China 2002, Part XII: Struttin' Our Stuff in Suzhou

Our trip to Hangzhou ended with an overnight boat ride on the Grand Canal all the way up, past Shanghai, to Suzhou. The boat ride was another of the highlights of our trip - we met quite a few interesting people, including another Chinese American student from Connecticut, and there was just a rustic sensation about playing cards in a cabin riding in a boat in a canal that was, and still is, a key to Chinese commerce for centuries.

Settling down in our cabin

We set sail

Some other boats on the canal

The next morning, bright and early, we arrived in the other half of China's Paradise on Earth, Suzhou. Suzhou does not have a signature lake, but is famous for quite a few things of its own - namely its gardens, water towns, and its silk industry, as we would come to learn from our tour of Suzhou that we were coerced on after departing the boat.

Bus Tour Time!

Our tour started at one of Suzhou's most famous gardens, the Shi Zi Lin Yuan (狮子林院), or the Lion Forest Garden:

Why anyone would let such a motley crew on their tour is beyond me...

Some of the other tourists =)

We next found ourselves at a temple (unfortunately, I don't quite recall the name) where we were treated to some more gardens, and also a traditional music performance:

I don't even know what is happening here...

Traditional music

I'm so bad, oh yeah...

Somehow, we found our way on a boat yet again, this time in one of the water towns in Suzhou:

Crowded boat

Some of the old houses along the water's edge

These canals, like the Grand Canal, are still used today to power the local commerce, as shown by this ladies cargo of watermelons...

The canal can be used for washing your dishes...

... Or washing your feet!

A nice view of a river bend

Before long, we were back on land, and on the way to our next stop, the Han Shan Si （寒山寺), or Cold Mountain Temple, which had quite a few impressive pagodas:

As you can see, my gangsta-ness had, by this time, reached the point of no return...

Colin on the impressive pagoda

Our last two stops on the tour were the obligatory, as I would learn years later on other tours of this part of China, tours of a tea house and a silk factory:

A tea sampling, where the guides taught us about traditional tea ceremonies

One of the more unusual segments of our tour was this runway fashion show in a silk factory

Of course, I couldn't help myself!

And that concluded out tour of China's Paradise on Earth, Su-Hang! Stay tuned for the conclusion of our Adventures outside of Xian!

An interesting trinket we saw while walking around Suzhou - these little clay dolls have little members that pee pee cold water if you pour boiling hot water on their heads! An ingenious, albeit odd, invention!

Defining Points

Every now and again, we ought to look back on our lives and reflect on the years that have passed. This gets more difficult as we get older, since, at least until a certain point, your life typically gets more complex and busy. And yet, I think it's more important to do so as we amass more mileage in our lives.

A few days back, I came to the realization that it had been just about ten years since I partook in my study abroad program to Xian, China, the yet-to-be-completed accounts of which can be read by my readers here at Grant's Pad, in somewhat reverse chronological order by clicking on the China 2002 label link in the sidebar.

Posing for a group picture on Mount Hua in 2002

Continuing down that line of thought, I looked at the specific date and realized that this past Monday, May 21, was ten years to the day that Cherry and I first met at the English "Sand Dragon" (this is what "English Salon" translated to in Chinese)!

The good ol' Sand Dragon

It's very eye-opening to look back and try to identify the defining points in your life - those block points that, had there been a slightly different sequence of events, or if you had picked the blue pill instead of the red pill, your life would have had little semblance to what you know it to be today. Things like moving from another state or country, picking your college and your dorm or first apartment, or starting a new job. These defining points do just that - they provide the setting for the rest of your life.

Cherry giving me a tour of her college in 2002

For Cherry and me, my study abroad trip to Xian ten years ago, and in particular, our meeting at the English Salon, will forever be one of the handful of such defining points in our lives. From that point on, our lives began to converge, bringing two largely insignificant individuals from vast distances and backgrounds apart together!

In commemoration of this defining point in my life, I plan to continue chronicling the experiences from the China 2002 study abroad trip, and hopefully conclude it, over the course of the next several posts. Keep an eye out!

