I’m not sure what the origin of this rule is, and from what the hotel staff have told me it has always been in place, so I guess that the fact that this is the first time I’ve run into it is just a coincidence.  Maybe we just always happened to stay at “international” hotels when I traveled with my family before (though I don’t think this is true), or maybe because when I traveled with my family the hotel staff figured that it would be OK since we look Chinese enough.

In any case, this time it has been excruciatingly tedious to find hotels because 80% of the places that we check out are not authorized to take foreigners.  This rule has been bent once or twice by kind (or shrewd) hotel staff, but especially in the big cities like Xi’an and here in Luoyang where we are right now, no one seems to be willing to bend the rules for us.

The upshot is that we waste a lot of time looking for hotels (about 3 hours and 5 bus trips today in Luoyang), and we are often not able to stay in the hotels that perfectly match our price point and desired criteria (location, cleanliness, etc.).  For example, there is a very cute old town in Luoyang with a pedestrian street that is located inconveniently far from the train station.  We wanted to stay there, but all the hotels in the region were either too expensive or did not accept foreigners.

I am really curious why the government insists on this archaic system when China is today so thoroughly open to foreign travelers.  I get (though don’t terribly like) the government’s need to keep a tab on foreign visitors, but couldn’t it do so and at the same time make travelers’ lives easier by just allowing all the hotels to accept foreigners, with the provision that they take the same information that the currently authorized hotels take now anyways?

Since this is the last stop on my trip before heading to the safety of Suzhou, I guess I won’t have to deal with it again.  But for all the people out there thinking about backpacking through China or just traveling without thorough planning, be prepared!

I’ve never gone as far in America by train, simply for the fact that it’s impractical and exorbitant. Even by car the farthest I’ve gone is maybe 9 hours, which gets you basically from Boston to DC. For comparison this is roughly the distance from Lanzhou to Jiayuguan.

One feels this vastness even more when visiting the Great Wall in Jiayuguan. It’s incredible to think that this wall stretches all the way to Beijing and beyond, that man could build something so vast. And then one realizes that many sections were built over 2000 years ago and the vastness of the history also comes into the picture.

Train travel isn’t necessarily convenient here though. The ticket system is a little archaic and does not work as well (for the technologically savvy) as say the SNCF does in France. The tickets can only be bought through official sales points, and not all the sales points have access to all the tickets. There is no discriminatory pricing for tickets so they tend to sell out very quickly, especially during rush periods like right now (the summer vacation season). Tickets only become available 10 days before the trip (sometimes 20 for high speed or express trains) and can sell out right at the moment when they become available. I hear this has a lot to do with scalpers (黄牛) buying them out right away. Anyway the ticketing system might make sense since lots of people might not be able to buy things online, but still there must be a way of implementing tiered pricing so you don’t get the kind of drastic shortages like there are now.

The trains themselves and the train stations are by and large comfortable and sometimes ultramodern. I took the Beijing-Tianjin express, which leaves from the new Beijing South Station and zooms along at an average speed of 300+ kmph to reach Tianjin in half an hour. This broke the world record for highest average speed for a regular passenger train service when it opened in 2008, and I think remains as of 2010 the fastest (along with the new Wuhan-Guangzhou line). I’m really looking forward to when the high speed lines are all finished, at which point one will be able to go from Beijing to Shanghai in 5 hours by rail.

This summer, my train from Beijing to Lanzhou was slower, taking about 17 hours, but this was fine because I had a bed. From Lanzhou to Jiayuguan we had a hard seat overnighter, which turned out to really suck becaus already it’s hard to sleep upright, but then we were also next to this big pack of loud obnoxious people who stayed up pretty much all night making noise and smoking. The last segmen from Jiayuguan to Dunhuang might have even been worse because we got a train without numbered seats, so we had to stand for the first hour, but luckily enough people got off so that we could sit for most of the ride. Altogether I guess I’ve probably already spent about 30 hours on the train so far, probably with many more hours to go.

In Dunhuang we’ve frequently relied on people from random book sellers to the bus ticket collector to our hotel receptionist to give us advice on where to go and how to get there. They don’t always know everything, but when they say they don’t know you can be pretty assured that they really have no idea, rather than just being too lazy or apathetic to find out, as is often the case in Beijing or Paris.

We spent a fun afternoon in Huyanglin (胡杨林), a garden of huyang trees, talking to the people who worked there and even learning a card game from them. Granted this had a lot to do with the fact we were pretty much the only visitors there for the afternoon, but still it was very nice that they were so open and friendly.

