长白山 - Changbai shan and North Korea

This weekend marks the halfway point in the summer semester here at CET. To celebrate, we all took a 2 day/3 night trip to the east and south of Harbin to climb a mountain called 长白山 (Changbaishan) on the North Korean border. We spent the night in a hostel (sort of, see below) and then cruised around 延吉 （yanji) which is a border city with North Korea. Most of our roommates were able to come with us and it was an amazing weekend of traveling, China with Korean characteristics and good Chinese practice.

At about 7:00 on Thursday we took the bus to the train station. All I had was a backpack and a sword. Yes, a sword, which I boldly carried in my hand into the station, passed it through the metal detector without batting an eye, and walked onto the train. We boarded the hard sleeper overnight train for Changbaishan, the 30 people in our program taking over most of one of the cars and hanging out in the passageway to the annoyance of the train personel. We were all very excited to be leaving the city for a new place, and our roommates had just finished their final exams so they were obviously happy. At this point you might be saying, \'Morgan, WTF, a sword? Is this Kill Bill!\' Never fear, all good things come in time. I spent a while talking with two roommates, Renfeng and (how embarrassing that I forget her name), planning the plot of the kungfu movie that we were going to shoot as we climbed changbaishan, making a plot of love, kungfu skill, mystery and of course all of it way more complicated and illogical than it should be. Needless to say, I was very excited about mountains, movies, traveling and the like and I ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep. I even tried to use a friends cell phone and IP card to call home, on the mistaken assumption that Friday was the 15th, my birthday. No I wasn\'t drinking anything, just excited.

At 5:30 am we got off the train and met our new tourguides (2 from Harbin plus one local one). All I wanted to do was sleep but the guy from Harbin just wanted to talk to me. He was 23, just graduated from tourguide school and really liked reading history books and watching history movies. He told me a long story about the ancient ethnicities of north eastern china, how different peoples had become different races, which all let up to a story of a war and fued between two families over 300 years ago which was crucially important to the Manchurians taking over the rest of the middle kingdom and as a result these two families, even 300 years later can\'t inter-marry. (A good point about Chinese politics and \'fued\'s being played out on a longer time scale than we\'re used to, read: they might wait 100 years to get Taiwan back but there\'s not a chance they\'re going to forget). Of course he told me a lot more but I was way too tired to have him clarify the vocab that I didn\'t understand. I told him a very bad version of the Indian wars in upstate NY during the French and Indian war after he asked for a similar story from my country.

After breakfast we got back on the bus to drive to Changbaishan. As we approached we were harangued for half an hour by our tourguiedes shrill voice talking about the tree species, cultural significance of changbaishan and that it was perfectly safe because the last erruption was 304 years ago. She then explained that it had erupted several more times in recorded history (which is fairly long here), I forget the other years, but that the local oral history said the mountain would erupt every 300 years. Although I was ready to flee at any moment, no signs of volcanic activity were seen, don\'t worry. I also learned how to say fun words like volcanic eruption and soapstones, yay Chinese. The bus stopped at the gate, which had huge billboard pictures of themountain, but there was no mountain insight above the tree tops in this flat forest. We walked through the gate and boarded another bus which took us for another 20 minutes on an increasingly steep road that finally arrived at a much bigger mountain than I expected.

Changbaishan is a cauldera very similar to Crater Lake, OR. The ring of mountains are over 2000m (6000 plus feet) with a very large lake, several K accross and over 400m deep at the top. The North Korean border passes very close to the lake, on the opposite side, so I can say I\'ve seen North Korea. The approach climbs up a wide valley caused by the most recent eruption and requires a covered staircase to protect against the loose rocks falling from the high cliffs. The steepest part has a several hundred foot tall water fall which fans out into rolling aspen forests, grey to yellow tinted cliffs giving it a very distinctive feel. There were also some hot springs at the beginning of the trail and the big attraction was eating eggs that had been naturally hard boiled in the springs. They tasted like hardboiled eggs.

As with all mountains in China, the equipment and skills perceived necessary by the climbers varies widely. We wore our sneakers and had packs with water, snacks and sweatshirts. Many people didn\'t carry anything and wore their leather dress shoes and slacks. I didn\'t see any skirts so at least most Chinese here were informed that this was a real mountain. Then there were a couple very large groups of Korean tourists who were all decked out in perfectly new, name brand mountain climbing gear and accessories. (hats, glasses, ski poles, packs, special shirts, pants, collapsable chairs, etc) I watched them closely but they didn\'t attempt any of the scree slopes or peaks, staying on the same stone staircase that everyone else used. Maybe most interesting were several of the Chinese girls on our trip who were genuinely worried that there wouldn\'t be enough male students around to help them climb the mountain. This perplexed me a lot because they really insisted on male students help and wouldn\'t accept the help of the capable American females. At first this seemed like a flirting game that students here play a lot, with the girls trying to be extra girly to get their guy friends to be extra macho (or more sensitive and feminine as the case may be). But this went passed friendly flirting and seemed to speak something about the interesting way gender roles are developing, not exactly upholding the capable and independent image of women we\'re used to in the West. Issues like them all being single children, experimenting with identity and relationships and having even less of a base of cultural precedent that American college students (us) feel at this point in their lives are all intertwined here and I think this is a fascinating aspect of modern culture here. Ok, Enough of that.

