mh_t

So this week I started on travel and transportation, a topic which has already provided some pretty interesting moments. One of the first things I do is to ask the students to give me a list of modes of transportation. Once they have provided all the ones I think are appropriate (i.e. not helicopter or rocketship), I split them into groups and have each group tell me the advantages and disadvantages of one of the listed modes. Most of the time they provide your obvious, generic answers, such as, "The advantages of the bus are it is very cheap and convenient. The disadvantages are it is very crowded, uncomfortable, slow." However, at least two classes so far mentioned "green" when talking about the advantages of walking or biking. This really surprised me the first time I heard it. For one thing, the Chinese term they translated (环保) literally translates as "environmental protection", so the only way they could have picked up the term "green" is if it was taught in class, something I wouldn't think they would talk about in an English class in China.

Another activity I did was to have them talk about tourist sites in Shenzhen they would have a friend visit and why they should visit there. Most of the time they did a pretty good job, listing places I have actually heard of: the beaches, Wu Tong Mountain, Windows of the World, and an amusement park called Happy Valley. However, some listed McDonald's as a tourist site until I explained that it didn't really count and the more annoying students all wrote "WC" as a joke. As an aside, "WC" is fast becoming my least favorite "annoying instance of British English in China".

The exercise did confirm that Shenzhen doesn't really have much for tourists compared to other cities of its size. The one thing that almost every group listed was Windows of the World, which has small-scale recreations of famous places around the world. This represents the typical Chinese arrogance/ignorance towards other countries: everything worth seeing in the rest of the world can be found in a theme park in Shenzhen. When I showed some pictures of Yosemite to teach the word "scenic", most of the kids thought it was Guilin, a place in a neighboring province. They were shocked when I said it was in California.

I also did a writing exercise asking where they would travel if they could travel anywhere. A lot chose the US, but most of that group did so because they wanted to watch the NBA, so Cleveland and Boston were the two most popular destinations. One girl apparently has a huge crush on both Ray Allen and Chris Bosh; she listed their names as being why she wanted to go to Boston and Toronto respectively. I can understand Ray Allen, but Chris Bosh? Really?

Anyway, it's been a pretty enjoyable week of classes so far. Hopefully that will continue tomorrow, though that may be be jeopardized by my compelling need to watch Man City vs. Arsenal tonight at 4 AM. Oh well, at least I don't have class until 2 PM tomorrow.

While I was walking down the street this morning, I saw a guy who had three monkeys on a leash walking in the other direction and it didn't even faze me. I think I can safely say I am fully acclimated to China now.

I've been trying to find a good Chinese TV show for a while. I figure it's a good way to hear (and read, since the government makes all shows have subtitles in an effort to boost literacy) authentic, colloquial Chinese. This has been very hard. Shows that have any kind of a social commentary are (obviously) frowned upon, so most TV shows either take place in the pre-Communist era or they're vapid, boring soap operas. However, after searching for a very long time, I think I finally found something I can get into. The show is called 喜耕田的故事, or the story of XiGengtian, which is about some former peasants living in the city who decide to move back to the countryside in Liaoning, a province north of Beijing. I've watched two episodes so far and it's pretty entertaining, although their accents are even stronger than most Beijingers. They also used a weird character for "I" in the subtitles that I hadn't seen before, so naturally I was very confused for a little while about who the mysterious person was that everybody kept talking about.

So, there are some good things on screen in China. And apparently, some bad things on screen in America. Such as a Tea Party movie. And it doesn't concern pre-Revolutionary War events.

http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/tea/091123/

So, if you go to Yahoo Weather or The Weather Channel, it will tell you that the temperature in Shenzhen will vary from 52 to 59 today. This is totally false. A real cold snap has finally hit, putting temperatures in the 30-40 degree range without factoring in wind chill. When you add in the facts that no one has central heating in China, most of the places where I hang out are outdoors, and my classes aren't heated, my life is becoming markedly less comfortable.

Unfortunately, I had assumed that Shenzhen would be safe from the weather I had experienced in Nanjing. My ratio of pants to shorts is very low, as is my ratio of t-shirts to sweaters. Hopefully, I'll be able to get away with wearing a hoodie to teach class in. The students have already started abandoning their uniforms due to the cold, so I figure I should be able to ditch mine as well.

The real question in all of this is why the Chinese feel the need to lie about the weather. In Beijing, the forecast on weather.com never, ever predicted rain, though it rained half the time we were there. Is it really that important to make people think you have good weather? Everybody knows it's winter. It's OK to for the weather to be a little colder. It's not like that many tourists are flooding into Shenzhen anyway. And is it really better to lie to your populace about what the temperature is?

Thought I'd pass along this article with a few thoughts.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/13/think_again_green_china

This article gets the situation just about spot on. One of the more interesting aspects it touches on is the limits of China's power to enforce its environmental policies. While I agree it is not as effective as it could be, I think that once the government feels it is imperative, its decrees will carry more weight. I mean, you're talking about a country that only allowed cars with license plates ending in an even number to be driven during the Beijing Olympics. Also, enforcement limitations do not affect their promotion of companies producing solar panels or developing better wind technology.

So if one looks at weather.com for Shenzhen, the temperature is 57. This apparently signals Armageddon in the minds of many Chinese. I, usually not accustomed to such beautiful weather in November, wore a short-sleeve shirt to work today and was greeted by ridicule, alarm, and awe, often at the same time. The other teachers were responsible for most of the alarm. They were sure I was going to catch a cold, the flu, H1N1, or government-created-killer-nano-robots. My students on the other hand, alternately thought I was crazy or 厉害 (a Chinese term that is perhaps best rendered as "extreme"). Several people told me I was really "strong" for wearing so little, but I didn't really get the connection there. However, this happened to transition pretty nicely into my discussion on "Superheroes", so I let it slide. That said, they didn't get the obvious reference to the Human Torch. Oh well.

If one goes to China, one might be forgiven for believing that the country as a whole has extraordinarily bad eyesight. The number of people with glasses here is frankly overwhelming. In some of my classes, over half of the kids have glasses, which is very different from my recollection of middle school. However, I think that there really is not much of a difference in the percentage of people with bad eyesight, but rather in the percentage that actually wear glasses. Due to a couple of cultural differences, people may choose glasses over the alternatives most people in the U.S. prefer.

In China, there is no stigma associated with being smart, and therefore no stigma attached to wearing glasses. In fact, when I started on this program, several former teachers recommended getting a pair of glasses just to look smarter and more professional in the eyes of the students. Therefore, there is no reason for kids, especially boys, to want contacts or other less visible measures to correct their eyesight (I am less sure about how Chinese feel about glasses on Chinese women) and in fact, there is some incentive to wear glasses even if you don't need them. This I think accounts for most of the difference between the two countries.

However, despite the large number of people wearing glasses, I do not see many blind people in China. And yet, in every city I have been to in China there has been a phenomenon I have not seen replicated anywhere else: part of the sidewalk has a distinctive track so that blind people can walk safely. It has raised bumps that can easily be felt underfoot and that change sharply before either a bend in the road or an intersection. One has to wonder why in a country renowned for its lack of safety protections why it is imperative that this be instituted as it affects such a small portion of the population, but that's China for you, I guess.

Sorry for those of you who actually want to hear about China. All I can say is be patient: I will get to that at some point. However, ESPN and Nate Silver (who is always high on my must-read list) have come up with a ranking system for international soccer called SPI. While this is somewhat intriguing, I have no idea why they chose international soccer and not an actual soccer league such as the EPL. There would be far more data since they play almost every week and the data would be more useful as there is not as wide a disparity in talent as there is in the international game.

