Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

Getting out and about around 包头 (Baotou)

Finally, after a year in Baotou I’ve managed to get out and about a bit! On October 1st, China’s “National Day” I went with some colleagues to the “Resonant Sand Gorge” about an hour and a half SW of Baotou. Parts of the landscape there look just like SW USA. The Gorge is full of large Sand Dunes about 90 meters high which mark the eastern most reaches of the Gobi Desert. It would be a perfect place to film scenes for any desert movies (it’s not as hot as most deserts). Half of us took a chair lift across the valley to the top of the dunes. I looked at the camels and petted one but did not ride any since no one else seemed to want to. Then I slide down the dune face on a sled but it was way too slow. So I tried to ski down (after climbing up again) but it wasn’t much faster. The most fun I had was driving a dune buggy around 7 times for ¥10 per round (€1.33), so a total of ¥70 (€9.29), … pretty expensive but fun. I had recently finished reading the DUNE prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and then DUNE by Frank Herbert (for the 3rd time) and so it was all the more fun to be in a dunescape!
I also finally managed to get into the mountains north of Baotou and climb one of them. They are apparently called the “Green Mountains” but are actually mostly barren with only very few trees or greenery on them. Although, this year there was more rain than usual and they were actually looking fairly green. I had lost track of time a bit during the week-long National Day vacation and thought it was Saturday when actually it was already Sunday. Therefore, I did not go to the English Corner in 8-1 Park as I often do. However, my friends from the English Corner called me— at which point I realized it was actually Sunday— to ask if I would like to go climb a mountain with them and after a little thought I agreed. The previous two days had been pretty cold and so I wasn’t sure, at first, but it was warmer now and indeed it turned out to be great weather for our excursion.
They came in a couple taxi-minibuses to my school at about 12:30 and picked me up and from there we went to Baotou’s East Side for lunch. There were about 10 of us including Sonny, one of Baotou English corner’s founding members, Louis, a Geography teacher and, Highway, who used to be in the army and Dora joined us after the meal. They had Mongolian hotpot and I had “Tiger-skin Tofu” and fried rice. After the meal we took a bus for about 30 to 45 minutes heading east out of town and got out at the village at the foot of the mountain. First we visited a little Buddhist monastery and/or temple in the village and then after they bought some water at a store we headed up to the base of the mountain. There’s an entrance gate to the mountain where one has to pay admission. Also near the entrance is a stall were one can buy sunflower seeds and rent shoes suitable for hiking up the mountain which were much needed by a few of our party especially one of the ladies. After Louis had negotiated the entrance fee for our group we set off. After the initial set of stairs there was a little Buddhist temple, which looked more Chinese and less like the Tibetan Buddhism which is the primary type in the Mongolian cultural region. Stairs have been put in up most of the way and so, while tiring, it’s a pretty easy hike otherwise. One thing’s for sure: there’s no point wasting money on a “Stair Master” when climbing regular stairs does the job just as well! It took us an hour and a half to two hours to get to the very top where there is a small pavilion. Despite the hike being mostly a matter of going up stairs it was still fun and the views were fantastic and beautiful. I was disappointed, however, to find quite a bit of trash at the peak, around the pavilion. Before going down I made sure to pick up the plastic bottles that had been left by our party and vowed to bring plastic bags the next time I went up there and do some trash pick-up. Some time later I was invited to go see a Buddhist monastery in East Baotou which is quite big and beautiful and looks like its been recently re-decorated/restored.
In December I had to go to Beijing to get a new visa for India, which I visited again from January 21 to March 4—during our school’s winter vacation. It was my sixth visit to Delhi in total and my second to last visit to India (New Delhi, anyway) while my parents still live there! I will visit around the same time in 2004 and then in 2005 my vacation will probably be in the summer and will take me back to Europe (Berlin and Osnabrück in Germany, mostly) after what will have been a 4 year absence! After that I might stretch my visits—my international vacations, in other words—to every few years, in order to save money.
