Beijing

Alright, time to dish the info on my time in Beijing!

So I set up a private tour with my family through a company called Bespoke Beijing. We had our own tour guide, Laura, and driver, Liu (who spoke NO English) all to ourselves for 3 days, then another day of planned itinerary, and one more day free. For sake of organization, I will take this one cool sight at a time.

Temple of Heaven

Old men painting Calligraphy 

Now Laura insisted that the only time to see the Temple of Heaven was in the morning, and now I know why. The entrance is park area, and the exit is also a long park area. It was filled with the locals! They were dancing, playing games, writing calligraphy, singing in large groups, knitting etc… It was pretty cool seeing them hang out and socialize like that. It was mostly, though not completely older, retired people… and hey, I wouldn’t mind a retired life looking like that! 

Chinese Chess

The Temple itself was a place where the Emperor would come and pray for things like good harvest. The entire area is built with a square wall, and an entirely circular inside… that is to symbolize the earth, being the square, and the heavens, represented by the circle. Once you enter the circle, you are dealing with heavenly stuff (hence the prayer and sacrifice that took place there). *side note* The ancient Chinese money, the circular coin with a square piece cut out, represents the opposite of the Temple of Heaven; the square representing the earth and the people, surrounded by the heavens. 

Anyway, the exit to the Temple of Heaven is this really long corridor type of thing… apparently the longest covered one or some weird record like that. The entire thing was intricately painted with detailed murals of old stories… some of which Laura stopped to tell us about. 

Tiananmen Square

Well, I have been to Tiananmen Square. To be honest, it was interesting being there, but otherwise I have nothing much to say about the place. We just walked around a bit and in general headed towards the Forbidden City… which took a little longer than planned because we had to stop and take pictures with Asian families who wanted their photos with us. One lady even pushed her baby into my mom’s arms and made us all stand around them for a picture. That kind of thing happened pretty regularly.

Forbidden City 

Every building the Emperor stays in has these.

The Forbidden City was…amazing. The roofs are almost all gold colored… the color of the emperor. The place was pretty big! The emperor stayed in the Forbidden City during the winter, and in the Summer palace during the… yep, you guessed it!... the Summer. Again, the amount of detail on each and every building in the place. What you might not realize… none of these structures are built with even one nail! Anyway, the entire area is decorated with dragons, the symbol of the emperor, and phoenixes, the symbol of the empress. 

Also, the first huge courtyard area has absolutely no trees what so ever to guard against possible assassins. For the same reason, the Emperor had 15 layers of bricks beneath the ground layer that we walked on… except that is not just for the entrance courtyard, but the entire grounds! Off course in the back of the Forbidden City, they had an entire garden for the Emperor and his children to enjoy… so I guess they weren’t worried about assassins there? 

Olympic Buildings

Of course we also went to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. So exciting! The Bird’s Nest was HUGE!!! I mean, I knew it was huge, but at the same time, it was so much larger than I had thought it would be!!

The Great Wall

This is how slanted one section was. haha

Alright, alright… The Great Wall. Awesome. We rode about 2 hours outside of Beijing to get to a more remote section of the wall… get away from those obnoxious tourists! Lol Anyway, this section of the wall has not been redone in most parts, so we were walking for about 3 hours along the original thing! Let me just say that some parts were STEEP! It was really cool getting to see the wall… it stretches all along the tops of these mountains, and as you drive up you’re thinking: “Oh my gosh… there is no way this is possible!” Discussing the length of the original wall is a bit complicated… but if you were to stretch it out straight, it would be greater than the width of the US from Miami to California! 

Summer Palace

Huge lake! All the gold-roofed buildings are part of the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace (name is self-explanatory) is built beside this huge lake… which actually makes it quite cooler in the whole area. What can I say? More beautiful buildings with amazingly detailed designs and painting, more fun pictures with the traveling Chinese tourists.

Lama Temple

Yay more temples! 

(okay, okay… I might have said that a little sarcastically) haha… it is just that I have been to sooooo many temples! Here, they had the tallest standing Buddha…no pictures allowed, of course! Also… I DID get to see some Lamas :) 

798 District

Made out of folding chairs!

lol Cookie-cutter Asian!

Now this is a cool little part of town that many don’t know much about. It is a place that used to have a bunch of factories, now they aren’t operational, so a bunch of younger modern artists moved in. It is full of modern art galleries and interesting statues and sculptures around the streets.

