Random Photos of Asia

Jonathan getting his ass handed to him in Street Fighter III: Third Strike in Kyoto


My father, my brother, and I walking through the French Concession in Shanghai


Waiting for the bus to leave the government-mandated tourist trap in Guilin


Mountain biking through Yangshuo. I'm wearing the hat backwards because my neck is getting sunburned. Be quiet.


Don't even ask me to identify which shrine this is in Japan. Wallace climbing up stairs.


Bamboo rafting in Yangshuo.


Brian being emo in Japan.


Dinner at a nightclub/karaoke bar in Yangshuo.

Leaving China

Myself at the top of Moon Hill, after a legendary climb. The view is even better in person.

For all my planning efforts, I could never have planned a trip this fantastic; it was filled with wonder and drama and epiphany. And best of all, I got to hang out with one brother, two parents, three former coworkers, a grad school classmate, an old flame, and an alma mater. That is clearly a record.

I can't wait to do this all over again in - ohmigod - LESS THAN FOUR MONTHS!?

Big thanks to my parents, who made the trip so much easier (and cheaper); between the free housing and meals, my stay in China was a much more pleasant one.

Now I return to meet whatever is waiting for me back in Los Angeles. I'm going to put back all the weight I lost, catch up with all my favorite yoga classmates, eat some barbeque on the beach, and most importantly...

Get back to work.

Actually, I've been told that work is SECOND most important right now.

It's an exciting time.

Last Shanghai Tidbits

A glimpse of my last few days:

• Eating roast duck and pineapple curry on the patio at Simply Thai in Hongqiao. Again. And again. And again. It's that good.


• Taking an hour and a half to have my hair cut, ears cleaned, upper body (including fingers!) massaged. All for the princely sum of $5.


• Getting thrown out of the knockoff mall storefronts for being too aggressive in my haggling. Sometimes the vendors are ACTING like they're really upset about your offer, and sometimes they ARE really upset. Telling the difference is something I'm still working on. Then again, it's probably not a good idea to skimp on luggage. Oh well. This is GREAT practice for Pillow Crisis negotiations.


• Reading books, watching movies, writing.


• Chores.

More Notes on Shanghai

It was raining in this city before Stefanie arrived, and while she was here, we had the most beautiful weather. Now she's gone and the rain is back. Sux.

Here's a brief roundup of my time with Stefanie (read more about her visit here) and her BFF Ting (who is very funny in a vulgar, lack of self-censoring sort of way and speaks Mandarin with a charmingly bizarre accent):

1) Do not even look askance at the zebras at the Shanghai Zoo. A few reasons why this is a bad idea: 1) the Shanghai Zoo has decided to install only the most minimal barriers between the animals, which results in animals being in much closer proximity than one is used to. 2) The zebras at the Shanghai Zoo are NOT. MESSING. AROUND. Ting was just casually talking to one of them, when he approached curiously, and then BUM RUSHED her, only to stop short of the fence and say, "Psych!" "Dude!" I exclaimed to Ting. "Your ass just got CHARGED BY A ZEBRA!"

1a) Another note: the lions at the zoo are quite the show. In the space of five minutes, we got to see: pissing, stretching, roaring, and (so adorable!) cuddling. And as always, red panda > black panda.

2) According to some of Stefanie's buddies from USC who spend a lot of time in nightclubs in Asia, Chinese girls will only hold hands for the first fifty dates, but Japanese girls will give up the anal on day one. Note to Japanese women: call me. Just kidding - before I start getting the hate mail, let me just say that the very amusing individuals in question are not exactly what I would call players, in the strictest (or even loosest) sense of the term, so your mileage may vary. A LOT.

3) Speaking of USC, Stefanie managed to actually drag me to - the horror! - a USC alumni event. "I am not a Trojan!" I said. "Stop saying that!" said Stefanie. To be fair, the event was staged at a nice restaurant, with plenty of decent food on hand; not to mention that my former graduate school gets style points for even holding events in Shanghai. But no matter how good an alumni association USC has, there's simply no compensating for the fact that the University of Texas at Austin has a better football team, and that Matt Leinart is a complete tool. And I can write that because Stefanie is in Xian now and she can't smack me! Yay! (PS. UCLA is really the better school, by the way. I couldn't get in there, so I had to settle.)

