Opera at the Ballpark

The San Francisco Opera had done a few of these simulcast now. Last year, I went to their simulcast at Stanford for "Rigoletto". This year, they hold a similar event at AT&T park, call "Opera at the Ballpark", showing "Samson and Delilah" on the jumbotron.

This is actually my first trip inside AT&T park. Compare to the other parks which I have been to(I have been to Wrigley Field, Jack Murphy Stadium and Tiger Stadium), this stadium is very new. It shows in the floor and seats. They are clean!

The weather was fairly cold. In fact, on my way to the stadium, part of 280 was actually raining! Luckily, the stadium was designed to shield the audience from the wind, so sitting through the opera was not a near death experience:)

I choose a seat about 20 rows behind home plate. One could have also sit on the field, but, I wanted a little more comfort:) The resolution of the wide screen jumbotron is quite impressive. From where I was sitting, I felt like I was watching my regular television(which is not HD) at home.

The opera itself is enjoyable enough. I sort of know the story of "Samson and Delilah", but am not familiar with the music. Acoustics at the ballpark is also not very good, but that is understandable.

Most people were there to enjoy themselves. I saw people circling the bases even while the performance was going on! The opera staff had handed out signs that say "Go Samson" and "Go Delilah" on either sides to the audience during the simulcast. Then, when there was any hint of physical contact between Samson and Delilah, people was holding up the sign and cheering! It was quite funny!

All in all, a enjoyable experience.

Last day of vacation

I woke up today with a mild hang over. I normally do not drink and certainly overdid it the night before:(

P offered a simple breakfast of granola bars and we sat around chatting again. For some reason, we started talking about calligraphy. It gave him an idea. He suggested I can go visit Guo Zi Jian(国子监）. According to P, this is the highest level of education one can receive from the Qing dynasty imperial court. I think of it as the Qing dynasty grad school:) P figure there might be some stone tablets of calligraphy there which I will enjoy.


Guo Zi Jian is right next to Kong temple(孔庙） which I had visit on my previous trip to Beijing. I must have arrive on a bad day, since everything at Guo Zi Jian is under construction. Much to my disappointment, there wasn't really much to see. The only stone tablet I found was one by Zhao Men Fu(赵孟頫）. I am not even sure if it is an orignal, since the stone tablet is not protect at all, someone had taken the liberty of carving some random lines onto the stone tablet:( After about half an hour at Guo Zi Jian, I am pretty much done! P had suggested having lunch at a vegetarian place across the street from Guo Zi Jian call Xu Siang Zhai(叙香斋). An excellent choice! They were serving a buffet lunch of all vegetrain items, with various faux meat and fish. I regretted not taking any photos, but the food look so real! The buffet had almost 50-60 varieties of food, including sushi, congee, dumplings, soups and deserts. The food is not overly season, which is a rarity in Chinese vegetarian cuisine and I enjoy it very much.

After lunch, it was time to head home to P, and from there, catch a cab to the airport for my flight home.

This silk road trip is definitely a blast. The highlight were the terracotta Warriors and Dun Huang Murals. During the couple of days where we traveled with the tour group, we certainly did not eat as much good, local food as I would prefer, but overall, it has not been to shabby too. Our tour guides and the locals we met were all very friendly and I had a really good time.

Beijing

Arrive in Beijing from Xin Jiang at about 1pm. Went to Pingod apartments where my cousin P stays. After catching up a little, we decided to take a walk in Ritan.

We had a beer to welcome me to Beijing at a Germany restaurant in ritan business park. Then walk around the park a little. Ritan is not like Tiantan, which is very touristy, but it does have some ancient ruins. It feels like a park which the locals used for their recreation activities. P has taken on rock climbing rather seriously, and the park has a climbing wall, so this is his regular hangout.

We stop by Xiu Shui Street (秀水街） after our walk in Ritan. I really did not have much to buy, but figure I could use a new sports watch. There are some sporty looking fake Nike and Reebok watches, but none of them has lap timer feature. The sales person complaint I am being difficult. "These are all fakes!", she exclaims. I had imagined the fake watches would have all the features of their real counterparts, but implementing lap timer feature on a fake must be too costly:)

Dinner was at Lao Beijing Luju Huo Shao (老北京卤煮火烧） in Jinbao street（金宝街）. P informed me the food here is very authentic. There were several taxi-cabs parked outside the restaurants, and the cabbies were all inside having dinner.

