I hope everyone is enjoying some of the great stories I have to tell about China. If it wasn't for modern technology, I don't know how I would keep in touch with everyone. I'm really lucky to be able to log on whenever and tell you about my adventures. But, China isn't all fun and games right now. Actually, we've all been discussing some of the things we could really do without while we're here in China. First, the public bathrooms. Often referred to as squatters, these bathrooms are just holes in the ground. Porcelain holes, but still holes none-the-less. Mostly a problem for girls, the squatters usually don't have toilet paper and are sure to have waste all around the floor near the hole. It's really not that awesome to use, especially to someone who doesn't have the coordination and balance to use them properly. Some of the squatters are so rancid that the smell literally feels like it burns the inside of your nose. Sometimes, you'll be surprised to enter into a bathroom and find no walls between squatters. But this is of no concern for the Chinese, simply life.
Speaking of toilets, the potty training is quite interesting here in China. If you haven't noticed in some of my pictures, some of the children are wearing pants that do not have a crotch area. This is so that they can be potty trained easier. Simply lift the child over a trash can and let them go. Or, if you don’t want to lift them, you can certainly just have them squat and relief themselves. Usually it doesn't matter where they go and places include but are not limited to the train (in between the lower bunk beds while the parents just watched and mopped it up with a towel before it ran into the luggage), the train station (right next to the seats where we were sitting), or even randomly on the street. Most of the time, honestly, I think the pants are amusing. I mean, I can't help but laugh when I see a little kid run by and the next thing you see are little butt cheeks peeking out of the bottom. Or when someone is holding their kid and they turn around and you just see the crack of their behind resting on their parents arm. It is a little weird, a little unsanitary, and definitely different than the United States, but it is one of the most common sights among Chinese children.
The pollution in Beijing is far worse than any other city we've been to. Shanghai was mostly clear, Hangzhou and Suzhou were too small to have pollution problems, and Qingdao had the sea breeze to keep the air clear. Although Beijing really isn't that bad, the hazy days are few and far between here. Especially now that the weather has cooled off the haze has mostly disappeared. But that still doesn't stop the Chinese from developing some wicked coughs. Now, imagine that you are peacefully enjoying a walk down the street and from somewhere near behind you--from deep within the bowels of whoever--a long powerful hhhhhhaaaacccccckkkkkk disrupts your peace. You wonder what is that noise, just to quickly hear the spit land on the blacktop some distance away. Yeah. It's that bad. The worst is when you turn around and it is a woman. That really grosses me out. It seems that every man, woman and even child has developed this unbreakable habit to hoc a luggie wherever they go, whenever they need to. The cab drivers do it while driving, the chefs do it while they cook for you, and of course the strangers on the sidewalks all spit their hearts out, every day, all day. There isn't any escaping it and now I really don't bother to turn around to see what's going on. Sometimes, they noises are so loud, that I'll be sitting in my room, doing homework (naturally), and from outside my window, I hear a pedestrian spitting. I wouldn't quite compare it to birds and chirping crickets, but sometimes I fall asleep to the relaxing hacking noises from my Chinese neighborhood.
Deodorant is impossible to find. Ask Jimmy, he forgot it on the Silk Road trip and on our trip to Qingdao. It was pretty funny when we went on a massive scavenger hunt to find it in Jiayuguan. Walking into random shops, applying invisible deodorant and having the locals laugh at us and hand us a travel size of roll on with a mystery odor for Y50. Jim was forced to buy it and we're still not sure if it worked or not but at least it kept him from smelling. (Just kidding).
There is another slightly interesting cultural difference in China. This has to do with the younger social interaction. Walking around campus, down the street, or in the subways you'll see a lot of girls walking hand in hand, leaning on each other or holding each other around the waste. In China, this is perfectly normal. Girls often have these types of relationships with their best friends, it's not big deal and perfectly acceptable. Even so much that it isn't completely limited to girls. Guys can also walk around with their hands on each other’s shoulders or holding the forearm. It's a little weird at first, but it's apparent that they are just platonic. The sense of personal space is very small in China. Yet again, we have nothing to do but laugh when a Chinese friend invades our American "personal space" bubble. The Chinese just have their ways.