4) If you want to get someone pregnant in Shanghai, a good place to start is New Heights on the Bund. It's a stylish rooftop bar/restauarant located on the top floor of an elegant 1920's building on the Huangpu River. There's a gorgeous view of the river and the Shanghai skyline, and you get a nice breeze up there. The food is very decent. The best thing about the place are the elevators, which are shrouded in darkness, with only a slight hint of accent lighting. You can barely see the face of the person across from you, and the elevator is intimate in size to begin with. It is dark, mysterious, and as sexy as elevators can be, which is usually not very.

5) Stefanie had her hair Japanese straightened in Shanghai for the absurdly low price of about $30. And yes, it looks quite lovely. The usual price in the states is in the hundreds, and Stefanie also received treatment from two stylists at the same time. The procedure took a few hours, and Stefanie had to sit very still for all of it, which pretty much guarantees that I will never, ever have my hair Japanese straightened. Oh wait - I'm Asian. I've got Japanese straightened hair FO' LYFE. I get this for free, ninja.

What A Depressing Song :(

Man, that Beck song at the end of the Stefanie post is a serious bummer. We need something to exorcise it from the room RIGHT NOW. Something a little more emblematic of the present moment. Something like:

Download: Get Ready - Ella Fitzgerald (MP3)

That ought to do it. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

The Train To San Diego

Stefanie at the top of the Empire State Building, 2006


So my friend Stefanie is in Shanghai. This is kind of a big deal.

But not for the reasons you might assume when a girl you used to be absolutely crazy about makes the most random and unlikely reappearance in your life, and you suddenly find her walking around your apartment in a towel. No - this is not a story about the rekindling of an extinguished flame.

It's about reckoning with the past.

I don't mean to elevate the story of Stefanie to the level of myth. After all, the story of the girl who broke Stefanie's spell over me is just as significant in my life, if not more so. (That the girl broke Stefanie's spell - and the ease with which she broke it - and that it remains broken - suggest a magic more powerful than Stefanie's.)

But I am writing about Stefanie here. Mainly because she has two things going for her. 1) She and I share a near-legendary anecdote in which I kidnapped her, threw her on a train, and took her to San Diego. 2) She refuses to go away. And believe me, I've tried to get rid of her.

But it's simply not happening. It was six(!) years ago that I kidnapped her. Four years ago that she decided to let me back into her life after that stunt. In total, we've known each other for seven years, a duration that astounds both of us. Our lives have diverged wildly in that time - and here she is knocking on my door, in a city seven thousand air miles from home.

I told Stefanie that receiving a visit from her in Shanghai, of all places, is not unlike receiving a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. I kept a wary eye on her, wondering if she'd tell or show me something I didn't know. Something I missed. Something that might reveal an inner purpose to her visit.

There was a point in which she settled down into my couch, and talked with me for a couple hours when she was supposed to be sleeping. Stefanie's extreme sleep-deprivation lowered her guard just a touch, and we began to have a conversation. And even as we eased into that talk, I knew that this was the moment I had been waiting for.

Stefanie and I tend to cover a lot of ground when we talk, mainly concerning the fine contrast in our ultimately similar approaches to life and everything. And it was a good conversation - one that makes me happy, because it confirms that I was not an idiot for liking this girl, and any confirmation of my lack of historical idiocy is always a plus. But it wasn't so much the content of our conversation, but rather the subtext.

The subtext was: whom are we kidding, we're only going to be friends, and we know it. And this is not the newest realization for either of us, but it was the first time we could sit down with the idea and be fairly comfortable with it. To be near it and not feel its emotional charge, to see it without the fog of the past.

That's not to say there aren't still lingering questions that will never be answered, or old feelings which miraculously and briefly resuscitate themselves for a flash, or regrets over missed opportunities. To this day, I still do not know what happened in Stefanie's head and heart in the scant two weeks between her kidnapping and her decision to eject me from her life. And I also don't have an answer for the question, "What if we had...?" And I might never. But those are questions asked when one is about to get back on the horse and ride after that girl again. And at this point, the only thing I wanted to sit on was the easy chair in my living room. So I didn't ask.

As we talked, I realized that this conversation would most likely be the very last time we would ever speak seriously about the past. We would never go there again, would never revisit that old place. After all, how much more could we say about events that were receding and shrinking into the past so quickly? This was it.