For those interested, here is the explanation of the methodology. I really like their first two steps, but I have to say I have a few problems with the later ones, mostly because they insist on using individual statistics.

http://espn.go.com/soccer/worldcup/news/_/id/4447078/guide-espn-spi-ratings

Problem #1: I don't like how they use club stats in their calculation. The game is TOTALLY different. A person might play in one position for his club and in another for his country (To wit, Steven Gerrard who often plays on the left for England instead of behind the striker). Therefore, his stats in a club match should have no, or at least less, bearing on his form in an international match. Even for those who play the same position, they might be asked by the coach to do different things than they would for their club team. Thus, some players are brilliant for club and terrible for country and vice-versa. Juan Roman Riquelme might be the best example of this as he WAS Villareal for a few seasons and almost single-handedly brought them to the Champions League semis but couldn't fit into the Argentina squad because he had to be the focal point of the offense. On the other hand, Elano was brilliant for Brazil but wasn't given the freedom he needed at Man City. Tactical changes are a big factor in a player's performance. This does not account for that difference at all.

Problem #2: They use team goal differential as being indicative of an individual's performance. This is pure and utter crap. Under their system, a goal-scorer gets 50% of the credit for the goal (which is way too high but that's another point). The rest goes to the other people on the field, with the forwards getting more credit than the midfielders, midfielders more than defenders, etc. Again, this ignores the fact that some players may never have contributed anything to the goal, or conversely may not not have done anything to warrant the other team scoring a goal. For instance, in a 6-1 victory for Man City last year, our striker Jo had one key contribution and did nothing the rest of the game, but by this system he would have had a great game. Even using assists as part of the calculation would be an improvement as presently having an assist counts for nothing.

Problem #3: Goals are the only thing determining a team's performance. It is not goals, but SCORING CHANCES that have the most predictive power. Say France is playing the Faroe Islands. Should be a slaughter, right? Well, in this game France only wins 1-0. In this SPI, they would certainly go down in the rankings. But supposing they had a lot of opportunities to score and on another day probably would have, but the Faroe Islands' keeper had a great game and kept them at bay. Should they really drop down? There is a big difference between a 1-0 win while creating chance after chance and a squeaker won on a late penalty. The law of averages would presume that France will bounce back and take most of those chances the next game. On a side note, this is why City's draws really worry me. We just aren't creating enough chances to make me feel that we will turn it around.

Problem #4: Do this for a league, not for internationals!!!!! In a league, there is less need to account for the intensity of a particular game, since they all count exactly the same in the standings. You obviously don't have to take a player's club record into account, removing most of the problems. And finally, you address something people actually care about. Predicting who gets relegated from the Premier League is something people talk about passionately. Does anybody really care whether or not Guatemala is better than Mali? When are they ever going to play each other? Everybody knows the FIFA rankings are terrible, but the reason why they aren't talked about like the BCS is that NOBODY CARES how high their team is. Ask anyone in England whether they care more about their club or England and they will say their club.

So, wrapping up, I'm kind of disappointed in Nate Silver. This seems like he doesn't have much of a grasp for the game and was pressured into this by ESPN. I hope this is the case as I feel a little less respect for him as of this moment. Oh well, at least he can get politics right.

Okay, I know I should be used to it by now, but why is there no love for Chris Paul's insane start to the season? He's shooting 63% from the field, 68% from 3, he's third in the league in assists per game, and 1st in PER with a mark of 36.0. Steve Nash is getting MVP buzz with a PER of 23. Chris Paul is averaging 26 points, 10 assists, and 4 rebounds per game all the while playing for a team with no one else to help him. I know the Hornets are only 3-5, but the Cavs aren't exactly lighting up at 4-3 and Bron's still got buzz. Chris Paul is literally the only reason to watch Hornets games anymore and it's only his awesomeness that is keeping them from hitting rock bottom. It will be really depressing when his numbers fall back to earth a bit.

Update: Byron Scott has been fired. Not a moment too soon. Not sure I like our GM with no coaching experience filling in, but hopefully it's a short term thing.

This truly is a great day! The House passes health care reform including a public option. Didn't look like it would happen for a while there, but it did. Amazing.

Of course, I was very disappointed to see both Scott Murphy, the Representative of our neighboring district who replaced Gillibrand, and Dennis Kucinich on the no list. Kucinich, I'm sure, felt the bill did not go far enough. Well, duh. But at least it's a start and once the foot is in the door there is no going back. To vote no on this bill that only passed by five votes is inexcusable.

