Arusha, Tanzania.  I never knew when these shocking moments would hit. At around ten that morning, I groggily stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom: a crucial part of my daily routine. The shower always represented a place to unwind, relax, and mentally prepare myself for the upcoming day, and in Arusha, Tanzania specifically, the nozzle represented no danger what so ever, however today I was in for a rude awakening. I falsely felt a sense of safety as I took a luxuriously hot shower.  As I thoroughly rinsed the remainder of shampoo from my hair and finished up, I reached down for the metallic lever to switch the shower off.  As soon as my hands made contact:  ZAP!  Volts of galvanizing electricity violently made their way through every fiber of my body.  As you probably know: wet person plus electricity equals not good. I shook up and down with my hair standing on end like a cartoon character.  In the midst of this involuntary spasm, my hand bumped against the lever once again and doubled the pain, and doubled my distrust in showers from now on. Ever since that experience, I now do a little poke test on metallic levers with the tip of my index finger prior to dampening myself. I stepped into that bathroom a tired, naive, and unprepared zombie, but left a shocked piece of toast who couldn’t feel more awake.

Yangshuo, China.  We entered the substantially sized grocery store with an equally big grocery list: eggs, fruit, vegetables, milk, and the other usual items needed to accommodate the maximum impact family.  My mom and I looked around puzzled.  Neither of us could read Chinese, but by first glance everything appeared wrapped in shiny, vivaciously colored, plastic wrappers.  We circled the store while scrutinizing the merchandize; the entire “supermarket” contained nothing more than various packages of gummies, candy bars, and other highly processed goods.  Just to be clear: this isn’t some random candy store, our house manager specifically told us that this is the supermarket.  We walked in to that store expecting to leave with food, but left with a full grocery list and a greater gratefulness for the supermarket a short walk from our house back home that carries dairy, meat, fruit, vegetables, and everything else.

Ubud, Bali. The inconsistency of plugs frustrated me from day one.  Why does everybody insist on using different shapes?  We carry a bag of adaptors with us at all times because you never know if the plugs in the next country will be shaped like a guy with a surprised face (the US plug), a sad face (Australia), a mad face (Tanzania), or any other expression you can think of.  In Bali, the outlets only accept double pronged, cylindrical plugs.  As I fiddled with various adaptors seeing which one would fit into the holes like solving some jigsaw puzzle, my hands frequently made contact with the metal prongs. Sure enough:  ZAP!  I successfully tapped into the electricity, inaccessible with United States plugs, with my hand. Albeit, the shock did not hurt as much as the shower escapade in Arusha, but that is not saying much.  I plugged in with a mild perturbation of using adaptors to charge my iPad, but unplugged my body with a mild fear of using adaptors to charge my iPad.

Bagamoyo, Tanzania. I anxiously awaited with my hand under the shower nozzle for the water to turn from freezing cold to an amiable temperature. Thirty seconds went by, then a minute, then three: the water pressure began to dwindle and the temperature stayed at a constant fifty degrees (Fahrenheit). I finally just stepped in and took the excruciatingly cold water like a man, but only for another minute or so, because after that, the water went from a drizzle to a drip-drip-nothing. That was the second worst shower of my entire life. I turned the shower on expecting hot water and the pressure of at least a squirt gun, but the cold stream shortly died out along with my misconception that showers are only warm and soothing.

Koh Tao, Thailand. Fizz stood a favorite restaurant of mine in Koh Tao, Thailand until the third visit. We all fell in love with the cafe ever since the first night: eating healthy, delicious, pomegranate salad and watching the exotic sunset with the tropical Thai beach in the foreground. The second time at Fizz, we lounged in beanbags on the soft sand, sipped on extravagant cocktails (virgin of course), and listened to their DJ lay down some original drumbeats. The third visit to Fizz, I planned on sitting in the corner, eating some fresh lunch, and working on Biology while my family walked around the island… but not everything goes according to plan. I unpacked my bag at the table and plugged in my rubber, white power cord into the outlet nearby  (a US plug, I couldn’t believe it.)  I nonchalantly picked up the end of the charger to begin charging my device and ZAP!  The doohicky that magnetizes itself inside the computer sent a volatile shock throughout my whole body. I somehow plugged the possessed cord in, but my whole body shuttered and a tingle went up and down my spine. I stared at my dad and started stammering, “Dad, DuDad, Dad!”

He stopped walking away, “What’s the matter?”

“The stupid cord shocked me when I picked it up!”

He responded with, “Did you touch the end of it?”

“Yes,” I tentatively replied.

“That happens to me all of the time, it’s fine.” He seemed unconcerned.

