Mt Wudang to Wuhan, part 3

Okay sorry about the bevity of this next post, theres far to much going for me to give you all a blow by blow as I'd like. And now with a small chinese lady in our lives, we're not in charge. So I'm going to compress a lot here. I give the full meal deal when we get home.

After the tea plantaion, we headed back up the mountain , on the other side of sword river gorge. We stopped just after the hotel we stayed at that night at Purple hevean temple. This is were the taoist nuns live. They safe guard kung fu, medicinal arts and music here. Victor sid that the Feng Shui is really good here...I said I'd love to try some but was still full from lunch...hehe. We are here to watch a taoist ceremony but it's not going to happen so instead we walk around and visit...more shirnes..one to herbalism including a little exhibt on ancient herbalism and how/what they did...really cool to see these old twisted roots. Then to the big shrine room where theres a massive stature of Zhenwu the dark warrior. The dark they speak of here is the priciple of Wu...the great poerful emptiness which contains all potentialities...cools stuff. On either side of the statute (which is 30' tall) are racks of odd pole arms...halberds and scythes and a thing that looks like a 20 siteded die on top of a pole...very cool. I cant help but be impressed with the amount of worship and devotion that's gone on inthis hall...1000 years at least. The beams and rafters are coated in chanting and incense. All of a sudden we hear chimes and bells and Victor says they are practising taoist music. We get to watch as they do and I tape a whole bunch, cant wait to hear it.After we leave the purple cloud temple, we drive up up to the mountian villa hotel we had originally planed to spend the night before in and get a nice room with a breeze. P and I sleep 9 hours..our first real sleep f the trip. We are awoken by a rooster. P sleeps more and I got to the top patio/roof of this place. There are 20 people there doing taichi with the foggy sunrise. We have a good breakfast with Victor and Mr. Sho and then hike to the south cliff palace.This is a temple/palace carved into the cliff side looking up at goldentop..where we were before. Too much to describe here. I made another incense offering for our parents in the shrine to zhenwu's folks. We tossed a coin at the luck bell...clang..clang and hiked back. Drive down the mountain as Victor is going to host us with his family at a lunch in town before we catch the train. On the way down, he sings carpenter's tunes..I have this on tape and will be the "must see" video of 2005! BTW the chinese love the carpenters like the frrench love jerry lewis...we dont question, we just nod and sing along. When we get to town and visit his book storeWe meet his wife and son and theres a crazy frenchman named marc there. We all talk about the mountain to eachother in our own languages and still fully understand. Then off to lunch. The was fun but it's the source of our TD. It's one of those wonderful auspicious traveller's lunches where at one point we we're all talking to eachother in french, english and chinese ( p started to sign ) and after much beers we headed to the train station
I could go on about the train trip more but I'll just say that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND a train trip in china. Ours was 6 hours from Wudangshan to Wuhan, mostly in the light. We had a soft sleeper car and share it with a woman who slept on the top bunk most of the trip. Soft sleeper is nice, a private comparment with 4 nice bunks, a table and even a volume knob to turn down the insane chinese pop and talk radio that was blaring when we entered the car. We drank beer and watched the rice paddys roll by. Over the Han River and down to Wuhan (Wuchang district) on the night of the 27th and to sleep. I'm going to drop the wudang stuff now and next posts will be about adoption. Hopefully by the end of the next post we'll be caught up.

Mt. Wudang day 1 part 2

Theres soooo much to tell..all of it bout my new daughter...but as she naps (10:30-11:30 08/31-05) I'll try to continue on the wudang story..I really want to get it out nd catch up so I'm relaying current events...where did I leave off....Oh! Hahah yes...so we're in this court yard and victor points to a small out building. We're to enter it and follow him. This is the "shrine of incresing your luck". He gives us a mantra to chant something like "gongchi-lala" or something like that. I hope I got it right because once we were inside I was saying it over and over...I probably got the tone wrong on the third sylable, rising instead of level and rising...so by going into the building and then squeezing and walking along the outerwall between an inner chamber and the wall(space of 1.5 ft) all the way in the pitch dark around the outerwall of the building you are supposed to increase your luck from bad to good or good to excellent. First victor went, then P and then me...now I have to tell you that both P and I thought we were in there for 10 minutes but really it was 1 minutes. As we emerged into the main room again an ancient taoist priest said something to patrice...victor said he wished you good luck, I think he said "hey look it's hillary clinton." BTW Patrice is REALLY FREAKED OUT at this point...any longer in there and was certain that she would just keel over and they'd have to dismantle the 1100 year old building to get her out. I have to say that there was certainly a minor time dilation vortex in there. So then guess what...more coutyards and small rooms and shrines to Zhenwu ooo BTW here's a little deal on him (it?)

