The Things They Carried: All aboard the Carnival Paradise

Last weekend’s Caribbean cruise with my brother and friends left me with some lessons in packing, a boatload (ha ha) of memories, and a few supremely entertaining photos.

For Future Me and anyone else planning and packing for a cruise, here’s a list of items you won’t remember to bring but might turn out to be critical (by some hedonistic criteria):

• Water and drinks – Only lemonade and iced tea are provided. If you want anything to drink besides ship tap water without paying exorbitant fees, bring it with you.
• Alcohol – Ditto. Carnival allows each person to bring one bottle of wine onto the ship; everything else is confiscated UNLESS you’re sneaky. Contact Robin Tan for tips on how to be sneaky.
• Cash – Always good to have. Especially if you like to gamble. (Please gamble responsibly.)
• Point-and-shoot camera – Cell phones don’t work on a ship for ordinary people on ordinary budgets, so there’s no reason to carry one around. Bring a dedicated camera for higher-quality memories.
• Walkie-talkies – How else are you going to coordinate that 19th group outing to the 24-hour pizza buffet on Lido deck?
• Games – There’s always time for games. Too much time.
• Speakers – Just in case you want to listen to something besides that old dude singing karaoke.
• Gym clothes – You’ll need to work out hard to power through that fourth appetizer at dinner.

On to the photos: The best of the bunch are simply too awesome for public consumption and will be left to the imagination out of respect for the subjects’ careers and dignity, but here are a few solid runners-up.

This guy is cooler than you.

This guy just thinks he is.

Sometimes you lose money at the casino. Sometimes Carlina wins $1000 in cold, hard cash.

Beka and Robin only won $200. Weak.

Offloading ourselves in Cozumel.

Candid shot.

Looking for a sunken ship during the Amazing Race in Cozumel.

We win!

Gold medals!

At the beach.

The first in a series of pool escapades.

Human totem pole, AKA Double Chicken.

Human pyramid. Why are the girls always on top?

Again.

Last hurrah in Cozumel.

Edible happiness at breakfast.

Birthdays happen at sea too. Happy 24th and 25th, Carlina and Justin!

The boys.

The Duke girls.

On a post-cruise diet in Tampa. Thanks John and Robin!

Team pic: Carlina, me, Robin, Neal, Justin, Dave, Beka, and Nancy. Thanks for a ridiculously awesome weekend!

10 Reasons to Visit China (AKA Stuff I Bought)

After my earlier post about some of the less savory aspects of life in the world’s most populous country, I think I owe it to my Chinese friends to balance the scales by writing a (literally) uncensored post about China’s better half. Now if only they had access to the Internet… Anyway, here goes.

Note: In including Taiwan’s finest in this list, I have no intention of making any sort of political statement about Taiwan’s sovereignty or the current state of Cross-Strait relations.

1. Chinese bakeries and bread – I don’t mean to hate on American bakeries, but 4 dollars for a tiny pastry? You gotta be kidding me. Chinese bakeries are like the land of the Lotus Eaters, only slightly less narcotic: The moment you walk into a Chinese bakery, a blanket of divine scent envelops you, and you never, ever want to leave. And that’s before you’ve even tasted the bread. During my 3-month stay in China, I never managed to escape a bakery with less than 2 pounds of bread, and it never failed to disappear within 24 hours.

Feeding the hungry beasts (AKA Big Brother and Robin)

2. Efficient public transportation – With a population of 1,324,655,000 (as of 2008), China has had a pretty good reason to develop an efficient, high-capacity public transportation network. In my opinion, it’s a little too good: Beijing’s 2¥ (equivalent to 29 cents US) subway, which took us from the 4th Ring to the heart of Beijing faster than any car, probably holds several world records for human close-packing, a game that I don’t particularly enjoy. On the older Lines 1 and 2, anytime from 8AM to 10PM, you can consider yourself lucky if you’re touching fewer than 4 people at once. For a quarter a ride though, I can’t complain.

Shanghai's 270mph Transrapid maglev train is pretty cool too...