The whole time I\'m climbing the mountain I\'m carrying a sword! You have no idea how great it feels to climb a mountain with a sword at your side! The Chinese comments were hilarious, from \'hello master\' to \'is that to protect against tigers?\' to \'excellent sword, foreigner, good quality\' (note: this is the cheapest taiji sword you can buy, and it was old and borrowed from a friend anyway), at the top one Korean hawker was really excited and really, really wanted to buy it. As much fun as it would be to reverse roles in the bargaining game, I refused on the basis of our kungfu movie not being finished yet.

The movie I\'m not going to talk too much about because I\'d rather have you watch it (when its finished), but we essentially chose the most beautiful backgrounds possible to carry out our incredibly cheesy kungfu/love story, getting some very interesting looks and having lots of fun.

After mountain climbing we went to a place called the underground forest which is really a sunken volcano crater which has a big forest in it, essentially below the surrounding terrain, home to diverse wildlife and plants. Then we went back up towards the mountain to go to a public shower/hot springs. It was a classy spa, with seperate halves for males and females. Since all our teachers and the older tourguides were female, us guys were left to ourselves, which meant running around like a bunch of naked 10 year olds, splashing, whipping towels, making dumb jokes about inviting the girls over and having a righteous time. Self conscious is not a word I would use to describe our Chinese roommates when there weren\'t any girls around.

That night we stayed in a 兵官， which literally means \'soldier lodge\' but is generally used for more economy hotels or this place which could be called a bed and breakfast. No, not bed, 炕 (kang). 炕 are used all over northern China to sleep on in the winter. It\'s essentially like sleeping on top of a fireplace. Its built like a large bread oven and you sleep on top, usually rolling your blanket out on top of the bricks, squeezing people in rather tight since it forms the entire floor of \'bedroom\' that you step up two feet to get into. Being summer, there was no fire under ours, and it was like sleeping on a thick blanket on a brick floor, so hard but not bad. Before bed four of us (one cool kid from Harbin and three of us Americans) sat out on some sofa\'s on their porch, watching the stars and telling gost stories and other tales from our lives. It was a very nice night.

The second day we got back on the bus for a four hour ride to the city of 延吉 (yanji)。I some of the Chinese girls taught me a card game, and after of about 10 minutes of struggling with rules and vocab realized it was Hearts with chinese characteristics – just different scoring, and things got much easier. The middle of the drive was highlighted by driving through a very small village which our tourguide explained was predominantly of Korean ethnicity which you could see by how they built their houses and the layout of the town. The bus didn\'t stop, only slowed down so we could gawk out the windows at these people who had suddenly and unwittingly become a museam attraction to be stared ot through the glass. I havn\'t been to see other \'chinese ethnic minorities\' in China, but from what I hear this is the fairly standard mentality: present a people and their \'ethnic characteristics\', take a busload of tourists to see these people and their characteristics and maybe buy some souvineers or buy a few sticks of incense, and of course take lots of pictures. I can\'t say I felt too comfortable looking out at the people going about their lives, looking slightly confused to see a couple tourbusses driving slowly through.

The city of 延吉 was nice, not too big and just about like most other cities I\'ve been to. There were lots of Koreans selling things, some of it having \'North Korean characteristics\' but like tourist items all over the world, most of it was made in China. We wandered through some shops and looked at things, but there really wasn\'t much here that seemed that interesting when compared to climbing volcanoes. But still, it was my birthday and my friends here weren\'t about to let me forget it. At dinner, Korean, do-it-your-self BBQ, they rolled out a big cake, complete with a pink, plastic flower/candle that played happy birthday continuously. And like all cakes here, the cake itself was a plain as plain can be, yellow and bland, only made interesting by the visually highly complicated but entirely flavorless frosting. But I\'m not complaining, merely explaining. It was a great birthday, thanks to all of you here for attending (ha, it was part of our planned trip, you didn\'t have a choice)

But I\'d also like to say a big hello and thank you to friends and family, literally from all over the world who sent birthday wishes, or who felt facebook.com was too silly and who were still thinking of me. And for those who weren\'t, I\'m more than happy you were doing something exciting enough that home and friends didn\'t cross your mind. I\'m not sure any of use knows what it means to live in a world where we can be in constant contact with friends in China, New Zealand, Nicaragua, France, Pakistan, the entire span of the US, heading off for Russia, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Africa, Lebanon, etc. But even if we don\'t know, we\'re sure as hell going to try and find out.

Here are pictures: Pending Facebook.com working again...
The movie (CET Kungfu lovestory, Part II) will be a little bit longer in coming, but trust me, it\'ll be worth it. Signing out for now,
古木军
Morgan