D'oh, not yellow scarf

So I have been going around China telling people the wrong Chinese name. When I first got here, I was unsure how to say my name in Chinese, but I remembered how to write it. I wrote it and the 3rd character caused some confusion, so they said maybe that's the traditional character and you should just use jin "金."

Now, I just found out that its actually the first 1/2 of the character which is supposed to be quan "銓" So my Chinese name is 黃思銓. When it was 黃思金, my students laughed because it sounds like "yellow scarf."

Anyhoo, 銓 is my great-grandfather's name, so my name means "thinking of quan", thinking of my great-grandfather. I am glad that this is the correct name because the meaning of 金 is gold so I thought that my name meant: "thinking of gold" and that is totally not me, I'm not thinking of being rich all the time. I'd rather be thinking about my family and heritage.

The Mom Chronicles: Haerbin

Haerbin (哈尔賓) is north of Jilin, close to Russia and the its the coldest I have ever been in my life, honestly. Why did we come here you ask? Its because of the annual Snow and Ice Festival which was amazing. It was well worth the almost frostbitten toes to see the magnificent sculptures. We ran into a group of deaf Haerbiners, so we hung out with them for a few hours while we waited for Matt, Kevin and Jim to arrive. They led us to the snow world and we got in for free!

These are 3/5 Olympic Mascots. They are super cute! Their names put together mean "Beijing welcomes you"

We also went to a Siberian Tiger reserve, where they are trying to revive their population. I'm not sure if its for the tigers' benefit or the people running the park. Our entrance ticket included a ride in a van through the tigers' habitat and for an extra $5, we could watch them throw a live chicken, literally, into to the lions' (or in this case, tigers') den. If we had tons of cash, we could have paid $250 to watch a cow be mauled by the Tigers. Later in the tour, we chipped in for another chicken, which my mom helped feed.

Mom getting ready to dangle the poor chicken over the tigers.

Haerbin was grand fun, but coming back to Jilin for a few days was a nice respite. Tonight, Jenny, Kevin, my mom and I will travel back to Beijing. My mom is leaving on Friday, tear. But on the bright side, my friend Letizia is flying in the same day. The four of us, Jenny, Kevin, Letizia and I are traveling together for about 2 weeks or so, making our way southward to Hong Kong! These are more Snow/Ice Festival and Tiger Pictures...

The Mom Chronicles: Dandong

Dandong is located right on the China/North Korean border. I guess I have an affinity to this particular border, as this is my 2nd venture to the border. One of the main sites here is the most eastern part of the Great Wall is found here, Tiger Mountain. It was great (...get it?) because we had the whole wall pretty much to ourselves, which was the complete opposite outside of Beijing. It was fabulous! I've been trying to incorporate the use of fabulous in the other guys' daily vocabulary, but it hasn't taken. But it was wonderful to see that little Dandong is using "fabulous."
The following day, we trekked to Phoenix Mountain, which was a short jaunt as we had to get back to Dandong to take a bus returning to Dalian to catch our overnight train to Haerbin.


Dandong Pictures

The Mom Chronicles: Dalian

When I told people I was going to Dalian, they said, "oh! why now? Its so cold!?" Indeed, it was cold, but not so bad, as its situated right by the ocean. Even though we spent a couple of days here, I really liked Dalian. The downtown was pretty compact and the shopping in the area was varied from high-end stores to bargain bins.

My mom and I found our way to a park with lots of cool statues and a enormous soccer (football) ball. Apparently, the Dalian football team is popular and during the summer, people crowd in the main square to watch the games on the huge TV screen.

This is the year of the mouse!Mom going in for the goal!

Even though it was not speedos weather, we found our way to the beach areas and had a pleasant stroll.

We had some great seafood dinners. We even ate at the same restaurant twice because the food was fabulous and cheap! Dalian Photos

The Mom Chronicles: Beijing

After I arrived in Beijing, I booked it to the Laos Embassy to get a visa because in February I am meeting Carolyn in Cambodia and we are making our way through some of the SE Asian countries. The security at the Laos embassy was very small compared to the U.S. Embassy in Shenyang. I just showed my passport and walked into the Embassy, filled out some paperwork, paid the fee and was given a slip to come back to reclaim my passport 2 days later.

Compared to what my friend, Alec, had to undergo for an Australian visa, it was effortless. I met up with Alec for lunch to catch up, as he is temporarily living in Beijing for a job. He is from Jilin, and his English is superb. He got a scholarship to study in England, which is very competitive. The program doesn't start until later this year, so he was planning to go visit his friend in Australia. He had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and go for an interview. Even though, he explicitly told the government officials that he already had plans to go to England and was only going to Australia to travel and had no plans of staying, they told him that he still might decide to stay and not go because the cost of living is cheaper than in England.

I felt bad that it was relatively easy for me as a US citizen to have the opportunity to visit almost any place that I want to, whereas he had to go through a whole ordeal, including flying to Shanghai for an interview, and still got rejected.

Anyhoo, I met up with my mom later that day and was very excited to see her. That evening, we walked to a row of night snack stands. They had everything from scorpion kabobs to stinky tofu (my fav!), called chou dofu (臭豆腐). Stinky tofu doesn't exactly elicit a mouth watering response, but its comparable to stinky (expensive) cheese.

On a side note, the character for stinky has an interesting explanation. The top character of chou is zi (自) which means "self" and the bottom part is da (大) which means big. So put them together and you have "big self" or someone who is arrogant: 自大. So no one likes anything stinky (besides stinky tofu and cheese) and no one like anyone who is arrogant, thus the character for stinky is combined from arrogant: 臭.

Eating a fried eggplant kabobMom signing the word deer and happens to be eating some too!

The next few days involved seeing all of the major sites of Beijing. We went to Tiananmen, Temple of Heaven Park, the Forbidden City, Lama Temple, a Tibetan temple and some other places. Everyday was cold, I am a wimp when it comes to negative Celsius weather, so I was always bundled up. At least our hotel room had heat!

On new year's day eve, we ended up joining this Chinese tour, which ended up being a disaster. I was warned beforehand about hokey tours, but I thought that it might have been legit. We went to the Great Wall, which was great but then they schlepped us around to places that tried to sell us jade, Chinese medicines and the deal was that the tour operators gets money from bringing in tour groups and makes a commission off anything that is purchased. C'est la vie. At least we made it out to the Great Wall.

New year's eve, we went out for a wonderful dinner. My mom was SO excited to see frog on the menu and she hadn't eaten it in ages. I'm not quite sure where I stand on eating amphibians, but I am sure that I wanted my mom to be happy, so we ordered it and I managed to eat a leg or 2. Beijing photos are here. Our chilly adventures continued the next day with a flight to Dalian...