New Videos and Thank You!

Followers and subscribers are slowly trickling into the site and my YouTube, so I want to say "Thank You!" to everyone! I have people coming here from the US, Iraq, Fiji, South Africa, Australia, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Italy.......the list goes on. 

I'm so humbled that so many people have come by -- It's amazing, and I absolutely love getting comments and emails from you guys. I've even been recognized in Lanzhou a couple of times by other foreigners --- that's insanity!

My numbers may be low to some, but I'm catering to a small market -- people interested in China, Lanzhou in particular. So, low numbers are okay! I'm just happy when people leave comments. It makes it all worth it!

So, I just want to say THANK YOU!

Well, the next order of business is my new videos! I have been on a vlogging streak lately, and I've made a lot of videos lately -- it's been great!

This first video is about me going to a local park on the north side of the Yellow River. It's called the "Idiom Park" by some because it has different sculptures which come from cultural stories throughout the little park. These cultural stories have lessons and morals, and have evolved into idioms that are used by the Chinese to this day! Check it out! If YouTube is blocked in your country, click here to watch the first video! 

So, let's talk about it!

I've forgotten how much I like to walk and vlog --- it's really great! That way, I can say whatever comes to my mind, and then edit out the stupid stuff or whatever doesn't fit within the "storyline" of the video. It's also a good way for you guys to get a sense of what's around me (or at least behind me).

I love living here for many reasons, but one reason is the depth of culture and tradition that this country has. And one result of that is this little cultural park with statues dedicated to idioms. People going around with their children can (and do, actually) stop and tell their children these stories while they're walking in the park. I actually got to listen to a bit of one, so that was great! It's just something that America doesn't have....or at least not in that same depth.

I said in the video that one of the most important things you have to do in a new culture is just to GET OUTSIDE and LOOK AROUND! It doesn't really matter if you completely understand it or not -- you just have to get out there.

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Now, the second video is about my encounter with prostitution in Xi'an.......some of you guys might know that story --- it's my most-commented post, and also one of the most popular. You can find it here.

Now, this second video might be hard to watch on Youku because of the censoring that happens in China. It's already been taken down once, so I don't know if it'll stay up. If it doesn't work, leave a comment, and I'll put it up again! Anyway, click here if YouTube is blocked in your country. 



 So, yeah --- if that was your first time to hear/read that story, then great! Now you've learned a valuable lesson in preparing for China! If you want to come here, then it's best to be aware of this. Technically, it's illegal, but it's tolerated. Kind of like weed in Jamaica.

I don't really want to say much more on that subject haha I think the video and the former blog post are more than enough!

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In other news, I've made some changes to my YouTube Channel - namely in the form of a couple of playlists, and they'll be updated every now and then.

As time goes on, I keep finding little ways to tweak and update my pages, and it's great! They're subtle changes, but I think they'll make a difference.

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As always, feel free to leave comments and subscribe to the blog or to my YouTube! I'm always interested in what you guys have to say!

Until next time,

Austin Guidry

My Favorite Pictures: Part 2

Today is Part 2 of my favorite pictures from my time in China. Just like last time, you can click to enlarge them, and feel free to comment and subscribe!

This is Mr.....we'll call him "Wang". - he is the father of one of my best friends. He comes from a really small and remote village in Gansu Province. He used to work in the fields and also did some construction work on the side. When my friend was in middle school, his dad heard about an opening at the county-level school (the county is 环县) for a village student. He wanted to take a bus to the county, but it had rained earlier that day, so the dirt roads have become unnavigable. Mr. Wang walked all day and all night to that school, and the next morning he met with the school officials and my friend got  the spot! He worked his way up to the number one student in the class all the way up until he graduated high school. He went to Lanzhou University of Technology and is now the number 1 English student at the University AND has spent 1 year studying in America at my university, ETBU. All that is possible because of this man. Although he is still poor and living in a 1-room house that measures about 15' x 10' with his wife, he has moved up into Huan county (环县) and is now an engineer. Imagine that.

These are some of my best friends. L -> R is Ethan, Janson, Freddy, William, Danny, Jim Green, (i forgot this guy's name), and Zhu. This particular occasion, we wanted to find a classroom to hang out in, but they all had students in them. We found one with about 10 or 15 students in it and we pretended that I was a foreign teacher that was going to have class now, so we kicked them out and just chilled! Sometimes being the foreigner is great.....

These two pictures came from the Terracotta Warriors exhibit in Xi'an. The Terracotta Warriors are a true treasure of China and of world history. They have survived since 210-209 BC. They are more than 2000 years old. It's unimagineable. Unbelievable. 

This is an interesting one - a nearly full-sized chariot and charioteer from the Terracotta Warriors exhibit! This is actually made of bronze, I believe.

This is fruit beer! I had it when I was in Xi'an. I don't know how in the world they make beer from fruit, but it's really really really good. It doesn't really taste like beer - it's pretty much just a soda. Kids drink it. I think the alcohol content of 果啤 is pretty much non-existent. When you drink it, you can taste one or two distinctive fruits - for me, the best one I can remember had a great mix of pineapple/apple flavor to it. It's really great stuff. I had it all the time. America needs this. 

This is me in front of Maiji Mountain, a really famous mountain just outside of Tianshi, in Gansu Province. It has 7,200 Buddhist sculptures that date from the 4th century all the way up until the 19th century Qing dynasty. It has 1,000 square meters of murals and the sculptures are scattered throughout 194 caves on the cliff face. 

When you are standing on the mountain looking out, it becomes obvious why the people who did the carving did it here. The landscape is second to none. It truly is majestic and is one of the most beautiful and truly awe-inspiring places I have ever been. 

This photo was taken in Tianshui itself. It's just a kid playing in some water, but the amazing part about the picture is just the innocence and happiness that was happening within that moment. The kid was having so much fun playing in the water, and the father was having just as much fun watching the kid play in the water - even the guy way over in the background of the picture is watching them. In the picture, it looks a little creepy, but it was not. He was smiling and watching them play in an innocent way.

It's truly reflective of the lifestyle in Tianshui - it is probably the happiest city I visited in China. Everyone was out and about and just enjoying themselves. People were doing Tai Chi everywhere, people were singing songs, playing instruments, reading - it was kind of like a dream, really. It was a great place, and to me, this picture just embodies the life there. I hope to go back one day.

This is me having dinner with Mr. Xi and his family - to me, it was an honor. After I heard his story, I could barely look him in the eye, but he was honestly one of the happiest men I ever met. He had the biggest laugh lines and Crow's Feet that I have ever seen. Although he was a poor man, he offered me so many gifts and treated me as royalty - he had never been around a foreigner before and I was his honored guest. But, for me, the honor was being accepted as a part of his family. His son and I are brothers, and I believe his father treated me as a son. 

These two pictures mean a lot to me. The first one features my friend Ethan's arm as we skipped rocks down on the Yellow River. Imagine that - skipping rocks on the Mother River. Our group of five had nothing to do, so we went out to Lanzhou's Xi Zhan aka West Station, and had hotpot. After that, we walked around and went down to the river. It was just a time for us to be kids for a bit - we were 10 years old again and skipping stones on the river.

A beautiful twilight after a beautiful day in Lanzhou. 

Xi'an Pictures!! and stuff....

Holy crap, more pictures!!! Like the subject line says - they're from Xi'an. Great trip, great company, great food. Any of these pictures you can click on and it'll make it bigger :)

This is what I called in one of my videos "the poetry rock place" in the Tang Dynasty Paradise - tons of classical Chinese poems carved onto these stones

This is the Dayanta - what Chinese people consider the symbol of Xi'an.

This is an overview of part of the Tang Dynasty Paradise. It's a reconstruction of the Tang Dynasty's fabled imperial gardens, but made into a sort of theme park. It was pretty cool.

Everyone knows what these are :) 

Many of the warriors are broken and slowly being reunited with the original earth that they were made from.

A chariot dug up from the site - so cool!!! It's pretty big - though not quite life size.

One of the famous night markets in Xi'an - this one is just behind the Drum (Bell) Tower that you saw in my videos. The vendors sell a lot of Muslim food and Xi'an specialties.

Dunno....just thought this was a neat doorway

A building similar to the Drum/Bell tower, but not it.

This is the Drum/Bell tower. The night market is not too far from behind where I'm standing.

One of the amazing bronze works of the Shang Dynasty (1600-1406 BC). The Shang Dynasty bronze work was unsurpassed in its time and remained the standard for bronze work until modern times. The details worked into this are just incredible.

These, as you can see are sea shells. They were used as the first form of currency in China (I think so, anyway) and the character 贝，which means 'shell', still can mean money in some circumstances, even now.

This is a mold for the next form of money that was made, which were circular coins with square holes in the middle so people could keep them on strings. Pretty cool!

This is an example of a Tang Dynasty 三采马 (I think that's the right 采). It means "3 color horse" and is a classic image of Tang Dynasty China. I have a souvenir one that my friend bought me 

The sign said it was a mirror - but....I don't see any reflecty-mirror-ness...just really awesome artwork.

This is actually really important in Chinese history. It is the cover of one of the old Chinese Civil Service Examination tests. These tests were given to people who wanted to become civil servants and took 2-3 days to complete. The applicants wrote '8 legged essays' based upon knowledge of Confucian principles. It was used for hundreds of years for people who wanted to serve the government.

I'm going to a city called Jinchang, which is in Gansu, for the Wuyi Holiday - we have a couple of days off for that holiday and it just follows the "sports meeting", which is where students and faculty get together for three days of no class and compete in sports events and showcases of martial arts and parades and some other jolly good stuff, so all in all, we get 5 days off of school! China is great like that. We've already had one holiday and are going to have 2 more, and then the "dragon boat festival" is coming up - another holiday!

Much love, talk to you guys later!

New Videos! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

Finally, I can upload some videos!!! So excited!!

First: watch the video, then I'll tell you about it:



On one Friday afternoon, (this is from early March) I went my friend Rayna's house to eat lunch and just generally hang out. It was , like I said, a great lunch, but the real value that I found in the experience was being humbly invited into a stranger's house to be treated to a great meal. We watched some footage of the Japan earthquake and talked about it (in Chinese, her parents don't speak English) and I realized that although there are a lot of differences in our cultures, people are just people - they laugh, they cry, they are silly, they are serious, they have hopes, dreams, fears, and hates.

I really enjoyed seeing new parts of the city - the city square, new streets, etc. On Sunday, I made my first trip to the West Campus to meet some friends. I couldn't imagine a better first time to be on the West Campus - I met a lot of my friends that I met online and some strangers invited me to their room to cook lunch for everyone. Although we, on occasion, had some communication problems, it was a great time and I could see from the start that these were friends that I would have for the rest of my time in China, and hopefully my life - it's hard to imagine going back home and not seeing these guys all the time. It's like I've known them forever.



Xi'an was a really great experience, although I got homesick for the first time because there were so many foreigners. That pang of familiarity and hearing people speak American English really made me miss home for the first time. I've missed a few things from back home, but that was the first time that I really had a longing to be back home - I gotta say, I didn't enjoy the feeling.

I'm not sure what my favorite place in Xi'an was, but I was really blown away by how much I learned about Xi'an's history and how integral the city was in the history of China. It was the capital of many dynasties, was the beginning of the Silk Road, and was the central distribution point for the imports that came in via the Silk Road. At the Shaanxi History Museum, there was a map of the Silk Road, and it went to a million freaking places - Rome, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Middle East, the east coast of Africa, Singapore, Indonesia, Russia, and even more places! I was blown away by the vastness of the scale of Chinese exports during those times - in school, you only really hear about the Silk Road going to Europe and you never think about just how many places there are to trade between China and Europe. Just amazing.

