Three good reasons to go to Sichuan Province:
We’re back from Xinjiang; thanks for your patience. Tomorrow I’ll update this post with a few random thoughts about our trip. I didn’t take any good pictures, but here’s one shot from Heaven Lake.
Random Observations:
The flight time (air time) to Urumqi from Beijing was 3 hours 47 minutes (3 hours 22 minutes back) and the roundtrip tickets cost around US$300 a piece — Toddler T gets his own full-priced seat now.
We stayed at the Sheraton in downtown Urumqi which was pretty nice. It cost US$80 a night (corporate rate). It’s always key to ask for a non-smoking room when traveling in China. We had a car and driver for our various day trips out of Urumqi. That cost about US$80 a day.
The ideal way to see Xinjiang is to go out there for three weeks and rent a Toyota Land Cruiser and drive around on your own. With Toddler T and Nanny in tow, that’s not practical and the best thing to do is stay someplace comfortable and just do day trips.
We visited various lakes and scenic sites (including a wind farm) outside Urumqi, and enjoyed the clean air and sun. Urumqi feels like a very small city — a mere two million residents — coming from Beijing.
A pickpocket tried to steal my old camera in a market in Urumqi. He failed but smoothly walked on by as I struck at him — a pro. The Uighurs tend to be kind of silent and brooding and maybe even a little hostile. The Chinese communists have relocated millions of ethnic Han Chinese to Xinjiang, so the Turkic local people (Uighurs, Kazahks, etc.) are now outnumbered. If we want to “succeed” in Iraq we should take a cue from the Chinese and move a few million people from the American Midwest there to settle down. (Bad joke maybe?)
A word about market-dominant minorities: the reason why the Chinese dominate the economy in Southeast Asia, the Indians in East Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Jews, well, everywhere, is that they are willing to do a deal. I found the local Xinjiang people very unwilling to cut a deal on anything. It’s like the market-dominant minorities have an intrinsic understanding of the time value of money and others don’t.
We bought several hand-woven wool rugs (dealing exclusively with Han Chinese). We don’t know anything about rug prices but ended up paying around US$1300 a piece for several 6′ x 9′ 720-line (518,400 knots per square meter or 334 KPSI) wool rugs. The price per square meter for 720-line wool rugs isn’t much different from hand-woven silk rugs, it seems. We were told no one weaves 720-line rugs anymore, and every one that is bought “new” is actually 20 years old. Any readers who know anything about hand-woven rugs, please leave a comment about this.
I fell down a storm drain in Urumqi. I got out of a taxi, put on my backpack, took Toddler T from the backseat and stepped back onto the sidewalk only to find no sidewalk there. I kind of slid, scraped, bumped down in, and as I fell I hoisted T up onto the ledge. Fortunately it wasn’t that deep a hole (maybe five feet), and although it was filled with fetid water neither of us was hurt. It could have been a disaster of course, and we were very lucky. Uncovered manholes and storm drains are a big problem in China. My classmate Rob from Hopkins-Nanjing fell into a manhole in Beijing, severed his urethra among other serious injuries, and needed to be evacuated to California for surgery.
I’ve eaten enough lamb to go several months without seeing it again.
We will be away in Xinjiang in western China for the next several days, but I look forward to sharing some pictures with you from our trip when we get back (probably around the 10th). See you soon!
We made the mistake of arriving early in the morning in Portland and suffered killer jet lag as a result. The rule is to arrive at bedtime when traveling long distances, so you can flop right in bed and fall asleep. Portland is farther north than Beijing (43.66 versus 39.54) so the days are shorter, which also makes the time change more difficult. It also rained a lot. I’m trying to start off on a high note. ;-)
The tickets I got from Northwest were a good deal and I planned to use some of my bazillion miles to upgrade us, but was surprised to learn that I couldn’t: the tickets were “un-upgradeable.” Given blackout dates and this new (?) “un-upgradeability,” frequent flier miles are more or less worthless now. Maybe I can donate them to charity. Roundtrip fare from Beijing to Portland (via Narita) was $651.43 per adult and $270.50 for baby. Trans-pacific flights are killer and I don’t want to do them more than once a year (if that). The stewardesses back in steerage class were all bitchy but the gratuitous gay stewards (on both flights) were nice.
