I am currently in Beijing until tomorrow morning when I will fly back to the states, and I'm missing the people from my project already. I was extremely fortunate to participate in an amazing project with a hilarious, caring, diverse group of people. We were American, Chinese, German, British, Italian, South African, and Taiwanese, and somehow we could all make this work. One of the members of our team is a geophysicist, and he performed magnetometer surveys in the areas near an ancient walled site. The magnetometer measures differences in the magnetism of the earth, so it works particularly well for detecting archaeological anomalies beneath the ground surface. We all got to try walking with the magnetometer, and believe me, it's a lot harder than it looks. We also got to stop by an excavation of ... read more

ME! Of course. So let me give a little lead-in for this one. I drank an expired canned coffee drink that I bought at a grocery (I was unaware of the expiration date at the time of consumption), and let's just say it's has had dire digestive consequences. Spicy Sichuan food did not help the situation. So after subsisting on two bowls of rice a day for three days (because I had to work out in the field where bathrooms (read:bamboo groves or tree lines) can be scarse), I did not need anything else to traumatize my body. Enter brittle tile. So in our augering group there are eight of us: four archaeologists and four day workers. While we were walking along a paddy terrace wall (mounded earth just wide enough to walk atop), we encountered ... read more

Sorry for the absence from blogging, but I've been walking through fields, digging holes, sorting out pottery, and covering myself with mud for the past five days. Anyway, New Year's Day in Chengdu was fantastic. We got up late, hit the hotel breakfast right before they closed it, then popped over to the Starbucks. Tasted just the same, and the prices are just the same as they are in America. My grande mocha cost 29 quai, which adds up to around $4.50, but for most Chinese people this is extremely expensive. After Starbucks we wandered around streets of western-style shops, all the big designers, then went to a two-floor restaurant that specializes in little plates of various and sundry Sichuan foods. It was fantastic and cheap, as well as overwhelming. After that we headed off to ... read more

Happy New Year's Eve from Pi Xian! We're going into the big city to stay the night and have a nice dinner, then do some sightseeing and hanging out in the Starbucks to use the wireless. I've been drinking freeze-dried Nestea coffee for the last week and a half. I purchased a "coffee milk tea" thing from the big grocery. It' was shrink-wrapped so I figured it would be ok. Nope. It's a cup that contains dry packets to mix together. However, there was some water inside the cup. It smelled horrible. "Coffee Milk Tea" was subsequently thrown in the garbage before consumption. The past two days I've been working with the survey team. A line of five people, each about 20-30 meters apart, walk fields together, digging small holes in any terraces or banks with ... read more

Even though we were in Chengdu for one day and night, I was relieved that we had time to go see the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center. It was a cold and gray day, and a lot of the things in the park were closed for the winter, but there were plenty of pandas about. The first thing we saw was a huge group of female peacocks, and the first few panda enclosures were empty, but then we hit the jackpot. Even though they're a bit on the roly-poly side, pandas are pretty agile in trees. We watched one trying to take a nap, but unable to get comfortable in his tree, proceeded to turn himself upside down, head butted up against a branch. This seemed to be the best sleeping position. I am still not sure ... read more