The afternoon sun over Pudong

I was reading the other day that Shanghai has the highest rate of lung cancer in China. I am not all that surprised. I know that if I leave a white T-shirt outside to dry for more than a day, when I bring it in it will be yellow/grey colour. Oh, also the tallest building in the above photo is the Shanghai World Financial Centre, at an impressive 492 meters high.

Kelly and I are catching a train to Harbin for a week or so, leaving on the 30th. We plan to go check out the Ice Festival should be good, and cold.

Great Value Beer

Generic brand 'Great Value' beer. 1.8 RMB per can which is about 30 Australian cents. Ordinarily I wouldn't have investigated, as there are a plethora of name-brand bad tasting cheap beers in this country, it is just that I was intrigued by the fact that one of them calls itself a light beer. Looking at the back of the cans, I quickly found a disparity. The 'light beer' was actually stronger than the standard beer. A simple label mix up, or something more sinister....? The investigative journalist in me decided to check it out.

I bought both, tasted them, noted down points on there respective flavour and mouth feel, put off posting, lost the notes and then decided to hastily end this half finished blog post.

HASTY ENDING:- They tasted average.

Lately

The Suzhou Hello Kitty Bra Shop, for all your Hello Kitty Bra needs.

The city of Suzhou is known throughout China (and the Chinese say, throughout the world) for its Chinese Gardens. We did visit 2 of the gardens, the two that were hailed as the best in the city in our guidebook (the Humble Administrators Garden and the Master of Many Nets garden. They were okay. They are hailed as the best gardens in the best city for Chinese gardens. To tell you all the truth, I enjoyed the Chinese garden in Sydney better. These gardens were both quite unkempt, and while I did get some understanding of the Aesthetic by trying to imagine the gardens in their historical context, this imagery was consistently ruined by the megaphone touting efforts of the ubiquitous Chinese tour group. Anyway, the photos I took have the advantage of being silent.

A bit problem with the entirety of Suzhou was its audio component. They say that Suzhou is a city renown for its "beautiful stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens."

For Kelly and I Suzhou will be forever known as the 'city of squeaky breaks'. Every vehicle with wheels, when stopping, emitted a sound ten times louder and ten times worse than the most awful nails-on-a-chalk-board sound you can imagine. It was crazy, the traffic was stop and go everywhere and hence I walked around with my fingers in my ears a large amount of the time. I think gunshots would have been a more comforting sound, and the locals didn't even seem to notice. I am convinced that there is wide scale deafness in China (it would explain why Chinese people scream into their mobile phones on public transport.)

Anyway. Enough ranting. I went to an amazing underground electronic night last week, where the highlight (for me) was the Beijing based 8-bit/IDM artist known as Sulumi.

He served up an amazing live performance using 3 gameboys, two effects pads, an iPod nano, and a vocoder ran through a synthesizer. He played an 8-bit set, and it was probably one of the most amazing of any live sets I have ever seen. He made some hardcore inspired 8-bit sounds that had everyone in the place jumping. The man himself often was jumping about with a gameboy in one hand, a vocoder in the other and a torch in his mouth to see the LCD screens.
Nice work I must say.

In violation of the Chinese law...

I went for a bicycle ride yesterday, out to a shipping port on the edge of Shanghai. I headed there because I had heard that Shanghai is one of the most busy ports in the world, and I have always found something aesthetically pleasing about the massive scale of ports and big industrial facilities.

When I reached the port area I came to a massive barrier / checkpoint / guard station. Cars and trucks (mainly container trucks) were pulling up the the windows and handing papers over for inspection. I was concerned that I had rode my bike all the way out here and wouldn't even get in, but was hoping I would stun them with my foreignness. I rode up to the barrier at a fast pace and slipped through the gap between the barrier and the wall. No one approached me or looked at me strangely at all.



The first area I was in was labelled a Logistics base, and seemed to have many warehouses. I passed through this area and found another checkpoint for the Shanghai Chemical Logistics base. This time there was a separate lane with some people on motor scooters getting their passes checked by a guard in a uniform. I lined up, and when I got to the guard I just nodded, smiled and kept riding past him. Once again, no reaction.

