Name: MBE (jason)
After living in China for over 6 years, my life back stateside...
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(since 5.14.04)
**My Yinchuan Photos**
**My Gansu Photos**
**My Turpan Photos**
**My Urumqi Photos**
**My Kashgar Photos**
**My Travel Photos**
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My wife and I moved to Atlanta in late June of this year. By the 30th of July we had bought a car, house and all the furniture! It was quite a month. We are happy to be back here in the ATL.
I know that it has been a very long time since I last blogged here. Over the next few months I plan to fill you all in on the latest. Just know, my wife and I have moved to Atlanta, Georgia (my hometown) and are both working at the international school here. More on that later! Comment, comment, comment...
Dear Readers-
If you have been reading MBE via RSS or Atom Feeds, please change to my new feed addresses: Feedburner, & RSS. I will be shutting down this address in the near future and would love to have you reading my stuff at the new address! Cheers
My change-over to MBE 2.0 is complete. I have noticed a real drop in traffic lately as I have not been posting as much. Visit http://jasonreagin.com to find out about the non-degree university courses that I am currently taking!
the switch to my new blog is almost complete. I have several new posts on MBE 2.0, stop by and let me know what you think.
After much discussion with my wife over the past few months I have decided to buy a domain name. There are several reasons for this. First, I am taking graduate, non-degree course over the coming school year. (We just started last week) When I am finished I will be a qualified School Administrator. More on that later. As part of the requirement for one of the courses I have to have my own website to share my findings. I had been wanting to start up my own 'full' site for some time and this presented the perfect opportunity. Also, it allows me to share photos and files that are stored on my site and I can adjust anything that I feel needs to be adjusted. The site is called jasonreagin.com, and I would love some feedback. I will be moving this blog site, but this is not going to be for a while. I still need to work out the bugs and get the template the way I like it.
As I wrote a few days ago, we had a great time in Jiayuguan. Our next task was to find a way to the next city, Dunhuang. We had four options for transport: Train, Bus, Car, and/or Plane. There were a few isseus that we had to deal with and came to the conclusion that taking a bus to the next city was the way to go. We could not have been more wrong. A normally 4 hours trip was extended to 9 hours in the 100+ degree heat without any A/C. 
The main road from Jiayuguan to Dunhuang was being re-built and I would have to say that the landscape from one city to the other was desolate to say the least. My wife and I were very happy to see Dunhuang once we arrived! And was it worth the trip? Absolutely! It was a fantastic city to visit and I recommend it to anyone interested in the silk road and the history that surrounds it. The most exciting place we visited would have to be the Mogao Ku (Mogao Grottes). This set of caves was really excellent to see. The placement of the caves has preserved the works for hundreds of years. There are just about 500 caves to see. For the 100RMB price you get to see about 15 caves. Each cave is locked and only the guides can open them, but they are all very impressive. The most impressive thing about these caves are the three different Buddha statues inside. There is one lounging Buddha and two sitting ones. The sitting ones are about 50-75 feet tall! It was really worth all the trouble getting there.
We also saw the Singing Sands and Cresent Moon Lake. We rode camels and 'surfed' the sands. It was also a very nice spot for photos and to see the desert culture of Dunhuang. Don't miss our photos of this and other spots in Gansu Province...
I know it has been about a week since I last updated about the summer trip. I have no excuse except that I recently got the latest NCAA Football game for my XBOX and I have been addicted! On with the journey...
My wife started a blog not too long after I did, but at the same time she also started her master's degree studies so has not had the time to post often. Well, she is back at the blogging game and would love some new readers. I can see how her written English level has improved over doing her masters and blogging (her native langauge is Chinese). Check it out sometime!