Now, if Obama gets this through the Senate and tackles climate change he'll have a pretty impressive first term domestically. However, I'm starting to be afraid that he'll be another LBJ: provided influential social change, yet unable to do anything about a war that he didn't start and ultimately kicked aside into the dustbin of history. Here's hoping history doesn't repeat itself and a new Nixon (Cheney, perhaps?) doesn't arrive.

Edit: Also, props to Anh Cao, the only Republican to vote for the bill. That takes some guts in today's Republican party still in the grips of Bachmania.

I purchased a bike last week and I'm loving it. The temperature has finally cooled off to the point where I can sometimes say I feel "cool", as opposed to always saying "IT"S AN INFERNO OUT HERE!" Naturally, this more comfortable temperature has made me want to get out more and biking is a good way to get out and get some exercise.

There are two types of biking in China: biking in traffic and biking in traffic jams. The latter is actually preferable because the cars are standing still and you just weave around them, when they're moving it becomes much harder. With so many people in the city, there are always cars and people on every street that you have to avoid. Not to mention that everybody drives super aggressively (think New York City drivers to the extreme) and you have to contend with busses for the space on the side of the road. Throw in the fact that traffic laws don't really exist in China ("Lanes? What do you mean by lanes?") and riding a bike two blocks down the street can be a very interesting time indeed.

Thankfully, I found a rather nice little road that goes by the nearby reservoir down to a pretty big park. There's even a little amusement park up north with bumper cars and kiddie roller coasters. The problem is that going anywhere beyond that requires a lot more traffic biking, but if the weather keeps being nice I'll probably bike all the way to Guangzhou (Canton) at some point.

1. I saw a four-year-old girl buying a pack of ciggarettes.
2. I saw a commercial for something called "Sugus" and the jingle blatantly rips off "Sugar Sugar".
3. When we went out for Halloween, literally dozens of people were standing outside the restaurant just watching us.
4. I crossed a pedesstrian bridge over a busy highway and I could feel the bridge move.
5. I get praised for my speaking ability when I say the simple phrase, "Check please!"

I went to Hong Kong last weekend for an orienteering meet and the experience was very interesting. There are just so many subtle differences that it does feel like another country, even if it is technically China now. The two most obvious were that the people drive on the left side of the road and that no one really speaks Mandarin (in fact, most people speak English as well if not better). The former is not the only remnant of British cultural heritage that has survived; many of the Chinese neighborhood names derive from the English rather than the other way around. Thus, the event I competed in was in Aberdeen, though it certainly did not have the feel of Scotland. This was my first orienteering event in Asia and that's really the only good thing I can say about it as it was mainly a trail run in a terrain of steep mountains and very thick green. I did manage to make a collossal mistake though, as I failed to notice that a stream was uncrossable, making me retrace my steps up a steep hill through the green. Still, it was fun to get back into it and even better to get out of China even for just a bit. That border is almost as easy to cross as the Canadian border so I expect to make a couple more weekend trips before too long.

But that was Sunday and today is Tuesday, or the day from hell as I like to call it. Six classes of seventh-graders is more than I can handle in any given day. Today was actually fairly good; I taught them the concept of rhyming and had them try to come up with rhymes for their English names. This produced mixed results as some of them are named Cassiopeia, Forest (not to be confused with Forrest), Yellow, and the always popular MichaelJackson (the kid insisted that was his FIRST name), but they had a good time.

Another crazy thing I forgot to mention about the school is that every day at exactly 3:45, the students get a 5 minute break to do some weird exercise that consists of rubbing the area around their eyes with their hands. Apparently, this is supposed to make them less tired. Of course, one might wonder, as I frequently do, why they do this before the LAST CLASS of the day, but they do it religiously. In fact, they're almosy always more quiet during that time than when I'm teaching.

Update: For those interested, here is a jpeg of the map I ran on. And no, this is not a aerial photo, the map is really that green.

