Sadly enough, after a number of years and 2 dfferent LJ blogs..... the day has come. Recently there have just been far too many issues with posting in LJ, or even with viewing others' LJ blogs, to make the experience more frustrating, and more of a slog, than enjoyable.

After brief experimentation----okay, okay, so the options are a bit limited by ( Read more... )

Hey, folks. This post had been going to be all about food.... and that requires pictures. But the picture-uploading widget for some reason isn't working quite right, meaning the food post will have to wait ( Read more... )

In the interest of hoping to be able to post (fucking anything at all) (ahem) a blog post, I am harmonizing my own blog. Yes this is pathetic, but one can hope that after about a kajillion failed blog-posting attempts, due to what I can only imagine is related to internet censorship in China, this is a last-ditch effort to keep this blog open ( Read more... )

Being ill has had its moments. I'm still not feeling very well... but a little better every day. (Or a regression, but overall an improvement.) The last time I went in to the Tibetan Medicine Hospital, the doctor who's been treating me was sitting around a space heater together with some women doctors. He asked:
"Are you a little better?"
"Yes, a ( Read more... )

This week has been one in which things fell apart and slowly are getting put back together into a harmonious synergy. (This being China, the aspect of 'harmony' is key.) Things in need of harmonizing were: my body, my bike, and some clothing. I'll talk about body last since it included perhaps the most...."cultural" of methods.

-Bike tune-up from ( Read more... )

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I'm a bit tired and possibly getting sick, so this entry will be more of a photo essay than a word essay. As you can tell by my overall eloquence, the journey to Chengdu has done wonders for my eloquence.  I'm going to catch up on blog / travel posts sequentially, starting from Shaxi before getting to Chinese New Year and (finally) to this most ( Read more... )

It's been a long, long time since I've updated (a month, in fact), and in the interim I've criss-crossed China a few times. Not a small thing, considering the size of the country. Or the state of some of the country's, ahem, "National Hightways"---which, as Jonas and I decided whilst bumping along on (traversing?) a particularly multiple-hours' ( Read more... )

Well! After 2 weeks in Italy and slightly less than 1 week at "home" in Shangri-la, I am back on the road for a bit of domestic Chinese travel. Some of it is required for my volunteer organization, VIA, and some is self-chosen so that I can see friends along the way.

**I will post more about Italia when I am back in Shangri-la in a few weeks, and ( Read more... )

This past Sunday I went to a T1betan wedding in a village not far outside of Shangi-la. It was in Hamugu Village 哈木谷村：

( Read more... )