Five Bars Over Mongolia

For you Blackberry addicts, you will be pleased to know that no matter where you are on the Gobi Desert, you can get cell phone connections. I could not get it in my apartment in Penticton but miles in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia, we are getting five bars. Telus should hire some Mongolians to work on their cell system. After a short 16 hour train ride from Beijing we arrived in Sainschand Mongolia at about 5:00 am. Most of the time was spent at the border dealing with immigration issues. After a pleasant strip search and some scowls we were allowed to leave China and enter Mongolia.
Our first stop was a ger (pronounced gar) camp located about 2o kilometres from Sainschand where we were to spend two nights. It was a basic camp with not a lot of amenities. Our ger (pronounced gar) was nicely appointed but the washrooms were a couple of 100 feet away. A long trip at around four in the morning with a wonky flashlight. One shower that sort of worked if you squatted down to use it as there was not enough water pressure to push it all the way to the end of the spray nozzle if you were standing. Some hot water, but cold showers were the order of the day. After all we were in the Gobi Desert.
The Gobi is not all sand dunes, most of it is made up of thin scrub where camels, sheep, goats and horses can find a few things to eat. Raising these animals is still the way of life for most Mongolians living in the Gobi. The live in gers (pronounced gars) and migrate at least three or four times a year. Mostly to assure that the camels, goats, sheep and horses have something to eat and to prevent over grazing.
A short nap and some breakfast, we headed out to a Monastery called Khamar. It has existed in the middle of the desert for almost 200 years. It it located here as it is near a source of some kind of power. It is a working monastery still today. There seems to be a huge deposit of iron in the area as the landscape is dotted with huge mounds of red dirt. Perhaps the power is magnetic. Despite the fact of its remote location, it was very busy with a few tourists but mostly Mongolians come to worship.
We were joined on our adventures by a couple and their young son. Americans currently living in Taiwan. We were stuffed into a minivan and transported around the Gobi at breakneck speeds over roads that had not existed a week before. If there was no road, we just sort of headed into the right direction. We got stuck in the sand once. But there was enough of us to push ourselves back on to solid ground. Not a problem. We could have easily called MAA (Mongolian Automobile Association) to send out some tow-camels. Remember we have great cell phone reception.

Later on our return to the ger (pronounced gar) camp, we came across a well where a Mongolian family was watering their goats, sheep, cattle and camels. They dropped huge canvas bags down into the well, pulled them up and dumped them into troughs where the camels, sheep, goats jockeyed for position get a drink. Finished, they jumped into their old truck (after using a big hand crank to get it started) and a couple of motorcycles and roared off home while the animals meandered off to find something to eat. It was a great end to our first day in Mongolia.

The New Adventure Begins

Dropped into the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube on our first day in Beijing. It seemed appropriate as our new adventure involves a job working in the Athletes Village for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. I start on August 10 and will be let go mid April. I had not planned to work in facilities ever again, but this is an opportunity that I cannot let go by. It means delaying our return to China by a year but it is an experience that will be just as exciting and mind boggling as our past year has been. Nonie and I plan to rent a nice condo in downtown Vancouver for the time we are there. Close to work and all the good (and bad) things that Vancouver has to offer. You are all welcome to visit us if you get the notion.


We spent our last day in Beijing with our friend Chao. We met Chao in our first few weeks in Harbin. He was hanging out in the hall outside my classroom. He was looking for some help to polish his English on his resume he was making for grant applications to US universities. We took the project on and happy to say he was accepted with a full scholarship to Texas A & M starting this fall. We hope to see him some time in Vancouver if he can fit it in.

We depart for Mongolia on Tuesday July 6th. Getting excited.

The Fat Lady Has Sung

The last week in Harbin was a whirlwind of lunches and dinners saying goodbyes to departing friends. It culminated on Friday night when we introduced the concept of "pot luck" to our Chinese friends. We feasted KFC, delicous quiches, pizza, rice balls and thanks to Tom and Aileen, fresh grilled hamburgers. Lots of food, beer and laughs

Saturday was departure day and a sad day for us. The younguns have been a wonderful part of our life for the last year and we are taking away some great memories. Takae, the daughter we never had. Branson, the rogue son who's antics both thrilled and dismayed us. Brian the enigma with the dryest sense of humour (That's humor for Brian) this side of the Gobi. Tom, our quiet son with a lot to say. Edoardo, our long lost Italian son who shepherded Nonie safely around Harbin and always made us feel special.

