China

Well, I'm in China now. My boat pulled into Shanghai yesterday after a two day journey. Yes, that's right, I said boat. It was a lot better than you think, especially when you travel with the former ambassador from Japan to China. Anyway, I've eaten tremendous amounts of gourmet Chinese food and had to witness welcoming ceremonies where ever we go. Yea, life is hard...

We're here to follow in the footsteps of a Japanese monk who came to China exactly 1200 years ago, so we've got the ambassador, his wife (my Chinese history teacher, hence why I'm here), the Canadian ambassador to Japan, a bunch of rich businessmen, a bunch of friends of everyone, and a bunch of nerds who love this Japanese monk guy. Today we picked up even more people, including about 10 Chinese Buddhist monks and a bunch of students from a local university.

Oh, I should mention where I am in China. I arrived in Shanghai, but spent little time there. I'm now in Yangzhou (yup, you never heard of it, but it's huge). It's north of Shanghai. China so far is pretty awesome. Full of amazing history and an amazing culture. And it development is incredible. This place is a juggernaut. They are catching up so fast is ridiculous. The whole country is a construction project.

I've done a lot here so far, but I'll save my stories for another time. I got a lot of them so far that you'll just have to ask me about later. But to make a long story short, some of the things I've done are: walk through an ancient Chinese neighborhood at night(where people still live), bribe a guy to get into a Buddhist temple at 10 pm, took a boat ride through 1400 year old canals (China is the country of canals, it's like Venice, except the size of Europe), walked on the 1200 yr old dirt city walls of Yangzhou (which is now a tea plantation? go figure...) and climb a 9 story pagoda. Not to mention all these sporadic Buddhist ceremonies we have, and planting tress, and the interesting people I've met. Oh, and the boat ride over...I've only just got here!!! 'til next time...