3. Boba (pearl milk tea, or 珍珠奶茶) that actually tastes good – And not just good, amazing. I’ve never been a big fan of boba, but then again, I’d also never tried Taiwanese boba before. Food typically tastes better in its country of origin, and boba is no exception. The milk is delicious—I’m lactose-intolerant, and I still couldn’t resist drinking it—and the palm sugar tapioca pearls are bigger, chewier, and simply better than the best California has to offer…

The best boba in the world: Taiwan's 青蛙撞奶 ("Frog hits the milk")

4. Cheap stuff – As a tribute to Inception, here’s a list-within-a-list of things I bought in China that were so-cheap-they-should-be-illegal-…-oh-wait-they-probably-are-illegal…

1.)  Tailored suit (made from scratch in 18 hours!): $88
2.)  4 tailored dress shirts: $59
3.)  A billion DVDs: See number 6
4.)  Dinner at a fancy restaurant: $5
5.)  2 pounds of sweet rolls: $1
6.)  Train ticket from Beijing to Shanghai: $100
7.)  Subway rides across Beijing: $0.29
8.)  North Face jacket: $33
9.)  Chinese prostitute: Priceless

Just kidding.

5. Street food – If you’re willing to risk your stomach lining, there’s cheap, delicious food to be had on every street in China’s major cities. And in reality, it’s not actually all that risky: as far as I know, no one in the Stanford group ever got sick from eating street food. Some of our favorites included roasted yams, sweet buns, pineapple skewers, haw skewers (bingtanghulu), and peanuts.

Bingtanghulu: Haw fruit on a stick, coated in sugar

6. Movies that come out on DVD the day after they open in theaters –

Fact 1: Today is August 2, 2010.

Fact 2: Ironman 2 comes out on DVD on September 28, 2010.

Fact 3: I own Ironman 2 on DVD.

Interesting…

7. Night markets – Taiwan’s night markets are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. A massive conglomeration of food stands, street vendors, arcades, and random shops, you could spend days browsing around and still not see (or taste!) everything. Most famous among them is the Shilin Night Market in Taipei. The best strategy of attack is to starve yourself for 2 days before hitting up Shilin.

Shilin Night Market's "XXL Crispy Chicken": A big slab of fried chicken

Mianmianbing: Super-fine shaved ice covered in sweet red beans and condensed milk. It's heaven on Earth.

8. Baozi (steamed buns) – During every quarter of the Stanford Program in Beijing, students gravitate to the Songlin baozi restaurant on campus. It’s such a simple concept—meat, veggies, or sweet custard in a steamed bun—but baozi have the addictive potency of crack cocaine. I couldn’t help visiting Songlin at least 4 times a week during my stay at PKU.

Fried shengjian baozi in Shanghai.

9. Hot springs (and other beautiful scenery) – A picture’s worth… well, at least a few words.

The Stone Forest in Yunnan Province

Taiwan's legendary Sun Moon Lake. Chinese kids grow up reading stories about this place, so when they visit Taiwan, they all want to go to Sun Moon Lake.

Me, Robin, and Neal on the Great Wall

10. New friends – It amazes me how close our group of 14 Stanford students grew in just a few weeks and how quickly and easily we became friends with our Chinese classmates at Peking University. In sharing stories and comparing life experiences, we each learned about the other’s culture and discovered that we weren’t so different after all, that the college student’s experience is (somewhat) universal: A mutual understanding seems to arise when you talk to any undergrad about all-nighters and finals, papers and GERs. Growing up in Ohio, I didn’t often meet people who were truly international, and I now realize that my 3 months of living and learning in China actually gave me more insight into my own life and my own (American) culture than into the Chinese culture that I was immersed in.

Stanford Shaolin in Pingyao. After summer internships and independent travel in China, my classmates are slowly drifting back to the US. Welcome back, guys!

Note: In case you didn’t notice, the previous paragraph was an attempt to stuff as many clichés as possible into a single paragraph. I think I succeeded.

Thanks for reading!

-Joel

P.S. Number 11 on the list would have been “New takes on old things,” for example…

Taiwanese spork.

The definition of "fruit"

Viagra (This is actually some sort of candy...)

