Some of you are probably wondering what it's like to go to the dentist in Beijing. I am not fully toothed again at least for a short while. I got a temporary crown that will work for a few months until I get a permanent one which I guess I'll do in Thailand as it's probably cheapest there. The temporary crown cost me about 110 dollars. Which led to start thinking that since I don't have dental insurance it might actually be cost effective to fly to China to get my dental work done. But anyway, I showed up, filled out one form, and then I was brought in and the dentist said "What's the problem?". The dental office itself was really nice and other than the fact that we had to get the receptionist in once or twice to translate it was a smooth dental ride the whole time. Interesting that I hadn't been to the dentist in ten years and now I've been twice in three months.

Still in Beijing. Two days from now I'll be in Shanghai.

FINALLY going to see the Great Wall today.

Only spent one night in Guangzhou but I really made most of it. First of all, where I was staying on a small island is where the US Consulate is located, and also apparently, where a big center for Americans adopting Chinese is located. Everywhere I walked around there were stores selling baby clothes and strollers, and American (or white at least) couples walking their new adoptees in same strollers. I guess you have to spend a month in Guangzhou before you can take the child out.

So, then I went over the bridge into Guangzhou proper to have some dinner. I sat down with a beer at some street restuarant and looked at the menu. Of course I can't read Chinese so my main modus oprerandi is to just point at something and then eat whatever it is that they bring me. So, I did that this time and the woman looked at me, looked at her coworkers and then looked at me again. I went back to reading my book and about two minutes later she plops down a bowl of stew. Grub stew. With a few grubs in it but one that is about the size of my index finger. I am totally aghast. I gasp and everyone laughs and then the woman points and something else on the menu and I nod and she takes away the grub(s). So,a few minutes later she comes back with something (pork?) which I eat and the she brings some broth which I sip and then I'm moving my spoon in the broth and then I see a piece of...wait, it's the grub cut in half! Needless to say, I didn't eat it.

So, I went on back to the hostel and as I'm preparing for bed I swing my legs around on my top bunk, lose my balance, and fall, literally, on my face. I chip a tooth and bite right through my lip and bleed just about everywhere. I left the room to go find a mirror to see how bad it was and walked past the reception area where all the employees go totally apeshit. They take me back to my room and in the morning they all come in and ask if I'm ok which was nice. Anyway, other than a scarred and obvious fat lip and also having a chipped tooth I'm fine. Or so I thought. That morning I had to get on a train for a 23 hour train ride to Beijing. No problem. Except when I tried to eat my ramen noodles in that first hour I realized that my mouth and gums hurt and were so swollen I couldn't eat solid food! Awesome, right! So, for the rest of the trip I just laid in my bunk and put small pieces of roll in my mouth that would eventually become saturated with saliva and then I could swallow them.

So, now I'm back in Beijing and I'm off to find a dentist.

Got up at five this morning and took a plane from Hainan over to Shenzhen with the full purpose of going to Hong Kong. Well, what I didn't realize is that you need a double entry visa if you want to go to Hong Kong and then come back into the mainland. I only have a single entry. I could have gotten a new visa but once I looked into the expense of getting the new visa and also the Hong Kong visa I realized it wasn't really worth it. It seems weird that you need a visa to go to Hong Kong since it's part of China now. Or is it? I'm confused about the whole thing.

So, I decided to come to Guangzhou for a day and then take a train back to Beijing where I need to finish up doing some things that I haven't done yet like the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and eating Peking Duck.

On the bus from Shenzhen to Guangzhou this afternoon the bus attendant (there is a driver and a bus attendant on every bus) came by with a video recorder and taped everyone's face. I assume for security reasons. Very odd.

I met a guy named Chris at the last hostel I stayed at and he had been living in Beijing for the past year studying Chinese and we were talking about living in China and he was saying that it was ok if you were a foriegner but he wasn't so sure how great it was if you were a Chinese person. He said that he was at a club about three months ago and it was raided by the police who seperated all the foreigners from the Chinese and let all the forigeners go but with all the Chinese they told them they were doing a full drug test right then and whoever tested positive was going to prison.

There are some things I really miss about the U.S.. Cheese is one of them. I don't know that I've had cheese since I've been here.

Bus stops that are reliably close to one another is one more thing that I miss. In Chengdu I missed my stop and the next stop was, no exaggeration, at least a half a mile down the road.

Can I give a hearty "What the fuck?" to my cellphone? It turns on and I can see that people have called and texted me but I can't access anything else. Like, using the numbers or the menu or anything. So, if you called or texted I can't see it. So, email it over.

I am still sunburnt. So badly that it's hard to sleep and I can't really go outside during the day. Tonight there is a barbecue at the hostel and then tomorrow I'm off to Hong Kong via Guangzhou. Then it's back to Beijing to get on that Wall, see the summer palace, and of course, find out how Lianna's thesis on online Chinese poetry is coming along.

