the internet: bringing us together and pushing us apart since Jan 1, 1970

Some things that are on my mind:

Chris Arnade's tweets - I don't know who this guy is, just stumbled on his posts, and couldn't stop reading. I guess here's a decent starter. He's a reporter who used to live in the "front row" (wall street) and now travels among the "back row" (small cities throughout non-coastal America).

An interview with Will MacAskill - guy behind 80,000 hours and Giving What We Can and philosophy prof. You don't have to listen to all of it (it's long) but you should (it's great) - the one point that's relevant to this post was about tribalism (especially in election season). Why should your view on abortion have anything to do with your economic policy?

With that context, sleepy and trying to wake up, I opened Facebook. Came across a post by a family member (keepin' this all super vague b/c public blog and don't wanna embarrass anyone I guess) expressing regret over some recent riots that came out of a vigil for a black guy killed by police. Other family (some close, some less close) jumped on, "yeah it's so sad," "violence is not the way," etc. And I found my mind doing a couple things:

1. assuming that those family members were all therefore invalidating the struggle of black people to not get killed

2. getting angry because black people are getting killed!

3. spiraling into rage, thinking about my other friends who are posting about black people being killed

4. writing off my family members' opinions because they're so sheltered in their white middle class lives or something

and... that's mostly ridiculous, to say the least:

1. man, who knows! I know that some of the family involved (again, staying super vague) care, and get it, about black people getting killed. posting about riots (happening in a place they're living) doesn't mean they don't believe protests are justified.

2. ok, this is not ridiculous

3. ... but this is silly. I'm getting a daily dose of anger fuel without doing anything about it. Like, I see posts running the gamut from "black people are getting killed, that is bad" -> "holy cow this is actually really bad" -> "if you disagree, you are wrong" -> "if you disagree, you are bad" -> "if you even less-than-fully-agree, you are bad". The later steps are usually said through sarcasm, not outright. Somewhere between "holy cow this is actually really bad" and "if you disagree, you are bad", this stops being useful and starts being tribalism.

4. oh gosh! first of all, I'm living in the biggest bubble city there is. I guess I see more poor and not-white people on a daily basis than they do, but I can't say I interact meaningfully. Second of all, what good is it to close yourself off from someone you disagree with? Third, I mean, these are family relationships, too, and those are important, and yeah you can disagree with someone's politics without writing them off as a person, but it's hard when you're in the "if you disagree, you are bad" mental state.

The result of all this is that I'm angry, and feeling closed off from family members. (and nothing has happened to help stop black people getting killed by police.) Maybe, looking at this real optimistic-like, I should focus on this as a practice opportunity to:

- remember not to take anyone beyond their word - if you say "riots are bad" it doesn't mean "the thing that caused their riots isn't bad"

- not close off, in case people do disagree with me

- love my family despite disagreeing with them sometimes

Well, at least I'm awake.

EDIT: to be clear, I didn't mean this post to be about the riots or police violence at all. I was trying to say more something like "Facebook surfaces the angriest views on anything to me, which changes my reactions enough that I'm unable to even relate to people normally; this is frustrating" and "I wish I could read my friends' news in a way that doesn't bathe me in anger." To be further clear, my points #1-4 above (the first time I talk about them) are mostly wrong, and I referenced them all again a second time to disprove them all. Anyway, if this post makes you want to discuss anything about riots or police violence, then sure, let's do so, but I don't mean to be taking any particular stand here. (well, ok, I guess I'm taking the stand that black people getting killed unjustly by police is bad. but that's hardly a stand.)

also: I was trying to anonymize everyone, and I'm pretty sure I succeeded in anonymizing it enough that an internet rando couldn't google the people involved, but obviously didn't anonymize it to the people involved (or people who know the people involved, or who also got the shared facebook post.) I'm not real sure how to do this. I could say "I saw a post from a person about an event, and it made me think ____" but then it's like reading math: so abstract it's hard to tell what's even going on. not good reading, anyway. Also, when I say "some family members", the wrong family members might think it's them. Open to suggestions on how to do this better.

also also: who am I writing for here? good question. first of all, me. there's a reason I hardly ever try to publicize this blog (and start all sorts of new ones for sub-audiences). I guess (and this is an unintentional thing I'm only now realizing) second of all might be pretty close friends and pretty close family? folks who know me and my context and life and might be interested in ramblings?
It's the kind of thing where it'd be nice if all my close peers were around a lot and I could process my feelings through them, but now we live all over the place.
And I want it to be super opt-in-whenever; like I don't want to facebook push it to you, but if you want to go check a blog, go ahead.
But it does leave me with a super uncertain audience, which means I'm sometimes not sure about who I can talk to about what. Eh.

(thanks to my mom for an interesting conversation about all this)

Anyway, if anything I say makes you feel bad in any way, or if it seems like a thinly veiled dig at you behind your back, let me know, let's talk it out.

A bunch of small thoughts from an old notebook

1. Listen to the "autism isn't what I signed up for" episode if Death, Sex, and Money podcast. Oh god! That's the most terrifying thing I've heard recently (b/c possibility times harm is really high).

2. Apparently there are people who pretend to be soldiers, wear combat gear, etc, just around town to get discounts, praise, etc. Uh, OK. And apparently there are people who like to find these people and discover that they're lying and publicly and loudly embarrass them. Again, uh, OK. They call their crusade "Stolen Valor." Predictably, sometimes they're wrong, and they just make a scene screaming at some poor old guy who couldn't answer their impromptu inquisition to their satisfaction.

I guess this is a perfect example of all kinds of terribleness that happens on the internet, ostensibly for a noble cause, but in reality caused by people's love of feeling superior and casting out the infidel.

3. Is there something to intermittent fasting? For general health and living longer because your body cleans up all the nasty damaged pre pre pre cancerous cells?

4. I just have one sentence written down and I forget the context: "the political discourse is more dangerous than ISIS." Upon reflection... Yeah, I can see that. Like if you pull some trick to get elected but then it also lessens public trust in government, and then we fail to pass a carbon tax or something. Like, if you're trying to drive a car a thousand miles, the most dangerous thing that can happen isn't a bumpy road, it's if you let your engine degrade. Eh, this requires some kind of large scale thinking to look at relative risks of various large problems. Gosh, wish I knew someone who did that :P

5. "You have to do a hard thing in your 20s. Grad school was/is OK for me I guess." - tongue in cheek, but like, one of the real upsides of grad school is I know I've been challenging myself and haven't wasted the last 5 years, career wise.

A travel and embroidery project 5 years in the making

Over the past 5 years, I've been lucky enough to take 3 more-than-a-month trips to some pretty neat parts of the world. 2011-2012, while waiting for grad school to start, I took off to India (and Cambodia and Singapore and Australia/NZ), came back to the states for a month, then went to Eastern Europe (and some Western too). 2016, after Tati and I got married, we went to central-western China.

Each time, I brought one button-down shirt. They tended to be khaki-colored, which is partially just coincidence and partially because I want to be Indiana Jones. Each time, by the end of the trip, after I wore it for 50+ days, that shirt was pretty beat up. For some reason, I still saved them. And here's why: I had this idea to stitch the routes I took onto them. Finally I got around to doing it.

India, plus Cambodia and NZ. In Singapore and Australia, I was just in a couple cities for a few days, so they're not as interesting to map. Blue is flights, green is ground travel. Only two flights here, from Kathmandu to Paro and Trivandrum to Bangalore; I try to stay on the ground as much as possible.

The countries I went to in Europe. Had to add another color for this: red is travel on my own two wheels. (125cc Aprilia Leonardo scooter, in this case.) Maybe should have redone my NZ trip with the bicycle trip, across the center of the South Island, in red; too late now.

Technically cheating with this shirt, b/c the India one made it as far as Lublin, Poland, and then I bought this shirt there. And this shirt then survived back to the US and I wore it sometimes here. But it's already complicated enough :P

No two-wheeling in China. But luckily, no flights either. There is a lot of China, and we saw only a slice of Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu. Kinda like if you went to the US and stayed in the Mountain time zone.

