http://www.flickr.com/photos/74773600@N00/114567498/
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

With the Drum Tower in the background. With spring already mostly sprung here in Beijing – though not leaves are out, there’s no ice on the rivers or lakes any more – it’s hard to remember how frozen solid everything was barely a month ago, but here’s a memory of how much fun Qianhai and Houhai can be in the winter, despite the cold. Brings memories of sitting by the
wood fire in my favorite cafe with some of my new friends or MSF colleagues
and watching the myriad variations on “things to move about the ice on” that
Beijing can come up with. Note how few actual skaters you see — it’s all skate-adapted chairs, bicycles, you name it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74773600@N00/114566568/
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

The fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year is lantern festival, and it was on
that day that my colleague (and financial supervisor) from Paris and I chose to visit the park. I think that’s why there’s so much incense burning…

Visits to Seoul
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

OK, I’m doing it again: putting things out of order on my blog. It’s Sunday,
the 19th of March here in Beijing and I’ve returned this afternoon from my
second visit to Seoul in the past month. MSF has an office there where we’ve provided psychological support for refugees from North Korea. Since the situation has changed a great deal since we first started this work, MSF has
decided to close this office and leave local actors to serve the needs of this population in the future. Due to the luck of the draw, it’s fallen to our office to manage the last several weeks of this office until we close it, and especially to me as administrator to manage all the legal and HR
aspects of shutting down our office. The downside, of course, is more work for me just as I prepare for my blessed seven week holiday in the US and Europe…the upside, of course, is a chance to meet some great colleagues (two of our four national staff colleagues there have applied to become MSF expats in the field in the future, and the one expatriate still working there, a psychologist from Italy, is a pleasure to know and work with) and get to know another city and another office a bit.

This last visit was a week long, so I could really make a lot of headway on what needed to be done. I added a Sunday at the beginning and a Saturday at the end so I could explore the city a bit: I’ve not been since I visited it during my Jr. year abroad, back in 1984. Naturally, it’s changed a great deal since then. Here’s a good shot taken from atop Namsan, next door to the huge US military base and site of Seoul Tower, one of the major landmarks in town (I assume it’s a TV broadcast tower, but I dont’ really know — it looks like it), but I didn’t think to take any pictures of it, itself – just shots from its hilltop. Sorry. Enjoy!

Bukhansan National Park, Seoul
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

I was fortunate to have a free Saturday in Seoul to do a bit of exploring. Though my Beijing colleagues and friends kept telling me how lovely Beijing was — high teens or even 20 degrees, sunny — I’m afraid to say Seoul was quite cold — at or below freezing most of the time, and my Italian psychologist colleague seemed to take a perverse pleasure in reminding me that the cold winds in Seoul are coming down from Siberia. They felt like it. Yet despite the cold grey weather, it was a pleasure to escape to Bukhansan National Park, an area in northern Seoul amply blessed with imposing granite peaks (at 700 to 800 meters high, above a city that’s pretty much at sea level) and wonderful hiking trails. The park has some historical significance, both in terms of defense of the capital from various invaders over the centuries, and for all the religious temples that are scattered over the mountains. I thought of my good friend Steve’s comment from one of my Beijing hike shots, about how the temples perched on the ridgetops and hillsides were quite lovely. Here are some shots that give you a sense of the park, including a few with temple shots.

Bukhansan National Park, Seoul
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

These next are basically three miscellaneous images that give another side
of my experience. The (bad, sorry) photo of me grinning is trying to show how amazingly steep were the trails I was on: the metal ropes you see are basically there either so you can rappel down (in my case) or haul yourself
up (if you were going the other direction). It was tremendously fun and made me wish I had my climbing shoes instead of running sneakers! The little bird was remarkably friendly and unafraid of me: I couldn’t decide whether it felt like Bilbo in the Hobbit, where the thrush (or whatever it was) helped him get into the back entrance to the Lonely Mountain, or something out of
Hitchcock’s Birds…but this guy was so little and cute, and cheeped at me like he wanted to talk, so I took it as a sign of nature’s bounty. The hazy shot of the city shows you how this park sits literally above the northern parts of Seoul. Sadly, it was pretty gray – it cleared up today, when I flew home…

Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

My friends Howard and Gene visited me for two weeks in January. The
highlight of their trip — at least for me — was the week we spent exploring Yunnan, which is one of the southernmost provinces of China, and
which contains an absolutely amazing range of landscapes, climate zones, and minority cultures and histories.

Of the week in Yunnan, the easy highlight for us all was two days we spent hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper Yangzi river, and exploring parts of Yulong Xueshan, a 5500-meter high mountain that forms a beautiful and
impressive wall of rock on the southern/eastern side of the gorge. This
introductory shot captures much of the essence of our hike: the flowering plum and beautiful hillsides, with the massive and magnetic bulk of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (that’s its English translation) in the background.

I’ll explain much more as we go along, but for those wondering or keeping
track: in the next few shots, one in particular is not sorted quite as I could wish. The shot looks down on the river from up above, and you see a few little boats pulled to the shore. This is, in fact, the ferry with which we crossed the river at the beginning of our visit to the gorge itself. (See later for the full story.) Also, pause a moment at the shot that looks down a vertiginous gully at the river itself, being joined by a small side stream that’s coming from high up on the north-west slope of the gorge. It’s disorienting since the drop is so sheer and far, but if you study it for a moment you’ll get more of a sense of how amazing this canyon is. All three of us, passionate visitors to the Grand Canyon, found this area equally beautiful, though not as vast.