touristing 1.3

The day we went to all these places I also took the medium format camera. I'm not as productive as Dan and I only shot one roll (if even that much) and since he takes film in when he's amassed a larger amount, I'll have to wait until there's more to develop before I get to see how they turned out.
The story behind this place (or one of the stories anyway) is that the man who had it built worked as a high-ranking government official. Somehow he managed to steal jewels from the palace. He'd build them into the walls of his mansion (and this place is like a small village, it's huge and complex and beyond what we'd consider a mansion). Eventually he amassed so much wealth that he actually had more than the emperor. He didn't give someone the cut they were due, though, and he got ratted out. Before losing his head, he and his family sure lived well.

I kept trying to get a picture of these pedicabs when streams of them would come rolling down the street, but I wasn't fast enough and missed it each time. Here they are parked, though, when they're much easier to catch.
This kind of thing cracks us up. A fake topiary to hide the spotlight...


Another pavilion for the corrupt official. Not bad!

touristing 1.2

The second place we visited that day was the Temple of Heaven. I liked this much more than the Forbidden City - it actually has trees! The Forbidden City didn't have trees except in one small garden area, because they didn't want there to be opportunities for assassins to hide behind trees. It makes the complex rather blank and scorching when it's hot. The Temple of Heaven, though, has trees all over, and it's quite large. There's a lot to explore. I've heard that in the mornings lots of people are there, doing tai chi and playing instruments, kind of like Zizhuyuan, near us.

touristing 1.1

Dan's students arrived earlier in the month and they're the nicest bunch of college students - they're fun to hang out with and we've had the chance to accompany them on a few sightseeing trips. These pictures are from a day we spent at The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Temple of Heaven, and one other place whose name none of us could remember, so we just started calling it The Corrupt Official's Mansion (which, in essence, is what it was back in the Qing Dynasty).

Devin carried around the video camera and was quite happy to be the official videographer.

I discovered the extent of foraging in Beijing: some potted pomegranates. They're just turning red, d'you think I'd get in trouble with the Emperor's people if I stole one?
Gotta love what's lost and gained in translation (which reminds me, I have more of these funny things to post later).
I tend to focus on the out-of-place, the misfits and wild-hearts breaking through the concrete. I particularly like plants growing on buildings... they remind of me of who always wins in the end.I'll keep going through the photos we took (it's been a few weeks already, sorry!) and let you see what we've been up to.

What's New

Here and over on the right you'll see two new graphics related to our latest endeavor: Novel Writing! Merlin, Devin and I have joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the goal of writing seven-thousand, thirty-five-thousand, and fifty-thousand words, respectively, in the month of November. We'll start on the first and end on the 30th and most likely be insane in between. We've been planning our stories out for the past few weeks, alternating between excitement and slap-ourselves-on-the-forehead, what-have-we-done insecurity. Gulp.

We need all the good wishes we can get - that Merlin will maintain her enthusiasm, that Devin will see a project through to completion, and that I will MAKE time to do this even if it means we eat ramen for 30 straight lunches in a row.

I've also got pictures to post and things to catch up on here - Dan's sister has been visiting, so I haven't been online much this week, but I'll try to put a few posts up in the next few days.

Hey, is anyone nuts enough to join us in this November craziness? (the icons in the sidebar are links to the NaNoWriMo sites)

Recycling posts

Well, I had the thought that I actually really liked the post I put up the other day and that I could work it into a paper of some sort. I think it's got the start of some important ideas about the relationship between ethnic minorities in China and the Han-centered mentality that talks about unity. So I've decided to pull it from here (it's saved in draft form in case I want to put it back up) so I can work the ideas out in greater detail. Sorry about teasing you all with it for a few days...

Home is where the ART is

We've been having a great time with one of CUN's recently graduated art students, Cao Shuang. He's about to start grad school, but has had free time to meet with us once a week. It's so nice to have an excuse to draw and paint. The last time I did any drawing at all regularly was when we were living in Hangzhou, and then we just had crayons and watercolors. Now we're learning how to use gouache, which we all like a lot.

He's had us sketch regularly, which is nice practice.

Here are some of the things that are up in our "gallery" at home.

one really long noodle

(trying out Blogger's video function - let me know what you think, compared to the YouTube versions I've posted before)

black&white

Just some pictures of us doing regular things...