Baby T was a very good flier and traveler but as he approaches his second birthday he’s beginning to get a temper. I hope he’s able to regulate it better than his father, who tends to be very calm and patient until he explodes and starts smashing things (however infrequent).
My sister always gives me a couple of investing ideas. She said there’s something called ThermaCare which is apparently wonderful if you’re suffering from menstrual cramps or back pain. I looked into it and it’s a Procter and Gamble (PG) product (already a Baby Portfolio Pick because of Pampers and also because fellow Hamiltonian A.G. Lafley is in charge there).
Her second idea was Victoria’s Secret because of their Ipex bra which she says is the most comfortable bra she’s ever worn. (My wife went right down to the store and bought a couple, and she agrees with my sister that they’re very good.) I’m a big fan of The Limited (LTD) and it’s one of the few retailers I’m willing to invest in.
The visitor center at Mount St. Helens is beautifully done. The Spruce Goose’s new home is also very nice.
What’s the obsession with trans fat? (I told you these were random notes, lol.)
Had an odd experience where all white people suddenly looked alike and even sounded alike. I’ve either spent too much time in China recently or everyone in Lake Oswego looks and sounds alike (a possibility).
Seems that in order to work at Powell’s bookstore you have to have multiple body piercings. I found a very helpful (unpierced) clerk there who located an obscure Ross Thomas book for me. I looked at the Little Book of Value Investing and also Joel Greenblatt’s Little Book and passed on both of them. Anyone who understands value is unwilling to pay $28 for something he can get at the local library.
Since when does a large pizza cost $22? And I couldn’t get out of the grocery without dropping $100. Gas was $2.76 a gallon. I drank a lot of Pinot Noir but didn’t note any names… should have since some of it gave me a headache.
Got less bearish on the newspaper business while there (read a paper (The Oregonian) every day), less bearish on bricks-and-mortar retailers (had a bad experience with tabletools.com since I ordered some Christmas gifts there which arrived either smashed (very badly packed) or the wrong items), and less bearish on GM (rented a Pontiac Vibe which was OK though underpowered).
We forgot our cell phone, but it’s being FedEx’d back to China for only $82. The pain of that charge is slightly muted by our being long-time shareholders of FDX.
I’ll end this long rambling post now. Thanks again for your patience during my absence.
I’d better write this post before I forget all the details of our recent trip to Sanya on Hainan Island.
We stayed at the Sanya Marriott Resort & Spa, which is located on Yalong Bay. The beach at Yalong Bay is supposedly the nicest on Hainan Island, and it was indeed a very clean, white sand beach.
The service at the Marriott was uniformly excellent, which was so astonishing that we forgot we were in China. I never encountered a member of the staff who didn’t greet us with a smile and a good morning/afternoon/evening. I read the South China Morning Post, International Herald Tribune and USA Today every day in the Business Center (for free).
The Marriott has a huge semicircular veranda that looks out onto the Bay (see here). You can sit out there in the evenings and have a drink and smoke a cigar (they had a nice selection of cigars, including one of my favorites, the Cohiba Robusto). Very decadent, I know, but I’m worth it. ;-)
We had the breakfast buffet every morning at the Marriot Cafe, which was very good — lots of variety for both eastern (fried rice, noodles, etc.) and western (omelettes, croissants, etc.) tastes. You’re a bit of a captive at these resorts because there’s nothing around for miles (except other resorts), so you tend to end up eating at the resort restaurants. We ate dinner once at Wanhao (their Chinese restaurant) and twice at Indochine (their Vietnamese restaurant), which were both quite good (Indochine moreso than Wanhao).
People ask, gee, wasn’t it crowded during the May Day holiday? The answer is no, the place was blessedly empty. The largest contingent of people there were Russians, apparently from eastern Russia, almost all of whom appeared to be gangsters. I gave these guys a very wide berth and didn’t even glance at their lovely “companions.” There were also a smattering of Japanese, Koreans, Americans, Spanish, French, and Germans. The Chinese tended to be Hongkong Chinese and not Mainlanders (it’s getting harder to tell the difference).
Chinese people tend to like to travel in groups and do stuff together (they’re big on “activities”) so they don’t hang around the resort or lie on the beach. So if you spend your days swimming in the various pools or in the ocean (very nice temperature), you won’t see many Chinese.