This chemicals base did have many interesting smells. After I got my first whiff of a delightful this-place-smells-like-cancer bouquet, the thought did cross my mind that this might not be a good place to hang out in. As soon as I saw the structure below I decided that I would have to go in and check it out, but would refrain from eating, drinking or touching anything here.



As I headed towards the water, I crossed into a petroleum processing and storage area.

There was an interesting looking Sinopec facility, with guards at an open gate. I tried my old ride-as-fast-as-you-can-through-the-checkpoint trick, but that met with much yelling. I tried to ask the guards if I could have a look around, but I have no idea what they said to me. They weren't saying no to my request, but I couldn't understand what the were saying. As I turned around and rode out I noticed a sign that said "All visitors must sign in for visitor pass". Perhaps they were telling me to go get one, anyway I rode on to the oil terminal.

The oil terminal wasn't that interesting, it was just a series of jetties with what looked like big petrol station hoses on them. There were way more interesting looking huge crane things of in the distance.



I imagine that the hoses plug into the ship somehow and the pipeline takes the oil along the jetty to the masses of storage tanks I had passed. You can see the oil storage silo things in the next photo.



Now, if you look in the foreground of that photo you will see a farm. That's right, there is a series of vegetable fields INSIDE an oil terminal, INSIDE a chemical logistics base. That's just great. There was a number of fields, however the one I was near was cut of from the rest by the pipelines from the oil dock running through it. The pipeline was raised from the ground, and had a massive jet of white gas coming from a seam. There was a massive ring of dead vegetation around the gas jet. I am going to be more suspicious of my local produce market from now on I think.


I decided to try and head for the big cranes I had seen. I imagined that they were container cranes for ships, so I went back through the logistics base to the area I had seen stacked with containers. I soon found a sign labeled 'Port' and followed it to another checkpoint. This checkpoint seemed deserted, so I just rode on through.

Jackpot. Crane city. So I am just about to ride along under the cranes when a guy in a security booth comes out yelling. Both him and a security car come over.

So I try to say to the guy that I am just having a look, we can't get any communication happening and he radios for assistance.

The police that arrived in this car were quite congenial, and when I said I was just looking around they said that was okay, but I couldn't ride a bicycle in this area. They called a Ute over with their radios and loaded my bike onto it. The police didn't speak much English and I couldn't speak much Chinese, so I got into the Ute hoping that they were just giving me a tour of the port by car. We started off, and the driver kept asking me 'which ship?' I just shrugged my shoulders and indicated that I would be happy to see any ship, and then suddenly realised what was going on. They thought I was a crew member, and was going to take me and my bicycle back to 'my' ship!

Now, don't get me wrong. The first thing that crossed my mind was to pick a ship and stow away, as that has certainly been a dream of mine. I did realise however that I had no passport, money or food and if I got on to a ship and was found, all tourist excuses would get me nowhere. I tapped the driver on the shoulder and said 'No ship! No ship'. He stopped the vehicle and called the police back.

I tried to explain to the police that I was a tourist and had rode my bicycle in from Shanghai city. They seemed quite perplexed as to how I got here, and called over a man in a suit who was coming off another ship. He spoke better English and did some translating for us, I told him that I had just rode my bike in to look at the port and no one had stopped me at the checkpoints. When he told the police this they were very surprised. They indicated I had to wait, and after a while more police arrived. There was now four policemen and a number of port security guards around me. The latest police arrival spoke quite good English. He had me repeat my story, and questioned me in length about what I was doing in Shanghai. I claimed to be a student at the university, and showed him an international student ID card. He kept asking me if I had met anyone in the port area or had given anyone anything, The police didn't seem to believe it was possible that I had just rode straight through the many security checkpoints.

The head policeman then spent ages talking on his radio, and finally informed me that coming into the port area was a violation of the Chinese law and that I would have to write a statement about who I was, what I was doing in Shanghai, and how when and why I entered the port.
I did so, gave it to him, and after another 20 minutes of talking on the radio he loaded my bike back on the security Ute. He said that I had to show them exactly where I had been, and which gates I had rode my bike through, and that after this they would drop me off outside the entry gate to the logistics base.

