A Beijing Escape – Heilongtan Natural Scenic Area or Black Dragon Pond (黑龙潭)

Posted on April 7, 2015 by mrmakdeck

Black Dragon Pond Scenic Area

Being able to connect with the locals, allows for one to access a ground level view of a city from through the eyes of the resident populace. While blogs can uncover the hard to reach places, the obscure museums, they gloss over mundanities and other unassuming treasures, that may be kept secrets only locals are privy to. Not that they are necessarily hiding them, like a Smegal-ish character and a ring, they just never had due cause to tell anyone of them and never considered them as anything out of the ordinary or worth mentioning. One of these places is Black Dragon Pond, located in Miyun County, some 93KM northeast of Beijing.

Lush wooded areas that provide an excellent escape from the smog, stark and population suffocation of Beijing.

The reason I found out about this place is that we were going there on a work outing with the company I was with. In fact, even as we headed there, trying to a get the name of the place and it’s location were a difficult task, as no one on our bus seemed to know where we were going and if they did, they weren’t able to translate it into discernable English. The ride on a rented bus, went through some beautiful countryside, mountainous, lush green covered cliffs overhead and even a glimpse at small, crumbling watch towers, curiously peaking out over the foliage like fearful, but interested rodents, their black window eyes, part of the Jiangjun Pass of the Great Wall. The ride was accompanied by a barrage of Chinese singing, laughter, charades, mocking of the three foreign teachers who understood nothing and were attempting to sleep off hang overs, which was near in possible by the vocal screeching, the over zealous chants and the electronic screech of an unnecessary amplification device.

Bumpy, noisy and all the other terrible dwarfs.

The GREAT wall!

Finally, the suddenly subduing of the amplified yammering and sing-song indicated that we had arrived. The group waddled off the bus. First stop was the barely distinguishable rest room. We cued in a line for the single revolting stall, with mixed emotions. The two foreign male teachers sought elsewhere to relieve themselves, knowing of the terror that waited them in that bog of horrors. When the foreign teachers had finished, we scampered over (trying to find creative movement terms) to an unmarked white building, and upon entering it, realized we were in some sort of information center for the Miyun area, complete with a Houston Control like archaic observance display.

1970s computer magic.

After everyone had completed their one, twos or a combination of both, we entered the Heilongtan area through an ominous structure that served as a ticket booth. The Natural scenic area comprises of a 4km hike, through a cavern, along what appears to be a manmade river. This isn’t a rural hike through nature. There are well-maintained stairs, benches and trash bins as well as the occasionally overpriced food and chachkas kiosk for all your necessary and unnecessary needs. You can also rent boats to survey the small droplets of water by boat. Oh, also, none of the drops of water are connected, so the boat rides are constrained to the area of a children’s pool to pouring out the contents of bottle water into a bread tin. Surprisingly, there were English signs, that are ultimately comedic components to their Mandarin counterparts. What one can draw from this, is that no matter how vast China is and how little the components that make it up are, China’s pride and drive to dominant and control, make naming even the most bereaved of interest things, an important undertaking. The names of each tiny pond and cave echoes this concern, with names like The Miren Caves, the Suspending Pond and what it titled “the masterpiece”, the underwhelming “Black Dragon Pond”. Oh, but don’t miss the “Dripping Pool”, the mysterious “Reed Pool” and the where the fuck is it? “Hedgehog Stone”. All worth to read the signs and stare down upon these stagnant beauties.

Eating unknown berries. Seems safe, says Nora.

Well maintained paths and bridges.

