We sympathized with our group's dazed and confused state of existense as they came out of international arrivals, having been in their shoes just a couple of weeks prior, but could also see that same wide-eyed excitement that their China experience just became very real. That realness would hit them hard the next morning with new extremes of heat and crowds, for Matt and me as well, with our tour's first stop at Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. The group was resilient though and we recovered in an air-conditioned and spacious museum in the afternoon.

The next day would remain as a top highlight of the entire trip. Beijing students that are part of a cultural ambassador program each buddied up with one of the Global Explorers students for the duration of the day. With their proficient English skills, our kids got an education on the history of the Great Wall, popular music and technology, and perhaps most importantly appropriate (or not!?!) Chinese slang. All of this, of course, occured while also climbing the allegedly steepest section of the Great Wall, amongst dense crowds, of course. Little did we know that the wonderful intensity of the day was just getting started. 

After a lunch featuring a local specialty of stewed whole fishand a million other dishes spinning around the lazy susan, we piled in to the foyer of the program's facility for a multi- staged "Sino-American Festival Carnival" complete with an official banner, words of wisdom by a costume Confucious, and TV and radio press reporters. The production was indeed festive highlighting three Chinese holdiays alternating with three American holidays throughout a calendar year, each with an interactive activity. After a calligraphy lesson, painting Easter eggs, making mooncakes, having a Halloween costume contest, making dumplings, and a visit from Santa Claus, and other various lessons and performances, we were both exhausted and humbled by the immense effort that went in to this production, but it was so much fun! As for the results of the media coverage, check out this report from China Radio International! 

The next morning held the most unique and highly anticipated event of our group's China experience. Through the passion of the AFAR Foundation, a major sponsor of the Learning AFAR program, for the work of Ai Wei Wei, we were able to visit him in his hime and studio. He is often labeled a "dissident artist" and regardless of what he is called, he has a fascinating story. If you are unfamiliar with the world's most famous contemporary Beijinger in every place except China, a great place to begin is watching his documentary "Never Sorry".

Approaching the unmarked entrance of his studio, two things immediately stand out: a vintage bicycle propped against a tree with a basket full of fresh flowers, juxtaposed with a healthy population of survelliance cameras glaring down from every direction. Ai Wei Wei puts a fresh bouquet of flowers out everyday as a reminder to the officials who have yet to return his passport after confiscating it as part of the effort to silence his voice and limit his influence.

The Canadian ambassador was just leaving as we arrived and the first thing Ai Wei Wei did was take a picture of us on his phone to post on Instagram (@aiww) while commenting that this was the first group of high school students to visit him. In a barely audible voice, he answered our various questions, but was mum on any information about his upcoming installation on Alcatraz, which the Oakland students will go see in person this fall and we will have to check out from afar. As a parting gift, he gave us each a couple of ceramic sunflower seeds from a previous installation at Tate Modern and the group a complete set of his documentaries. Wow.

Then we returned to the hutong, this time on a bicycle rickshaw tour instead of our own two wheels. We ate lunch in the home of Mr. Wong who regularly cooks for groups touring the hutong as his post-retirement hobby. We also got a tai chi lesson in the street from a kong fu master who studied with Jet Li and crowded in to another woman's home for a traditional papercutting lesson. It was cool to see the hutong from the inside out rather than just passing through the alleyways and wondering what life is like behind the grey walls, even if it was only a glimpse.

Our last evening in Beijing, we had a Peking Duck banquet in the fancy restaurant of our hotel, a delicous send off meal before flying to Shanghai, and a local delicacy that Matt and I were grateful to try without the financial commitment of buying a duck dinner on our own!

While we flew into Shanghai, we did not actually stay there until several days later, first visitng the surrounding "small" cities of only a few million people of Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. In each city, we visited the best of what they are known for. 