The most generous gesture that we experienced here was when we made the miscalculation of trying to walk back to the hotel from the Overhanging wall (悬壁长城) in Jiayuguan, and after about 1 hour on the deserted road it turned dark and we were in risk of getting lost. We saw a cab go by and we tried to wave it down, but it turned off a small road before reaching us. Strangely, the cab stopped but no one got out. A minute later the cab started moving again, this time coming towards us. When it reached us we could see that there were maybe 7 people inside (it was a sedan!) and the 4 people in the back got out and offered it to us. I think they were all a family heading home, and the grandfather and a baby stayed in the front seat to be dropped off after we got dropped off. The driver offered to drop us off, then the grandpa and baby, and would then go and pick up the rest of the people, who would just stand and wait for however long. We almost didn’t take the cab because we felt bad about them waiting there in the middle of nowhere, but they insisted. In the end it saved us maybe another hour of walking, and since it turned out that I had suffered a heat stroke that day it was a good thing we took them up on their offer!

My biases come from the fact that it is commonly known (or maybe believed is more accurate) that Gansu is one of the poorest provinces in China. But maybe all of the government stimulus money has been used here to clean things up and make them more friendly for visitors?

There was a big push in the last decade to speed up the development of the Western regionsand maybe the modern looking cities are the product of that. On a related note, things are not much cheaper here than in Beijing either.

One thing along the way is this formation (click through to see the satellite photos) on Google maps, which looks like a huge valley, but it does not turn up on any searches about the surrounding cities.  Definitely gonna check that out…

Any suggestions for things to do after this part of the trip?  We’re thinking about going to Henan and seeing Luoyang, Kaifeng, and the Shaolin temples.  Anyone know if there other things in that area or in Shanxi/Shaanxi that are worth visiting?

I was quite sure this was not a silly question. The original motivation behind my question was more economic than anything else.  A more detailed version of my question would have been, “What exactly do the people here produce so that they can enjoy a decent living?”  We all know that the Bay Area produces high tech, Boston produces brains, and New York produces financial crises, but what exactly does Bucey-les-Gy, France produce?  The answer to that question should have been obvious, since the food and wine that all those big brains in SF, Boston, NY, and Paris consume has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was the sleepy countryside that we were driving through.

But his answer also addressed an undercurrent to the question that I wasn’t thinking of at the time, but which upon further reflection is more fundamental.  What, exactly, do people in sleepy country towns yearn for?  We know that people in cities, at least the vibrant ones, yearn for success, money, power, sex, and so on.  We, and by we I mean the privileged class that I happen to be among, namely the financially secure, educated, well-traveled, upwardly mobile, professional or intellectual class, I think we tend to think of life as having a “goal”, whether it be making lots of money, doing the best research, and so on.

But taken from a different point of view, such goals seem, if not silly, then at least misguided.  After being in France for a while, where people seem less driven by such external forms of success, it has become more and more apparent to me that it’s worth asking ourselves whether we have our priorities straight.  Maybe living itself is enough, and all those other goals that we set for ourselves are not really bringing us closer to some abstract fulfillment, but rather taking us farther away from the fulfillment that comes from just enjoying each day as it is?

Not to say that we should all move to the countryside and start planting crops.  But almost by definition the desire for something more, something better seems to imply that what one has today is not good enough.  Is there a way to pursue success and be ambitious while at the same time cherishing the moment and the way things are?  And if not, what’s the right balance to strike between the two?

The kind ladies who were responsible (both for the problem and for fixing it) told me that it took over 3 months to get the original contract, so it might take another 3 months to get it fixed.  I told them that this would not work: I needed to apply for my residence permit within 2 months of arriving.  They told me they’d see what they could do.

Lo and behold a short 5 days later I had a new corrected contract, signed and all.  It goes to show you that when you put a fire under their seat the French are able to hop into action and get things done.  Now if only I could open a cell phone contract…

Midwest:

May 9 – 11: Chicago
May 12 – 13: Urbana, IL
May 14: Madison, WI
May 15 – 19: Minneapolis, MN

DC:
May 29 – June 2

California:

June 8 – 15: LA
June 15 – 21: Bay Area

Europe:

July 14 – 18: Paris
July 18 – ??: Somewhere (Dublin? Madrid? Suggestions?)

America:

August ?? – probably taking a road trip somewhere, any recommendations / offers to crash on your couch?

My main impression however was how many teenagers were putzing around the mall.  Somehow living in Manhattan I’d forgotten that there was this awful stage of human development called adolescence… you don’t really see many teenagers hanging out in New York.  Either they don’t exist, or they’re much better at pretending to be grown-up than the suburban variety.  But here they were, in the Natick Mall, in all their hormonally confused, sexually frustrated, acne-ridden, and socially awkward glory.  There were the skanky hos, wearing neon tube-tops and short shorts as if they were going out in Ibiza (in 1985), the slackers in their hoodies, the wannabe thugs in their gold chains and baggy pants, the goths, the jocks, the lipsticks, and so on and so forth.  I’d forgotten about all these little tribes and how much they meant back in high school… not that we don’t have our own tribes now, but somehow we seem to be able to get along better ever so slightly.  Maybe we do grow up at some point… or at least we get better at pretending to get along.