In Hainan now. Took a flight from Kunming to the capital of Hainan, Haikou. Then from there I took a bus to the town of Sanya in the south. The three hour bus from Haikou to Sanya showed karaoke videos, including one that was a cartoon of pigs in love that they showed twice, and also some weird Chinese comedies. I showed up here in Sanya and pretty much went to my room and rested and read my latest hostel book swap pick up "Noble House" by James Clavell. I've read "Shogun" twice and really liked it but this one is really not that great. Not to mention Clavell's less that savory depiction of Chinese people. There's a lot of "Eeee! How I would like to slit that barbarian's secret sack and feed him the contents!" and "Ayeeyah Third Toilet Maid Fung! How I would like to pillow with her and feel her golden gully!".

I am sunburned really badly. I went swimming yesterday and even though I had sunscreen the sun here is intense. So, my shoulders are in a bad way and I'm staying out of the sun so I can recuperate.

Ran into the British girls here in Hainan so we and some other people went out for drinks and dinner last night and then a midnight swim. I can hardly hold my head up. I'm very hungover from that. So, hungover and sunburnt. Internet,anyone?

I left Chengdu a few days ago and am now in Kunming. There isn't a whole lot going on in Kunming but due to weird Chinese transportation stuff it was cheaper for me to come here than it would have been for me to go directly to Hainan.

The last day I was in Chengdu the owner of the guesthouse took about ten of us out to Cantonese food at one of his favorite restaurants. He asked if we were interested in eating turtle which we weren't but brought up the conversation I know you've been a part of where someone says "It's really so arbitrary what we decide to eat and what we won't eat!" and everyone nods and says "Very true." and "Oh yes!" as if this is the smartest thing anyone's ever said. I mentioned that I was fine with being arbitrarily not ok with eating duck's brains out of the skull. Then for some reason the conversation went on to cannibalism and how one of the people at the table couldn't understand that if you were in that sort of lost in the Andes and had to eat your wife situation how anyone would hesitate. I don't get this. I mean, yeah, if I were starving to death then I would probably eat whomever but I don't think it would necessarily be all that easy to just cook up somebody up without at least a little feeling of "Oh, well, we were such good friends." and I could certainly understand how someone might not want to do it. Anyway, the meal was free which was nice and also really good although the pig's feet were way to gingery for my taste.

So, I flew to Kunming since it was either 18 hours/ 32 dollars for the train or 1 1/2 hour and 44 dollars for a plane. I'm off to watch the World Cup with two young women who just graduated from college that I met in this restaurant and who are pretty open about pretty much everything. So I heard a lot about one's parents's open marriage and how her ex-boyfriend is on dialysis after recovering from his coke addiction etc... Anyway, should be an interesting evening. They were off for malaria drugs and facials the last I saw of them.

Still in Chengdu. I've been here about four days now just hanging out and doing a lot of getting lost in the city. Yesterday I tried to go to Wang's Tiny Museum for the second time and for the second time I was a complete failure at finding it. I even had a Chinese guy show me where the street was and I still had no luck. So, after that I decided to go to a place on the map the hostel gave me that said it had the best dumplings the hostel owner had ever had. Could I find it? Nope. I did however see a beggar with a small monkey on a string.

I've just done a fair amount of hanging out at the hostel and watching movies. I watched Charlies Angels, Jarhead, Kill Bill 1 and 2, and a bunch of world cup games. Tomorrow I'm off to Kunming I think. I'm actually not sure. I'm trying to eventually find my way to Hainan which is the Chinese Hawaii and then to Hong Kong and from there take a train back to Beijing. I missed the Wall and I feel like I should probably get that in since I'm in China and all.

I did see a woman getting dental work done in a dental office with a huge window so you can watch what's going on. That seemed a little weird.

With many tears I separated from my new British friends and headed down to Chengdu. On the train it turns out that I was next to the only other white person on the train a woman named Rebecca from Rocklin NY. We had a nice long chat about her boyfriend in Chengdu and if they were going to stay together and so on. He'd been teaching in China for a year while she was in the states so she was concerned they'd gone off in two different directions. I offered my sage advice,"Yeah, relationships are hard." and let it go at that.

Showed up in Chengdu yesterday at 5 in the morning and was fairly burnt out so didn't do too much. I did take a walk downtown where I saw snake meat for the first time (it was in the shape of a snake. That's how I knew) and at the end of the market I turned right and saw some military guys in front of a gate. So, I looked up and it said "Military Area" so I thought, "oh, can't go that way." and took out my map upon which one of the military guys comes running out yelling and pointing very vigorously for me to get away. Which I did and and as I was I noticed that there were three more military guys running up behind him and toward me. So that was kind of unnerving. I walked away without incident however. I would hope that if I was mapping military installations I would be a little more discreet and go around the corner or something.

