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Published: April 20th 2009
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Ah, Springtime. Flowers in bloom, blossoms on the trees and wtf is this white stuff??? Just before leaving Beijing and everywhere in Xian there are whirlwinds of this fluff flying everywhere. The caption of the photo from the newspaper reads “People cover their faces as catkins from willow and poplar trees float in the air in Beijing yesterday. They are warned to wear veils or sunglasses when outside because catkins can cause respiratory problems”. And I thought it was just the smog making our eyes burn, but no, we’re also being attacked by nature. Sniffle, sniffle. Out of necessity I’ve been “liberating” boxes of soft Kleenex from our swankier hotels to keep on hand (oh, my poor nose).
As I mentioned in a previous post, we stick out like crazy everywhere we go, and the lovely local folks, being naturally curious, have given us each at various times an obvious stare or just boldly come up and ask to photograph us. We’re getting a big kick out this because we couldn’t be more generic representations of Canadian tourists if we tried (it’s the sporting of Tilley hats and fanny packs me thinks). There is, however, one glaring exception. None of
The man, the myth, the legend...
In all his magnificent glory. (photo printed with permission. T-shirts soon to be available) us, not one, can even come close to the frenzied obsession the locals everywhere we go are feeling for this guy. My uncle M is a total rock star. He’s like the Jonas Brothers here (for you old fogies, the Jonas Brothers are like the Beatles (but minus any actual musical proficiency). That comment may well get me pelted by tweens the world over for even hinting the JBs are anything but musical virtuosos, but chances are they won’t even see this - I’m fairly certain they‘re busy watching Twilight for the nineteenth time.
But back to uncle M…T tailed our own resident rock star walking down the street and videotaped the phenomenon. People freaking LOVE him. He even had an entire table jump up an cheer when he walked into a restaurant (granted they were a tiny, little bit drunk) but they totally went nuts, shaking his hand, taking his photo and they even bought his table a round of beer. He’s even had perfect strangers walk up to him and give him stuff just for the pure joy of laying their eyes upon him. What is it about this dude? Finally aunt D asked a local -
the not so surprising answer: “I think, because his hair and beard, it is very funny”. Mystery solved. Apparently a lucious white perm is the key to the hearts of the Chinese people.
T and me loved Xi’an…the big highlights were the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Terra Cotta Warriors. Very cool stuff and we got in a lot of other sights as well. Our days have been long, though, with never quite enough time to do absolutely everything, but we’re hitting all the “must sees” so all is good in the ‘hood. With a little more free time we would have been able to bike along the top of the city wall and hit a MacDonald’s (no tsk, tsking - we gots a bad hankerin’ for soft serve ice cream), but despite there being MacDonalds everywhere we never seem to actually find ourselves in front of one. If anyone were coming to Xi'an, I’d suggest adding a half day just to be able to do that bike ride and walk around. Surprisingly excellent city, and I love being surprised like that. (You get a gold star, Xi’an. Way to be awesome)
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E-dog
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Very-Very awesome!
I loved this blog the best! It must be really-really awesome having the '' Santa on vacation'' rock-star with you guys. I am presently in class in the CPU room with the girls here and they were all wondering why I was laughing my head off. I explained the reason and of course they all wanted to see this ''rock-star''... Chuckles galore I might add! Thank you Lynne for giving me the idea for my next class... We are seeing in my geography classes environmental issues around the world. That pic is a great starter for my discussion!! WOOHOO. Keep on truckin' you guys!