My original plan was to spend 5 days in Beijing but forgetting to bring photos for the visa application and misjudging how easy (or not) it would be to get a hard-sleeper train ticket on the same day I was planning to leave caused me to spend an extra 2 days there. I was staying with some friends but happily staying an extra couple days wasn’t problematic for them (and didn’t involve any extra expense for me). However, it was cold and I also had a cold so I did not go out much. Although I did go see my friend Martin Kerr’s solo-concert at his friend Moki’s newly acquired music club. It’s the LOUP CHANTE, originally opened by some foreign students. It has a good reputation for being a place to go to listen to good music and is right next to Beida University (on Bai Yi road… the next time you’re in Beijing you can go check it out… you can give me a call for further directions).
The first half of the new northern loop of the Beijing Subway has opened. However, this new line is an over ground elevated train so it should more rightly be called an S-Bahn for the German speakers or an L (or El as in “elevated”) for those from Chicago. The new stations and everything are lovely and well made but the admiration stops at closing time—literally! Because I got there at 21:00 on my way to Martin’s concert and the damn thing had just closed! Aargh! How can Beijing hope to compete with other global cities (which it does in many ways quite well) if all its subways and other light rail all close between 21:00 and 22:30!! They should really stay open until at LEAST midnight… at least on the weekend (this was a Saturday night). So I went to try and find the bus stop that Martin and I had used earlier that day to go to the place. I found a bus stop for the same # bus but I wasn’t sure which side of the road was the right one. I thought saying “Beida” might be enough for the bus drivers to know where I was asking to go but the drivers of buses on both sides of the road shook there head at me and so then I didn’t know what to do… I asked some young people if they knew which direction/bus to take to go to the place I wanted to go to. They were not familiar with the bus I thought it should be, I guess, because they suggested a different bus which didn’t quite go to the right place but went in the right general direction. So I took the bus they were taking and the next bus stop was the one I had been looking for. I wanted to get out and wait there for the bus I had wanted to take before since (at least earlier in the day) it definitely took me right to where I needed to go but by the time the thought process had happened it was too late. I then spent the time trying to figure out whether I should change buses or not and finally decided to when I saw the right-numbered bus coming up behind us and I thought I might be able to switch buses without having to wait at the bus stop but I didn’t make it. Then looking at the bus schedule it looked like the route was different after 20:00 and I wasn’t sure whether the bus would still be going as far as I needed anymore so I again enlisted the help of some more young people at the bus stop. It helped out but the only problem was that they thought I needed to get off a little earlier than I actually did and so I had to walk for one or two bus stops before finally arriving at the Loup Chante (The “Singing Wolf” if I'm not mistaken) about 2 hours later than I had wanted to (or would have if the damn train line didn’t close so early). Luckily I had been planning to get there early and so Martin was only just starting as I arrived. And so I had a great time listening to his beautiful voice, enlightening and uplifting music for the next two hours or so. Plus, he was nice enough to take me (and another of his friends) home by taxi as I was broke and wouldn’t have known how to get back by bus even if enough of them were still running. So, it still ended up being a great evening.
I also took the opportunity to visit a friend of my parents and colleague of my fathers—Mrs. Traudel Schlenker— who works at the Beijing Goethe Institute (my father is the assistant director of the Goethe Institute—or Max Mueller Bhavan as they’re called in India—in New Delhi). If you don’t know: the Goethe Institute is the International German cultural institute which teaches German and promotes multi-cultural exchange the world over. Also, Traudel has a daughter who went to my high school (J.F.K.S. in Berlin, Germany) right after I did, and so we had plenty in common to talk about. We went to a great Indian restaurant that we both hadn’t been to in the ZhaoLóng Hotel.
Furthermore, for the first time in my life I met someone whom I had first met in Cyber Space (over ICQ). We met twice, first at the Taj Pavilion Indian restaurant and then at a Chinese restaurant and then window shopped at a couple high tech stores. I already new what Sunnore looked like and vise versa, though, since we had seen each others web-pages with accompanying photos.