Two different, relevant, and entirely accurate links about China. The first is a Times article on ridiculous regulations in China, specfically where one town forces children to salute passing cars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/world/asia/26salute.html?hp

The second is a series of photographs about Chinese pollution. Now, Shenzhen is not even close to as bad as what is shown in the pictures, but I still would not drink the water if you paid me.

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

These past two weeks I've been back to teaching on my normal schedule which has both its advantages and its drawbacks. On the plus side, it's nice to have a regular schedule. Or wait, it would be, if they actually gave me a schedule with some modicum of regularity. It does at least seem to be permanently set now; I haven't wandered into the classroom to find nobody there again.

I can now say for sure that my Junior One students (or sixth graders) are far superior to my Junior Two students (seventh graders) in just about every way imaginable. Sixth grade is really still elementary school in my opinion, they haven't hit the serious attitude change from puberty yet and are thus willing to shut up and do work. My seventh graders are far harder to both engage and to keep quiet and are less respectful of me. Combined with the fact that my Junior Two classes are for the most part earlier and in the other building, a fifteen minute walk away, and it's easy to see why I prefer my Junior One week a lot more.

In class this week, I wrote some words mixed up on the board and asked the kids to come up with words they could make using those letters.
I used "The World Series" (I was doing a baseball lesson) and sometimes they came up with some very good words: "shower", "soldier", "dessert", "sword", etc. However, every time I did this, someone came up with "SOS", which I assume is a reference to the Rihanna song. I had to explain that it did not count as a word because each letter stood for a word, but I'm not sure they got it. Oh, and every Junior two class came up with "shit" for this exercise.

I find myself continually frustrated with soccer statistics. Soccer is indeed a tough game to quantify, particularly at the individual level because the player's interaction with the ball is only a small portion of what produces value to the team, but we should be able to do better than what there is now. Most of the so-called statistics are not really statistics at all, merely trivia (see Martin Tyler's "stats" column at skysports.com), and others are useful only in betting. Indeed, most of the statistics sites I went to included information for betting and linked to some gambling sites.

Obviously, soccer can't have the same sort of statistics as baseball because there is no one-on-one interaction comparable to the pitcher and batter, but it is also tough to use stats of sports like basketball and hockey. Plus/minus doesn't tell us anything because there are so few substitutions. Unlike basketball, scoring is very rare and most of the players on the field can be effective without scoring ever. There are just not enough meaningful events in soccer to create a system like PER. I think it will be a long time before anyone comes up with a stat that successfully captures an individual's performance.

That said, soccer is a team game and team performance should be easier to measure, not that you'd know it by following soccer right now. The most common statistic used in "analysis" is time of possession, measuring simply the percentage of time each team has the ball. Of course, this completely fails to tell us anything about the game, as a team could sit back in their own half with all the possession, but posing no threat towards goal. This was somewhat rectified by the invention of territorial advantage, which differentiates between possession in your own half and possession in the opponent's half. While this is indeed an improvement, it still does not tell us who was controlling the game.

The problem is obviously that the object of the game is to produce goals, not possess the ball. Thus, one would think that they would look at scoring chances, assuming that more scoring chances will lead to more goals. However, instead of a useful statistic like a "strike rate", or percentage of scoring chances converted, they insist on calculating "shot accuracy", the percentage of shots that are on goal. Your shot accuracy could be 100%, but that is no guarantee you have any goals to your name, rendering its effectiveness as a stat minimal.

I would start out by creating a statistic called "pace factor", simply the average number of possessions a team gets each game. By telling how often the ball changed hands, we can see how fast the game was played. A team with slow, meaningful build-up play that rarely gives the ball away (think Barcelona) will undoubtedly have a low pace factor. The problem is, there can only be one pace for each match. The team playing Barcelona will have the same pace as Barcelona (plus or minus one). How do we know which team used their possessions more effectively? We add scoring chances to the mix! If we look at the ratio of scoring chances to possessions, we could see how effective a team is at creating chances, or conversely how effective they are at preventing scoring chances from arising. I would call these stats "offensive efficiency" and "defensive efficiency" respectively. Of course, a team with a high pace factor might allow a lot of goals per game even with a high defensive efficiency simply because they allow so many possessions. I suspect this is true of many lower-table teams. The problem is not really their defense, but their midfield which gives the ball away far more frequently than those of top table teams. I suspect the opposite is true at big clubs. Their defensive efficiency isn't great, but they are able to overcome that by having a low pace factor and a far superior offensive efficiency.