A big thanks to our friends Justin and Janie, who helped us in so many ways. We so enjoyed sharing our traditions with them, we will miss their smiles and thier friendship.

Many things went unsaid Saturday morning but were expressed in the fierce hugs we gave each other. We look forward to the future and the opportunity to meet them all again.

Our newest adventures began when we entered the car for the aiport.

It's a Girl!

Nonie and I would like to introduce you to the latest addition to the Cornell Dynasty. Unlike the Qing Dynasty who faded into obscurity, we continue to beat the odds and make babies. Sweet! Her name is Isla (Eye-la)Jean and she entered the world in the early morning of June 23rd at a whopping 7 pounds and 7+ ounces. Granmma and Grampa are doing fine. Oh and mom is too. Dad is still wondering what happened to the dangly bit but I will explain it to him when we see him at the beginning of August. The perils of having the "TALK" so early in his childhood as he has forgotten the "girls are different from boys" segment of the "TALK". We didn't have access to PowerPoint presentations back then. Although he did manage to make a baby. Hmmm?

Having had only boys to raise and no nieces close by, we are a little lost as to what the protocols are for baby girls. No help here in China where the male child still remains supreme, especially with the " one family, one child" rule. As all good grandparents do, we will make decisions based on what feels good and to hell with the future consequences. "To raise a child is great but to spoil is divine."

In China, children are either spoiled or forgotten depending on the economic circumstances of the family. There is a huge divide between how a child is raised if you are a have or have not. Some of my students have not seen their fathers except for a few times a year when they return for short vacations from jobs that may be thousands of mile away from their home province. Moving your family to where you work is closely regulated and not easy to do. There are over 150,000,000 itinerant workers in China so you can imagine the number of children growing up in a one parent household. Sometimes both parents must move to where the work is but thankfully grandparents quite often fill the void of the missing parents.

For the most part, children are revered here and no sacrifice is too great for parents to make so that their children can live a better life than they did. Parental sacrifices are a recurring theme that we have heard from a few of our students. Hearing these stories, sometimes made me feel remorseful as I do not remember much sacrifice when we were raising our two boys but then sacrifice is in the eye of the beholder.

We are busy this week with goodbye dinners and a little adminstration work. We have already said goodbye to Brian with others following every couple of days. There have been a few tears shed and I suspect a few more to come.

We're Back

Thanks to our in-house computor wizard we have regained access to our blog site. It seems that big brother "C" feels that unedited access to blogs is not healthy for young minds so has blocked access to all off shore blog sites. I am not sure if they have even read my blog so I guess I can't take it too personal. I have probably put a few censors to sleep over the last ten months.

Glad to be back as this will be the only way I will remember what the heck we have done over the last fifteen months. (Censors take notice: I avoided the hell word)

We have been busy so I will just give you a quick recap. We made it safely back from Shanghai. We were successful in obtaining our visas for Russia and Mongolia. Tickets and travel arrangements have been finalized for our return to Canada. Completed our last class on Friday night with a little administration work left for next week. Had many long lunches and a few dinners with friends. Gave a boring presentation entitled "Growing Old in Canada: 6 Decades of Change", not a big turnout. Did a little local sight seeing during the "Dragon Boat Festival" holiday. Had planned to go to Beijing but opted to save some money and stay local. Introduced our Chinese friends to the concept of "brunch". It may catch on.

We will leave for Beijing next Saturday and then two days later leave for Mongolia and home. Will hopefully keep you all enthralled with our newest adventures as we proceed around the world.

Stay tuned for the bestest news yet along with pictures.

Shanghai, The Old and the New

The history of Shanghai goes back to the 10th Century when it began life as a small market town. It became a home to 250,000 refugees when a sudden feudal war broke out in Kafeng, one of the seven ancient capitals of China. Over the next 10 centuries it continued to grow in stature, as a cotton and textile producing area, as well as due to it's location at the mouth of the Yangstze River. Trade between China and Europe became brisk with Shanghai playing host to the British, Americans, Germans and French. The growth of the cotton industry in 19 Century Europe and the Americas slowly destroyed the cotton industry in Shanghai and its stature started to wane. During the Sino-Japanese war over the Korean Peninsula in 1894, the Japanese became the controlling partner in Shanghai and began to build factories to take advantage of the cheap labour force that had relocated to Shanghai due to the war. Japan was soon followed by the rest of the western world and thus the industrial power house that is Shanghai was born. 

