Zhaoyang and I created this blog as a place to write our notes and stories on the various trips we have taken over the years. The audience is us, but we’re sharing it with anyone that might have an interest. We will be blogging from all the places we visit to create a diary of our trips, filled with pictures and memories that we can enjoy long after the trip is over.
Part of the funny reason for our travels is detailed in this post by Zhaoyang. Before the first Big Trip, I had told her I would take her to France if she got all A’s again after she did that in her first quarter in college. Well, she kept getting straight A’s and I ended up owing her 44 cities. We’ll keep a running total after each trip for fun!
Another thing you’ll see in the blog is both Chinese and English. There are several reasons for this. The primary reason is that Zhaoyang, being from China, feels more comfortable writing in her native language. Secondly, Zhaoyang’s sister Wei doesn’t speak English and Zhaoyang wanted her sister to experience these countries through her eyes. As Zhaoyang is the primary blogger, the role of translator falls to me. I have some limited Chinese skill but far from being able to be a translator … lol. So I use Google translator (and more recently some AI tools) to do the first pass of the translations and then go back and redo the sentences to make them more clear (Google does an OK job but often it misses some of the nuances.) After I finish the translation, I read the blog aloud to Zhaoyang to make sure it captures her true intent. Also, I sometimes add some things that she missed or that she didn’t want to highlight and then she goes back and adds those parts into Chinese.
Also, throughout the blog are references to PJG and PJM. These are Chinese nicknames that Zhaoyang picked when we first visited Lijiang, China before she came to the US. In Lijiang, local young boys and girls call each other Fat Gold Brother and Fat Gold Sister, which in Chinese is Pang Jin Ge (胖金哥）and Pang Jin Mei (胖金妹) in Chinese. We have been calling each other these nick names ever since.
You can see the YoTube Channel where we host various videos: