Today, I intended to go to a couple of places I knew had big markets so I could buy the last few presents I need to buy. I got slightly sidetracked by the internet in the morning, but I got out, and found the subway station. (Actually, I should say 'metro' station, as the Chinese have the annoying habit of calling underground passageways 'subway's)
In Hong Kong they have these nifty cards, called Octopus Cards, which you put some money on, and then can use anywhere. It is like a super smart card. They accept them at restaurants, convenience stores, and most importantly, the metro and the buses. The absolutely coolest part about them though is that they work via magic.
All you have to do is wave your card past the reader and it reads it. Not like with a laser scanner or something, because it still works when it is inside a wallet. I've been trying to find out how they work, but I'm not 100% sure. One of them said something about induction on it, which kind of makes sense, but is mindblowing nonetheless.
Anyhow, to use the metro, you wave your card when you enter the metro, and then you wave it again when you leave at a different station, and the card knows how far you've gone. This part is also magic.
I went to the first market, a place called "Sham Shui Po", which I'm pretty sure it impossible to pronounce correctly. They have there a marketplace, but it doesn't sell the right sorts of things. They sell useful things there, like computer components, or clothes. I don't think anyone wants jeans from China. So I left that area, and it was back to the metro.
The next place I visited was "Tsim Sha Tsui", which is even harder to pronounce than Sham Shui Po. This place had real stores, as opposed to the street market in Sham Shui Po. Unfortunately, all the stores (and I do mean all of them) seemed to be selling jewelery or watches. Or both. This is an area dominated by East Indian people, and they seem to have a somewhat different approach than Chinese people to pressure sales.
Chinese people (and this is a huge generalization, I know) tend to have their little spiel that they'll run up to you and say, but they don't really engage you. They just say there thing at you, and hope that you'll be interested. I rather like this approach, since at least it is direct.
The East Indian gentlemen I ran into are much different. They'll come up to you and start talking to you, ask you where you're from, how long you're staying in Hong Kong and so on. Then they'll tell you they've got a super deal for you, they'll make you a suit! For cheap! And it'll be done before you get on the plane tomorrow! Amazing! Then you walk away, because WHY WOULD YOU BUY A SUIT ON HOLIDAYS?
I want to be clear that I don't think all East Indian people are this way, or even that it is a significant aspect of their culture. It's just the East Indian people in this one particular section of Hong Kong who are doing this one particular thing do it in this way.
I eventually found a store that was selling the sort of things I was looking for, and was about to go back to the hotel, when I saw a sign pointing to a tourist-y location called the Avenue of Stars that I'd been wanting to go to since I saw a blurb about it on the train. So I followed the signs through the metro station (which turned out to be HUGE. It's the largest underground structure I have ever seen) and eventually came out and found the last sign, which pointed to...a MALL.
Yes, the only way to access the Avenue of Stars is through a mall. Very clever that. I eventually got there, and it was pretty cool. You know the Walk of Fame in Hollywood? It's basically that, except for Hong Kong actors. Of which there are a lot. I saw Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee's handprints, among others. They also had some signs about the history of Hong Kong cinema, which I thought was fascinating, and I will probably bore people with when I get home.
Also: the view. The Avenue is actually a walkway built over the ocean, and it had one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Also the sun was shining, and it was in the high twenties, temperature-wise. All in all, a beautiful place.
I sat down to enjoy it for a moment, but only a moment, because another man (also East Indian) approached me. He kept calling me brother, and asked me about where I was from, and how long I was staying in Hong Kong (so far, par for the course).
Then, he told me I was very lucky, and asked me to hold out my right hand, which I did. Then he read my palm. Turns out, I have a long life ahead of me, but I have a somewhat scattershot money line, and my loveline dictates that I will be very generous, but no one will appreciate me. So says my palm.
Then he informed me that two women are in love with me, but I am only in love with one of them (which was news to me. If whoever these two women are could please identify themselves, that would be super. I don't want to be surprised by a palm reader again). Then he did a very simple mind reading trick, which I messed up by not choosing "rose" when he asked me to name three flowers. (The way the trick works is this: He writes down the word "rose" on a piece of paper, and then gives it to me. Then he asks me for three flower names, which he writes down. Almost every guy in the world, and most women when asked for three flowers will include 'rose' on the list. Then, he asks me to pick one, and if it's rose, he says, "AHA, I guessed right" when I open the piece of paper he gave me. If it's not, then he says I eliminated it and asks me to pick again, until either I pick rose, or it's the only one left, in which case, he claims he read my mind. I however, didn't write Rose, so he couldn't do the trick. So next time he only let me pick two of the things, and supplied the third himself.)
Then he told me that on January 28, 2008, I would get some good news, but ONLY if I was a generous man, and gave him some money for charity. See, he was raising money for a poor family. He was about to pull the same trick as he tried with the flowers on me to make me pick $500 (Hong Kong Dollars) to give to him, when I told him I didn't have any money (which is sort of true) and abruptly walked away. I was rather annoyed that my relaxing sit in the sun was ruined.
Later, as I was reading a sign, another East Indian man approached me, and told me his name was Mr. Yogi, and the man I had spoken to earlier was his student. So, he would read my fortunes much better. He did much the same spiel as the other guy did, except with a much heavier emphasis on my love life. He promised me that within 14 days, my true love (whose name I told him was Sophie, by the way. I used my made up girlfriend on him) would be back with me (I also told him we had broken up, after dating for two years. If he's going to make stuff up for me, I'm going to make stuff up for him). Then he wrote something down on a piece of paper, and said that if he could predict my reactions accurately, I would give him $500. He didn't accept my no money excuse, and offered to take me to an ATM. I told him to read his own fortune, which was obviously not very lucky, and walked away.
You see, I have learned. If someone is trying to swindle you, it is OK to be rude to them. $500 HKD is about $65 CAD (still less than I paid for that damned tea. I travelled halfway across China for less than the price of that tea). There is no way I am paying someone that much to read my fortune, especially when I didn't ask them to. On the upside, I do enjoy watching someone try to swindle me. I knew what was up right away, as soon as he brought up money, but I kept playing along for a while, just for fun. I do wonder if anyone falls for it though. I mean, who gives someone $65 for a magic trick? If he could snare one sucker an hour, he'd be making as much as a mid-range lawyer.
So: con averted! Until I went shopping again later, that is. I went into an extremely sketchy looking shopping area near my hotel, and found a store that was selling DVDs. I was pretty sure that something was up, but it was cheap enough to waste the cash finding out. What you do is write down the numbers of the DVDs you want, pay them, and they give you a number. Then, you wait for 20 minutes, come back and they have your DVDs. If I was thinking clearly, it would have been obvious what the scam was, but I was still surprised when I came back 20 minutes later and their store was GONE. As in, all of their DVD cases and everything just disappeared like they were never there.