We woke up Saturday to a sunny and comfortable morning and a lovely Chinese/Western breakfast. Our plans were first to head over to the Pudong side of the river and explore all those shiny new buildings. We were to take a shuttle train that travelled between the two riverbanks in a tunnel under the river located only a block from our hotel.   We arrived to find it closed due to construction. Plan B had us take a stroll down E. Nanjing St. to gawk at the fancy shops and find our way to the Peoples Park.  We arrived about 10:30 to find the park just starting to fill up. There are two subway stops located in the park and there was a continuous line of people exiting out into the park.  It was a little like the line of ants you see marching from their nests, all heading in the same direction and following the ant in front.  We explored the park and headed over to the Shanghai Museum or what looked like a museum.  Whoa, no crowds. Excellent. We quickly jumped into line, whoa, tickets on sale for half price, whoa, can it get any better?  We followed the crowd inside.  Whoa, wrong museum.  We found ourselves in the Shanghai Museum of Architecture.  Oh well, I really wanted to go there anyway.  Shanghai has some of the most stunning buildings I have ever seen. It was nice to be able to see them all in one place. 

 The park was getting busy so we took the plunge down into the subway for a quick two stop run across the river to Pudong.  We exited out into the sunlight to find ourselves surrounded by 8ft. high steel construction walls on all sides. It seemed like the entire Pudong was under construction.  Following the crowd along narrow walkways we eventually found an area that was not under construction and provided a fabulous view of the Pudong landscape of award winning architecture. We also had our second "sea of humanity" experience.  It seemed like the entire population of Shanghai was headed to one of the architectural wonders located in the Pudong.  It  is a huge tri-pod shaped tower called the "Pearl".  It is home to a Shanghai television station and a tourist event much like the Empire State Building, with the most convoluted ticketing system ever invented.  There were over 10 different tickets that you could purchase with a myriad of options.  I just wanted to go to the top, but you can't just go to the top, you have to visit a bunch of other stuff and pay for it.  There was a massive lineup just to get into another massive line up that got you to another lineup for tickets. Nah! We decided just to wander around the Pudong and enjoy it from the ground.  As we made our way away from the architectural wonder, the crowds started to thin our til it seemed like it was just Nonie and I. The rest of the Pudong area was deserted.  

Our biggest challenge was trying to find our way around all those damn construction fences. The Chinese seem to have a huge surplus and they are not afraid to use them.  Everywhere we wanted to go was blocked and involved an extra 500 metres of trekking around these fences, just so we could travel 100 metres.  We did stumble across a cute little park with it own lake or that's what the sign called it. It was really just a glorified pond but at least it did not have any construction fencing.  By now we had consumed much water and a bathroom break was becoming imminent.  I spotted a nearby McDonald's sign, always a home of clean washrooms, so we headed over that way.  Aaaagh, only to find those damn construction fences were keeping us from that lovely porcelain.  After much cursing we backtracked down this alley and through a construction site to finally arrive.  Ahhhh!  We took advantage of the break and had a large  fry and a couple of cold Cokes.  

After a little more wandering around and more stunning architecture we had had enough and we waded back into the "Sea of Humanity" for a return subway trip home and supper.  We took a few moments back at the hotel for a rest then a quiet dinner in the hotel dining room complete with a cute Chinglish menu and pseudo Western food such as the ever popular spaghetti with tomato soup sauce.   After dinner and a half bottle of fine Chinese wine under our belt, we again waded out into the Bund to try and find the river cruise dock for a nice evening cruise around the Pudong.   We found it not as busy as Friday night.  We  were not pushed along so much as led along.  We made the assumption that the crowd knew where they were going and went with the flow.  We were correct as we eventually reached a temporary pedestrian bridge that took us across the barricaded street to small chunk of the riverbank that was not under construction and was left for the tourists to jam themselves into. And jammed we were.  We eventually found an small area that allowed us a clear unobstructed view of the lights of Pudong and the effort was worth it.  It was quite a show.  We watched a video of a 35 story high butterfly unfolding it's wings and taking flight.  Took my breath away.  

It was now just about 8:00 and the crowd actually seemed to be thinning out.  We wandered around looking at the various boat options for river cruises and after careful consideration, did not find any that looked seaworthy enough for us to risk our lives on.  All the really nice ones seemed to be docking somewhere else.  It had been spitting rain on and off, so it was time  to go home for a wee drink from the last half of the bottle of wine  and some napping in front of the ever present English news channels that seem to populate Chinese cable.  But luck was with us and we found one Channel playing an English movie with Chinese subtitles. 

