Xinnian kuai le!

Whew. It's been a busy two weeks – I'll start at the beginning. My parents arrived at their hotel last Friday night, upon which I whisked them to my school for a performance by Xinjiang students celebrating the annual Corban Festival. It started at 7 and went past 11 p.m., so we just stayed for the first two hours.

After we toured campus Saturday morning, we headed downtown to see Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We killed time window shopping at Wangfujing before having a fabulous dinner at Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant.

The weather was perfect for our visit to the Great Wall on Sunday, with clear blue skies. It was also warm enough to take off our coats once we started hiking along the top (photos here).

On Monday we visited the Lama Temple, then stopped at the Silk Street Market to haggle over hats and gloves before returning to campus for a Christmas pageant. There were choirs, dance performances and student bands, plus some Christmas carols from the foreign teachers. Mom and Dad were on their own while I attended a dinner with school officials and other foreign teachers.

We spent Christmas Day at the Temple of Heaven and Beijing Antique City. Brian and Tienie joined us for Christmas dinner at a local Korean BBQ restaurant.

After class on Wednesday, my parents and I trekked across the city to the sprawling Summer Palace. It was freezing and all the ponds and lakes had frozen over. On the way back we drove past the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, which is the main Olympic venue. Our taxi driver pulled onto the side of the freeway so we could get better pictures, and it turned out to be a popular spot – enterprising vendors were even selling Olympic souvenirs. We took the subway back to Tongzhou and met Brian for dinner at a Xinjiang restaurant, where we ordered meatsticks, naan and a giant lamb shank for Dad.

The next day we visited the Military Museum, which covers everything from the ancient dynasties to the Communist Revolution. In the evening we had dinner in Haidian with Niall and his parents, who were also visiting. Photos from all these places are here. I also have some photos of Beijing Christmas decorations.

Friday afternoon we flew to Chengdu, in Sichuan province (photos here). We were the only Westerners on the plane. At the baggage claim in Chengdu we watched with a sinking feeling as the last few bags circled around on the conveyor belt – Dad's was not among them. We spent some time filling out the necessary forms and took a taxi to our hotel.

We woke up early Saturday morning for the drive to Leshan (pop. 200,000). Carved into a sandstone cliff outside Leshan is the 71-meter Giant Buddha, which sits at the intersection of three rivers. Local residents built the Buddha 1,300 years ago because boats kept crashing where the rivers meet – and gave it full credit when the accidents ceased. More recently, however, scientists have determined that the Buddha's construction actually altered the riverbed to make it safer.

In the afternoon we visited the famous Qingyang Taoist Temple, then went back to the hotel for a few hours. We capped off the day by attending a Sichuan opera, which included acrobatics, musical performances, a hand shadow show, and of course the so-fast-you-can't-see-it face-changing that Sichuan opera is known for.

Sunday morning we rose early again to visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which houses 67 cubs and adults. The three-month-olds lounging in the nursery – pandas can't really move freely until 150 days – were unbearably cute. Pandas have been around for 8 million years but they've evolved into placid herbivores, consuming up to 40 kilograms of bamboo a day. Because bamboo is so fiber-rich, however, they don't retain many nutrients and so have to keep eating.

After lunch, we went our separate ways at the airport – my parents to Shanghai, me to Beijing. We have today and tomorrow off, then it's back to class for a few weeks until the February break. 2007 is over already! Happy New Year (Xinnian kuai le!) and best wishes for 2008.

China Fun Fact: There are fewer than 1,000 pandas left in the wild.

News break

Niall directed me to this 1,700-word "special report" in today's China Daily on the Tibetan Living Buddha reincarnation. After laying out the five key points that govern the central government's role in the selection process, the article wraps up with these thoughts:

The religious rituals concerning the reincarnation of Living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism and the historical conventions formed during the administration over the reincarnation of Living Buddhas exercised by central governments... have become essential conditions in establishing the authority of the reincarnated Living Buddhas. They have also become the faith of Buddhist followers. The system and the implementation of it fully demonstrate national sovereignty and the authority of the central governments. It not only helped to improve national unification and solidarity and maintain social stability in Tibet, but also helped to boost the healthy development of the Tibetan Buddhism and consolidate its position in Tibetan society.

The government has stepped up its media offensive against Tibet and the Dalai Lama over the last few months as he visited the U.S. and other Western countries (see here for another example).

Also making the news here: China to play greater role in World Bank, South Korean presidential election kicked off, Asia all the rage as world of sports heads East, and Jamie Lynn Spears says she's pregnant (side note: Hello, she's 16!!).

Unrelated but also of note is this article about America's shadowy think tanks, with Karl Rove (or possibly CIA head Michael Hayden) gazing out menacingly from the Xinhua news magazine's cover.

China Fun Fact: English words that come from Chinese include silk, kowtow, typhoon and gung-ho.

Xuě

Traffic laws in China are lax at best; outside the city center, for example, red lights are more of a suggestion ("Hey, you might want to consider stopping here, you know, if you feel like it") than a hard and fast rule. Coming back from an Indian restaurant last night, Brian and I had to exit the subway and jump in a cab because our line closes earlier. Unfortunately it was on a frontage road going away from Tongzhou, so the driver followed the highway briefly before making an awkward U-turn to the right. It took us a minute to realize he was going up the off-ramp. That's when we decided to put our seatbelts on.

When I looked out the window this morning there was snow, which continued throughout the morning. You all know how I feel about snow. It's like watching the Roadrunner try to ice skate. But it made for some pretty pictures.


China Fun Fact: Mine accidents claim almost 20,000 lives each year, including more than 100 workers killed last week by a gas explosion at a mine in northern Shanxi province.