So I told Stefanie something Judy had said about her long ago, something to the effect of: "What this girl wants to do is put you on a pedestal and then run away from that pedestal as fast as she can." And I don't know if Stefanie agreed with that or not - there was a significant silence in the air at that moment. All I can do is note that Stefanie is ever so quick to intensely verbalize her disagreement, and her silence is always telling. She says so much more with quiet than she could possibly know.

I had expected Stefanie to tell me or show me something, but in the end, it was the silence I had been waiting for. And it was a necessary silence; on some level, both of us had travelled around the globe to have this talk, to share that silence, and finally - to get on with the rest of it. On some level, my life had paused for this moment, and now, having seen it, could resume at full velocity.

Pausing was sad, but speeding away is thrilling. I know that Stefanie and I will never again set foot in Union Station together, will never again sit side by side on the Pacific Surfliner, will never again visit San Diego in each other's company. But I am on a new train, sleek and fast, charging towards a new destination at a mile a minute.

As is Stefanie.

Download: Judy On Stefanie's Signficance (2004) MP3

Download: Ship In A Bottle - Beck (from the Japanese release of Sea Change) MP3

On Travel

There is a seductive falsehood advanced by Hollywood that an entire life is decided in a single moment. A moment in which a stand is made, a course of action decided, all things thrown to the fates. This is the moment everyone in the audience is waiting for, because it's precisely the moment we all wish we had the courage to manifest in our own lives. It's a moment in which a movie character feels - if only briefly - free.

But a movie is at best a rough compression of a life's story, and earning a sense of freedom outside of a movie theater is difficult at best. You might very well enact a dramatic moment of your own - quitting your job, kissing that girl. You might then experience a brief moment of creative and revelatory power in which you feel the boundaries of your existence slightly redrawn. But then what?

You get bored, and you call upon yourself to do it all over again. And repeating yourself is too easy, so you have to do something more new, more difficult.

What I'm saying is that quitting your job is not enough. It's, as I've learned, only the first step of a very long job. Geoff Dyer writes in Out of Sheer Rage: "To be free is not the result of a moment's decisive action but a project to be constantly renewed."

The most important thing I've learned from this trip is that the process of confrontation can never end. By confrontation I mean directly facing that which scares you, that which discomforts you, that which you do not know. In a sense, I must summon the same nerve required to quit a day job, and deploy it again and again and again.

There were so many times on this trip when I was one word away from missing some of the most intensely new experiences of my life. That word would be one of the most common: no. I could have turned away from the peak at Moon Hill. I could have declared it too hot to go biking in Yangshuo. I could have shunned the inherent cheesiness of a bamboo raft ride down the Li River.

The simplest example I can give of a necessary confrontation is my willingness to make a complete fool of myself in a foreign culture, by slaughtering the local language and customs. How simple it is to buy a pair of shorts in Los Angeles. To buy them in Yangshuo, however, requires one to question every assumption one has about nature of transactions and one's relationship to them. I have to get a receipt stamped somewhere else, and I leave the shorts here, and huh?

This is a confrontation one can easily avoid: just buy all shorts in Los Angeles. But there is something valuable I discovered about buying shorts in Yangshuo, something I find valuable in all my traveling experiences: the recovery of senses and faculties that are all too rarely called into action. Foremost among them: a willingness to get lost, to screw up, to stumble into something new and unknown. But also: the ability to constantly head into confrontation, and feel stronger for it.

For me, travel is ultimately a series of small adventures that beckons, awaiting your answer to its repeated call. I have invoked Hayao Miyzaki repeatedly on this trip, and it's because his films proclaim a simple truth that bears repeating: we are all children wandering into the woods, hoping to find something new.

China: Chilling In Full Effect

For the past couple of days, we've been chilling around Hongqiao, the expat section of Shanghai, and we might as well be back on Larchmont. We're running into American high school kids everywhere, eating in yuppie Thai places, and catching up on Entourage by means of completely legitimate DVDs we purchased at full price from the local video store. Yesterday, we hit the local Japanese gaming lounge and rented an hour in a room with leather-cushioned walls, enjoying some four-player Wii.

The era of daily posts has come to an end, as the moving around and doing exciting stuff all the time portion of this trip has clearly concluded. That being said, I'm still in China for about two more weeks. Here's what to expect:

1) A thoughtful post or two about any semblance of meaning I've gleaned from this trip. Also some nice photos I missed the first time around.