We could also look at the average time each possesion lasts, giving us more information about what a team does with their possessions. If a team has a high offensive efficiency but isn't scoring any goals, it might be because they spend too much time per possession, looking for that perfect pass (think Arsenal a few years ago). Also, if a team's time per possession is very short, we can tell that they are getting kicked off the park, or relying on the long ball. Even better, we could look at the amount of time each possession that led to a scoring chance took, thus showing whether the team was more effective using a slow build-up or counter-attacking football.

Unfortunately, nobody tracks the number of possessions per soccer game, or at least I can't find it anywhere, and I can't watch every premier league game myself to collect data, so I can't really evaluate how my stats work or if they have any predictive value. If anybody has any feedback (or "constructive complaints" as Michael Scott would say), or knows a good soccer stats website, let me know in the comments.

I finally think that it's appropriate, after a few days of being reminded how much work sucks, to write about my awesome vacation. It was really great and my only regrets were not having enough time to spend and not planning more in advance so I could manage my time better, though it was fun to just do things randomly. The best part about all this was that I was completely on my own: I was in control of my own schedule, I had to rely on my Chinese to do anything, and I had a lot of money to spend.

I arrived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, on Friday afternoon. When I arrived, there was an employee from the hostel I was staying at waiting for me to escort me there via bus. Of course, his sign said "Mari Hawks Peter", but I was pretty sure that meant me. The Hump Hostel, as it is called, is really terrific. It's located right in downtown Kunming, close to the train station, a night market, and some great bars and restaurants. The hostel itself has a bar in it and there is another bar on the floor below it that is also affiliated with it. I ended up hanging out with some Swedes and Norwegians who were studying at the university which was really fun. I even got to talk about orienteering and they didn't look at me like I was crazy.

The next day I went to the aptly named Stone Forest (石林), an area about an hour or so outside of Kunming. The town is so named because of the pillars of rock that litter the landscape (see picture below). Their heights vary, but most are at least ten feet high, and they are all thin, but craggy. I am not a geologist and could not decipher the Chinese characters describing how they were formed, so I can't give you that information. However, they were really cool to observe, walking amongst them. Of course, it was less fun seeing them when crowded by the tons of Chinese tourists, but I managed to find the outlying trails that the Chinese tourists shunned, which were just as beautiful. Despite the beautiful scenery, the highlight of this trip was a sign that read in English "You are just the very angel of the excellent scenery gifted by god traveling here rather than merely a traveler." Um, yeah. I spent most of the day there, then returned to Kunming and set out for Lijiang the next morning.



Lijiang is a small city, by Chinese standards, with slightly more than a million people and getting to Lijiang from Kunming is tricky. There are no trains because the area is very mountainous, so I had to take a nine-hour bus.  With this in mind, I left at 7 AM, arriving in the late afternoon. After finding a hotel, which turned out to be the worst place I have EVER stayed in China, I set out for the Old Town district, a pristine neighborhood of old-style Chinese buildings and cobbled streets, which is the main tourist attraction in Lijiang itself. I spent the whole night walking around the area and window-shopping. Originally, Lijiang was the gateway between Sichuan and Tibet, with the major trade routes going through the city. The shops in the old town reflect this influence, containing a lot of Tibetan jewelry and clothing, as well as that of the Naxi people, the ethnic minority group that is native to the area. As I walked around, I noticed several really cool hostels right in the Old Town, kicking myself for not staying in one of them.