One last cultural difference before I head off to bed. American college students live in heaven compared to our Chinese counterparts. In China, the Chinese students have the same size room with not one roommate, or two, but 4 other roommates. If you do the math, that's 5 people living in the same room. I couldn't imagine the frustrations I would have not being able to have a single moment of privacy. It gets better. They have to be in by 11:00 PM. Weekends included. If they aren't inside, they might as well book a hotel room for the night because they'll be locked out. And the power goes off at 11:30 or something. Oh, and their bathrooms. They don't have showers in any of their buildings so the students at UIBE have to walk to the next building over to take a shower. I think they have squatters on every floor, but our friend Li lives across from them and says he can't leave his door open because they smell so terrible. If any of these things happened in the US, I'm sure college admissions would dramatically drop and there would be a student riot.
That's all I've got for now. I'll keep you guys up to date this week with what's going on. Tomorrow, I think we're going to go get some custom made coats from the Wool Market in Beijing. After that, we have to work on getting our visa changed so we can leave the country. We're trying to get to Tokyo and Hong Kong by the end of the semester but the visas are once again confusing all of us and giving us a headache so we won't know for sure what's going on until we actually get the visa.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
A National Lampoon Chinese Vacation
I'm back from yet another adventure. This time my travels have taken me to Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. All of these cities are located along the central part of China's east coast. We arrived in Shanghai Saturday morning and I was absolutely ready to go exploring around town. Shanghai has over 15 million residents living in this sprawled out, skyscraper ridden maze of streets. The buildings are tall, spaced out and everywhere. The people crowd the sidewalks and the cars make crossing the street a headache, constantly turning left to right watching for turning cars, swerving vehicles and other pedestrians. It reminded me so much of New York City and that is probably my favorite part of Shanghai. Our hostel was located near the Bund. The Bund is a European district across the river from the Pudong Financial District. From the Bund, I enjoyed looking at the European style architecture while at the same time looking across the river at the Jin Mao tower, Pearl of the Orient TV Tower, and Shanghai International Finance Centre. These buildings are well over 70 stories tall. It was a beautiful skyline. After hanging out in the Bund, we walked down Nanjing Road, famous for market shopping and other stores. We ate dinner at the French Concession, which is an expat neighborhood in Shanghai that was originally a French colonization. The area was pretty cool but very expensive. We enjoyed some Thai food and headed to an Irish pub afterwards.
Sunday morning was the official start of the National Holiday. The Bund was closed because there are too many people and the government takes precaution to make sure people don't fall over the wall into the river. We headed to Yu Garden, just south of the Bund. The Yu Garden was amazing. We found a lot better markets around there and found some cool gifts. After hanging around the gardens and eating lunch, we took a ferry over to the Pudong Financial District. From here, we walked down to the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower and went to the top. By the time we arrived, the sun was beginning to set and reflect off the glass skyscrapers. From the top, we couldn't even see the end of Shanghai, the horizon was dotted with far away apartment buildings and the rest faded away in the haze. It was amazing to see such a great city. We were surprised by how much the wealth gap effected Shanghai. The juxtaposition of old Hutongs and soaring skyscrapers was incredible. We wandered through a hutong and were awed when we looked up and could see 50 story office buildings just a few blocks away.
After the TV tower, we met up with our friend Serena, who studies at a university in Shanghai. She took us out to a great dinner for authentic Shanghainese cuisine. It was so delicious. Apparently, Shanghainese and other southern provinces do not serve as large of portions as Northern provinces, so we ended up having to order a few extra dishes to fill our American sized appetites. Afterwards, Serena showed us a Roman Catholic Church nearby. It was a beautiful church and unfortunately it was closed but it was the first I've seen in China.
Monday we left for Hangzhou, which is a great city. Located in a small mountain range, the main attraction here is the lake. Hangzhou is the number one tourist spot in China and I could definitely see why. You know how you are always looking for the perfect place to have a great family reunion, or to take your family for a relaxing weekend? This is definitely the place. The lake offers peaceful views and refreshing breezes perfect for flying a colorful kite or walking around. There are a couple pedestrian bridges crossing the lake that make it perfect to walk across or even ride your bike. We rented bikes for our two day stay and had a blast riding in traffic. We got to see tons of the city and the city reminded me so much of home. The mountains were really cool and the mixture of city life and outdoors was balanced just right. Getting to Hangzhou was a fiasco however. While in shanghai, we took a cab to the train station. Before we arrived at the train station the cab driver offered to take us to Hangzhou, to avoid all the crowded trains, slow busses, and long lines. After our experience with the Qingdao train, we were all loving the idea of taking a car to Hangzhou. We settled on a price and it was great. We loved the cab driver, the cab driver loved us, he even stopped to get some breakfast (we were starving)! It was clear we were on the same page and it was a lot more convenient to be dropped off right at our hostel in Hangzhou. Well, we were wrong. We arrived in Hangzhou and the driver tells us to get out and take another cab because he doesn't know the streets. Well, we weren't going to pay him in full for dropping us off on the outskirts of Hangzhou, so we gave him what we thought was a good price and walked away. Then, we have a crowd of Chinese around us, people spitting out Chinese at us and a whole scene going on. To cut it short, we ended up having some random guy take the front seat, we crammed in the back, and he told the driver how to get to our hostel and we paid him in full. Huge ordeal, not worth the hassle, we should have taken a bus.