I touched my index finger to the smooth, metallic trackpad and ZAP!  Again.  Now, I not only felt scared and shocked, but angry at Dad who convinced me to shock myself again.  I frantically looked up at him and blurted out, “It shocked me again! It really hurt.”  He walked over (at a pretty slow pace I might add) and touched the computer: ZAP!  Sweet revenge. “Let’s find a different cafe,” he suggested with an anxious look in his eye. I walked into Fizz expecting to get a tranquil view, a healthy plate of salad, and a good amount of work done, but left with the bottle of water I ordered and a newfangled cautiousness when handling my power cord.

Zanzibar, Tanzania. Zanzibar opened my eyes in many ways, but perhaps the most significant shocker occurred when my grandfather, dad, brother, and I visited Kingey’s home… our driver from Crazy Mzungos.  We made our way out of a small street market and turned onto a bumpy, dirt road.  Houses, comprised of scrap metal, cardboard, and cement surrounded us, along with a herd of stray cows, palm trees, and a group of local kids playing soccer with a scrappy ball of trash.  Everything looked dirty and exasperated by the oppressive heat.  We parked the car outside of a tiny cement compound with no windows, and walked in through the door frame (there was no door.)  Inside sat three women, one elderly and two middle aged, as well as two small kids who looked three or four years old. They greeted us with big smiles and said hello in Swahilli, “Jambo.”  I scanned the room: no lights, no furniture (besides two plastic stools and palm leaf mats) and nothing to entertain themselves but each other. They had so little, but still seemed so joyous. I walked into Kingey’s home hot, tired, and longing for a cool pool, but I left shocked and grateful for what I already had.

Wiring in Yangshuo, China where we had the best WIFI in Asia!

This April, 12 years later, we were able to travel back to China and really SOAK IT IN!  We got to hang out and just live life for 2 months in China. It was amazing and we learned things about the culture and people that we had not been able to appreciate the first time.

As we leave China, this is what we take away:

1) FRIENDLY AND NICE!  When acquaintances on this trip learned we were headed to China, they repeatedly told us “be prepared, the Chinese aren’t that friendly…!”  Born and raised in Boston, a city also known for giving people the cold shoulder, Cliff and I were not intimidated  But we found the opposite of the cold shoulder in China…we found warm fuzzies, friendly faces and people willing to help us each and every time. Perhaps those people who think the Chinese are not friendly have only traveled to the big cities in China…and let’s face it, everywhere in the world, big city people are not that friendly…they are in too much of a rush.  But get out of the city, and people want to talk to you, meet you and help you out! I can’t even recall how many times our bikes broke down in Yangshuo and each and every time, a local would stop and help us out…often getting grease all over his or her hands in the process.

These woman really wanted to take a picture with Otto because they thought he was so cute

2) THINK-OUTSIDE-THE-BOX. We are lead to believe that the population of China is full of automatons who rarely have a unique thought or approach. Again, with our time in China, we got to meet enough individuals to realize nothing could be further from the truth. Individualism and creative thinking is everywhere!  You see it in the chefs, street artists, entrepreneurs, etc. We were lucky enough to get to hang out with several Chinese nationals in their mid 20s, who sat down and talked to us about life in China while we described life in the US. We talked for hours about the family unit, going to college, getting jobs, getting married, social media, food, tv, gun control, manners, everything! And we realized that there are way more similarities than there are differences. Two of the people we hung out with started their own online business selling socks (the Chinese buy a ton online) so we even had fun brainstorming about online marketing strategies

My favorite retailer in Yangshuo! It is a place that you can go in, write letters or postcards and tell them when you want them to be mailed and they will hold them for you and mail them on your specific date in the future

Tuck and Jones hanging outside Postcards to the Future

3) FASHION! I had heard people in China are fashionable but “WOW” I was blown away! And not just in the big cities, everywhere! People are uber hip and demonstrating their own personal flair with funky outfits and combinations. It was fun to sit in an outside cafe and just watch people walk by and check out the fashion…especially the shoes

Matching mother and daughter tights

Awesome shoes we spotted in Shanghai

4) CLEAN. I don’t know why, but I expected to see a lot of liter in China. So many counties have such a problem with trash everywhere. But China was immaculate. And not just the big cities. Even as we traveled into remote villages on day trips, everything was neat as a pin. I was amazed. Then one day, I asked Emily, a young college student doing an internship at our hotel, what was China’s secret to keeping everything so clean. She said “propaganda” and pointed out how many of the local billboards and roadside signs were dedicated to the environment. We started taking pictures of signs and asking her to translate them when we saw her at night and they were always the same “Keep our country clean!”  “Pick up trash.” I realized that the word “propaganda” has a bad connotation in the US but to the Chinese, it just means marketing. And guess what!?!? The marketing is working

A random alley in a small village we went to….I love all the alleyways!