Things I learned:
"Embroidery" just means sewing decorative things. (Thanks to my friends Erin and Iris for some tips on the process btw!)
Stitching across pockets is hard.
A "Transfer pen" is a thing you can use to draw on fabric then stitch over it and easily wash it out. Here's the one I used.
There is "embroidery thread" that would have made these lines a little thicker and prettier. Whoops.
Every project about your own travels is pretty navel-gazey unless you're Paul Theroux or Pico Iyer. I'm fine with that.
We have a nice frame shop in the Mission at 20th and Valencia where you can get nice premade frames.
I can be an artist in my spare time. That is both possible and ok. Furthermore, I can call myself an artist regardless of how much art I make or how good it is. Doesn't mean I'm claiming I'm as cool as most artists, just means "I make art sometimes."
Being Done with a capital D with a long project feels good.
Being Done with a project that feels really awesome, that has personal history and meaning embedded within it, feels extra good.

Avoid Brazil (The Movie)

Another half formed post, but if I wait until everything is perfect I will never blog.

If we talk a lot, you probably know that the dystopia I fear the most is Brazil. (The movie, I mean.)

1984: we kinda figured out how not to have that one for the most part. (granted, parts of it keep showing up, Snowdenleaks and all, but the whole vision is unlikely.) (we can debate this I suppose but the point is

Brave New World: again, we got parts of it, but I feel like we're getting better at non-eugenics, and nobody I know makes me think we're likely to drug ourselves into unthinking oblivion. (If you think we're doing that: name *a person* who you think is doing that. people like to say we're doing this in a society-as-a-whole level, but when you try to find it in individuals, it's difficult. I am optimistic about individuals.)

Terrorists Win: again, unlikely. (even though the danger from terrorists is not the suicide bombers who kill 3 people a week, or the 9/11ers who kill 3000 people once a decade, it's the terrorists who steal a nuke and kill 3 million people once a century. is this a more hedged view than I've had before, which was essentially "do not worry about terrorism At All"? yes. have you figured out how to change my mind on anything at all? yep: get Scott Alexander to blog about it. but I digress.)

The Matrix or Skynet or Paperclip Maximizers: now, this one is more likely than any of the above! But I'm not very good at figuring out small probabilities over large time frames, and multiplying by the harm caused by each of them. So I will simply say that this maybe should get bumped up my queue, but in the meantime I figure it's still not as likely as...

Brazil, though: the bureaucracy dystopia. The system that Squashes You. (maybe because of a typo on some form somewhere.) Here's an example, an account of a harrowing Heathrow deportation experience. (tl;dr: someone was going to give a perfectly legit talk at a perfectly legit conference, and said so at immigration, but for whatever reason, UK officials turned her away. This is not just an annoyance, it is a really distressing 48-hour-or-so experience.)

Likelihood of Brazil: AFAICT, 100%. I mean, this future is already here. (It's just unevenly distributed.) The richer (and whiter and maler) you are, the more you can opt out of some of the Systems, but still, every so often, one will squash you.
Likelihood of Brazil getting worse: 98%? I mean, we keep doing more Machine Learning to categorize everyone every day. More, more complicated systems, which each have a 2% false positive rate, but 2% of Everyone is a huge number of people getting hosed by each one. (and it's a non-independent 2%.)
Problems of Brazil: are obvious I think - esp if you're a Muslim flying on a plane or a black person stopped by police or whatever. TODO: more detail here.
Problems of Brazil even if you're a richwhiteman: it just narrows your universe. I mean, Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who made a clock - you can't even make a clock and bring it to school anymore. You can't wear funny clothes and fly on a plane. You can't take risks with your money, start a business or something, if you want to buy a house someday.

What can we do about it? I don't really know. Like, some of the work going on with making your algorithms not profile people is a nice start, but there will always be false positives. Make sure your System has a solid (quick, easy) appeal process?

What exactly do I mean by Brazil? TODO: more detail here too. Roughly: complicated systems with false positives?

And this is even leaving out the stuff that's not really one system squashing you, but a bunch of systems letting you fall through the cracks. Rents rising, can't make ends meet, etc. (Pittsburgh! Not SF. Kinda just wanted to highlight another great article from my friend Margaret.)

Weird mornings on Market St, part N

Parked my bike outside Equator Coffee by 5th and Market. Locked it and got a seat looking out the window so I could watch it in case someone was trying to steal it. Lo and behold, not 5 minutes after I sat down, a couple guys were standing around it, eyeing it suspiciously. I was trying not to Nextdoor* them, but I started making eye contact, and they were like "is this your bike?"

*racially profile

Turns out the one guy had his bike seat stolen, and it was a black and white Novara seat. My seat is a black and white Novara seat, on a not-Novara bike. It's probably a $10 seat, that I got from my friends Iris and Jim in Pittsburgh because Jim had taken it off his bike. Then, when I bought my bike, it had a leather saddle, which is cool but doesn't do well in the rain, so I took it off my bike and put on this Novara seat. So, weird story, and he was convinced I had either stolen his seat or bought it off a guy.

Dude calls cops. Ok, I got nowhere to be, I can wait for the cops. But A. cops are going to take forever to show up for a small bike part theft (and I don't blame em, really) and B. how the hell am I even going to prove it's my seat? I start texting Iris, who can back me up, I guess. I mean, it's better proof than this guy has.

And like, I don't even care about this seat! But the cops are called. And his story checks out; he has another bike seat with him; says he was going to put it on my bike, so at least I've got a seat. I'm eyeing his extra bike seat, which is also worth about $10, and I'm like "want to just trade?"

So we do. Go down to a local shop, borrow some tools, trade the seats, and we're all happy. Hell, his new one (plain black) looks better than my old black and white one, on my bike, anyway. I'm pretty sure he's actually legit, despite my first inclinations with randos on Market St, because if he's running a scam it's the weirdest/dumbest scam of all time.

Strange morning. Anyway, counter-story to the typical Market St Rando story: not everyone is a terrible bike thief? Sometimes a guy who has some crazy story about his bike seat is actually telling the truth? I'm not sure what to learn about this, except that I feel like I did a Good Deed, and that feels good?

On being a taker

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, is this book where a telepathic gorilla (Ishmael) explains the history of humanity. One crucial point happens around the introduction of agriculture. You've got everyone running around, nomadic hunting-gathering, and then some people figure out how to grow and store food, and this split happens. Some people settle down and grow crops; Ishmael calls them "takers." Some people keep hunting-gathering and nomading, Ishmael calls them "leavers." The leavers really have better lives: they eat healthier food, live longer, live in the moment and don't worry so much, don't have issues of hierarchy or power. But the takers are better able to survive as a society, live through famines, make weapons, so slowly the nomads are forced out of their land and die off, and nowadays 99.9% of people are descendants of the takers.

Importantly, Ishmael means the words "taker" and "leaver" to be value neutral. He could have called them group A and group B, but that implies one is "first." He's just trying to say, here are two groups, they differ in this one big way. (Still seems a little loaded to me but I'm going to run with the terms anyway.)

Now, modern day. Obviously we're not choosing to use agriculture or not. But I feel like we do still have a basic choice in life: to take or leave the deal that's been handed to us. Taking tends to include some variety of a career, family, "normal American life." Leaving has all kinds of forms: traveling full time, starting your own business (outside the VC world), becoming a monk, whatever. (Of course, there are degrees to this too, and you can Take in some ways and Leave in others. Plus, it all depends on your upbringing; if you grow up a monk, then staying a monk would be taking, I guess.)

Now I'm 30, and I've decided, slowly over ~10 years, that I'm a taker. This isn't something I necessarily expected; sometimes I thought I'd be a full time traveler or move to Nepal, sometimes I thought I might not ever get married, and I had (still have!) a running understanding with my friend Ram that one of us may one day drop everything and go live in a cave on a mountain. But taking is the best thing for me now.

And it's not a decision that happens quickly; it's a series of slow decisions that I've all consciously decided. Yeah, I'll be happiest and most helpful if I join the corporate world, after a stint in the academic one. Definitely married, and with that, gonna have a family. Not going to be a monk. Not even going to be a full time artist.

Respect to the leavers! If anything, I find leavers cooler than takers. If you can make your own separate peace, whether that's through punk zines or religion or hippie communes whatever else, and you're not hurting anyone, power to you.