Let's talk Pandas. Holy shit are they cute. Yes, as good as advertised. I took a trip up to the panda center where who did I run into but Kate and Caroline! "Jack Bauer!" they yelled. We caught up a little but they were on a different tour so I lost track of them. I forgot to bring my camera into the panda sanctuary. However, I got promises of emailed photos of the ones that Kate and Caroline took so thank you to them. Anyway, big pandas or small, they are all adorable and really at times do look like humans in panda suits. Even the red pandas, who kind of get the short end of the stick in the panda world, were really cute. We watched a movie about how the pandas mate and the artificial insemination. They showed footage of a panda giving birth and the thing just squirted out and the panda looked fucking terrified. And about three seconds later a scientist runs in the cage and gets the baby to put in a controlled environment. One of the women I was on the tour with said "Oh, that's so sad that they take it away like that!" but then the next footage was of a new mother playing with the newborn like a cat with a mouse until the scientists, who were very obviously flipping out, came in to get it.

The best sign at the sanctuary said: "I am the national treasure and I hate noise".

We (Caroline, Kate, and I) got in a bus wreck today. We were on our way to the Terracotta Warriors on a city bus when I heard this horrible grinding noise and then was thrown forward violently. When I looked up we had rear ended the bus in front of us at the bus stop. The glass had cracked on our bus's window and the glass had broken out completely in the bus in front of us. The impact also caused the bus in front of us to rear end the bus in front of it. I got off and took some pictures. I haven't done much with the camera yet but I have taken pictures of a REALLY fat cat and also of a bus wreck. I was going to take a picture of all the people in wheelchairs at the Terracotta Warriors but that seemed rude.

Anyway, we walked the rest of the way which allowed me to pick up some steamed buns for breakfast. We hopped on the bus for the hour long ride out to the Warriors. The Warriors are pretty fucking cool. Each one has a totally different face that was the face of the craftsman that made it. All of them had been destroyed at one time and they have reconstructed an enourmous number of them. Well worth seeing. They did have this thing where for a small fee you can have your face put on a Terracotta Warrior so then you have this photoshopped kind of thing with your face on the Warriors body. I opted out of this but Bill Clinton had not.

I can read the comments by the way. They come to my inbox.

I left Beijing last night on a train to Xian but not before I went looking for an English language bookstore at the mall. I was not able to find one but I did see a live informercial for Bailey's Irish Cream with girls in Bailey's outfits and also saw a product called Isaddle with I'm sure Apple's lawyers are all over. This was marketed as some sort of fitness device and what it was is this seat that moved like a saddle. It looked a lot like a very sophisticated sex toy.

The trip to Xian was 13 hours and I shared a compartment with three other Chinese men. They showed me some rice wine one of them had bought (we didn't drink any of it) and told me to definitely order some in Xian as it is a specialty there. I kept saying the word for the wine and then acting drunk and they were loving it.

I slept for most of the trip and then showed up in Xian at about 7 in the morning. After getting lost trying to find the hostel I finally found it and went upstairs to the lounge where I made the acquiantance of two British women, Caroline and Katrina, who were very amused by my American slang. I told some story where I used the phrase, "Alright Dude, that's not cool." and this was hilarious to them.

One thing I forgot to mention is that comments are now enabled. Actually, I might have mentioned it but I can't ready my own blog here since blogspot is banned in China. So, oddly, I can post on my own blog just not read it.

Off on the overnight train to Xi'an...

On Thursday I headed down to the Temple of Heaven park for a look around. Like all things in China it costs. It was a fairly nice park although I have to say it's a little weird that they won't let you on the grass. There were plenty of old people around exercising and so on and one particular thing they were doing was dancing with plastic rackets that had balls on them. They were listening to this revcording that I guess told them the steps and they would all turn around and flip the rackets around in union. It was interesting since they were able to flip the rackets around without the balls actually coming off. That was pretty impressive.

That night I went to a show of acrobats that was pretty good. It was definitely not the A list and none of them looked over twenty. There was a contortionist and there was a woman who was able to spin two parasols with just her feet which is more impressive than it sounds. Also there was a boy in a suit with flames stitiched on it who was a juggler and at one point juggled six balls on the ground while walking up and down stairs. He also juggled eight balls but he fucked that up. It was kind of nice to see him fuck up since it was a reminder that this shit is totally hard to do. It's easy to forget when you watch people do this kind of thing seemingly effortlessly.

Last night was the first World Cup game and I headed over to the expat area to watch some of it. In one block I was asked about 9 times "Lady bar? Massage? Lady bar?". And then again when I walked back down the block. The bars were all very expensive, think NY prices, and so I just stayed for one and then went back to the bar the harmonica player owns to watch. For some reason all the Chinese were rooting for Germany. No idea why.

