particularly Wonton soup, only in Sichuan dialect they are called 抄手 chāoshŏu.  I can’t wait to bust that one out once we arrive in Chengdu!  Unfortunately, no pics of the since I forgot all else once we began eating.  For the sake of not posting 30 pictures all in one post (很花时间!), I’m going to call it quits for now and will be back with m

ore about my experience at 千佛山 Qiānfó Shān “Thousand Buddha Mountain” tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!

Andy

济南的景点 (Jĭnán de jĭngdiăn) Jinan's scenic spots (Day 1)

大家好！

Yesterday was my first day of actually visiting a few of the many 景点 located here in Jinan.  First, a little introduction.  Jinan is also known by the name 泉城 quán chéng (city of springs) for the numerous artesian springs located inside the city.  Many of the springs are located within the same vicinity in an area that is known as 泉城广场 quán chéng guăngchăng (city of springs plaza).  This was a really huge area with at least 20 or so different springs.  It was definitely a good thing that we came here where it was slightly cooler because it was practically 100 F!!!

(Here are my friends: Wu Juan, Wu Ying (Juan's sister), and Xiao Peng (their nephew))

 

(Left:  This fountain in the plaza shoots jets of water to the beat of music)

(Right: This sculpture is known as 泉标(泉城的标志) “the emblem of city of springs” and represents jets of spring water coming up from the ground.)

Before heading down to the springs, we checked out a series of statues of all the famous historic figures from Shandong province, which are really quite a few of the very most well known including Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, Zhu Ge Liang and many others.

(Here I am chillin' with 諸葛亮 (Zhu Ge Liang), the master strategist from 三國演義 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms))

The most famous one that we saw is called 黑虎泉 (Hēi Hŭ Quán) "Black Tiger Springs".  People were lined up to fill containters with the spring water, which you can reportedly drink straight from the spring.  We all also gathered a small bottle and I used it today to brew my morning Nescafé (after a good long boil, of course).  Pretty good stuff!

(Here are some pictures of a few people gathering water from one of the springs.)

(Here are Juan and I feeding the Black Tiger some of his own spring water.)

After making our way out of the giant plaza, it was off for a bit of lunch.  We walked through an area with only restaurants and vendors where all of the buildings were very old-style (Sorry, no pics.  The heat must have been getting to my head) and ended up at a place that

 specialized in 大米面皮儿  (dàmĭ miànpír) "rice noodle skin" which came  served in a nice spicy sauce with bean sprouts.  We also had a delicious sour plum drink that reminded me a lot of one of my favorite drinks in Taipei.

After lunch, we headed to one last spring area called 蜘(Zhīzhū Quán) "Spider Springs" and hid from the crippling heat for about an hour.  

Finally, after tricking ourselves into thinking we had cooled off, we headed to 大明

湖 (Dàmíng Hú) "Big Bright Lake" located within a short walk from the springs.  .  Usually, one has to pay $50 RMB (about $7.50 USD) to get into the park surrounding the lake, but to my surprise there were several open gates on the sides of the park that you could just walk through freely.  My friends explained that what we were doing was called 走后门儿 (zŏu hòuménr) "going in the back door" and that the tickets were sold primarily to outsiders.  Its always best to know someone on the inside, isn't it? :)   The lake is beautiful and sitting next to it reminded me a lot of being back home in WI.  There were areas of Lotus plants 荷花 (hé huā) that will bloom in the next month or so.  I learned that lotus leaves can be brewed as an ingredient in rice porridge or 粥 (zhōu), which I was able to try the day before.

(Left: Cool looking trees by 大明湖.)(Right: A 100 year old house in 大明湖 park.)

By the time we left the lake, everyone was exhausted and right on the border of heat stroke (we were out in the sun from 10:00am-4:00pm).  I was glad to come back to my hotel room for a cold shower and a nap.  Actually, I pushed my nap off until about 6:00 because I'm reading a really good book.  I awoke to the hotel room phone ringing, which meant that Wu Juan, Wu Ying and Xiao Peng were back to pick me up for dinner.  Still groggy as hell, I went downstairs to meet them.  We ended up going to a place called "Golden Hans" (金汉斯, Jīn Hànsī), which is a German decor buffet restaurant that also features South American style BBQ (you know, where the waiters walk around with meat on skewers).  Picture a pirate themed restaurant in the US, but with all the waitresses dressed as German bar maids.  The food was pretty good, including the more exotic stuff like chicken hearts and cow tongue, but none of us could bring ourselves to eat all that much because of all the heat we had taken earlier that day.

After "Golden Hans," I came right back to the hotel with the intention of reading or finally catching some television in Chinese, but I was thwarted again and actually fell asleep with the lights on for a couple of hours.  Today, we are going out again, but should be calling it a day somewhat earlier since its supposed to be even hotter than yesterday (is that possible?).  More later, hope everyone is well!

Andy

International Travel and Arrival

Hi everyone,

As I'm sure you've assumed, I've arrived safely in China and today will be my second full day in Jinan, which is the capital city of 

Shandong province.  Jinan is famous for

 the ma

ny natural artesian springs that are found within the city limits.  I'll be visiting a few o

f the springs as well as other sites in the next few days, but for now I'd like to share a bit about my flight  and my first day in Jinan.

My flight from Milwaukee>Chicago>Beijing>Jinan was extremely tiring, but overall u

neventful.  I tried my best to sleep on the plane and was able to do so intermittently without any help from sleeping pills.  On the plane, I ended up switching seats twice with people

 who 

wanted to sit together with friends or family and ended up with an isle seat in the middle of the plane.  Actually, karma must have been on my side for switching seat

s, because I ended up right next to three different groups of interesting people who I w

as able to talk to.  The first group was a guy from Chicago and his two kids who were actually coming back to Jinan to see relatives (small world!).  There were also an older couple and a single older lady on my other side.  It was a lot of fun to talk to the older folks and I could really tell by their accents that they were from Beijing.  The single old lady was a real character and she talked for about 70% of the 13.5 hour flight!!!  Before we landed in Beijing, the plane had to make a series of wide, arcing manuevers in order to avoid several thunder storms in the 

area.   By the time I arrived at 北京首都国际机场 (Beijing's Airport) I was so exhausted that I actually went and laid down and drifted in and out of sleep while I waited for my connection to Jinan. I had the eyelids getting heavy/snapback awake thing going on for like 3-4 hours!

I slept for the entire flight from Beiing

>Jinan, only waking up to eat the on flight snack, which was a delicious ham on an english muffin type thing.

Once I finally arrived in Jinan, the younger sister of my friend and colleague from UWM (Wu Ying) and her classmate (Chen 

Fanli) picked me up from the airport.  They have been just wonderful and I'm not sure what I would have done if they hadn't been around to help me get into the city and settled.  They had eve

n helped me to reserve a nice, but affordable hotel room located very close to a lot of the best sites in Jinan.  After checkin

g into the hotel it was off for a quick bite to eat.   One of the things that really 

surprised me about Jinan is just how hot it is here.  Jinan has definitely lived up to its reputation as one of the "Four Furnace Cities of China" (Ji

nan, Chongqing, Nanjing and 

Wuhan for you Chinese language students).  After that it was off to bed to try and sleep it off and get ready for my first day in China.

When I woke up yesterday, the first order of business was breakfast, 

which is provided by the hotel each morning from 6-8 am.  The breakfast was buffet style and definitely Chinese style with rice porridge, all kinds of steamed buns (which is the main staple here, not rice), lots of meat and vegetable dishes to eat alongside.  Everything was so d

elicious that I am going to make a point of being on time for breakfast every day despite the early cutoff time (jetlag helps with this, I woke up at 4:45 this morning feeling great).

Yesterday, I spent most of the day on my own waiting for Wu Juan (Wu laoshi, my colleague) to arrive from Zaozhuang in the south of Shandong province to arrive by train.  I took a couple of long walks around the area near the hotel and ended up going through the student dormitory area of Shandong university which was very pretty. 