But respect to the takers too. My skills, abilities, and preferences mean I'm probably going to do better taking than leaving. And taking doesn't mean I'm cool with the world overall; there are many (many!) systemic problems. But for my individual self and life, I've got to decide to take it or leave it, and I'm taking it.

(Perhaps the most interesting point in this, to me, is that I felt compelled to write it. Like I've got to justify why I'm a taker when I think leavers are cool and the world is full of big problems.)

A couple logistickey things about costs and gear

Costs of some things:

A double hotel room, not fancy but clean, usually with bathroom, in a not-dumb location: $20 (small towns) to $40 (big cities)
Hostel bed: $4-15 (the low end can be pretty dank (as in socks, not as in memes))

Meal of noodles, baozi, dumplings, or something else at a little joint on the street: $1-2
Meal at a sit down restaurant with a menu: $4-8
Hot pot or other fancy meal for two: $20-30
Watery Chinese beer: $1.50-2.50. But at a bar it's not just "buy yourself a beer"; you buy like 6 or 12 for table then drink shots of it. You may drink a lot of beer quickly, but it's probably OK because a lot of the beers are 3% ABV.
German or Belgian beer in a fancy bar: $5-8, and then you sit there with one beer for yourself you selfish antisocial goober
Tea: you usually can't even buy this, it comes with the meals and is green and weak.
Tea at a teahouse: $2-3. Yesterday I tried to buy tea with fruit and sugar at an outside teahouse and she said "yi bei, er shi", which means "one cup, ¥20 (about $3)." But I thought she said "yi bai er shi" which means "¥120 (about $20)." So I made a face and said how that's too expensive and got a beer instead. I'm wondering what she thought of the whole thing.
Coffee: $4-7 (or $33 at that bizarro-world drug front coffee shop we ran into) By the way, the best coffee shops in Western China, based on my extensive survey, are Xiangcheng Coffee in Shangri-la, Greenhouse Coffee in Xining, and Let's Grind in Chengdu.

Entrance fees: significant! Yading and Kanbula were both $40. Lots of others for things like Yubeng, Zhangye Danxia, the pandas in Chengdu, Songzanglin monastery in Shangri-la, that Qinghai Lake tourist trap, and some frickin' gorge in the middle of nowhere outside Xiahe where some goons set up a ticket booth were in the $10-15 range. I mean, they've got you over a little bit of a barrel because it's clearly worth it, but be sure to budget for these.

All day bus (e.g. Chengdu to Zoige, or Shangri-la to Daocheng): $20
21-hour train, hard sleeper (which is not "hard", really, it just means that there are 3 bunks, not 2): $45
2 hour express train: $15
Hiring a car and driver for a day: $70-100
Gas: $6/gallon

A nice thermos: $15
A nice scarf: $15
Cheap baijiu (liquor): $1 for a 6-oz bottle with a beer bottle cap
Expensive baijiu (Moutai is the one brand I know): $200 for a big bottle
Cheap Pu-erh tea: $0.15 for a one-serving rock
Expensive Pu-erh tea: remember those old ads for K'nex? "If you can imagine it, you can build it"? Well, if you can imagine it, you can pay it for Pu-erh tea.
Is Pu-erh tea really The Best? I mean, up to you, but sure, in the way that caviar is The Best but so is peanut butter.
Clothes: not way cheaper than the US. You could pay $20 for a shirt or pair of pants that are probably like a step down from Gap. You can get amazing sayings on it though, so point, China.

Some more thoughts about gear:

Phone: we are clearly in the age of the smartphone. (This is not a given. 5 years ago we were not.) So glad I didn't bring a computer.

Coats: if you're going to China in July and August, you don't need two down layers. I still like my current plan of rain jacket shell + down jacket + down vest for when it's really cold, but God it was 80 degrees for 90% of this trip, I really could have skipped the vest.

Toiletries: I thought I was really clever by packing one toothpaste for the both of us. Guys, don't do dumb micro-optimizations like this. Just bring two lil' toothpastes.
I brought one 4oz and one 2oz bottle of contact solution (ssh, don't tell the TSA). That was the perfect amount. Or really, the perfect amount is, get Lasik like Tati and bring no contacts.

Oh my god Towels. Maybe bring a towel? For the first half of the trip we mostly got towels included; the second half, I often didn't. It should be a law that a guesthouse gives you a towel: look, guys, you launder your sheets, just launder towels too. There's no way I should have to carry this. But anyway, especially if you're super-budgeting it, maybe bring one of those REI-ish super-towels.

Socks: I'm finally kinda happy with the Smartwool PhD like quarter-length socks. They still make my feet too hot but not wayyy too hot so that's nice. It might be just finally going shorter than crew-length. Added bonus: they pack smaller.

Amount of clothes: I'm updating my recommendations to 3 T-shirts and 4 pairs of socks. Socks are so small and sometimes you really need new ones. Shirts, you don't need new ones as badly. (also, 2 pairs of pants, one button-down shirt, 2-3 underwears, and whatever coats you need. these numbers all include the one you wear on the plane.)

Shoes: Got these Salomon something something light hiking shoes that are waterproof and breathable and blah blah but what I really dig is that they have this drawstring doober instead of laces! I can very easily leave them loose and very easily tighten or loosen them. Never tying anything again. Love it.

Vacuum packing bag: I finally tried one. I think it saved me space? It's kinda neat? It also takes up a little space itself? The jury's out.

Kindle: wow, when I have infinite podcasts and infinite Ascension (video game) it turns out I read zero. Welp.

Chinese Phrasebook: didn't actually need this - Google Translate has it covered, and even when it makes you say something that doesn't really make sense, it still kinda makes sense.

Medicines you might need: only bring a bunch of medicines if you'll be real rural. If you get sick in a city, worry not, just go into the pharmacy and describe stuff (Google translatin' like a boss), and they'll hand you three drugs: one will be western-looking (maybe even a name you recognize), one will look like Skittles and have plants on the box, and the third one's a wild card, could be Western or plant skittles. Take 'em all as the pharmacist says (they'll cost $6 total), and something will work. Not sure which.

Plug adapters: you probably don't even need these! Every Chinese plug I saw can take the standard American two-pronged plug (in addition to others). If something has a 3-pronged plug, then bring a 3-to-2 adapter, but you're probably only bringing plugs for your phone so you'll probably be fine.

Let's talk about Chinese food more

Someone asked me "what's your favorite Chinese food" and I was really kind of puzzled. What IS it? Like, maybe baozi (steamed buns)? But that's so unfair to lots of way more interesting foods. I hate picking favorites; I want to eat every food.

They were also talking to me about the "northerners eat noodles, southerners eat rice" thing, and I realized, oh yeah, I _have_ been noticing way more noodle joints (and wonton, and dumpling, and baozi) since getting north of Chengdu. Anyway, point to the Northerners; nothing against rice, but they make some amazing noodley things.

Speaking of which: short history of some noodles. So Lanzhou, Gansu became known for its Muslim beef noodles, or niu rou mian. This is fine. However, in nearby Qinghai, there was an area called Hualong, which used to make a bunch of guns. (They started making guns a few decades ago, when Mao and his revolutionaries sent all the gun makers out to this faraway place because they didn't want gun makers all over the place.) But then they started sending guns to criminals (because, who wants guns?) so the new government wanted to get Hualong some other industry. So they started training them to make niu rou mian. Clearly, not quite as well as the Lanzhou folks, but whatever; the industry flourished and they started exporting niu rou mian shops around the country, and now most niu rou mian is second-rate knockoff Hualong stuff. I met a reporter named Chris who's doing a story about this and other intricacies that come in when you dig into the noodle world; fascinating stuff. (And Chris, sorry if I messed up details here. Readers, I'll try to remember to come back here and link to his full story when it's published in a few months if I can remember.)

Folks in Gansu/Qinghai have a way of making lamb. I think it's a Hui (roughly, Chinese Muslim but not Uighur) thing. On menus I've seen it something like "boiled lamb" ... which sounds terrible, but it's really good. More for tenderness than taste - but you can add flavor by dipping it in these spices that are also really good.

Aged vinegar is a thing I haven't noted much about yet. It's everywhere. There's always a thing of red pepper and a thing of aged vinegar on the table. This is awesome. It's savory and tangy and good on just about everything.