In Suzhou, it was a boat ride through the canal, seeing the equivalent community to Beijing's hutong. Then we moseyed through the Lingering Garden, a traditional dynasty era garden with the design and selection of specific plants carrying lots of symbolism. Before departing the city, we snuck in a whirlwind tour of a silk spinning factory where we got to pet the super cute silk worms!

Nanjing had a 20th century historical focus, with a climb up to Sun Yatsen's Mausoleum. He is revered as the father of modern China. The second site was a somber one of the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre, evoking feelings similar to visiting a holocaust museum. An important lesson for our group was seeing how the massacre museum delivered clear messages about the atrocities commited by the Japanese during WWII, but omitted all information about the role of of the Chinese government in creating a circumstance where such a brutal slaughter was even possible. 

Hangzhou is a city known for its green efforts as well as its green tea. We visited a tea farm and sampled some of the finest dragonwell variety money can buy, and for that reason we only left with a tiny tin of it. Ironically, while the city promoting the use of electric cars and bicycle sharing programs, we were still stuck in some of the worst traffic in our diesel-powered tour bus. When we finally got to the famous West Lake for an electric boat ride across it, it was so hazy with regional air pollution that we could barely make out the scenic views! Sigh...

In Shanghai for the last three days of the program, we of course took in the famous skyline view from the Bund, only slightly hazed with air pollution at the time. We also saw a stellar acrobatics show, ate some awesome dumplings, did the obligatory souvenier shopping frenzy routine, and contrasted a solar energy research facility with a state-run petrochemical company's educational exhibit. The true highlight in Shanghai was visiting some senior citizens in an assisted living facility. They were so excited for our visit that we were rushed from room to room with just a few minutes to talk via a translator in each one. Then they put on a performance that rivaled the cultural ambassador students' in Beijing!

The nine days of the program were packed to the brim with all the best that China has to offer. We were worn out at the end of each day and even more so after seeing the group off at the airport, the standard condition I find myself in at the end of every Global Explorers expedition. This is how we know that we made the most of it though.

Even more than the places we experienced, the people are what made it particularly memorable. The whole group of students from Coliseum College Prep and their adult group leaders were so fun and rewarding to work with. The group bonded as a whole instantly making managing of group dynamics a non-issue. They are from socio-economic backgrounds that typically preclude international travel so it was amazing to see this experience resulting in personal insights and hopefully opening up new inspirations and options in their futures. I will never forget watching them kanga line up and down the subway car on the way back from viewing the Shanghai skyline lit up on the last night of the trip. They were turning the passengers' heads, of course, but also making them smile.

We also had two very different, but equally awesome guides from Chinatour.com. Jing in Beijing was extremely thoughtful and articulate, while Peter in Shanghai kept us engaged with his hilarious antics and unbounded enthusiasm for everything. What really pulled the disparate pieces of our undrstanding of China together though were the personal stories and reflections they shared.

But besides missing all these people, we were also grieving the end of having luxurious hotel rooms, prearranged and impossible to finish meals, and a personal guide who could answer every obscure question in fluent English. Just when we had gotten used to travel in China being so carefree, we were back to fending for ourselves...

Once settled in to our apartment, we "bravely" ventured out in larger and larger concentric rings away from it, motivated by the basic needs of food and bottled water. At first we only ate from a strip of restaurants on a commercial street close by. Since our apartment is located in the Haidian, primarily a residential and university neighborhood, we really stuck out as the clueless tourists we were and got our first taste of stares, giggles, and "instant celebrity" photo requests. At the same time, we felt like little shy toddlers pointing to pictures and acting things out to communicate rather than "using our words." We did, however, refrain from throwing tantrums of frustration when we did not get our way, which was often. When we attempted to inquire about the location of a supermarket, we were confused when multiple people pointed straight down at the sidewalk or the floor of a business. Finally, a nice man led us down a set of sketchy looking stairs which opened up into a huge basement supermarket! All of the downward pointing suddenly made sense...

