4.8.08
BEST WEEK EVER!
Ok, so. I have to say that my time in China was INCREDIBLE. I’ll start with my Beijing Trip.
We didn’t get into Beijing until the late afternoon, so we didn’t do much on our first day. The airport we flew into, however, is brand new (as in it opened last week) and was huge! We had to take shuttle after subway after bus ride just to get out of the place, but it really was pretty spectacular. Even the ceilings had to be at least 20 feet high. We stayed at the Jinchuyan Guest House on campus, and after arriving we had a great dinner. Pretty much everywhere we ate was set up the same: there was a huge lazy susan on the middle of the table and they just kept bringing out more and more fun. Chinese food in China is different from American Chinese food, but it does have similarities. A lot of the flavoring was different and some of the dishes were different (I can’t describe them though because no one ever spoke English so I really had no idea what I was eating), but a lot of the flavoring was the same. After dinner they didn’t have anything else planned for us to do, so Amy, Tom, Grant and I decided to walk around campus. Their campus is pretty big, which would be appropriate considering they have 40,000 undergrads. We really had no idea where we were going, but we had fun wandering. It was also pretty cool because there were tons of little night stands set up—selling waffles and drinks, or books and other random convenience store stuff. We talked to a few of the students and didn’t find out too much because most of them told us they didn’t speak English very well, but it was still fun trying to talk to them. After wandering for an hour or two we headed back to the guest house, though we did get slightly lost for a while.
Day Two: We woke up early to do Tai Chi with the cutest little old Chinese man ever. It was pretty chilly, and the weather was a bit drizzly, but we did it in a garden on campus near the guest house. He showed us two Tai Chi moves, and it was a pretty entertaining half hour start to the day. We went back to the guest house for breakfast, which was interesting. They had a lot of the same food that they had had for dinner—noodles, rice, soup, and hot milk, which is good but not so great at 8am. I opted for all of the delicious sesame seed cookies, biscuits, and pastries instead; I know, not too healthy, but I did have some eggs and sausage type thingys that I don’t really know what they were. After breakfast we went to Tianenmen Square, which is a huge outdoor square (I think it’s actually the largest in the world). It’s surrounded by the museum, some government building, some interesting statues of soldiers, and the gateways to the Forbidden City. Of course, there is a huge statue of Mao in the center. On top of the gateways to the Forbidden City there was another large picture of yours truly. After getting to walk around the square we went inside the Forbidden City. It was so huge, there was no way we would have been able to cover even half of it in the time they gave us. One thing that was pretty cool was that we were given electronic tour guide boxes you wore around your neck and listened in the headphones. As you walked around the city, the satellite would track your position and when appropriate explain (in English) the location you were in. It was tons of old Oriental looking palaces, most of which had gold painted ceilings and red walls. There were usually dragons and bright designs painted on the trim. There were tons of different palaces and buildings, even a garden or two. After walking around for an hour we went to lunch at another authentic Chinese restaurant. Back to the lazy susans and this lunch wasn’t too bad either; we got lots and lots of dumplings. After lunch we headed over to the Temple of Heaven. This was another huge place that I wish I had more time to walk around in. Tom, Grant, Amy and I had fun taking some Kung Fu pictures and Tai Chi pictures. At one point, when we decided to do Tai Chi in the middle of the Temple square a cute Chinese girl jumped in with us and got a few good pictures. Next we went to a Chinese Acrobatics Show, and it was insane! It was like Cirque de Soleil. They had contortionists, guys jumping through hoops, guys flipping twenty feet in the air off of seesaws, girls dancing and making pyramids on bikes, and even a few random parrots flew through the audience. It wasn’t terribly cultural, but it was still pretty damn cool. After the performance, we were all dropped off at Silk Street; it’s a ridiculous six floor market filled with everything, from fake designer sunglasses, purses to pearls and silk and DVDs and electronic gadgets. I got a lot of stuff, but it was all so cheap that it was definitely worth it. It was also ridiculously easy to bargain with them; all you had to do was walk away and then they’d be willing to let you pay whatever you wanted. I got a sweet pair of high top converse for the equivalent of about 15 dollars, a cute purse (yes, it’s a fake lesportsac, but I only got it because the pattern is adorable birdies), and a nice silk top. So, within the first two minutes or so of being in the market, Amy and I lost the boys because Grant is totally ADD and wanders off like crazy and we were busy bargaining for silk shirts. We spent some time trying to find them (when we weren’t distracted by the cute clothes and accessories…that is), but as we were buying purses we heard an announcement over the loudspeaker from Grant asking if we could please come to the front of the market. He had been able to convince tons of cute little Asian women that Amy was his girlfriend and he needed to find her, so they let him make an announcement on the loudspeaker. (Just as an FYI, Amy has a boyfriend at home, it just totally made the announcement ten times better when all of a sudden we heard “Will Amy Thompson, Grant’s girlfriend, please come up to the front to meet her boyfriend. Thank you.”) We were on our own for the rest of the night, so after meeting up with Tom and Grant we went to a pizza place (I know, I know…but Chinese food is heavy and we all needed something a little less authentic to eat by this point). There were about seven of us: the four of us and then two other girls, Caitlyn and Allyson (I know—she spells it like me! AND she’s from Texas, AND she’s in XO. Small world, huh?), and another guy Phil. The pizza was delicious and we walked around downtown Beijing for a bit before riding the subways back (or at least most of the way back) to campus. It was crazy though because the subways stop running at 11pm, so we were literally running to catch our last subway (we had to transfer three times in the subway station, but Phil had his lonely planet and knew how to travel around so it was a lot of fun). The last transfer aka the Big Run to Catch the Next Subway was insane. The lines were so far apart from each other; we had to run up at least three escalators in addition to three flights of stairs, lots of walking around and even a long crosswalk outside to get to the line. We knew we had to run because the Chinese people were running along with us! We luckily caught the last subway though, and from outside the last subway station it was only a ten minute cab ride back to the guest house. It was a workout, to say the least.