Tibetan food gets dumped on a lot, and it's true, I wouldn't rank it among the world's great cuisines. But they've got a few high points. A lot of them are the breads. Not only the qing ke bing (highland barley cake) that Tati and I have grown to love, but also just a bunch of different breads that probably have names that I don't know. They're great kinda in the way that naan or pita is great, not like French or Italian or German bread.

Fuqifeipian, or "Husband and wife lung slices", named after a husband and wife who used to sell lung slices. (luckily, not their own.) Now it tends to be all sorts of organ meats, spicy Sichuan style. Totally great.

Another standout: liang pi, or a cold noodley thing. I'm not sure quite what it is besides kinda chewy wide noodles that are cold and spicy. (About time; everything else here is piping hot.)

Let me know if there's any iconic Sichuan dishes I ought to be cooking or trying. (or Gansu, Qinghai, Yunnan, or Tibetan, really, but I'm going to be focusing on Sichuan.)

What's up in Xining

Xining is neat. It's ~2 million people, putting it on par with Pittsburgh or Cleveland (metro). So, tiny by Chinese standards. Here's a mash of thoughts about it and areas or things I liked:

The Tibetan Medicine Museum. I found this way more interesting than the average museum, for two reasons:

1. all these old medical and astronomical charts. When it comes to writing stuff down, Tibet goes big, not home. So they try to codify everything they know about medicine, and it's 60 volumes, 78 chapters, 60 million words. I mean, and we're not even getting into their religious stuff. This kind of baffles me - how is the rest of the world not all bowing down to their medical knowledge superiority? I'm assuming, with my casual built-in Western chauvinism, that maybe _some_ of those 60 million words are unnecessary. Like, maybe in Tibetan medicine, conciseness is just not a virtue, so if you write the same thing in chapter 71 that someone else wrote in chapter 32, no worries. More darkly, maybe it's an academia syndrome, where all those monks had to do something to prove that they're smart and not wasting time, so they just kept writing. I'm harsh on them because I've been frustrated by their religious writings too; if it takes 100 billion words to understand existence and your mind, then might as well give up. Isn't there a faster track to it? But I digress. It's neat to see.

 This is one book! It's about 6 feet across and 2 feet tall.

Tibetan skeletons: even creepier than Western ones

Here's the 60 volume compilation.

2. The Giant Thangka (Tibetan painting). This thangka, the world's longest, is literally 600 meters long. They say it contains all the history of Tibet, and as I walked along I was like, ok, first king, second king, etc, 27th king, cool, now here's Buddha, ok, life of Buddha, ok, ... and then I figured they'd get into the Dalai Lamas or something. Nope! Way off the rails! There's about 400 meters of various deity-looking creatures with names like Abhiyatsangkhavidayachakra who has 28 arms and is stomping on babies while breathing fire. Interspersed with some abstract diagrams that say something like "the deity of universal truth" but look like an intricate Parcheesi board. Remember how Tibetans aren't known for conciseness? They go big, not home, and I can admire that. (though I'm glad I don't have to study it!)

Xining is close to the outdoors so you can go to Qinghai Lake or Kanbula or all sorts of other
beautiful spots, that's cool.

You know how Pittsburgh is 2 or 3 million people and all single-family homes? Xining is all high-rises and mid-rises. Even as a small city. I appreciate that. Still doesn't feel crowded!

My view

It's moderately easy to get around. Moderately. It's got only buses, no subway, and is occasionally really pedestrian-hostile. Like, instead of a crosswalk they'll have a bridge over the road. Or a terrible mazelike underpass! To say nothing of the cars who do not give a good goddamn. And guess what: traffic's still bad! But it's small enough that I can walk to most places I want to go.

Xiadu Dajie. This street is just one after another, cool bar or coffee shop. I could live on this street. (and some days, kinda did.)

Wenhua Jie and nearby, it looks like, north of Dong Dajie, is where more people go out though. It's funny, bars and cafes are all clustered in bar/cafe areas.

I'm near Mojia Jie, which is I guess a "market street"? But we're in China, so this doesn't seem to distinguish it from a lot of other streets. Eh, it's central anyway.

I'd give more info about the place, but who here is going to Xining, anyway? Eh, hit me up if you are, I'll dish on where to get a good baozi or the best gin and tonic I've ever had (surprisingly enough).

The parks are cool. Central Park has a bunch of people dancing in different ways. Xining's People's Park has nothing on Chengdu's People's Park: Xining's is half amusement park and gaudy tchotchke shops.

If you're around here and you think you hear bombs or gunshots, don't worry, it's just someone setting off fireworks to commemorate their new store opening or something. Loud as nuts, though.

Woof, and it's hot. Mid to high 80s and sunny all week. Drier than Chengdu though.

I feel this trip winding down: I have kinda one last jaunt of traveling: one day in Zhangye, one day in Lanzhou, one day on a train, like half a day in Chengdu, and back to home! It's nice to alternate some moving fast with some sticking around in the same place. And it's all easy from here: see a couple tourist sites, eat some Lanzhou beef noodles, run around Chengdu for a day, hop on a dumb flight back. (via Paris. No, that is not the quickest way back. So it goes.)

Some Helpful Tips for Traveling in Western China

(Particularly Kham and Amdo, where we've spent most of our time, aka parts of Yunnan Sichuan Gansu and Qinghai)
(also feedback is welcome, help me fill this out)

Where I've been and am most qualified to give advice about: Kunming, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge, Feilai si, Shangri-la/Zhongdian, Yubeng, Daocheng, Yading, Litang, Kangding, Chengdu, Langmusi, Xiahe/Labrang, Tongren/Rebkong/Rongwo, Xining, Kanbula, Zhangye, Lanzhou

Learn Chinese! This trip was more language-intensive than I think anywhere else I've been. If you're in Germany, say, everyone knows English. In a place like Korea, a lot of signs are English and you can usually app your way around. But China's a mega culture of its own, and while there's a lot of English signage, and many English speakers, I think it'd be really hard without knowing any Chinese.
I did Pimsleur lessons 1-90, which were mostly good. Practice listening and speaking is crucial, because it's what you'll do the most. Their context is kind of dumb - they always assume you're an American businessman in China to do business - but it's maybe 2/3 useful and 1/3 business fluff. I also tried this app Skrittr, which was good for learning characters - not as crucial as the speaking, but very useful to at least be able to identify maybe 50 or 100 characters.

Phone: get a phone! Or, a sim card. Or, get Project Fi which has reasonable prices overseas. (Maybe t mobile too?) This seems really essential. A common occurrence:
Me: huh, I'm at the address of the guesthouse, or at least close, where is it?
(Calls guesthouse, lots of Chinese ensues, which I don't understand, but I manage to say where I am)
(5 minutes pass)
Someone from the guesthouse: oh hi! Are you Mr. Dan? (Shows me phone convo record to authenticate himself) follow me!
(We go around a corner, into an alley, up an elevator, across a way, up another elevator to the 32nd floor, into someone's apartment that has been converted into a guesthouse.)
Seriously. Things are not so walk-in here.

Blogs:
The Land of Snows http://www.thelandofsnows.com
The Adventures of Jonas https://jcrimm.wordpress.com
These two are the two best English sources I've found for the whole region. Especially Land of Snows - everyone reads it, and Lobsang, the writer, can even answer questions if you email him. Jonas is more under the radar, but has lived in the area for a long time and writes really great bits about places to get you excited about places you didn't know much.
Other solid blogs that have helped me here and there:
China Nomads http://www.chinanomads.com
To Go Back https://togoback.wordpress.com
Bamboo Compass http://www.bamboocompass.com

ATMs: I think the only ones that work with foreign cards are Bank of China, ICBC, and China Construction Bank. ATMs from these big 3 are in all big, medium, and small cities, but not very-small cities. So Feilai si, Yubeng, Litang, and Langmusi were lacking them, the rest had them.