There is a Sheraton on one side of the Marriott and a Hilton on the other side. I explored both of them and can report that not only were the grounds and layout of those two places inferior to the Marriott, but so was the service. Spot checks for friendliness and helpfulness in both places were not encouraging and made me that much more impressed by the Marriott. The Hilton and Sheraton just felt much bigger and tackier and more impersonal to me. Lastly I should mention that the Marriott was very “stroller-friendly,” which I can’t say for either the Hilton or Sheraton.
We had beautiful weather the entire time we were there (tropical paradise weather), but it’s too hot at midday in May to do much of anything. We had an early lunch and napped along with baby every noontime. You’d be insane to play tennis or even golf (but I’m a wimp when it comes to heat).
The taxi from the airport was RMB 120 (US$15). The round-trip flight (Beijing to Sanya) and hotel (including breakfast) for five days and four nights cost RMB 13,600 (US$1,700), which isn’t too bad for two adults and a baby. Remember we went during the May Day holiday when they jack up (double!?!) the rates, so you could definitely get a much better deal traveling “off-peak.”
If you’re considering a trip to Sanya, I heartily recommend the Marriott resort. And if you have any questions, just leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them.
Related: China Syndrome, by Howard French
Hainan Island, the so-called Chinese Hawaii was once one of the poorest and sleepiest of China’s provinces. Hainan, which sits off the southern shore of Guangdong, has gone in one decade from a rice paddy–and–water buffalo economy to a booming tourist market fueled by, yes, golf, beach resorts, and glittering shopping centers. “This is the only tropical island in China, and it’s becoming a place for leisure and company gatherings,” says Annie Shum, director of marketing at the Sanya Marriott Resort & Spa. “You can have an outdoor barbecue and romance under the stars, or you can come here to launch your car model.” The region is being remade with an immaculate slickness that smacks more of computer simulation than of the slapdash construction from which many earlier developments in China suffered.
We had a nice visit to Hainan. I plan to write a longer post about our trip later.
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A friend in Hongkong recommended that I tour northern Laos by motorbike. Apparently the European Union paid for the improvement of a vast network of roads in northern Laos which no one uses… except for fat expats on vacation. Now I’m looking for a place in Viet Tien that can provide me with a motorbike and sidecar (so Baby T and his mother can come along).
We flew in first-class, business-class, and steerage-class on our various flights to and around and back from the US. Actually Baby T and his mother never flew in steerage class, but I did because of “liberal guilt” and a desire to avoid other fat, balding white guys. There is no difference in the service you receive among the classes — the only difference is the amount of space you get. The stewardesses are almost all hard-asses — the older they are, the more rigid. Of course we were flying United everywhere, and employee morale there is predictably dismal.
I was hit by a wave of anomie (”a state of being characterized by disorientation, anxiety and isolation”) while in the Beijing airport. It’s a weird sensation where you don’t know quite where you are or what you’re doing — I bet a lot of people feel it in international airports.
At the Hyatt in San Francisco I noticed a sign by the fridge that said there would be a $20 charge if the contents were “disturbed,” i.e. you take out some beer cans to chill bottles of breast-milk. Crazy.
We rented a Ford Freestyle and later a Ford Escape. They were both OK to drive, but guzzled a lot of gas. I experienced a bit of road rage on both coasts — granted, I was at fault in both instances. I don’t drive much these days and I’m also a firm believer in the “law of prevailing mass,” but folks seemed more forgiving on the road when gas was $0.99 a gallon.
While in Sonoma County I learned that they have such an over-supply of grapes now that many farmers are turning their crops into fuel, which is nutty considering the quality of the grapes. I also looked into the real estate market a little bit while there — a tract house I looked at in Santa Rosa was selling for $600K; I asked what it last sold for: $365K only three years ago.
The bums on the west coast are rarely aggressive, in the midwest they’re occasionally aggressive, and on the east coast they’re frequently aggressive.
I learned while reading this year’s issue of the Forbes 400 that both Bill Gross and Ken Fisher are billionaires, which stunned me.
If you’re a true hotel snob, you only stay at places where they give you a real key, not a key card.
I caught a couple of episodes of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money finally. I was underwhelmed and even felt a little bit embarrassed for him. It is not a show I’d go out of my way to watch.
I also watched some episodes of the World Series of Poker (loved those Milwaukee’s Best ads!), and realized that the only thing more pathetic than entering a poker tournament with 5,619 entrants is watching said tournament on TV.
