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The Moses Plan
Saturday, July 2, 2005-11:45 AM
The Hebrew prophet Moses delivered 600,000 Israelites from slavery under Egyptian oppressors into "the land of milk and honey".
If he can lead hundreds of thousands of people across a barren desert all the while being chased by the Pharaoh's army, why then is it so difficult for me to travel around China for a few months?
That isn't to say Moses's sojourn was a walk in the park. At one point, with his pursuers close behind, Moses came upon a seemingly impassable obstacle: the Red Sea.
What's a prophet to do?
He raised his staff. There was some wind, lightning, thunder, and other powerful weather phenomena, and the Red Sea is split down the middle making the rest of his journey possible.
Barring any unexpected success with a few last ditch efforts I have in place right now, I'm going to have to use what I've been calling "The Moses Plan".
"The Moses Plan" has me dividing my travels (like Moses divided the Red Sea) into two smaller trips with Guangzhou being the starting and ending point of each trip.
The first half of the trip consists of the points of interest in the Yangzi Basin and the Yangzi Delta that I originally intended to be the latter half of my trip. Cities like Changsha, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. Along the way I'll have to extend my current visa or quickly exit China to Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, or Thailand.
Between the first and second half of the trip I'll visit Hong Kong and hopefully be able to get a double entry Chinese visa with 30 days per entry.
After that I'll travel in Southwest, Northwest, and maybe Central China to cities like Leshan, Guiyang, Xishuangbanna, Kashgar, Urumqi, Dunshuang, Golmud, Yinchuan, Hohhot, and Tianjin.
Also, I hope to be able to cross the border into Myanmar or Pakistan along the way.
Before I went to Tibet, I wrote that it's good to encounter problems once in a while when you travel. In this case, I really wish my plans could have been a little more straightforward.
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