Day Three: I got up for another exciting morning of Tai Chi, though our numbers had greatly decreased to about ten people (it was obviously optional). After breakfast, we went to the Great Wall! The part of the Great Wall we went to was a really intense hike, because it was just tons and tons AND TONS of steps and uneven walkways. Of course, I made it all the way to the top of the part of the wall where we were…and back down of course. It was really tiring but an incredibly satisfying experience. My calves and butt needed the exercise too! We went to another Chinese restaurant for lunch and then went back to campus in the afternoon to finally meet the students. They gave us a presentation on different art activities students do on campus, like play a weird Chinese instrument, do calligraphy, and sing. It was a little boring, so a group of SAS kids peaced out about halfway through to do their own thing (not too surprising). I’m glad I stayed though, because afterwards SAS gave our own impromptu presentation of our talents. Big Tom got up and sung a little opera, Phil juggled for them using a pill bottle, a camera case, and a small phrase book [on the spot thinking], and Tom and Grant sang “Be A Man” from Mulan. It was very entertaining. Next, the students (though there were more than twice as many of us then there were of them) gave us a tour of campus. I spent most of my time talking with a really cute freshman named Sophie. (All of them have both Chinese and English names…and most of them were English majors, so they were getting good practice from us). We ate at their cafeteria, which had even more Chinese food. The students walked us back to our guest house and we had half an hour to get ready before going out to a karaoke bar with the students! They were absolutely adorable, and I really wish we got to spend more time with them. Sophie and Margaret were probably my favorites, and they got up to sing a karaoke duet! We had a lot of fun, but by midnight we were all pretty exhausted and ready to go back. Some kids stayed out to party a bit more, but most of us went to campus with the university students. I was in a cab with Sophie, Margaret, and Leo. We made sure to get some good pictures before saying goodbye. I went back to the room and talked with my roomie for the trip, Cooper, who was very sweet and nice. (I’ve really had good roommate luck all around!)