City block in Guiping, where Yve was born!

Tuck standing in front of a propaganda sign

Our favorite liter campaign with these cartoon diaper babies telling people to clean up

5) DESTINY. Yve already wrote an awesome blog post on Serendipity in Guiping. Our amazing experience in Yve’s birth town just goes to show you that this stuff doesn’t just happen in the movies We went to Guiping with absolutely no specific goal other than to see the town and to leave feeling a little more connected to that region of China.  Meeting Chen Bin Ying and spending the day with her was above and beyond our wildest expectations. What was cool was that Chen Bin Ying KNEW Yve. She remembered her in the orphanage and spoke about the 10 months she was there.  It was like meeting a long lost aunt! And we now have a friend for life so every time we go back to Southern China, we can visit and we can keep in touch via email.

Chen Bin Ying and Yve in the lobby of our hotel in Guiping!

We left China feeling psyched that we spent time really getting to know a few people as well as some beautiful places off the beaten path and away from the big cities. But we realize that we just scratched the surface. China is enormous and there is so much left to see and do. It will most certainly take many more trips to see it all  But we are most proud that we were able to form our own opinion about the country and we leave with a really different perspective on China than when we arrived.  And I am confident that if today’s young generation in China will be running the world’s next superpower, they will do a great job!

We felt like part of the family with Sam (far left) and his Mom and Dad in Yangshuo!

Here’s an awesome video that Ryan showed me of two guys climbing the 2^nd tallest building in Shanghai. Watch, but continue reading my blog post cause I haven’t even got to the point of this entry yet

One building stands out the most out of all, even more mind blowing and eye-catching than the tallest buildings in Shanghai.

The Oriental Pearl Tower

As iconic as our beloved Seattle Space Needle, you can see the Oriental Pearl Tower is distinct within the landscape!

As you can see, this thing is pretty dang cool. I don’t even have any similes for this building so I’m just going to leave it at this: Shanghai Pearl Tower = Awesome!

A pedestrian walk high above the traffic allows you to walk around and see the Pearl Tower from many angles!

At night, it looks like something out of an Austin Powers movie.

Well, if you are thinking that then you’ll forgive me when I tell you about this place. If you’re from Seattle, then you might have experienced the powerful awe that this place carries with it. Now you’re probably thinking – wait this chain is in Seattle also?! What is this place Starbucks? And now you’re probably thinking – when the heck is this guy gonna get to the point and stop predicting what I’m thinking? Well then I’ll just shoot the name out….Din Tai Fung!

This might already ring a bell to you if you’re from Seattle or Bellevue; the dumpling place that has a 30-60 minute wait to get a table, even on week nights. If it doesn’t ring a bell then I’ll just give you a quick briefing….amazingly awesome, stupendous and to die for. That statement wasn’t just to get me more comments on my blog post, I can honestly say that I could live off Din Tai Fung for the rest of my life.  Din Tai Fung in China is just about as common as TGI Fridays is in the US, so there’s not any wait to get in.  At this point it might be a little ambiguous as to what Din Tai Fung actually is, so I’ll take you through your basic night at Din Tai Fung.

Your waiter brings you to your table and lays out some menus. You flip to the first page of the menu, and what you see will change your life and alter your future forever. The juicy pork dumpling. You go through the menu trying to find something worth taking space in your stomach other than the juicy pork dumpling, but you can’t. You order your drinks, juicy pork dumplings and something else to cover up the fact that you are only ordering juicy pork dumplings. You have a conversation with your friends, let’s say you are talking about politics. After you begin talking about politics, your tower of dumpling steamers arrives in a jiffy. You make your dumpling sauce with the proper proportions of soy sauce and vinegar on a small plate of fresh shredded ginger. You will clench the soft outer shell of the dumpling vigorously in between your chop sticks, trying very hard not to splatter the delicate drop of wonder onto the table along with your hopes and dreams. If you are an amateur than you will read the dumpling eating manual and place the dumpling onto your spoon and poke a hole in the side of your dumpling and watch the juiciness flow into the spoon, and then you will eat it. If you are an experienced  Din Tai Funger, you’ll know the poking and prodding will ruin the popping sensation that happens in your mouth when your teeth puncture the skin of the dumpling.  Next you will be amazed. You will start to think of what job you need to have to eat at Din Tai Fung every day. You will begin shoving the dumplings in your mouth as if they were popcorn. After you eat about 12 dumplings and  gulp down your drink, you start to fade into the I-really-wish-I-didn’t-eat-that-many-dumplings phase.  After you finish discussing your I-really-wish-I-didn’t-eat-that-many-dumplings phase you will start to head out and plan your return.