After several steps, many of my coworkers, who never take more than several steps, were exhausted. But with a lot of encouragement and several taunts, most of them were rallied to make it to the top. On the top, we admired the pools from above from the viewing platform, had a snack, one of 85 snack breaks we had that day and headed down the same stairs, greeting other coworkers who were sill trying to make it to the top. Dejected, many of those who were ascending, started to descend with the rest of the group. Lucky no one had to be fireman carried. I was prepared to do so. Never the bottom, a red foam pad bridge, attached by ropes, had several of us attempting to cross it, without flipping the pads and sending yourself into the drink. It tempted several of us, including my boss and myself, to attempt, fail and fail some more, soaking our prides and clothing, in water that smelled of the sweat of the elderly. After leaving Heilongtan, we drove for ten minutes for a 100-course lunch and beer. After consuming ten times my weight, we went to a pool, where we were allowed to boat, play ping pong (which I actually was able to hold my own against others, which surprised myself), as well as go in this big inflatable ball that floats on the water, which you run in to make it spin. It’s hysterical, when several people are in it and are completely out of sync, flipping each other laughing at their incompatibility. Several drop kicks to the face it’s not as fun. Yet even more amazing than this wondrous tool of revelry was that some of my coworkers opted out participating in this part of the day because the hike had tired them out and they needed to sleep in the bus. Wow. Wheelchair ‘em now, Dan-O.

View from the top

Really enticing sign!

Eat til you fall down meal

Directions are below, as well as an additional gallery. If you liked this please follow, like and share as well as follow me on twitter @pedaleachmile. Follow my adventures on here and at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL59E469A3DF414464.

DIRECTION AND COST:

ADMISSION: 35 RMB

DIRECTION:

I have to say, I have not personally gone here by public transit, so what I am pulling off the internet is a conference of several sources.

Take bus 980 or 980 (express) at Outside Dongzhimen Station, and then get off in Miyun Drum Tower Station. Walk southwest about 656 feet (200 meters) to Miyun Theatre Station. Then take buses Mi-60, Mi-61, Mi-62, Mi-63, Mi-65, Mi-66, Mi-67, Mi-68, and get off at Black Dragon Pool Station. A

Again, before getting on a bus, show them the symbols for Black Dragon Pond, just to verify as buses change frequently.

Episode 6 Supplement – Part 1 – Cuandixia

Posted on April 3, 2015 by mrmakdeck

Episode 6 – Into the Swing of Things – Part 1 -Cuandixia

For the video check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOq2LDegb1Q&index=11&list=PL59E469A3DF414464

Homemade fish, yam and coleslaw – my compliments to Chef Rachel.

Some of my foreign friends hated Beijing. They hated the smog. They hated the crowded streets. The noise. The Chinese-ness of it all. To be fair, many of them had never been outside of their own countries before. They were mostly young, teaching kids who only understood half of what they said and were use to a life filled with peanut butter and cheese and alcohol that wasn’t Baijou. Yet for them, Beijing was perfect, for as a metropolitan, they could engage on all of these luxuries. They didn’t ever have to go beyond their comfort zones, eat food they didn’t know, see anything besides the inside of chi-chi bars, malls and Mcdonalds.

Fish preparation.

My girlfriend and I, on the other hand, had come to Beijing to experience Beijing. To meet the people as best as we could, to eat as much delicious food as we could shove into our hamster cheeks and to explore, explore, explore!

Part of that exploration was food. Not just going to restaurants, but Rachel is an excellent chef and to have all these new products at your fingertips, it would be a shame not to get creative, try local recipes, and use new products to create new spinoffs. The wet markets were a blast to visit, loud, chaotic, unrefrigerated meats, hand-pulled noodles, life fish, frogs sold out of garbage bags, you name it, we saw it, we bought it, we ate it. That became a weekly event in our household. Going to the local market, seeing familiar faces, trying new veggies or fish, buying a new treat from the bakery upstairs, fitting in as best as we could.

Part of that fitting in was going beyond, seeing the MUST SEES and partaking in leisure activities. That includes visiting places beyond central Beijing. Weekend trips, being able to escape Beijing for a couple days to investigate it’s outskirts, it’s green, quieter, cleaner, mountainous surroundings, where life is still lived at a slow pace, possibly an echo of a Beijing long ago, was a way of contextualizing Beijing and it’s people. One of those places was the Ming era village of Cuandixia.

