Small Village Detox: Cuandixia

After a wild night out with my great roommates and some fun new Chinese friends I luckily found an awesome way to kill a hangover. Get myself out of town, into the mountains to an ancient Ming village and hike! Gotta sweat it out!

Cuandixia is a 2-1/2 hour bus ride west of Beijing. The village is a well preserved vernacular mountain town, dating from the Ming Dynasty 500 years ago. The buildings were in the traditional Chinese courtyard style, all built out of stone from the surrounding mountains.










My favorite part: Every part of the landscape that wasn't at a high pitch was terraced with exquisite stone wall's. It was so hard for me to comprehend that these walls were all bit by hand in the course of the past 500 years.



Unintentionally, while trying to kill my hangover I had to make sure I wasn't going to kill myself! While hiking and getting lost I found myself on top of this rocky ridge. With steep drop off's on either side. A bunch of hiker's spotted me and after a language clarification, said "You are lost, come down here, very dangerous." They were really impressed by a foreigner hearing and visiting Cuandixia and liked talking to me and taking pictures. Here's the ridge and the buddies.



From the top you can hear all the noise from the village and if you yell you can hear your voice bounce off the mountains and dissolve through the valley.

The pace of life in the village was relaxing. I walked through the village and hiked around all day, at around 5 o'clock the sun was already far behind the mountains and the berry pickers and sweet potato roasters started to pick up shop. By 7:30 it's pitch black. And walking around the town at night is just as entertaining. Walking around is great in the dark and you settle in the courtyard where you are staying and talk with the other visitors, with a bottle of Tsing Tao








As Jono says "you gotta detox before you retox."
Haha- but nothing too crazy this time I was in bed by 10:30 and up hiking at 7:o0 the next day! I highly recommend visiting here one day if you are hungover. Its worth the trip.

Peking Daze

Perhaps the context of my visit to China was quite significant to how I viewed it. We flew to Beijing on Saturday around noon. Here's how things led up to that.

Thursday: worked in studio all day, and all night
Friday AM: slept for 2 hours total pinned up for mid review
Friday PM: spent 6 hours listening to architecture dialogue about our projects, followed by a Korean dinner on the floor with our professor and reviewers, Couch-beers and PACK!

So in contrast to the way I usually approach trips to other places or let alone countries I never visited, there was no suspense leading up to Beijing at all! Willie, Nick and I were planning to go to an additional city in China but never had the time to figure things out. So it never hit us till we checked in at the airport that we were going to China. Funny yet exciting.

The whole time I was there, it was hard to convince myself that I was in China. Disorientation coupled with amazement; an interesting context. However, the longer I stayed the more I was impressed and became accustomed.

Here is our trip to the Great Wall. I believe it doesn't need much explanation.


This is Sabrina. She is a great new friend. She was working at the Day's Inn where Jordy and Andy were staying and was jealous/interested when she was helping us book a cab for the day to the Wall. So instead of being jealous, she came!





A nice lady we met on the hike mentioned that the Great Wall is the biggest public works project in the history of the world.




"I'm in China!!!!"




12 Km - Jinshanling to Simatai

Must See List: Beijing + China

Sorry to all those loyal CCB followers for leaving you hanging for so long! I couldn't log onto blogspot while in China! I took over 700 photos so I need to filter them a bit. Here is a quick tee.

Beijing was....

Well its hard to explain how it felt. It was the first time since I was young and saw the Parthenon that I felt the power of history right around me. Except this time was different. It seemed that not only was I observing incredible past civilizations, but that I was also in the middle of History and the world evolving. The temples, hutongs (alleys) and people of Beijing all possess a consistent vibrancy. A culture with life in it's rawest and most basic form. And a built ancient history that is incredible but doesnt feel detached from the present.

A couple for now...


Lama Temple


Great Nick Wallin' it up


Sacred Way at Ming Tombs

Ancient Ming stone village

Review Tomorrow China Saturday

We are all hunkering down for mid review which is tomorrow! (Friday)

Well not too seriously hunkering down because I did go to the South Korea vs Senegal Soccer game last night! It was awesome! Korea 2-0!

So now I have to get working on my 2000 unit housing project! What should I call it? Does anyone have any ideas? Here is a thing I did for studio on photoshop, maybe that could help.




HAVE A GREAT DAY... and week ILL BE IN CHINA!

Birthday greeting for Dad

Dear Dad,

I was on the subway with Willie the other day. And he had this confused look on his face. He mentioned that his odd look was due to a group of older suspicious men. Willie said "they are looking at you funny." So I turned around and they gave a little smirk. The men then made this gesture with their hand's to imply something large and they said in broken English something along the lines of "so big" and that's where it shifted from confusing to comedic. The small Korean men were marveling at my large calf muscles.

Thanks dad, you made my day along with a bunch of random Korean subway riders. I have been hiking that mountain behind studio a lot so you'd be proud to know that my legs are becoming even more disproportional to the rest of my body.

Happy Birthday,
-jimmy

For those who don't know John Morgan, I usually describe him to my friends as "he's a lot shorter than me but has calf's twice the size."




These arent the old guys on the subway nor my father for that fact, just some buddies who like to share booze and food on the mountain.

20 Minutes

As an architecture student no matter how hard you try it's inevitable that at some point throughout the semester you will be living at studio. Our studio building at Yonsei University isn't the most conveniently located. It's way up a hill and isolated from most of campus. However it's proximity is unbeatable.
This is where a 20 minute walk will get you:


20 minutes up


20 minutes down (Sinchon district)

One way you feel like you are on top of the world, the other way you feel like you are in the middle of it.
This weekend I decided to hike to the top of the hill that our University backs up against. After twenty minutes at a consistent slope you come to an over-look on an ancient smoke signal station. The view over the city was incredible, better than Ingwansan (which we hiked for history class.) The equivalent from studio in St. Louis would be Art hill or Delmar Blvd. Pretty nice trade off.



I couldn't believe how awesome it was so I hiked it three days in a row. Can't wait to do it again, maybe check out the sunrise after an all nighter.