Journey to the West
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
A short post here, mostly just to break the ice. After the planning conference in Beijing, I met with my Dad, sister and her boyfriend to travel around for 2 weeks. We spent a few days in Chengdu and the rest of the time in Yunnan province. This in Mid and Southwest China. I had heard a lot about these places and was quite excited to see them. Won’t really go into much detail here, but I have uploaded the photos to the gallery now.
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IMG_2411
Date: 06/20/2007Views: 791
The trip sort of solidified my impression of tourism, which had been developing over my last few trips. Basically, I hate sightseeing. If something is designed (i.e. is man-made) to be a tourist site, chances are I won’t like it. What I do really enjoy is visiting natural settings. And so, on this trip our 2 day hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge was definitely the highlight.
My friends Steph and Evan have talked about the screwed up nature of tourism much more eloquently than I, but the common idea between us seems to be that once you have traveled a certain amount, the novelty of being “somewhere else” kind of wears off and you really start to question your presence in a place that in a lot of ways, has no meaning to you. If you aren’t going to take the time to stay there and become acquainted with the place on a meaningful level, then what is the point? I’ll leave that open.
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Date: 06/22/2007Views: 777
I plan to start posting a little more regularly now. I’ve got just over 3 weeks left. The pressure is on to complete my research, it’s going somewhere, but I am still not exactly sure where. I’ll be coming back with something, but it may take a while to decide exactly what it is I have.