Cuandixia

Public transit in China is like Russian Roulette. Nerve racking, ridiculous, yet in this instance, the cause of death will be being lost somewhere in the mountains or missing essential organs. Eeny Meeny Mino Mo. The bus numbers constantly change, have infrequent hours, don’t go to where they say they are going to go and sometimes, stop for inordinate amount of time, as the drive smokes ten packs of cigarettes, has a swig of some that is definitely not water and inhale food equivalent to 2 meals and a half.

Yet the process to get to Cuandixia was quite seamless. One switch and a few hours and we (myself, Rachel and our friend, the wonderful, quite Mandarin fluent, Cian) were there, Cuandixia.

ancient sun roof in Cuandixia

Though it is granted a quick blurb in Lonely Planet, no one I knew (surprise) had been there or knew it even existed. And really, without any basis for considering the pros and cons of coming, left us delightfully surprised and in unexpected awe (though I am in awe of Velcro shoes, so it’s not that much of a stretch). Like many ancient place in China, the government has caught on to the conceit that people are interested in visiting them. So before you enter the town, there is an authentic, ancient tollbooth, with ancient tollbooth guards, appropriately dressed, charging you an entry fee, for which you receive ancient relics (tickets). You can see that the town has received some reconstructive surgery, some botox injections, that may have one questioning the authenticity of some of the structures, some of the quite quaint activities that were going on, in the open, as if for demonstration and entertainment purposes. And yet, beyond the signage, the hotels, whether it was a ruse or not, I did feel as if a slower pace of life had been maintained undisturbed here.

The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644CE) era village has a wealth of sites and activities to see. In a backyard we saw a guy making doors from scratch and in another yard we saw a guy, smile plastered on his face, messing around with bees with just his bare hands. There are numerous temples here, including the Temple of the Goddess of Fertility and Temple of Dragon King Subduing Demons (basically temples for all important occasions), restaurants to indulge in local cuisines like edible plants, mushrooms and wild rabbit (all very simple, but tasty) and old Maoist graffiti to see (basically the Chinese Banksy…kidding…they usually say stuff like “Mao is dope” or “follow Mao, YOLO!”), as well as a lot of old ancient structures to climb, peak into, smell, taste and attempt to move (well covers are heavy). There are even local knickknacks you can pick up, like scary cat stuffies and honey from the dude who was asking to get stung (wackjob!).

For a worthwhile panoramic view of the town within the lush green trees and mountainous surroundings, I recommend you walk up the path on the otherside of the road from the main village, passed the Temple of the Fertility Goddess (love me some fertility), and climb as high as you can up the stairs. Tons of photo ops, meditation points, plus moments where you feel like you are in a real life Skyrim, climbing up rock face to get the ultimate view, forgetting exactly what the hell you are suppose to be doing in this mission. From above, you can see into the ancient courtyards, see the lovely veggie gardens, the ancient grey slat roofs, and the picturesque retaining wall that surrounds the village, as well as people walking around performing their daily chores. Looks straight out of Chinese Lord of the Rings mixed with the Chinese version of the opening scene from Beauty and the Beast (NIHAO, NIHAO).

Crazy man and bees.

After exploring the town for several hours and eating, we looked at the map and noticed there was another town up the road a little bit named Baiyu. Rather than staying put for the night, we decided to head up to this other town, thinking possibly it was beyond the tourist machine. From a smattering of reading that exist on the internets about Baiyu, one can conclude that no one visits this place or only pass by, recording as many details they can from a fast moving vehicle.

Cat doll that Cian purchased.

The day was hot and the sun reflecting of the road was cooking us. Smoking some not so great hasheesh made our slow jaunt towards heat stroke a little more hilarious than it should be. But Cian and I had other plans besides simply getting to Baiyu. As we walked through the valley, rocky cliffs on either side, lush green peaking over their ledges, branches, swaying the breezes, catching and releasing the twinkling light of the sun, we noticed the numerous caves that pocked the side of the incline on either side. They beckoned us like Amsterdam window prostitutes.

“Rachel, wait here, we’ll be right back!”

