This pic was also taken in Guilin, I believe this to be a cave. 

Here is another picture of the moutains in Guilin 

This is a pagoda, it was in the middle of a Buddhist place of worship located in Xi'an. 

Inside the vast ways of the Forbidden City, orignal Beijing: built when Beijing was still known as Pinying. 

Mural of Mao the communist founder of The Peoples Republic of China. 

Central Monument at the sqaure. 

One of the many ominous soldiers at Tiananmen Square, it seemed o me like they were there not because they needed to be. They were for the people to see, whether Chinese or Foreign. There was also a big police influence due to the anti-Japanese protests. 

A market place in Xi'an I walked through. 

These peddlers came from the shore, and rowed quickly to our boat in order to sell things. With their frail bamboo boat and wooden oars they reached our boat, latched on and began waving their goods. 

The vast underground ways filled with the thousands of Terra-Cotta warriors. 

Globalization at its best, even inside the remote and isolated city of Xi'an.
 

I took this in Beijing, I Love the shape. 

The great wall, flooded with thousands of tourists from all over the world. 

Two Monks in a buddhist temple in Xi'an enjoying a conversation over some sort of Melon. 

This is one of the many mountains that surround the Lee River and the city of Guilin. Each one of these mountains are so different in shape, its astounding 

This is a waterfall in Guilin, one of the many waterfalls that feed the Lee River. 

My 12 days in China

Our group met at the lovely but somewhat natural hour(to me) of two AM, and departed from NYC Kennedy national airport to catch our six AM flight to San Francisco. Everything went smoothly, and the five hour flight to California felt short. In California we waited four hours for our next flight, San Francisco to Beijing. This was by far the longest flight I have ever been on, I remember being on their for so long and hearing someone walk by and say "seven more hours". It was interesting to look out the window, we flew over Siberia, and below us was only rough and jagged mountains of snow. We arrived in Beijing four PM local time, once we got out of our terminal into the airport I was in a way stunned. There were thousands of people waiting, but so many men. There was a time when I was looking around to see if there were any women there. The male-female ratio is very different there than it is here in the U.S. We got on our bus and headed for Beijing, that was when it hit me, we were China.

The next day we woke up early and went to the Temple of Heaven, this was a monument built by one of the Dynasties. The most interesting part about this place was it was a Saturday, and all the locals go there to enjoy a variety of activities, from dancing to exercising. There are these intricate stone staircases leading up to the dome, the dome was a tall thin structure, from the base you have a wonderful view of the city.

T'iananmen square was the next, we arrived there in central Beijing. Our tour guide warned us not to ask her any question about the Chinese government or any of the occurrences in 1989 until we were back on the bus. When we were actually in the square, the large, paved concrete surface surrounded on all four ends by museums honoring Chinese history, several peddlers approached us. I took notice to one man holding a calendar, he was different from the other peddlers, he was not eagerly trying to sell his goods, just standing there right on top of us holding them. When our tour guide was finished I saw him walk away, whispering into his sleeve. Our tour guide said that he was an undercover cop, and she could tell. I walked and took notice the anti-Japanese protests, the murals of Mao, than a little boy about the age of ten approached me holding two one-hundred yen Japanese coins asking me to exchange them because he was hungry. My tour guide said he was a thief that would grab any money I took out and that she sees him all the time. I though about him a lot, imagine spending next to everyday of your life at the infamous T'iananmen square, with the ominous soldiers pacing back and fourth with their expressionless faces. I wondered what his world was like.

We went to several other places while in Beijing: The Forbidden City, The Ming Tombs, etc. The second day we went to the great wall, a short drive out of Beijing. We drove the poverty driven outskirts of the city, through these rough and jagged mounds of earth, they called them mountains, but they were different than any mountains I had ever seen. Then we were there, The Great Wall. The great wall seemed like it went on forever, as far as my eyes could see, it toppled these mountains, these mountains that would be hard to walk on, let alone build a such a structure or fight a war.

After a short flight we were in the city of Xi'an. Xi'an was a smaller city in the mainland of China. It felt so much more Chinese than Beijing, not a tourist or any English to be found: and just like Beijing you couldn't see the blue sky through the pollution. I finally saw other tourists when at the Terra-Cotta warrior site. The Chinese government built these gigantic domes over the entire site, there were an astounding six thousand warriors uncovered, and two more domes of them in the process. These stone warriors did not have a uniform design, they were all different. There were several face molds, different torso, uniform, etc. molds. It was astounding.

Our next stop was Guilin, here in Guilin there was no wind, and it was humid: a felt a little sick from the dramatic climate change: New York's fading winter, Beijing and Xi'an's chilly wind and now suddenly the tropical humidity of Guilin. In Guilin we took a boat along the Lee River through the mountains. This to me was the highlight of the trip, everybody on the boat English, American, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian we are all so entranced by these mountains all we did was stare up to them. They had these very odd shapes and were covered by Trees, the water trickled down and into the river in these beautiful waterfalls.

We flew to Guangzhou, and then caught a train to Hong Kong. It was nice to get to Hong Kong, it felt so much more familiar, although I enjoyed the change, Hong Kong reminded me of Manhattan. The locals here are really cool with the way they do their hair, their wardrobes and their awesome black, rectangle thick framed glasses. Hong Kong was no doubt a different country, very different from the rest of China. It was diverse and much more capitalist. I really enjoyed this city, and would like to come back.

If there was anything I learned from this trip it gave me a better understanding of what I thought was a whole different world. I went to China with the mentality that it was going to be so different, so different from anything I have ever seen. The people, the culture: everything, and it was. But as different as it may have seemed, I realized just how similar it was, and just how similar we were being the rest of the world to the Chinese. I looked around and saw children laughing and playing just like they do here. I saw people loving life, working, enjoying their leisure time doing so many of the things that we do, so similar to the way we do it. I think that is where a lot of the racism comes from, refusing to accept the fact that your aren't that different from other people(s).

Racial Seperation and Reverse Discrimination

I live in a very diverse area where Latinos make up 60% percent of the majority, and African-Americans 30%. I grew up here, just north of the bronx: and have learned to love it. Iam proud to have grown up where I did, not so that I can go places and wave my ghettoness like a flag, Iam proud to have grown up here because I believe it is the way people should develope. You need to know at a young age that the world is very diverse, not everyone is your color, not everyone speaks your language etc. Iam proud that I wasn't the 6 year old boy in the post office that upon seeing the first African-American had to ask his mother "what color is he". Despite the diversity, I still see a lot of racial seperation. When we went to lunch I saw that the Cubans sat with eachother, the Argentines sat together as did everyone else. This is no surprise, these people could relate to those of the same race: they spoke the same language and ate the same food. This voluntary racial seperation comes as no surprise, except when I turn on my television. When I turn on my television and watch BET(Black Entertainment Television), a network that broadcasts by blacks for blacks. In the commercials all the actors are black, everyone on that channel is black, it didn't bother me. To me it was no different than the radio stations in Spanish, or the spanish speaking channels on T.V. It began to bother me when I watched "B.E.T news" and they reported on pop-culture and the death of Johny Cochran but than they reported on a school in queens. Where the (black) principal of this school who was in the reserve was called to go to Iraq and they were reporting on this mans impact on this (black) community in queens. But than I realized, this is national T.V, everyone who watches B.E.T in america and possibly other places will see this. This story about this principal in queens should be on a local news station not national television. It hit me than that B.E.T wasn't reporting on this man or his impact, they were reporting on him because he was black, they interviewed students because they were black, they covered this story because it was a story in a town where there wasnt a white person to be found. Im not preaching togetherness, Im not trying to save and/or change the world, but this has to go. B.E.T's racial seperation is no good: they are trying to create a society for African-Americans, a different world, and incase they havent realized, theres only one world. I look back at the way African-Americans were treated and Im ashamed, ashamed to be caucasian, and ashamed to be american. But now B.E.T is using these decade old occurences in their defense. Just think about what would happen if someone started C.E.T, Caucasian Entertainment Television, activisits would be on them in a minute, and they would be shut down.

It reminds me of a what I read in the paper a few months ago, a white teen gets expelled for trying to start a club for whites, after being turned away from other clubs dominatd by African-American students. Its reverse-discrimination, and it is happening everywhere here in the U.S. Its almost like its ok for African-Americans to be racist, but its not ok for whites to be racist. Slavery and Segregation were horrible things, but we as society cannot use these or allow these to be used as excuses for racism and racist actions. Its not ok for anyone to say nigger (because of the way I feel about this word I will refer to it as "the N-bomb" throughout the remainder of this post) Its not ok for whites, or blacks or anyone. People think it is ok for African Americans to use the N-Bomb, but its not. Its not ok to have slavery and segregation influence how non-blacks think about african-americans or how they think about the rest of the world. And it is definatley not ok to use these as excuses or insults to any race. They were horrible occurences that are now in the past. We musn't dismiss the wrong-doing of a race or one person because of slavery of segregation. Reverse Racism is wrong, just as wrong as racism itself. A jewish man kills a German, are you going to say its ok because of the holocaust, ofcourse not.

We need equality! and it isn't going to come from B.E.T's seperation from the rest of the world, or reverse discrimination excusing this seperation or anything else.

Just a thought, excuse some generalizations and acknowledge how hard it is to be politically correct all the time

GMAIL!

this morning to my suprise, and delight, I was checking my email and I saw the usual "You are currently using 148 (15%) of your 1,000 MB". But this morning it was slightly different it said "You are using 148 (9%) out of 1592 MB".

Another 592 MB from gmail!

I have 50 invitations and feel that the are going to waste, so please anyone who wants or wants to try the est email service in the world leave a comment!