2) My family members and friends depart in a few days. Wallace and Brian are currently visiting West Lake / Hangzhou, so we'll see what they have to report when they return to Shanghai.

3) Then a brief visit from a Very Special Guest Star (who was way down on my list of people most likely to come to Shanghai, and yet here she is). I don't know how much time I will actually spend with her, given her, uh, ambitious expectations regarding how many things and people she can see in four days, but we'll see. We may both have our hair did simultaneously at the same salon, so stay tuned.

4) Work resumes on Lobsters vs. Butterflies. I have my laptop, I have my notes. I'd better have at least two action sequences blocked out by the time I go home to LA. And then I finish this thing by the time I run out of money.

5) Hardcore cocooning: Heroes season 1, a season or two of Naruto, and six books: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami, The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, North by Frederick Busch, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel, and Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer.

6) Lots of meditation and contemplation regarding various aspects of my existence. Some of the things Judy said a month ago to me weigh heavily on my mind, and let me tell you, I am going to be watching the next six months of my life with great interest.

China Day 9: Billionaires, Bamboo Rafts, Banana Pancakes

Our original plan was to go mountain biking again, but our plans were stalled by the first real rainfall of the trip.

Since any given activity in Yangshuo is weather-dependent, we were grounded. I spent some time in a cafe, reading Geoff Dyer's Out Of Sheer Rage while one of the restaurant workers dozed at a nearby table. Later, the others joined me at the restaurant and I had a one dollar grilled cheese sandwich, and Wallace had banana pancakes. (More about the pancakes in a bit.)

Finally, the weather cleared up, and we hired some bikes and a guide to take us bamboo rafting down the Li River; she took us down an easy bike ride, and deposited us at the wharf for the bamboo rafts. The boatmen threw our bikes on the back of the rafts, and we were off. The boatmen navigated by pushing long rods into the water - the Li is shallow and clear, and you can often see the bottom from the raft.

A short raft ride down the Li River lasts about an hour, and is extremely pleasant experience, assuming the weather is nice. We saw the scenery that China is legendary for: limestone rock formations shrouded by wisps of fog. Meanwhile, the raft hit some occasional rapids, and we would have to raise our legs to avoid getting our feet wet.

The amazing thing about the relatively underwhelming rapids of the Li River is that stationed at every fall is a photography raft, outfitted with a working PC and photo printer. That's right - we saw Dell workstations floating on the Li River. And we could even hear the Windows alert noise as we floated downstream. Wallace asked his boatman how they managed to get electricity on the river, and the answer was simple but unsettling: very long extension cables run from the nearby villages into the river.

After the boats dropped us off, our guide met us and led us to the site of the 1000 year old Banyan tree. There was some internal debate about whether paying $2 US to see a tree was actually worth it, but we were there, so why not. Unfortunately, all four of us got lost looking for the tree, which caused our guide to loudly question our intelligence in Mandarin.

The Banyan tree, you see, is quite big. It has a tremendously large canopy, shielding its enormous limb structure from the elements. Stepping inside its leaves is like stepping inside a cave. Legend has it that if you visit the Banyan tree once in your life, you will become precisely 20,000 times wealthier. Also, if you walk once around it, you will live to be 99 years old. Our longevity and financial security is now assured.

In the evening, we had dinner at an obnoxious nightclub/cafe, trying to eat while a group of Chinese tourists sang karaoke to histrionic Chinese love songs. Brian and I felt like having banana pancakes, but we wanted them with ice cream. So we went back to the site of Wallace's pancakes, and had Wallace instruct the waitresses to make the pancakes and top them with ice cream. This simple request BLEW THE WAITRESSES' MINDS. "Have you ever had this before?" they wanted to know. "Banana pancakes with ice cream! This is crazy!" they exclaimed. But they dutifully went into the kitchen, and returned with two banana pancakes: crepe-like desserts made with thin banana slices. And topped with vanilla and strawberry ice cream. The ice cream was a perfect complement to the pancake, and we congratulated ourselves on our culinary genius.

China Day 8: Rock Climbing At Moon Hill

Someone out there really, really wanted me to climb this mountain. I nearly gave up a few times. But I received much unexpected assistance from a host of unlikely helpers. And I made it. Insert meaningful life lesson here.