Stores I Miss

So, I was reading a bit from the course pack of my Global Strategic Management pack this morning (a very rare event for me - just looking at that binder is intimidating). Among the articles that caught my eye were one that was entitled "Toys 'Were Us?" which was of course discussing the struggling toy chain once loved by throngs of children throughout the 80s and 90s.

The article reference the recent demise of KB Toys, the mall-based toy store chain. I guess I'd not thought about it before, but I did indeed notice the absence of KB Toys stores in my trips to the mall over the past year. Not only KB Toys, but also other favorite stores in the mall that Ed and I used to love visiting whenever my parents would go to the mall, such as Electronics Boutique and Waldenbooks. Now, Electronics Boutique still lives on in spirit through video game store Gamestop, but Waldenbooks declining presence in malls is actually somewhat of a shock to me. Has the public become so disheartened with the classic art or reading that they no longer feel the need to put bookstores in the mall? I feel like I should be the last person to complain, since I haven't read a book in who knows how long, but it's still a little sad to not see those stores that we spent countless hours in as children.

What are some stores you used to visit that aren't around any more, or are hard to find nowadays?

China 2002, Part XI: Hangin' in Hangzhou

Wow, it's been almost a year and a half since my last China 2002 post! I guess I've been pretty busy with other things and have been finding too many other interesting things to write about. Fortunately, I didn't really come across anything interesting the last couple of days... thus is the nature of the off-season! What's that you say? Basketball? Magic? Cavaliers? What are those? Drum corps???

After our romp in Shanghai, it was time to move on to less opulent lifestyles once more and head towards what the Chinese refer to as "Heaven on Earth". You see, back in Imperial times, when the Emperors wanted to live the high life, they would leave their capital cities (be it Xi'an, Nanjing, Beijing, etc..., depending on the dynasty) and head towards the cities of Suzhou (苏州) and Hangzhou (杭州). These two cities collectively were known as Su-Hang (苏杭), and it is said that "上有天堂，下有苏杭" (shang4 you3 tian1 tang2, xia4 you3 su1 hang2). This little couplet translates to "Up there there is Heaven, Down here there is Su-Hang", referring to the paradise-like qualities of this region.


We hopped on the train to Hangzhou on the morning of July 8, arriving in the afternoon. We quickly found a hotel courtesy of one of the famous-but-probably-illegal "bread cars" that we had become quite familiar with during our stay in Xi'an. So called Bread Cars are essentially privately run taxi vans that are shaped somewhat like loaves of bread, similar to the Volkswagen vans of the 70s (in fact, I'm not sure that some of them aren't actually Volkswagen vans from the 70s!). These services are typically shunned by the government, which has deemed them to be road hazards, and rightly so, since they don't really follow road rules and stop just about anywhere there is a potential fare!


The first order of business after finding lodging was washing our clothes, since they were pretty soiled from the last few days of mountain-climbing, panda-hugging, and club-hopping. This was China, however, so we washed our clothes by hand and hung them up to dry. This proved to be a bit of a mistake since the climate in Hangzhou is substantially more humid than that of our Xi'an home base... regardless, the next thing on our minds was getting some food, as we had not had any since leaving Shanghai. We were quite excited to find a place claiming to serve our favorite Xinjiang dish, 大盘鸡 (da4 pan2 ji1), or "Big Plate Chicken", a wonderful concoction made with a whole chopped-up chicken, red hot chili peppers, potatoes, and broad rice noodles.


Unfortunately, our hopes and wishes were completely dashed, as Hangzhou's interpretation of 大盘鸡 was a complete failure. To compensate, we went in search of more food, which we found courtesy of a local who showed us a place to have more traditional cuisine of the region (typically sweeter and more vinegary than the bold tastes of Central China). We hit up an internet bar to catch up on our e-mail and then headed in to sleep.

