Roelof in China

A Farewell

Roelof — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 20:26:28 +0000

As most of you know, I am back in the Netherlands now.

I will not continue posting on this blog.

Thank you all for reading it! It has been a great year for me.

Love,

Roelof

Chinese New Year

Roelof — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:15:14 +0000

Tonight the year of the tiger takes off, and I am curious what it is going to bring. Right now everywhere around me there is noise, the air is full of the smell of smoke and firepowder.

The Chinese are celebrating their new years eve with firecrackers and fires, everyone is supposed to be at home with his family tonight.

All shops are closed, and most of the doors sport a sign like this. It is 福， the Chinese character for luck, turned upside down. This is a wordplay with the word “dao”, which can mean “upside down”, or, with a different character, “to arrive”. So it is supposed to be a sign promotig good fortune for the shop or the family.

I wish you all a happy new year.

Remember that “free” boat trip? Have a look…

Roelof — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:22:57 +0000

Hey folks!

A while ago I blogged about that free boat trip that Lisa, Johannes, M-J and me were offered. We were filmed while sitting in that boat. Now have a look what they used the material for, of course without our permission.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQwNDQxOTQ4.html

Pay attention at 1:38.

This is the official application video of Nanjing for the Youth Olympics.

Greetings,

Roelof

Leshan

Roelof — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:15:27 +0000

Hello everyone, this post is a roundup of our day trip to the city Leshan. This town is famous for it’s many old Buddhist statues, especially the biggest Buddha in the world!

From Chengdu to Leshan it took us about 90 minutes with a van. We had bought tickets for a coach, but strangely enough we were guided to a small van, apparently not many people wanted to go there. This was most welcome! As a rule of thumb, less tourists usually translates into a nicer experience.

The DaFo scenic area consists of a huge park situated on a mountainous forest area near the river, and the forest was full of caves, statues and temples. Especially nice was the tranquillity of the area, not much noise from cars or people found its way up the slopes. I selected the best pictures and will not write much, I think this can convey the beauty of this area far better than I could with words.

(This time all pictures are clickable again, to see the bigger versions.)

A cute Chinese boy wanted to take a picture with me (this happens to us three all the time), so I asked Rebeka to take one as well.

It was amazing to walk up and down through the jungle-like area, mainly on stairs.

After having walked a while, one would encounter another nice building or a statue.

I felt like an explorer, especially because there were not many other people. Quite unusual for famous Chinese sightseeing spots, we were lucky with the day we picked.

After having strolled through the forest for a while, we came to the river. An amazing sight.

This small pavilion used to be part of a defensive line along the coast. I loved it.

And then we arrived at the main attraction. The big Buddha. The first picture is the staircase that you have to descend.

An amazing sight. Carved into the riverside cliffs, this Buddha, measuring 71 metres, is the largest in the world.

Originally it was constructed to calm the waters of the river. After it’s completion, the inhabitants noticed that the river was indeed much calmer and safer to use for transport, and thanked the merciful Buddha. It is speculated that the massive amount of rocks that were dumped in the river during construction altered the currents.

I really like this picture, the monk was wandering around and I was lucky to capture it.

Please observe the tiny woman dressed in red to the right of his forehead. This gives you an idea of his gargantuan proportions.

One of the nicest statues there, in my humble opinion.

We found a cannon! A real cannon! The first I have seen in China so far, and it reminded me of Zeeland. (Southern Dutch Coast – lots of cannons there). A bit further we found a bridge that crossed over to the island which you can see in the pictures with that riverside pavilion.

Very pretty indeed. To get there one had to cross an old fishermen’s village, which was transformed into a bunch of souvenir shops and tourist restaurants.

While sitting in the bus back, exhausted from the long walks and the many stairs, I felt really happy and fulfilled. Because of the few other tourists and especially the few changes to the old buildings and statues, this area felt like really experiencing a part of Chinese history. More so than many other spots, that lost part of their charm through extensive refurbishments.