Zhenwu, the "Perfected Warrior," began as an entwined tortoise and snake, the animal symbol of the north in the Five Phase system. This emblem was called the "Dark Warrior" (xuanwu) until the 11th century, when the name was changed to "Perfected Warrior" (zhenwu). From this time onward, Zhenwu assumed human form and rapidly became one of the most important deities in the Taoist pantheon. This was in no small part due to both his identity as a warrior god and his association with the north, the direction from which China was constantly threatened by neighboring people from central Asia. As a result, the Perfected Warrior eventually became known as a protector of the state and imperial family. Sponsorship of Zhenwu by the emperor reached its peak during the Ming dynastyóespecially during the reign of the third Ming emperor, who credited the god with helping him seize the throne. A temple to Zhenwu still stands in the northern quadrant of the Ming imperial palace, later used by the rulers of the Qing dynasty.

Due to the popularity of the Perfected Warrior, his worship spread beyond the confines of Taoism. He became an important member of the Buddhist pantheon as well. Zhenwu is still actively worshiped, and his central temple on Mount Wudang in Hubei province remains one of Taoism's most important sacred sites.

I guess Zhenwu was a noble (perhaps to be emporer) and chucked it all once he saw the mountain...His mom said..oh no you dont, I have some serious dowagering planned and sent 500 warriors to get him back..they came to Wudang and after witnessing Zhenwu's devotion ( and hanging out in the ancient sex street in wudangshan ) decided Wudang was a better deal than the barracks back at the palace. They Stayed and became the 500 celestials...Zhenwu "cultivated" for 42 years and then POOF immortal. The priests and nuns still sped significant time "cultivating" here now. Anyway, we head up some stairs leading out of the courtyard of shrines and to a door., one of three. This one is for humans the other ones are for celestials and devils. They bar the devil one closed ALL THE TIME...wouldn't you? Any way now we follow a stone path and stairs zig zag up to the top...stopping once in a while to catch or breath and the view...the breath part is hard cause the view steals it from you as soon as tyou think you've caught it.

Okay finally to the top. Golden Top. We rest for a bit and shoot more pictures and video. It's actually much more simple up here..no intricate storylines or complex metphores using deities and clestials...just nature..Wu..the great dark emptiness containing all potentialities...we are quiet.

Below us the clouds form as waves slowly washing up and over the surrounding cliffs, Victor says that at a village over there, pointing to a sunny patch of green below us, UNESCO musicologists found old people singing rare folk songs. No pollution, no bustle...just peace. A Taoist monk comes by and kicks a plastic water bottle off the ledge where it had been left. It careens down the cliff and lands in a pile a ways down in a courtyard. {Patrice observes we're witnessing something that will soon be changing. I hope not. We head down. Victor stops to lobby for off campus privialges (taoist monk-wise). I hope he gets it. Cable car down and still no monkeys. We stop to have lunch. Victor and Mr. Sho and us eat at a little, very clean comparitivly, looking place. We have chicken and good mushrooms (with bones and a chicken foot in it which victor quiclkly grabs with his chopsticks and chomp) and steamed hot veggies..no TD here under the watchful gaze of a picture of Mao. Victor and I start to hatch a plan to have Duluth and Wudangshan become sister cities...tourism realted. They have many of the issues that we have..growth in one industry and decline in others...how to balance visitors with maintaining the way of life which draws them. Into the car and down the mountain. It's early sfternoon and we come to where Victor has his "insitiute". It's built into an old school building which served the children of the tea plantation which surrounds us.
We stop and share tea at the plantaion store and buy some and P and I walk off by ourselves for awhile. P is getting tired of always being "guided". We walk for a bit and up to a watertower/obersvation deck. Kids follow us to the top and all say "HALLO" we say "HALLO" and then we all laugh. We walk down. The big black butterflies here are almost birdlike. One more temple and then to our hotel for the night. More soon.

Wudangshan day 1, part 1

It's 6:45am Tuesday morning here and my girls are still sleeping. That wont last long I think so I'll try to tackle my goal of catching up from the past. More on out new treasure in another post...I ill say this when she smiles...eally smiles, she looks like an old japanese man...and she's quite the trickster...but I digress...rewind back to 08/26/05 Waking up on Mt. Wudang
After a night in very moist hotel room I got out of bed about 5:30 or so and walked out on the patio which led into the building.Our hair raising and long plane/car trip the night before brought us to this place in total darkness so I was stupified to look out on a breathtaking moutain vistaThe hotel (and included karaeoke bar) actually was quite nice. We were just billited late night into a room that into which an 800 foot jungle encrusted cliff was emptying is newly gotten rainfall. I got my first solo glimpses of Mt. Wudang....OMG...

For those of you who haven't heard me raving for the last month about this trip,here's the beginning of some info on Mt. Wudang. Guess what it's ALL that and more. The hotel we were at was right next to the Wudang Taoist Academy of Wushu Arts. I've posted more Wudangshan pix at the supersecretmoonbase.com ( use the "more pics" link on the right side of this blog ). There was a court yard of blue clad wushu students short step marching back and forth in lines while a master yelled at them for chewing gum or not resembling a tiger enough..one or the other. I watched, stretched and read my copy of the dao de jing.

1. The Way
The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not true.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without intention is to sense the world;
To experience with intention is to anticipate the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.


Soon as the sun began to peek over the cliffs, I got P out of bed. Trooper that she is, she got up and saw sun rise on the mountain. Then she was back to the spore suite until I bribed her with coffee from the co-op ( 64.07 yuan / lb --posters, the first correct USD conversion gets a cup of wudang green tea from me!). We were to meet Victor and Mr. Sho at 8a. Soon there were many younger chinese women scurrying around yammering at each other and washing washing washing the floors. We went to the court yard and found Victor playing ping pong ( seriously ) with the night staff...he was heng hao (very good) and I came to find out later that he had to stop playing competeitvly for an injury...now thats ping (or is it pong?) Into the car we get and drive back down the mountain half way, This time we can see what we've gotten ourselves into...and it's absolutley beautiful..lush pines, wierd other trees, vines and shiny leaved plants..victor says theres boars, leapords and, to P's utter joy, possible monkeys.


I want to take a moment here to talk about China's most abundant resource, insanely fervent workers...young, old and post retirement everywhere there are people, backs bent and shovel in hand. The emporer and officials who commishoned the temples and shrines of Wudang to be built 800 years ago have the stain of the blood of tens of thousands of workers who died during the constructions on their hands...now thats a pleasant thought. But everywhere we go in China, from Beijing pre-olympic construction to the rural agricultural work in coutless rice paddys we saw on our train trip from Wudangshan to Wuhan...peopl peopl...toiling on all days of the week, in the day and in the night...Patrice asked Victor about it and he gave a short sounding "They have jobs"... I was struck by the industriousness of teir efforts...The next time I see an american moaning about ANYTHING I'm going to lay into them in mandarin..."get off your nascar ass and get out into the feild and pay for that SUV with sweat!"


We come to an intersection and turn to drive bck up the other side of the ravine/gorge that we've just come down. Up, up, up past more workers clearing tons of rock off the road..each time we come to a hairpin or a group of workers, Mr. Sho lays on the horn a couple of taps. Soon we come to the end of the road and are faced with a bluff probably 900 meters up, some shops and a cable car, kind like the alpine tram at lutsen only in china going up to a Taoist temple complex built on the top of a mountain. The row of shops, all open fronted and selling trinkets, odd potatoes nd the main tourist souvenier of Mt. Wudang, swords...I have come home. Sowrds...literally hundreds of them...the river in the gorge, Sword (Jian) River..And due to the fact that we have so limited yuan, I cant buy one....grrrr..Big, Huge, Monstorous, medium and toy...swords with tassles, swords in boxes, hanging on the wall...swords for tai chi sword practice, special ornamental swords to scare devils from your house...swords for cleaving letters open and proping the window open...I ave to keep moving...Victor buys our tickets and we're away up, up, up...P wants to see a monkey, I want a monkey with a sword...Actually not...P and I dscussed why it's hard for people and monkeys to live together...it's not our stupidity, or our wonton disregard for theirs and our living spaces...no it's that we cant abide all their sill monkey pranks. Butter on door knobs, short sheeting, fake poop...and always with that insideous monkey snickering in the background..I'm glad we didn't run into any monkeys...that we know of at least.

Golden Top (1 pillar supporting heaven)
Okay everyone, get out the zepp album...you know the track I want to play. The cable cars DONT STOP! You have to hustle out either side quick like or you are going back down...the timid luckily cant get on or else they wouldnt ever get off...We get out of the tram car/sauna after passing many choice monk perches. Victor rides the car behind us...he's actually got business up here. He wants to become a Taoist priest but not stay up on goldentop and has to lobby for a permit. P and I are set to walk the rest of the way on the ...wait for it...stairway to heaven...actually getting to use that phrase is an odd badge of honor...much like the bruise I have on my forehead from passing out in the bathroom from TD (see past post)...Anyway victor said that hermits and meditators have been up here in caves since ancient times..in chinese, thats really old...like BCE stuff and I could see where they had hung out...meditated, converted and fossilized. We start out ascent up winding skinny stairs to a patio where we pause for a picture or two.We shared this spot for a second with a blue tailed lizard. And on again..Victor has a schedule to keep us on. Up more stairs to another patio with a few incense selling stands and a carved "very fine caligraphy". It says "One Pillar Supporting Heaven"Kind of like Goldentop's mission statement...a good one at that...to the point. We buy incense and we both make offerings in this icehouse sized incense burner, I prayed for our new dughter. I dont know what P prayed for but she started to cry afterwards so...Then...guess what? Up more stairs...just short though a door....

OKAY HANG ON FLASH FORWARD!! BTW now it's 5pm Wuhan BestWestern and I just changed my daughter's first poop in our family...BIG NEWS cause we've been pumping her with apple juice, watermellon and teething biscits for 36 hours...it had to blow sometime and we were eagerly awaiting this blessed event...which just happened now 2 times in the last 30 minutes...never been so happy to smell diareah before..she fits in with mom and papa now..at least at one point she stood there..peeing on the floor...and laughed with us.

okay back to the misty mountain... we go through a door into a coutyard where shrines lead off all sides. each has sliding doors which are locked and some purpose related to the life of Zhengwu the mystic who is the root of his whole mountain. I'll find a link to his story so I dont butcher it.

a quick few shots of sugar

No words I could feebly craft will suffice here

flash forward: two many irons in the fire

A quick jump ahead in time to today (Sunday at 2:19 pm.)

In an attempt to prepare for a meeting of all the adopting families, Patrice accidently and unknowingly plugged in an average American curling iron rated for 120 volts into an outlet carrying 220 volts. As I emerged from the shower I was greeted with the smell of melting plastic and the sight of a rapidly disintegrating appliance. To Patrice's credit, she had plugged it in to the American three bang multi-plug/unconverted receptical I had created for devices which already have transformers. I had not explained this to her. The curling iron metal was hot when I touched it. Patrice is now taking this post as dictation as my hand is now in a bucket of ice which was ordered from room service who requires a tip and was held from entering the room to disguise the odiferous remnants of the nearly averted hotel fire jk jk. Now we have to dispose of the evidence in downtown Wuhan and hopefully not get charged for the melted carpet. More later...