Tall buildings (Taipei 101, the 2nd tallest building in the world; the tallest is in Dubai, of course)

T-shirts

English (This is a sign for a bathroom)

Self-service restaurants (This one made us catch our own fish for lunch)

Definition of "edible"

Birds' nests

Toilets

Trash cans

Palm Drive (This is at National Taiwan University; compare this with Stanford's Palm Drive)

An Ohio Yankee at Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo

I’m graduating tomorrow! From the BOSP Beijing study abroad program, that is. With the last finals and final papers of junior year turned in, I’m now officially a senior at Stanford.

In other news, my mom, my brother, and a friend are somewhere over the Pacific Ocean at this moment, on their way to Beijing to travel with me for the next 2 weeks. Except for the part where I speak Mandarin on par with a Chinese toddler, I’m basically a Beijing native at this point, so from now until Sunday, I’ll be showing Mom and Co. around Beijing and its many visual and gustatory attractions. We’ll then fly to Taipei, Taiwan, where I’ll get to see my grandparents and other relatives for the first time in over a decade. Then it’s back to the mainland, Shanghai and Hangzhou, for a few final days in the Orient, before we return to the US and life goes on…

I’ll be back in the US on June 23 and back at Stanford (living in Crothers) for research on June 28 (2 days before I turn 21!), but with everything that’s going on in my life (i.e., packing, eating, shopping, more packing), I don’t have enough time to write a full post right now. In the meantime, enjoy these pictures from the last couple weeks of my Beijing adventure, including a trip to Shanghai and the 2010 World Expo…

The 2010 Shanghai World Expo Mascot. With a blue "toothpaste thing" in the background. (They call him Haibao)

Mai, Me, Adriana, and Lili at the Tunisia Pavilion

Kelsey and the home of Messi

The US Pavilion. Surrounded, of course, by Chinese people trying to get in.

Half of our group (Chris, Kelsey, Lili, Adriana, Mai, Bill)

The other half (Dominik, Tarun, Amanda, Marty, Lianna)

Mexico, Stanford-style. (Photo courtesy of our resident photographer, Lianna)

People hopping fences to get INTO Mexico? Really?

Meet my friend, Frida Kahlo.

Usain, you're such a poser.

Romania's Greenopolis Pavilion

Reppin' Stanford.

Lunch at the Africa Pavilion: Ostrich wraps

Inside the Africa Pavilion. I don't understand...

The UK Pavilion. The shimmering effect comes from 60,000 transparent plastic rods that act like fiber-optic filaments in drawing light into the pavilion.

Marty, Me, and Adriana, playing in Australia

The host country China's spectacular pavilion, the only one that will be left standing after the Expo ends in October.

Taiwan and a Taiwanese.

Vietnam and a Vietnamese.

Burma and a... Chinese?

UFO? Nope, just the World Expo Performing Arts Center.

The Saudi Arabia Pavilion. Basically a gigantic lit-up bowl with palm trees on top. And a 4-hour wait to get in.

Nanxiang Xiaolongbao: The most famous steamed dumplings (baozi) in the world. No joke. They were invented here in Shanghai. The baozi are magically filled with soup, so you drink the soup with the straw before eating the rest.

On the Bund, looking over the Huangpu River to Pudong. Shanghai's iconic skyline is in the background.

The Shanghai skyline at night.

Stone Age weights. For real men only. (Let's go pump some... stone?)

Aww, how cute.

Even cuter.

Not quite as cute.

Ditto.

And we have a winner! The kitten in a box in a Shanghai alley was by far the cutest thing we saw all weekend.

An American-style diner in the French Concession was holding a contest: Eat a 1-kilogram burger in 10 minutes, and you don't have to pay for it. We convinced my roommate Bill to take on the challenge. At left is a normal-sized burger for comparison. Notice how the monster burger is bigger than Bill's head.

Chowing down.

Success!

Over 2 pounds of meat and bread (plus fries!) in 9 minutes. What a trooper. (I just noticed that I'm in the background of the Polaroid. Success.)

The Wall of Champions.

Me, Mai, Adriana, and Kelsey. Halfway up Xiangshan (Fragrant Mountain), on the outskirts of Beijing.