Tomorrow we are headed for a breakfast of Starbucks muffins and a Cafe American.  Ahh! Can it get any better?

Shanghai Baby

As we walked the streets we were greeted everywhere by a "sea of humanity". Over the years, I have heard or read this phrase on dozens of occasions and always thought I had an inkling of what the phrase meant. I was wrong, at least until last Friday night on the Bund in Shanghai. We arrived at Pudong/Shanghai International Airport on Friday in the early afternoon. The waiting areas seemed abandoned as we exited the plane and made our way to the luggage area. We found ourselves the only passengers in a massive hall where we were greeted by eight huge, empty carousels. At that moment, I casually thought to myself that I had expected Shanghai would be busier than this. Our luggage arrived quickly and we made our way through the airport to the MagLev Train station.

The MagLev would shuttle us to the closest subway station. We virtually had an entire car to ourselves. We quickly got up to speed. Did I mention that the MagLev reaches a top speed of 450 kph? I took a moment to send a high speed, 450 kph text to our colleagues in Harbin. As we sped past cars on the adjacent freeway, they seemed to be going backwards. As quickly as the train got up to speed it slowed down and we arrived at the subway stop in under 8 minutes. The subway car was nearly empty and we were able to get seats. We had three stops to reach the one nearest our hotel. At the next stop we found that station a little busier but the last stop before ours was very crowded and our car quickly filled to capacity. As we neared our stop we fought our way to the door in preparation to disembark. As the car rolled to a halt and the doors opened, we were greeted by a mass of people anxious to board the car with no time or patience to let people off. I know now how a salmon feels trying to swim up stream. I grabbed Nonie and we pushed our way through the crowd. It seemed like all the riders in all the cars were leaving at this stop. We just let ourselves be pushed along trusting the crowd knew where they were going and would deliver us to an exit. With memories of having Nonie's purse pickpocketed as we departed a subway station in London, we clutched our belongings securely as we flowed through the station.

We were eventually spit out onto East Nanjing St., a busy pedestrian shopping street in central Shanghai. It took us a few minutes to get oriented and find the correct direction to our hotel, about a ten minute walk away. We took a few hours to relax in our room before heading out to see the sights.

Our hotel was only half a block up from the Bund. The Bund is a street/quasi park that runs along the Huangpu River and stares across to the Pudong District of Shanghai. The Bund was the Wall Street of old Shanghai with most of the buildings built in the 1930's and where fortunes of the robber barons were made and lost. Across the river is the Pudong New Area. The area did not exist eleven years ago and is now home to some of the world's most stunning and possibly most gaudy architecture. The panorama that you see behind Nonie and I is only a small part of the view and has only existed since about 1997 and later.

We found the Bund completely dug up and under construction. A eight foot wall had been erected between the sidewalk and the street and the river. We could barely see the skyline of Pudong over the fence. We turned right, looking to find a break in the construction so we could cross the street and reach the riverbank for a clearer view. The complete renovation of the riverside along the Bund had been started about two weeks before we arrived. It is scheduled to be complete in time for the 2010 World Exposition that will be held in Shanghai next May 1, exactly a year from the day we arrived in Shanghai.

We eventually found our way to the extreme end of the Bund where we found a hotel with a nice and virtually empty deck overlooking the river and Pudong. We grabbed a table, ordered a drink and prepared to watch the sun set and the lights of the Pudong skyline appear as darkness fell. It was stunning to watch as the faces of huge highrise buildings were turned into giant video screens. I kept losing track as I tried to count the number of floors used for showing these advertising videos. Vegas has nothing on this show.

Drinks done, we strolled back towards the Bund, hoping to find another break in the construction that would allow us to get a different view of Pudong skyline. As we moved deeper into the Bund, the crowds grew in every increasing numbers. Five blocks later, with no break in the construction in sight, we found ourselves being pushed along buy a "sea of humanity". It just sort of happened. We really did not notice until we decided to turn around and return to our hotel only to find ourselves facing a wall of people all heading in the opposite direction from the one we wanted to go. As we were close to a cross street, Nonie and I decided to fight our way to the corner thinking that once we got off the Bund, we could move more freely. This thought was quickly dispelled as we turned the corner only to find thousands more visitors streaming down the street, drawn to the Bund and lights of the Pudong skyline. It was a bruising return to our hotel.

This was our introduction to the beautiful and exotic city of Shanghai. A scene that we would face a few more times as we explored this city of 17,000,000.