Rachel looked doubtful. The last time I said that I had left her in a Chinese cemetery alone and got lost in 800 meters of nettle bushes, only to return to her after 45 minutes, scraped, bleeding and guilty as charged of abandonment.

Rockslide time!

Cian and I saw our cave and scrambled up some “stairs” towards it. The footing was far from stable and sunstroke didn’t help us keep our balance. But finally, we made it, into the mouth of a cave. Headbanging session and photos? Of course!

Worm time!

Getting down from the cave was a bit trickier. I went first, which was a terrible idea and involved me dodging falling rocks from that were being loosened by Cian’s decent. The final bit, involved surfing on a large rockslide, almost being partially covered by it. But what a way to go, right? Rockslides would be great without the “rock” part. I love slides! So misleading they are!

Tra-la-la to Baiyu.

Anyways, after an hour more of slow meandering, we made it to Baiyu. The ancient town with it’s old courtyard grey stone houses, its wandering chickens, dogs and cows, its villagers who looked aghast to see us wandering down the main street, was the real deal. There were small signs of infrastructure, a sign here, a new pavilion there, but nothing complete. The houses themselves were dilapidated, unaltered and ultimately looked as if they had been lived in for 600 years, which undoubtedly, some of them may have been.

Cave dance time!

We explored the main streets, the alleys, looking over walls, trapsing into open courtyards, waving at villagers, who simply returned our flapping hands with wide-eyed stares and concerned expressions. The village, not surprisingly was made up of mostly the old and young. Presumably, the adults had to find work elsewhere. We stumbled upon a building plastered red posters and caligraphied writing. Entering the partially ajar door, we noticed it was the town hall of a bygone era, complete with 60-year-old sound system, pictures of Mao, Stalin, Marx and Engels on the wall. Free condoms were sitting in an ancient rack in the front. The condoms, like the rack, were ancient, but it was tempting to see, like milk, how far past the expiry date would they still be good. Kidding. Horrible joke. Cian is a proud father and regrets nothing (another joke).

Baiyu

Meeting hall with all the greats watching on making sure it’s all Communist enough.

It was getting dark and thanks to Cian, we found a place to stay, inside of a local family’s courtyard home. For dinner we had wild hare and beer as the owner of the establishment, chainsmoking, watching Chinese game shows and smiling and simultaneously watched the crazy foreigners approvingly eat his wife’s food. Though it was hot out, we slept on a traditional “kang” bed, which in the winter, can have a fire lit under it to heat it. The next morning, tea, eggs, blechy millet soup and no plans. We asked the proprietor of the establishment if there was anything worth exploring around here. He handed us a brochure with pictures of The Great Wall. We laughed thinking he thought we meant in the Beijing area in general. He turned to Cian and rattled off some Mandarin. Cian explained that there was a section of the wall an hour and a bit by foot around here that no one knew about really and was discovered by shepherds who used to area to graze their goats in. We hadn’t the time to see it, but made an oath that we would return to find it.

Our host in Baiyu showing us the Great Wall.

Wild hare.

Walking back to Cuandixia and visiting some small pools hidden in deep crevices along the road, I realized that’s what exploration is about, going to the edge of the tourist “map” and then going beyond, simply walking off the grid and realizing the world isn’t flat and you will not fall off. Many pleasant “wow” moments are out there to discover and share.

For directions to Cuandixia and more information, scroll to the bottom of the page!

Follow me on twitter @pedaleachmile

Again, the video of the trip and more China, cycling, travel videos are at:

Jumping on the kang bed as Rachel sleeps.

DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION

CUANDIXIA (爨底下)

Cost: 35 RMB

Recommended Time: Meh…I hate saying, TAKE ONE HOUR or it’s GOOD FOR FOUR HOURS. There are temples to see, food to eat, activities to see, walking to do, relaxing to partake it. An easy overnight or weekend could be made of exploring.

Bring: Toilet paper is a MUST, water, sunglasses, hiking appropriate shoes.

