I made it through the final lecture and my students’ final exam. So, now I am doing some travelling. I am currently on a high speed train to Shanghai. I have been looking forward to riding on a high speed train, even before I arrived in China. When I woke up this morning, to get ready to travel, I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning! I love trains, and I especially love high speed trains. The current travelling speed is posted in every train car. See below… 304 km/hour, which converts to nearly 200 mph! We are flying right along.

I am travelling with a new friend named Lamqiezhun. (The pronunciation is hom-see-joon.) What is particularly interesting about her name is that “Lamqiezhun” is her entire name. She doesn’t have a family name at all. She is a graduate student who just finished her degree in Grassland Management. I met her last Sunday for the first time, just by random chance, and she is fluent in Chinese, Tibetan and English. We met at an informal Tibetan dance on the soccer field after dark. We joined the circle dance for a bit and then we watched everyone else and just talked. She is very friendly and I eventually asked her if she might be interested in being my travelling companion. She was keen on the idea, and so here we are travelling on a high-speed train to Shanghai.

She is Tibetan and we have talked about what it is like in her hometown and in Tibet, in general. We even spent some time talking about yaks!

She was born in the Tibetan countryside and then moved with her family to the Tibetan city of Xining. Her family has kept the family property in the countryside and her whole family — about 20 people on her mom’s side, gather annually out in the country. They stay in the beautiful white yurt that you see below. The yak glamor shot is of “Dumpling”, who is one of her favorites.

It has been*very* helpful to have Lamqiezhun as my guide. Travelling in China would be very difficult without a helper who speaks Chinese. There seem to be many rules and situations that she needs to sort out for me. The Chinese system for many things is complicated. I am very glad to have someone to help out with the travel details, plus she is a great companion and easy to talk with.

As we were waiting in the train station for our train to arrive we had the following conversation:

• her: Standing next to you is very interesting.
• me: Oh, really?! Why?
• her: Did you know that everyone is staring at you? They aren’t full-on staring at you, but they are all stealing furtive glances. Many times.
• me: Oh yeah, that. I forgot to warn you. Traveling with me means you will get stared at a lot. Or rather, you’ll notice that I get stared at a lot. I kind of stand out.
• her: It feels a bit weird though, that they stare at you. It’s not like they’ve never seen foreigners before.
• me: I noticed it a lot the first week or so. I barely notice now. It doesn’t bother me much. They aren’t being mean or hostile, just mostly curious. They look at me, then glance away. Then look again, then look away. It’s the little kids who are funny about it. They stop and just stare. I smile and give a friendly wave, which they like. I catch the attention of babies. Even they can tell I’m different.
• her: This is going to be an interesting trip, with everyone looking at us. I’m used to blending in a bit more than this.
• me: It actually works in my favor sometimes. People are a bit friendlier because they can tell I am a foreigner and have no idea how things are done. I catch a lot of breaks because they give me the benefit of the doubt.

The distance from Beijing to Shanghai is 750 miles and takes 5 hours 30 minutes by high-speed train with 7 stops in between. To put this into perspective, Ithaca to Chicago is 675 miles. Can anyone imagine being able to get to Chicago in just five hours?!! This is amazing to me.

I looked up the airplane travel time for Syracuse to Chicago and it’s 4 hours and 45 minutes. Go figure.

Key takeaway: the trains here are seriously fast, comfortable and convenient.

On our first night in Shanghai, we wandered the city exploring the area between our hotel and the river. It’s a beautiful modern city. The cityscape is fabulous and almost unearthly.

On the far side of the Huangpu River, you can view the modern skyscrapers. On the the close side of the river are the classical European-style buildings that were built in the mid-1800’s when the European powers in invaded and staked a claim to large swathes of China.

Our plans for the day include a visit to the Shanghai museum and some garden visiting.

The one thing that I forgot when I did my trip planning is that the monsoon season reaches into Shanghai. Thus on our first evening stroll through the city, we walked in the monsoon rains. It wasn’t a downpour, but it was a steady rain and as you can see in the photo above, we got soaked despite our valiant use of umbrellas.

I am not complaining though because it reached a searing 106 degrees in Beijing today. So glad that we managed to escape that weather for a few days.

The countdown until I leave Beijing has begun… I have just four days left. I am going to make the most of it!