You must visit this mountain before you die. Seriously.

As you can probably see, it was fairly cloudy and foggy. The result was an mysterious, ethereal and overall stunning atmosphere. Alas, it also made taking photos quite difficult with my fairly basic camera!

The ascent wasn’t too difficult — about two and a half hours of climbing steps. What was a hassle, was the many workers hauling goods up the side of the mountain with us (to supply the hotel and other commercial operations at the summit). This led to some tight and potentially dangerous situations. For the lazy, there was the option of a cable car, at the not-to-cheap price of around 85 yuan (to put things in perspective, a bus ticket from Yancheng to Nanjing is about 80 yuan).

It’s really hard to illustrate the sense of scale there was when climbing Huang Shan. In the photo above, you can make out people climbing a near-vertical staircase… Unfortunately, I could not fit both parts of that peak into the shot from my vantage point.

The fog was clearly visible and semi-fluid… It often seemed like an peculiar organism.

See all of the photos in the photo gallery.

Well I’m most definitely chuffed: C-Dogs SDL has finally made its way into the Gentoo Portage tree!

Which is cool after waiting 8 months… hehe…

So if you’re using Gentoo, and wish to test it out, simply:

$ echo "games-arcade/cdogs-sdl *-" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
$ emerge games-arcade/cdogs-sdl
$ cdogs

For more details, check out the Gentoo Online Package Database Page for cdogs-sdl.

Now I really should get around to releasing 0.4 while I’m at it… ;-)

Nanjing

Nanjing ( lit. ’south capital’ ) is certainly one of the more beautiful cities in China — trees line virtually every main road, and the city itself is bordered by mountains, the Yangtze river and the old city walls. There is a certain charm to the place which is not seen in Beijing, which supplanted it as national capital.

We (most of us GAPers from Jiangsu) all tried to visit the Nanjing Massacre War Memorial, but, alas, it was closed for renovations (until November!) Slightly peturbed, we visited the Xuanwu lake. The lake (and the couple of islands in the middle) were impressive, and much fun was had playing pirate with the electric boats. Had a good lunch, then some tandem bike shenanigans.

Zhenjiang

The last stage of traveling to Zhenjiang was the spectacular — a huge suspension bridge spanning the Yangtze river. One could see the barges slowly ploughing the river, carrying all sorts of cargo.

This (I dare say) “junket” was financed by the local government — I suppose they figured it was in their interests to have lots of foreigners looking at the various things they chose to show us — a special school (for mainly the deaf), a bamboo screen factory (woven by hand, often taking several weeks for each piece), a clothes factory, the old administration complex (quite a few European buildings), a model farm, a new school (and became an instant celebrity. hah!) and a temple.

Two other GAPers were there with Joe and I — Andrew and Hugh. It was good to catch up again, and various amusing things transpired involving beer which I shall not go into much depth about.

Today Joe and I were informed that we have two days off due to the classes we teach having an important exam (and thus needing time to prepare, etc)… We made this short film:

Windows Movie Maker (it’s decent enough to do what we want, but can anyone recommend a better [free] alternative?) and a Canon PowerShot A530 were the primary tools we used. The soundtrack is “Ambush in the Passage” by Jeremy Soule from the Total Annihilation real-time game.

Many thanks to the Wang Wang (??) biscuit company for giving us inspiration and tasty snacks!

The following is a recount of my experiences in Beijing:

Beijing… North capital…! One really huge city, with incredible traffic chaos — nobody really follows the traffic lights or signs (however a policeman in the center of a huge intersection wields a degree of authority)…. It’s every car, bike and pedestrian for them self (and somehow it works). The layout is essentially a grid, with wide concentric “ring roads” speeding up travel.

Our hotel was the “Holiday Inn” (downtown). Apparently it was 4 star. I would be reluctant to describe our particular room as meeting those standards — it was often noisy at night and the beds were hard (however some other people got more spacious and comfortable rooms), but it was more than adequate. After all, one does not go to another country to enjoy the hotels… :-P

And the toilet and basin swirled in the opposite direction! How strange!

I felt a little sorry for the lady hotel workers who would have to stand outside (but dressed in a really cool red coat and hat thingie) in the cold… seemingly all the time. So I tried to practice my Putonghua with varying degrees of success.

I wouldn’t recommend this hotel for it’s price.

After asking about 10 people along the way, I ended up finding an internet cafe ( “wangba” )… It was tucked into a lane, up a flight of stairs. Inside, it was dark and smoky (people can smoke just about anywhere in China) and generally almost full of people [For those from Melbourne, the cafe was somewhat like N2C in terms of atmosphere]… Most were playing internet games, in particular one which looked like Diablo but wasn’t.

It was a new experience walking alone around the streets at night, and actually feeling safe. There are always people around, and everyone is generally friendly. People seem surprised at my state of singledom. No marriage proposals as yet, however. :-o

The Hutongs

We also visited the house of the illustrious Mr Feng — once a widely renowned breeder of singing grasshoppers and fighting crickets (it’s true!). He showed us his instruments and devices for the upkeep of these critters, including a minute set of scales! I don’t think many others noticed, but Mr Feng was Muslim — he had a hanging of the Hadj on his wall, along with the more traditional Chinese trappings. Mr Feng had some rather cute puppies out the back of his house, as well as some strange birds…

The Great Wall

It’s hard to appreciate the scale and immense nature of the wall until you actually walk a section of it. It was actually really really hard work in places, with the steps being over a foot high, as the wall impressively climbed the mountains. To think such a thing went on for thousands of kilometers over such terrain is still mind-boggling. Anyhow, the view from the top of the section I walked provided a good view of the surrounding terrain — semi-barren, steep and breathtaking in it’s ruggedness. One could see the wall curling over and around the landscape on the other side of the valley. There was also a smaller track running somewhat parallel to the wall which led to two pagodas (pictured)….

Tienanmen Square & The Forbidden City

It’s really hard to actually appreciate the sheer scale of Tienanmen Square, let alone The Forbidden City. The square not only houses the “North Gate”, Mao’s mausoleum, a giant pillar — it is surrounded by imperious communist buildings and presided over by the giant face of Mao hanging on the Northern wall of The Forbidden City. Red flags were everywhere. As were tourists and stodgy vendors (never ever, ever pay their asking price). Nevertheless, the Square was exceptional with its atmosphere of scale.

The Forbidden City was even larger. One can look all the way through the consecutive inner gates for at least a kilometer… Buildings everywhere, but placed with a sense of deliberation — nothing felt “crowded” or haphazard. The architecture was exquisite, and I felt lucky that it was still preserved to be seen, given the track record of “preservation” in this country (quite literally a land of cranes). Indeed and unfortunately, the main part of the forbidden city was under wraps because of restoration. A pity, but that was only one part that was missed out of a overly fantastic wander.

Other Things

We also saw an Acrobatic show, which was fantastic and often jaw-dropping, as well as a Kung-Fu show, which was exhilarating too.

The “markets” as they are called, are indoors, and there are floors and floors of all matter of menagerie. The girls were in 7th heaven. At the top of floor of these buildings typically is a food hall — and the food is really good value and for the most part, really good.

All in all, Beijing was fantastic. I am eager to re-visit on my own (as opposed to being in a semi-tour) as I found Shanghai more liberating in that I was able to explore to my heart’s content.

See more photos in my photo gallery.