You will have learned a valuable lesson: Din Tai Fung is amazingly awesome, stupendous and to die for.

Wescott and I eating just one more!

The steamers of dumplings!

Mom likes to create a “sauce bath” for her dumplings

All of us posing with the Din Tai Fung mascot

If you can’t already tell by my tone of voice, I was skeptical. No, I am not trying to pull a fast one on you guys by substituting “The Great Wall of China” in for the word “Parthenon” with my previous The Pretentious Parthenon blog post, albeit the attitude was not dissimilar as we sightsaw around Greece.

What can I say? My eyes have an exceptionally voracious appetite. You know how people are always saying: “Feast your eyes!” when they show you something marvelous?  Well, frankly, my eyes do not feast. Actually, maybe they do feast, but more accurately, are never satisfied.  In plain English: I’m not one for sightseeing. Which is a major problem because sightseeing has been a main objective throughout this entire trip. I don’t know if I was always this way though, because we used to hike a lot at home and I always thought that was fun. Now that I think about it: this trip has totally spoiled my eyes! My eyes have sampled holy lobster rolls from the Mattapoisett Oxford Creamery, and now just roll their eyes (pun intended) whenever you say, “We’re going to go down to the xyz restaurant and get some lobster rolls.” Yeah, a great view is great and all, but unless it’s the Santorini Caldera, Sagrada Familia, or a couple of baby cheetahs, you can count my eyes out.

In addition to my eyes being picky about what they “feast upon,” they also tend to rest on their laurels. In other words: they like the lobster rolls at Oxford Creamery, and why would they mess with a good thing? Why try the lobster rolls at the other restaurant two blocks down the street? My eyes are content and aren’t exactly eager to try anything new any time soon.

Hey. No judgment: they like what they like. Fortunately, for my persnickety eyes, they don’t get to choose what goes into their mouth and what doesn’t; my parents do that. Unlike my eyes, my parents’ eyes want to try every lobster roll restaurant the world has to offer, so there wasn’t really ever a debate when it came to going to see The Great Wall.

I didn’t believe the hype. Pictures from countless tourist flyers and posters cluttered my mind with scenes of a big stretch of wall, shoulder-to-shoulder dense with hordes of people and a ridiculous multitude of tour buses. This is what my mind was preparing itself for as we drove to the hotel.

We rolled into The Great Wall Box House late in the afternoon. I really needed to take a pee. Our driver from Beijing to The Great Wall Box House didn’t speak any English, and since I wasn’t really up for playing “I really need to go to the bathroom” charades with him, I painfully endured two straight hours as my bladder quivered on the brink of explosion. Because I ran straight for the bathroom like a maniac, my eyes didn’t get a chance to behold the meal they would soon be “feasting upon.”

At first glance, it was greater than I ever imagined: long stretch of ancient, rugged, crumbling path with a great heap of worn stone that resembled a watchtower here and there. It was magnificently peaceful. Nobody was in sight and no tour buses were idling out front. It was just us, the Box House, the quaint town of Gubeikou and these mystic hills that cradled amazing, antique pathways and bits of historically mind-blowing stone.

We reluctantly rolled out of bed for sunrise the next morning. As we climbed a brisk and relatively steep hill, the main attraction came into view. A methodically winding wall, lit up with a golden hue by the first rays of dawn, slowly awoke, like a drowsy serpent regaining consciousness after an eternal slumber. There it lay, waiting for us, the first to greet on this fine day; for as far as the eye could see, not a single person was in sight. The wall seemed to beckon to us that humbling morning. It seemed to be enticing me to trek onwards, and to discover the secrets that lay deeply imbedded in every ancient crack, hole, and crumb of stone. “The things I have seen and the adventures I have witnessed are beyond belief.” It said. I took one step forward. One foot lifted from familiar weather-beaten dirt and landed on ageless, everlasting stone. I envisioned the feet that had been here, in this same situation, before mine, the people who had took this step ages ago. Maniacal Huns storming Chinese forces?  Chinese soldiers hastily preparing for war?  Maybe. A swift messenger who brought vital warnings of a Hun invasion at least.

My imagination had a field day with those thoughts, and my eyes, they just stood there: awestruck by the taste of the lobster roll they just put into their mouth.

View of the Great Wall at sunrise the first morning

This is the section of the Great Wall which was right next to our hostel

Me on Great Wall Jinshanling which is a section that has been fully restored and even has a gondola!