DIRECTIONS: Metro out to the end of line 1, to the Pingguoyuan station. Take bus 892 to Zhaitang (斋堂镇) (6 RMB with subway card or 16 RMB without). From Zhaitang, taxi to Cuandixia (10 RMB per person). Buses are infrequent, but the last bus from Zhaitang to Beijing is 5pm (supposedly…).

Without a Guide – Stumbled Upon Places of Awesomeness – Part One

Posted on March 25, 2015 by mrmakdeck

Random “film studio?” somewhere in Greece.

The best travel stories come from discoveries you make on your own. Sure, everyone knows where the BIG tourist sites you MUST see are, but sometimes the off-beaten-path places are infinity more personal, engaging, interesting and variant from the norm, making them some of the most fulfilling finds. Some of these places may be local secrets or the locals don’t see any reason why anyone in their right mind would be interested in seeing/experience them. Either way, this is part one of my highly subjective list of alternative tourist/non-tourist destinations that that stand as triumphs to wandering/nomadic jaunts and may also spark a flint in you to explore beyond the travel books, the hearsay, the MUST SEES and the Checklisted. Enjoy.

The Alkmaar Beatles Museum – Decked out Beatles bedroom, Lonely Hearts Club Band figures.

Beatles Museum – Alkmaar, Netherlands

Alkmaar is a tourist destination in the Netherlands, famous for it’s Friday Cheese Market in the central square, where droves of tourist pile into the stands (yes, as if you are watching a baseball game) to view men, dressed in pork pie hats, white shirts and pants, carry cheese on “sleighs” attached to suspenders to and fro from the old weighing house. Yes. Sleighs and suspenders. I’ll explain another time. Alkmaar also has it’s staple Dutch things to see, such as canals, churches, old architecture, beer houses (and coffeehouses) and ridiculously gorgeous, accomplished people. But a specialty museum hides a somewhat out of place collection, just at the north edge of old town. The Alkmaar Beatles Museum. Why? Did the Beatles ever come to Alkmaar? Sadly, no, but John Lennon’s first guitar was made here. Still. Why? The answer to that, as well as many other questions can and will be answered by the museum’s owner, curator, creator and guide to everything Beatles. On his personal tour through the museum, the proprietor of this small, but extensive collection of memorabilia, will share his insights into his collection (“I have a bigger collection of Beatles stuff than the museum in Liverpool”), about Yoko Ono (“She’s the devil, she tried to buy John Lennon’s clothing back from me. I would never sell it to her”) and general odd anecdotes (“I mean, I have Beatles mothballs, it’s pretty impressive, ya?”). Though it is a single room establishment, the detailed information plaques, plus the amount of stuff shoved into this location, will easily occupy an hour or more of your time. Really worth the sidetrip and a SUPER awesome stumble upon! I took the tour twice, because, MAN, is this guy a Beatles fan (ticket stubs, original contracts, moth balls and all!).

DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION:

Address : Kanaalkade 48, 1811LS Alkmaar, North Holland, Netherlands.

Admission: 2.50 euros

Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 4:30pm and Sunday 12pm to 4:30pm.

From the Cheese Market, which is located on all tourist maps of Alkmaar, head north of the Waagplein, along either Houtil (Pieterstraat) or Voordam (Kaarsemakersgracht). When you hit the canal, make a left. Paul and John’s faces will greet you at the entrance. Lots of random Beatles gack for sale as well.

Chinese Museum of Women and Children - Toys, miniature examples of cultural practices, and wheelchair games

Chinese Museum of Women and Children – miniature examples of cultural practices, and wheelchair games

