Flash Back 2

Xian to Kunming

I traveled a lot by train; the average time I spent in one go was about 14 hours overnight sleeping in a bed that was a little to small for my height. This was the last train ride I took in China, and it was also the longest train ride I have ever taken anywhere. From beginning to end it took over 36 hours to complete.

Now you might be asking what someone does for 36 hours of constant motion, and confined spaces. Luckily I spent about half of the trip sleeping, a quarter of my time was spent staring out of the window looking at the ever changing passing country side. The last quarter was spent talking to people on the train, be it fellow travelers or native Chinese practicing English, or me practicing Mandarin.

Flash Back

Welcome the to the first of many "flash backs" I will be presenting for your reading pleasure. The flash back is just going to be a way for me to recount travel experiences that I haven't posted before because I was lazy while traveling and stopped posting about two months in.

The first flashback is going to start where I left off in the blog.

July 4Th 2010:
I had finished visiting the Terra-cotta Warriors with an Israeli named Sid the day before, and really didn't have anything to the on the day of American Independence. So after breakfast Sid and I went out into the Muslim district of Xian to explore and maybe barter down some things that we needed/wanted. On the way back to the hostel we found a supermarket with cheese in it. This was the first time in two months that I had seen cheese for sale in any store. So we bought about 20 dollars worth of cheese, some bread, wine, and beer.

I celebrated 4Th of July eating spreaded cheese on bread with tomatoes, drinking weak beer, and talking to anyone that wanted to listen about the American holiday.

Long Over Due

A new posting has been long over due! Over the last year and a half I have been a lot less traveling and a lot more working in the retail industry. I haven't been spending this time stagnet though, oh no! I have been pushing to show my travel work to a broader audience, as well as working on my fine art photography.

List of accomplishments:

-Land back home after seven months traveling, surprising my parents during the holiday season.
-Getting my old job back at Hunts Photo and Video.
-Reconnecting with old friends that I hadn't seen in months.
-Editing down the photos from Asia.
-Getting my website up and running. http://www.ianhartsoe.com/
-Having my work shown in galleries across the country.
-Getting an Apartment in East Boston
-Helping to start the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts, in Rochester NH. http://www.rochestermfa.org/

The traveling bug has hit me again, and the back pack is going to get the dust brushed off of it soon! I am planning a trip to travel around the Iceland Ring Road sometime in the middle of year. Check back for updates on the planning process and the final itinerary!

Terra-cotta Warriors

Like the Eiffel tower in Paris, and Big Ben in London the Terra-cotta warriors are something that can't be missed whenever you travel to China.


Where they a highlight on the trip? I would say not. To be honest I was actually a little disappointed without the whole experience.


The most exciting thing that I got to see was a pair of handmade marionettes sponsored be Johnson and Johnson



Way creeper in person. The little girl was about five meters tall if memory serves me right.

Xian

Due to some timing issues I ended up staying in this city for five days, which was about two days longer then originally planned, but ended up being just the right amount of time to spend their.


Xian is one of the last cities to have a Ming wall still in tact and standing, so for about five hours one day I spent my time walking around the whole top of it. At a certain point on the wall there where cloth and metal figures placed along the sides for about a kilometer in length.
The rest of my time was spent walking around the Muslim district, and visiting the sights around the city.

Harbin

Located in the northern most part of the country, Harbin was a place of vas differences to the rest of China that I had been to beforehand. It is a relatively new city compared to the rest of China only really beginning to grow and expend in the beginning of the twentieth century. Through the course of it's hundred years it has seen a lot of changes over greater China as well as itself. In the thirties it was taken over by Japan until the end of the WWII. Before that there where huge immigrations of Russian Jews into the city, eventually becoming the largest immigrant population in China. Even though these two events don't hold true today you can still see he heavy influences of both, but mostly from the Russian Jews. A lot of the architecture has a very distinct Russian look about it, with the use of domes on buildings, and stones in the streets.

Dancing on the streets at night

In a lot of the major cities and towns in china they would at certainties during the day have group dancing sessions, and lessons for the, and out in the public. Some a small with only a few people participating in it, but once you get to the major cities you will a lot of time see huge groups sometimes a hundred strong. This group was ballroom dancing, another smaller one a little ways away was learning how to tango.