DATELINE: Chengdu, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

Early in my trip, I almost made plans to bypass Chengdu because of bad weather. I'm so glad I decided to, as Mom would say, play it by ear. I have had a great time here and wish I could stay a little longer (but I'm also eager to get to Yunnan). I did experience my first rainy day in China yesterday. I put on my poncho and set out to find Chen's Mapo Doufu, the oldest mapo tofu restaurant in Chengdu. After much searching, and my map nearly getting ruined in the process, I made it. Wow! Delicious!! And for those of you who are shocked that I ate tofu for lunch, I must point out that it was topped with ground pork. The rain had gotten worse after lunch, so I decided to take a taxi back to the hostel, instead of a bus. It felt like I had to wait forever to find an empty one! (I guess it's like finding a cab in NYC in the rain.) I sat in the front seat of the taxi so I could easily show the driver my map, which was bilingual and also had directions to the hostel printed in Chinese. He shook his head and motioned with his hand that I should get out of the taxi. Not eager to go back into the rain, I did what any good New Yorker would do: I took out a pen and wrote down his license number. Well, he quickly changed his mind! He did try to get away with not using the meter though, but I quickly noticed and motioned for him to turn it on. Bam. Nothing gets by this chick. This morning I woke up early to tour the Panda Breeding Center. The pandas were amazing! I've never seen one in person before. The adult pandas had just been fed and were lazily munching on bamboo. Pandas can only digest 20% of their food, so they move around very little to conserve energy. They rarely mate and often have to be artificially inseminated. Also, mother pandas often lack a maternal instinct and become frightened and hurt their babies after giving birth. All in all, they are pretty much the most poorly evolved creature in nature; but they're adorable and beloved so conservationists work hard to keep them alive. I saw a tiny infant panda in it's incubator. It was so small that it wasn't even cute yet, just squirmy and pink. The highlight was a bit of a splurge for a once-in-a-lifetime experience: for a donation of 500� (about $75), I was allowed inside one of the panda enclosures! I pet and hugged a giant panda and a worker took lots of pictures of me with it. It was worth the money! I met some Israeli backpackers while on the panda tour, and they invited me to a Sichuan cooking class this afternoon. Tonight I will fly to Lijiang and begin my tour of Yunnan Province. In other great news, I was finally able to secure a train ticket! I'll be in a soft sleeper (the more luxurious option, with a curtain and only 2 berths stacked atop each other instead of the hard sleeper's 3) for the 23-hour journey from Kunming to Guangzhou. What an exciting way to close out my travels within China.

DATELINE: Chengdu, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

Success, and only 4 hours behind schedule. I'm treating myself to a taxi from the airport rather than taking the bus to the city center. Off to Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel, where, as the brochure says, "Rabbits run free and happy.". Sounds like my kinda place.

DATELINE: Chongqing, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader: "But I thought you weren't going to Chongqing!" Apparently my airline had different plans. I'm currently sitting in the Chongqing airport--actually, outside the airport in the plane, which was *supposed* to have landed in Chengdu. I haven't the faintest idea what's going on, because the announcements are no longer bilingual (I guess the crew's English skills were limited to "please put your seat backs and trays in the upright position.") Even the movie they put on is in Chinese (with Chinese subtitles! What a tease!). I'm popping a kloponin and hoping that I'll be able to follow the lead of my fellow passengers, since they are all in the same boat (er, plane). I'm itching to get to Chengdu, to eat some mapo doufu and see pandas. In the meantime though, I'd settle for stretching my legs and eating some KFC in the airport.