After yesterday's incredible mountain biking adventure, all of us thought we were putting the bikes on hiatus. "No way we're going back out there the next day," we said. "Nope." This lasted until about three in the afternoon the next day, when we said, "Maybe we'll just go out for a little spin..."

We biked to Moon Hill, about three and a half miles from Yangshuo. When we got there, we were greeted by a retinue of elderly Chinese women farmers carrying cold drinks on their backs. We paid the admission fee and entered the site, thinking that the old women would stay at the gate.

They didn't.

Instead, they started the CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN WITH US. At first, we started joking. "We have an entourage!" "My posse rolls deep!" We kept climbing, thinking to ourselves that there was no way that these elderly Chinese women could possibly keep up with us.

Cut to twenty minutes later, when we were perched on a stoop about two-thirds of the way up. The women were fanning us. I felt like turning back, there was nothing but an endless series of steps, with no visible end in sight. The old women noticed my reluctance, and shouted at me:

"You can do it!" "Ten more minutes to top!"

Ten minutes? Sounded reasonable. We kept climbing. The elderly women took shortcuts and surprised us, emerging from hidden paths: "Ha ha! Hello!" They kept shouting at us: "Three more minutes to top!"

We reached the bottom of the donut hole. I sat on a bench and rested, glad to have finally made it to the top. Wallace engaged the old women in conversation. It turned out that the women were local farmers, and they took shifts climbing Moon Hill once a week, selling beverages to the tourists.

"So they're like vultures," I said. "Waiting for us to drop."

"More like St. Bernards," Wallace said. "Bringing refreshment as we climb the Alps."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I just realized that these women climb this mountain multiple times a day."

"Yeah," said Wallace. A brief silence. We both confronted our own weaksauce.

The women told Wallace that their rice fields were visible below, several hundred feet below us. I told them that their fields were pretty in Chinese, as "pretty" is one of the few words I remember in Mandarin. They laughed.

Then they told Wallace that we weren't done climbing yet.

"They say you can reach the top of the donut on a ten minute path," said Wallace.

"Ten minutes," the women repeated.

So we got up and started climbing again. This time, the women stayed behind. A very inauspicious omen.

I led the way. We were literally rock climbing, negotiating overgrown paths and sharp rocks. The buzzing of angry insects was in my ears. I heard things rustling in the foliage. Then I hit an incline that was pure ascent: rocks piled on top of rocks, straight up.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," I said.

"Me too," said Jonathan.

"We came all the way out here," said Wallace. "Might as well."

We kept climbing. We ran into an Australian lady. Australians are everywhere in China - they can't get enough of the place.

"How much further?" asked Jonathan.

"Not too much," said the lady. "You're fine," she added soothingly.

Finally, we poked our heads up through the foliage, and saw an endless landscape of karst limestone formations, rice paddies, and rivers. We stayed up there a bit, took some pictures, and then came back down, where the old ladies met us.

Then they tried to sell us Cokes at ten times their market value. We bought them. And then we all climbed back down together.

And took the picture you see below.

China Day 7: Mountain Biking in Yangshuo

When you take a trip, you're always hoping for at least one transcendant moment - that instance in which you realize why you had to go on the journey to begin with.

Today was that moment.

It started innocently enough. We walked over to the local mountain bike rental place to inquire about rates and routes through the local countryside. At first, the idea was that we'd just take the bikes for a spin, get acquainted to biking. Somehow we ended up on a five hour, fourteen mile bike ride through some of the most stunning landscapes I've ever seen.

That's my friend Brian walking his bike because the rest of us were stupid enough to cross that bridge on our bikes. He asked me, "Is this bike ride Hayao Miyazaki enough for you?" If you know who that is, then you know what he's talking about.

Anyway, we rolled through rice paddies, small villages, rocky paths. Past water buffalo, startling flocks of ducks (they'd waddle away and honk at us), trailed by tiny Chinese children yelling at the top of their lungs, "Hello! Hello! Hello!" (they'd run away and laugh every time we pulled out our cameras). Meanwhile, elderly Chinese people smoking cigarettes cycled laps around us, as we struggled to complete the trail along the Dragon river.

We kept crossing paths with one particular gentlemen, who would offer helpful directions, and then bike away, only to cross our paths at another critical junction. He eventually just led us to the bridge over the Dragon river, and finally, showing his hand, attempted to sell us a bamboo raft trip down the river.