One of the galleries we went in had a room with 4 blank walls where a huge David Bowie was broadcast on the walls with his blasting music… a version of one of his songs that the artist interpreted as Modern Art. (I admit I am not a pro on the subject, I mostly just wanted to go for the street art!)

Hutongs

Do you guys know what Hutongs are?... I didn’t. They are alleys, basically. Off of the alleys, there are Courtyards with surrounding rooms. Each of the rooms is occupied by a different family, sometimes shared by families. There are also small kitchens, which they often share, and no bathrooms! Outside in the alley… the Hutong, there are public restrooms which everyone uses. Obviously I didn’t get the chance to see the men’s restroom… but I did glance into one of the women’s… and I now understand why many older women seem to have an aversion to doors in bathrooms… there are none in the Hutong bathrooms! So anyway… thousands and thousands of people live in these in China. Some have been remodeled a bit, some have not.

It is really unbelievable when you think of a nation which has been moving forward so quickly, can still be stuck in such a backwards practice! I mean some of the Hutongs seem clean enough, despite the lack of personal room or anything else that we might consider “normal” but some are serious dumps.

We took a rickshaw ride through one Hutong area, and went shopping in some of the other ones which have becoming local shopping streets.

Night market

One of the famous sights in Beijing is the Night Market. It is not huge or anything, but it is a long row of hawker-type stands selling all sorts of goodies… of course, what “goodies” are is up to the individual, I souse. I would define “goodies” as the yummy fruit and toffee-covered snacks… my brother, however, chose to define “goodies” as scorpions, sea horses and star fish. Among the list of also available “treats”, though not tried by any of us, were water beetles, snake, the private parts of male sheep, centipedes and silk worms! At some of the stands, the bugs were still alive!... well, up until the time that they were cooked. 

Whew! Well those were the highlights of Beijing! I hope you learned a bit more about the places, I guess… and enjoyed the pictures of course!

Xi'an

I back!!!! Whew! Spent the last 8 days or so (add two for travel) in China. The first 3 were spent in Xian. 

A bit of background? Well Xian was one of the ancient capitals of China. Seriously, it is REALLY old. As in early-human-remains-discovered-here old! Also, Xian is not a huge city… I they consider themselves to be pretty small, though I think they might be considered a 3^rd-tier city (or whatever they call them). So how big would you think that meant in the US? Well in China, it means 3.5 million people. Yeah. 

So those of you who know anything about Xian at all are probably wondering:  Did you see the Terracotta Army? Yes!

So Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, commissioned the building of is Terracotta army. The soldiers, larger than life-sized, are in 4 (known) pits around the Emperor’s Tomb which, by the way, has never been opened. In pit one, the largest, 2,000 of the 6,000 soldiers have been unearthed… they are still working on the rest. Pit 2 and 3 are also available for viewing, and neither of them is finished yet, either! Each soldier was made out of Terracotta clay and has amazing details…even the treads in their shoes and wrinkles in their clothing where added in. Each soldier’s face is different… in fact, many soldiers sat to have their face copied out, and all the soldiers were painted, though the paint has since disintegrated on most of the them.  

…but I am getting ahead of myself a bit. So my trip…. My family had scheduled a two day private tour in Xian and had an amazing guide- Lily and a driver. Unfortunately, it was raining for most of our trip to Xian. Anyway, our first sop the next day was the Terracotta Army. As you might have gathered from the above info, it was pretty interesting. Lily told us all the details. Unfortunately, there is simply no way I could possibly be able to type them all down here! Next stop…. Museum! Now since China has soooo much history, their museums are correspondingly huge and packed with historic tidbits. This time, however, Lily was there to guide us along. We spent about 2 hours there, and still skipped a lot of it! 

I enlarged this Terracotta Warrior, for two reasons. 1: Not all of his paint has worn off... see the color in there? and 2: so you can better see the amazing detail that each soldier has. Take a look at his hair and clothing as an example...and if you look close enough (I realize it is hard to see in the pic) you can see the individual treads on his shoes!

Next? Big Goose Pagoda. This is a big tower that houses monks…and apparently there is no real consensus as to the reason for its name. lol We went up to the top… a gruesome 7 flights (where 7= more like 14), but it was a pretty good view of the city. After, we saw a cultural show…a REAL one, mind you! Not like that one I saw in Indonesia! Haha It was okay. We had a dinner that was about 7 courses while they played traditional music on instruments that nobody (except the performers) play anymore, and also did some traditional dances and stuff. 

Day two!