Greetings,

Pandas!

Roelof — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:33:37 +0000

“I didn’t do it!”

Hello dear readers of Roelof’s blog!

Urged by my dear mother, this post gets priority.

The absolute highlight of our stay Chengdu was our visit to the panda research base there. The full name is Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, and it is one of the most important panda bases in the world. It now harbours over 80 living pandas and numerous pandas have been born and bred there.

We left the hostel petty early at around 7, because we were told that the pandas would be fed at around 8:30. This was a good tip, when we arrived the pandas just started their breakfast, and we could make some hilarious pictures. At first we were almost alone and it was just wonderful.

Breakfast party!

Pandas are even slower and clumsier in real life then as they are portrayed in popular media, it was just so endearing to watch these fabulous animals walk around, grap some bamboo and then roll backwards do devour it slowly, savouring every bite.

“My mommy alwys says have a beautiful back.”

“See?”

“My favourite spot.”

After the breakfast they started to become ever calmer, and started looking for a nice spot to slumber, just like this cute fellow. His backside was even more endearing, but see for yourself:

“As comfy as can be.”

While some were napping, others were still eating. Comfortably. Uncompromised comfort seems to be a major thing in panda lifestyle. Quite inspiring, actually.

“Huh?”

Apparently pandas in captivity can be very social animals, although they are mostly solitary in the wild.

I want one for my naps as well…

Oh how we loved this guy.

But this one was neat,too. He was the biggest panda we found there.

Did I mention that this guy in the tree was cute?

I never realized that pandas are so fond of sleeping in trees.

“Naah, I don’t really like the view from this side…”

“Maybe it’s better from over here?”

“Definitely!”

“Chillin’!”

A bit later we found another panda in a tree, but this one seemed to almost fall down. Simply gorgeous! I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

A smaller part of the base had red pandas, an animal that I had never seen alive before. They were almost cuter than the giant pandas! But look for yourself:

“Look, a helicopter!”

I really love the next two pictures…

We had a wonderful day, and if anyone of you ever comes to China, be sure to consider a visit to a panda base. I haven’t been able to figure out why, but these animals touch a chord among humans. It is great that so much effort is put into their preservation. China is willing to go very far for this national symbol (e.g. killing a panda is punishable by death…).

Greetings from afar,

Train Ride

Roelof — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:49:37 +0000

Hello folks,

I decided to write a short post about our preferred mode of transport during the last weeks: “hard-sleeper” trains.

During the last weeks, we covered more than 3500 kilometres. The major part of this was done by train, in three etappes of 16, 24 and 26 hours.

Click here to see a map!

The trains are really long, each consists of more than 14 compartments. Every compartments is divided into ca. 10 segments, and every segment consists of six beds, three to each side.

This means that every train carries roughly 1000 passengers, so just imagine how crowded the train stations are!!!

I thought the beds were quite comfortable, they were about 70 cm wide and long enough for a stout fellow like me to lie stretched out. The mattress was about as soft (or hard) as my mattress at home, so no reason to complain about that, either. I really wonder how comfortable the more expensive softsleepers are.

We always chose the top beds, and this proved to be a very wise choice: No matter what was going on downstairs, we could sleep/drink or chat in relative peace. After the first trip I started looking forward to the next ones, it was great to relax and read in there. After 24 hours, however, I couldn’t help but feel locked up and I yearned for some movement and fresh air.

Here are some impressions from the inside of the train.

I will post another post with lots of cute pictures very soon, so stay tuned!

Greetings from afar,

Yangshuo!

Roelof — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:37:28 +0000

Hey guys, Yangshuo is amazing.

I decided to publish this post today, although I have several more waiting from the last days. (Pandas et al.)

So the posts on my blog will not follow my journey anymore, but I think that is not really necessary anyway.