Man, is China inexpensive. For example, yesterday I had one beer and dinner and it cost ten yuan. This is 1.20. The bus costs 12 cents. Most sites are around 2.50 to get in.

Today I headed over to a lamasery to look at the all the Buddhist temple stuff and it was interesing to see all the people with HUGE bundles of incensce praying and bowing. There was a Guiness Book certification on one of the temples because one of the idols was 35 feet tall and cut out of a single tree. There was a sign urging everyone to "Treat relics well". I did.

Last night I went to a bar down the street from my hostel. I had a few beers and then the owner asked if he could buy me a beer and talk to me. Who am I to say no to that? So he sits down and we start talking and it turns out he had gone to the Berklee School of Music for guitar but had stopped because he wasn't as good as the rest of the students. "Guitar is a western instrument not an eastern instrument.". So, he picked up the harmonica instead. I'm not sure where the harmonica is from, but anyway, he was accomplished enough to have won an award in Taiwan for harmonica arrangement. He also told me more about the area of Beijing where I am staying and that a block and half away is where Chiang Kai-Shek lived. So that was pretty cool. I was about to leave but then pressed more free beer in my hands and told me I had to drink it. So I ended up talking with this other Taiwanese guy at the bar,

Him: You like to party?

Me: Yeah.

I was hoping that this was a prelude to him opening up a suitcase full of drugs or something, but no. All he said was, "Yeah! Who doesn't?!".

Awkward moment number one of the trip:

I am talking to a woman who is in my dorm room at the hostel about a woman across the street wearing a t-shirt that says "I love BJ".

Josh: Don't you think that that is a little weird that she is wearing a shirt that says "I love BJ"?

Woman: What? I love Beijing?

Josh: Oh, I guess when I see that I think "I love blowjobs".

Woman: Huh.

Today I had the confusion of "Is that a trash can or a post office box?"

There are so many Pomeranians in Beijing. Actually, there are quite a few toy dogs in general.

Traveller graffiti really makes you long for bar grafitti. Maybe it's just me but I'd much rather read "Why are you looking up here, the joke's in your hand" than "Life is not measured in how many breaths we take but by how many things take our breath away".

I am so sunburnt it is ridiculous. I got very last trying to find my hostel after going to the Forbidden City and Tianemen Sq. this morning. I had forgotten my ability to zip through museums and historic sights at the speed of light. I also went to the National Chinese Museum which was A: not all that clean, B: had exhibits which made no sense such as a big red car that wasn't even lit up, and C: had a big wax figure exhibit of famous Chinese people throughout history. That's it in a nutshell. Oh, also some pottery. I'm not that into pottery. The one super cool thing that they did have was this jade burial suit that was made of over 1300 pieces of jade that were stitched together with golden thread. THAT was amazing.

Here I am in Beijing. Yes, 13 hours really is a long as motherfucking time to sit in a plane. Before I left I was reading this review of Air China and they discussed how they thought the planes seemed really old and I pretty much thought to myself "Well, as long it's not a propellor plane than it's really ok with me.". It's true though: the planes are pretty old. For example, two of the three screens in my cabin were not working which was ok since they showed "Fun with Dick and Jane" and some movie that looked like it took place in China and starred Donald Sutherland. They also played both of the movies TWICE. Air China is kind of a cut rate outfit.

Anyway, I got picked up at the airport and was taken to the hostel which is kind of in the backpacker ghetto part of Beijing. I had some sort of traditional Mongolian dish for dinner and the owners of the restaurant brought out their 15 year old daughter to practice English with me. I tried to learn some Chinese from her and I managed to do so a little bit but my pronounciation is so monstrous that I don't know how much help it will be. Anyway, as I was leaving the girl said "You'll come by again tomorrow?" and her mother said something which she translated as "My mother hopes you'll come by too." I left that one with a pretty firm maybe.

Also, it doesn't appear as though my phone doesn't really work in China. So, I now have a beef with Cingular and with Crunch gym which hasn't canceled my account yet. My work is never done.

Holy shit. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm having a little bit of the jitters right now. There is definitely some premature homesickness occuring. I know that that will be out of the way in a few weeks though when I'm used to being on the road.

Went to Karl and Alison's wedding on Saturday and had the best time. I also got really drunk. I think anytime you are doing karaoke in the nude you can pretty much call that a drunken escapade. Regardless of the fact that this will forever be remembered because it was actually at someone's wedding party, the night was great. Certainly one highlight was when Joey went in the house to get some wine before we went back to the hotel but couldn't find any so he just brings a pitcher of beer for us to drink in the car.

In the morning we watched this informercial which was mildly entertaining until J.J. brought up the fact that he's seen it three or four times already and so was saying things like "Oh! Oh! This guacomole they make looks really good!" and telling us what thing would be made next in the Magic Bullet. "Yep, a mousse!".