Day Four: Well, I got up with the intention of going to Tai Chi, but I never made it. While Cooper and I were en route to the garden we got stopped by a little old Chinese man who talked to us for the entire time! He was really cute and wanted to practice his English on us (as most of them did to get ready for the mass of people coming up for the Olympics). It turns out he’s a retired Olympics Diving Training coach. He told us a lot about China and was curious about our own travels. It made for a really nice morning. We went to the Beijing Zoo to see giant pandas! It was actually kind of sad because they were pretty small cages and the pandas didn’t seem too happy. Also, all we could see was the pandas because there was an additional entrance fee to visit the rest of the zoo and other animals. It was still pretty neat to see the pandas, and we ended up leaving a bit early to add a few more things to our itinerary before we had to head up to Shanghai. We went to the Summer Palace, and surprise surprise it was another massive and beautiful place to walk around. Amy, Grant, Tom, Meghan (fyi: Meghan as in the one who’s close with Kate and Amanda…the one I like but not necessarily enjoy traveling with) and I decided to go paddle-boating on the lake; it was so much fun (especially just listening to Tom and Grant bicker like an old couple while trying to paddle). We had MORE Chinese food for lunch, and I’m not going to lie, I was very sick of Chinese food by that point. It’s good; it’s just all very heavy and saucy and doesn’t sit that well with my stomach. Our trip leaders were really nice and took us back to the Silk Street Market for one more hour to do some last minute shopping before the airport. I was able to pick up some nice jewelry and in the last two minutes Amy and I did some awesome power-shopping for two nice trench coats. We went up, tried them on, said, “I have to leave in two minutes, we’ll take it for a 100 that’s it.” It worked! It’s a really nice jacket too. We finally headed to the airport to get home. That was the biggest airplane I’ve ever been on. It was one of the ones with four seats in the middle and two more seats by the windows on the outside of each row. I was pretty beat after such a long day, but we knew we were only going to have one night to go out in Shanghai. We were going to go out with Izzy and a few other girls, but their Beijing trip (which arrived to the airport a little later than us and were on the flight following ours) didn’t get back to the ship until 11pm. I assumed they didn’t want to go out, so I got ready for bead. At midnight though, I got a call from Amy asking if I wanted to go to a gay dance club; how could I refuse? It ended up, however, that the one guy who knew where the club was left before we could get directions. We ended up going to a street with lots of bars; by the time we got there, there was only one still open. It was ok though because we only wanted to have a dance party, and they did have a dj. I finally got back to the ship and ready for bed by 3:30. It was a late night, but it was still a lot of fun. It was also a wonderful night because when I had gotten back to my room from my trip, I saw a thick envelope waiting for me on my bed. XO sent me a bunch of wonderful postcards (and a photo of the care package they sent home for me). It was so sweet! I absolutely loved it, and it was the perfect present to come home to after a great trip! I had the Peking Opera School fieldtrip the next day, and we left at 9am. I absolutely loved it; it was so cool getting to see their training facilities. It totally reminded me of Idyllwild or a conservatory. In addition to academic courses, the students train for six hours every day in martial arts, ballet and singing (plus a few more). A few of the students would stop their training to show us some of their moves. I was able to get some of it recorded on my camera, including a famous Peking Opera star who can do watersleeves with 8 feet long sleeves! Watersleeves is a cool Chinese art form where the dancers wear long sleeves of silk that they wave around in the air to make cool shapes and pretty patterns. I came back to the ship for lunch when the fieldtrip finished and then I went back out into Shanghai for the last day with Izzy, Tom and Grant. I know, surprising crowd, huh? We went to another market, but I was really pretty shopped out by this point. I got one or two more things, but I had had enough shopping. We went to a Walmart next, which was located across town, but it was worth it. We all stocked up on snacks for the long haul between Japan and Hawaii because we knew it would be so much cheaper in China than if we waited till Japan. We went to the post office, so we could mail a few postcards. We wanted to find an American food place for dinner, since we had all had way way way too much Chinese food but couldn’t find one. We ended up getting a taxi back near the ship and decided to try and find a place to get some food there. It was only Chinese food, so we figured we’d suck it up and get one last meal of it. We walked into a big restaurant that was completely empty except for one large family seated around a big round table. Of course, after walking around in the rain all day and being tired and hungry, we were quite the motley crew. As soon as we walked in, however, they all started cheering for us and motioning for us to sit down at the table next to them. After bewildered glances at each other and more cheering and beckoning from the Chinese group, we finally sat down. When we asked the woman who came to our table for our menu, she informed us that they didn’t have a menu. For a second, I thought, well this is an odd place, but then she said it was because they were celebrating opening night (which was the following night). The family had come in that evening to celebrate, and we were their first ever costumers. The hostess told us to tell her whatever food we wanted and they would cook it for us, so with some battered English and a Chinese Mandarin phrase book we came up with a few good foods to order. A few more groups of people came in after us, but they wouldn’t seat them! Apparently, we were just pretty special. The food was delicious…as in, the dumplings were so good we had three orders of them. One cute older man kept coming over to our table to do “cheers” with us. He later pointed upstairs and started shaking his arms and hips; he wanted us to go dancing with him at the club upstairs! How could we refuse such an offer?! (And by the way, while we were eating Amy happened to be walking by and stopped in to say hi but ended up staying with us). We went upstairs and they had a private karaoke room! It was the five of us with all these old Chinese men, including the boss/owner of the restaurant! We kept doing “cheers” with them with wine (and when you cheers in China you have to drink the whole cup, so it’s pretty much drinking shots of wine). We had the GREATEST time dancing to techno music and singing karaoke songs like “Let it Be” with these guys. It was by far my favorite night in China. We would have stayed all night; unfortunately, it was pressing on 8:30 and we had to be back on the ship by 9pm if we didn’t want dock time. We sadly had to say our goodbyes to get back to the ship, but overall it made for a WONDERFUL time in China.
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