They did as they promised, and I was free to ride back home. I was detained for about an hour and a half I think. It was all quite interesting, I am probably lucky they didn't detain me for much longer and I am definitely lucky they didn't check with the university to see if I was really a student. In retrospect it makes sense for them to be concerned by my presence, I was in an international area, where sailors and cargo are present before going through customs. I think the fact that I was an Australian helped, they wanted proof of that and I believe I would have been treated differently if I was any nationality with which China has major political issues (America)

I have put more photos up on Flickr, including the ones from Latvia and Lithuania that hadn't gone up before due to CD issues.

By the time you read this, my name may be written on the side of a house somewhere in Gansu province.

As part of my travel from Xinjiang to Tibet I passed through Gansu province, stopping at the oasis city of Dunhuang. I had caught an overnight train from Wulumuqi in Xinjaing and had heard that Dunhuang was a nice place to spend a while, so I checked into a dodgey dormitory for a few nights. I say dodgy, but you do get what you pay for. I paid around $4 AUS per night. For that I got a bed in a room with 4 other beds and a squat toilet in the hall. They were kind enough to throw in a coating of old plaster every day (fallen from the roof to the bed) and as much black Chinese hair as I could find in my bedsheets. I decided to sleep in my sleeping bag.

There were 2 other people in the room with me, a Swedish dude named Chris who had just turned 18 and finished school and a Japanese dude who had been travelling for 8 years. They were both pretty cool, Chris and I happened to be both planning the same route to Tibet, so we travelled for a while together, he was actually with me up at Namtso when I got altitude sickness.

Anyway, one of the days we were in Dunhuang Chris and I hired bicycles and set of for the Mogao caves. It is 20km out of town, and in the first kilometer or so my tire became flat. This meant that every time the tire rotated onto the valve, it jolted the bike enough that the bell rang. This combined with the old rusty nature of the bike meant that the soundtrack to this particular ride was something like "thud scrape DING! thud scrape DING! thud scrape DING!"

After about half an hour of riding we realised that there was no way we were going to make it to the caves before they were due to shut, so we turned randomly off the path and road along a dirt track.

We stopped our bikes by a cotton field and were standing by when I saw a family in a field that were looking at us. I waved, they waved back, so I decided to go say hello. They seemed thrilled that a laowai had broken up the monotony of bending down to pick cotton, so I stayed a while and helped them. Below is a photo of a woman showing me how to remove the pluck the cotton from the stem.

Passing back along the highway to Dunghuang, I noticed a what looked to be a brick works to one side. Given my experience getting down and dirty with the locals I thought I would wander in.

The only westerners these people would have seen would be rapidly passing them by on a coach to the local tourist attractions, so we were quite a scene. It seemed that I could go pretty much anywhere in the place. I walked around the joint and sized up the brick making operation.

First a bulldozer type thing pushes a big pile of dirt towards the machinery. The picture above is of the guys keeping an eye on said machinery. The bulldozer is located behind the dirt piles seen in the background. There is a hole somewhere underneath and a conveyor belt carries crushed dirt out. This dirt is mixed with a percentage of charcoal and moistened. It is then fed into a machine that extrudes it and presses it through an array of wires, to cut it into bricks. Please see below.

The wire cut bricks are taken by cart to a drying rack. The people who were working the machines and working the carts were typical young Chinese. Below is a short video I took of the process.

You can see the boards that are taken from the stack on the right hand side of the video. The bricks are extruded onto them and then they are carried to a cart. The cart, when full, is wheeled off to be unloaded in the drying saw. Men, women and children were stacking wet bricks in piles like the one below.

The wet bricks seemed to just sit in a stack. I walked around the entire ground and checked everything out, Seemed like a stack of wet mud bricks turning to dry mud bricks. Even the driest of the bricks were pretty damn average in my opinion, and I was wondering why they were bothering. I only say this as I picked up a brick and tested its strength (against another hard object, yes...) and it smashed very easily. The bricks only seemed as strong as dry mud.

After destroying and defacing (see the picture at the top of this article) a few bricks, we waved goodbye and walked back to our bikes. Before you get all sanctimonious on me, there were many many piles of discarded reject bricks smashed all over the place.

When we were up on the highway again, I could see that the brick works continued across the other side of the road. There was a tunnel. By watching, I could see people load up the dry weak bricks (I am sure there is a pottery term applicable here... perhaps green?) and take them through to the side with the kiln.

