The sun sets on the Northeast provinces around six but not on me.

I’m not done with Beijing yet.

We left our protagonist in a state of confusion and regret. After almost causing an international incident, the mood was grim and the hazy skies of Beijing were no comfort to a man wrestling with his own demons. The world seemed darker but surely the light persisted somewhere in the shadows. Where could this boy pretending to be a man find hope once again?

Probably not at the silk factory that I ended up stuck at for the afternoon.

One of the most annoying parts of this trip has been the frequency with which we visit factories for whatever cliched Chinese product you can imagine. First it was the pearls then terracotta then jade then porcelain and now silk. For the record, I really enjoyed the terracotta factory and getting to see the silk worms. However, I did not enjoy any of the others because they’re pure crap followed by gift shops.

The silk worms were the highlight of this factory and the only reason I’m mentioning it. I’m fascinated by silk because it was such a huge part of the Silk Road trade that helped connect the pre-modern world. But the most interesting story is how the Europeans stole the only means of production for silk from the Chinese, silk worms found originally in China.

The emperor of the Byzantines, Justinian, sent Christian monks to China. Their secret mission was to get their hands on silk worms. The ones pictured above are very delicate, need to be fed foliage almost constantly, and are probably at the same stage in their life as the ones these monks smuggled out of China. They hid them in storage containers with other goods they had purchased. There were false bottoms full of leaves and silk-pooping baby worms. That’s somehow awesome and really lame all at the same time.

We ate lunch but it wasn’t at the silk factory. The guide had told us that silk worm bodies that are thrown out from the cocoons harvested for silk can be eaten and are rich in protein.

He was holding one in his hand.

I said, “You gonna eat that?”

And there must have been some sort of lost in translation moment because he just looked at me like I was crazy. Or maybe he just didn’t want me stealing his silk worm recipe.

I got caught up in telling my story about trying to eat a silk worm. We ate lunch and then went to the Lama Temple. The great thing about this place was that I finally saw a Michigan State shirt. I’ve been looking everywhere for something from home that could be in a picture with me.

These kids were interns from Michigan State and I asked if we could get a picture showing where we lived. I’ve been instinctively pointing to my hand each time someone asks where I am from. Unfortunately, people from Grand Rapids are less intelligent than other Michiganders and the chick held up the wrong hand and then turned around rather than just using the other hand. It almost ruined the picture but I’m in it so everything is cool. Also, people from Grand Rapids smell funky.

The most interesting aspect of the Lama Temple is that it is for Tibetan Buddhists. That’s not exactly a sect of Buddhism that has a great relationship with the Chinese government ever since the Dalai Lama was ousted from his home. Despite the government allowing this temple to function, in order to foster a better relationship with the community or for image reasons, the whole place is somewhat on eggshells because you see and hear very little that refers to the leader of the sect and his problems with the People’s Republic.

We left Beijing the next day. Several of my favorite moments on the trip, and a few of the most poignant, are from visits during our stay in Beijing. But overall, I really did not like that city at all. It is polluted and drab and their Pizza Huts are all fancy pants. I’m not sure how to negotiate the fact that I didn’t enjoy Beijing but I loved seeing Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and borrowing a Chinese Pizza Hut menu forever.

Anyway, our next stop was the city of Hailar in the province of Inner Mongolia. This was a substantial change from what we had seen in China up to this point. First, I felt like I was home because it is not tropical and there are trees (rare in cities) and you can see the sky. This kid is not meant to be in big cities for too long. Second, I was finally popular with Asian people. Almost everyone in the group is always getting asked for pictures but never me. Turns out that I’m huge in Mongolia.

We went to a park and it had trees. That was cool because I like trees but it wasn’t something I had never seen before so I pretty much just climbed stuff and had a good day.

Then we went to a nearby “zoo” and that was fascinating. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of a zoo in the first place. But I know that the ones back home are not as horrible as this one. It was dingy and the cages were ridiculously small and made no attempt to imitate natural habitats. The only good thing about this visit was when I found a big empty animal pit and convinced several people there was a hippo in it. You should have seen some of them run to get pictures. Ain’t I a stinker?