Apps:
WeChat (it's the Chinese SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Everyone is on it. Easier than phoning even.)
Ctrip (for booking trains)
Booking.com (for hotels, better than Ctrip's selection)
Airbnb (it's getting pretty popular; often guesthouses just use it to advertise, but whatever, you found a place to sleep.)
Uber (works here! even better: if you have the Chinese characters for where you're going, you can copy paste them into the Uber app, and then you don't have to explain to the driver where you're going)
Pleco (draw a Chinese character and it can tell you what it is)
Google Translate (and download the offline Chinese language pack) - this does photo translation too which is occasionally super baller. It also does draw-a-character but whatever I like Pleco.
Maps.me (best offline maps I've found, though I've heard good things about Galileo too. That's a caveat - it uses OpenStreetMap, which is still not quite Google Maps quality, but getting surprisingly close! Make sure to download the China provinces you're visiting for offline access)
Baidu Maps (all Chinese, but useful for copy-pasting an address sometimes)
A VPN or three - usually the VPN provider will have their own app.
Anything else you might need! China blocking Google means that the Google Play Store won't work unless you're on VPN. So make sure to download all your apps just in case your VPN isn't working.
Other online helps: China DIY Travel helped me book a train at one point.

VPNs: you need at least one of these. China blocks all sorts of sites (incl Google, Facebook), but if you've got a VPN going, then instead of you asking for, say, google.com, you ask some rando computer in the US, then that computer asks for google.com, and sends the website back to you. China doesn't see you asking for google.com, it sees you asking for some rando computer in the US, so it doesn't block you. Sounds complicated, but most VPNs make it pretty easy to set up. The thing is, it's one more thing to fail, and when you're dealing with crummy wifi and poor Edge connections, one more failure sucks. So I have two VPNs (Privateinternetaccess and OpenVPN) and sometimes one works better than the other. Sign up for them (pay them money, usually like $6-10/month), and make sure you get them fully set up before you go - like actually connect to them at least once. If you've got a VPN for your university library or something, don't count on it - turns out my CMU VPN only VPNs traffic to paywalled journals/conferences. Which is useful, but not enough for me in China.

Watch for gouging: on tourist goods and taxi rides. That's the only places I've ever felt ripped off or like you need to bargain. Bargain for tourist stuff, and either agree to a price beforehand or use a meter in a taxi. (Or use Uber!)

Books: two books I really enjoyed were Country Driving by Peter Hessler (about China in 2010ish) and Trespassers on the Roof of the World by Peter Hopkirk (about Tibet in the 1800s)

Traveling with a purpose beats wandering

I had another post entitled this, but Blogger's Android app, which is hot garbage, ate it. Seriously; it's 2016 and we're making software that loses data? I like how "hot" is now an intensifying adjective for "garbage"; really gives you a visceral sense of how frustrating this is.

Anyway, the post was long, but it's probably good that Blogger ate it because it should be short. All I was really saying is: traveling with a purpose is cool. Traveling without a purpose is less cool. We've got this idea of traveling as vacation, which naturally implies wandering - "I'll go to Hawaii or Thailand or Paris, and then I dunno, good things will happen." But all the coolest travelers I can think of are either working or going there with something in mind - whether it's kitesurfing or visiting an old friend or searching out the best wines.

You want to play the tourist/traveler game? (this is the game where "tourists" are any travelers you don't like, and "travelers" are travelers you do like.) That's the difference: having a purpose or not.

I should mention that touristing, or traveling without a purpose, is about as big a sin as drinking bad coffee - like, I'm not going to get on your case, you're not a Bad Person, you're not even doing a Bad Thing. It's just less cool - you might enjoy traveling more (and you'll get more cred) if you travel with a purpose. But hey, sometimes you need bad coffee, sometimes you like bad coffee, sometimes you want to show up in London and wait for neat things to happen to you. That's ok too.

(I'm just personally tired of purposeless traveling, like I'm tired of bad coffee :)

Kanbula nuts and bolts

If you find yourself in Xining and looking for an adventure, skip Qinghai Lake and go to Kanbula Forest Park. (I mean, or go to Qinghai Lake too, just be sure to rent a car and don't take the bus. Kanbula's easier to have a good time in, if you're by yourself.) This post will attempt to cover all the nuts and bolts to help you get there, because I couldn't find a lot of great English info when I was looking. It's oriented to people googling for Kanbula (or Zhakanbula, or Khambra, as it's also called) - hello googlers! if you have any questions, please leave comments.

Getting there: take a bus to Kanbula from Xining's coach station (right next to the train station). Cost me ¥22.5, and left at 10:30 AM, with other options throughout the day, at 12:00PM and I think 1:30 and maybe another one too? Took about 2.5 hours. The bus arrives in Kanbula town, and a bunch of drivers had vans to take us the last couple of km to the entrance to Kanbula park, for ¥10 each.

Getting back: I don't know exactly when buses go back to Xining. One person told me 10am, one person told me 12:30pm, one told me 11:30am. Who knows, they may all be right. At any rate, it's possible to get back. I think you can also get back the same day, but you should spend a night, it's more fun.

Where are things: the park is around the Lijia reservoir. There's one road that goes around the whole thing. The entrance is at about four o'clock. There are free buses that will take you around this road, counterclockwise usually, and stop at tourist viewpoint sites. There's also a boat that goes across the reservoir (also free); catch it at the first bus stop (around one o'clock on the map) and it takes you near Nanzong monastery (which is in the middle of the clock). That's the route I went: on the bus from four o'clock to one o'clock, took the bus to the center, then walked to Dehong at about seven o'clock, then eventually got a ride back to the entrance and out of the park. So I don't know what's in the western half.

Sleeping: there are some guesthouses in the villages along the south side of the road around the park. I stayed in Dehong, with a Tibetan guy who approached me along the way, for ¥70 including dinner and breakfast. Basic (outhouse etc) but it was fine for a night. There are guesthouses too that I think are a little nicer for about ¥100. Other travelers around the internet report staying in the Nanzong nunnery, but I didn't try; didn't want to impose on them.

Food and drinks: not a ton. Bus stop #1 (at one o'clock) has instant noodles and stuff, and the boat dock has people cooking bread, potatoes, and eggs. Supposedly there's a restaurant in Dehong; I got dinner and breakfast from the folks I stayed with. There are a lot of places you can buy water and non-perishable junk food though.

What to do: you _could_ just take the bus and boat around and take photos at all the tourist sites. Luckily, you can also get off the path by just getting off the bus and walking somewhere. I can't really recommend hiking routes because I didn't have a map, though some other people did so there must be one somewhere (maybe Chinese only). You can hike up to Nanzong town and monastery, and nearby there is also a wooden stairs thing that goes up to a very high place. Shoot, there's viewpoints all over the place. You'll get some good pictures however you go.

Cost: ¥240 to enter the park, as of 2016. (oof!) But only ¥22 for the bus each way, and ¥70-100 to stay the night. Plus a few bucks for food and drinks, and you've got a two-day trip for ¥400-450 per person. Not super cheap, but you could do worse, and it's worth it.

Why's it worth it: I mean, mostly great views. You get the red rocky mountains, the high altitude lake, and some nice forests. It's not super touristed; it is a little bit, and will undoubtedly get more, but you can still get off the path a bit. (as opposed to, say, Qinghai Lake.)

Another day, another couple of Chinese families adopting me

Seriously! Folks here are so over the top friendly. Like, to a fault, but really the fault is mine because I'm the weirdo here.

Went to Kanbula Forest Park, and it was totally great, and I'll write another post just about it, because it was totally great. Arrived around noon, and at around 2, these guys were saying "hey, where are you sleeping? you should come stay at our house! we're in Dehong Village, only ¥50." They offered to drive me there right away. It was really hard to express "no, I want to go walk around first, then I'll come to your place," but somehow I did... and then actually found one of the guys! (Dehong has literally one street, so it wasn't impossible, but still.) Now he's running a guesthouse, really, but more like a bed and breakfast and dinner, and even more like "ok, you're one of our family for the next 12 hours." I sat with them and ate dinner, and then sat around more while everyone talked and I didn't understand, and there was an amazing Tibetan drama on TV with super cheesy special effects (a bunch of princes and princesses and magic and warriors and a monkey guy? like a story of Hanuman or something? but Tibetan?) Eventually we went to sleep. The only one who didn't make me feel right at home was their amazing yappy little guard dog, who was about the size of a bread loaf, but I was still glad he was chained up.