I couldn't resist seeing how the rest of the process worked. We walked down to the kiln side of the brick works. The bricks seemed to be wheeled into a queue, then moved from the queue to a massive kiln like structure with smoke coming from it. Below is a cart man who has just left the kiln.

A woman from an office looking structure came out and stared at us meaningfully while we were near this side of the kiln. She looked at me meaningfully, as if thinking about what action the management should take. I looked at her, waved my hand and shouted hello (Ni Hao) in Chinese. She walked back inside her demountable style office and closed the door. End of issue...

I took the apparent freedom of whiteys to walk around the entire operation. Whenever someone would look at me in surprise I would wave and shout 'Ni Hao!' and they would smile. I didn't think anyone would stop me, so me and Chris walked into the brick kiln. It was reasonably warm inside, but not as hot as I thought it would have been. There were portholes in the walls, and a team of workers stacking at one end, and unstacking at the other. I thought we were between firings. I walked up to the workers stacking wet bricks into the corner, see below.

The workers as you can see, were surprised at seeing us. But not surprised enough to stop working. All the jobs in this entire place looked like they would suck, unless you enjoy doing the same 3-6 second operation over and over all day. I walked out of the kiln and climbed up a bamboo ladder onto its roof. I was very surprised that someone didn't stop me, as the office woman from before had come out and was watching me. The man below was watching many all smoke orifices in the roof of the kiln.

One thing I don't understand about the layout is, where was the fire? I was inside the kiln and it was no more than 70 degrees, which was far less than the temperature of the smoke coming from the holes in the roof. I touched one of those holes in the roof you see above, and believe me it was scolding. There was no way I could have lifted one of those metal plugs.

Anyway, the finished bricks seemed just as hard as western ones. They were a little rough round the edges at times, but given how they are made that can be forgiven. It was quite interesting to see what looked like ordinary dirt turn into a finished, fired brick.

Acetazolamide

Okay, so after my last experience with altitude I thought I would get prepared for the next time I went that high. I recently took a trip around Tibet, where the majority of the travel was above 4000m and the highest point was at Mt Quomolonga (Mt Everest) base camp at 5200m.

Before leaving Lhasa I thought I would try to track down some Acetazolamide (trade name Diamox), which works to lessen the severity of AMS through allowing hyperventilation and hence increasing the oxygenation of the blood. I checked many pharmacies all over Lhasa before being directed to the Peoples Hospital, where I managed to purchase a bottle of 100 tablets for 14 RMB. The reason I made the effort to get the tablets was that there was a nights sleep planned at the Rhongphu Monastery guesthouse, Wikipedia says that its at 5200m, however while we were there someones altimeter watch said it was around 5000m. Either way, its damn high. Sleeping at altitude is very difficult, and I didn't want a repeat of my last altitude experience.

I should mention that I have actually tried Diamox before, while I was sick up at Namtso. I didn't mention it in the last post, but one of the people I was with gave me a few tablets which I swallowed with no immediate effect. This makes sense of course, as Diamox takes 6 - 12 hours to become effective. The one thing I did notice was the side effects the next day, my face tingled intensely for half a day.

The first half of the trip involved sleeping around 4000 meters, and that all seemed to be okay. I was a little short of breath while exerting myself, but nothing too serious. Then we got to Shigar.

Shigar is a picturesque Tibetan town in the shadow of a monastery and ruined hill fort, after leaving our bags at a guesthouse we decided to check out said monastery and ruined hill fort. (see left for monastery and right for hill fort)

The town is at 4400 meters, and the top of the fort was about 300 meters above the town. It was very hard work getting to the top, out of 8 of us that attempted it, me and 2 others made it. It was probably a bad idea but the view was fantastic.

In the evening I started to feel a little ill, a familiar altitude headache was coming on. I think I made the same mistake as I did at Lake Karakul, by going up high then climbing higher. Given that the day after we had planned to go to Everest base camp, I decided to start taking the Diamox. I felt pretty average in the night, and at one point my oxygen starved brain thought there was a small Tibetan child hanging from the roof of our dormitory (it was a jacket).