I could go on and on and on about Xi'an and China stuff in general - so if you have any questions or whatnot about the video, leave a comment!

4/3 - Xi'an, Part 1

(I didn't use the internet while I was in Xi'an, so this is a little dated) 4/3 Today I went to Xi'an with Jing - met some cool people on the train and got to practice my Chinese, although it could have been better (but I guess it can alway be better). I gotta talk about the train - dude, it sucked. We didn't take a sleeper car because of prices, so we sat in hard, unmoving seats from 10:00pm to 7:30am. Couldn't sleep much. Without a doubt, the best part was the students who sat across from us who we got to know, they were really cool and after we got off the train, we had breakfast with them. I gave one of them my QQ and I hope that she will keep in contact with me :)Anyway, back to the good stuff. Xi'an seems to be a really cool city - it the streets are a lot like Beijing - some parts of the sidewalks are copy/paste. I guess that's Communist planning for you. It provided a little sense of familiarity and brought back a lot of good memories - a lot of my best experiences here have been in Beijing, so I'm always glad to relive them :) Jing's friend here is cool - but it's frustrating sometimes because they both speak their local Ding Xi dialect and it's nothing like Mandarin, so when they talk, I can understand absolutely nothing. I tried - really tried to listen and understand, but it is just really different. I guess that I've now experienced a little bit of the regionalism of China. They are old friends from middle school, so I am not hating on them for speaking it, I completely understand! If I ran into someone from Tyler or Dallas here, I'd totally speak fast and slang-filled English - it'd be a nice reminder of home! In the airport, I showed her most of my iPhoto pictures of Colorado and Tyler, and for the first time I got homesick. It didn't last long, but it was not a pleasant feeling - just like an empty hole filled with longing for familiarity and the reliving of memories of family, home, and my favorite state, Colorado. New Orleans is still my favorite city, but I love Colorado the most overall - I don't think Louisiana as a whole can compete with Colorado.  I spent most of the day with Jing at the Tang Paradise park. It's a restoration/commercialization of the dynasty's fabled gardens in Chang'an (present day Xi'an). It's a really big place - I think it's over 165 acres, which doesn't sound like much, but that's a lot to cover in 3 or 4 hours, we were both really tired. Her friend (I can't remember his name….sorry, dude) was trying to buy the equivalent of a season pass to the park and the line was forever long, so he told us to go on ahead and have a good time. He lives in Xi'an, so he said he had plenty of time to visit later. One thing I love about Xi'an is that the upkeep is infinitely better than Lanzhou. Being a city that attracts a good amount of tourists, it is pretty clean and for the first time since living in Lanzhou, I saw green plants. I know that doesn't sound like anything worth writing about, but think about it - if you had only seen brown grass and trees that had not begun to come out of hibernation for a month coupled with tons of dirt and dust, you'd be excited about lots of green foliage too. I took a lot of videos and pictures, so you can compare the two places - there's a huge difference.  Tomorrow we're going to the Shaanxi Provincial Museum and climbing Li Shan (Shan means 'mountain' in Chinese). We might go see the Terra Cotta Warriors as well if we have time. We're going to do that, without a doubt - it's a must for Xi'an, and really any historical trip to China.  I'm really super tired, so I'll go to bed now. Talk to you guys later!

to Xi'an!

