Jabe's Guestbook

On the Unbearable lightness of Nice
Enjoyed your honest look at Clark and enjoyed the lively interchange of comments. I think all the 'nice' people should get togethor on la la land for a love fest and let everyone else have a bit of free speech in peace. Maybe then we'd get some real action on issues that need to be addressed in the world.

Great photos
I'm glad the photos on your blog were restored! Beautiful photos.

Re comments
Jean/Jack - I flew into Clark because it was the cheapest place to fly in to, no other reason. Kat2 - please read what I wrote rather than what you think I wrote. When you have done that, let me know in what way I was bad mouthing the Philippines - I believe my only negative comments were about Clark.

Why CLARK ???
Of all the nice places in the Philippines Islands (PI)...why Clark ?...It's very well known that only Dirty Old Rats from overseas go PI's red-light district.

chinese language
Enjoyed your blog a lot and thanks for sharing your experience! Comment on English languge: Chinese as a language appears difficult and cumbersome if you look at it as a user of phonetic language. When learned as first languge, it is rather easy to acquire. By grade 3, I was able to read newspaper. With thousand of years' of experience, I believe the Chinese have figured a painless way to pass on the language to the next generation. I am not aware that Pinyin was Albanian. Pinyin uses romanized alphabets to standardize chinese mandarin pronunciation (Taiwan uses a different system). It is (supposedly) taught in schools. But once learnt, it is probably discarded as the "characters"become the daily written and ready form. Although Chinese and Japanese are very different languages, Japanese uses Chinese characters for their meaning and sound to write its language. Both languages use same character for "East". Mainland China uses the simpliefied version and therefore looks a little different vs q PS. In general, I am at awe at your level of knowledge on Chinese culture, history and geography.

Excellent pictures
What nice pictures of Hong Kong! Marvellous

RE:
Amazing pictures and interesting details. Cant wait to pack my bag and leave for China. Ps. How do you pronounce these names, like Xi'an, Shaanxi ???? mj

Fellow traveller's comment
Spectacular! we're planning to visit China really soon. enjoy the rest of the trip and thanks for sharing the pics!

I was just there yesterday
Hi, Jabe: Your entry is very good and I commend you for your insight. I am visiting Juizhaigou for 5 days and am staying in a beautiful (although not cheap) hotel called Juizhaigao Paradise Resort & Convention Center. The hotel is something of an architectural wonder built high up a mountain about 5 km from the park. One thing I wanted to tell you is, if you can, do make a point of going to the Ancient Qiang Village and the Opera House there. The show is a true spectacle of song and dance and tells the story of the Qiang people in a beautiful fashion. It lasts about 1.5 hours and the level of talent is very apparent. It gives the outsider a better appreciation of the folk history of this area and winds up with a heartfelt invitation for the audience to join the cast in a round-the-bonfire singing and dancing. It is very special and makes you feel truly welcomed by this people who have an obvious reverence for Nature. So do make this addition to your trek. On another note, the walking in and around the park is not for the faint-hearted. Good walking shows and relative good health will take you far. High blood pressure and high altitudes don't mix!

wow
Amazing sculptures! never seen ones like that before.

sichuan
had you been to daocheng town during your trip in china ?if you didn't ,i strongly recommend you to trip there,it's amazing,welcome to china again

back in my day...
I visited Dali with my parents about 20 years ago. Memories are fairly pleasant. However, I was also rather young and naive. It was funny how my mum kept on commenting on how "green" the area was at the time as a few weeks later, after we returned to Hong Kong, my mum read in a newspaper that there had been a government crackdown with the army in Dali burning farms down, as the local farms had become rather too enterprising and were growing marijuana instead of their regular crops. Although I’m reasonably convinced that she didn't recognise the plants…