The next day, I decided I needed to head to Tiger Leaping Gorge, the final destination of my trip and my real reason for going to Yunnan.  The gorge is 15 km long between mountains as high as 6000 meters, making it the tallest in the world. It was about 3 hours away from Lijiang by bus, but much to my dismay, the bus tickets were sold out. So, I hired a van driver to take me there for 100 yuan, which turned out to be fine. A couple hours of driving through beautiful mountain roads later and I was at the start of the gorge, where two forks of the Yangzi (Yangtze for you old-schoolers) river come together to pass through the mountains and started hiking.

Now, hiking in China is completely unlike hiking in America. China has so many people that there are some living everywhere, even in villages in the mountains that you can't possibly drive a car to. Thus, there are a series of guest houses along the trail, spaced out about every two hours of hiking, and also people on the trail who will will sell you water and food, albeit at very steep prices. This trail was not a particularly tough hike, though there were some rough spots as I got further into the gorge. Though you can hike all the way through the gorge, it switches sides of the river in the middle. Due to the fact I had to return to Shenzhen fairly quickly, I figured when it switched sides and crossed the road, I would find a car to take me back to Lijiang to start my return journey.

I ended up hiking for seven hours on the first day and every bit of it was amazing. It wasn't a clear day, but it wasn't raining and the clouds made the gorge seem even more spectacular, as if the clouds were hiding it from everyone else besides me. The way the mountains rise from the river into the clouds was a sight to behold and every turn in the trail brought spectacular vistas of the valley, the mountains, and the river. It is the kind of thing that is impossible to capture in pictures, not that I didn't try, because of the sheer size of everything. Look at the picture below. Now imagine the mountains on both sides rising at least three times as high as what that picture captures. It is absolutely incredible. I think it is the most beautiful place I have been to, certainly the most spectacular. It is an absolute must-see if you ever have the opportunity. If I go again, I will spend at least a week.


I spent the night at the Halfway Guest House, a beautiful place in the middle of the gorge. My room had a spectacular view looking at the mountains on the other side and the food was made from fresh meat and vegetables grown right there. The next morning, I climbed down to the river and found somebody to take me back to Lijiang.

All told, I only spent 5 days in Yunnan, which I feel is about seven days too few, and two days riding the train, which is about two days too many. That said, it was worth it to see some great cities and one of the natural wonders of the world. Ah, I miss it already.

Edit: These are not MY pictures. I still need to find some way to get my pictures from my phone to my computer.

I really like following baseball in China. I feel like I'm back in the good old days when the Series was during the day and everybody huddled around the radio during recess. Every morning I rush home from class to catch whatever I can of the Rockies broadcast and I feel like I've gone through some sort of time warp. However, if anybody knows a good site to stream baseball games, I'd love to have it.

Rox won a huge game last night and I like our chances in a frigid Coors Field. I am slightly perplexed as to why Hammel is starting Game 3 and not Game 2. Hammel is the epitome of a good pitcher who can't handle Coors. His home/road splits are pretty striking and it's not like Cook is ill-suited to Coors. I am also praying Torrealba keeps this up because he really should not be in the lineup; his power numbers are lower than Iannetta's by a good deal and their OBP is about the same despite Torrealba's hot streak.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Dodgers will win the other series. The Rockies were 6-1 against the Cardinals this year (including a four-game sweep in St. Louis) and are perenially unable to beat the Dodgers, as evidenced by the last series with the division on the line. Honestly, if you don't pitch to Pujols and work around Holliday, there is no one in that lineup who can do anything. There also would have been some nice, emotional stories about Holliday coming back (Wait, I'm complaining about missing these? Never mind). Anyway, first we gotta take care of the Phils. First pitch of Game 3 is 9:37 AM tomorrow. I will be listening.


Edit: I just noticed in an ESPN wrapup of the Twins-Tigers play-in game, they commented how the Tigers wouldn't miss the Metrodome because they had more losses there than any other team. Now, this is not surprising because the Tigers play in the same division. The truly astonishing thing is that ESPN felt this was noteworthy despite EVERY AL Central team losing between 109 and 114 games at the Metrodome (the White Sox have lost the same as the Tigers, the Royals one fewer). If all AL Central teams lose at almost exactly same rate, why would the Tigers in particular not miss it? This struck me as very inane.