The city wall! So China has this love of walls. They have this one… called the Great Wall… you might have heard of it, they like to brag about it a lot. lol Well Xian, what was the old city (now it is larger) has a city wall built around it. It was huge! There are 4 gates and in the center of the town, as with all the old cities, there is a huge bell tower, struck in the morning, and a huge drum tower, struck at night. We rode bikes around part of the wall… the entire thing is about 10k long or something… but the “best” part was when somebody stole my parent’s tandem bike! They got off to take a picture, turned back and it was gone! We didn’t get in trouble or anything, though, because only rented bikes are allowed on the wall, so it is not like somebody could sneak it away. 

The dumplings we learned how to make

We also did an in-home visit while there. We went into this lady’s house and sat with her and chatted, then she made dinner and showed us how to cook some of the food. She was an excellent cook! 

Lastly, we went to an old Mosque… but this was no Mosque like any I had ever seen before. In fact, the only thing that gave it away was the prayer room. Otherwise, it looked just like a Chinese garden!Look... this pic to the right is the entrance... no domes or anything like that here!

So that was Xian! 

Let’s see… a few interesting facts I learned about China?

1.)    The children seem to spend more time at school than the parents do at work! Ridiculous, in my opinion!

2.)    Chinese ladies like to leave the door open when they’re in the bathroom for some reason.

3.)    Lots of Chinese couples get married in restaurants… it is apparently the “in” thing! They also consult someone about the best days to get married which is based on their own birth dates as well as their relatives’ too.

4.)    Having both a girl and a boy is considered lucky. People liked our family :)

5.)    People who work for the government can be fired for having more than one child!

So that was Xian in a nutshell, though I assure you I could go on for quite a while about it if I had the time (or space). Enjoy all the pictures!

Shanghai Adventures

** okay, so this is part 2 of the below post :) Again, it was typed before, but I guess I forgot to publish it! Don't forget to read the post below for aaaallll the info on my China experience!**

So what to do in Shanghai?
A tour of Shanghai! Let's see.... we went to a silk factory and learned about the silk-making process. We also went to a pearl store.... they get like 30 pearls from one oyster! We also visited a Buddhist Temple where they had these two really famous (according to them) white jade Buddhas. They had a tea show there where they made tea for us too. Another place they took us was an old Chinese Garden. So these Gardens are pretty amazing. The entire household of the family living there is spread in sections throughout the garden.  

The entire garden is completely man-made including the lake and the hill. They say that in a proper garden no matter where you point your camera, you should have a perfect picture. Oh, in case you were wondering... of course there were koi fish :)
Anyway, so another day in Shanghai, I went with my mom and my brother to the zoo. It was huge! So they had most of the normal animals you would find there and all, plus some pandas, of course, but they also had dogs. A LOT of dogs. They had every sort of dog pet that you could imagine there... it was so strange!
Another cool thing about Shanghai: The pearl TV Tower. The say it is higher than the Eiffel tower.... I'll let them be the judge of that, but it was certainly more interesting in many aspects.... it had a glass floor, for one thing!

That's right....epic!
Okay, so let's see.... another day I went to a small, old river town. Now let me just flush that out.... when I say old in Florida, I think of St Augustine.... oldest city in the USA, right? Well that does NOT compare to these old cities in China!!! I mean, their museum stuff dates back to B.C!

Well, so those are some of the things that are most memorable from my Shanghai trip! It was a good trip, but I would not want to live there! Its an expensive place to live in, and there are just too many people. Did you know that most of the people take at least an hour to get to work and another hour to get back... and that's AT LEAST an hour, not most!.... many people take even longer!  No thanks!

Well, that's all for now.... but remember to read the post below if you haven't!... there's more China there too :)

China

**a little note from me, Christy Sunshine. I wrote this a while ago, but I apparently didn't push "publish" how embarrassing! So I hope you enjoy it... better late than never. I think I will split it up into two posts....**