The next day, we headed out to see Hangzhou's most famous landmark, the West Lake, or 西湖 (xi1 hu2). The West Lake is famous for a tower called 雷峰塔 (lei2 feng1 ta3), or Thunder Wind Tower. Unfortunately, the tower was in the middle of a restoration project, so we didn't get to see it. We did, however, get to take a little boat ride on the lake and see the Chinese tourists gawk in awe at my tall, Caucasion companions. One family even asked Eric to pose with their children!


Tune in next time for the conclusion of our trip to China's Heaven on Earth!

Childhood Friends

Last few days have seemed extraordinarily long - even the weekend! I suppose the long weekend wasn't really a surprise because I was at class for most of it. Granted, I spent a lot of my time in class playing Picross, but 16 hours of class over two days is still a lot to get through!

The Gators managed to rebound after our upset to Ole' Miss last week... sort of. I didn't get a chance to actually watch the game - instead, I was following it using internet updates during class - but I did manage to see that we were absolutely killing ourselves with stupid penalties and getting gashed by Arkansas' not-so-famous offense. They were only able to score once in the whole game, but they got to the red zone with ease several times only to turn the ball over or have a field goal blocked. Florida didn't really pull away until the two long runs by Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps in the fourth quarter - but I still don't know that we can count on them against a good defense, say, LSU's this week. We're really going to have to bring our A+ game this Saturday!

On Sunday, I had lunch with a childhood friend. I first met Todd in 1988, when my family first moved to Spoonbill Lane. I was just six years old, and he was probably five, but I'm not sure these days. Todd also had a little brother named Zach, and, along with Mike and Dave next door, the three sets of brothers (Ed, in my case) were best friends for the six years that we lived there. I can't really say much about other people's childhoods, but my experiences with those five kids are still clear to this day.

At some point, we formed the STB (Squirrel, Turtle, and Bird) club to somewhat formalize our friendship. Todd and Zach were the Squirrels, Mike and Dave were the Birds, and Ed and I were the Turtles. Together, we had several events, often dreamed up by Todd. Such events included an Olympics type event, various neighborhood sales, declarations of war on other kids in the neighborhood (although Todd is actually probably one of the most peaceful kids I know), STB Radio, STB theme parks, and so on. I don't remember who it was now, but someone came up with another clever definition for the acronym, "Salute To Boys". Todd always had a penchant for Disney, so it didn't surprise me that he was now in the hospitality industry and had at one point worked at one of the hotels in the Disney resort.

Summertime seemed like straight out of a Calvin and Hobbes summer series back in those days, complete with our version of Calvinball (which, if you know what Calvinball is, is not much different from actual Calvinball). Living in Florida, we didn't have the national park-like backyard that Calvin and Hobbes often rode their wagon through, but we did have a wagon - several, in fact. On the other hand, Calvin and Hobbes didn't have a pool - pool parties were a staple of our summers. For several years, we would also attend a church camp (I actually attended Sunday School back in those days and was part of the Kids Choir) over the summer.

Todd also introduced me to several of my passions today. Both he and Mike were among the first kids to get Nintendo at their house, and I vividly remember hours after hours of playing the original Super Mario Bros., Tecmo Super Bowl, and the Tiny Toons game. Although my parents had Atari right around when I was born, Nintendo was my first real video game love. Todd and his parents were also very big Seminoles (in fact, he ended up going to school at FSU), so my first real college football watching experience was 1992's National Championship between FSU and Nebraska. It's a little odd these days since I eventually became the die-hard Gator I am today!

I've met up with Todd two, maybe three times since moving from Spoonbill Lane. It had actually been close to ten years since our last meeting in 1999, when he was still in high school! It's a shame we didn't get to spend more time this weekend, but he lives pretty close by, so I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to hang out again someday.

China 2002, Part X: High Rolling in Shanghai

Happy Year of the Rat!

I actually remember the last Year of the Rat in 1996. I remember it because it was the year that the Florida Marlins won the World Series in baseball and the Florida Panthers made their playoff run in hockey, and due to a series of strange events, rats were a symbol for that year's Florida Panthers. It must have been a pretty big deal at the time, because I don't follow hockey at all, and even I know about that!