I expected to wake up with a tingling face, as that was a side effect I had experienced before. I also expected to wake up with my vision intact. That was not the case. As soon as I woke I found that the whole room was blurry. I rubbed my eyes a few times to no avail, I couldn't see more than a foot in front of me clearly. I could only read text if it was a few inches from my eyes and as for seeing into the distance, forget it. I had read somewhere that blurred vision was a possible side effect of Diamox so I wasn't totally freaking out, however since I had hoped to see Everest that afternoon I was a little concerned. We had a 5 hour bus trip up to Rhongphu Monastery and Everest base camp, in which I spent the beginning vainly attempting to discern the scenery we were passing through. One of the women on the bus offered me her prescription glasses saying they were a 3.5 correction factor, whatever that means. I tried the glasses, and to my amazement everything suddenly regained sharp focus. Praise the lord, I could see!

The mountains and valleys that had been just coloured shapes now had texture and contours, and I didn't have to guess who people were by their general body shape and clothing colour.

The woman in question was wearing contact lenses, so I borrowed her glasses for the day. It would have looked quite amusing, me wearing narrow euro-style women's glasses, but for clear vision it was worth the price. I used the glasses several times during the bus trip to see various sights of merit, but I didn't keep them on continuously as I didn't know if they would adversely affect my vision in the long term.

My vision slowly recovered over the day, to the point where I could see Everest without the glasses in the afternoon. (Everest image below)

The real proof my vision had returned was that in the evening wearing the glasses made everything blurred. I had a decent nights sleep, and the next day stopped taking the Diamox.

It was a very interesting experience having impaired vision, especially as it seemed to mimic the common sight disorder of myopia. It only lasted 6 hours or so, however I really noticed how much lack of sight affected my life. I couldn't read signs or tell the time. It would have been interesting (albeit annoying) if the side effects had lasted for longer, so I could have seen how I adapted to blurred living.

Too high

The first time I had altitude sickness was up in the mountains between China and Pakistan. We had driven from Kashgar up the Karakorum highway to Lake Karakul. Lake Karakul is at 3600 meters high, the highest I had ever been on land (at the time). Kelly and I were were staying in a Kyrgyz family yurt on the edge of the lake, and after leaving our bags we set off for to circumambulate the lake. I was feeling pretty good at this point, the air seemed a little thin and it was harder than normal to walk, but I didn't have any symptoms of sickness at that point. As I was feeling fine I decided to climb a mountain overlooking the lake to get a better view. It was very difficult to climb as the thin air meant that I had to rest every couple of hundred meters, but I finally reached the top. Exercise at altitude is unwise as it greatly increases your chances of suffering from the altitude, by the time I was near the top I was defiantly affected. I had climbed another 800-1000 meters and my mental faculties had diminished significantly, I was talking to myself and felt rather dizzy. To the right is a photo of Lake Karakul taken from the top of the mountain I climbed. Below is a photo of me at the top of a survey marker tower on the top of the mountain





After getting to the bottom of the mountain, a headache set in that was to get progressively worse all night. Even though I was very tired I couldn't sleep, and was too mentally tired to read a book or conduct much of a conversation. When I arose to use the bathroom (a ditch near the Yurt) I got lost in the dark and nearly stumbled into the wrong Yurt. The stars were fantastic however, probably the best I have ever seen. Too bad I wasn't really in a state to appreciate them. In the morning we drove back down to Kashgar and after a few hours sleep I felt much better.

My second experience with altitude sickness happened recently in Tibet. I had been in Lhasa for 3 nights and had been experiencing mild discomfort due to the altitude. Lhasa is at 3650 meters, and at that height there is only 65% oxygen available, compared to sea level. It was not so bad, I had a slight headache in the evening and interrupted sleep. On the 3rd day in Lhasa, some people I had been travelling with were planning on going up to Lake Namtso and spend the night, so as to see the sunset and sunrise. I arranged for them to buy me a ticket without really thinking about acclimatisation. Namtso is the highest saltwater lake in the world at 4720 meters, at this height the oxygen is down to 56%. The night before going I still had a headache and was beginning to think that an extra kilometer of altitude was a poor idea. The next morning I had resolved to only go to Namtso if I could get back the same day. Altitude sickness is always worse at night, and by being up high for only half a day I would avoid the worst of the sickness without wasting my ticket. The driver of our vehicle indicated that it would be possible for me to return the same day, so I boarded the bus and we departed Lhasa. I wasn't sure that I would be able to return, as the driver didn't speak English and our discussion was mainly conducted with the Chinese word for today, and hand motions.