But most importantly, The Box House sits right next to an amazing stretch of the Great Wall!  This afforded us the luxury to hike up for sunsets, sunrises and everything else in between.  We leisurely explored The Great Wall each day, heading in new directions and hoping we would end up in a place that would point us home. The village of Gubeikou was fun to meander around as well.  For anyone contemplating a visit to Beijing and The Great Wall, I would highly recommend a stint in The Box House!

Of course, Jones had to do one of his epic tours…here it is!

Typical dinner at The Box House

Spring blooms all around the village!

Tuck trying out the exercise equipment in town. You can find it in public places everywhere around China for people to use

the ester bunny came and gave us 7 eggs and lots of candy and we had fun and then it stardid ranig and we went out hiking the grete wall. then we came back and we wer all slugs and went to bed.

That was fun I hope we can do it agin.

These are the sins Jonsie and I made and put on the windo for the ester bunny

This is me and by basket…we got Skittles nunchuks! (see above)

Jonsie and his basket

Seeing Tiananmen Square for the first time was like finally seeing the face of that person you always hear so much about from your friend or family member: they almost never look anything like the way you pictured them. Tiananmen Square did not surprise me in terms of shape, for it was square as I suspected, but it fell decisively short in the awe-factor. In other words, I guess I expected more of this place I heard so much about in home and school. The way my teacher droned on and on, you too might have suspected some sort of mystical aura to be radiating off of the well-worn tiles. But alas, it was a square; a red square full of flustered tourists, flashy cameras, and perpetual commotion.

Now, while we are approximately a world away from China, I realize that the Square is not about what you can physically see, but what it represents. Nobody in “The Hunger Games” looks at Katniss’ Mockingjay pin and sees a gold pin. They see an idea, they see revolution against the Capitol.  But the thing about ideas is that they can be interpreted differently depending on perspective.  Some see a gold pin and hope, while others may see a gold pin and chaos.  What do you see when Tiananmen Square comes to mind?  I think that the name one uses to refer to the protests of 1989 gives you a lot of insight into what their thoughts about the whole event are.  I made this chart to help categorize people based on my understandings:

Wikipedia: If you are Wikipedia, a walking dictionary, or extremely passive person, you will use an amenable term like “The Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.”

The Everyday Westerner:  We as Westerners are typically critical towards the manner in which the protests were dealt with on June 4th. By manner, I am of course referring to the way in which the government slaughtered hundreds to thousands of unarmed civilians in the streets. We call it as we see it: “The Tiananmen Square Crackdown,” “Protests,” or “Massacre.”  I will refer to not only the mass killings that took place in Tiananmen Square, but the event as a whole using the term, “Tiananmen Square Crackdown.”  I went with “Crackdown” for no philosophical reason other than because it sounded familiar: not as harsh as “Massacre,” but more descriptive than “Protests.”

 An Obedient Chinese Citizen:  The Chinese Government puts a lot of effort into diluting the severity of the Tiananmen Square Crackdown.  When talking with a friend of ours who grew up in China, the subject of Tiananmen Square came up.  We were shocked when he promptly told us that the Government refuses to talk about it.  The teachers are not allowed to cover it in school at all, nor are they permitted to answer any questions about the event.  Uneducated Chinese citizens commonly use names such as the “June Forth Incident” or simply “June Fourth,” the day that the People’s Liberation Army actually began killing protestors.

 A Slightly More Rebellious Chinese Citizen:  These citizens don’t let something like “government censorship” stop them from learning what they want to learn.  They are slightly more pugnacious and critical towards the government and use slightly more critical names like “June Fourth Massacre” or “June Fourth Crackdown.”  To bypass Internet censorship they use code names like “May 35th,” “VIIV” (Roman numerals for 6 and 4), and “Eight Squared” (which is equal to 64).  It’s pretty awesome.

 A Chinese Government Official:  If you are a government official in the country of China than you are most likely trying to eradicate the existence of the Tiananmen Square Crackdown from history, because, like those who were against killing the protestors, you would probably be ejected from the government if that is not your objective.

Ever since the Crackdown, the government has slowly been changing the name they use to refer to the event. It started off as a “counter-revolutionary riot,” however that was dialed down to simply “riot” after a while, this evolved into “political storm,” and finally they settled on an extremely neutral phrase: “political turmoil between the Spring and Summer of 1989,” which they continue to use to this day.

Tiananmen Square represents something different depending on your perspective.  The aura that I desperately searched for on the day that I visited Tiananmen Square was there, but I just couldn’t see it at that time. It is metaphysical; an intangible idea that varies depending on who you are. Now that aura is obvious to me. I can feel it radiating from all the way across the globe in an extremely symbolic square that came to life once I stepped across it’s storied past.