I figured Grant's Pad would celebrate this Chinese New Year appropriately with another China 2002 post. So sit back, relax, light up some incense, and walk with me...

Or fly! As mentioned at the end of the last installment of China 2002, on leaving Sichuan, we actually took a plane to Shanghai to continue our vacation. Chinese airlines, to say the least, are none too impressive. I've often made the complaint that service on American airlines is crap. Well, the service on Chinese airlines actually isn't that bad - they have stuck to the norm in Asia of keeping their flight attendants on a strict appearance standard - but the patrons are pretty much like patrons on any form of public transportation in China - very rushed with little respect for rules or novel concepts like queuing. Not queuing theory, mind you, which is comprised of some pretty hardcore mathematical models, but just plain old waiting in lines. Of course, once you're used to it, being bigger and stronger than most Chinese, we were able to push our way around most places, but it does take some getting used to! Oh and in-flight entertainment is limited to, well, whatever CDs you brought with you. I guess my CD player didn't weigh my shoulder down in vain after all!

The last time Kir-Wei and I were in Shanghai, we hadn't been taught in the ways of how much things should cost in China. Case in point - we bought bead bracelets for a whole 10 yuan, when in actuality, you should be able to pay just 1 yuan for them. The saying goes "You don't know money's worth until you've been to Shanghai." Now that we've been in China for almost two months, we can understand where this saying comes from. For example, the cab drivers in Shanghai, while friendlier than those encountered in Chengdu, charge about twice as much as our drivers in Xian. Plus, unlike most drivers we met in other cities in China, Shanghaiese cab drivers often don't know how to get where you want to go - something that almost never happens in Xian!

Candy (remember her?) greeted us at Shanghai airport, and we made our way with some struggles to Pujiang Fandian, a very old, sort of classic lodge. The lobby is very luxurious, reminiscent of what Shanghai must have been like when Europeans ruled here, but our rooms were actually more like youth hostels - beds in rooms of about ten other foreign travelers. It's actually pretty cool when you're looking forward to meeting other travelers, but it makes you really think about leaving stuff in the room! Plus, the location of the hotel was really supreme - since it was built in the early 1900s, it overlooked the Bund for a spectacular night view!

Our trip to Shanghai consisted largely of living the high life. We visited my uncle Cheng Hsiu at his restaurant (remember that classy looking joint from one of the first China posts?) where he fed us very well and then took us out with his two female musicians to a KTV place that he likes to frequent. Uncle Cheng Hsiu provided the cover and the drinks, but we were on our own when it came to selecting from the buffet line of escort girls! Escort girls are apparently quite common in nightlife in Shanghai - we ran into many more while going to nightclubs like Club Maya around town. Basically, it's like paying to have a girl stand next to you and talk to you. Kinda creepy, I know!

Club-hopping wasn't the only thing we did in Shanghai, however. We strolled the streets quite a bit - one of the greatest things about cities in Asia is that you don't feel completely alone when you're walking around in the street - in fact, everyone's doing it! Of particular note was Tom, Colin, Eric, and my visit to the Grand Hyatt hotel, the tallest building in all of China (and I believe the fourth tallest in the world). At the top of the Grand Hyatt, you were invited to sit down and have very expensive (by both Chinese and American standards) appetizers and enjoy the view of the city from its highest possible point.

Of course, we didn't stop there. We had real steak in Shanghai (not that the wonderful Brazilian steak on skewers restaurant in Xian didn't have excellent red meat in huge quantities). We watched a horrible Chinese movie and paid full price for it in a real, legitimate movie theater. And, we paid a whole 5 RMB to go to the very nice Shanghai History Museum! Actually, 5 RMB (student pricing) was a very welcome price. At this point, we didn't think we'd ever see cheap things in Shanghai again.