Our hostel booked our room, so we ended up having to share a room with four random people. They woke us up at 6 am by talking loudly, smoking a cigarette, and banging all the doors multiple times. We did have a great restaurant across the street though and our other friends from Beijing had arrived in Hangzhou the same day. We met them that night for dinner and drinks and we enjoyed meeting up with our classmates in a different city. We left on Wednesday, October 1st to Suzhou. We only spent the day in this "Little Venice" which is quite an overstatement. Venice is far more beautiful and spectacular, but Suzhou had some great things about it. It was very small town feel, but because of the National Holiday, there were about 1.5 million tourists there that shouldn't have been there. Too crowded but great to visit. We took a boat ride down the canals with a couple of Chinese students that were travelling for the holiday. It was a lot of fun and we caught a bus back to Shanghai. The traffic to Shanghai was outrageous but we arrived in 2.5 hours (should have been 40 minutes). We missed the fireworks for National Holiday and again, our hostel booked our room so we had to stay at a different hostel. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen for a reason. Our new hostel was 100% nicer than any other hostel we stayed at. For $7 usd a night, we had our own room, great facilities, clean bathrooms and ping pong and pool. Not to mention a great location and a movie room with internet.
For our last day in Shanghai, we went to People's Square near our old hostel. We spent the day in and around the area, buying some souvenirs and enjoying the weather. We ended up staying in the Park for a long time. It reminded me of going to Central Park, looking at all the buildings around me, laying down and taking an afternoon nap in the warm weather. It was great. We ate at a Japanese restaurant and went down to the Bund to see the skyline at night. It was amazing and beautiful. We spent the night on a rooftop bar at our hostel and invited our other friends from Beijing over for drinks.
The trip went by incredibly fast and I had a great time. I hate giving these abbreviated stories but I'll post pictures soon. I'm back in Beijing trying to catch up on all the mountains of homework I've left for myself. Cheers.
Sunday morning was the official start of the National Holiday. The Bund was closed because there are too many people and the government takes precaution to make sure people don't fall over the wall into the river. We headed to Yu Garden, just south of the Bund. The Yu Garden was amazing. We found a lot better markets around there and found some cool gifts. After hanging around the gardens and eating lunch, we took a ferry over to the Pudong Financial District. From here, we walked down to the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower and went to the top. By the time we arrived, the sun was beginning to set and reflect off the glass skyscrapers. From the top, we couldn't even see the end of Shanghai, the horizon was dotted with far away apartment buildings and the rest faded away in the haze. It was amazing to see such a great city. We were surprised by how much the wealth gap effected Shanghai. The juxtaposition of old Hutongs and soaring skyscrapers was incredible. We wandered through a hutong and were awed when we looked up and could see 50 story office buildings just a few blocks away.
After the TV tower, we met up with our friend Serena, who studies at a university in Shanghai. She took us out to a great dinner for authentic Shanghainese cuisine. It was so delicious. Apparently, Shanghainese and other southern provinces do not serve as large of portions as Northern provinces, so we ended up having to order a few extra dishes to fill our American sized appetites. Afterwards, Serena showed us a Roman Catholic Church nearby. It was a beautiful church and unfortunately it was closed but it was the first I've seen in China.
Monday we left for Hangzhou, which is a great city. Located in a small mountain range, the main attraction here is the lake. Hangzhou is the number one tourist spot in China and I could definitely see why. You know how you are always looking for the perfect place to have a great family reunion, or to take your family for a relaxing weekend? This is definitely the place. The lake offers peaceful views and refreshing breezes perfect for flying a colorful kite or walking around. There are a couple pedestrian bridges crossing the lake that make it perfect to walk across or even ride your bike. We rented bikes for our two day stay and had a blast riding in traffic. We got to see tons of the city and the city reminded me so much of home. The mountains were really cool and the mixture of city life and outdoors was balanced just right. Getting to Hangzhou was a fiasco however. While in shanghai, we took a cab to the train station. Before we arrived at the train station the cab driver offered to take us to Hangzhou, to avoid all the crowded trains, slow busses, and long lines. After our experience with the Qingdao train, we were all loving the idea of taking a car to Hangzhou. We settled on a price and it was great. We loved the cab driver, the cab driver loved us, he even stopped to get some breakfast (we were starving)! It was clear we were on the same page and it was a lot more convenient to be dropped off right at our hostel in Hangzhou. Well, we were wrong. We arrived in Hangzhou and the driver tells us to get out and take another cab because he doesn't know the streets. Well, we weren't going to pay him in full for dropping us off on the outskirts of Hangzhou, so we gave him what we thought was a good price and walked away. Then, we have a crowd of Chinese around us, people spitting out Chinese at us and a whole scene going on. To cut it short, we ended up having some random guy take the front seat, we crammed in the back, and he told the driver how to get to our hostel and we paid him in full. Huge ordeal, not worth the hassle, we should have taken a bus.
