One thing you learn quickly about traveling in China is that paradoxically the closer you get to the date you want to travel, the cheaper tickets get. So, unless it’s spring festival, it’s good to keep your options open. And so my options are open, still, if narrowed down a bit for my travels post-Hangzhou and pre-Beijing:

OPTION ONE:
Fly into Chengdu. That’s the location of the Panda Research Center and also the largest city near the earthquake that happened yesterday in Sichuan province. I would make my way into Northern Sichuan through Songpan with a visit to the Jiuzhaigou U.N.-designated Biosphere Nature Reserve. Then up across the border into Gansu province where I’d try to hit up the likes of Langmusi, a horse trekking locale, and Xiahe, a somewhat famous Tibetan village that serves as a stop on the pilgrimage to Tibet itself. From Xiahe, I’d have to stop in Lanzhou to hookup with the transportation hub. If I have time for an extension of the trip, I can take a 24 hour train from Lanzhou to Urumqi, which is in Xinjiang province. No trip to Xinjiang would be complete without another 24 hours to Kashgar, THE Asia market trading hub for thousands of years. I would fly back from Urumqi to Beijing.

OPTION TWO:
Fly into Beijing and drop off the majority of my belongings at where I’m staying. Then find a ten hour train to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. From there, I would visit various grassland villages and stay in yurt-style furnishings of Mongolian culture. I also might make a special Mongolian festival if I hit the timing right. This trip would be a bit more calm and relaxed since I wouldn’t have planes to catch and places to be. Inner Mongolia is considerably closer and easier to reach than Xinjiang.

OPTION THREE:
This is a minor combination of options one and two. Fly into Lanzhou and do a small trip to visit Xiahe or some Tibetan villages in Gansu. Then take the train back to Beijing via Inner Mongolia being sure to stop in hotspots like Hohhot and the grasslands.

These three options are made possible by Lonely Planet, without which I wouldn’t really know what is in these places. That said, my opinion of Lonely Planet has changed quite a bit as of late. Over spring break, I traveled Taiwan (almost) entirely without any sort of guide. A few friendly emails with suggestions from friends and family and a quick peek at a book at a hostel to help with hiking Taroko Gorge outside Hualien. I realize it’s easy to just follow the book. It gives a feeling of independence without having to have a guided tour with thirty other Chinese tourists. That said, Lonely Planet is not the end all be all. It puts you in the right place to have a baseline good experience and helps manage your expectations. That last part is key, if you have expectations for a place and they are met or surpasses, then your on track to travel well.

I stumbled upon yet another classmate that has been faithfully updating her blog, Adventures in China, over the past five months along with some stunning photos too. Take a look at some fresh writing.

And some of the folks I’ve already mentioned:
Awkward in China – Maeve
Bu De Bu Ai – Mairead
Penglisha – Liz
Adventures of Aina – Hannah
Visual Doc – Andrew

Lookout

Originally uploaded by ryanocerosk.

Okay, picture time. Click through for all 30+ photos of the Gorge. Goats, sheep, mountains, trees, trails, waterfalls, and all. Happy viewing!

So I cheated a little. I should get a t-shirt that says, “I climbed Tiger Leaping Gorge,” but with an asterisk noting that I took a 30 minute horse ride up the steepest part called the “28 bends.” I did make it about a quarter to a third way up the 28 bends before deciding to pay a Naxi local for the use of his horse for what could have been maybe 2 hours plus of uphill hiking. Maybe I should be proud that I bargained hard-core for the horse (I played the “student” card)?

When I reached peak at 2600 meters, a hobbit-like man charged 8RMB to people go out on this extended perch to take a photo of the gorgeous view. Now, it was free to look – such a tease – but just one photograph would cost you because he “made the path to the perch himself.” I doubt that he made the path himself, but even if he did, the land is public. I can’t figure out if this hobbit-man guarding his tourist-path is a clever chap or a cheat. Do you think I paid him or not?

On my second-day, I ended up hiking with an odd-collection of Asian people: a man from Shanghai, a Chinese mother-daughter pair, and a lone Korean girl. This group was so preoccupied with finding cheap transportation for the ride back to Lijiang that they ended up arguing for an hour at a rest-stop instead of actually continuing hiking.

What do the above three examples tell you about China?

The Chinese have a fantastic knack for monetizing (to use a Google Adsense term) everything. Identify a need and charge for it. Bathrooms? Internet? Napkins? Toilet Paper? Pay up.

Everything has a price and nothing is priceless. Want to bang the huge drum at the Drum Tower in Xi’an? Sure, 10RMB. Want to see a tigers attack and eat a cow at the zoo? Sure, 1400RMB.

And the result is a culture obsessed with comparative cost. It’s not really that much-criticized American consumer culture where people buy, buy, buy. Chinese people love to compare cost. It is: how much did you pay versus how much did I pay. The relative cost is much more important than the actual cost. As long as I got it cheaper than the next person, I can feel good. And this is built into a culture where prices are not fixed. You bargain everything.

Some people hate bargaining but one must admit that it is a luxury to have the knowledge that everything is negotiable. If you are at a restaurant and you like the tea cups, you probably can buy them if you ask. In America, you ask to buy a restaurant’s dishware and you might be thrown out.

So for kicks, here’s how I made out: I paid 40RMB for a horse compared to the standard 100RMB for white-people and 60 for non-white-people, so said my horse guide. I paid 5RMB compared to the 8RMB that my American companions paid to the hobbit-man, according to my ex-pat English teachers I met at the hostel. The Shanghai man said he paid 5RMB too. I ended up sticking with the Asian companions and paying 21RMB for a trip back to Lijiang compared to the 25RMB I paid going to Tiger Leaping Gorge.