The girls, all looking amazingly happy for a candid shot.

Halfway up the mountain.

At the top of Xiangshan. Check out the view of Beijing in the background.

You just can't get away from those pandas. Sure, they're cute, but this is ridiculous... 🙂

Thanks for reading! Check back in 2 weeks for more new and exciting content. 🙂

-Joel

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to China

Unless you want to be human-trafficked or see your face on the evening news, hitchhiking is one game you really shouldn’t play. Especially in China. Especially in southern China. Especially in the mountains of Yunnan Province.

But there we were last Sunday, lost in southern China, in the mountains of Yunnan Province. What choice did we have?

That particular adventure began peacefully, innocently, with a taxi ride from Peking University to Beijing Capital International Airport. It was the Chinese May Day holiday weekend, and the eight of us––7 students from Stanford, 1 from Peking University––had planned a 5-day expedition to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan. A 3-hour Hainan Airlines flight later, we were breathing in the clean (!) air of Yunnan and facing the imminent danger of having our body parts sold by a predatory swarm of strangers offering us cheap rides to our hotel in unmarked, windowless vans. We declined politely and took legit taxis to our home-away-from-home-away-from-home, the 4-star Kunming Jin Jiang Hotel. Granted, that’s 4 “Chinese stars,” as my roommate put it––1 for a bed, 1 for a TV, 1 for a working toilet, and 1 more for a shower––but even with 8 people stuffed into 2 rooms, we were living the good life.

Friday

Having banned early morning activity for the weekend, we set off at noon the next day in a rented bus with hired driver, in search of a real Chinese adventure. Our first stop: Jiuxiang Scenic Area (the equivalent of a state park in the US), 2 hours southeast of Kunming. On the way, we got a glimpse of the “real” China: sun-browned farmers knee-deep in rice paddies, a bevy of sad-looking oxen, and, in a representative juxtaposition of rich and poor, lavish country clubs with 18-hole courses right next to crumbling peasant abodes.

Jiuxiang Scenic Area

Chris, Me, Adriana, Lili, and Marty outside the caves of Jiuxiang

Still water.

I'm not quite sure what was going on here...

Jiuxiang is arranged as a linear passage, leading visitors through dazzling caves and spectacular gorges, and although the views alone were worth the trip, I was most impressed by the preferred mode of transportation back to the entrance…

Horses!

Buck-wild on a bucking bronco. Or something like that.

My horse couldn't hold it in, and Adriana couldn't help taking a picture.

Who knew horses could climb stairs?

Adriana, Marty, and Lili

That 20-minute ride on a Yunnan farmer’s horse––and a friendly chat with the farmer himself––was one of the most memorable experiences of the entire trip. Upon reaching the entrance of the park, we proceeded to spend tourist-worthy amounts of money on dried fruit, fresh fruit, and souvenirs.

Back in the bus, our questionable young driver was stewing in discontent. Hoping to shirk half a day’s paid work and get home before sunset, he lied to our faces, saying that we were out of time, that our next planned destination, the Stone Forest (Shilin), closed daily at 5PM. We insisted on going anyway.

The Stone Forest, which covers a vast area extending beyond our field of view, turned out to be a climber’s paradise. Rocks of all sizes sprout out of the ground in clusters, with hidden crevices, weathered cracks, and natural handholds aiding our efforts to scale them. Our late evening arrival meant the park was completely devoid of tourists, and we did our best Spiderman impressions in clinging to sheer rock faces and posing for sensationalistic photos. And from our vantage point atop the tallest stone cluster in the park, we had the opportunity to watch the sun set over the rock-dotted horizon. Beautiful.

Entering the Stone Forest

Stanford students can fly. Briefly.

King(s) of the Hill.

Sitting Stanford ducks: Marty, Bill, Me, Adriana, Lili, Chris, Bella, Beatrice.

Climbing is way harder than it looks...

Success.

Adriana did me one better.

As did Lili.