On the way up to the lake, the highest pass we crossed was at 5190. The air was very thin and I didn't feel totally normal but when we got down to the lake I was feeling fine, out of breath and tired, but that is pretty normal for the height. We walked a kora circuit around a rocky hill near the lake and checked out the Buddhist trappings of this holy lake, there were the ubiquitous prayer flags strung from every possible place and carvings and devotional objects in the caves.

A headache was coming on, so I returned to our guesthouse and lay down for a few hours. The pain in my head was getting stronger and stronger as the afternoon ended, however I really wanted to see the sunset and the rest of my companions were on top of the hill watching, so I slowly tried to walk up to the top. As soon as I started walking up the stairs I knew it was a bad idea, I was so out of breath and dizzy I had to go back down. I still wanted to see the sunset, so I staggered round the base of the hill to sit by the lake. I made it halfway round before collapsing down behind a rock out of the wind. By this time I realised that I wasn't in any fit state to make it any further. I decided to try and get back to the cabins, and with difficulty stood up. My head felt like it had been pierced by an ice pick and any movement I made twisted the pick, sending debilitating waves of pain through my brain. After standing I took a few steps before intense nausea resulted in me throwing up my lunch of instant noodles and yak cheese. I threw up a few more times on the long painful trip back to the cabin, there was no one around when I got there so I crawled onto my bed and waited till the others came back to the cabin. Mark, one of my companions at that point had some Diamox with him and had left it on the table in the cabin. Diamox is an altitude sickness medication and I had heard it would alleviate some of the symptoms of altitude. I messaged Kelly and asked her to find out what dosage I should take. She was naturally alarmed to hear I was sick, and did some research on the Internet. She reviewed my symptoms and found that they fit the description of Moderate Acute Mountain Sickness. According to http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/safety/altitude.html "At this stage, only advanced medications or descent can reverse the problem. Descending even a few hundred feet (70-100 meters) may help and definite improvement will be seen in descents of 1,000-2,000 feet (305-610 meters)". Without descent my symptoms would only get worse, and would eventually progress to Severe AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) and the potential fatal conditions of High Altitude Pulmonary Edema and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HAPE and HACE respectively, basically meaning water on the lungs and water swelling the brain).

My mental faculties were severally diminished, and the massive pain in my head distracted me from taking any definitive action on my own. Luckily Kelly insisted that I find a way to descend immediately, otherwise I may have sat in pain as I became sicker and sicker. Once the rest of the group I was travelling with arrived, they helped by finding our driver and insisting that he take me down. He was very reluctant to drive down through the mountains in the night, and charged me 600 RMB to take me to a lower town. To get down to a lower altitude however, we had to go back up to the 5190 meter pass. Mikko, a Finish man bought a small bottle of oxygen from a woman at the guesthouse and gave it to me for the trip. I lay in the back of the van and breathed the oxygen as we left. I had an agonising headache at the lake, and that only got worse with the ascent to the pass. Every bump of the road was an agonising jolt to my head, and the twisting of the road exacerbated my nausea to the point I had to stop the van and throw up several times. After an hour and a half we reached a town at around 4200 meters and the driver checked me into a hotel. I went to sleep despite my headache and slept for 10 hours.

When I woke up it took me a while to realise where I was, but when I did I also realised that my headache was gone. I still felt lethargic and slightly nauseous, but the improvement over last night was dramatic. Returning to Lhasa, I slept for the rest of the day and awoke feeling better than I had when I had left for Namtso.

It was foolish of me to have gone up to the lake so not as to waste my 120 RMB ticket, when it ended up costing me much more than that in the end. I now think I have more of a healthy fear of altitude sickness. I am glad I spent the money to get down lower, when I returned I met someone whose friend is still in a coma in a chinese military hospital with HAPE and HACE. That could have been me if I hadn't of got down when I did.

I am still in Tibet at the moment, and have started to upload some new photos to flickr. Click the link to the right to check them out.