Tomorrow night I am going to Xi'an for the celebration of Qing Ming Jie. Qing Ming Jie is on the 4th of April and it is a day for Chinese people to honor their ancestors. They visit graves of deceased family members and clean the headstones/plots and honor the dead. I would say it is like Mexico's Day of the Dead, but I don't know enough about either holiday to be able to say. We have no classes from Sunday to Tuesday - awesome! Something I did not know about the Chinese University system is that it is quite common to have class on Saturday and Sunday....dude. I'm so glad I go to school in America - it would suck to have classes every day of the week. But the Chinese have a lunch/free period from 11:35am to 2:30pm, which is cool, but their classes go later. The free period is kind of like a siesta - a lot of people take naps. I have unknowingly woken a few of my friends up from their naps when I wanted to ask them something. It's an interesting difference.  Anyway, back the main thing. I am going to Xi'an with my friend Jing. We are meeting a friend of hers in Xi'an who will take us around the city. We are planning to go to Hua Shan (Flower Mountain), see the Terra Cotta warriors, go to a few museums, and do a lot of other stuff. It's late now and I have a headache, so I can't really remember where else at the moment. I will be sure to take lots of pictures and video so I can share. The pictures will be up as soon as I can get them up, but videos will have to wait, of course. I'm still having trouble uploading - the files are just too big.  If I compress them any smaller, the quality is crap. I had some pictures of Xi'an in one of my first posts, if you'd like to look. I am sending this blog post via email and I don't think you can put photos on a Mail2Blogger post. I'm hoping to have some Western food while I'm in Xi'an. I'd love to have a cheeseburger. I don't really miss Western food very much, but I do get cravings every now and then. Tonight, I went to the "English Bubble", which is a place where the Chinese students can go to practice their English. No one is allowed to speak Chinese. Tonight was "Louisiana Night", so Jeff and Thuy (who were born and raised in the Shreveport area) talked about crawfish, bayous, jumbalaya, plantations, alligators, rednecks, the Bible Belt, Jazz, and all kinds of stuff. It was nice to be reminded of somewhere that is close to home. Although I haven't been to New Orleans that much, I have to say that it's one of my favorite cities. Someone mentioned me doing a Texas themed night, which would be cool - I'd like that. Anyway, that's all that's new for now - I've got to pack and get some homework done before we leave. Later!

Lanzhou, China (Lots of Pics)

Lanzhou, China (兰州，中国) is the capital of Gansu Province, which is pretty much smack in the middle of China. Here's a map - (Click on any of the pictures to see them full size)

Lanzhou has about 3.5 million people, so it's a pretty good size city. It has a big petrochemical industry in the city, so the pollution is pretty bad...really bad, actually. Sometimes parts of the city are obscured due to all the pollution. Lanzhou was put on the map for being a major stop on the Silk Road for foreign traders centuries ago, but it was eclipsed by Xi'an, a city to the southeast of Lanzhou, where the Silk Road ended.

Interestingly enough, Lanzhou built the first bridge across the Yellow River:

It is located in a semiarid part of China and is about on the latitude that Chicago is on, so those of you who have been to Chicago have an idea of the weather (especially the winter). My National Geographic Traveler says that Gansu Province's winters is 'harsh' and 'brutal' and 'punishing at times'.....yeah, that's encouraging. 

A really cool place I'd like to go is here: the Binglingsi Grottos. It's about 70km away from Lanzhou. The caves and grottoes are carved into the side of Xiaojishi Mountain and were built between the 5th and 19th centuries. Most of the caves were built during the Tang dynasty (618-907AD). There are almost 200 caves and niches featuring murals, 694 stone statues and 82 clay figures.

Xi'an, which marked the end of the Silk Road, has enjoyed a much more prosperous run than Lanzhou and tons of people have told me to go to Xi'an, so I guess I'll be going there. There's lots of stuff to do, from the various museums and historical stuff to riding your bike around the old city walls. It's a day trip, about like a trip to Dallas from Tyler or something like that.

Yes, that is a KFC banner.

Lanzhou University of Technology (兰州理工大学), the University I'll be going to, is, like the name indicates, a mainly technologically oriented school, but their English department is growing as the need for learning English grows. Interestingly enough, I will be in the first class of international students to ever go to this school and the first from ETBU to ever go to the school for a semester. So, naturally, this is a big opportunity for me (and it looks good on a résumé). I will be taking Chinese Language classes (Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking), a class on Chinese Culture, and my Senior Thesis. Everybody who has looked at my Facebook Group, "Austin is Studying Abroad!", you have already seen the pics of the school, but you can always check out Google Images: