Sweat and Malaria Tablets

I haven't written. I know, I know, what good is a blog if you don't write, and how will anyone know I'm alive if I don't feed the blog, but the internet isn't exactly the most reliable thing when you travel, at least not in South East Asia. Things here run differently to back home, as you might have guessed. For one, heat is a given. I encourage you to find a clip of Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam" doing the weather report - "Hot today, hot yesterday, hot tomorrow", but I'm pretty sure he uses more profanity, being Robin Williams and all. But somehow I don't think you'll be satisfied with a simple paragraph telling you that the jungle is hot. No, you want more:

1) We're terrified of mosquitos. They're invisible biters and cary nasties with them. We take a malaria pill each night after dinner (if you want to know how well they work at preventing malaria, ask my brother). Adrienne's makes her photosensitive, which doesn't mean that she turns green and produces energy (which is what I thought it meant, she asured me that was photosynthetic), but means she get sunburned easily. I already slop so much sunscreen on there is no way to tell if mine is as well. Yet we're not afraid of malaria (hell, malaria is curable, just ask my brother). We're quaking in our sandles about Dengue Feaver: uncurable and absolutly miserable! We were at a swanky bar in Saigon and they had a cocktail called "The Dengue Cure", so we had to order it. On a tangent, the bartender was a friend of ours who had won best mixologist in Shanghai last year, a city of many classy bars... this was a delicious drink! But back to the serious matter at hand - I am relieved that I come from a place with next to no infectious disease inherent in our mosquitos.

2) Vietnam is a forgiving country. You'd expect them to be rather upset with the USA for fighting them, occupying them and causing thousands of birth defects as a result of chemical warfare (agent orange). Yet they're just not that angry. In the north there wasn't much fighting (lots of bombing, but not hand to hand fighting), so they were rather realxed about the whole thing. In the south it was more intense, especially around Saigon, where there was fighting and American troops. But people like my motorbike driver, who was from the south, was very philosophical about the war. He told us, "My father went to the war against the Americans but was very unlucky, he didn't come back." Those are not the words of an angry bitter soul.

The only time I felt any animocity towards my country was at the Chu Chi Tunnels - the tunnels outside Saigon the VietCong faught their war from. They were amazing to see, and unbelivable, considering they lived, ate and slept in these tiny little subterranian tunnels. Before we went in the tunnels they showed a propoganda film from the 70's about local men and women who'd killed lots of Americans and what heroes they were. It was odd to sit in a room and watch a video explaining how great it was to kill an American.

Other than that incident though, Vietnam seems to have mostly moved on from the war. That isn't to say some people aren't angry or effected, but the unused bunkers dotting the country side seem to have blended into the landscape and history of the country, not like a black eye, but like another story in Vietnams long history.

3) At the tunnels we got to fire M16s. They were loud, they were awesome!

4) The Temples of Ankor Wat are one of the 5 most amazing man made things I've ever seen. They're older than almost any church in Europe, bigger than any church in Europe and can be covered in elaborate carvings. I mean, some of these awesome temples are older than England... that's old!!!

Don't Tell My Mom

Please don't tell my mom; it's not the type of thing she's want to hear. My dad maybe could handle it, but mother's don't like to know these things. Yes, I did it because it seemed fun, and No I didn't get hurt, so there shouldn't be any problem. No harm, no foul, right? Still, don't tell my mom that we skipped out on our bus ticket from Hue to Hoi An and hired motorbikes to drive us 100 miles down the coast.

Our drivers, Nho and Ty (Easyrider), were just supposed to drive us around the old tombs and city of Hue during our 5 hour bus layover. We were just supposed to get back on the bus and ride to Hoi An that afternoon, but the more we rode, the more fun we had, the more they talked up riding down on the bikes and after a while it seemed like a darn fun idea. So we did.

Of course riding a motorbike through the windey highways of Vietnam, past the rice paddies and mountinous jungle isn't the safest way to travel, but there just isn't a better way to see the country. They took us to a mountain waterfall with a swiming hole below to relax at. They took us over the seaside mountain pass outfitted with a US bunker from the war, as the green hills which looked on raced to the blue Pacific below. They took us along the miles and miles of beach, past the resorts, restaurants and men lounging on plastic chairs. They took us off the tour bus and into the real Vietnam, bringing us local snacks (gelatinous rice steamed in bannana leaf with shrimp) and local restaurants. It you ever come to Vietnam, please hire a motorbike.

But please, don't tell my mom. These kinds of things tend to worry mothers, so please don't tell mine.

Life on the Road

I'd like to say I'm jet-setting around Asia, but that's not quite true. I'm more of 'slow bussing around Asia.' It's been a busy week, traveling from the foothills of the Himilayas to the Gulf of Tonkin and the Pacific Ocean. Adrienne and I are adjusting to life on the road still, with each day presenting new challanges and new adventures.

Leaving China left me with the problems of traveling in a unique country [Vietnam] without the requisite bag of tricks I'd developed in China. Adrienne has told me I need to smile and say, 'no thank you', to street people, instead of just ignoring them like in China. Also, I've found the Vietnamese slightly less punctual as the Chinese. Plus there are more scams.... much more.

Talking to people makes you wonder why you'd come to a country where almost everyone has their own scam story on either a bus, travel agent, taxi or xe om (motorcycle taxi). The scams are all the same, from extortion to overpricing, to bait-and-switch to outright theft. I sit on edge waiting for my crack at this seedy underside of Vietnam, suspecting everyone of harboring an inner swindler. Not the most enjoyable way to travel, but as time passes my feeling has been dissapating. Hopefully it won't be my lingering memory of this country.

Aside from that I've been taking a lot of busses. Overnight sleeper busses where instead of seats there are proper bunk-beds, like in a first class airplane but much more cramped (up to 40 bed on a bus!). The roads suffer more than the buses, as we traveled 7 hours from the tiny village of YuanYang to the Vietnamese boarder, travling the entire way benath the completed but unused highway - Vietnam hasn't built it's side at the boarder yet, so China forbids travel on it's half. In addition to the Chinese government's urban transportation policy, descending and climbing the hills near the Sino-Vietnamese border on the tiny windey roads can also be cause for nausea. Or at least it was for an old gradma 3 rows behind me, yacking into a bag as we climbed the hills to the village of YuanYang. I just put on my iPod and rubbed Tigerbalm under my nose to cover the sound and smell....

The decent from the mountains of Lijiang, through the rice village of YuanYang, the rainy hills of Sapa and down to the metropolitan hub of Hanoi has been a dizzying display of minority villages, fantastic panaramas and lots of rain. The best thing I've seen in the past week was Halong bay - an oceanic playground of hundreds limestone cliff islands shooting up from the green-blue water below. It's an experience to kayak through a small cave into a hidden lagoon surrounded by towering green cliffs on all sides.

I'm catching a bus down the coast in 10 minutes to Hue and Hoi An. Beach here I come!

Chinese Sunscreen

We often use the word 'Chinese' to describe something with uniquely Chinese characteristics, which celebrates the heritage of the country, like 'Chinese Food' or 'Chinese Martial Arts'. However, sometimes the word is used to designate something of low quality, 'Chinese quality' for example (or just look at all the fuss the PRC kicked up over Guns and Roses latest album - 'Chinese Democracy'). We'll I am afraid I need to rail on 'Chinese Sunscreen'. The quality is low.

Adrienne and I arrived in the remote western tourist city of LiJiang this week, expecting to see timeless Chinese Streets (used in the first meaning), and breathtaking scenery. On our first full day we saddled up on some bicycles and headed out of town, being sure to slop on some sunscreen before we left. Adrienne and I both have a bottle of sunscreen, but Adrienne's is from the 'Cancer Prevention Center of Australia', mine is from China. Choosing to rub the Australian stuff on our faces and necks, we set out on a very sunny bike ride to a small, rather decidedly uninteresting and unworthy-of-the-hype town nearby. As we paused for lunch we realized how red our arms were becoming and pulled out my Chinese sunscreen to remedy the problem before the burn was absolute.

The sunscreen did nothing. It might as well have been water. In no way, shape, or form did it prevent a single UV ray from our sun from reaching our skin; in short if we'd have been from KFC we'd have been served extra crispy. Thanks Chinese Sunscreen.

Not to fear, we made the best of it, setting off on a 2 day hike of Tiger Leaping Gorge the next morning, burned as can be, but happy to be traveling. The hike was strenuous at times (900m elevation gain), but to see the 5500m tall mountains sweep down nearly 4000m to the bottom of the gorge was unforgettable. To put it in perspective, the distance from the bottom of the valley to the top is almost as great as the distance from sea level to the tallest mountain in Europe. We might have been red from Chinese sunscreen, but I've no complaints about the Chinese mountains.

To the road...

As I write this I am less than 12 hours from getting on a plane out of Shanghai without knowing when or if I will return to this city. It's been a fascinating interesting experience, you might even call it life changing. The past two weeks have been understandably busy, scurrying around to ship off all my things and say goodbye to friends before I leave. This end, like most, is bittersweet; As excited as I am to travel, and as excited as I am to leave, departing a place where friends have been made and an enjoyable life lived always has a twinge of sadness. Because I've been busy I haven't been able to write everything I wanted to write in here the past few weeks, so I'm going to hit you with some quick hit paragraphs about Shanghai.

This city can be beautiful. Who knew?! At the City Urban Planning Museum they showed a map of the downtown and had all the parks and streets lined with trees and flowers highlighted in green, which stunningly displayed how much of this city has greenery if you care to see it. Now that the usual grey has abated for the past two weeks and the sky is blue, everything seems greener and more natural.

And Shanghai isn't taking this beautification lying down either, hoards or workers and public works projects are making this drab grey city more and more vibrant by the day. A block from my house an old decayed street was redone with more trees, more flowers and a new paint job that took the street from depressing to leisurely in a few weeks. Elsewhere in the city paint on the old grey block houses gives them a lighter presence, casting the mind back not to the communist era, but before that when Shanghai was really coming into its own. Perhaps in a few years the city will complete its transformation, which I no doubt will return to see.

The Shanghainese can learn, and learn fast. The World Expo is coming and Shanghai needs to be ready for it's big debut. As a result there have been posters, fliers, people with microphones urging pedestrians on the escalator to... Stand on the Right, Walk on the Left. You may recall I railed against the Chinese inability to grasp this concept, which I suspected at the time was because nobody had ever told them to. Turns out I was right, and all they needed was a massive government campaign to tell the people what to do and think, and compliance has been exceedingly swift! Westernization here they come!

Unfortunately the Expo brings other problems for the expats living in Shanghai. The government here has already unrolled a campaign of advertisements which will run nearly 24/7 on every available viewing screen proclaiming this upcoming expo as the seminal pinnacle of human creation for all of history. I'm not kidding, May 1 marked the '365 days until' point and the ads ratcheted up from boiling to straight vaporization. Thankfully I'm leaving and I'll never need to gaze into the happy eyes of the large 'toothpaste-looking' mascot ever again. The rest of the expats remaining behind in Shanghai will no doubt have reoccurring nightmares about this creature and will need psychiatric care... Good luck to you all.

On an unrelated topic, I've realized China does a pretty good job at recycling. I don't know how accurate my last statement is, but my personal experience in the past week while trying to throw out all the junk I didn't want left me realizing how much other people in Shanghai wanted my junk! Now, I've experienced the strange bottle recycling phenomenon before. Every city has recycling and every city has can and bottle people, but rarely are these can and bottle people seemingly homeowners with leisure time to play majong. Whenever I try to bring my empty bottles to the trash cove in my building complex, I make it halfway there before some old man comes running up to me to take the bottles from me, which wouldn't surprise me half as much if he hadn't been relaxing in our guarded compound playing majong with his buddies. I don't even know where the recycling place is near my house, but he does and I know how to find him, which is all that matters. Also, as I was Cleaning my room, I had loads to throw away, the useless junk I'd collected but had no intention of paying good money to send home, every trip I made to the dumpster full of bags had been seized by curious collectors before I returned with the next load 5 minutes later. Somewhere in Shanghai people are enjoying baggy sweaters, extra reading lamps and broken suitcases and I hope they enjoy them. Here's to you, Shanghai's secret recyelers!

Finally, as a last ditch 'Tourist in Shanghai' moment, I saw the Chinese Acrobats Show on Sunday night. Between the lady who balanced 20 water glasses on her chin before climbing a latter in high heels and the gentlemen who flipped off see-saws onto waiting chairs 30 feet above, I was most impressed by the one man who juggled a porcelain pot the size of a mid sized TV on his head. He would toss this massive pot in the air, catch it on his head, then tossed it from lip to lip on his head, all without dropping the thing which would have caused a massive headache, had it not crushed him completely. Nothing like a little good old fashioned tourist razzle dazzle.

And so, for the next 4+ months I expect nothing less than the usual tourist razzle dazzle. This isn't the end of the blog. Although I can't get Shanghaied in Shanghai anymore, I can still write about everything I see in South East Asia and beyond. I'll write soon.