My wife and I bought a new ride today. it is not what you think, I would never drive or own a car in China. No, we bought an e-bike. The company that makes it is in Shanghai. Named OTONG, it is pretty cool. Ours is blue:
The reason for such a weird title for this entry is that we only spent 12 hours in Lanzhou and that was not even our choice. When we were in Yinchuan we tried to get train tickets straight to Jiayuguan, but all the tickets were booked for a week. So we took a little side trip to the capitol of Gansu Province in hopes that we might have more luck to get tickets. We arrived about 6:30 in the morning in Lanzhou. We went directly to the train ticket office and were told that the only tickets they had the next three days were hard seats. We took them but I knew what was to come. In Lanzhou we visited the 5 Springs Mountain Park. It was an ok park, as far as Chinese parks go. There was a temple and a small pond, but it was mostly for older people and children.
I know that I was a little harsh about Lanzhou in one of my last posts and it is unfair to say these things with not having visited the main site (Bingling Temple Caves), but it was a dirty, crowded little town that is only known for its noodle dishes! One good thing is that I got my hair cut on the street for 5RMB (about $.65).
The train trip was about as miserable as they come. 13 hours sitting up in a hard seat over-night. When I say hard seat, imagine a park bench with a cloth over it and two other people to either side of you smelling of garlic. 
That is what we had. But by the time we got to Jiayuguan it was all worth it. More on that later. Don't forget to check out my pics at: Yahoo! Photos, Flickr, & ImageStation!
Sorry that I have taken a week to get these online but 600+ photos to edit and re-size for storage online takes a while to do. I used to use 'webshots' but I got a message today about being close to my limit for the FREE membership (240 photos). They were more than happy to extend my total to 3000 photos if I wanted to pay for the premium membership. 
So I have decided to use my 'silver' account from Sony Imagestation. I don't even remember signing up for the service, but got an e-mail from them this week about using it. The downside is that I have a different address for each album that I want to share. So here it goes:
Yinchuan
Gansu (including Lanzhou, Jiayuguan & Dunhuang)
Turpan
Urumqi
Kashgar
Enjoy! Please leave a comment in the guestbook of the photos that you like...
We left Suzhou by bus to the Shanghai Hongchao Airport on the afternoon of Sunday, July 10th. Our destination was the capitol of the Ningxia Province in North-Central China. Yinchuan was a great city to visit. We had not heard alot about it but it is a place that I will recommend for anyone interested in seeing a different side of China. Our main reason for visiting was to see the Western Xia Emperial Tombs. While the tombs were a wonderful attraction we also found a few things that are off the beaten path. Some of the things that are a must-see within the city are the bell and drum towers, as well as the city square. Our favorite stop in the city proper was the Chengtiansi Pagoda. The site includes a museum about Ningxia and Yinchuan. It was interesting to find out that the Ningxia Province actually has the most people of Islamic beliefs in all of China. This was a shock to me as I always assumed that Xinjiang would be the most.
The food in Yinchuan was better than to be expected. The city is actually small and is more modern than we had thought before we went. The airport and train stations were easy to use and all of the people that my wife and I met were really nice and more than willing to assist us with different things. One evening we took a walk from our hotel to some nearby restaurants. I wanted to eat mutton kebobs and my wife wanted cold noodles and we were both in luck! 
We were in Yinchuan for 3 days before being re-routed to Lanzhou (an unexpected change in plans). We were only in Lanzhou for about 12 hours but we saw some of the city. I must say that if I never visit Lanzhou again it will be too soon. It is not some place that I will recommend anyone to visit. More on that and other details of our trip later...
I have not blogged in the past few days because my wife and I have been un-packing and buying new things for the new apartment/flat. We bought 2 sets of bookshelves and a few new things for the computer room.
We arrived back home in Suzhou about 11:45am today. After the 23 hour train ride from my wife's hometown we decided that showers were in order. While I was waiting for my wife so we could go and grab a bite to eat I checked out MBE. It seems that over the past three weeks the comment spammers have been having their way with my blog! 
To say the least I was more than a little upset. I have mentioned before about how I feel about spam and the people/companies that use it. (there is a special ring of hell for those folks
) So to keep this sort of thing out of my mind for the time being I have had to limit my comments section to those people registered with Motime. You can get an account and only use it for comments if you like it is not required that you set up another blog. But if you are like me, I am registered with so many services that my inbox fills up with unwanted crap. Until I am able to see up better filters for my comments than I will have to only get comments from Motimers. (Sorry)
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