Wake-up call at 6am (which was fine b/c we went to bed around 10, because sunset and what else are you going to do?), scarfed down some bread and instant noodles, and off we all go, them to work, me to take pictures. There's this great gesture/saying that I've gotten a couple times on this trip, like, "then you can go chk-chk chk-chk" (miming a camera), meaning "go take some pictures!" as if he's saying "go refill your oxygen tank" to a scuba diver. Of _course_ you want to take pictures, so all we have to do is suggest it and you'll get the idea.

Of course I did go take pictures, though, because sunrise over these amazing mountains and etc etc, and then it's 7am and dude had told me the bus was at 10am. So I kept walking along the road, which was calm and peaceful and perfect temperature and forests and mountains, and not even many cars, though about 1/3 of them stopped to make sure I was ok. Yes, I just like walking!

One lady was super insistent and kind, though, and it was a big hill and I was tired, so I did accept her offer to the top of the hill, squashing into the backseat along with her mom and kid. (Grandpa was in the passenger seat.) Her name was Lisa, and between us we shared about 10% of a language. With Google Translate, though, we were up to about 50%, so we could communicate, albeit haltingly. She asked where I was going, I told her Xining, she said great, we're going there too! Can we go together? Sure, I said.

This was great for about 15 minutes, we were all talking, until I realized they had just arrived last night and hadn't been around the park at all. I'd spent all of yesterday walking around the park, and would really rather gargle vinegar than go to all the Touristic Viewpoints again, but had no way to communicate that. Outs I tried:
- "oh, don't worry, I don't want to slow you all down. thanks anyway."
- "there's a bus, I'll just take the bus."
- "if you really want to give me a ride, you can take me to the park entrance, where I'll catch the bus back to Xining."
and of course she was having none of it. Eventually she decided the thing to do was to leave right now for Xining. I mean, great, that's what I wanted to do, but don't cut your trip short! I only relented when she kept insisting and I also realized that stopping at the couple of viewpoints we'd been to and taking a couple of photos is really all they wanted to do anyway.

(on the bus to Kanbula, some guys were saying to me "why would you stay overnight in Kanbula? you can see all the sights here in like 2 or 3 hours." Strange view on tourism - though I expect I'd get the same if I was traveling with a random family back in the US)

Like the last time I was temporarily adopted, everything was a discussion, and I never knew what was going on. Worse, it was a discussion between two cars - they were going caravan style with the other half of their family! Argh! I'm glad I had chosen to run with the following half-truth: "I have to leave Xining tomorrow, so I want to have time to see Xining first" so I was able to kindly leave them when we got to Xining.

(to drink coffee and sit at my phone and keyboard and type blog posts like a frickin' antisocial weirdo... eh, y'know)

Man, when your biggest complaint in a place is "the people are too nice here"... Like, it's a legit issue, but also does leave me with a positive view of a place.

One of the hardest things about traveling is you can't be yourself.

Or really, you can't do what you want to do, what you _would_ do at home. Especially when you don't know the language, but even when you do. Instead of doing what you want, you can pick from a narrow range of choices which you usually don't actually like.

Think about it: when did you last go sightseeing in your home town? (new residents don't count) It's not actually much fun.

Instead, you get to choose from a narrow range of things that the local culture has made available to you. Luckily, this almost always includes food. And looking at natural things; we can almost all look at things. Museums are just one notch less accessible: if they can afford a translator into your language, you can see those too. Sometimes sports, live music, other cultural things.

But what do you _like_ to do? I like doing a lot of nothing with friends. Riding bikes. Making art. Cooking. Playing board games and solving puzzles. None of those are in the above list. So we end up doing a lot of things that we don't like to do, when we travel, because it's the thing to do. And we often can't control most of that experience, especially if we don't know the language.

Case in point: I am just about to leave the god-forsaken hellhole called Erlangjian Scenic Area on Qinghai Lake. I ended up here due to a lot of things:
- internet guides failed to really explain how to get to Qinghai Lake, other than "share a car"
- I'm alone now, so renting a car and driver for the day would be $100
- I couldn't find other passengers to share the ride with me at the bus station
- there was another bus station I could have tried, but it was mismarked on OpenStreetMap and missing on Baidu
- plus, I was a little wary of drivers on this route anyway, given stories of trips to Qinghai Lake including long stops at jade and jewelry shops
- my guesthouse host told me it was "inconvenient" if you take the bus, not "terrible"
- I figured, ok, public bus to Qinghai Lake, at least it gets me there. Then I can rent a bike maybe, and if not, I can just walk along the lake. Plus, it was late morning, and if I'm going to go I better go.
- oops shit the "scenic area" is *entirely fenced in.* Like, fence going down into the lake. You can rent a bike or walk, but you can't leave this one-square-kilometer area.

I wanted to spend a little time alone looking at a big lake. Biking would have been a bonus. Instead, I got an hour and a half of a crummy crummy tourist trap.

Like, I can't explain in Chinese, "I want to go to the lake, but not the tourist holding pen on the lake." I didn't even know there _was_ a tourist holding pen. I can't explain "no really, I want a bike, and a ride to the trail where the annual race around Qinghai Lake goes, and then just leave me alone and I'll come back in 6 or 8 hours." That's not one of the options on the Xining Tourist Menu.

Eh, so it goes. More thoughts to come about having a purpose when you're traveling, but I'll save that for another post.

A Woefully Incomplete List of Little Cultural Nuances That Might Be Useful To Know in China/Tibet

- if your bus ticket has an assigned seat, it usually matters. Just sit there. If your seatmate is loudly coughing and loogying into a plastic bag, I mean, at least they've got a bag.

- sometimes, people will ask if you have ¥1 extra to make change easy. For example, if it costs ¥81 and you pay with a ¥100, they'll ask if you have 1. "Yi kuai?"

- similarly about ¥1 notes, public bathrooms usually cost ¥1. Even if there's nobody there, when you come out, someone will have appeared to collect ¥1. It's useful to have ¥1 notes handy.

- however, change is not usually a problem. The ATM gives you ¥100 bills, which are worth about $16, so even if you're buying a bottle of water, people can usually make change if you're out of small bills.

- people count on their hands in a different way. I guess it's more efficient? But I usually just don't know what number they're telling me. I have figured out that two index fingers crossed like you're warding off a vampire is "10".

- one thing they may ask you in a restaurant is if spicy food is ok. If they're asking you something and you can't tell what they mean, listen for the syllable "là" which means "spicy."

- another thing people will ask you way more often is where you're from. My Pimsleur tapes didn't include this, but I've noticed that it often includes something like "na li." You can just say "Mei guo" (or "America") and everyone will be happy. Then if you ask them where they're from, they will say "China" and look confused. Like, isn't it obvious? They'll usually tell you what city if you keep asking questions.

- A common greeting is something like "have you eaten yet?" I don't know what the polite phatic response is, so I just answer truthfully. I don't know if this makes people uncomfortable.

- In a restaurant, if there's a menu, the waiter will usually bring it over right away and then stare at you while you try to decipher it. This can be unnerving. There are a few good solutions: if there are pictures on the menu or the wall, point; if it's a place that obviously serves one thing and you know how to pronounce it, do that; point at other people's food; point at a random thing on the menu; (hard mode) ask "ní kēyī shénme tuíjiàn de?" which is close enough to "can you recommend something?" that they'll usually pick a thing for you. Then nod vigorously and say "ok" a lot.

- there will be no cold drinks with your meal. Maybe hot tea. Your options here: deal with it, drink beer, (sometimes) bring your own drink. I'm not sure when it's ok to BYO; maybe always? Whatever, just try it.

- drivers honk all the time. It's nothing personal. Unlike in the US where a honk means "get out of my way and also you are bad", here it just means "get out of my way" or "coming around the corner, look out" or "I am frustrated" or "hello I am here" or "my car is hooked to a bomb a la Speed and I have to honk every five seconds or it will explode, sorry." Still better than India.

- cross the street aggressively. Cars will not stop for you. If you're really stuck, find a local also crossing and walk right next to them.

- speaking of taking things personally, a Tibetan sticking their tongue out at you is a greeting, not an insult. On the same note, I've found Tibetans laughing at me a lot, which I think is not a greeting but is still more cordial than most people laughing at me. Also, I think I do a lot of dumb things.