Xiangfan to Wudangshan Mountain

I'll start with the good thing. We were met by our guide from the tour company and the driver. Our "guide", who is now a partner with me in a plan to make Wudangshan and Duluth sister cities ( more later ), told us his english name is Victor. He was certain that we could not pronounce his chinese name and we left it at that. Victor is one of the only english speakers in Wudang county...yes I said it, Wudang County. So he tours people aound the Wudang scenic and cultural heritage area...He also owns a book store in Wudangshan along with his newly reconciled wife, Julia. He is one of the founders of the Wudang Taoist Culutural Center. Providence and Zhengwu had crossed our paths. He is a sweet, interesting and knowledgeable man. Along with our enigmatic driver Mr. Sho, Victor scooped us up at the dimly lit Xiangfan airport/tire reclaimation centre and unto the newly constructed Xi'an to Wuhan expressway in Mr. Sho's volkswagon sonata (not availble in the us).

Oh, the flight.... The Beijing airport is where we made two mistakes...er had two important learning opportunites..

1. Dont let strange men "help" you. As we approached the ticket counter (for domestic flights) a guy came up and hustled us up to the counter. He took our tickets and began to talk to the lady at the desk. We thought he was an Air China expiditor or some thing so we went with the flow. He certainly expedited the process and with him we hurried around to the entrace to the gate area. we stopped to tip him. I had no USD so I asked P to get some and he saw our money and literally grabbed a 100 yuan note and vaproized. Lesson learned, DO it yourself if you can...and actually we could have. Especially in Beijing, the counter staff at hotels and the airport are used to forigners, not the band, and will help you through.

2. Exchange USD at the airport before heading to remote areas. We did not do this and spent the next few days relying on Victor to accept USD for extra things not covered by the price of the tour. I would now be the proud owner of a Wudang sword if we had been smart this way. The nearest BOC(bank of China) was in Shi'yan 1 hour away and not in the cards so we're were stuck with our capitaist green backs...as a matter of fact, as of this post, we still hvent been able to exchange our traveller's cheques as it's sunday.

Okay..after making through chinese travel security..I got held up for a second because of my laptop battery looking like an brick of boomy on the scanner screen...we got to the gate to wait for CA1385...which was late 1 hour...so we tried to carve a spot for ourselves....people,people,people,people,people,peoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeople
peoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeople and they ALL have cel phones. You can call from the golden top of Mt. Wudang and order a pizza (just DONT EAT IT!) if you want. FInally after a gate switch we got on the Air China 757 with others going to Xiangfan for the big tire re-treading symposium and trade fair. The flight was ok...we actually declined an inflight peejio. Dark when we landed at Xiangfan and there were locusty grasshoppery flat black jumper flier type bugs everywhere...we waited for our luggage and we hear a voice TCHRIS! PAT-REECE!..it's Victor -- he's smiling.

Drive two hours and a bit of conversation with Victor...getting to know each others story....He says he very much respects our plan to adopt...has many questions about it. We get to the ancient stone gate now guard house at 10:30p, the mountain is closed and there is some tense back and forth ... victor gains us entry...now we take a 1/2 hour twisty turn hold the handle ride up the mountain...they've just come off of two weeks of rain but we see stars in the sky...P can tell that there are trees and woods here and she is tired but happy. We get alomst to the top part where the hotel we've booked is and there is a gate across the road. Two huge bolders are just about to dump down the mountain from the rain just up the road. A few weeks ago in another nearby park, a bus was crushed by falling boulders, killing 5, so they are taking no chances here. Victor makes some calls and we stay at a hotel that we past a half a mile back. As it's after 11 now, we have to wake up the attendant and find a place for our heads to lay down. At this point, due to a combination of terror, excitment, travel, and jet lag we have had only 5 hours of sleep in the last week. The room is low grade motel and VERY MUSTY...you'll find out why when you read the next post....

Beijing

08/24/05 If you think division street in st. cloud is bad, do not come to Beijing. First of all, they do not even let forgiener(s) , yes the band and yes anyone else but chinese, drive in the country. I thought it was just part of some PRC plan to control visitors...au contraire! It is for our saftey. OMG it's like everyone is actually trying to either hit or be hit. People on mopeds carrying their entire apartment weaving and lurching. In the words of martin sheen in apocalypse now "I see no method here". This photo, which looks like coverd parking, is actualy cars waiting (the only time I saw this btw) for a light change. Like a phalanx of rusty macedonians late for a spartan smacking these cars will soon jolt forward...15 abreast and drive directly at us.