Chinese Museum of Women and Children – Beijing, China

Beijing is a very popular tourist destination, where people cram into tight spaces to see the sights: The Lama Temple, Forbidden City, The Drum and Bell Towers. Usually, tourists do not have over a year to explore this city, but since I was teaching there, I had oodles of time to venture into every nook and cranny of this massive, forever growing city. Through some blog posts, I had heard about The Chinese Museum of Women and Children. It was somewhere near my house, but I was not exactly sure. Asking friends of mine who had lived in Beijing for many years, turned up nothing, but, “there is a museum for Women and Children? Well…enjoy!” Thanks. Scouring the alleyways near to the train station, I finally found it, a big glass and metal structure, abnormally round by Chinese architectural standards, hiding down a side street. So what is in a museum dedicated to tykes and the better sex (at least more mature and organized sex)? Well…a lot of random exhibitions. It’s true, this museum doesn’t really have a said direction, but that’s part of the beauty of it. The general subheading, Women and Children, allows this museum to basically run the gamut of weird and crazy ideas that it’s creators came up with, one dark night, ten bottles in of Baijou, Chinese white wine (imagine sweet turpentine (ps I love it)). From a history of customs (marriage, death, birth), a section on clothing from the various ethnic minorities, to toys, to a video game that allows you to be a wheelchair bound child for a day, this museum wins on entertainment and education levels. Again, worth the scavenge and great to fill up more than a few hours, if you are a keener to read things and play wheelchair games and kick digitized water in a digitized puddle, as I am. Oh and the “We are the best country of all time, forever, infinity, win all the games and wars and beauty competitions” style propaganda abound, including a hilarious section about pollution.

DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION:

Address: Beijigelu 9, Beijing, China.

Admission: Free

Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 5pm

Metro Station Dongdan on Lines 1 or 5. Take exit B, take first alley to your left, heading east and then first right. The museum will be on your left. Quite tricky to find as the address on their website is completely wrong. It’s behind a building called Chinatex Mansion. The Chinese characters if you get lost are 中国妇女儿童博物馆

Tuzrakter – Art and open air bar serving Hungarian beers and MEAT together = perfect.

Tuzrakter – Budapest, Hungary

First off a warning. Do not attempt to find Tuzrakter, because it no longer exists. But when I visited this art coop/film space/activist hive/squatter den/bang up food and drink spot in 2010, it was very much alive, debating, swilling, loud, sexy and spilling out into the streets. I was doing a charity bike ride with a group of Canadians, raising funds and awareness for microcredit, so stumbling upon this place on Couchsurfing was pretty much planning a outdoor wedding in Vancouver in Spring and it being a clear, sunny day (if you don’t get that local reference and are use to the more traditional, religious based reference, here it is: “it’s a miracle!”). This place wrote the Hungarian autobiography on cool, without even attempting to define themselves as such. Like a 1920s Parisian café, yet not with a wine and smoke odour, but a beer, burning incense, bike lube and oil, and a twinge of hashish aroma, every night was drum circle night, with rhetoricians, theorists, radicals, avant gardes, raging heat, fire, manuscripts, scripts and manifestos, screaming and rebutting above the rhythm. A cultural hub full of hubbub. Art in non-conventional spaces, on unconventional terms. All of this ended with a price hike in rent from the government, a ploy to shutdown this meeting place for the “ill repute”. Not that shutting such a place will squash the hill. The ants go marching on…

DIRECTIONS: None. “It’s too late to apologize…it’s tooo llllaaaate”

Yi Ta – Peaceful lone tower of the Bai Kingdom.