Yangshuo is often cited as the most beautiful place in China. Well, the town itself is definitely what draws loads of tourists to this place: It is a place that practically grew around a crapload of hostels and hotels, with all sorts of “western” bars and souvenir shops. The main streets look like you are next to a really impressive tourist attraction, with all of the street merchants and merchandise, only that the tourist attraction here is not a temple or any other nice building but the landscape.

The whole countryside is full of weird round mountains called karst peaks. It is totally surreal, especially on misty days like today. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

After our breakfast we took the bus to a famous tree that looks like this:

The tree is more than 1000 years old, and really really impressive. It looks like the branches have grown too heavy, so that various “assistant” trees have been planted and merged with the original tree. This looks really weird, somehow the added trunks make the tree look very alive and very… organic. Almost like an entity from a fantasy story. I can’t put it any better, maybe the pictures can convey what I try to say.

On our way there we met a nice Chinese guy who joined us for the day. On the other side of the river was a mountain that we wanted to see from up close, but there was no bridge to be seen, just a “road” through the river. This was like a dam where the river was only 5 cm deep, albeit flowing with a strong current.

We actually saw various things crossing the river there, and it was hilarious to watch.

Especially this fancy fellow.

I decided to cross the river on another funny crossing, and man, the water was cold!

The others found a bridge some 800 meters further downstream… From the other side the view was really nice as well, and we found this special rock there:

Rebeka and I decided to give the road a try on our way back, and it was FUN. It really was.

Icy at first, but after that it felt just great to stand in the middle of the river, with stunning surroundings and stunned observers because two foreigners were not paying the boats or hitching a ride through the water.

Later we walked on to one of the most famous hills in Yangshuo, the Moon Hill. Quite easy to see why it is called like that, isn’t it?

So we went on our way to the “step to the moon”…

…and got closer and closer.

We climbed up until we were standing right underneath the arch and from there further up to the top, from where we had a wonderful view (into the mist). We could barely see any other hills, quite disappointing. It wasn’t that bad though, since we had already lowered our expectations, and the mist made the view quite spectacular in it’s own right.

The way up there was very slippery, and the way back took us three times as long as our climb up, but we made it back (almost) without scratches (and with only one muddy bottom).

As extra bonus, we did our best to avoid any vanity:

When we came back, we found a place specialised in various masks. A great sight!

Although we were pretty exhausted, we couldn’t help but smile at the sight of this sign. Since Yangshuo is usually overrun by backpackers, hostels and bars advertise with being featured in the Lonely Planet. This one does it a bit different, though.

It was a great day, I am looking forward to tomorrow. We might take a boat trip, I’ll keep you all posted.

Xi’An

Roelof — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:28:13 +0000

Hey fellows!

I haven’t been writing for quite a while, I’ve been in some sort of inspirational dip. But that’s all about to change, as I am travelling China now I have loads and loads of things to tell. On the 13th I packed my stuff and flew to Xi’An to join Rebeka and Tjasa on a tour through China.

As some of you might know, Xi’An (literally: Western Peace), formerly called Chang’an, is the starting point of the silk road and very famous for it’s grave of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. This was the guy responsible for construction of the Great Wall and he wanted to be buried together with loads and loads of humans. Apart from his servants that were to be buried alive with him, he ordered his people to build thousands (> 6000) of life-sized human statues from clay. They made a full-scaled army out of clay, divided into different squadrons of archers, horsemen and the like. No horseman without his horse, so they made those as well… The whole area is enormous, and the main mausoleum has not even been excavated yet. We went to the site in the morning, and the main excavation hall looks like this:

Lines and lines of clay figures neatly lined up. But the many rows of excavated statues are not what is most impressive, it is the other halls and the realisation that most of those figures are still buried somewhere. Scans of the area show that it is and insane amount, and at the moment no excavation work is done anymore.

What’s really impressive is the variety in the clay statues, and although they have fairly similar bodies (in several types, of course), the faces are very lively and individual. In one museum we saw a photo display with close-ups of more than 100 faces next to each other!