Simple pleasures

Sometimes we forget about the simple joys in life, and I've found one of the simplest. First, let me set the scene.

China has it's own ways of doing things, for example many people still prefer to poop in a hole in the ground, so in many less westernized cities most of the bathrooms are simply 'squat toilets'.

Now, living in Shanghai I feel privileged to be surrounded by a world of toilet seats, meaning I don't need to stand in a room whose floor is covered in... well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, plumbing in Shanghai isn't always up to snuff. As a result, many toilets, like the ones at my office, cannot accommodate flushed toilet paper; instead a small waist bin sits in the stall next to the toilet and everyone tosses their used paper in there.

Are you ready to hear my simple pleasure? It's walking into the bathroom to discover that the trash can is empty. It means nobody has used the toilet since the cleaning people came, how great is that!!! I imagine this phenomenon is much less common in womens' rooms, but it still isn't that common in the mens'. Unlike in the west, where we can only gauge the cleanliness of the bathroom with our eyes, here in China we have proof of its cleanliness in the emptiness (or fullness) of its trashcan. Believe me, when the trash can is full, I search for a different bathroom. It may be a simple joy to find and empty one, but aren't the simple pleasures the ones which make life great?

The Mystery of China

Following my trip to Nanjing, and in the spirit of 'see it before you leave China', my girlfriend and I traveled to the city of Hangzhou, a small city and lake an hour and a half southwest of Shanghai which was voted the #1 tourist city in China in 2006 (by China). Everyone in China has seen the TV advertisements urging you to visit the city; there is only 1 English speaking channel and they show the ad every commercial break, ending with the comically endearing slogan, "Discover the Mystery of China!" Hangzhou lives up to the hype.

Though the town is lackluster, the West Lake evokes the classical beauty we've come to expect from Chinese scroll paintings. Before I left, I was told that "Hangzhou may be more beautiful when it's cloudy because the mist only adds to the atmosphere." Sceptical as I was of this tidbit, imagine my joy to discover they were correct, and the clouds and rain couldn't spoil my journey.

Most of my day was spent ambling across the miles long causeway across the west side of the lake. At one point we took a short boat cruise to the island in the center, which provided stunning views of the pagodas, hills and bridges in the distance. Any shore provided a fantastic vantage of the green natural beauty of the place, whether it was the bridges on the causeway or the tea house we lunched in. Green and natural as far as you could see.

All this greenery comes as quite a shock after living in Shanghai for a year. Hardened to the dreary existence of grey that permeates the Shanghainese life, escaping to a land of utter green is like opening the door after a tornado whisked you away to Oz. But to focus solely on the natural beauty almost does the people of Hangzhou a disservice: the area itself is clean. Unlike Shanghai where litter is strewn about like peanut shells after a baseball game, the tourist areas of Hangzhou were devoid of debris. Even the air felt cleaner!

All this environmental 'can-do' might explain why Hangzhou has some of the most famous tea in all of China. Having sampled some at the tea house, we proceeded to the National Tea Museum for the rainier section of the afternoon. After getting schooled on the finer points of Chinese tea history (more interesting than you'd think... for example: did you know that before the Song dynasty most tea was crafted into tea cakes, which had to be cooked, not steeped, before drinking and was more soup like than today's teas?), we ended up in the gift shop a few hundred yuan poorer and a few canisters of tea richer. Personally, I didn't care much for the tea when we were at the tea house, but when in Hangzhou, do as the Hangzhouns do.

The trip lasted barely over 24 hours, but I got to see the sites, drink the drinks and eat the eats (Hangzhou is famous for fish and a clay-pot roasted pork dish). My only regret is that I didn't get there sooner!

The Massacre of Nanjing

The Year: 1937. The place: Nanjing, China, home of the government of the Republic of China. 2 years before most history books record the start of WWII, and 4 years before Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, the Empire of the Rising Sun launched the first attacks of the most gruesome war in history. Technologically and strategically superior to the divided Chinese armies, the Japanese quickly swept through Shanghai and seized the capital Nanjing. What followed was a shocking atrocity - in 6 short weeks, 300,000 citizens of Nanjing were brutally killed.

In Nanjing, I visited the memorial to the massacre, a large, solemn memorial and museum on the burial site of one of the massacres. The massacres are both a sore point for the Chinese people and a rallying cry of nationalistic angst. Many of my students refuse to accept that the Japanese ever apologized for this dark point in history, yet evidence is to the contrary, as the Japanese Prime Minister has done so on numerous occasions. Although it would seem time for the Chinese to let their anger pass, there is no doubt they have reason to grieve the horrific events of 1937.