We started with 4 cold dishes: Xin Li Mei carrot skins（心里美萝卜皮）, Century eggs with tofu（皮蛋豆腐）, napa cabbage with yellow wasabi（芥辣白菜墩） and ma tofu（麻豆腐）. Then 2 bowls of Luju（卤煮）. Then got adventurous and order huo shao donkey meat（火烧驴肉）, served in shao bing, plus dog aspic（狗肉冻）. Wash everything down with Red Star Er Wo Tou(红星二窝头）.

Xin Li Mei carrot skins is a pickled carrot skin. The carrot skin is a special type of carrot with green skin on the outside, and a pinkish skin on the inside, sliced thinly. The pickling is not too tart and the vegetable is still quite crunchy. Pretty good dish.

Napa cabbage with yellow wasabi is exactly what is being described. The cabbage has been pickled with a yellowish liquid and pack quite a punch. Good on days where allergies is serious:)

Comparatively, century egg with tofu is a very normal dish. Good, but normal. Soft tofu is slice then soy sauce and sesame oil is poured over the tofu. It is then topped with century egg. A good contrast in texture and flavor between the mild taste of tofu and century egg. I might try to recreate that dish at home.

Ma tofu is the fermented soy bean residue left over from making tofu or soy milk, stir fried with diced spicy dried chili pepper. I enjoy the texture of the dish and the spicy aroma of the fired chili pepper. Again, another dish difficult to recreate due to lack of soy bean residue.

Luju is a bowl of pig's intestines, five spice tofu and pieces of flour, cooked in a flavorful broth. I cannot really make out what the exact ingredients of the broth, but do taste some fulu (腐乳) . Very satisfying soup base. I think I end up drinking more soup then eating the intestines.

Donkey meat is a little unusual. It is quite soft, but not melt in your mouth soft. There is still some texture in the meat, but no stringiness. There is no strong donkey flavor(whatever that would be...), but it was clearly not chicken, beef, lamb or pork. I don't know if I consider it good enough to order again.

Comparatively, dog aspic has a dog like smell to it...in a bad way. I did not like this dish at all. It is my first taste of dog meat and besides saying I have eaten dog, I really cannot recommend the dish to anyone. Probably it is the preparation, and an acquired taste, but not a dish I will ordered again.

After dinner we had a drink at Q Bar. The owners: Echo and George, were bar tenders at Long Cafe, where we had drinks 2 years ago on my last visit to Beijing. I like the atmosphere of the bar and am a sucker for roof top garden. I have 3 special grape martini, which is not too sweet and got quite drunk.

A good break from the rather hectic silk route travel schedule. I like going to museums and visit natural scenery on my vacation, but just catching up with family/friends is fun too.

Urumuqi

Our final stop on silk route is Urumuqi. The attraction in Xin Jiang is mostly its natural beauty. The first stop is South Mountain Ranch（南山牧场）, where we visit a working Kazakh yurts. We are served a salty tea drink and some fried snacks. The tea must be an acquired taste, since I did not enjoy it too much. The fried snacks were pleasant enough, but the weather is cold and the food cool down too much, making it taste greasy.

But we were not just here for food. The travel agency has also arrange for us to witness some other activities: horse racing, courtship on horseback and sheep football. Horse racing, as the name suggested is kids racing their horses. The riders are all in their teens, with the youngest as young as 6. Their horsemanship is incredible.

Courtship on horseback is another traditional event. Here a young man would follow the object of his desire on a horse ride to the far end of the field. Along the way, he can say anything he wants. On the return trip, the ladies show their true colors. If they are unhappy with anything he says, he gets a solid whipping by the ladies. On our visit, the young men could all use some help with courtship, since all of them were whipped hard by the ladies:)

The last event is football, except instead of pigskin, a sheep carcass is used. Men on horseback would wrestle each other for the sheep, and if successful wrestle the sheep from an opponent, ride a round about the field and throw the sheep into a basket. His teams will attempt to block for him, while the opponent attempt to take back the sheep, all on horseback. While there is not crash like in football, the action was fierced and the man were all very much into it.