The final event of note this semester was the first Chinese wedding I’ve attended. Although, it wasn’t a purely Chinese wedding but a Chinese-German wedding of two friends of mine, Jörn and Huimin. Two hours to the east of Baotou, as I’ve mentioned before, is Hohhot—or as the Chinese pronounce it Hu-He-How-Teh—the capital of Inner Mongolia. Although most Chinese usually refer to it as Hu-shì (shì sounds like shir and means city or market) for short. It was on the last Sunday of December. It was a lovely wedding, but the temperature was well below freezing, maybe –15° C. Compounding this was that the heating in the restaurant was poor at best. It must have been worst for the poor bride! And I was suffering from a cold also! Nevertheless, I was very glad to have gone to such an important event in the lives of two of my good friends! It convinced me though, that if I ever get married in Inner Mongolia it will definitely not be in the winter! The marriage, pre-, post- and the marriage itself was a mix of German and Chinese traditions. For example, on the Chinese end: the marriage took place in a big restaurant, the couple bowed 3 times to both sets of parents and to each other (the “to each other” part was very much in a sense of fun with the groom being pushed closer and closer to the bride until he was too close to bow properly) and changing clothes—from western fashion to Chinese fashion— after the main part of the ceremony was finished. And on the German end: some friends and the parents created a skit while putting up pictures of the couple’s two lives and how they came together on a clothes line. After the main part was over and the couple had changed from their western style wedding dress in to Chinese style costumes, they went around to toast everyone at each individual table. During the whole thing the guests had been eating a big lunch while being entertained by the “ceremony”, as it were.
On my way back to India for my winter vacation I had to stop in Beijing for a couple days in order for China Eastern Airlines to reissue me my ticket because they had stopped the Shanghai-Delhi flights (which was my original route) in favor of (only) a weekly Beijing-Delhi flight. It turned out to be a great thing, though, since it gave me the opportunity to spend a great evening of dance and music with Martin and friends at a friend’s house and then I went out with a couple friends to a Salsa club called “Latino’s”. The club has a live band which plays Latin music and during the breaks they play Arabic and other music. I enjoyed it very much!
Recently while being driven in the school’s car (which is mostly used by the executive principle—the school’s no.1 big boss) I discovered that the driver had installed a police siren! The principle has friends in the Police and that’s probably where he got it from. So now every now and then, when the driver is in a hurry he likes to give a honk of the extra loud police horn or a brief woop-woop of the siren. Since the car is white, taxis or whoever is in the way quickly get out of the way thinking it’s an undercover police cruiser! It’s an interesting and amusing experience which I'm sure provides the driver with great amusement!
Another observation of interest I’ve made is the bus conductors on the small private buses which supplement the public buses on the same routes. They are extremely outgoing in trying to get passengers, shouting out at people on the street and sometimes almost forcing them in! But many people prefer to wait for the public bus because, although they are often more crowded with standing room only, they are often slightly cheaper.
There are at least two fun signs in Baotou. One of them is for a western style fast-food restaurant which has the amusing name: “Pope Love” however for some strange reason the acronym is PPL not PL. I’ve realized—I guess Po Pe means something in Chinese. I’d really like to take a picture of it and send it to the Vatican! Another amusing sign for you German speakers, which is to be found in several places is advertising for a clothing company called, in pinyin: BUSEN which in German means breasts!
An interesting thing in Chinese (Mandarin) is that the terms for water, soup and tea seem to be used interchangeably. So you might ask for more tea by saying, “more soup please”, or ask, “do you want more tea?” By saying, “do you want more water?” And similar possibilities. It seems to be true for some other terms also.
Some highlights of my sixth time in Delhi: a visit from my Uncle Dieter (my father’s youngest brother) and Aunt Adelheid (his wife). A trip with them and my parents for 9 days through Rajastan (in North West India) stopping in Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jaiselmer, Ajmer, Pushkar (if I'm not mistaken). Visiting my friends in Delhi and at the Bahá'í Mashriqu'l-Adhkar (in English: “Dawning Place of the Remembrance of God”) which is also known in Delhi and throughout India as the Lotus Temple. And general R & R and time spent with my parents, watching TV, reading books and enjoying a fast and unrestricted internet access at the local Cyber Hook-Up Point.
Now I'm back in Baotou for another 10 months before my next international vacation trip. The weather is finally nice and warm (10° to 25° C) and rain instead of snow today (however Baotou is predominantly a dry climate). There’s usually enough wind to keep the air fairly fresh, much fresher than New Delhi, anyway!