I pride myself on being a decent speller. After all, I was once a reserve on my 3rd grade spelling bee team, combing the Oxford dictionary to learn and memorize multi-syllabic words that I or most normal humans would never use in our daily lives from the day the spelling bee competition ended. (We didn’t…
RIP Pickle
A few weeks ago, our family dog Pickle had to be put down. He had heart troubles as well as several conditions from his old age that affected his quality of life severely. I was glad I got to spend two weeks dog-sitting him while my family was back in Malaysia. Each morning, he would…
The Highway of Dreams
One way to experience the legend of the purported Eighth Wonder of the World, the Karakoram Highway (or KKH for short), is to travel from Kashgar to the town of Tashkurgan. Although Tashkurgan itself isn’t much of a destination, it’s a great place to rest for the night after a six-hour journey. I’d been told that there…
The Kashgar Livestock Market
As I showed a taxi driver a picture of the Kashgar livestock market I found on the internet, I told him, “Wo yao chi zhe bian” (“I want to go here.”). The Uyghur-looking driver looked at me and replied back in Mandarin as we looked at each other, him in a questioning and I in…
Practicing Gratitude
March 14, 2019 This morning, somewhere on the East Coast of USA, I woke up early to walk to the beach to watch the sunrise. I don’t remember if I’d ever watched the sunrise on the Atlantic Ocean so this marked a first for me. Watching the sunrise reminded me of a practice I’ve been…
Ōu’ěr Dáxīkè Night Market
No matter where you travel to in the world, night markets always provide fascinating things to look at, interesting people to watch, and delicious food to sample. Late one evening, I was wandering the streets near Id Kah Mosque when I came across the “Ou Er Da Xi Ke” Road night (technically, “evening”) market. Entrance…
The Century-old Teahouse
What does one do on a blazing hot summer’s day in Kashgar? Wandering is certainly an option. I started walking around Old Town when I came upon an interesting-looking structure that I learned was the Ostangboyi Tea House. It was apparently a century old and one of, if not the last, traditional teahouses in Kashgar. As…
The Oasis City
What was once an oasis city on the cusp of the Taklamakan Desert that dates back to 200 B.C., Kashgar (or Kashi, its modern Chinese name, which, in this rare case, doesn’t sound as “cool” as its predecessor) is a major stop on the old Silk Road. Reading the Wikipedia page, I can’t even begin to wrap…
Random flashback – Getting tea in Chengdu
A fun thing to do in Chengdu is to visit one of their many parks and after a nice stroll, get some tea at a tea house. The tea itself wasn’t anything special to my unsophisticated taste buds. It was just a hot, comforting beverage to be enjoyed while people-watching. Many years ago, I watched…
Turpan
I wanted to take a trip to Turpan to know what it’s like to be in the 2nd-lowest depression on Earth after the Dead Sea. However, this also meant being in one of the hottest places in all of China. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to that aspect of the trip but it is what it is….