After lunch, we visited Heavenly Mountain and Heavenly Lake(天山天池）. Again my impression of Heavenly Mountain is heavily influenced by martial art stories of Lian Yu Shen（梁羽生）. But this time, we were all greatly impress by the natural beauty of the region. Again, we rode the cable car up the mountain to heavenly lake. One thing I immediately notices is the water of Heaven lake is not as clear as I had expected. I was comparing the water to Tahoe, which is much clearer and blue in color compare to the rather muddy water of Heavenly lake. However, there are layers upon layers of mountain with a snowy peak at most remote shades of mountain, giving the area a certain romantic feel. It is not Tahoe, but certainly has its own charm.

Turpan

Today we wake up to find ourselves in a new province: Xin Jiang(新疆）. Our destination today is the fiery hot city of Turpan（吐鲁番）. But someone must have been praying to the travel gods. We got lucky! The high was only 29 deg C!

We arrive at Turpan at about 7am Beijing time, 5 am local time. Again, the draw of a tour group our size is amazing. There was actually 2 beautiful Uygur ladies were there dancing to the drum beat of a Uygur gentleman, welcoming us at 5 in the morning!

After a quick breakfast, we set off for Bizaklik Thousand Buddha Cave（柏孜克里克千佛洞). Similar to Dun Huang, the caves are painted with Buddhist murals. Unfortunately, these murals are severely damaged and have little aesthetic value. According to our guides, the murals, if undamaged, could rival those of Dun Huang. One can only imagine...

The caves are located on the foot of Flaming Mountain(火焰山). If the name sounds familiar, it should! This is the inspiration for Flaming Mountain in "Journey to the West"（西游记）!

Now, there is of course no flames to be found in the mountain, but there is fairly unique landscape. On our next stop, we drove to a tourist center for the "most ideal photographic location for Flaming Center". Also in the center is the largest thermometer in the world.

The center is clearly milking its connection to "Journey to the West". On the walls of the corridors leading to thermometer are paintings of stories from Journey to the West.

The thermometer itself seem a little small. In fact, the one at Baker, California seems bigger! However, our tour guide keep insisting the one at Flaming Mountain made the Guinness Book of World Record. She's cute, so I decided to let it slide:)

The weather was cold enough that we were wearing jacket, but decided we need to lose it while taking pictures so that our friends will believe we are actually in Turpan:)

From Flaming Mountain, we went to Grape Valley(葡萄沟). This is probably the most blatant tourist trap on the entire trip! There was nothing to see except grapes hanging overhead. Having visited many vineyard in Northern California, I am just not interested.

Next, we visited a Uygur grape farm for watermelons and grapes. Again, the Uygur farmer clearly often have tour group visit. There was a long table where we all sat. On the table were Uygur hats that guys could wear and take pictures. We were served watermelon and grapes while there was a singing and dancing performance. Then we were asked to join in. Finally, the farmer ask if we are interested in tasting raisins...

He started by telling us the cheapest raisins from Xin Jiang are not fit for human consumption. Rotten raisins are soaked in chemicals or smoked by sulphur to preserve them, and then sold at a low price. Well, goods from China has been suffering from bad press lately, so I am incline to believe him:)

He then turn us on to raisins he cultivated. They are indeed quite sweet and tasty. Feeling a little guilty from the free watermelon and grapes, we decide we should buy some rasins...Sigh...I guess we fell for the oldest trick in the tour guide's book:(

After a quick lunch, we went to Jiaohe city ruins（交河故城). I usually enjoy visiting ancient relics, but the ruins here have abandon for so long that natural erosion has cause the entire city ruins to look like some random mud caves. I cannot help but recall a article by Yu Qiu Yu(余秋雨） about how fragile a city is.

The next spot requires is a large network of underground water canel call the Karez system(坷儿井). Since most of Xin Jiang is a desert, the only source of water is melting snow from the Heavenly Mountain(天山). Digging more expose canal to bring water from the mountain to Turpan is not feasible because too much water would have evaporated during transportation. Instead, underground canals were dug. According to the guide, the sum of length of all the underground canal together would exceed that of the Great Wall of China and is one of 3 ancient engineering marvel of China. It is indeed very impressive, but somehow not widely report(at least I was not aware of the Karez system before this trip).

Our final stop is at Emin Minaret(苏公塔）, a real life mosque which welcomes non-Muslim. The architecture clear is different from the Tang inspire building we have been seen through our trip, but did not have the onion shapes which we are familiar with either. The tower itself if made of bricks and has various patterns on it. Quite beautiful to look at. However, in terms of historical importance or artistic value, it cannot compared with some of the buildings we had seen thus far.