Up next was the museum for the Ewenki ethnic group of Mongolia. The museum was very well done but entirely in Chinese. Our tour guide spoke almost no English so this was something of a disappointment only because there was no way to learn much from the many postings of information.

But Dr. Philips more than made up for this when we had free time. One thing I’m learning to do, and will have to become better at in the future, is find the right balance of exploring getting rest lest I wear out and get all whiny. On this particular day, I decided to explore rather than finish watching “The Departed” on my iPod.

One other thing I’m learning is that I’m not so intelligent or savvy that having a travel guide is a waste of space. If others had not checked their guides then I might have never visited the Global Anti-Fascist War Museum. And then I would have missed out on two great opportunities.

The first opportunity was to exploit the Mongolian people’s weakness for my awesomeness. Like I said, no one had ever asked me for a picture and it really hurt my feelings. But when we got to museum I was assaulted with groups of Chinese tourists who wanted a picture with me. The only way I could have been more popular at that moment would have been if someone started blasting Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.” and I started dancing because I am an excellent dancer and that is an excellent song for dancing.

What is World War II for Americans is the Global Anti-Fascist War to the Chinese. However, they tend to focus on their specific conflict with Japan after it invaded and subsequently occupied Chinese territory. They call it the War of (Resistance against) Japanese Aggression. This museum was built to commemorate the occupation of northeastern China, specifically in Hailar.

Obviously, something like this is great for any social studies teacher when it is done right. This museum was beautiful for the artifacts you could see and interact with, the bias to consider, and the opportunity for me to get pictures and information which could be meaningful for my beloved US History teachers.

Screw the Gov/Econ teachers. They only love me when they need something. Like back rubs.

Anyway, I want to make sure the wealth of resources and information I bring back is shared with everyone in the department. This was the first time I felt like I was doing something for US History. Fortunately, I have seen a great deal more since then and made purchases reflective of our department’s wants and needs for Chinese studies.

Also, I went deep underground in tunnels built by Chinese prisoners and forced laborers for the Japanese. That was the last picture I got before my camera died but the others got a lot of shots that I will have access to later.

It is hard to aptly describe my experience in those tunnels. We were so far underground that it was freezing cold and you could see your breath. It was oppressive when you considered the claustrophobia of being so cramped and far underground. But you also had to consider the oppressive nature of such tunnels even existing given the cruelty towards the Chinese that resulted in their construction.

Yet, at the same time, I was so intrigued and excited to be witnessing these tunnels firsthand. I honestly did not soberly reflect on what I had seen until later. I was like a child while exploring the tunnels. My excitement was palpable when I was the first to brave a pitch-black, narrow passageway that eventually led to a completely vertical tunnel that showed just how far down we were and was the only spot I ever saw that had any natural sunlight penetrating the darkness.

I was one of only a handful who had ventured out during our free time to give this museum a chance to impress us. We met everyone else later at a local park where they had been doing stuff but it wasn’t as cool as our stuff so I won’t waste the energy typing about it.

We were only in Hailar for one night so we concluded our time there at a local plaza where there was some sort of festival taking place. The locals were dancing and having a good time. I fought the urge to join in lest my booty-shaking destroy their culture forever. However, I did manage to get a great picture for the cover of my next hip-hop album.

One thousand yuan. So gangsta.

The flight to Hailar from Beijing was the beginning of several days of non-stop travel and different hotels. After less than twenty-four hours in Hailar we were on our way to Manzhoulii and that meant a drive of several hours through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

The drive was very peaceful (because our bus couldn’t go faster than about fifty) and lunch was different (because the first dish was jellied fish skin and the best thing I ate was another fish eye) but I got to ride two different four-wheelers (because I broke the first one and had to ride back hanging on for dear life to Stan) and my little sister for the trip, Michelle, got to ride a horse for the first time in her life (because she chickened out when she was much younger).

Manzhoulii is right on the border with Russia so we got as close as possible. There was a special area that only Chinese citizens could go into so a few members of our group got closer than me. I wanted to pretend I was Lijun’s son but decided that no one would appreciate my elaborate backstory. It involves being switched at birth and a plot to kill the president.