- ATMs are in most cities. Some of them will work with your card. Rule of thumb: the bigger it sounds, the better. Bank of China, ICBC, or China Construction Bank: good. Anything with "rural" or "agricultural" in the name: bad.

- If someone, like a hotel person, gives you a receipt, hold on to it. Sometimes they will ask for it later. I am not sure why, or what happens if you threw it out.

- Tibetan guard dogs are super mean. But don't run from them; they will chase you down. Instead, look real imposing, throw a rock at them, or mime that you're going to throw a rock at them. I mean, that's the advice I've gotten; I think the real thing is, don't run into a Tibetan guard dog who's not chained up.

- Linkin Park seems real popular. Particularly the "Minutes to Midnight" T-shirt.

- "Supermarket" usually means "department store."

- people, especially kids, will say hello to you a ton. Unlike in some places, this will not lead to a hassling. At worst, you get a 3 line conversation: hello, where are you from, what is your name. (Disclaimer: I'm a dude, not sure what ladies experience.)

- it seems like lots of workers have some kind of meeting or assembly at the beginning of their shift. You may see them standing in formation with a boss-looking character in front. At one point, I even saw a group doing a dance. If this is what it takes, I could never be employed in China.

- in any fancy cafe, you have about a 50% chance of the music being low key singer-songwriter heartfelt acoustic covers of songs that maybe sound better in the original? Like, there's Blackbird and stuff, sure, but also Billie Jean and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

But Langmusi is super boss though.

I walked up a "Red Stone Mountain" (small mountain; 1hr walk. Still, definitely red stones.) and wandered back the stupidest way possible because I couldn't find the trail. I was just straight up blazing through bushes and shrubs and trees and sheep. What a dumb mess.

Today I rented a bicycle and rode on some hiking and horse trekking trails. Glommed on with a friendly American horse trekking group because I didn't know where I was going, and I wasn't going any faster than they were anyway. Their Tibetan guide invited me to join them for lunch in a black yak-hair tent, and then advised me to stay with them to avoid the (loud, gnarly, obnoxious, vicious) Tibetan guard dogs around. (dogs here are mean! apparently at night their job is to defend their territory from the wolves. eep!) Ended up in the Ocean of Flowers, which was like it sounded: wildflowers making the grass kinda blue-green so it looks like an ocean. Amazing and quiet. Nothing around except a couple of buzzing bugs. Ended up being a 6 hour ride when I was headed out for about two. Super difficult (high altitude + uphills + kinda creaky bike that wasn't quite big enough for me) ... another mess I might not have gotten myself into if I knew what I was in for. But so worth it!

In which, surprisingly enough, traveling with someone else's family is hard

Alternate titles: An introvert's nightmare, Friend-breaking-up is hard to do, Americans are like _this_ and Chinese are like _this_

So Langmusi (aka Lhamo, Taktsang Lhamo, Dagcang Lhamo, Lhamo Gompa, Lamo Goinba, but I will use Langmusi because it seems the most widely used) is this beautiful place about a day's travel from Chengdu, so I head there. Only problem is, there's no bus from Chengdu to Langmusi, just to Zoige (aka Ruo'ergai, but I will use Zoige because I am not a Klingon), about a half hour drive away. Zoige town, however, ... kinda sucks, so I'd rather just get to Langmusi. As in most Tibetan Chinese cities, there are a fleet of drivers who can get you there or anywhere else; as with most drivers, they charge per car so you gotta find some friends to go with you, or pay like 250 RMB to get an hour away.

There's this family that's going there too, or something; they hear I'm going to Langmusi and they lump me in with their negotiations. (unwisely, it turns out; the driver at one point looks at me and goes "50 RMB, ok?" and I say ok, because it is ok, but it turns out the right answer was "no of course not you greedy scumbag, way too much.") Anyway, there is hardcore negotiating going on, involving me, the dad of this family (I think his name is something like "Ya", even though that doesn't really sound like a name, but it's as close as I could understand it), the grandpa ("Yi"?), and their... friend I think? (surprisingly named "Shamma"?) It does not involve the mom or the ~4 year old girl. (I tried to ask their names at some point but it got lost in translation and they never volunteered them when we were going around doing names. Welp.)

God, I can already tell this post's going to be long, and short on action. I need an editor. In the meantime, I'll just explain all the constant ambiguity that accompanied this adventure, and you can read until you get bored.

Anyway, Ya and Yi and Shamma and driver figure it out, and off we go. This took about a half hour. We then go to this field on the outskirts of town while the driver goes in this building and does something? Who knows. Took another half hour maybe. The field's pretty enough; it looks like the Windows XP default desktop. We take pictures and durdle around.

Driver comes back, and off we go. This time to about half a mile down the road, when the driver pulls over and everyone gets out. Then the driver goes home. I still have no idea what happened here, but here we are, six of us, on the side of the road. Ya and his daughter walk back to the city to ... find another driver?

Then the police show up. Three of em; the one in charge looks kinda like my cousin Jordan, but a little older, maybe 40s? The next guy looks around my age and trying to do a good job. The third guy looks like he's about 22, real gawky, and possibly stoned. Anyway, older-Jordan does all the talking, and I still have no idea what's going on, but I'm guessing he's telling us not to hitchhike? And then he and middle-cop tell us to walk back to town. Stoner cop never says a word.

So we're off, back to town! Well, as we're walking off, the cops see a mostly-empty van driving to town, and they ask them to take us back, and they do. After fiddling with the back seat for a while to get it to stay in one place.

Now it's about 2 hours after we started, and I keep wondering, is Ya just lowballing everyone and the drivers are not driving us because we're not paying up? Eh. I cast my lot with Ya and friends, and at this point they're still my best bet to get to Langmusi. And, sure enough, they find another driver and we pile in, mom and kid in front, four in the backseat. I keep falling asleep on Shamma's shoulder. He's not real fussed about it.

Arrival in Langmusi. They're like "where are you going to stay?" and I don't know, of course, so they tell me to come with them and they find a decent place that costs us each 30 RMB ($5) per night. I mean, cool; I thought we were just ride share buddies but I don't mind splitting a room.

We go for dinner. This is an absurd negotiation as well which I don't really understand, but we walk in and out of a few places before ending up at a Sichuan restaurant. Ya: do you want some beer? Me: I mean, if you are. We go to a convenience store and buy 9 beers. We then find out they are pineapple-flavored after opening 4 of them (for the men, duh) and Shamma goes back to return the others and get plain beer. We then each have a pineapple beer and a plain beer, so I guess we're double fisting?

The food is fine. We order some things. Yi wants some boiled lamb. They bring out the lamb and it doesn't look as good as the photo, I guess, so he angrily sends it back. More debate. They keep asking me what I want. I'm seriously fine with anything. But the tricky thing is, sometimes it's all easier if you have a preference, but then you can't easily voice a preference after saying it doesn't matter. Whatever, we eat.

Ya: do you want to all take a walk? Me: Ok, I guess. The family walks down the street. Ya and Yi and Shamma are looking at these elaborately decorated knives in the tourist store. Ya: what do you want to do? Me: I seriously don't care. Eventually Yi still wants some lamb, so we decide he and Ya and I will go buy lamb and the rest will go home. What are we going to do with this lamb? I still have so many questions.

(by the way, we didn't double fist the beers; everyone drank the plain one and then just left the pineapple one. Seems like a waste; I mean, come on, guys, every Chinese beer tastes like water anyway.)

Ya decides to buy some more beers. Ya: do you want to try some Ergotou? Me (thinking): ugh ok I mean I'll try a taste to be a sport but really don't want to be drinking tons of shots of 56% liquor. But that is hard to convey when you share about 25% of a language.

So we have 4 beers, a little ergotou bottle, and a plastic bag with like 2 pounds of lamb. We set up a little table in our room and drink beer and ergotou and eat lamb.