So, I'm back in Shenzhen for now. The trip was great, though I could have used an extra few days at Tiger Leaping Gorge. It is definitely a must-see and I'll try to upload some pictures in due course.

The problem, however, was the amount of time I spent on the train and various busses getting to all of the places in Yunnan. I spent more than two full days on the train during the course of the trip, the latter of which was spent without a bed or any place to lie down, called a "hard seat" in the Chinese reckoning (there are also "soft sleepers", "hard sleepers", "soft seats", and "standing" tickets). Note to self: Never buy a train ticket for 25 hours that costs as much as a bus ride for 9 hours. This was my first experience with the "hard seat" arrangement and I will now present my frustrations with it in the form of the questions that cropped up in my brain while I was riding the train, minus the various expletives which originally punctuated them.

1. Why is THIS the place for the people with "standing" tickets to stand?

In my car, which I assumed would have contained only passengers with tickets for "hard seats", there were also plenty of people who only bought "standing" tickets, meaning that they were there in the middle of the aisle. This got rid of all possibility of casually standing up and stretching or getting stuff from your bag. Going to the bathroom was also a major annoyance because not only were there tons of people in the way, but they took your seat once you got up. They left when you got back of course, but it was still vexing. When you are already crowded like sardines and more people are added to the mix, it's like adding gasoline to an inferno. Give them their own car and get them out of my face! Literally!

2. Why on earth do the Chinese seem to feel that THIS is the proper forum to eat their grossest foods?

Look, I like Chinese food. That said, I still don't know how they can eat scorpion on a stick. I'm just not getting that. First of all, you have to understand that the seats were arranged like booths in a restaurant with about three feet of space (if that, I am terrible at guesing distance) between the people facing me. There was a tiny table in between us that had a garbage pan on it. Thus, when the couple across from me (newlyweds by the look of them, they were going to look for work in Shenzhen actually) kept on eating the worst possible foods, I was directly affected. Eating whole fish covered with MSG from a bag? Eating fruits that required spitting out pits (not to mention sunflower seeds) into the pan on the table? Eating boiled eggs that honestly looked like they had been dipped in tar? Even if it hadn't been RIGHT in my face, it would have been bad. This was really not helping my nausea at all.

3. Why don't they turn the lights off EVEN AT NIGHT?

I didn't get this for a lot of reasons. Riding a train isn't like flying a plane; you don't have to create an alternate reality in which night is during the day or vice-versa because you aren't crossing time zones with that kind of speed so you don't have to make people adjust. So, the natural solution is to let people sleep when they're supposed to sleep (i.e. at night) and let them be awake when they are supposed to be awake (i.e. the day). This isn't complex. Let me tell you, being in a seat that can't recline surrounded by people who spoke worse Mandarin than I do (most were Cantonese) in a smelly train with the LIGHTS ON is about the worst way to sleep. And in the day, you don't need the lights. WHY ARE THEY ON? I can see turning them on when you stop at a station, but other than that there is no point whatsoever. And speaking of stopping at stations...

4. Why don't Chinese get off the train to smoke ciggarettes WHEN THEY'RE AT A STATION?

I understand that most Chinese men smoke. I even somewhat understand accomodating them to some degree since they are a large percentage of train passengers. I am reluctantly willing to allow them to smoke in the spots between cars. However, I have no idea why they can't get off the train to smoke when they're at a station. It's more comfortable than being on the train, I daresay. And it's not like they didn't smoke when the train stopped. That is the time when the doors between cars are open so the smoke travels further. Get off the train and stop making me mad!

If it hadn't been for these four complaints, I think I could have managed. As it was, I barely survived. It was not nearly the relaxing end I had pictured to the vacation. All right, rant over. Next post will be about the happy part of the vacation in the mountains of Yunnan.

I've arrived in Kunming, going to the Stone Forest tomorrow and Tiger Leaping Gorge the day after. I'll talk more about it when I'm back in Shenzhen.