China! Wow, such a quick word to say is not enough to encompass all that my experience has involved.
So my first impression of this huge country was that it was flat. Soooo flat. We were visiting Shanghai which is definitely in the flat part of the country. Also, the fact that they drive on the right side (as in both the right AND correct side haha) of the road brought me an unexpected feeling of comfort... a feeling that did not last the whole ride to our hotel. The streets of Shanghai are crazy! There are cars everywhere, as expected of course, but there are also every variation of bike, moped, scooter and motorcycle that I could think of. They drove through the streets as swarms of bugs might rush through an abandoned picnic table with leftover food. It was utter madness. Street lanes are, apparently, just for show, and the little green man doesn't necessarily mean it is safe to walk... just that it is the safest time to walk as long as you're still on the look out for approaching vehicles! (and no, that is NOT an exaggeration!) They don't just honk when someone is about to hit them or something, but instead, they honk when they abruptly switch lanes and don't want anybody to do the same in front of them, or when they are going to zoom past you instead of let you out, or when they are going for it, but aren't sure you are paying attention, or.... well, you get the point. If Shanghai was a musical, the honking could be the refrain for every. single. song.
There are so many people in Shanghai, that at times I was utterly overwhelmed with the presence of them all. They added to the already present stress of trying to navigate a city where the dominant language does not even use a recognizable writing system. Thankfully, Shanghai is more accustomed to outsiders than many other Chinese cities, and the English versions of their people, places and products where often displayed... though even that doesn't help much when you can still hardly pronounce them correctly much less understand them!
Eating the food in China was always something to feel wary of. No, it is not because I was afraid I was eating cat or dog...usually, but for different reasons all together. Traditional Chinese meals dictate that the platters ordered are shared, usually on a table with a lazy susan in the middle. I don't like tea, but it is usually served with your meal. The first obstacle was to order... the waiters often spoke no English at all. Since the menus were virtually all picture menus, this helped immensely. Still, however, there were several times when we would attempt to order something and the waiter would insist that we could not have that. I am still thoroughly confused by several of our restaurant experiences, and there was more than one time when what showed up wasn't quite what we had been expecting to receive, or that something was missing from our order. Then there was the added uncertainty of whether or not we would even like anything at all. Thankfully, we managed to enjoy most of our meals there though I admit that several of them took place at locations such as KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonald's.
One thing that I had considered beforehand, but wasn't really sure about, was whether or not I would be able to use my computer the same. I wasn't. There was no access to facebook as well as a couple other sites I tried to reach while I was there... including this one! Well, I guess that could be expected from a country controlled so tightly by the government.... which brings me to my next topic.....
Communism.
Now we Americans know about how Communism is portrayed in the US. It is bad stuff, right? Well to tell you the truth, I didn't know what to expect from China on this front. Yes, it was weird walking through the metro where tiny communist flags were hung as you walked down the hallways, as well as the CUBA! products (sporting attractive communist graphics) that were available from days when China and Cuba had been close buddies, but other than that there wasn't much of a visible difference. Again, I don't know what I expected to see, but I somehow expected there to be something! The first tour we took in Shanghai, our tour guide spoke of the government. THAT was where I was first surprised. The communist party in China, isn't a free-for-all, everyone-sign-up-here type of party.... it is an exclusive and privileged one.... ironic, I think given the basic concept of what communism should really mean. She spoke of the communist party with a sort of adoration, awe and pride... not that she was a part of it personally. She talked about how the children are brought up learning about their great country and even sang up a song about the great communist country with it's strong communist leader.... it really took me by surprise. I mean, obviously to her it was normal, but that, my friend, was a culture shock for this born and bred American, I can tell you!
Since I feel that this is one area where people seem to be interested, I will also tell you quickly what I learned about the One Child policy. I don't remember what year exactly this law went into effect, but they generation that right now is around 30 years old is about the age of those who began not having siblings. My first tour guide was a girl that probably mid twenties or so. She did not have siblings, though she did have many uncles, aunts and cousins since the law had not been in effect at the time of her parent's births. My second tour guide was also an only child.... he was in at least his early 30s. When he had been born, his parents, who did not live in a major city such as Shanghai, could have had more children, but had decided not to. He was married and had just had his first child, a son. He told us that there were many economical problems that were probably going to develop as a result of the One Child policy. For starters, much of the Chinese lifestyle revolves around one's family. This includes how people are taken care of when in need, holiday activities, trades.... you get the picture. Children that are being born now, when grown up and married, will have two sets of parents to look after, four sets of grandparents and, because until this generation, people had children at very young ages, they are likely to have great grandparents to care for as well! This creates a lot of stress on the children. Also, many holidays are times when you are supposed to gather with family, which before, could have included aunts, uncles and cousins.... these are family members that the children being born now will no longer have. Our tour guide also told us that, because of these concerns that there will not be enough young people, married couples who were both single children are allowed to have two children. There are also other situations where more than one child is allowed, such if you are a minority, or if you are wealthy enough to pay the fines. Well, I could talk more about this, but I will leave off for now because my post has grown rather long...