DATELINE: Xi'an, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

The heat in this city is crazy, but otherwise I adore it. The nightlife here is especially vibrant, with neon lights everywhere and lots of vendors out, food and otherwise. When I was out during the day today, the heat and humidity were so overwhelming that I was worried I wouldn't be able to eat; fortunately I found a hand-pulled noodle cart that had gathered a crowd. Even though the old lady preparing the noodle dishes made mine with significantly less red chili oil than the bowls the Chinese girls I was sitting with were eating, it was still flavorful and satisfying. I was sweating so much from the heat and humidity that one of the girls gave me a packet of tissues. I really wish I understood some (any) Mandarin, because people here keep trying to talk to me, and I feel bad not understanding. Last night some guys were trying to talk to me and they called over a little girl to help. I couldn't communicate with her that well, but I made her laugh by showing her random phrases from my Mandarin phrasebook ("There is a problem with the toilet." "Is there a fitting room?") This evening, I went to the Tang Dynasty music and dance show. It was a dinner theater, and they served us quite the dumpling feast beforehand - including duck dumplings shaped like little ducks, pork dumplings shaped like little pigs, and walnut dumplings shaped like little walnuts. (Guess which ones were the only dumplings I refused to try?) The show had lavish costumes and scenery, good Chinese music, but most of all it provided a nice break from walking around in the heat to find my own fun. After coming back to the hostel, I decided to venture out again. I walked up to the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, then to the Muslim Quarter night market. While walking around, a ton of taxis, pedicabs, and motorbikes kept stopping to ask if I needed a ride. I decided that taking a motorbike was something I really wanted to do, so I went to one of the taxi stands and found a female driver so I wouldn't get raped (stabbed maybe, but likely not raped). I showed her my hostel on the map and she said she could take me there for 10 yuan (realy cheap!) I had so much fun on the bike, and the cool breeze dried all of the sweat off of my drippy forehead. I should be getting to bed reasonably early tonight because tomorrow I'm going to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. I hear that it's another sweatbox, but it's something I do want to see (besides, I'll likely be just as sweaty if I stay in the city). I hope I meet someone on the tour who wants to explore with me during my last night in the city - I enjoy walking around by myself, but there are some discos I want to check out and drinking alone isn't much fun.

DATELINE: Xi'an, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

It's 11pm here and I'm eating spicy grilled corn on a stick and watching an outdoor karaoke party in front of the Bell Tower. Sounds great, but then again, it's 90 degrees, oppressively humid, and I'm dripping with sweat. Shanghai was sweltering, and Beijing was brutal, but daytime in Xi'an might do me in.

DATELINE: Beijing, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

Here I am at the Beijing airport awaiting my flight to Xi'an. I didn't expect to be flying so much, but apparently train tickets are impossible to book. The sleeper seats sell out a week in advance, and I'm not anywhere a week in advance of anything. None of the long-distance ticketing services have turned out to be reliable. Ah well - still haven't given up hope. I don't know what it is that I find so enticing about long-distance train travel, but I know it's something I'd choose to do if given the opportunity. Trying to make the best (read: most fun) of my traveling circumstances, I searched in vain for a bar in the Beijing airport. Ended up buying a beer from a vending machine. China can be a strange place.

DATELINE: Beijing, China 

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Author: Lauren Cohen

While my experience in Shanghai was mostly about exploring the city at my leisure, in Beijing I've felt like I needed to hit all the big tourist spots. On my first day here (after a long nap since I had "slept" in the airport when my flight from Shanghai got me here after the Metro had stopped running), I went to Tiananmen Square, stopping along the way for some Beijing (Peking) duck. Along with the expected accoutrements of scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce, they served me a dish of melon slivers and sugar. Sweet and savory duck skin dessert pancakes: possibly my new favorite thing. Tiananmen Square awed me, as did the Great Wall the next day. I took my hostel's tour to Mutianyu, a section of the wall that is less crowded than the touristy Badaling. It had a cable car up and a tobaggan ride down (whee!). I did a lot of climbing though! The sky was overcast (or maybe just polluted - I don't think I've seen a blue sky since I've been here), so my landscape pictures didn't come out so beautifully - but given how sweaty and hot I was, I was relieved not to have the sun beating down on me. After sliding down(whee!), I braved the crazy-ass souvenir hawkers. They were relentless: if you spent even a minute looking at their offerings they wouldn't let you leave until you bought something. One of them even followed me to the ATM, then tried to reneg on the price I had bargained to because she saw I had more money. Our tour group at lunch at a tourist restaurant that served the kind of gloppy, corn-starchy food that one gets at bad American-Chinese restaurants. There were a few Chinese people in our tour group, and I noticed they were conspicuously absent from the group luncheon. The food at the Forbidden City today was also downright bad. I guess I shouldn't have expected to find the best food at tourist spots: I would never recommend that anyone go to a museum cafe or theme park for the best American food. Today's lunch left me feeling a little queasy, actually, so for dinner I did the Unthinkable: I went to McDonalds. As I was walking around the neighborhood of my hostel, I first tried to get a skewer of grilled meat - but as soon as I put it near my mouth and smelled five-spice powder, I knew I couldn't stomach it. As much as it pains me to admit it, the Big Mac and fries was exactly what I needed. Tomorrow, though, it's back to adventurous dining. I just have to stay away from those tourist traps.