The craftsmanship is astounding, even things like moustache types are different (Inspiring!)

If you want, you can even have a nifty clay face moulded after yours and then buy a terracotta figure for it…

In the adjoining museum some of the most precious works are exhibited, for example this stunning carriage.

After returning to Xi’An we visited a pagoda from which one had a nice view over the city (hidden behind a veil of smog…). We were especially lucky because we could witness a massive fountain display right next to the pagoda, for 15 minutes numerous fountains were orchestrated to the music of An der schönen blauen Donau by Johann Strauss.

From the pagoda I also spotted this nice fortress, unfortunately it was too far away to take a good picture.

In the pagoda area I found these strikingly beautiful seats, I really wanted to take one of them!

When we exited the pagoda, this tree caught my eye, and I just want to share these two pictures with you.

On the next day we had a “museum day” and firstly went to a museum about the excavation of an neolithic village near Xi’An, called Banpo village. This village is over 6000 years old, and on the site we found some nice reconstructed huts and a museum with artifacts like clay pots and stone tools. It was quite captivating to think about how they must have lived. What I found especially impressing was the mout around the village which was about three metres wide and more than 6 metres deep.

After this museum we visited the Shaanxi History Museum, which was quite a nice building itself. (This is only the left wing.)

I found this museum to be one of the most entertaining museums I have seen so far, two of my favourite pieces are the following.

I really can’t put a finger on it, but I just do like this pot. The other piece is quite famous, and it is not difficult to guess why:

I think this dragon is as Chinese as it gets, and it looks really lively and somehow funny with his hind legs up in the air.

The museum put an emphasis on the silk road and it’s influence in Xi’An, with coins and trade goods.

When we left the museum, we were in for a surprise: Chinese crowds staring at x-ray pictures. At first we were quite surprised, but as soon as we turned we could see what they were staring at: the sun! After having seen so much historical things my first thought was: Help, part of the sun is missing!

Which was the truth. It was stunning. Really stunning. We observed most of it through camera’s and a scarf, and Rebeka managed to make some wonderful pictures of it. See for yourself!

I wonder if one of us is ever going to see such a nice eclipse again in our lives. We were exceptionally lucky to exit the museum at exactly the right time, and I am very happy that I could experience this.

One other attraction of Xi’An is the Muslim quarter. Somehow I felt strangely familiar with the food served there (pita bread filled with grilled meat), although it was more spicy than it’s German counterparts.

In the quarter one can find a huge mosque (more than 1000 people can worship there at the same time). The mosque area is a fascinating combination of Muslim and Chinese architecture, with palm trees and a minaret disguised as a pagoda.

The whole area was lively, during the evening the streets were packed with people. Everywhere strange odours were floating around, and of course many small stalls sold tourist trinkets. And delicious food…

Towards the end of the day we passed a pretty drum tower. Unfortunately we could not listen to any of the regular drum “concerts”, but the tower itself was a nice sight.

Everything about Xi’An was just right, we stayed in a TERRIFIC hostel. Just a few of the really nice things there: free beer every night, free guitars and delicious breakfast. One night we stayed up till 2 or 3 and the whole bar sung along with old classics like Hotel California, Let it be, Free Fallin’ and the like.

It was terrific.

I’m off to Chengdu, of panda fame.

I’ll keep you posted,

Free Weekend Away

Roelof — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:17:06 +0000

I wanted to post this for a while now:

Several weeks ago, I was able to enjoy a free weekend trip! Some friend’s friend of M-J runs a tourist company, and they offered some “foreign friends” a free trip to two old towns in China.

The thing was that that company actually wanted to bring some visitors (so called “foreign buyers”) to a textile exhibition in Textile City, an enormous area where an incredible amount of textile is produced every year. So me and some friends went along and enjoyed a weekend full of long bus rides, touristy “old” towns and a free night at a 5-star hotel!