Yita Si – Dali, Yunnan, China

From Tuzrakter to something a little more ancient and still open to the public. Dali, the ancient capital of Bai Kingdom, is a reasonably relaxed city (China wise) in Western Yunnan to soak up sun, use as a jump off point for further exploration in the region and one of the few places in the entire country that has CHEESE as part of their diets. Without getting into a lengthy digression, while food and living costs in China are quite reasonable, the tourist sites, demand ridiculous fees for sometimes little return or a poorly fabricated cultural anomaly that is both laughable and depressing (they charge you to climb random mountains, enter parks, touch statues…). One of the biggest tourist attractions in Dali, are the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple, standing at the based of the Cangshan Mountains. Scouring the Internets, I found a website that showed you possible, unobstructed photo ops without paying the ridiculous entrance fee to the temple. I am all about the experience, so photos are nice to remember how something felt, but do not amount to having done anything. Looking over Dali through Google Earth, I found something just down the road from the Three Pagodas. Yita Park. I knew that “ta” is tower and I knew that “yi” means one, I wonder…Again, onto the interwebs to find some more information about this singular tower, which from pictures, I could see existed. Was it accessible? Was there an entry fee? The only info I could find, were short blurbs, noting that it was a derelict 10^th century tower, that was in a neglectful state. Curiosity sparked, asking locals through a series of hand gestures and interpretive dances, no one understand/knew/cared what I was talking about. After several tens of minutes of wandering in the general area where the map said it was, as this blog post insinuates, I stumbled upon it. Passing through a car gate and a crumbling exterior wall, passed an military watchtower and a temple, where workers sawed, hammered, chiseled in a cloud of sawdust, with a curious eye on my girlfriend and I. Upon a dirt mound, surrounded by green pines and long, uncut grass, the solitary tower rose, not derelict, but more defiant to drooling tourist mongrel, which bites at its heels, demanding it to be repainted, stocked full of gaudiness, false priests and boxes to place money for its “upkeep” and the upkeep of fatcat officials. Not yet. It was still free, but I presume that the workers weren’t simply fixing up the old temple for good will. This is the ancient, untouched China that people chase and try to touch. I climbed up to entrance, which was open and peered inside. It was black with darkness and soot from years of burning fires and sacrifice. It’s yellow exterior peeled and chipped with sun and rain and it was such a glorious, phallic like, momentary “fuck you”, to the lion tamers of natural, wild history, which tells its tale through wind, not written words.

DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION:

Address: Entrance at Y juncture in Yita Alley, Dali, Yunnan, China.

Admission: Free!

Hours: Whenever!

From Chongsheng Temple, walk south along the main road (214 National Road). Travel for about ten minutes and make a right on Yita Alley (一塔巷). You will run directly into the park. Ignore all the blockades and fences, run free (both imagination and physically) in history and nature.

Dr. Guislain’s Museum – Ghent, Belgium

Housed in a work psychiatric facility, the museum’s purpose is to inform the public of the history of psychiatric practices and dispel any misnomers or prejudices people may have towards the field. As it says on the website, through its exhibits, it focuses on destroying highly suggestive and value laden terms such as “madness” and “mental disorder”, by presenting the artwork, writing and stories of current and former patients. Both beautiful and inescapably haunting, the museum presents a part of society we tend to ignore, attempt to conceal or pity. This museum is not grasping for pity tears, but rather, evokes honest to goodness awe from the inspirational tales and works of these individuals. A museum, an art gallery and an emotional, humanist rollercoaster all rolled up into one highly effective collaborative effort. Something well worth spending more than a few hours immersing oneself in, reading, watching, emoting, while coming face to face with raw output and sincerity. Even in the museum section, the focus is not on demonizing the profession, but rather showing the charity and positive outcome of the brotherhood that started this hospital. This is truly an experience, which words do little justice to encapsulate, so I will stop at that.

DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION:

Address: Jozef Guislainstraat 43, Ghent, Belgium.

Admission: 8 euros

Hours: Tuesday to Friday 9am to 5pm, Saturday to Sunday 1pm to 5pm

From Sint Pieters station, take Tram 1, stop at Guislainstraat. Spin around and a BIG sign will state that you are at the riiiiight place.

Each Mile

A Misguided Guide to Cycling the World

Category Archives: Each Mile – Journal Entries and Writing

A Beijing Escape – Heilongtan Natural Scenic Area or Black Dragon Pond (黑龙潭)

Episode 6 Supplement – Part 1 – Cuandixia

DIRECTIONS: Metro out to the end of line 1, to the Pingguoyuan station. Take bus 892 to Zhaitang (斋堂镇) (6 RMB with subway card or 16 RMB without). From Zhaitang, taxi to Cuandixia (10 RMB per person). Buses are infrequent, but the last bus from Zhaitang to Beijing is 5pm (supposedly…).

Without a Guide – Stumbled Upon Places of Awesomeness – Part One