Our hostel booked our room, so we ended up having to share a room with four random people. They woke us up at 6 am by talking loudly, smoking a cigarette, and banging all the doors multiple times. We did have a great restaurant across the street though and our other friends from Beijing had arrived in Hangzhou the same day. We met them that night for dinner and drinks and we enjoyed meeting up with our classmates in a different city. We left on Wednesday, October 1st to Suzhou. We only spent the day in this "Little Venice" which is quite an overstatement. Venice is far more beautiful and spectacular, but Suzhou had some great things about it. It was very small town feel, but because of the National Holiday, there were about 1.5 million tourists there that shouldn't have been there. Too crowded but great to visit. We took a boat ride down the canals with a couple of Chinese students that were travelling for the holiday. It was a lot of fun and we caught a bus back to Shanghai. The traffic to Shanghai was outrageous but we arrived in 2.5 hours (should have been 40 minutes). We missed the fireworks for National Holiday and again, our hostel booked our room so we had to stay at a different hostel. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen for a reason. Our new hostel was 100% nicer than any other hostel we stayed at. For $7 usd a night, we had our own room, great facilities, clean bathrooms and ping pong and pool. Not to mention a great location and a movie room with internet.
For our last day in Shanghai, we went to People's Square near our old hostel. We spent the day in and around the area, buying some souvenirs and enjoying the weather. We ended up staying in the Park for a long time. It reminded me of going to Central Park, looking at all the buildings around me, laying down and taking an afternoon nap in the warm weather. It was great. We ate at a Japanese restaurant and went down to the Bund to see the skyline at night. It was amazing and beautiful. We spent the night on a rooftop bar at our hostel and invited our other friends from Beijing over for drinks.
The trip went by incredibly fast and I had a great time. I hate giving these abbreviated stories but I'll post pictures soon. I'm back in Beijing trying to catch up on all the mountains of homework I've left for myself. Cheers.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The Eagle Has Landed
UPS has finally delivered my keyboard to me. It took about a week longer than it should have but it got here. When my dad shipped the keyboard out to me, Chinese customs called me while I was in Qingdao asking me for a copy of my passport. Well, since I was in Qingdao I couldn't fax it right over. By the time I got to Beijing, UPS had sent my keyboard to Beijing Customs and Security for a thorough inspection of the contents. They decided that it was ok to send but I needed to pay a Y136 fee. Of course, living in the 99c store this isn't much more than $17 tax, but still, $17 is a lot considered I've been wanting this keyboard for so long.
When the package was stuck in Beijing Customs & Security, I tried to have my dad call over and find out what was going on and to see if he could fax my passport copy over. Of course, no one spoke good enough English, so it was just a frustrating experience for my dad and a waste of long distance minutes. Having a Chinese phone, I called the hotline, figured out what was going on and got the all clear to be delivered today. But, nothing is that easy with my luck. I had to let the front desk know that my package was being delivered but I had to pay a fee to pick it up. They don't pay fees on behalf of the package holder so I gave them my name, room number and cell phone number so they could notify me as soon as it arrived. Today, I went back around 3pm, expecting them to have forgotten to call me but nothing had arrived. Around 5pm I got a phone call from the UPS driver. He was on campus but he was telling me what street he was on. I didn't know where he was, he didn't know where he was, so it was kind of a lost cause and things got lost in translation. Finally, a few phone calls later, after I asked a Chinese person to give him directions to my building, the brown truck turned around the corner glowing and with trumpets of victory and cheering crowds... Well, maybe it wasn't that exciting but for me it was. I guess that concludes the UPS adventure.