The Shanghai History Museum wasn't the only cheap place we went. Probably the coolest thing we saw in Shanghai was the acrobatics show. It was only 60 RMB, which might seem hefty until you remember that it translates to about eight bucks and you remember that Cirque du Soleil will set you back over 100 USD at a minimum for anything near decent seats. The show was pretty low budget, with silly leotards and no major lighting effects, but the acrobatics were top notch, ranging from balancing acts to plate spinning to a girl on a 10-ft unicycle tossing up to three dishes at a time with her foot on top of her head! The most amazing act by far, however, was the final one. One global cage. Not one, not two, not three... but seven motorcycles driving loop-de-loops around one man standing in the middle! Incredible!

After nearly a week of hanging out in Shanghai, it was time to see a different place. Tune in next time to read more about our self-awarded vacation trip! In the meantime, be sure to check out the Photo Albums below!

Tom's Shanghai albums (three albums)
My China Album (Part I)

China 2002, Part IX: Backpacking in Sichuan

... or in my case, shoulder-packing, since I made the regrettable mistake of partaking in this quest with a shoulder bag filled with tons of things other than the essential clothes, snacks, and bottled water. My shoulder bag had at least another 5-10 pounds of books, CD player, and CDs! Interestingly, my left trapezoidal is substantially bigger than my right one - I wonder if weeks of trekking with this bag has anything to do with that?

My newer readers might not have been around during the establishment of my China 2002 Flashback series, which this is a continuation of. It's basically what I would have written if I had a blog back in summer of 2002, when I did a study abroad to Xi'an, China, where I met some lifelong friends and my lifelong partner in Cherrie. You can check out the rest of the series by clicking the "China" label under the "Labels" sidebar. I haven't had a chance to finish up this series, since I've been writing about other things like football and Scions and so forth. Speaking of Scions, last week's poll is complete and I have to say, wow there were a lot of haters! The most popular response, as you can see, was "Doesn't matter, they're still ugly!"

Final Results of the poll:

Do you think Scion has become stale?

Yes, they should go back to their funky roots. 2 (16%)
Nope, they're still funky, just bigger and better! 3 (25%)
Doesn't matter, they're still ugly... 5 (41%)
What is "sky-on"?? 2 (16%)

Anyhow, back on topic. With the Chinese New Year of the Rat fast approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to kickoff the Grant's Pad Slideshow with photos from my China 2002 study abroad, and then I thought it would be appropriate to finally contine on with the China 2002 Blog Series. We last left off with Part VIII: Dating, where I wrote about the womanizing exploits of Kir-Wei and myself. So, without further delay, here's Part IX!

It is now the beginning of July, and Kir-Wei, Eric, Jelani, Colin, Tom, and I decided to take a trip to the South of China, taking advantage of our program's extremely liberal schedule and taking off about two weeks.

Our voyage began with a short eight hour or so train ride to the bustling city of Chengdu (成都), in the Sichuan (四川) province, most famous for their cuisine (also known as Szechuan), panda bears, and several famous historical (or legendary, have it your way) martial arts sects, including the Emei (峨嵋) sect of Emei Mountain and the Qingcheng sect based out of, you guessed it, Qingcheng Mountain.

Some fun facts about Chengdu. Like Xi'an, Chengdu is one of the ancient capitals of China - in fact, its name is more or less translated as "Becomes the Capital "in Chinese. It first served as the top city in China in the fourth century BC, during the warring states prior to the Qin dynasty. Of course, we all know that the Qin used Xi'an as its capital, so Chengdu didn't reclaim its capitalship again until the Han dynasty in about 400 A.D. Chengdu is also notable for being the birthplace of paper currency around the middle of the 10th century A.D. The reasons for Chengdu's importance can be seen by its geography and layout - it is very centrally located and one of the largest major cities in China at over 10 million population. To control traffic, it is also designed as the "perfect" city, employing a very organized hybrid grid/concentric circles system also used in other major Chinese cities such as Beijing. Even so, navigating its streets as foreigners was no easy task - we left that task primarily to the cab drivers!

Our first major stop in Sichuan was the aforementioned Qing Cheng Mountain (青城山). Qing Cheng mountain is actually divided into two parks - the main mountain and the rear mountain. The main mountain is much more popular, as its the one that is featured in TV programs and such. However, seeking a more rustic quest, we headed straight for the rear mountain. Still, the base of the mountain was teeming with tourists, food vendors, and the sort. Slightly less than halfway up the mountain, however, the human traffic dropped significantly, as we became the only signs of humanity save for the hard core mountain men that hand carried hundreds of pounds of supplies back and forth between the temple at the top of the rear mountain.

The steps were many and the sights were stunning - some four or five hours in we were already past the clouds, thanks to the steep grades. The mountain was spectacularly green - like something straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. However, at some point we did get pretty tired, and pretty hungry as well. Luckily for us (especially since we had already passed all of the inns along the way and it was getting dark), there was a Daoist temple called White Cloud Temple (白云寺) at the top of the mountain, where they not only fed us some of that famous Sichuan cuisine, but they clothed us in very Kuomingtang reminiscent gear to protect us from the cold of night and rented out some quarters for us to spend the night for the equivalent of about one US dollar! How many times in your life can you claim to have camped out in a Daoist temple at the top of a mountain in China?? This was easily one of the most memorable parts of my trip.

On the way down the mountain on the second day we started down the mountain until, to our surprise, we reached a river that we had to cross. Fortunately, there was a ferry and we didn't have to back track all the way back up to the temple and go down the way we came. Several miles later, our American spoiled butts took the easy way out and took the cable cars down to get a birds eye view of the Green City (which, in case you were wondering, is what Qingcheng translates to).

At this point, we took a look at our goals. Eat World Famous Sichuan Cuisine? Check. Climb a famous Kung Fu Mountain and stay at a Daoist Temple at the top? Check. Pandas? Not yet! For our last stop in Chengdu, we headed to the creepily named Chengdu Giant Panda Research Facility.

To our relief, this was not some animal testing factory where baby pandas were harvested for their bamboo-shoot enriched coats - it was actually a huge, state of the art natural habitat that bred and cared for the world's largest population of giant pandas in captivity in hopes of boosting their natural population. Turns out that pandas are some of the dumbest mammals in the world, and as such, struggle to survive due to their picky appetites and stupidity (they often don't recognize their own offspring and, as a result, many baby pandas are left to die on their own or even flat out killed by their stupid parents!). We toured the facility, and we also had our photos taken with a baby panda for a modest price of about 12 US dollars!

That concluded the first leg of our trip to Southern China. Next stop, Shanghai! And we would go there in style, taking a real plane instead of a train! Make sure you check out all the photos of our trip to Sichuan in Tom's Chengu Photo Album and my own personal collection!

Stay tuned for the next segment of our backpacking journey in China!

China 2002, Part VIII: Dating

Wow, it's already December! At the beginning of the year, I noted how it was a bit of a chore coming back to work after a long break. I believe I was referring to the whole "getting back into the groove" effort and trying to remember what it was you were doing prior to the break. Well, this week, as you know from the previous post, follows another somewhat long break in the form of the Thanksgiving break. While the break itself wasn't nearly as long as the wonderful winter break that we get every year, it is still a fairly long break, and coming back to work this week has been just as hard. The week has seemed to just drag on forever, and heck, it's still not over yet! Usually, weeks that drag on and on are victims of having little work to do. This week, however, there actually is quite a bit of work to do. Still, the week drags.

As a result, I don't really have much journal material to write. I'm not sure you guys would want to read about what I'm doing at work (nor do I think I would be allowed to write about some of the stuff anyway), and non-work life is not particularly exciting at the moment. So, I've decided to take us back to my China 2002 Flashback series! Today's topic, our dating lives in Xi'an! Enjoy!