Even though simple things like grocery shopping were genuinely exciting for us, we were also anxious to see some of the famous sites of Beijing. Given the huge scope of the city, we soon realized we would only have time to explore a fraction of it in the coming week. It was time to prioritize, especially because we needed to dedicate about half our time to taking care of business we didn't get done before leaving the States. A few days were spent researching our options for visiting Tibet (required to be pre-planned and approved by Chinese government control), journaling, blogging, and other miscellaneous "life stuff."

Our first sightseeing day was dedicated to taking in the Summer Palace, along with literally 40,000ish other visitors, mostly Chinese. This wonderland of ornately decorated temples, residences, and courtyards was a great introduction to the Ming dynasty era, as was the Temple of Heaven that we visited on another day. We were shut out of the Drum and Bell Towers since they were closed for renovation, but truly enjoyed the haven of peacefulness of the Lama Temple, which according to Lonely Planet is the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet.

I have to admit that I had a few butterflies in my stomach that first sightseeing morning when we negotiated our bicycles into the cramped elevator, not realizing in the moment that the ridiculously fast-closing door would actually be the most challenging part of cycling that day. (In subsequent trips, I got good at aggressively hip-checking the door long enough to wheel our bikes in!) Once on street level, what we witnessed, and then participated in, was a state of no-rules driving, biking, walking, and occasional rollerblading. A Chinese tour guide nailed it when he said, "Traffic signals are just a suggestion. This is China!" We did the ol' follow-a-local routine through intimidating intersections, and learned the importance of balancing caution with confidence. When making a move, one has to do it decisively as any hesitation will just result in confusing those around you, which is far more dangerous than simply keeping narrow margins of space in the miraculously harmonious flow of various forms of propulsion. 

From our daily excursions, we have made a couple of conclusions about cycling in the world's second largest city. First, when there are no (enforced) rules, you can't get mad at other people for breaking them. Things that would result in outright road rage in the US were just taken in calm stride here in Beijing. No one got outwardly angry at me if I cut in front of them, so likewise I did not react if I had to slam on the brakes and swerve when someone darted out in front of me. Secondly, while the infrastructure is in place to make Beijing an orderly city to cycle in, such as a plentitude of designated separated bike lanes, the reality is that a bike lane is never really just a bike lane. It is also a parking lane, a double-parking lane, a place to sell fruit, a place to unload a pile of bricks, a place to smoke a cigarette, a place to talk on your cell phone, and a place to throw your litter. So we decided that all these obstacles make for a real-life video game. In fact, you can even watch us "play" in the video at the end of this blog.

Of course, if you know us at all, you won't be surprised to hear that several of our bike trips were destined for breweries. We were, however, pleasantly surprised with the extent of the craft beer scene, having arrived expecting to find no more variety than Tsingtao-type "refreshing" lagers. Several of the taprooms we visited are located in "the hutong," our favorite element of Beijing. Hutong are traditional courtyard homes that predate the literal rise of mega-apartment complexes beginning thirty or so years ago with the "opening up" of China. A single hutong seems to be designated by the common alleyway of the homes' entrances, so many uniquely named hutong can be found in a small area, which made tracking down the breweries an adventure in and of itself. 

Many hutong have already been destroyed to make way for Beijing's modernization, and surely many more will be, especially as younger generations prefer not to live in such a highly communal situation, and by that I mean a public bathroom outside the home with often times no stalls between the squat-hole style toilet. At the same time,  certain hutong have become trendy spots for cafes and bars, others have commercialized into boutique shopping pedestrian streets. The local government has recognized the tourism value of hutong and responded with targeted "restoration" efforts, which really entails knocking them down and rebuilding in a similar style, but inevitably losing character in their newness. As a visitor passing through, it is easy cling to the preservation opinion, but as a resident of Beijing, I can see how the future of the hutong is much more complex, both literally and figuratively grey.

