Tag: The Great China Quest

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On The Road

Arrived

My Books > The Great China Quest > Arrived

The first surprise of the trip happened yesterday before we even got out of Guangzhou. Our boarding cards mysteriously directed us to business class for the 5 hour flight. We’re still not sure what happened (we didn’t want to ask any questions!) but it was fun to look down on the economy class for the first time in our lives.

Urumqi is different from any other city we’ve visited in China. A lot of people here look Eastern European and radio music has traces of Russian and Arabic influence. Road signs are in Chinese characters and Arabic script.

After checking in to a very nice hostel, we went to a little coffee shop where a boy named June who worked there spontaneously and unexpectedly wrote us a poem then read it to us over the shop’s loudspeakers. The text of his poem appears (as he wrote it) below the video.

We also met a very kind woman named Dr. Yang and her son at a little noodle shop. She told us her incredible tales of her long history of consulting fortune tellers and she thinks she may be able to help us find one today. We’re well on our way toward accomplishing:

Challenge 1: Find a fortune teller and get your fortune told.

[youku id=”XMTkyOTY4OTI4″]

[youku id=”XMTkyOTcxMDM2″]

Poem by June (许晓龙) in Cite Coffee, Urumqi

Time goes by, the good friend ship has gone,
The sky is blue.
There are many happiness in Cite Coffee,
This is my sweet valentine,
Say that you love me, don’t go away,
When you feeling empty you should drink…latte coffee.
It’s like dancing or a beautiful girl,
A summer’s day we are meeting here is very difficult,
So love is thanks giving.

Categories
Planning

Business Cards and Last Minute Preparations

My Books > The Great China Quest > Business Cards and Last Minute Preparations

We’re leaving soon and for the first time in our lives Adrian and I have business cards. Here’s the front:

Here’s the hanzi, pinyin, and English translation:

《A計畫》- traditional characters, therefore more “artistic” and “cool”

A jì huà

Plan A

俩老外中国行

Liǎ lǎowài Zhōngguó xíng

Two foreigners China trip

一本介绍中国文化，生活，风俗的书

yì běn jièshào Zhōngguó wénhuà, shēnghuó, fēngsú

A book introducing Chinese culture, life, and customs

The back has our Chinese names which are:

  • 安冬 Ān Dōng = Adrian [literally “peaceful winter” – Don’t laugh, I had to have a Chinese name and somehow I ended up with this!]
  • 奥博特 Ào Bótè = Albert [no real meaning, just sounds as close as I can get to my English name]

We’ve still got some packing to do, but we’ve each got new compasses and an English map (as pictured on the front page). What else could we need…?

The next time you’ll hear from us, we’ll be in Xinjiang province. It’s right up in China’s remote north west and borders 9 different countries including Afghanistan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Russia. We’re expecting it to be quite different from where we are now and hopefully not quite as hot! We’ll let you know soon.

Categories
Planning

And the Winner is…

My Books > The Great China Quest > And the Winner is…

With just 10 days to go until the start of our trip, we are pleased to announce that we now have the Chinese name of our book!

Last month we started a competition to help us find our Chinese title. In total we received 28 entries which were all put to the vote among our Chinese friends and colleagues and yesterday the winner was decided. Congratulations to Emily (one of our Peizheng students) who came up with the winning name:

《A計畫》

(In English this roughly translates as “Plan A”, a play on words using the first letter of both our names combined with traditional Chinese characters.)

Well done again to Emily and thank you to everyone who took part in the competition.