Me at Emei Shan, Sichuan.

Possibly the best noodle shop in Chengdu.

Snouts for sale at an open market.


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微微拍的照
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Veronica posted a series of photos from her China trip. (I miss you， V.)

奥赢

(Olympic win)
Oil on canvas
60x50 cm
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This is a recently completed painting based on a package of cabbage seeds found in a village outside of Beijing. The title comes from the brand name of the seeds themselves. Although hard to tell looking at a monitor, the painting is far more fleshy and thick than I usually paint, and the size is far larger than previous work. The girl is, self consciously and awkwardly, breaking past her boundary. Anyway, I'm quite happy with it. Thoughts?

The trio by an ancient water urn used to fight fires, Forbidden City.

Veronica amazed at a overstocked market, Sichuan province.

Strange pastry and coffee at our questionable, but pleasant hotel, in Shanghai.

Smart dressed, nervous ladies on a street in Xintiandi, Shanghai.

Dad taking a picture in a Shikumen house museum, Shanghai.

Handsome Ariel in a cafe near the old drum tower, Beijing.

Mountain temple at Emei, Sichuan

North Korean restaurant karaoke madness at the DPRK Embassy. Lots of glaring, brusqueness and static ceremony.

Dad at the Simatai section of the Great Wall.

Smiling through crushing crowds.

Kitty at Grandma's Kitchen, a great lil' restaurant and guesthouse in Beijing.

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旅游啊

I've been busy. Veronica and my father visited me recently, with a few days overlapping. Both were memorable and packed with sightseeing. Let's review:

VERONICA

Vero and I went to Sichuan and ate incredibly good food, lesuirely climbed a sacred Buddhist mountain, breathed in factory pollution in and around Chengdu and I struggled with the thickest accented Mandarin in the country. We saw a very traditional Tibetan neighborhood in Chengdu and had several moments of being stared at in random villages. The most wonderful moment was on Emei shan, a beautiful Buddhist mountain with several ancient temples scattered throughout the area. We spend the night in a haunting nunnery with traditionally dressed incredibly friendly nuns, the strong smell of incense and loud droning bells.

DAD

When my father came and I bid Veronica fairwell, the two of us went to Shanghai. It was a far more upscale trip, so our bathroom had a tub and I wasn't drinking packets of Nescafe out of enamel cups anymore. Lots of incredibly fancy pastry breakfasts, shopping, museums, obsure temples, strolling and long conversations. He bought a lot of antiques from a seller with a charming kind of English, who proclaimed him to be "big customer." Generous dad even bought me nice new clothes. Shanghai is a great city to wander, and we saw lots of decaying old art deco buildings, some seemingly abandoned and ghostly. Pretty.

And so, goodbye Veronica
-or-

*再见微微*

<3

知春里小学二年级

Last day at Zhichunli primary school with my third graders.
(I remember how happy I felt to start summer vacation when I was their age.)

污染天气
AIR POLLUTION

Thursday the 18th in Zhongguancun, a suburb of Beijing. There are dozens of skyscrapers in the distance, totally concealed in smog. One of the worst pollution days since winter.

Same day at dusk near the city center. It rained lightly; a strange, chemical smelling rain.

My first horse ride.

Drying sheets.

Ariel. Behind him are these wonderfully fake concrete yurts and Han women in Mongolian outfits.

A camel owned by the resort.

Sunset.

Prairie girls.

Redundancy.

Chao in the yurt dining hall.

Happy Ariel at 乌兰花, or "Black orchid" town, which was our transfer point to reach the grasslands.

Chao and I in a moto-rickshaw in Hohhot.

Hohhot at night. Note the Muslim style domed buildings.

Mongolian restaurant by Hohhot University.

Our guide with an "aobao," or prayer mound, in the grasslands.

Wild mushroom our guide found.

Chao in front of a Mongolian white stupa. Both Tibetan and Mongolian cultures share this kind of structure.
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内蒙古
Inner Mongolia

Ariel, Chao and I went to Inner Mongolia last weekend to see the grasslands, an endless stretch of rough green and shockingly blue skies. It was one of the most beautiful places I've seen. There is basically nothing at all for miles; no trees, no mountains, no water, just endless varieties of grass and more bizarre insects than I've seen anywhere. Giant crickets that look like hummingbirds when they fly, smooth marble slabs buried under dry earth, rabbit and snake holes. Most startling of all, for a city boy like myself, is the silence, which is almost strangely loud it's so quiet, and the dramatic temperature drop and strong winds at night.

We rode horses, ate a lot of lamb, and met a few Mongolians. One guide spoke excellent Mandarin, but was impatient to teach us a few Mongolian words. The language has very strong constant sounds and seems painful to speak, like the sounds are scraping your vocal cords. We passed by a village like one I'd never seen, made entirely out of rammed earth with beautiful, completely foreign boxy, colorful temples.

Hohhot was a surprisingly unique city. Mid-sized cities in modern China are mostly fashioned completely alike; the train station and long distance bus station are close to one another with most hotels around them, major streets are very wide with tremendous street lamps, skyscrapers are everywhere, giant monolithic Communist structures, the old part of the city is being flattened, etc. However, Hohhot had very Hui minority style structures with minarets and onion domes, all street names in Mongolian script, huge metal sculptures of horseback Mongolian warriors; all somewhat tacky, but at least it had a personality.

I believe average Chinese people view Mongolians in this dramatic, Plains Indian kind of way and enjoy putting on cowboy hats and heading to the grasslands to ride horses and drink sheep's yogurt. It's a lot like Americans' "wild west" fascination; an interest in this noble savage that has been conquered and can be safely approached. The comparison is obvious in city and place names, which are nearly all translated directly from Mongolian script into Mandarin characters, a rare thing in Chinese. Compare that to Mississippi, North Dakota, Miami and countless other American places that are named after tribes or use native languages for naming.