But something has been nagging me and did not feel quite right.  I had two main culprits in mind: my poverty and the difficulty of dating here.  But, like a physicist in search of a Grand Unified Theory, I thought there might be something more fundamental behind it all.  And now I have my theory: what really bothers me about New York is excessive ambition.  The most visible aspect of it is money, and the unimaginable amounts people spend on apartments, restaurants, and luxuries here is mind-boggling.  But I’ve decided that money is just a symptom, not the source, of what bothers me.

Everyone here is trying to outdo everyone else.  It’s all about who got a bigger bonus.  Who went on the most exotic vacation.  Who has the nicest apartment.  But it’s not just about money, it pervades everything else too.  Who knows the most obscure restaurants.  Who knows the password for that underground bar.  Who’s in on the latest fashion.  Who is recycles more.  Who has more angst.

Ambition and a desire to outdo others leads to excellence, but it also leads to neurosis.  What really bothers me about New York is how far on the neurotic end of ambitious it is.  New York shouldn’t stop pursuing the next great thing, or else it wouldn’t be New York.  But I think it (and people here) could stand to take a second every once in a while to stop and appreciate that, gee wow, we’ve already got it pretty good here.

Finance has attracted so many talented, hard-working people into its fold with the lure of easy money, a fast lifestyle, and early retirement.  It offered an easy route for kids who might have come from modest family backgrounds to become multi-millionaires within years of graduating from college, easily making their parents’ lifetime incomes many times over.

And the rest of the world has suffered as these bright minds were tempted into what essentially is the task of shifting money around.  Now granted the allocation of capital is an important task; money that sits in a pile collecting dust does no one any good.  But somehow the amount of money that was made doing this investment and redistribution was always surreal, and now we’ve found out that indeed it was all a mirage.

Maybe if more of the people who went into finance had gone instead into government and figured out sensible ways of regulating the investment banks maybe this crisis would never have happened.  Maybe if more of them had gone into science and worked on renewable fuels we would be one step closer to energy independence.  Maybe if more of them had gone into the civil service we would have better diplomats and friendlier relations with the rest of the world, we would have a healthcare system that isn’t falling apart, and we would have teachers who actually know the subjects they are entrusted to teach.

And maybe after the dust settles after this crisis people will re-consider their alternatives more carefully and choose one of those jobs instead of finance.  We will always need bankers and financiers, but do we really need so many?  And does finance really deserve to employ such a large fraction of our best and brightest?  Without the lure of 6-figure bonuses (that had little correlation to actual value created), maybe we will shift back towards an economy and a society that actually produces wealth, culture, innovation, and prosperity instead of producing the illusion thereof.

Unfortunately this scandal is emblematic of the entire go-go decade, as Paul Krugman so eloquently put it. We’ve been living in a fantasy world where unrealistic returns are viewed as normal and no questions are asked about just where all this magic money is coming from.  How exactly does the SEC, not to mention all the other regulatory authorities that Madoff evaded, miss such an incredibly ridiculously enormous fraud?

If Madoff is (almost certainly) convicted of the crimes he committed, what will be his punishment?  Should he go to a white-collar jail and live out the rest of his life in relative comfort?  How exactly does that work anyway?  What exactly is the “harshest” punishment that should be meted out in such situations?  We commonly hold the death penalty to be the harshest punishment available; does it fit in this situation?  Is it commensurate with the crime, or inappropriate because the crime wasn’t violent?

I’m still on the fence about whether the death penalty itself is humane or not.  I have my reservations about whether we as imperfect fallible people have the right to judge whether someone else lives or dies.  But I do believe that, assuming that the death penalty is acceptable, there should be no question that someone like Madoff, if proven guilty, should receive it.  He has caused almost incomprehensible harm to such a vast number of people that we will be picking up the pieces for years if not decades.  Maybe no one has died directly at his hands, but the number of lives that he’s ruined, the number of organizations that are now bankrupt because of his actions, the immeasurable wealth squandered because of his crimes has resulted in far greater harm to this country and to the world than any single act of violent crime could ever cause.  If this judicial system has any pretentions to justice, I hope that it lays down a punishment that’s comparable with the judgments it’s laid down for other crimes, and makes Madoff pay as dearly as anyone possibly can for his crimes against his investors and, more pertinently, for his crimes against humanity.

First, they told us our love was an abomination, that we didn’t deserve to live.

But we stood up, we joined hands, we came out of the closet, and we said, “Yes we do.”

Then, they told us our love is not natural, that we weren’t normal.

But we paid our taxes, we voted, we volunteered, we raised families, and we said, “Yes we are.”

Now, they tell us our love is unworthy and inferior, that we can’t marry.

But we will fight, we will not give up, we will not back down, and one fine day we will be able to say, “Yes we can.”