I often had to focus on the rocks in my path in order to prevent a fall, but every time I looked up, I saw something stunningly beautiful. Quite possibly the favorite bike ride of my life.

Eggs, Bacon, Toast, Hash Browns, and OJ

Three dollars and change. For real. And the OJ is fresh squeezed.

China Day 6: Cruising Down the Li River

We took a four hour cruise down the Li River, down to Yangshuo. The boat served food cooked on the rear balcony of the boat, and I didn't risk eating it. The landscape on the river itself was beautiful, but it was so hot that you could only spend a few moments on the observation deck before retreating back into the cabin.

The first thing you notice about Yangshuo is how friendly the town is. The touts smile even when you reject them, and the entirety of the city seems to cater to the whims of foreign tourists. There are many Western restaurants, and plenty of nightclubs. It reminds me of Prague in a way: small, touristy, but very charming.

The second thing you notice about Yangshuo is how many backpackers all over the place. There's something that draws them here, and I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

China Day 5: How To Eat Live Animals

Tonight, we found ourselves on the restaurant row on Nanhuan Lu in Guilin, trying to locate a restaurant recommended by Frommer's. On the way there, we overheard a piercing squawk, and turned to see a local restauranteer beheading a chicken on the street, allowing the blood to run down the sidewalk. Wallace took a picture, and then wished he hadn't.

We couldn't locate the restaurant by name, so we entered a place that was our best guess.

"At least this place doesn't have any cages outside," I said.

"Yeah it does," said Wallace. "It even has those small furry things."

"Small furry things," I said. "Mmmm."

The small furry things slept in their cages, unperturbed. We sat down and ordered the local specialty - beer fish; the fish isn't fried in beer batter, but merely cooked with beer. After the waitress left the table, Wallace got up and announced that it was time to pick our fish.

We went outside with the waitress, who gestured at a particular fish. She pulled it out of a tank with a net and plopped it down onto the sidewalk for our inspection.

"How about NOT putting our food on the ground?" I asked, but she was oblivious to my concerns. She and Wallace entered into a involved discussion (in Mandarin) regarding the fish.

"The fish was swimming upside down," said Wallace to me as an aside. "I'm not down with that."

"I'm not down with putting our meal on the concrete," I said.

The waitress tried to upsell Wallace on a monster fish, but Wallace refused. Too much food. He pointed at a catfish, but apparently you can't make beer fish with a catfish, so we were at an impasse.

Then some guy, who may or may not have been affiliated with the eatery, walked up to the restaurant with two fish in a net, and dumped them in the tank. One of them successfully manages to swim upright. Wallace and I gave the waitress the thumbs up. She pulled it out of the the tank.

"Make sure she doesn't let it touch the ground..." I said.

As if she had heard me, the waitress kept the fish well above the sidewalk. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, without warning, the waitress raised the fish above her head, and VIOLENTLY SMACKED IT AGAINST THE GROUND. The fish was completely motionless.

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE.

Wallace told me that the waitress needed to stun the fish so they could weigh it. The fisherman came over with a scale - a simple rod with a weight hanging from it; he picked up the fish and announced the weight.

We went back inside the restaurant, they cooked the fish, we ate it.

And it was very, very good.

Other highlights of the day: Jon and I visited a dim sum cafeteria with a simple ordering system. Point at the dish you want, and then make a gesture indicating how many you want.

Several walks along the pretty path that runs along the length of the lakes in Guilin, both during the day and night. The Chinese care so much about landscaping that it's almost obsessive. Hey China, how about taking some of that love for landscape, and transferring it to say, architecture?

Walking near the rear entrance of a restaurant, and watching the manager lead thirty employees in calisthenics. Calisthenics in this case being dancing really badly to awful Chinese techno music.

Buying shorts and sneakers (it's too hot for jeans) at a Chinese department store, and generally embarrassing the employees with my complete failure to understand how a transaction is completed in China. By the way, I bought two pairs of shorts and a pair of sneakers for less than $30. And no, I will not wear them in the states.

The Importance of Hand Gestures

We have one person who speaks a little Japanese on this trip, another who speaks Mandarin relatively well, and two who speak neither. Despite this, I occasionally find that my hand gestures manage to trump the language skills of the others.