Meanwhile, snoozing alone in the bus, our driver had reached a tipping point. When he realized that his contracting manager (basically his pimp) had signed him up for the extra drive to Shilin for a meager 200¥, he exploded. We feared for our lives, as the crazy kid floored the gas pedal and started passing cars left and right. At 80 miles per hour. On a 2-lane mountain road. We made the 2.5-hour trip back to Kunming in 1 hour, but by the time we reached our hotel, none of us ever wanted to see a bus again.

Saturday

Saturday was a day for relaxing. After a massive Western-style breakfast––our first since coming to China––at the hotel’s 20th floor “revolving” (it didn’t revolve) restaurant, we explored downtown Kunming, wandering through a crowded but charming city park, a minority food and music festival, and various roadside shops. With the evening approaching, we took a cab over to Dianchi (Dian Lake) and watched the sun set over the Western Mountains (Xishan)––yet another unforgettable view.

Public dating boards: Find your true love, by age, hometown, and major (?!?)

Adriana admiring the lily pads.

Chinese civil disobedience: Uncensored (proxied) web access at an internet bar

Stanford + Chinese minority girl

I hate getting inattentive advice.

Outside the Yunnan Minority Village... Check out Xishan in the background.

Many horses were ridden on this trip.

Bella, Marty, and Adriana. Looking mighty gangsta there, Marty.

Beautiful sunset over Dian Lake and the Western Mountains

That evening, we were all tired, but we decided that we couldn’t leave Yunnan without experiencing a night out on the town. The concierge recommended checking out the Kundu Night Market. The party didn’t start ’til we walked in, and when one club started blasting Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” just as we walked in, we knew we were in the right place. Brash Americans the lot of us, we had no shame taking over the stage at each venue––the moment we got on, everyone else got off––and, there in the middle of downtown Kunming, we danced the night away.

Clubbing in Kunming. I love the picture of the little girl in the background.

Sunday

It was supposed to be a day of rest.

With grand plans of climbing the Western Mountains, we set off for the park gate around noon on Sunday. A navigational debacle ensued, with half the group ending up on the wrong side of the largest lake in Yunnan, and the rest of us baked in the sun for an hour waiting for our lost companions. Once we were all together, a gondola whisked us over Dianchi and halfway up the mountain.

Repping Stanford AND Peking University.

Climbing Xishan was like trying to wear out a Stairmaster. The stone steps seemed to never end, and when we reached a summit of sorts––so what if it wasn’t the actual mountain peak––we declared victory and celebrated with a picnic of eggs, Chinese bread, and jackfruit chips.

Nice umbrella, Bill.

Kunming from ahigh. (Xishan summit)

A quick downhill walk and a rocky bus ride later, we found ourselves at the base of the mountain, with no transportation and no idea where to find transportation. Our Holy Grail was the hot springs district of Anning, a small town 30 kilometers away, but how would we get there? We started to walk, hugging the shoulder of the mountain road and winding our way through shabby little towns before realizing that we had no chance in hell of finding our way alone.

After finding out that taxi companies in Yunnan do not, in fact, dispatch drivers, we set off on a wild goose chase, taking a series of rickety, peasant-filled buses and ending up in the middle of some sort of city, which we were first told was close to Anning, then were told was as far from Anning as it was humanly possible to be. With each passing moment, hitchhiking was becoming more and more attractive an option.

We were saved by a couple brave men, Kunming taxi drivers willing to ferry us through the mountains to our destination for a reasonable fee. We arrived at the Jinfang Shenlin Wenquan Resort––it was truly a resort––around 8PM,  paid 128¥ RMB per person, and hightailed it out back to the springs. Each spring was like a big hot tub, minus the bubbles and the grime, and several were flavored: milk, rose, various Chinese fruits/vegetables. Befitting the theme of our trip, every time our group entered a spring, the incumbent Chinese family immediately departed. We didn’t mind. After our trying day, it took 4 hours of physical and spiritual cleansing before we were ready to part from the heavenly warmth of those hot springs. The experience was worth every penny and every wrinkled finger and toe.

Ready to hit the hot springs.

Hot milk. Mmmm...

Me and Chris.

Rose-flavored hot spring. 🙂

All in all, one of the most exciting weekends of my life.

-Joel