After seizing the city, the Japanese decreed that many soldiers had likely taken off their uniforms to blend in with the civilians, a claim which the Japanese said gave them license to round up and murder thousands of civilians. One story of a rickshaw-puller explained how Japanese soldiers had set upon him while he was cooking, claiming that he must be a soldier because he had calluses on his hands (no doubt from pulling a heavy rickshaw all day). He was lead into a field with over a hundred other men, who were then shot down en mass by the soldiers. The young rickshaw driver only survived because he was shot in the arm first and fainted, only to awaken later among a pit of bodies. Horrible stories like this were too common in the museum.

Yet the murders are not all. Over 80.000 cases of rape have been reported, concerning women from the age of 12 to 70. Daughters were raped in front of fathers, mothers in front of sons. Brutality of this sort is hard to forgive, but not to be forgotten.

A few things shocked me during my visit. The most notable was that the most staunch defenders of the public, the people who brought sense to the madness and who helped ease the death toll, were mostly German. The leader of the international committee which created a 'safe zone', was a Nazi representative, sent my the 3rd Reich to oversee business interest in the region. The Red Swastika League buried countless bodies, providing decency and preventing outbreaks. How a few years later Germans would become known for their own holocaust, while preserving so many lives in China was unexpected.

Also shocking was the purveyors of brutality. I have studied bits and pieces of WWII, and my impression is that while it takes a nation to be complacent in a holocaust, the killing done by the Nazis was carried out by a select crew of SS officers, specially hardened and warped. Yet in Nanjing, the mode of execution was no gas chamber, but the end of a rifle. And the killings were not carried out by special, hardened madmen, but large, general parts of the Japanese Army. These were the regular soldiers committing unspeakable acts against civilians - had none of them morals?! Was the mindset of the average Japanese so far removed from humanity that it could produce huge squadrons of executioners? I feel the horror of Nanjing lies as much in the scale of the victims as it does in the scale of the criminals.

There is no doubt Japan should be sorry for what it has done, and perhaps it hasn't been enough. China has every right to be upset by the past. But why neither nation seems wiling to find common ground only lays the seeds for more unspeakable disasters.

One Night In Nanjing

"Wait, Dan, you didn't tell us anything about Nanjing!!"

So true. So, what do four expats on holiday in the historic city of Nanjing get up to on a Saturday night? Well, let me tell you from personal experience, it's far worse on a person's body than you might expect. Let me explain:

Me and my three travel buddies (my girlfriend Adrienne, and two other co-workers Cortney and Alison), had just left the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Museum for a stroll around the restored old part of town near the Confucius temple. The museum gave an awesome PRC slant to this group of rebels (we call it 'The Taiping Rebellion, after all), which disregarded their fanatical, crazy brand of Christianity (the leader claimed to be Jesus's brother) and puritanical laws which would John Carver would protest to, and instead claimed them a sovereign 'kingdom' defending the rights of the poor peasantry in imperialist occupied China. Good stuff.

As I was saying, we'd just left and walked around Fuzimiao (the old town, which as you can see from the lights, was doing it's best to look young and hip). Stopping in an ice cream parlor to get off our feet, we asked the waitress a good place for dinner or drinks. Our conversation was strained, half in English, half in Chinese, but all she kept repeating was "One Nine One Two". So we hopped in a taxi and shouted "Yi Jiu Yi Er" and were whisked away to a giant complex called, well "1912" filled with bars and restaurants. After downing a considerable amount of hot pot, a wonderful dinning experience where they boil a pot of broth on your table then bring you plates full of raw vegetables and meat, which you can cook, season and eat at your leisure, we found a hip bar playing live western music (live Chinese music is called karaoke and is to be avoided). After playing a few hours of a game which involves dice, gambling and bluffing, we decided to turn in so we would be refreshed for our sightseeing the next day and sought out a taxi.

The taxi ride, however led our night astray. We were going home, we were going to sleep, but we were hungry. If you're hungry in China and it's after 11pm, there is unfortunately only one place to go - McDonald's. We informed our driver half way home of his new task, finding a 24-hour McDonald's. After the first 24 hour McDonald's was closed (how can a 24 hour restaurant be closed?!) we arrived at the promised land of quarter pounder goodness. Had we gone home that night we would have only caused our self dietary harm, unfortunately we weren't smart enough to do that: someone proposed a relaxing massage and all agreed. Our fate was sealed.