When we were looking for The Lockup in Shibuya, nobody could manage to communicate to a friendly police officer exactly what we were looking for, until I put my wrists together to indicate being handcuffed.

"Oh!" said the officer, "Lockup!" And then he gave us the directions. This was an especially risky maneuver on my part, as the handcuff gesture is generally not one you want to make with a policeman.

Today I was ordering some fries from McDonald's (I was still hungry after dinner, and have found that American fast food places serve as my late night snack source in Asia.). And in order to communicate "to go", I feigned leaving the room like a cartoon character. The server laughed at me, but I got my food in a bag.

China Day 4: Guilin, Caves, Drunk Panda

1) Guilin is extremely pretty. Lot of Crouching Tiger-type scenery on hand here. Oddly-shaped limestone mountains popping up in unexpected locations.

2) Seven Star Park has exquisite landscaping and a large collection of caves. Walked through Seven Star Cave, expecting to walk through a short, narrow tunnel. Um, no. The cave is a series of increasingly enormous chambers, with anthropomorphic stalagtites and stalagmites everywhere. The Chinese have insisted on lighting the caves like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which only adds to the creepy atmosphere.

3) While wandering around Seven Star Park, we came across a residential area(!) and a woman washing her puppy in a bucket with a hose. Considering that the temperature was a humid ninety degrees, the dog looked perfectly happy.

4) Afterwards, we found the zoo, which was depressing. Lots of prison-cell cages and poorly maintained facilities. The lone panda was kept in holding cell, as if he had been arrested for DUI and had been thrown in the slammer to sleep it off. The red pandas were perhaps the only animals in the place that looked content; happy to be eating bamboo and drinking milk.

5) Speaking of animals in cages, you often find them outside the restaurants on Nanhuan Lu. Someone asked the purpose of this unusual form of decoration, and I informed them, "It's so you can pick the animal you want the restaurant to kill and prepare." Most of the creatures were seafood, but one restaurant had cages filled with some sort of rabbit/guinea pig combination that to my eye, did not look particularly tasty.

6) We ended up eating at a Sichuan restrauant named Yiyuan Fandian on Nanhuan. Sichuan cuisine is known for being spicy, but I was still floored by the sight of a gigantic bowl of chili pepppers (with bits of chicken buried deep beneath) arriving at our table. Then came the shuizhu niurou (tender beef slices and vegetables in a chili sauce), and the dandan mian (noodles in spicy peanut sauce) - neither was more merciful. Thank goodness for the tangcu cuipi yu (crispy sweet-and-sour fish), which had a delicate texture and perfectly balanced sweetness.

Notes On Shanghai

1) It is so damn hot and humid here. Today's saving grace was the arrival of fog, but still.

2) A young lady in my yoga class told me that buh-yow, which means "I don't want that" is the most important phrase in the Chinese language for an American tourist. Having used it frequently as a child in regards to Chinese food, I told her I was more than familiar with it. She turned out to be right - nothing deflects a tout like that phrase.

3) Driving a taxi in Shanghai seems to be an exercise in Zen. Every driver I've ridden with is extremely aggressive, but seems to take absolutely no offense at the aggressions of other drivers. They simply adjust course accordingly, and move on.

4) Speaking of traffic, the cars have right of way over pedestrians. And there are often no crosswalk signals, the lack of which results in the most terrifying street-crossing experiences of my life. As Brian says, "Get in where you fit in."

5) The city is an exercise in urban planning maximalism. The rule is: build as many skyscrapers as possible, as quickly as possible. The landscape is more reminiscent of Blade Runner than any other city I've visited, which brings me to my next point.

6) There is some strange Chinese preoccupation with colored lighting. There may be some municipal law which states that every building must be clad in animated neon. Some of the gargantuan skyscrapers on the skyline actually function as monitors, displaying pictures of puppies and kittens for no discernible reason.

7) The food is incredibly cheap. The bill for excellent dim sum with my parents at a really nice restaurant came to about $25. For SIX people.

8) Cheap cabs are very convenient. I feel like a rich New Yorker.

China Day 1 & 2: Shanghai

We've been spending some time with parents in Shanghai.. The theme of my dad's place is fake Greek pantheon, with classical statuary amid well-tended gardens. We've had a lot of excellent food, courtesy of my parents, and have been enjoying the amenities of my father's apartment.

We've already stopped at one knockoff mall, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more in our future.

