Kevin in China
clock | July 17, 2006Here is a little tangent to Kevin's adventure. You may recall from one of the previous installments (Kevin in China, part 6 - The Mystery Snake) that there was an evening that Kevin does not remember very clearly, due to great hospitality of his hosts and the high alcohol levels of the wine served at dinner. You may also recall that another American was present at that dinner - Vanessa. Unlike Kevin, she remembers that evening very well and here is her lucid report:
This is Vanessa, the "guest-star" of Kevin's Pinqian report. He was kind enough to include my name amongst his email list;…
clock | July 14, 2006More adventures in China - new snakes, new local customs...
More miscellaneous locations
(Dalongtan, Muyu, Bantong)
Sorry for the delay, my internet access has been fairly sparse recently, and I have been backed up on my writing (ever since meeting Vanessa and Emma, I've been doing more hanging out than I have writing in my journal on a boring day).
So last I left off I believe I had just returned from Qianjiaping, and on the 6th the Stanford family, Xue, and Dr. Li all left Muyu. The day was fairly slow, most of my day was spent airing out my sleeping bag and all my clothes that were still…
clock | July 13, 2006Kevin sent three new reports. This is the first one. Next one tomorrow and the third on Monday. All exactly at noon!
Qianjiaping Report
(tian-jia-ping)
30 June
There were rumors that Dr. Li and Dr. Stanford and Emma were arriving later this afternoon. They were expected around 6:30pm. By the time 7pm rolled around and no one showed up. Vanessa and I decided to get some food at a new restaurant (what we are calling the Red Lantern Restaurant). The restaurant was one of the more scenic restaurants in town. You have to cross a bridge in order to get to it, and due to all the rain, the river…
clock | June 30, 2006Kevin went to another place and kept catching a snake he cannot identify. Read more under the fold....
Pinqian Report
(pin - tchin)
The Pinqian trip is a fairly short and concise trip. The trip guest starred Vanessa Reynolds for about half the time. Prior to this trip, her China experience had been the mega-cities (and Muyu). I was very pleased later in the trip when I had asked her about the time spent in Pinqian and she said it had been the highlight of her China experience. I am the opposite, I have not really spent any time in the mega-cities except for a few days in Beijing, and I did…
clock | June 29, 2006The fifth installment just came in - read under the fold. (Oh, and BTW, I was wrong - the installments ARE in the correct chronological order)
Muyu, extended stay, report
(Mu - you, as in newt)
I never thought it would come to this, having to give a report on my finds and experiences in the town, but fortunately there has been enough of a mix of activity to keep me interested.
My town experience started when we left Dongxi on the 14th of June and headed back to Muyu. From the 14th until the 23rd I stayed in Muyu (that's 10 days!!) and on occasion went to some places nearby.
15 - 16 June…
clock | June 23, 2006Here is the fourth part of Kevin's journey. I have just realized that I posted the previous two in the wrong order, thus post #2 should be third and post #3 should be second. I was going by the order in which I received them instead of dates in the journal. And I am doing these things late at night (having them automatically published at a preset time - noon), doing all the HTML for italicising the species names, running the spellcheck, expanding IM-style contractions into full-length words, breaking long paragraphs into multiples of shorter ones for ease of reading on a computer screen,…
clock | June 22, 2006Below the fold is the third report from Kevin. This time it really gets interesting, even fascinating! Hunting snakes, rural China, the people....Kevin has interesting observations about everything.
Since the way Kevin embeds pictures in MSWord makes it very tricky to extract them and still have them look decent, I urge you to go check out the photos he managed to upload onto Photobucket. Enjoy:
Xiagu report (she-ah-gu)
27 May
At first I was not near as impressed with Xiagu as I was with Jiuchong. It was much bigger and less personal. We arrived late afternoon on the 27th. Of course I…
clock | June 21, 2006Here is the first of Kevin's e-mailed reports from China, dated June 1-3, 2006. In it, you will be able to see pictures of some natural beauty he saw in China, then another kind of natural beauty he saw in China, then yet another kind of natural beauty he saw in China....
I love the way he writes - he should (will?) be a great blogger. What a combination of a travelogue, a personal diary, and lab notes of a research scientist - all in one, the three aspects of it connected seamlessly into a single narrative. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. So, without further ado, here is Kevin:…
clock | June 20, 2006Let's see how many people incapable of spelling 'plane' arrive here by the way of Google. But I am talking about a real 'plain' - a big one, in China, and about some very real live snakes as well!
A good friend (and ex-neighbor) of mine, Kevin Messenger, is in China right now, surveying herpetofauna (that is - reptiles and amphibians, for the non-biologists here) in a remote area of central China, rarely visited by Weesterners, and never before surveyed by scientists.
He is one of those natural-born herpetologists - he lives, breathes and dreams snakes. When I lived in Raleigh I would often…