When the package was stuck in Beijing Customs & Security, I tried to have my dad call over and find out what was going on and to see if he could fax my passport copy over. Of course, no one spoke good enough English, so it was just a frustrating experience for my dad and a waste of long distance minutes. Having a Chinese phone, I called the hotline, figured out what was going on and got the all clear to be delivered today. But, nothing is that easy with my luck. I had to let the front desk know that my package was being delivered but I had to pay a fee to pick it up. They don't pay fees on behalf of the package holder so I gave them my name, room number and cell phone number so they could notify me as soon as it arrived. Today, I went back around 3pm, expecting them to have forgotten to call me but nothing had arrived. Around 5pm I got a phone call from the UPS driver. He was on campus but he was telling me what street he was on. I didn't know where he was, he didn't know where he was, so it was kind of a lost cause and things got lost in translation. Finally, a few phone calls later, after I asked a Chinese person to give him directions to my building, the brown truck turned around the corner glowing and with trumpets of victory and cheering crowds... Well, maybe it wasn't that exciting but for me it was. I guess that concludes the UPS adventure.
The Heart of China
I haven't posted the past few days because I've been crazy busy trying to figure out our National Holiday vacation. We've booked tickets for Shanghai and I leave tomorrow morning. We'll spend two nights in Shanghai, then Monday morning, we depart for Hangzhou. Hangzhou is one of the most beautiful cities in China. In the center of town is West Lake, a beautiful and clam lake. Also, Hangzhou is nestled inbetween small mountains and has an eclectic feel (as eclectic as you can get with 3+ million residents). We spend two nights in Hangzhou and Wednesday we head to Suzhou. Suzhou is one of many local watertowns. The watertowns of China are much like Venice. Small canals run through them and the most popular towns Zhouzhuang and Tongli have no roads at all. We aren't staying the night in Suzhou but instead we head back to Shanghai for Wednesday and Thursday nights. We leave early Friday morning back to Beijing. This trip has crept up on all of us. With school and still recovering from our Qingdao trip (not literally) we haven't had much time to plan for this trip. We have places to stay and a loose itenerary but we're basically going to wing it most of the time there.
Since I have nothing interesting to write about concerning my life here (same old, same old: school work, gym, hanging out, etc.), I think I'll give everyone a glimpse of some things I have forgot to mention. These things are so distinct to China, and occur so regularly that I have completely forgot to tell everyone about them. Most of them you might have heard rumors of or inferred them from my stories but now I'll go into a few details.
First, and most recent, my marketing teacher. The Chinese people are extremely welcoming (most of the time) to foreigners. So much so that during my first marketing class, my teacher welcomed us to China and profusely apologized on behalf of his country about the milk problem going on. He said something along the lines of this:
In addition to this sincerity, I probably haven't mentioned another gesture that shows the Chinese character. Many times, if you go to a restaurant, expecially a small family-style restaurant, and they do not have a Sprite or Iced Tea, the waitress will personally run down the street to the nearest convenience store and buy your drinks. This often happens when they serve us hot tea on a sweltering day and it makes you feel terrible. They will never tell us that they don't have our beverages, they simply reappear carrying a bag of 6 bottled waters and 2 iced teas. It makes all of us at the table feel terrible. We wouldn't have ordered those drinks if we knew they would have to go through all that trouble. Something like this would never happen in the United States.
Another example is when we were in Xi'an. We were famished after a full day of sightseeing and all of us were irritable with hunger. After walking around our hotel for 15 minutes, we were getting angry wandering around. I asked a gentleman where we could go to eat and he asked us what we wanted to eat. I told him something quick and cheap and the next thing we knew he was escorting us down a side street. I tried to tell him that he could just point us in the direction but he simply wouldn't have it. He took us to a street full of restaurants. At this point, we easily could have found a restaurant on our own, but no way, he took us to a place and we sat down. It was a kabob place with very cheap food, but some of us had had stomach problems for a few days and weren't about to try something interesting. I told the gentleman that we would like to eat elsewhere and right away he said OK! We walked to another restaurant which was much better and not only did he help us find it, but he stayed and helped us order food. We invited him to eat with us but he kindly refused stating he was on his way home from work and had to go home. I also doubt this kind of thing happens in the US.
Additionally, last one for today, was the woman at the China Mobile store in Xi'an. I had run out of minutes on the Silk Road Trip and I wanted to fill my sim card again. I asked the woman if she had Beijing minutes to sell and she did. I didn't have my wallet or my phone with me so I returned the next day. This woman was so helpful and so kind we spent well over an hour talking. She complimented me on my Chinese (which is about a 3 yr old vocabulary) and we were able to communicate on my limited vocabulary. She has a son, who is 19 who is learning English. He goes to a local university in Xi'an and she was so proud of him. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she saw her son in me. She asked if I had eaten some of the local Xi'an foods and recommended me to order certain dishes explaining what they were and how they tasted. I forgot the name of the one thing she liked the most, which was a breaded something or other and it sounded spectacular. Before I knew it, I was almost late for dinner and thanked her for her conversation. She wished me good travels and safe studies when all I wanted was a few minutes for my cellphone. It was a great experience.