And you know what? The lamb is frickin' delicious, best I've had in maybe ever (Yi was on to something!), and the ergotou is really pretty decent too. (ergotou >> baijiou in my book. wait, are they the same thing?) And we're having a good time, talking about stuff, until the next day's plans come up. They want to take me to Flower Lake. I think about the 100 debates we've had (rather, they've had, in Chinese) in the 5 hours we've been hanging out, and I can_not_ stomach another day of this. We're buddies, but we're not travel-across-the-country buddies. So I throw out excuses, like "I wanted to rent a bicycle", but Ya is having none of it. We are Traveling Companions now. And I try to think of a kind way out of it, and the best I can come up with is, "I really prefer traveling alone."

It's like someone threw cold water on the room. Yi and Shamma seem to get it; I said as much in Chinese and they're talking with Ya, but Ya is so sad. And, I mean, I'm sad too! Friend-breaking-up is really hard. But it seems there was no way we were going to remain friends but not travel together for days, and traveling with them, kind as they were, was stressful as hell.

So it goes, I guess! I'm not losing sleep about it, it was clearly the right decision, but it's hard to tell someone who's convinced that you're best buddies, that no, we were rideshare companions and then I ate dinner with y'all because it's nice of you to invite me. He's gracious about it, but fighting back tears. He says something about "no, I understand. American style." and I start wondering if, maybe, we can make a grand generalization about American and Chinese cultures based on how I like traveling alone and they wouldn't possibly even think of it.

I feel like I've got a good quote in me, something like "travel is the art of getting into uncomfortable (but not dangerous) situations that you might not have done if you'd known what you were in for." Editor, please clean that up, and then start making inspirational posters of it.

Some thoughts while bingeing 99% Invisible on a bus

The Mojave Phone Booth: a rando phone booth in the desert. This guy got obsessed with it, eventually found where it was, made a website for it, and then it got totally overrun with visitors and callers. But there must have been a sweet moment in between where it was not 100% obscure or 100% known, when this guy and some friends could call it or make trips out to it and random people around the world would call it, and it was this beautiful thing connecting people but not overrun beyond what it can handle.

Ok gentrification ok and every story about gentrification ends up with "be nice to the community, care about them, get to know them; don't move into a poor community in order to 'be the change' and hipsterize it and make it all fancy and rich." What if you move into a rich community and attempt to "be the change" to make it more diverse and interesting and welcoming? (obviously thinking about myself and Tati and Noe Valley; not that we're amazing people who could do that, but is it a reasonable goal?)

OH MY GOSH CELEBRATE MAINTAINERS. We are all about the innovation, the new thing, the "unicorns" that get a huge success in a short time, the people who launch the new feature... but what about the people who keep the old feature working? There's a famous column by Joel Spoelsky about how Netscape really shot themselves in the foot once by throwing all their code out and starting over. And yet, that's what everyone wants to do. Celebrate the people who keep the old thing running and improve it; make it work better, not just newer. Forget Steve Jobs, celebrate Alice from engineering who keeps your iPod Actually Just Working.

And this holds beyond software! Listening to an episode about Soul City, one of 13 ill-fated attempts to start a new city in the 60s, backed with federal money, because our old cities were so hosed and nobody knew what to do with them. They all failed except one that just happened to be near Houston in an oil boom. Not super surprising; you can't just plant your flag in the ground and say "new city here!" (well, plus Soul City, the only one started by black people, was hosed by plain ol' racism too, which never helps)
I think now we're seeing that we better fix what we've got instead of start a new thing, usually, mostly. And screw Tony Hsieh and his big plan to make Vegas cool; props to the million unnamed city council people and PTA board members and garbagepeople who keep our existing cities working the way they are.

Taiwan's Taipei 101, a big building featuring a huge tuned mass damper, which is usually an annoying thing you've gotta stick into your supertall building, but they decided was going to be a feature and tourist attraction. And then they made "Damper Babies", cartoon characters to get people excited (!) about this tuned mass damper. I ... want to buy some Damper Babies merch now.

I had no idea "Temescal", Oakland, was a newfangled realtor manufactured BS name like NoPa or Lower Nob Hill. Insidious, eh?

When you travel, you kinda ghettoize: Chinese travelers stay at the Chinese guesthouses, Tibetans with their Tibetan friends and family, Anglophone laowai at the places that have signs in English. (non-Anglophone foreigners? haven't met a one yet :P) This is ok, I think. I've made way more real connections with people at the Anglophone guesthouses than the Chinese ones. Language matters.

Living half on your phone

This trip has been a little unusual, because I haven't brought a computer and I just use my phone for everything. Which is neat, for a few reasons:
1. I can finally do basically everything I need on a phone. horray smartphones
2. not lugging a 3+ lb big lunk of metal
3. less dead time; even on a bus or whatever I can be reading about new places, writing these dumb blogs, playing video games, etc.

The downside is, it makes me wonder if I'm missing out on something, like paying less attention to the world around me while I stare at my phone.

But, as usual with worries like this, I'm just going to ignore it, because without any way to measure it or any bad feelings about it, I'm basically just parroting the "fear new technology for insidious reasons" meme that's been circulating for about a thousand years.

Plus, it's kinda how the world is now. A lot of our life is on our phones/computers now. You say I'm missing something in Sichuan; I say I'm missing ten minutes that I would be on the subway and I'm learning more about the city in the process. In traveling, I give up one world temporarily to experience another, but maybe I only need to give up 70% of that world and I can keep the 30% that's online. And that 30%, through blogging and discussing things as they happen, as well as looking up stuff about the places I'm going, helps me make the 70% of the time richer too.

Goodbyes in Chengdu

As I write this, a group of mostly middle-aged ladies are doing a synchronized dance with fans outside the apartment complex where I'm staying. Rock on, Chengdu.

Also, I'm staying in an apartment complex. We've stayed in Airbnbs too, but it seems like Chengdu at least (maybe all of China) might not have needed it. I booked the "24k Warm Inn" ("warm" is certainly not what I want, but the reviews were good) on Ctrip because it's near the train station, so I can leave on an early bus tomorrow. Rolled up, and ... there's an apartment complex. Much confusion later, and my terrible 10% Chinese, and this lady finds me by the apartment's security guard booth. She and her husband, it seems, have a largish apartment, so like 3 of the rooms have become the "24k Warm Inn." Hey, works for me. By the way, make sure you have phone service if you travel to China; some things are impossible without it. (Have I mentioned how great Project Fi is?)

But I digress. Had to say bye to my lovely traveling companion and wife (!) Tati this morning as she heads back to do more Facebooks. I offered to come back with her, but she said, heck no, if you can get the time off, do travel more. (have I mentioned she's great?) It's been a lot of fun traveling together, though, and I miss her already.

Also saying bye to this lovely city Chengdu tomorrow morning. It's been fun. Here's what you should do if you go to Chengdu and don't have a better guide than me:
- see the pandas, of course; this can be like a 2 hour thing
- hang out in People's Park just to see what's going on. Teahouse visit required, ear cleaning optional.
- you know eat everything of course duh - I'm sure I'll blog more about food later
- skip Wuhou Temple and go to Wenshu temple instead: more interesting, fewer crowds, more teahouse
- speaking of crowds, gosh, skip Kuan/Zhai Alleys and Jinli Street. Entirely tourist traps. They are described in ways that sound good, "neat alleys full of cool cafes and shops etc," but they are so crowded and not even interesting.
- instead, go to Xiaotong Xiang, a few streets north.of Kuan/Zhai, and have a coffee or four in a cute cafe.
- ask me for a couple of restaurant recommendations, and an Airbnb rec, if you want, I can try to give them to you in ways that you can look up and find

Feel free to stop reading here; the rest is just upcoming travel plans.
Tomorrow I'm off to a bunch of places with both Tibetan and Chinese names: Lhamo/Langmusi (via Zoige/Ruo'ergai), Labrang/Xiahe, Rebkong/Tongren, and Xining. Heading north from Sichuan into Qinghai, which sounds like the Wyoming of China. Tackin' on a few days in Gansu (the Utah of China?) on the way back, stopping in Zhangye and Lanzhou on the way back to Chengdu to fly home. I did a weird thing in that I actually cut this trip short - I had planned to come back on the 24th but I'm coming back on the 13th instead. That seems a little strange; didn't think I'd ever really want to do that, but I'm excited to get back to my life with Tati, our home, SF, and the PhD. That's a good thing, I think.