There's something semi-romantic about Shanghai; walking through certain parts, if you squint, the city vaguely resembles an old European capital. But Paris doesn't have skyscrapers on the skyline that flash pictures of kittens.

We started today walking through the shopping areas of Shanghai, and ended up in the Bund, the old European section of the city. The architecture is beautiful in the context of obscenely rich people from the twenties with bad taste. That being said, stepping into one of the old buildings gives you a sense of Shanghai during the twenties.

We strolled down the promenade along the Huangpu river, which offered more great views of the city, to the Bund Sightseeing tunnel, which is notable in the sense that it is COMPLETELY INSANE. You get into a slow moving tram, and are transported through a tunnel in which you are blasted with flashing neon and strobe lights, while a soothing Chinese female voice says things like, "Welcome to hell. Welcome to magma."

The Pudong area of town is notable in that it didn't exist ten years ago. Now it's skyscraper central for the town, and is home to what may or may not be the tallest skyscraper in the world, depending on whether you count antennas as part of a building's height. We visited the aquarium in Pudong, where we wandered through glass tunnels looking at sawfish, sharks, and seals; I also happened to meet my old friends from South America, the Magellan penguins.

We hit the elegant piano bar on the 53rd floor of the Grand Hyatt at the Jin Mao tower, which is a great view of the city, and an infinitely superior way to view the skyline versus the Pearl TV tower. We had drinks and honey-coated walnuts seasoned with sesame.

Then it was off to find the best xiaolong bao in the city. We walked back through the Bund, and found what might very well be the filthiest restaurant I've ever visited in my life. (And once I found a dead mouse under the tablecloth at a restaurant in Prague.) Some nervous discussion about food poisoning ensued, as well as some speculation regarding the rating the Los Angeles Health Inspector would give the place. But then the food arrived. Xiaolong Bao are dumplings stuffed with pork, and a health amount of broth. And they were quite good - sweeter than I've usually had, which may be the Shanghai style. I had some difficulty with the chopsticks,though; the trick to eating the dumplings is to nibble a little bit off the top, then suck the broth out, then stuff the whole thing in your mouth - all without breaking the dumpling. They were quite good, but we'll see if my stomach agrees with me.

Japan Day 7: Tsukiji Fish Market

Woke up early to go to the Tsukiji fish market.

The one thing I will remember about the tuna is how sleek and glossy their bodies are, like a clear coat finish on a brand new car sitting in the showroom.

As for the market itself, The place is remarkable for several reasons: 1) They actually allow visitors to enter the market and interfere with the hardworking and tolerant fishmongers's work. 2) There is heavy machinery rolling all over the place, and death and injury are an omnipresent threat. 3) Everywhere you look, something interesting is happening.

As I said to Wallace, it's great for taking pictures - all you have to do is keep pressing the shutter button, and a great photo will take itself.

Afterwards, we stepped outside the market and into a nearby sushi place, which presumably had its fish delivered straight from the market next door. We had sushi for breakfast, and the tuna was a delight.

Then we caught an All Nippon Airways flight to Shanghai, which was memorable solely as a reminder of how incredibly lackluster American airlines can be. Not only were we served a meal on this flight, but we were offered movies on demand, complete with dvd controls, as well as video games.

Japan Day 6: Philosopher's Walk & Back to Tokyo

Ok, this one has to be very short because I have to wake up in four hours to see the auction at the Tsukiji fish market.

The short story is that Jonathan and I split off from the others (who were headed to see the Giant Buddha at Nara) in order to walk the Philsopher's Walk in Kyoto, a pleasant stroll along an old canal.

From there we continued walking into the shopping district, had some more Pastel pudding (strawberry this time), and had lunch at an izakaya place. The funny thing is that the proprietor was convinced Jon and I were Japanese, and spoke at us for a full minute or so, until she noticed how unresponsive we were, and then promptly brought out the English menus. This was so amusing to our tablemates at the bar, that they whipped out their phones and snapped pictures of us.

From there we headed back to the hostel, wrote some postcards out, and then headed back out to Tokyo. We were pretty tired at this point, but of course we couldn't stop moving. We headed back out to Shinjuku to do some shopping, visited the observation deck at the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which boasts a full panoramic view of the city, and then had some dinner.

Now I'm going to take a nap, see some dead fish, and then have some incredible sushi for breakfast.