For dinner, we were treated to BBQ whole lamb(烤全羊), a Xin Jiang specialty. I know I have complained we were not able to get authentic local cuisine, but here I have to take back what I said. Given the size of our group, we were able to order 3 whole lamb. This would be difficult is I had traveled alone or even in small group. The lamb itself does not have a strong lamb smell, due to its feed. According to the tour guide, the grass in Xin Jiang has more alkaline in it, so it changes the taste of the lamb. I personally do not have a problem with the lamb smell anyway, and really enjoy the dish. The meat has a little cumin like seasoning on it, but most of the flavor comes from the lamb itself.

After dinner, we had a performance of Uygur dance/music group. This is suppose to be a professional group, but they have only 4 female dancers, 4 male dances and a band of 4 musicians. Consequently, the performers are forced to do back to back dance. I felt really bad for the dancers.

Crescent Lake, Dun Huang

This morning, we visited an attraction within Dun Huang city call "Echoing Sand Mountains, Crescent Lake". It is a somewhat interesting geological formation. According to our tour guide, the crescent shaped lake is formed due to the unique mountain formation in the area. The sand storm created a circuit pattern, just sparing the stream to form a sparking lake. The lake gets its water from melting snow atop Qi Lian mountain. Unfortunately, in recent years, due to global warming, there is less melting snow and parts of the lake appear dried.

The excursion became an excuse to play in the sand! We were encourage to slide down a rather steep sand dune. Supposedly, the echoing sand will make a loud noise. After consulting with our tour guide, he frankly tell us it is unlikely we will hear the sand. Bummer...

We also got the chance to ride a camel. The animal is fairly tame, so they walk slowly on the sand. It is still a fairly bumpy ride. I gain much more respect for ancient travellers who had relied on these animals to ferry them across the vast desert that is the silk route.

When we are in Gobi desert, the desert scenery is quite similar to the desert of Arizona. It is here at Crescent lake that we see scenery similar to those of the Sahara. While this is not a historic site, I did think it is a worthwhile stop.

In the afternoon, we went to what I consider the other most important attraction of the trip: the murals of Dun Huang at Mao Gao Caves. Our first cave is home of the North Buddha, where a large piece of rock is carved into a big Buddha from the early Tang dynasty. The entire statue is more than a few person high and is aw inspiring. The walls of the cave is covered with paintings of various scene of Buddha spreading his gospel and the surrounding disciples. All were vividly painted and the colors have survived through the ages extremely well

The second cave is home to the South Buddha. Here the craftsman has already master perspective and design carve the Buddha so that it appears even bigger than the North Buddha, which being actually shorter. The third cave is home to the sleeping Buddha. Here the Buddha is in his sleep soon before his death. His disciples are shown standing behind him, some frowning, some happy. Some of the disciples are depicted as statues and others as paintings. On the opposite wall is painting of 5000 little Buddhas. Each has its own facial expression and distinct features.

We also went to several caves from early dynasty where it was obvious the art is clearly Indian art and showing early signs of influence from Chinese art. Another highlight is the cave where the Buddhist elders had hidden their sutra from invaders. The sutra was later discovered and subsequently sold to museums from around the world.

One painting that I had especially wanted to see was the "Reverse playing of the Lute"(反弹琵琶）. Our guide told us that particular cave is too small to accommodate tourist. Sigh...

All in all though, it was a treat to see these priceless treasure. I don't usually buy souvenirs, but since we are not allow to take photos inside the caves, I broke down and bought a set of post cards of Fei Tian(飞天).

Travel to Dun Huang

After a relatively light day in Jia Yu Pass, we travel to Dun Huang(敦煌). The trip takes about 4 hours by train from Jia Yu Pass and another 2 hours along a really bumpy road by bus. Along the way, we saw a sand structure said to be remains of the Great Wall from Han dynasty.

The surrounding is the vast Gobi Desert again. It is on this trip where one starts to realize how big China is in terms of land mass...

At dinner, we were served camel's foot. The meat really has no distinct taste of camel, and I recall only it has lots of connective tissue, giving the meat a gel like chewy texture. I really can't say it is delicious, and since I do not know if camel is endangered, I cannot recommend the dish again.

We went to the local night market after dinner. It was targeted mainly towards tourists. There were skewers of lamb BBQ on the street that smells wonderful. However, wary of the hygiene standards of street vendors, we decided to pass...