Thats all for today. I have a whole list of more stories, so whenever I have nothing to say about travelling, I'll share some more.
Since I have nothing interesting to write about concerning my life here (same old, same old: school work, gym, hanging out, etc.), I think I'll give everyone a glimpse of some things I have forgot to mention. These things are so distinct to China, and occur so regularly that I have completely forgot to tell everyone about them. Most of them you might have heard rumors of or inferred them from my stories but now I'll go into a few details.
First, and most recent, my marketing teacher. The Chinese people are extremely welcoming (most of the time) to foreigners. So much so that during my first marketing class, my teacher welcomed us to China and profusely apologized on behalf of his country about the milk problem going on. He said something along the lines of this:
I am so sorry that you have to come to China at this wonderful time in China's histor and are unable to drink our milk or eat our dairy. For many of you, this is your first time to China and I am ashamed that are here while this is happening. Don't worry. The managers and owners of the companies are being severely disciplined and soon I hope it will be safe to drink our milk again.He was extremely sincere and I was personally touched by his apology. He had no need to apologize for that company or for the problem in general. It was quite a moving experience.
In addition to this sincerity, I probably haven't mentioned another gesture that shows the Chinese character. Many times, if you go to a restaurant, expecially a small family-style restaurant, and they do not have a Sprite or Iced Tea, the waitress will personally run down the street to the nearest convenience store and buy your drinks. This often happens when they serve us hot tea on a sweltering day and it makes you feel terrible. They will never tell us that they don't have our beverages, they simply reappear carrying a bag of 6 bottled waters and 2 iced teas. It makes all of us at the table feel terrible. We wouldn't have ordered those drinks if we knew they would have to go through all that trouble. Something like this would never happen in the United States.
Another example is when we were in Xi'an. We were famished after a full day of sightseeing and all of us were irritable with hunger. After walking around our hotel for 15 minutes, we were getting angry wandering around. I asked a gentleman where we could go to eat and he asked us what we wanted to eat. I told him something quick and cheap and the next thing we knew he was escorting us down a side street. I tried to tell him that he could just point us in the direction but he simply wouldn't have it. He took us to a street full of restaurants. At this point, we easily could have found a restaurant on our own, but no way, he took us to a place and we sat down. It was a kabob place with very cheap food, but some of us had had stomach problems for a few days and weren't about to try something interesting. I told the gentleman that we would like to eat elsewhere and right away he said OK! We walked to another restaurant which was much better and not only did he help us find it, but he stayed and helped us order food. We invited him to eat with us but he kindly refused stating he was on his way home from work and had to go home. I also doubt this kind of thing happens in the US.
Additionally, last one for today, was the woman at the China Mobile store in Xi'an. I had run out of minutes on the Silk Road Trip and I wanted to fill my sim card again. I asked the woman if she had Beijing minutes to sell and she did. I didn't have my wallet or my phone with me so I returned the next day. This woman was so helpful and so kind we spent well over an hour talking. She complimented me on my Chinese (which is about a 3 yr old vocabulary) and we were able to communicate on my limited vocabulary. She has a son, who is 19 who is learning English. He goes to a local university in Xi'an and she was so proud of him. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she saw her son in me. She asked if I had eaten some of the local Xi'an foods and recommended me to order certain dishes explaining what they were and how they tasted. I forgot the name of the one thing she liked the most, which was a breaded something or other and it sounded spectacular. Before I knew it, I was almost late for dinner and thanked her for her conversation. She wished me good travels and safe studies when all I wanted was a few minutes for my cellphone. It was a great experience.
Thats all for today. I have a whole list of more stories, so whenever I have nothing to say about travelling, I'll share some more.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Last of the Pictures
I have officially caught everyone up for the Silk Road. These last pictures are of our trip to the Mongolian Grasslands where we stayed overnight in the gers. Also, there are a few pictures of Hohhot the city, which is located in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia (still in China). It was a great trip as you can tell by the pictures we all had a great time and experienced so many different things. I wish you all could have been there.
It might be easier for most people to simply click on the "View Album" link below the slideshow. This way you can see better quality pictures and comment on them as well. I'm sure when you see our feast at the Mongolian Grasslands you'll laugh and wonder how we ate that, but it was delicious, trust me.
Also, here are the pictures from the weekend. I hope we all don't look like a bunch of drunks but it was a beer festival, so don't blame us for holding beer in every picture. At least we were all safe.
I have been at the internet cafe for more than 4 hours now and I need to do something productive. I have some reading to get done so I think I'm going to do that for a while. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing for the National Holiday coming up this weekend. We have classes on Saturday but everyone is planning something. Had they told us earlier, we could have gotten visas to leave the country, but they told us a day before we left for Qingdao so we had limited time to plan something. Our trip to Thailand is no longer going to happen and nobody can reach a consensus about where to go and for how long. The best deal we're seeing right now is a trip to Sanya, Hainan. This is the southern-most point in China. Hainan is the Hawaii of China and Sanya has amazing sand beaches and lots of stuff to do. If the plans go through, I'll be headed there from Wednesday to Sunday, October 5th. I'll let you know about that adventure as it unfolds. Until then, have a good one.
It might be easier for most people to simply click on the "View Album" link below the slideshow. This way you can see better quality pictures and comment on them as well. I'm sure when you see our feast at the Mongolian Grasslands you'll laugh and wonder how we ate that, but it was delicious, trust me.
Also, here are the pictures from the weekend. I hope we all don't look like a bunch of drunks but it was a beer festival, so don't blame us for holding beer in every picture. At least we were all safe.
I have been at the internet cafe for more than 4 hours now and I need to do something productive. I have some reading to get done so I think I'm going to do that for a while. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing for the National Holiday coming up this weekend. We have classes on Saturday but everyone is planning something. Had they told us earlier, we could have gotten visas to leave the country, but they told us a day before we left for Qingdao so we had limited time to plan something. Our trip to Thailand is no longer going to happen and nobody can reach a consensus about where to go and for how long. The best deal we're seeing right now is a trip to Sanya, Hainan. This is the southern-most point in China. Hainan is the Hawaii of China and Sanya has amazing sand beaches and lots of stuff to do. If the plans go through, I'll be headed there from Wednesday to Sunday, October 5th. I'll let you know about that adventure as it unfolds. Until then, have a good one.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
More Silk Road Pictures
These are pictures of the Tai Taoist Monastery near Xi'an.
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These are pictures of Shaolin Monastery and the Longmen Grottoes.
My Third Chinese Adventure
I returned back to Beijing this afternoon after a great weekend in Qingdao. What a trip! Let's start with the overnight train that we had to go on. At first, we didn't mind that fact that the lights didn't turn off or the fact that the seats were really uncomfortable and practically leaned forward. We also didn't mind the fact that we were getting in at 7:20 am. But the fact that they sold at least 100+ standing tickets made the trip a little uncomfortble. If you can't quite get a mental picture going let me try and paint one for you. When we got on the train everyone was putting their belongings in the overhead holders so the isles were pretty crowded. Because this is China, people were already sitting in our seats which is fine because they moved when we asked them too. But the problem was, there wasn't anywhere to go. The isles were so packed that we figured out pretty quickly that these people were going to stand for the 8 hours to Qingdao. They were sitting on the ground, laying under our seats, squishing onto people's laps. There were people sitting on the bathroom sinks, underneath the sinks and on the floor inbetween the cars. If I had to go to the bathroom, it would have been like trying to play a game of tip-toe over peoples bodies. The conductor who checked tickets could barely snake through the hoards of people. The beverage cart never came. Sleeping was another story. Since someone was leaning on my seat, I had a great view of their backside and there were too many people to stretch out my legs. I put my head face down on the table and spent most of the night switching between that position and seat-sleeping.
When we got to Qingdao we had to buy our return tickets back. In China, you can't buy roundtrip tickets for trains, you have to buy a ticket from one destination to another. Our returning overnight train was sold out, but I'm sure that we could have gotten standing tickets (yea right). The only available tickets were early morning tickets and we tried to get everyone on the same train but ended up having to split into two trains. The rest of the day we spent napping at the hotel and eating until our friends arrived from Beijing. It was only Jim, Devon and I on the overnight train because everyone else has classes on Fridays. We met up with our Chinese friend Serena and her friends. They took us out to a pagoda on the water and afterwards we went out and had a great dinner. Tons of delicious seafood including clams, mussles, shrimp and even crab. We had a few vegetables and lots of beer. We learned all of the traditional Chinese drinking games and enjoyed challenging our Chinese friends to their own games. Most of the games involve one on one challenges like who can finish a bottle of beer faster.
We met up with our other friends at the hotel. Being in China, the hotel booked one of our reserved hotel rooms so we ended up having two rooms for 15 people. Apparently in China they dont mind how many people sleep per room. The front desk asked if we had 8 people in one room and when we said yes, the clerk wasn't even surprised. That night we all went out to a bar as a group and had a great time. The next morning we ate and headed straight to the beer festival. It was a cool festival, but not what we had expected. It wasn't as cheap as we had planned, but there were so many fun things to do. They had Hofbrauhaus from Germany (I've been to the original), they had Heineken and other imported beers and of course a huge tent for Tsingtao Beer (the beer was first owned by Germans thus the different spelling). They had tons of food and some interesting music but we had a blast. We made our own international feel by playing American drinking games. Of course, the Chinese crowded around us taking pictures, cheering us on and even joining in. The tripods and videocameras were out in full force and a Chinese newspaper took our picture for the front page. In the background of this picture, a guy is holding up his baby to get in the picture. Serena and her friends also met us there and they ended up having a great time. They really enjoyed us Americans. Around 5 o clock we headed toward the beach to continue our fun. We all took a dip in the sea and played soccer with a Chinese guy. The water wasn't the warmest but we had a great time.
We went back to the hotel to change and clean up. We went to dinner and celebrated Jeff's birthday. It was last Monday, but no one had time to celebrate because we had just returned from our Silk Road trip. We had a lot of toasts and some more seafood and finished the night by going out to a local club with our Chinese friends. Leaving Qingdao was a bummer. We all had such a great time and the weekend flew by. We were all loving the Northern California of China. I'll post some pictures when I can.
Here are some of the Jiayuguan Fort and the Hanging Wall.
Here are some pictures of Xi'an and Muslim street.
Here are some pictures of the Terracotta Warriors.
When we got to Qingdao we had to buy our return tickets back. In China, you can't buy roundtrip tickets for trains, you have to buy a ticket from one destination to another. Our returning overnight train was sold out, but I'm sure that we could have gotten standing tickets (yea right). The only available tickets were early morning tickets and we tried to get everyone on the same train but ended up having to split into two trains. The rest of the day we spent napping at the hotel and eating until our friends arrived from Beijing. It was only Jim, Devon and I on the overnight train because everyone else has classes on Fridays. We met up with our Chinese friend Serena and her friends. They took us out to a pagoda on the water and afterwards we went out and had a great dinner. Tons of delicious seafood including clams, mussles, shrimp and even crab. We had a few vegetables and lots of beer. We learned all of the traditional Chinese drinking games and enjoyed challenging our Chinese friends to their own games. Most of the games involve one on one challenges like who can finish a bottle of beer faster.
We met up with our other friends at the hotel. Being in China, the hotel booked one of our reserved hotel rooms so we ended up having two rooms for 15 people. Apparently in China they dont mind how many people sleep per room. The front desk asked if we had 8 people in one room and when we said yes, the clerk wasn't even surprised. That night we all went out to a bar as a group and had a great time. The next morning we ate and headed straight to the beer festival. It was a cool festival, but not what we had expected. It wasn't as cheap as we had planned, but there were so many fun things to do. They had Hofbrauhaus from Germany (I've been to the original), they had Heineken and other imported beers and of course a huge tent for Tsingtao Beer (the beer was first owned by Germans thus the different spelling). They had tons of food and some interesting music but we had a blast. We made our own international feel by playing American drinking games. Of course, the Chinese crowded around us taking pictures, cheering us on and even joining in. The tripods and videocameras were out in full force and a Chinese newspaper took our picture for the front page. In the background of this picture, a guy is holding up his baby to get in the picture. Serena and her friends also met us there and they ended up having a great time. They really enjoyed us Americans. Around 5 o clock we headed toward the beach to continue our fun. We all took a dip in the sea and played soccer with a Chinese guy. The water wasn't the warmest but we had a great time.
We went back to the hotel to change and clean up. We went to dinner and celebrated Jeff's birthday. It was last Monday, but no one had time to celebrate because we had just returned from our Silk Road trip. We had a lot of toasts and some more seafood and finished the night by going out to a local club with our Chinese friends. Leaving Qingdao was a bummer. We all had such a great time and the weekend flew by. We were all loving the Northern California of China. I'll post some pictures when I can.
Here are some of the Jiayuguan Fort and the Hanging Wall.
Here are some pictures of Xi'an and Muslim street.
Here are some pictures of the Terracotta Warriors.
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