See that? That’s the Russian border.

The provinces of the northeast are interesting because there is an obvious Russian influence in the architecture and even the langauge on signs. Few Americans ever venture that far. Thus we were often confused for Russians. That was especially true when we went out that night.

Then again, it is hard to define night because the sun sets around six. The portion of Russia that runs along the northern border of China has almost five complete time zones while China has only one that is based on Beijing. So the sun rises and sets at odd times the farther away you get from the nation's capitol. The sun rises around four in the morning in the northeast and that means I can’t be blamed for not knowing when real morning starts and sleeping until noon the next day.

We were back on a train the next day for our penultimate destination, the city of Harbin in Heilongjian province. But this was a special train ride because we weren’t in comfortable, air-conditioned soft sleepers but the much more public hard sleepers. Six to a cabin instead of four, no doors, and much less freedom to negotiate with other passengers so you can sleep near people you know. Thus several of us, including myself, ended up sleeping alone in a cabin full of Asians.

We arrived in Harbin after I spent the night getting stared at and sat on by Chinese passengers who were displeased with me for using my bottom bunk to sleep rather than allowing them to sit and talk.

We went first to the Unit 731 Museum. I must admit my own ignorance here if I hope to make a point. Before our first day in Harbin, I had no idea what took place in the building pictured below and which now houses the museum that keeps the memory alive.

Unit 731 was sent by the Japanese during WWII to perform biological experimentation using the Chinese as test subjects. We study the atrocities of the Holocaust and Nazi cruelty in the name of science but I had never been exposed to these similar horrors until now.

The experminents are eerily similar to those performed in Europe. Some experiments involved testing the effects of frostbite, hypothermia, and biological weapons in the name of protecting their own troops and developing new methods of warfare. Others were to answer questions about human anatomy and this usually meant vivisection, research through operations on the living. And of course it always meant dehumanization. The Japanese referred to their subjects as “pieces of wood” in all of their officail transcripts.

But don’t forget to turn your criticisms back on our own people. Those who performed these inhumane experiments will burn in a special kind of fire but they aren’t the only ones fixated on the macabre. The picture above is of documents from the United States. We intercepted transmissions about the experiments in Harbin and translated them for our own study.

Our next day was primarily spent visiting religoius sites in Harbin. First, we saw a Jewish synagogue constructed in the 1920’s by immigrants from Russia trying to escape persecution. I love the picture above because of the contrast of Chinese with the Star of David. The People’s Republic is one of the last places you expect to see Judaism given the state, an atheist regime, only officially recognizes Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Daoism.

After the synagogue, we visited Saint Sophia Cathedral. The building is beautiful but it was almost destroyed. The Chinese already had some issues with it for fear of not following the rules of feng shui but it was almost doomed during the Cultural Revolution. Being a church and symbol of a faith is pretty tough during times when such things are being eradicated.

The beautiful, and heavily restored, exterior of the cathedral gives way to a scarred interior. You can only imagine the murals and articles of faith that once adorned the walls. The same is true of the Communist Party slogans and hateful propaganda that was scrawled and etched into the walls by the Red Guard who were responsible for the destruction. Those who control the museum that is now inside the church made sure that none of that vandalism could still be seen.

This cathedral is striking as a reminder of the damage during the Cultural Revolution. It also evokes China’s new stance on trying to admit Mao and the Red Guard’s failure without really delving into just how horrible the Cultural Revolution was for the Chinese people.

We had one more day in Harbin and it was ours to do as we pleased. However, I spent almost the entire day in my room working on curriculum because we had a draft and presentation due later that night.

So I’ll leave you with a cliffhanger before the post on our final stop, Shanghai, and my triumphant return home at the end of this week.

I went to McDonald’s during our free day to take pictures of Chinese people at McDonald’s. Then I decided to get something I don’t believe we have back home. I’ve never seen it on a menu but what kind of a person goes to McDonald’s for chicken and not a cheeseburger? Why don’t you just kick Ronald McDonald in the junk if you’re going to insult him by eating chicken under his roof? Anyway, the question is…

Do you think it was delicious or not?