We eagerly sought a massage parlor, hailing a taxi whose driver delighted us in telling us that she knew of two places. The first place she took us too was covered in bright neon lights outside. We sent an emissary to check out the situation, while the rest of us had waited in the car. The response was something to do with 'men only' and 'shower' - we suspected it was one of the 'for men, by men, in the shower' massage joints. We moved on.

The next place was a hole in the wall, but didn't involve showers and was only 5 bucks for an hour massage. Never mind that it was dodgy and dirty ( just look at the picture!), it seemed perfect. It seemed. Perhaps my massage artists had been woken up by our 1am arrival; perhaps my artist had just broken up with her boyfriend; perhaps my artist had a hatred of westerners; or perhaps she just didn't like me. Whatever the reason, the next hour was reminiscent of what I expect a few minutes in a boxing ring with a kangaroo would feel like. She hammered away, push pressure points, bruising my bones, muscles and self-esteem in the process. It was far from a relaxing massage.

The next morning when we woke, we had a full day of sightseeing planned. Aching, we dragged ourselves around the top tourist sights, imagining how great we could have felt had we just skipped that darn massage. Our last stop on the day was Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum. The first president of the Republic of China after the last dynasty in 1912, he is considered the many to be the father of modern China. He was also a hug advocate of steps.

Taiping Rebellion. McDonald's. Massage. Stairs. Nanjing.

Keep Holy the Holy Day

"Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life." - Deuteronomy 16:3

For millions the world over, this passage has decreed abstinence from leavened bread on Passover. As Jews are not to eat bread, Catholics are not to eat meat on Fridays of Lent. These 'sacrifices' of joy and convenience help millions focus their faith and expand their spirituality. In China, however, it couldn't be easier.

Bread is no longer part of my weekly diet. Now, before all you 'carb-haters' decide to flood to China, it wasn't that I wasn't living carb free; rice and noodles are a near daily occurrence. Aside from the odd treat from the pastry shop or the occasional sandwich from Subway, it's like Passover everyday in China - except the wine sucks so you'd never ever want to drink 4 cups.

As for my personal Catholic dilemma surrounding meat, again it's a breeze! Nobody cooks vegetables like the Chinese - nobody. As a 16 year old, I never would have thought I could be so happy eating half my meals without meat. When my mom came to visit, she was sceptical of the meatless dishes, but after a week of non-stop Chinese she too had seen the light. Eat Vegetables with Glorious Chinese Characteristics! Non- meat is a non issue.

I celebrated my Easter with friends at a decedent western-style buffet at one of Shanghai's swankier hotels. Meat is allowed on Easter, so roast pork and lamb, an array of seafood salads, dim sum, Thai and Indian dishes, not to mention the giant cheese plate (I haven't had brie since I was home in January) and a chocolate fountain graced my plate, er plates. Full and feeling the size of a house I set out with my girlfriend for a weekend in Hangzhou.

Somehow train-rides and Easter go hand in hand in my mind, no doubt a holdover from a children's Easter TV special I watched when I was a kid. The ride was swift and pleasant, this time leading us south of Shanghai towards the stunning natural beauty the lake at Hangzhou provides. I didn't make it to church this year, I tried the English church in Shanghai last Easter and left feeling more than disappointed; it was far more preachy and narrow minded than anyone raised on guest lecturing theologians from the Weston School of Theology could bear. Resolved to not miss out completely on the holiday's religious side this year, I threw on Jesus Christ Superstar and gazed out the window.

With the weather as perfect as it gets now, and the countryside mirroring the springlike atmosphere, bursting forth swaths of yellow rape-seed flowers among the rundown houses, fields of green and misplaced apartment complexes, the train ride the prefect backdrop to an Easter's day.

I can't comment on religion in China, but they say it may soon have more Christians than any other religion in the world. It's encouraging that there are at least a dozen churches in Shanghai. Understandably people are still learning about religion, recovering from the cultural gap which has always existed and the more recent rift in culture sharing between East and West. I've explained more times than I can count that according to dogma, Easter is more important than Christmas, questioning to myself how many Americans are aware of that fact. Perhaps religion can eventually be used to bridge the gaps between the West and China, not widen it. Besides it's easy to be religious in China - we don't eat much meat and bread to begin with!