June, 2002. Kir-Wei and myself had gotten to know Candy and Cherry quite well, respectively. Both girls were in Kir-Wei's group in our first visit to the English Salon. One day, Kir-Wei was studying, or something, with Candy when Cherry called, asking to chat with Kir-Wei. As Kir-Wei was occupied, I decided to make a move, and Cherry and I went on our first date that night to downtown Xi'an. Over the next few weeks, Kir-Wei got very close to Candy (as evidenced one morning in class by a rather large hickey!) and I got close to Cherry (as evidenced by the lack of my appearances at group functions and staying out late at night). We went on a number of dates to the City Walls, around Shaanxi Normal University, late night ice cream and snacking around the town, and her college, 西安翻译学院, or Xi'an Translator's College, as well.

I've mentioned before in my other college flashback posts that I dated a lot in school, and my reputation among the other students in Xi'an was something of a player, though really, that's an exaggeration. If you want to see a player, see my boys Chris and Kaveh, the other members of the Tri-fectorate! Me, I enjoyed company, and was fairly proficient at obtaining digits and getting dates, but I wouldn't really consider myself to be a player. However, with both Kir-Wei and I hanging out regularly with Candy and Cherry, we weren't doing much to shed that label.

I have to admit, Kir-Wei was more capable than me. Candy really liked him a lot, as she would later even go with us on our vacation to the south. However, Cherry, as she often reminds me to this day, didn't really like me much when we first met. She says that I looked like a thug, and that the humble, book-smart kind of guy was more her type. I suppose there is some truth to her stereotype - after having dyed my hair red, not only was I often mistaken as a Korean tourist, but I looked so thug that I was actually stopped at her school by security to make sure that I wasn't there to stir up trouble! Little did she know at the time that my own academic achievements probably exceeded the vast majority of the bespectacled, academic types that she liked!

Eventually, the days came when Candy, and shortly afterwards, Cherry, had to leave Xi'an. Kir-Wei was pretty lonely for a while, but we would later meet up with her again during our vacation. He and Candy would eventually make a trip to Beijing after the rest of us had returned to Xi'an, and they both came back to Xi'an for much of the rest of our stay there, somewhat to my dismay (since I was kind of a perpetual third wheel). However, Kir-Wei is one of my best friends (not to mention the most regular visitor of Grant's Pad), so I tried to be a good sport!

When Cherry left, however, I didn't know when I would see her again. She didn't want to come with us on our trip, and left me with a farewell letter and a small pendant to remember her by. During our trip to the South, I tried to contact her many times, but on the one time that I could have crossed paths with her, I decided to continue with my friends to the rest of the trip. Eventually, she told me that her phone number had changed and gave me her home address, but I wasn't able to call her for a long time. Eventually, I wrote a letter to her, mostly in English, except for the introduction that I was able to piece together with my lousy command of written Chinese, and sent it to her in Shanghai, hoping that she would call me, but somewhat expecting that it was over...

Almost every day, I waited for her to call me. Towards the end of our stay in Xi'an, we were forced to move because of some math symposium that was going to be held in the hotel that we stayed at. As I had not yet heard from Cherry, I was pretty disappointed. However, our move was delayed, and once again I was given a little more hope! Miraculously, on the very last day before we actually moved to the International Student dorm of the nearby 外语学院, or Foreign Languages College (Candy's college), Cherry finally called. She had gotten my letter, which I had addressed incorrectly. By chance, her grandfather had walked past the pile of undelivered letters and saw on addressed to Cherry in horrifically poor Chinese penmanship. Cherry had read the letter and was so moved that she immediately called me after reading it and gave me her new phone number.

Of course, her new number was a pre-paid phone, and wouldn't you know it, she had run out of minutes before that call ended. It wouldn't be until Kir-Wei, Eric, and I were in Beijing on the last leg of the China 2002 trip that I was able to talk to her again. We kept in touch and I visited her in China several times over the next few years, getting to know one another better, and the rest, as they say, is history!

So, that's the story of how Cherry and I met, and the most important reason (among many many other wonderful ones) that my trip to China in 2002 has such a special place in my heart! From her initial dislike of me to the letter that finally brought us back together - it had ups and downs, but ends happily ever after, like my own personal fairy tale!