I also wasted a lot of time, messing with Skype because I haven't been able to make calls to actual phone numbers, just Skype to Skype, so if you've received any crypitc, dead-air messages, its probably just me.  I'm embarrassed to say, but I slept from about 3:30pm-8:00pm (2:30am-7:00am US Central).  Fortunately, I woke up about 30 minutes before Wu Juan and Wu Ying arrived to pick me up for dinner.  Last night, dinner was delicious, if not a bit shocking by American standards.  We had 鸭血粉丝汤 (yāxuě fěnsī tāng) or "duck blood sweet potato noodle soup."  The duck blood factors in as a congealed cake that has the texture and consistancy of tofu, but alot darker in color.  With the meal, I also had a duck head.  Unfortunately, the pictures of me eating the duck head are all on Juan's camera, so I'll have to post them later.  We also took a quick tour of a very crowded grocery store, where I could have spent hours looking for old favorites (maybe later).  After returning to the hotel, I had planed to catch some Chinese  television, but to my surprise, I was out like a light!  After catching up on so much sleep, I actually feel really great today, so hopefully it will be a very eventful day.  Time for breakfast!  Catch everyone later!

Andy

An Introduction

Hello everyone! 

Some of you know me as Andy or Andrew, sometimes I also go by 歐

頌安, and more recently a lot of you have been calling

 me 歐老師.  Anyway, you can check the picture to make sure that you've get the right guy and the right blog.  As many of you know, this summer I'll be heading to China to attend an institute for American teachers of Chinese language. The full name of the program is "ACC-CLASS K-12 Chinese Language Teachers' Institute in China" (I can't even remember how many times I've had to copy and paste that title in the last month! 

正正止).  In a nutshell, my travel plans will be as follows:

I depart Milwaukee on June 17 (TOMORROW).    After visiting friends in Zaozhuang, Shandong province for a few days, I'll be off to Beijing where the first two weeks of the program take place. The final three weeks of the program will be in Chengdu, Sichuan province, where I am especially looking forward to trying the spicy cuisine and checking out some of the many tea houses that the city is famou

s for.  From Chengdu, I'll travel directly to Taiw

an on August 9th, where I'll meet up with my girlfriend, Ali. We plan on living in Taipei, studying Mandarin Chinese, and teaching (Engli

sh for me and Yoga for her) for the next year or two.

The purpose of this blog is to hav

e a place to share my thoughts and experiences during the surely adventurous next year.  Its also a great way to keep in touch and anyone can leave comments or questions after each blog entry.  I'm going to try to have updates at least twice a week.  Blogging is definitely new to me since I've never even kept a diary, and oft

en tell people how much I hate writing, so ple

ase bear with me and cut me a little slack if I stink it up for the first couple of entries.  That being said, I'm extremely excited to begin this trip and have been waiting to check out Mainland China since I began studying Chinese in 2001.  (Side note: Did you ever see the Blair Witch Project?  I kind of feel like I'm in the early, enthusiastic part of that movie.  Lets all hope that this blog doesn't become an increas

ingly depraved account of my getting terribly lost on the streets of Beijing, resorting to eating insects (which is common and r

eportedly delicious says Uncle Jim), and eventual disappearance.  Just kidding, this is going to be awesome.

The title of this blog in Chinese is 頌安流浪記 Sòng'ān Liúlàngjì, which translates roughly to Andy's vagrant story.   My Chinese name is 歐頌安 Ōu Sòng'ān, so Sòng'an is my given name, like Andy.  流浪 liúlàng means vagrant or bum and 記 jì means memory, record, or story.  So, this blog is the story of me bumming around in China and Taiwan.  Also, the title is a throwback to a famous Chinese comic strip called 三毛流浪記 Sānmáo Liúlàngjì about a poor, orphan boy (Sānmáo or "three hair") trying to survive hard times in 1940s Shanghai.  Everyone in China knows about Sānmáo and there have been many movies and cartoons about him since the original comics came out in the 40s. 

Right now, it is June 16th, 12:09 PM central time.  My first flight departs Milwaukee at 6:40 AM and it'll be a very early morning, so I'd better get some sleep.  Thanks for putting up with this boring introductory stuff.  I promise my next entry will have more interesting, juicy stuff.

Take care all,

歐頌安