On saturday morning we met somewhere in Nanjing to take the bus, it took us 5 hours to get to the first town.

It was located at some waterway, and we visited an “old” rice-wine brewery there:

Unfortunately we could not try some for free, and I did not want to pay for anything.

In the small alleys of this town we also found a textile production facility, which produced blue-and-white textile according to a very old process: Firstly some white something was applied to the white textile through a paper model, which looked like this:

Then the prepared cloth was put into basins full of an intense blue color, extracted from some plants. The patterns were really elaborate, and all those long stretches of cloth that were drying in the wind looked nice. Did I say that the weather was terrific?

Quite remarkable were the shapes of some doors I found there, have a look!

I wonder why anyone would design doors like this…

Another amazing thing were the intricate woodcarvings which the buildings were decorated with, the most beautiful was this one:

We were in a rush, so after some enjoyable hours we were brought to our amazing hotel.

I did not take any pictures there, I was way too busy enjoying the dinner and our rooms. I could not remember when the last time that I had lain in a real bathtub had been, so I could not resist… When I got out after an hour and put on the cozy bathrobes, it felt like heaven.

Those bathrobes were so comfy that five of our group decided to wear (only!) them to the KTV place… Hilarious! (karaoke-TV, which is HUGE in China).

We ended up having our private party there until late, but I was soooo tired that I left around 1.

After the breaktfast buffet we were brought to the textile exhibition, which was not really worth mentioning. We spent only one hour there, and we had to pretend to be foreigners (easy) that were interested in buying textiles (hard).

The opening ceremony was quite nice, and we had a good time there.

Rebeka (Slovenia), André (US) and Tjasa (Slovenia)

After that we visited another “famous” small town, but by then we were quite exhausted.

The only thing worth mentioning was another weird door we found. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture without me posing weirdly…

Totally exhausted we climbed on the bus back home, and somewhere around midnight we arrived in Nanjing.

Although there were some annoying bus rides, this weekend was big fun, and you can’t beat the price…

The main reason for this trip being so enjoyable can be seen on the next picture, thanks to all four of you!

M-J (GB), Jolien (Belgique), Package (Slovenia) and Tjasa (idem)

Snowfall

Roelof — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:20:54 +0000

Who wants to walk with me?

Tuesday afternoon, taking the bus to the other campus on my way to my German class!

As soon as I arrive, I am surrounded by a wonderfully quiet snowscape.

It is amazing around me, the first real snowfall in Nanjing and it is at least 15 cm! I love the world around me, let me share it with you:

I wander around and find some Chinese students who are willing to take a picture of me:

This lake is beautiful, and I spot three Chinese dudes on the other side, spontaneously I decide to attack them ferociously with a rain of snowballs. After their initial consternation they decide to (try to) pay me back, and a small artillery battle begins.

Unfortunately my watch tells me that my class is going to start, and somewhat reluctantly I climb the stairs to my classroom.

The 11 attending girls do not know what a “Schneeballschlacht” or a “Schneemann” is, so I explain it and soon half an hour has passed. While listening to “Aurelie” (“Wir sind Helden”) and singing along the next 20 minutes in this (non-heated) classroom pass.

The second hour is filled with a discussion about the differences between meeting someone in your first life (reality) or in your second life (internet), and with chilled bones and some interesting results I end the classes for today with (almost) no homework.

(Walking down the steps I realise that I am the only one who was not wearing a jacket that classroom…)

I have to wait for the bus, and I suddenly feel inspired to create this work of art:

(And yes, those ARE chopsticks…)

After targeting (and hitting) some more (absolutely terrified) Chinese students, I hop on the bus back home.

The trip is tiresome, but the sunset above the mighty Yangtze makes up for it.

I stroll home from the bus station with a huge smile on my face, happy with the things I am allowed to experience here.

Thank you for walking with me!