Anyhow, once successfully located, we first sampled a quality flight at Great Leap Brewing, founded in 2010 and claiming to be the first in Beijing's craft beer revolution. GLB is proud of sourcing most of the beers' ingredients locally, which, assuming their name references Mao's campaign "The Great Leap Forward," is just a little ironic to be associated with a period of anti-agrarian industrialization that resulted in the Great Chinese Famine. Well, cheers to that…or not.

The door to the cleverly-named Slow Boat Brewery's taproom was like a true speakeasy, with a three-inch wide sticker as its only external advertising. When we inquired about the hidden nature of the jovial taproom on the inside, an ex-pat co-owner with a Chinese wife as a business partner explained that in Chinese custom, it is rude to flaunt a business that is doing well, especially as the only one in a very quiet hutong. We had a tasty IPA that was on a special deal as part of an IPA festival week, which we appreciated in particular since Beijing's trendy craft beer at $7-9 per pint does not mesh well with our long term travel budget.

We were excited to try craft beer from a nanobrewery owned by a local rather than ex-pats, until we did. While it seems like the Lark Brewpub has potential, the taps they actually had hooked up had some distinctive "beginner homebrew" off-flavors. So over to my personal favorite Jing A Brewing Company in Sanlitun, the embassy district and haven of ex-pats, to finish off the beer tour of Beijing.

Our arrival in Beijing coincided with a good air-quality window that made our bicycle-based explorations much more enjoyable and healthy. Only when the pollution settled back in did we fully realize how unusually beautiful our introduction to China had been. We opted to ride the subway on the bad days, or even just the not-so-great days. We were amazed that it took almost as long to ride the subway as it did to cycle to many places, and that we could ride as a far as we wanted for 2 RMB (about 33 cents). 

Our longest subway ride was our last day on our own in Beijing before beginning the Global Explorers trip. We rode for an hour and a half to the far outskirts of the city to visit an energetic guy named Shao Ming. He is a fellow cycle tourer, and after trips across China and regions of the US, came back to Beijing and started a touring bicycle brand called Boskey. His tiny apartment is also his bicycle building shop along with his business partners. We connected with him through a network with the unfortunate name of Warm Showers, where folks with an interest in cycle touring can host or meet up with bicycle travelers. A few days earlier, we also went out to dinner with another friendly Beijinger named Victor who gave us valuable advice about cycling across China from his own personal experience.

With ten days to "figure out" China to our credit, we then headed to the airport to greet a group of high school students from Coliseum College Prep in Oakland, along with two of their principals, and still to our great relief a local Beijing guide from Chinatour.com.

It is not often that we arrive to any destination in style, especially a new continent where we know virtually nothing and no one. But there it was, our VIP sign at international arrivals for "Casey and Matt" held by (English name) Amy, our point of contact from the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Shiyan School. As soon as we saw her friendly smile, we breathed a sigh of relief. With the security that there was a real live English-speaking person here to help us, for the first time it seemed realistically plausible that arriving to the second most populous city in the world with two bicycles was actually a good idea. We were dazed and confused from crossing countless time zones. Half of July 7th, our second wedding anniversary, had vanished somewhere between Alaska and Russia. We half-stumbled into the school's van after some creative arranging of our bicycle boxes into it first. 

Some of the students and faculty of the aforementioned attend NatureBridge every January. Upon learning that we would be traveling to Beijing this summer, Ms. Wong generously offered up a teacher's apartment to stay in since the teachers would be gone over summer break. The apartment was not available until a day after we arrived, so the staff really went above and beyond by not only picking us up at the airport, but helping us arrange a comfortable hotel for our first night as well. Besides doing some serious sleeping, we hesitantly ventured out into the surrounding neighborhood for adventures such as buying bottled water and finding a dinner place. We settled on a restaurant with a robot that slices noodles into boiling broth, with absolutely no idea whether this was a normal occurrence or not. It turns out that it was not.