08/25/05 Summer Palace
When the emperor wanted to set up a fising shack, he called 300k of his buddies and wala, the summer palace. Unfortunately, the whole this flew in his face when his mom decided to check in on him...her and her 108 eunichs....Nothing is more lame at a fishing shack than a eunich...all they show up with is their pole, no tackle. Just inside the gate we entered at, if you were to but a burlap sack over the rock of longevity and the 800 year old dragon turtle sculptures, it had the feel of the DNR fish exhibit at the state fair. If you look on the eves of chinese buildings, there are a row of animal effigies, the more little ceramic critters, the higher the building owner's status. I'm thinking to try and cut a deal with the squirrel family who rents from us...we hang more bird seed for them to steal if they hang out on the eves of our roof in a neat line like that once in a while. The emporer has 9 squirles. All in all, the summer palace was a cool respite from downtoen Beijing but it's overblown baroque-osity was overshadowed by it's ornamental plethora. Oh...one of the families brought their three young children. Cute blondies...and a huge hit at the summer palace...I finally encouraged the oldest boy to start charging 20 yuan for each chinese person who wanted to touch their head, 30 for a cheek pinching and 100 yuan(rmb) for a photo op.
We after checking out the boat house, mother's palace and the cement pontoon we went to the buffet. Here we got our first peejio of the trip. In true automontapieac fashion PEE-jio is beer. This helped to momentarily cure Patrice from the combination of constaption, diarehea, menstral cramping and jet lag which had beset her.

After lunch and some pearl shopping at the next door pearls-are-us, we went back to the hotel. The rest of the families who had been on this tour with us stayed there and Patrice , I and our guide Peter left for the airport. We had to catch the 17:05 to Xiangfan. Okay this is where it gets interesting...

first chance to really post

right now It's 8:07am Wuhan time. Patrice is sleeping ... or better yet, trying to sleep as I just keep waking her up. I'm not sure why...maybe excitement on y prt or perhaps it's anxiety. I DO know that I got up this morning and had to look up this address


Travelers' Diarrhea at the CDC website

ommonly associated symptoms are nausea(got it), vomiting(not yet), diarrhea(mostly dense), abdominal cramping(a small bit), bloating, fever(yep), urgency(I'm usually fairly "urgent"), and malaise(ooo, I'll be laying around today a bit).

GO fluoroquinolones!! We brought a full course of cipro so we started that aout 4am last night.

I cant "view" these posts so I'm not sure if they are really posting could I get a mic check from someone please?? email us and use this secret phrase...

cbacigalupo@gmail.com

Escherichia coli

Okay now the good news...but first P just got up and has asked for coffee...which I brought from the co-op....sale coffee 7.99 / lb...hang on

there..started the water boiling...a MUST HAVE in china.

We were just discussing the "fancy" hotels we've stayed in...the Best Western May Flower - Wuhan is right up there. So this pad, out home for the next week or so, is a welcome relief after the two pretty interesting, very rustic and more than midly moist hotels up the mountain at Wudangshan. So much to share...ooo but I feel that I better start in the beginning and try to catch up..it's amazing how much we've done and seen since last tuesday. So for this post, I'll copy and paste some stuff I wrote on the flight from Mpls to Tokyo and a picture or two.

You know that saying, "They all look alike." Well P and I are now firmly convinced that "WE all look alike!" We have seen the asian counterparts, dopplegangers?, of several of our friends and co-workers. P tried to sleep on the flight as the asian version of Matt Alvar drooled on her shoulder...just like home!

begin pre-written text --

08/23/05 19:25 Beijing time

Well I'm taking notes on the plane to copy and paste later when I have a chance to toss them up to the blog. OI! I hope I'm (we're) getting over the initial adjusting to travel...getting the few things you actually need and use in the right pack location so you have them on hand when you need them. I find that is the hardest part of traveling. Once you've got your journey feet, then you can relax a bit.

Minor turbulence as we cross the northern reaches of Canada. Must be some active inuits and moose down there. Mostly the turbulence has been from me. I can feel it shedding as we get further into our future. Knock on wood, we've not felt any effect from the mech.s union strike. All flights on time ( we got off the ground in mpls about a half an hour late but thats probably normal) Now we're on the way to Tokyo via the Yukon and Alaska.


P said , while wolfing a cheeseburger in the mpls airport – angry at her over anxious husband, that it's amazing to see so many different types of people. Soon we'll be the minority. I cant wait.

We spilled wine on my “go to the commissar” shirt during the flight. Here's hoping thats the worst thing that happens.

BARK BARK WOOF BARK !! We could here Murphy and scout barking as we flew past Duluth at 515mph.

I'm struck with the hugeness ans the smallness of the world. So many lives and stories, ours is only one. And when the sun sets, everyone lays their head down. We're actually chasing the sun on this flight. We left Duluth at 12:35p and will be in Beijing by 21:30 the next day.


535mph, head wind of 35 mph

we're here!!

quick post to let you know we made it....waking up in beijing at oriental cultural hotel. I'm posting but cannot view the blog. more abit later...all good not a bump from NWA at all....woohoo...more to come

Packing

Well, it's getting real close now. We spent all of yesterday (t-minus 4 days) shopping at target...twice....all day...we shopped so hard that by the second time we were there (after dark) I had changed clothes. We were working off this packing list prepared by a insane hypocondriac. If she pumped her kid with half the meds we bought, the child would either be sicker than a tyhpoid victim or some mutant hyper-healthy super freak able to repel all the bacteria in china with her pee. This is the first time P and I have even thought about medications needed to have a kid. Luckily a nice couple gave us nipple advice. Above is a picture of the baby stuff as laid out on the dining room table. That's nearly $600.00 of butt paste and batteries (both useful and NOT interchangeable)

In country cel phone

We've rented a cel phone to have in china. $77 for 17 days and 2x calling cards for 36 total.

Dear Mr. Chris Bacigalupo:

Thank you for placing order with PandaPhone rental service.
Every order and every customer is important to us and your satisfaction is our desire, no matter whenever and wherever!

Your phone number is : 13636455542

Simple instruction:
Making a call in China to China phone number: to Regular Phone Line and Cell Phone: direct dial
Making a call to international City like USA: 17901+ 001+ destination phonenumber
Call from USA to your cell phone: 011+86+13636455542

Have a safe and pleasant trip to China and welcome to China this wonderland!

draft Intinerary scroll down a lot! dont ask why.

Day	Date(s)	Location	Activity	Flight No./Train No.
1	08/23/05	Dlth,Mpls,Tokyo,Beijing	Flight There	NWA Flights #3024,19,11
	08/24/05	Peace Hotel, Beijing	Overnight+Cel rental
2	08/25/05	Beijing	Sleep or tour
	08/25/05	Beijing, Xiangfan,Wudangshan	Travel to Mt. Wudang	CA1385, Minivan
	08/25/05	Wudangshan	2 x Overnight,Baihui Moutain Villa
3	08/26/05	Wudangshan	Tour Upper Mountain
4	08/27/05	Wudangshan	Tour Lower Mountain
	08/27/05	Wudangshan-Wuhan	Train to Wuhan	T371
	08/27/05	May Flower Hotel Wuhan	Begin Overnights Wuhan (x6)
5	08/28/05	Wuhan	GOTCHA, register with PCAD
6	08/29/05	Wuhan	Notary, Shop for supplies
7	08/30/05	Wuhan	Free
8	08/31/05	Wuhan	Free
9	09/01/05	Wuhan	PU Notary, L's Xport, paperwork with CHSM
10	09/02/05	Wuhan, Guangzhou	Travel to Guangzhou
	09/02/05	Guangzhou, White Swan Hotel	Begin Overnights Guangzhou (x7)
11	09/03/05	Guangzhou	Tour / Sightsee
12	09/04/05	Guangzhou	L's visa photo, med clinic (check up)
13	09/05/05	Guangzhou	Tour / Sightsee
14	09/06/05	Guangzhou	Tour / Sightsee
15	09/07/05	Guangzhou	4pm Consulate, take oath – host fee
16	09/08/05	Guangzhou	Get Visa
17	09/09/05	Guangzhou to Duluth	Flight Home	NWA Flights #10,20,1466