The next morning, we were picked up by the school's driver, Song, in the van again and got to tour the school campus en route to our apartment. It is a beautiful and expansive place, complete with gardens, a table tennis dome, and zoo! Yes, a zoo. Wandering the halls of the Carden Academy division, it was strangely wonderful to see a photo display with our co-workers Jen and Steve in the Marin Headlands along with written reflections about the students' trip. We also got to eat lunch in the staff cafeteria, sampling generously from the extensive buffet line. Still new to struggling with chopsticks as my only option, I was chagrinned when most of the teachers and staff around us pulled out spoons from their personal food containers!

In the afternoon, we moved in to our apartment for the next ten days. We were not sure what to expect, especially as we approached a large complex of buildings that each easily house a thousand people. But when we opened the door to a spacious and nicely furnished two-bedroom place on the 10th floor, we felt overwhelmed with gratitude. This would prove to be the perfect "home base" for settling in to our travels and transitioning to life in China for the next few months.

“Sigh...Why can’t we ever do anything simple?” was a sentiment we frequently expressed to each other as we survived the month of May and looked ahead to June. We fully anticipated that the end of our time at NatureBridge in the Marin Headlands would bring on an inevitable flood of transition-related tasks. But we also knew from previous experience that there was not much else we could do except swim hard in order to keep our heads above water.

We kicked off May with a lovely week and a half in Colorado. The first part was attending a Global Explorers staff training in Fort Collins to prepare us for leading expeditions to the Grand Canyon and China this summer. While Casey has led trips for the organization since 2006, Matt now gets to experience firsthand the inspiration of being part of it all as well.

We finished our Colorado trip by renting a house in Winter Park for Matt to celebrate his 40th birthday with some family and friends. Yes, May is “mud season” there, but it was an intentional getaway to somewhere with nothing to do except eat, drink, and be merry in the hot tub even as a late season snowstorm rolled in.

Mid-month, and back in California, we threw a farewell-to-us-while-we-say-goodbye-to-our-stuff party. After some late nights of detailed possession sorting, we set up an indoor yard sale with curated thematic displays and a silent auction for the major pieces of furniture. Matt’s last batch of homebrew, a porter with a hint of chocolate, was on tap and proved as effective as serving complimentary cocktails in a high-end department store in promoting a shopping frenzy. It was a bit bizarre to see people claiming our stuff, dragging furniture out the door, and trying on our clothes, all while simultaneously socializing, but ultimately the event was very successful.  While the profits from our friends' generous shopping spree at our pop-up thrift store have been set aside specifically for the humanitarian and environmental aspects of our travel, we were even more touched by the surprise of a departing gift from our community of an essential modern day adventure storytelling tool: a GoPro camera!

Our last weekends at home were spent wrapped up in a three-day long Wilderness First Responder recertification course, then leading an all-day preparatory retreat in Oakland with the awesome students we will be traveling with in China. The packing was forced in to every spare moment in between our commitments and somehow it all got into the Uhaul trailer by our last day of work on June 10th.

Saying goodbye to our house, work, and community felt very surreal, and difficult to comprehend how six years had flown by since we arrived intending to stay just two. We were both ready and not ready for this moment, but there was really no option to turn back from the multi-staged departure that lay ahead:

Stage One—We drove almost non-stop from California to Colorado, where our dear friends Eric and Julie have generously shared a corner of their basement for our remaining belongings.

Stage Two—We flew to Wisconsin for a wonderful celebration of Grandpa Ivan’s 90th birthday and a fun and festive reunion of the widely-dispersed Fagre clan.

Stage Three—After returning to Colorado briefly, Matt flew to New York to spend time with family and friends while Casey flew to Arizona for an incredible experience rafting in the Grand Canyon with a unique and hilarious bunch of teens. The hike out from Phantom Ranch on the Bright Angel trail made for an epic day on so many levels—the beauty, the challenge, and the compassionate teamwork of the group will never be forgotten!

Stage Four—We reunited in the Marin Headlands once again for a few days of recovery and final preparation based out of our friends Pete and Lauryn’s house. More sorting, final packing, and the real goodbyes. Then, somehow, we were boarding a plane to Beijing and beyond…