I honestly don't understand how that can work for them. I mean, they managed to swindle me out of $5 CAD, but that's not really very much, and they can't very well do that every day or people are going to get angry at them. And they certainly can't do it to everyone, since they could only be open 20 minutes at a time.
However, while I was wandering the 'mall' I was in, looking for some trace of them (I do like to believe the best in people, even after they've taken my money), some other nice young boys showed me the store they were just opening (at 4 pm) which was full of porn. He informed me I would like it very much, and when I told him it wasn't quite what I was looking for (although maybe some people would like Chinese porn as a present), he told me that it actually was. I just left.
All in all, I feel like I went out and experienced Hong Kong (and was the target of a scam not once, not twice, but three times, not including the people who offered to sell me Rolex watches, or the "Opal Exhibition" that is actually a store that they trap you inside of. They have locking gates and everything). A good last day, if ever I saw one.
The south of China has some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. The city of Hong Kong is situated on around a glimmering harbour, with tree covered hills surrounding it, with rivers and lakes not too far off. It is gorgeous. However, I vastly prefer the culture of northern China. I liked the atmosphere, I liked the history, and I much preferred the way people sold things. Although I still like price tags over bargaining. Unless I'm feeling cranky. Then I could bargain up a storm.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about coming home. On the one hand, I'm very excited to see everyone back in PG, and also about being somewhere where everyone speaks proper English (it seems like some sort of impossible paradise that can't ever really exist). I'm also happy to leave a place where I'm constantly unsure. I never know what the proper custom to follow is, or what people actually mean.
On the other hand, I think China has probably been the greatest adventure of my life. I had almost constant excitement. Any time I wanted something interesting, all I had to do was walk out my front door and pick a direction. In addition to that, I feel like I've been completely changed, intellectually. This is not to say that I suddenly think that everything I believed before was wrong. No, quite the opposite. Being faced with a country so different from what I'm used to really laid bare what my basic beliefs really are. And, seeing how things are here, where many many of my core values are violated, made me fairly certain that I'm happy with them.
This is not to say I suddenly think I'm right about everything. This is just my core value system being validated to myself. Pretty important process.
OK, now I have to try and fit all the crap I've got into the bags that I have. I have one carry-on sized bag and three checked-luggage sized bag, and somehow I have to reduce that to two checked-luggage sized bags. I wish I had played more tetris!
This here is the second to last blog post ever for this blog (barring some sort of disaster). I'm going to do one big summing up when I get home, which promises to be epic. Other than that, I'll see most of you in a few days!
(No pictures today, as I forgot to bring my camera. Give me a break, it's the last day. My mind's not on tourism anymore)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
A Cross Country Trek
Hello, noble readers. In the last two days I have traveled over 1400 km in a country where I can only read about half the signs and no one on the trains speak my language. It was pretty epic.
I got up, got all ready to go and was all set for railroading. I wore my big coat, even though it was rather warm in Shanghai that morning, and bound to be even warmer in Guangzhou. However, that coat is huge. I mean absolutely huge. I think you could measure its volume in litres.
I got myself to the correct railway station, (the big cities aren't content with just one railway station) got to the waiting room, and rested. My packsack is very heavy. Carrying it around railway stations is rather tiring.
The way to figure out how to get on a train, when your ticket is in another language, except for some random numbers, is to follow everybody else. So when everyone stands up, you stand up too. When they head for the train, you head for the train too. It works quite well.
I got on the train, found my bunk (I picked the upper bunk on the bunk bed when I bought my ticket, so I could just sit up there and ignore the other people in my room.) and got settled in. As it turns out, the only other person in my berth was a chinese lady who may or may not have spoken any English at all. She only ever spoke Chinese at me.
I spent the whole day (since I was confined to a train) reading and playing games on my computer. A nice day, in other words. Unfortunately, I have this problem when I am on trains in China. I don't know how to get food. There is a dining car, but every time I go into one, everyone just sort of looks at me, and I don't know what to do.
Eventually, since I hadn't eaten for 12 hours, I was hungry enough that I looked up the Chinese word for eat, walked into the dining car, pointed at myself and said it. This was enough, and I got myself some food, which was pretty stellar. Not the food, it was pretty lame. The fact that I was eating was super exciting.
I slept fitfully all night (the train stops, often several times an hour, and every time it does so, it bangs around a bit, blows its whistle and the station sounds a warning bell. ALSO they like to have bright lights in the station). I got to Guangzhou early, and dragged myself out of the station, managed to find a taxi (they were all driving by, empty, in an area where you couldn't access them) and got to the hotel where my luggage was being stored.
I double checked the time of my next train, and the name of my hotel in Hong Kong, so I would be all ready. I took a taxi to the other train station in Guangzhou (it would be entirely too convenient to have both trains I needed at the same station).
Now being the fore-thinking person that I am, I had purchased my ticket online, and needed to pick it up.
The thing with the Guangzhou East train station is that it has 5 floors. Why this is the case, I do not know, but there are. The ticket office was on the second floor. So I went there. I asked where to pick up my tickets, she said the 4th floor. So I went to the 4th floor.
On the 4th floor, they told me to go back to the 2nd floor. I tried to get internet access at that point, to see what the website had to say, but there was no network there. So it was back to the second floor.
I showed the lady there my laptop with the ticket reservation email open (which I had cleverly left open when I was at the hotel.) She explained to me that when you buy a ticket online to go from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, you have to pick it up in....HONG KONG. I was NOT impressed by this.
Still, not a huge deal. Train tickets are only 180 Yuan ( = $25 CAD). So I'd buy a new one. But what's this? They don't take credit card at the station, only cash? Oh, and I don't have enough cash because I was leaving the country and didn't need it anymore? Oh, how WONDERFUL. Luckily (?) for me there was an ATM. It was on the first floor.
Now, it is time to point something out here. I had picked up my luggage from the hotel, so I was now carrying two suitcases and a large packsack. I estimate the total weight of my luggage at 120 pounds. Most of the time, I could drag my suitcases on the ground, so it was only the 40 lb packsack I had to worry about. But as it turns out the only way to get down from the second to the first floor is stairs. So guess who was carrying 120 lbs of luggage down a huge flight of stairs. It was me.
I found the ATM on the first floor, and tried to use my credit card to withdraw cash. But for some unknown reason, they decided to accept only 6 digit pins on this machine. Mine is 4. In order to get that to work, you're supposed to put two 0's after your number. But do you think that worked? No it did not. I tried it over and over again, trying the 0's in different places, and trying double other numbers at the end. But it did not work.
OK, so I would try and get cash back when I bought something then. Ha ha, silly me, NOWHERE in the station takes credit card, except for the Starbucks, and they don't have cash-back. I asked the information lady, and she said there was another ATM downstairs. So, I went into the basement, went to the ATM, typed in my pin number, and it said...I had tried my pin too many times that day on my card. I couldn't use it. If there wasn't a security guard standing right there, I might have kicked that machine. Repeatedly.
Now, this was only my credit card. I could still potentially use my bank card. However, I hadn't called them to let them know I was in China, and I was told that they'll freeze your account if you try to use your card in a foreign country without letting them know first.
So, I need to call them. There were payphones (on the same level even) but you needed some kind of card to use them. So I tried to purchase a card (back up on level 1 and 2). But the only thing I managed to purchase was a cell phone long distance card. This was not on purpose.
Then I remembered I had a cell phone, and maybe magically with a long distance card, it would work. But, because my cell phone has been acting very strangely, I hadn't charged it so it was dead. But I had a power cable. So I tried outlets on the second and fourth floor, but they were both deactivated. I tried asking some stores to use their phone, but I couldn't make a call outside China.
At this point, I sat down amid my luggage and considered my options. They were extremely limited. In fact, for a while, I thought my options might be to find a hotel, call the bank from the hotel, and come to Hong Kong the next day. That would be bad for me though, since I would be paying for two hotels tonight.
My other option was to try my bank card and hope. So it was back to the basement (from the fourth floor). And....it worked! I got my cash, bought my ticket and got on the train. It took me two and a half hours of walking all over that station with my 120 lbs of luggage to get a train ticket that I had already bought. I am distinctly unimpressed with that train station just now.
However, I am now in Hong Kong, in my very tiny hotel room. Very tiny. The main part is about the size of a cubicle, and the bathroom must be about 16 square feet, and that includes a shower. I am, however, very happy to be here. You see, in Hong Kong, just about everyone speaks English. Decent English too, so you can ask for clarification on things, which is not something I could usually do in mainland China.
Tomorrow I am going shopping for the last of the presents I am bringing back, and the day after I am out of here! My plane leaves at 2 in the afternoon, and arrives in Vancouver at 9 am the same day. How crazy is that?
Oh, and my mom posted a comment about it, but I'm guessing not everyone checks those repeatedly to see if they're updated; My flight gets in to PG at about 2pm. My parents are picking me up from the airport, and taking me to their place for dinner. After dinner (about 6:00-6:30) I will be back at my apartment. The following day, barring a major case of jet lag, I'll be at school.
Here are some pictures from Shanghai. It's back to Picasa, because Hong Kong is outside the great firewall, so I can access my own pictures.
I got up, got all ready to go and was all set for railroading. I wore my big coat, even though it was rather warm in Shanghai that morning, and bound to be even warmer in Guangzhou. However, that coat is huge. I mean absolutely huge. I think you could measure its volume in litres.
I got myself to the correct railway station, (the big cities aren't content with just one railway station) got to the waiting room, and rested. My packsack is very heavy. Carrying it around railway stations is rather tiring.
The way to figure out how to get on a train, when your ticket is in another language, except for some random numbers, is to follow everybody else. So when everyone stands up, you stand up too. When they head for the train, you head for the train too. It works quite well.
I got on the train, found my bunk (I picked the upper bunk on the bunk bed when I bought my ticket, so I could just sit up there and ignore the other people in my room.) and got settled in. As it turns out, the only other person in my berth was a chinese lady who may or may not have spoken any English at all. She only ever spoke Chinese at me.
I spent the whole day (since I was confined to a train) reading and playing games on my computer. A nice day, in other words. Unfortunately, I have this problem when I am on trains in China. I don't know how to get food. There is a dining car, but every time I go into one, everyone just sort of looks at me, and I don't know what to do.
Eventually, since I hadn't eaten for 12 hours, I was hungry enough that I looked up the Chinese word for eat, walked into the dining car, pointed at myself and said it. This was enough, and I got myself some food, which was pretty stellar. Not the food, it was pretty lame. The fact that I was eating was super exciting.
I slept fitfully all night (the train stops, often several times an hour, and every time it does so, it bangs around a bit, blows its whistle and the station sounds a warning bell. ALSO they like to have bright lights in the station). I got to Guangzhou early, and dragged myself out of the station, managed to find a taxi (they were all driving by, empty, in an area where you couldn't access them) and got to the hotel where my luggage was being stored.
I double checked the time of my next train, and the name of my hotel in Hong Kong, so I would be all ready. I took a taxi to the other train station in Guangzhou (it would be entirely too convenient to have both trains I needed at the same station).
Now being the fore-thinking person that I am, I had purchased my ticket online, and needed to pick it up.
The thing with the Guangzhou East train station is that it has 5 floors. Why this is the case, I do not know, but there are. The ticket office was on the second floor. So I went there. I asked where to pick up my tickets, she said the 4th floor. So I went to the 4th floor.
On the 4th floor, they told me to go back to the 2nd floor. I tried to get internet access at that point, to see what the website had to say, but there was no network there. So it was back to the second floor.
I showed the lady there my laptop with the ticket reservation email open (which I had cleverly left open when I was at the hotel.) She explained to me that when you buy a ticket online to go from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, you have to pick it up in....HONG KONG. I was NOT impressed by this.
Still, not a huge deal. Train tickets are only 180 Yuan ( = $25 CAD). So I'd buy a new one. But what's this? They don't take credit card at the station, only cash? Oh, and I don't have enough cash because I was leaving the country and didn't need it anymore? Oh, how WONDERFUL. Luckily (?) for me there was an ATM. It was on the first floor.
Now, it is time to point something out here. I had picked up my luggage from the hotel, so I was now carrying two suitcases and a large packsack. I estimate the total weight of my luggage at 120 pounds. Most of the time, I could drag my suitcases on the ground, so it was only the 40 lb packsack I had to worry about. But as it turns out the only way to get down from the second to the first floor is stairs. So guess who was carrying 120 lbs of luggage down a huge flight of stairs. It was me.
I found the ATM on the first floor, and tried to use my credit card to withdraw cash. But for some unknown reason, they decided to accept only 6 digit pins on this machine. Mine is 4. In order to get that to work, you're supposed to put two 0's after your number. But do you think that worked? No it did not. I tried it over and over again, trying the 0's in different places, and trying double other numbers at the end. But it did not work.
OK, so I would try and get cash back when I bought something then. Ha ha, silly me, NOWHERE in the station takes credit card, except for the Starbucks, and they don't have cash-back. I asked the information lady, and she said there was another ATM downstairs. So, I went into the basement, went to the ATM, typed in my pin number, and it said...I had tried my pin too many times that day on my card. I couldn't use it. If there wasn't a security guard standing right there, I might have kicked that machine. Repeatedly.
Now, this was only my credit card. I could still potentially use my bank card. However, I hadn't called them to let them know I was in China, and I was told that they'll freeze your account if you try to use your card in a foreign country without letting them know first.
So, I need to call them. There were payphones (on the same level even) but you needed some kind of card to use them. So I tried to purchase a card (back up on level 1 and 2). But the only thing I managed to purchase was a cell phone long distance card. This was not on purpose.
Then I remembered I had a cell phone, and maybe magically with a long distance card, it would work. But, because my cell phone has been acting very strangely, I hadn't charged it so it was dead. But I had a power cable. So I tried outlets on the second and fourth floor, but they were both deactivated. I tried asking some stores to use their phone, but I couldn't make a call outside China.
At this point, I sat down amid my luggage and considered my options. They were extremely limited. In fact, for a while, I thought my options might be to find a hotel, call the bank from the hotel, and come to Hong Kong the next day. That would be bad for me though, since I would be paying for two hotels tonight.
My other option was to try my bank card and hope. So it was back to the basement (from the fourth floor). And....it worked! I got my cash, bought my ticket and got on the train. It took me two and a half hours of walking all over that station with my 120 lbs of luggage to get a train ticket that I had already bought. I am distinctly unimpressed with that train station just now.
However, I am now in Hong Kong, in my very tiny hotel room. Very tiny. The main part is about the size of a cubicle, and the bathroom must be about 16 square feet, and that includes a shower. I am, however, very happy to be here. You see, in Hong Kong, just about everyone speaks English. Decent English too, so you can ask for clarification on things, which is not something I could usually do in mainland China.
Tomorrow I am going shopping for the last of the presents I am bringing back, and the day after I am out of here! My plane leaves at 2 in the afternoon, and arrives in Vancouver at 9 am the same day. How crazy is that?
Oh, and my mom posted a comment about it, but I'm guessing not everyone checks those repeatedly to see if they're updated; My flight gets in to PG at about 2pm. My parents are picking me up from the airport, and taking me to their place for dinner. After dinner (about 6:00-6:30) I will be back at my apartment. The following day, barring a major case of jet lag, I'll be at school.
Here are some pictures from Shanghai. It's back to Picasa, because Hong Kong is outside the great firewall, so I can access my own pictures.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Boooooring
Imagine the most uneventful day of your life. Now imagine you are in Shanghai. Then you have a pretty good idea of what my day today was like.
I was woken up this morning by someone who spoke Chinese at me. I have no idea why they were calling me, or what they wanted, but they did wake me up at 6:30, and that makes them not my friend.
I got out of bed, got ready to go and took a taxi over to where I was supposed to meet the tour guide. When I got there (there being a very nice hotel lobby), there was no tour guide. When I waited for over an hour, there was no tour guide. Indeed the only tour guide looking person didn't speak English and was rather annoyed with me for keeping on pestering him.
Anyhow, I took a taxi BACK to my hotel, and proceeded to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I found a Pizza Hut, where the waitress spoke English, and I just about cried I was so happy. This is the first time I've gone into a restaurant and they spoke any English. Also, I had PIZZA.
Other than that, I laid around, played games, watched TV, and chatted on MSN. I also found that I am near a historical site, some guy named Shangcheng's former residence, but I couldn't find any information about him, so I decided against visiting it.
I'm a little cheesed off about the lack of a tour guide. I still don't know what happened, because the company that organized my tour just sort of coordinates everything, and no one person knows anything except how to get me to the next person. So I am still trying to track down the specific tour agency that was supposed to take me around Shanghai today.
Tomorrow morning, I am embarking on a very long train journey. By the time I am done, it will be afternoon on the following day, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'll have my suitcases back. So, the chances of me updating my blog tomorrow are exactly zero, since I will be hurtling across the countryside for most of the day.
One last thing about Shanghai though. It has by far the best traffic of any city I've been to so far. People still drive like maniacs, but there is a method to it. And they've implemented some clever systems to keep it under control. At some intersections they've actually got people who stand at the crosswalk and won't let people by until the walk light has turned. They also keep cars from randomly driving through the sidewalk when there are pedestrians on it, which happens a lot here.
I'm pretty excited. Except for picking up my luggage, which promises to be somewhat hairy, everything is all roses between me and coming home. I've got the day on the train, two days in Hong Kong and a day on a plane, and I'll be back in PG.
No pictures today. I have some, but I'll upload them next post. They're not terribly thrilling, since I didn't exactly go anywhere.
I was woken up this morning by someone who spoke Chinese at me. I have no idea why they were calling me, or what they wanted, but they did wake me up at 6:30, and that makes them not my friend.
I got out of bed, got ready to go and took a taxi over to where I was supposed to meet the tour guide. When I got there (there being a very nice hotel lobby), there was no tour guide. When I waited for over an hour, there was no tour guide. Indeed the only tour guide looking person didn't speak English and was rather annoyed with me for keeping on pestering him.
Anyhow, I took a taxi BACK to my hotel, and proceeded to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I found a Pizza Hut, where the waitress spoke English, and I just about cried I was so happy. This is the first time I've gone into a restaurant and they spoke any English. Also, I had PIZZA.
Other than that, I laid around, played games, watched TV, and chatted on MSN. I also found that I am near a historical site, some guy named Shangcheng's former residence, but I couldn't find any information about him, so I decided against visiting it.
I'm a little cheesed off about the lack of a tour guide. I still don't know what happened, because the company that organized my tour just sort of coordinates everything, and no one person knows anything except how to get me to the next person. So I am still trying to track down the specific tour agency that was supposed to take me around Shanghai today.
Tomorrow morning, I am embarking on a very long train journey. By the time I am done, it will be afternoon on the following day, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'll have my suitcases back. So, the chances of me updating my blog tomorrow are exactly zero, since I will be hurtling across the countryside for most of the day.
One last thing about Shanghai though. It has by far the best traffic of any city I've been to so far. People still drive like maniacs, but there is a method to it. And they've implemented some clever systems to keep it under control. At some intersections they've actually got people who stand at the crosswalk and won't let people by until the walk light has turned. They also keep cars from randomly driving through the sidewalk when there are pedestrians on it, which happens a lot here.
I'm pretty excited. Except for picking up my luggage, which promises to be somewhat hairy, everything is all roses between me and coming home. I've got the day on the train, two days in Hong Kong and a day on a plane, and I'll be back in PG.
No pictures today. I have some, but I'll upload them next post. They're not terribly thrilling, since I didn't exactly go anywhere.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Shanghello
Here's a tip: don't go walking in barefeet along the railroads in China. Aside from the fact that you'll get run over by a train, turns out that the toilet is not so much a toilet as it is a pipe to underneath the train. So, the railway tracks are covered in human waste. How gross is that? You're welcome.
I arrived in Shanghai today, and Shanghai is very tall. There have been tall buildings, very very tall buildings in every city, but Shanghai really takes the cake. In other places, there is a mix of tall and not tall. In Shanghai, it is a forest of buildings. It really looks like a forest, except instead of trees, there are nicely spaced buildings everywhere.
It's not something I talk about a whole lot, because in PG, it's not an issue, but I really don't like being in tall buildings. The second I'm above about the third floor, I become convinced the building is going to fall over. It's not a reasonable thing, I'm well aware, since buildings really don't fall over very often/at all, but this sort of thing isn't usually very reasonable. So, I'm slightly on edge all the time I'm here. Unless I'm on the ground. Then I am not at all concerned about buildings falling on me.
I had today completely off once I made it to my hotel (where I am on the 12th floor). After the fiasco in Beijing, I decided I didn't really want to try and find things on my own, so I went for a bit of a wander around my hotel, but I didn't find much very exciting. I'm in a very downtown-y kind of downtown, the same sort of downtown you might find in Vancouver, except that the things they sell have Chinese on them. I guess it really is quite like Vancouver.
I found a bookstore, which I was hoping would have some books in English. They did not. They did however have a rather extensive DVD collection, some of which were in English. I saw a movie called DOA (Dead Or Alive) which is based on one of the silliest video games of all time. I had heard about this movie being made, and then nothing more, so I ASSUMED someone came to their senses and canceled it. But no, it was made, and when I found it for about $2 CAD, I could not pass it up.
The point of DOA (the video game) is scantily clad women. Oh yes, and there is fighting as well. But mostly the women. It's the only fighting game to come out with a sequel that was Extreme Beach Volleyball (I am not making this up).
Turns out the movie managed to have all of this (including the beach volleyball). It also managed to have a lame plot, bad acting and cheesy dialog. Even the fight scenes (which you'd think would be the whole point) were obvious rip offs of other movies. My point here is that it was exactly what I thought it was going to be (and if you've played DOA, you should know exactly what it's going to be) and that made it great. If you feel like watching a silly, silly movie, watch this one.
I also watched The Holiday, which came out last year or something like that. It was pretty OK. I've also been watching some of a show called "Life" on my dad's recommendation, and it turns out to be fantastic. If you're the sort of person who gets cable, and likes good TV shows, check it out. It is on NBC. But that's enough about TV & movies.
I've had a very relaxing day, which is good, because I did not sleep so well on the train, and I am rather tired. The only problem is the sink is talking to me. Not with words, but with gurgling. It's a little disconcerting. I'm hoping the water settles or whatever.
Tomorrow I am going on a city tour, so I'll know all about why Shanghai is the most populous city in China (or so people keep claiming). For now, I will leave you with a snippet from my hotel's guest directory:
"Dear guests:
Warmly welcome to Shanghai Bailemen Hotel.
Our hotel is three star hotel. The hotel's motto is 'The Hotel you come in, the happier you feel' . We wish you to make a good impression and have a good time to stay with us in our hotel.
This book will introduce you all the hotel's faculties and services we provided. Please contact with us according to the list if you need any help. You can feel much more comfortable and get better service from our hotel.
All of the staff wish you have pleasant stay in the Shanghai Bailemen hotel. We look forward to entertaining you and your friends again in the near future."
It makes you wonder why they even bother. At least they had a spellchecker.
Windows Live Spaces
I arrived in Shanghai today, and Shanghai is very tall. There have been tall buildings, very very tall buildings in every city, but Shanghai really takes the cake. In other places, there is a mix of tall and not tall. In Shanghai, it is a forest of buildings. It really looks like a forest, except instead of trees, there are nicely spaced buildings everywhere.
It's not something I talk about a whole lot, because in PG, it's not an issue, but I really don't like being in tall buildings. The second I'm above about the third floor, I become convinced the building is going to fall over. It's not a reasonable thing, I'm well aware, since buildings really don't fall over very often/at all, but this sort of thing isn't usually very reasonable. So, I'm slightly on edge all the time I'm here. Unless I'm on the ground. Then I am not at all concerned about buildings falling on me.
I had today completely off once I made it to my hotel (where I am on the 12th floor). After the fiasco in Beijing, I decided I didn't really want to try and find things on my own, so I went for a bit of a wander around my hotel, but I didn't find much very exciting. I'm in a very downtown-y kind of downtown, the same sort of downtown you might find in Vancouver, except that the things they sell have Chinese on them. I guess it really is quite like Vancouver.
I found a bookstore, which I was hoping would have some books in English. They did not. They did however have a rather extensive DVD collection, some of which were in English. I saw a movie called DOA (Dead Or Alive) which is based on one of the silliest video games of all time. I had heard about this movie being made, and then nothing more, so I ASSUMED someone came to their senses and canceled it. But no, it was made, and when I found it for about $2 CAD, I could not pass it up.
The point of DOA (the video game) is scantily clad women. Oh yes, and there is fighting as well. But mostly the women. It's the only fighting game to come out with a sequel that was Extreme Beach Volleyball (I am not making this up).
Turns out the movie managed to have all of this (including the beach volleyball). It also managed to have a lame plot, bad acting and cheesy dialog. Even the fight scenes (which you'd think would be the whole point) were obvious rip offs of other movies. My point here is that it was exactly what I thought it was going to be (and if you've played DOA, you should know exactly what it's going to be) and that made it great. If you feel like watching a silly, silly movie, watch this one.
I also watched The Holiday, which came out last year or something like that. It was pretty OK. I've also been watching some of a show called "Life" on my dad's recommendation, and it turns out to be fantastic. If you're the sort of person who gets cable, and likes good TV shows, check it out. It is on NBC. But that's enough about TV & movies.
I've had a very relaxing day, which is good, because I did not sleep so well on the train, and I am rather tired. The only problem is the sink is talking to me. Not with words, but with gurgling. It's a little disconcerting. I'm hoping the water settles or whatever.
Tomorrow I am going on a city tour, so I'll know all about why Shanghai is the most populous city in China (or so people keep claiming). For now, I will leave you with a snippet from my hotel's guest directory:
"Dear guests:
Warmly welcome to Shanghai Bailemen Hotel.
Our hotel is three star hotel. The hotel's motto is 'The Hotel you come in, the happier you feel' . We wish you to make a good impression and have a good time to stay with us in our hotel.
This book will introduce you all the hotel's faculties and services we provided. Please contact with us according to the list if you need any help. You can feel much more comfortable and get better service from our hotel.
All of the staff wish you have pleasant stay in the Shanghai Bailemen hotel. We look forward to entertaining you and your friends again in the near future."
It makes you wonder why they even bother. At least they had a spellchecker.
Windows Live Spaces
Friday, January 4, 2008
Xi'antastic!
My hotel in Xi'an = very noisy. I am basically in the middle of town, and apparently, there is a constant party. Also my bed was very hard. But I was so exhausted from my pair of super intense days that I had no trouble sleeping allllll night.
This morning we started by going to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a big, old Buddhist temple. There is quite a story behind how it got there. During the Tang Dynasty, the Emperor sent out a monk to learn about Buddhism. So, this monk wandered around southern Asia for 17 years, spending most of that time in India. He eventually came back to Xi'an, bringing with him 300 Buddhist scrolls, and singlehandedly founded Buddhism in China.
In India, a particular sect of Buddhists were very hungry one day, and they asked the Buddha to give them some food. At that moment, a goose flying overhead dropped dead in their midst. They declared it a miracle and then decided never to eat meat again. Then they built a pagoda on the spot where the goose fell and called it "Wild Goose Pagoda."
When the Chinese monk came back to China, he decided he wanted to emulate this, so he got the emperor to build him his own Wild Goose Pagoda. This was 1400 years ago, and it is still standing. Sometime later, they made another Wild Goose Pagoda, which was smaller, so they differentiate them based on size, hence "Big Wild Goose Pagoda." And it is very big. Seven stories and over 30 m tall, it's pretty impressive, considering how old it is.
After the Pagoda, we went to the site of a 6000 year old village, which they call the Bampo village, because they found it in a region called Bampo. They have actually built a museum around the excavation of the village, so we could see everything as it lay in the ground, which was pretty nifty. There was the main living section, which consisted largely of mud houses with straw roofs, and was completely surrounded by a moat (the ancient Chinese loves them some moats). Then there was the burial section, where they had dug up a bunch of graves, which you could look into. I found this exceptionally creepy.
After the Bampo Village, it was lunch and then on to the Terra Cotta Warriors, which is the entire reason anyone goes to Xi'an. in 1974, a farmer was digging a well in his field, when he discovered a clay head. He very cleverly reported it to the authorities, and they bought his field and dug up the pieces of over 6000 clay warriors.
You see, in addition to uniting China and building the Great Wall, the first emperor of China decided he wanted to be safe in the afterlife as well, so he ordered the construction of a Terra Cotta (which means clay, basically) army. Each soldier in the army is unique, and each one was painted. Archaeologists suspect that there are more sites of Terra Cotta Warriors, since these ones are 1.5 km away from his tomb, in just one direction. (I'm not so sure the emperor wanted to be protected in the afterlife. I think he just wanted a better Warhammer army than Pharaoh Ramses.)
He had 700 000 people working on the Terra Cotta Warriors for 37 years. The people were not too impressed about this, because despite the fact that he united China, he was a bit of a jerk, so after he died, the peasants started revolting, and one of the things they did was break into the Terra Cotta Warriors hall, break them, and set them on fire. I'm not sure how smart setting clay on fire was, but they did manage to burn most of the paint off and wreck the structural supports so that the cavern collapsed. Thus, when they found the warriors they were in many pieces. They have been slowly re-assembling them for the last 30 years.
The emperor was a pretty paranoid guy though. His tomb was very Indiana Jones. There were automatic arrows, big pits and a moat of mercury. THEN, just to make sure no one could figure out how to get into his tomb, he had the people who designed it buried in it as well, long before they were dead. (The Chinese were big on burying other people in their tombs. The Empresses, Concubines and numerous servents were often buried right along with the emperor, regardless of how dead they were at the time.) To this day, no one has been able to get in, and it is still under a mound of dirt.
The Terra Cotta Warriors are pretty impressive though. If I were a ghost, I wouldn't want to try and get through.
I found out something very interesting about China today also. I had always assumed that, like Russia, religion was against the law. It is possible that this was the case during Mao's rule, but it is not anymore. People are free to worship whatever they like, which explains the presence of a Mosque and a Buddhist temple, both of which are still active. Hooray for not being quite as oppressive as I thought, China.
I had a pretty good time in Xi'an, although it was very short. I was in Xi'an for like 36 hours. If you think history is interesting (like me) I would recommend going to Xi'an over anywhere else in China, because although Beijing has relics dating back hundreds of years, Xi'an has thousands of years of history, which is actually pretty tough for me to wrap my head around.
The city itself isn't so thrilling, for the reaons I mentioned in the last post. My tour guide, who I spent a lot of time with, as she picked me up from the train station took me on a private tour, then the next day led my group tour, and then brought me back to the train station, was very nice. Chinese people tend to think I am very young (like 17, or in one case 15), so I think she was being protective of me. Also, I am a pretty excellent student, because I always look interested and ask questions. As such, I often notice teachers (and in this case tour guides) lecturing directly at me. This tour guide (whose name was Sophie) did that a lot. So when she asked me if I liked the city, she was so earnest and so sincere about how great the city was, I couldn't exactly say, "Well, it's sort of old and dingy." But it is.
Anyhow, I got to the train station, managed to get on my train and found my spot. I held out hope that no one else was going to be in my little berth area, but three Chinese men came in. They were fairly loud, they smoked and they were playing some kind of card game. I watched them play for over an hour, and I'm pretty sure I've got the rules, so when I get back, I intend to play it with some people. I THOUGHT once we all went to sleep, they would cease to be annoying, but one of them snored incredibly loudly. It was second only to Dr. Chen in terms of volume and general annoyingness. But I was so tired I went back to sleep pretty quick.
Now, on to Shanghai!
Windows Live Spaces
This morning we started by going to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a big, old Buddhist temple. There is quite a story behind how it got there. During the Tang Dynasty, the Emperor sent out a monk to learn about Buddhism. So, this monk wandered around southern Asia for 17 years, spending most of that time in India. He eventually came back to Xi'an, bringing with him 300 Buddhist scrolls, and singlehandedly founded Buddhism in China.
In India, a particular sect of Buddhists were very hungry one day, and they asked the Buddha to give them some food. At that moment, a goose flying overhead dropped dead in their midst. They declared it a miracle and then decided never to eat meat again. Then they built a pagoda on the spot where the goose fell and called it "Wild Goose Pagoda."
When the Chinese monk came back to China, he decided he wanted to emulate this, so he got the emperor to build him his own Wild Goose Pagoda. This was 1400 years ago, and it is still standing. Sometime later, they made another Wild Goose Pagoda, which was smaller, so they differentiate them based on size, hence "Big Wild Goose Pagoda." And it is very big. Seven stories and over 30 m tall, it's pretty impressive, considering how old it is.
After the Pagoda, we went to the site of a 6000 year old village, which they call the Bampo village, because they found it in a region called Bampo. They have actually built a museum around the excavation of the village, so we could see everything as it lay in the ground, which was pretty nifty. There was the main living section, which consisted largely of mud houses with straw roofs, and was completely surrounded by a moat (the ancient Chinese loves them some moats). Then there was the burial section, where they had dug up a bunch of graves, which you could look into. I found this exceptionally creepy.
After the Bampo Village, it was lunch and then on to the Terra Cotta Warriors, which is the entire reason anyone goes to Xi'an. in 1974, a farmer was digging a well in his field, when he discovered a clay head. He very cleverly reported it to the authorities, and they bought his field and dug up the pieces of over 6000 clay warriors.
You see, in addition to uniting China and building the Great Wall, the first emperor of China decided he wanted to be safe in the afterlife as well, so he ordered the construction of a Terra Cotta (which means clay, basically) army. Each soldier in the army is unique, and each one was painted. Archaeologists suspect that there are more sites of Terra Cotta Warriors, since these ones are 1.5 km away from his tomb, in just one direction. (I'm not so sure the emperor wanted to be protected in the afterlife. I think he just wanted a better Warhammer army than Pharaoh Ramses.)
He had 700 000 people working on the Terra Cotta Warriors for 37 years. The people were not too impressed about this, because despite the fact that he united China, he was a bit of a jerk, so after he died, the peasants started revolting, and one of the things they did was break into the Terra Cotta Warriors hall, break them, and set them on fire. I'm not sure how smart setting clay on fire was, but they did manage to burn most of the paint off and wreck the structural supports so that the cavern collapsed. Thus, when they found the warriors they were in many pieces. They have been slowly re-assembling them for the last 30 years.
The emperor was a pretty paranoid guy though. His tomb was very Indiana Jones. There were automatic arrows, big pits and a moat of mercury. THEN, just to make sure no one could figure out how to get into his tomb, he had the people who designed it buried in it as well, long before they were dead. (The Chinese were big on burying other people in their tombs. The Empresses, Concubines and numerous servents were often buried right along with the emperor, regardless of how dead they were at the time.) To this day, no one has been able to get in, and it is still under a mound of dirt.
The Terra Cotta Warriors are pretty impressive though. If I were a ghost, I wouldn't want to try and get through.
I found out something very interesting about China today also. I had always assumed that, like Russia, religion was against the law. It is possible that this was the case during Mao's rule, but it is not anymore. People are free to worship whatever they like, which explains the presence of a Mosque and a Buddhist temple, both of which are still active. Hooray for not being quite as oppressive as I thought, China.
I had a pretty good time in Xi'an, although it was very short. I was in Xi'an for like 36 hours. If you think history is interesting (like me) I would recommend going to Xi'an over anywhere else in China, because although Beijing has relics dating back hundreds of years, Xi'an has thousands of years of history, which is actually pretty tough for me to wrap my head around.
The city itself isn't so thrilling, for the reaons I mentioned in the last post. My tour guide, who I spent a lot of time with, as she picked me up from the train station took me on a private tour, then the next day led my group tour, and then brought me back to the train station, was very nice. Chinese people tend to think I am very young (like 17, or in one case 15), so I think she was being protective of me. Also, I am a pretty excellent student, because I always look interested and ask questions. As such, I often notice teachers (and in this case tour guides) lecturing directly at me. This tour guide (whose name was Sophie) did that a lot. So when she asked me if I liked the city, she was so earnest and so sincere about how great the city was, I couldn't exactly say, "Well, it's sort of old and dingy." But it is.
Anyhow, I got to the train station, managed to get on my train and found my spot. I held out hope that no one else was going to be in my little berth area, but three Chinese men came in. They were fairly loud, they smoked and they were playing some kind of card game. I watched them play for over an hour, and I'm pretty sure I've got the rules, so when I get back, I intend to play it with some people. I THOUGHT once we all went to sleep, they would cease to be annoying, but one of them snored incredibly loudly. It was second only to Dr. Chen in terms of volume and general annoyingness. But I was so tired I went back to sleep pretty quick.
Now, on to Shanghai!
Windows Live Spaces
My impending return
I'm currently sitting in the hotel's internet cafe with the guide
waiting for me, so I don't have much time. I am leaving on the train
for Shanghai tonight, so no blog post tonight.
waiting for me, so I don't have much time. I am leaving on the train
for Shanghai tonight, so no blog post tonight.
Several people have asked me when I get back, and the answer is: the
evening of the 10th. Unless my plane is delayed, I ought to be home
around 5 pm that night, full of stories and presents. How very
exciting, ya?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Xi'an to you too!
Xi'an: pronounced shee-YAN.
If you haven't read my previous post, Shanghaied in Beijing (which you probably haven't unless you're up very early in the morning), I would do so right now. In fact, if you're a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I've got here two monster posts in a row, I'd read the other one and not this one. If you read on blog post this year, make it that one. It's pretty stellar.
So, at the end of my last post, I was on the train headed for Xi'an from Beijing. It was a fairly uneventful trip. I was asleep for almost all of it (the trip is about 10 hours long). Or rather, I was trying to be asleep, but wouldn't you know that sleeping on a tiny bunk with all your stuff on a moving, rather loud train makes it difficult to sleep. So I was in and out all night. It was sort of sad, because it was very dark, so I couldn't exactly see the countryside.
I got to Xi'an rather exhausted, as I had had a pretty intense day the day before, but when I met my tour guide, it was hop to it. We were going on a tour of the city. I had only a few minutes to grab some breakfast, and then there I was, running around Xi'an.
A bit about Xi'an, since no one has probably heard of it. I hadn't. Xi'an itself has been inhabited for 6000 years, many of those years, it was the capital of China. There has been human~ish civilization in Xi'an for over a million years. I find this quite incredible. Indeed, the museum I visited claimed that the Yellow River was the cradle of civilization, not the Tigris and Euphrates like we usually hear.
China has an absolutely fascinating history. From about 4000 BC until about 1000 BC, China was a bunch of warring city states. This was about the time when the Egyptians were kicking butt. China is a big place, so there was room for lots of Warlords. In 1000 BC or so, the Zhou dynasty became very powerful, so China became a bunch of city states who didn't mess with the Zhou.
After the Zhou dynasty fell apart, this Qin (pronounced Chin) guy came along and thought it might be nice to unite China. Having the most sophisticated military technology, he did so, and became the first emperor of China. (This is what the movie 'Hero' is about). Not only did he unite China for the first time, but he began the construction of the Great Wall, and it is his tomb that has the Terra Cotta Warriors. My tour guide called them "miracles" but I don't think I'd go so far. They are very impressive though.
Anyways, after him there were a bunch of other dynasties, with China occasionally splitting into two or three kingdoms. But one dynasty in particular bears mention. The Tang Dynasty came to power just as the Romans were falling (not that these were related). The Tang dynasty built on the work of the dynasty before them and created the Silk Road, which connected Xi'an with India, the Middle East and Constantinople. Yes, centuries before Marco Polo was even born, the Chinese were trading with Constantinople (which is at the point where Turkey meets Greece). It kind of diminishes his accomplishment, I think.
After the museum (which I found exceptionally fascinating, but I'm not sure enough of my facts to relate everything here), we went to something I thought my tour guide was calling "The Great Mask" but was in fact "The Great Mosque". Xi'an has a very large Muslim population, and they built themselves a nice Mosque, which is very cool because it incorporates both Arabic and Chinese style in it. I took some neat pictures.
Following the Mosque, we visited the City Wall. The City wall was built in the same era as the Forbidden City. It encircles what used to be the entire city, with a perimeter of 14 km. It turns out you can rent bikes to ride all the way around, and this is exactly what I did. It was a pretty neat ride, even if my bike was the worst thing ever. The wall, although quite solid, is 600 years old, so some parts were rather bumpy, and the bike was definitely a road bike, so I felt every single bump all the way through all of me.
Later this evening, I went to a dinner and show (the dinner and the show together didn't cost me anything close to what that tea cost). The dinner was a dumpling buffet, and let me announce something. Let it be known that I, Daniel Yule, love dumplings. Let it echo down the ages that I will eat just about anything that comes in Dumpling form, including, but not limited to, fish, sharks fin, cabbage and just about anything else you want to stick some dough around and fry. Dumplings are far and away my favourite Chinese food. These particular dumplings were also in the shape of what they had inside of them.
The show was alright. It was a re-enactment of Tang Dynasty music and dance. Now, the dancers and musicians were very good, but you could tell they've done it a million times. They looked bored out on the stage. When you add in the fact that the production values were often downright cheesy, it was an underwhelming experience. But I am of course, comparing it to the acrobats I saw in Guangzhou, and anyone would be hard pressed to even begin to compare with that.
Xi'an is very different from the other cities I have been to. The other cities all look very new and exciting. Xi'an reeks (literally reeks) of past greatness. You can see it everywhere, from the old buildings to the veneration of a dynasty that held power over a thousand years ago. Unlike the poor of Beijing, who try and sell you things, the poor of Xi'an just beg. It just seems like a tired old city. Actually, it reminds me of the London in Oliver Twist. There are decrepit old buildings, beggars, pickpockets, marketplaces, and so on.
Tomorrow night I am leaving for Shanghai, so I won't be blogging most likely, but hopefully I don't have another intense day like yesterday. Anyhow, here is Xi'an in pictures.
Windows Live Spaces
If you haven't read my previous post, Shanghaied in Beijing (which you probably haven't unless you're up very early in the morning), I would do so right now. In fact, if you're a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I've got here two monster posts in a row, I'd read the other one and not this one. If you read on blog post this year, make it that one. It's pretty stellar.
So, at the end of my last post, I was on the train headed for Xi'an from Beijing. It was a fairly uneventful trip. I was asleep for almost all of it (the trip is about 10 hours long). Or rather, I was trying to be asleep, but wouldn't you know that sleeping on a tiny bunk with all your stuff on a moving, rather loud train makes it difficult to sleep. So I was in and out all night. It was sort of sad, because it was very dark, so I couldn't exactly see the countryside.
I got to Xi'an rather exhausted, as I had had a pretty intense day the day before, but when I met my tour guide, it was hop to it. We were going on a tour of the city. I had only a few minutes to grab some breakfast, and then there I was, running around Xi'an.
A bit about Xi'an, since no one has probably heard of it. I hadn't. Xi'an itself has been inhabited for 6000 years, many of those years, it was the capital of China. There has been human~ish civilization in Xi'an for over a million years. I find this quite incredible. Indeed, the museum I visited claimed that the Yellow River was the cradle of civilization, not the Tigris and Euphrates like we usually hear.
China has an absolutely fascinating history. From about 4000 BC until about 1000 BC, China was a bunch of warring city states. This was about the time when the Egyptians were kicking butt. China is a big place, so there was room for lots of Warlords. In 1000 BC or so, the Zhou dynasty became very powerful, so China became a bunch of city states who didn't mess with the Zhou.
After the Zhou dynasty fell apart, this Qin (pronounced Chin) guy came along and thought it might be nice to unite China. Having the most sophisticated military technology, he did so, and became the first emperor of China. (This is what the movie 'Hero' is about). Not only did he unite China for the first time, but he began the construction of the Great Wall, and it is his tomb that has the Terra Cotta Warriors. My tour guide called them "miracles" but I don't think I'd go so far. They are very impressive though.
Anyways, after him there were a bunch of other dynasties, with China occasionally splitting into two or three kingdoms. But one dynasty in particular bears mention. The Tang Dynasty came to power just as the Romans were falling (not that these were related). The Tang dynasty built on the work of the dynasty before them and created the Silk Road, which connected Xi'an with India, the Middle East and Constantinople. Yes, centuries before Marco Polo was even born, the Chinese were trading with Constantinople (which is at the point where Turkey meets Greece). It kind of diminishes his accomplishment, I think.
After the museum (which I found exceptionally fascinating, but I'm not sure enough of my facts to relate everything here), we went to something I thought my tour guide was calling "The Great Mask" but was in fact "The Great Mosque". Xi'an has a very large Muslim population, and they built themselves a nice Mosque, which is very cool because it incorporates both Arabic and Chinese style in it. I took some neat pictures.
Following the Mosque, we visited the City Wall. The City wall was built in the same era as the Forbidden City. It encircles what used to be the entire city, with a perimeter of 14 km. It turns out you can rent bikes to ride all the way around, and this is exactly what I did. It was a pretty neat ride, even if my bike was the worst thing ever. The wall, although quite solid, is 600 years old, so some parts were rather bumpy, and the bike was definitely a road bike, so I felt every single bump all the way through all of me.
Later this evening, I went to a dinner and show (the dinner and the show together didn't cost me anything close to what that tea cost). The dinner was a dumpling buffet, and let me announce something. Let it be known that I, Daniel Yule, love dumplings. Let it echo down the ages that I will eat just about anything that comes in Dumpling form, including, but not limited to, fish, sharks fin, cabbage and just about anything else you want to stick some dough around and fry. Dumplings are far and away my favourite Chinese food. These particular dumplings were also in the shape of what they had inside of them.
The show was alright. It was a re-enactment of Tang Dynasty music and dance. Now, the dancers and musicians were very good, but you could tell they've done it a million times. They looked bored out on the stage. When you add in the fact that the production values were often downright cheesy, it was an underwhelming experience. But I am of course, comparing it to the acrobats I saw in Guangzhou, and anyone would be hard pressed to even begin to compare with that.
Xi'an is very different from the other cities I have been to. The other cities all look very new and exciting. Xi'an reeks (literally reeks) of past greatness. You can see it everywhere, from the old buildings to the veneration of a dynasty that held power over a thousand years ago. Unlike the poor of Beijing, who try and sell you things, the poor of Xi'an just beg. It just seems like a tired old city. Actually, it reminds me of the London in Oliver Twist. There are decrepit old buildings, beggars, pickpockets, marketplaces, and so on.
Tomorrow night I am leaving for Shanghai, so I won't be blogging most likely, but hopefully I don't have another intense day like yesterday. Anyhow, here is Xi'an in pictures.
Windows Live Spaces
Shanghaied in Beijing
Holy. Crap.
My last day in Beijing was by far my most intense day yet. I think that's saying something.
It started early, when I met my tour guide at 8:00 am. Her name was Sunny, which aptly described her personality. She was a pretty great tour guide. She was funny, and had lots of interesting things to say, which you'd might think would describe EVERY tour guide, but this is not the case. Turns out, in Beijing, you have to be certified to be a tour guide. 20 000 people apply every year. Only 1 000 make it. Sounds like a martial arts tournament? Tour guiding is serious business in Beijing.
Anyhow, we went off to the Ming Tombs, which is oddly enough, where the Ming emperors are buried. The Ming emperors were also the ones who built the Forbidden City, and all the other stuff we looked at the previous day. The only bit that is open to the public is this one big room that they have converted into a museum. They had some neat stuff in the museum, which I did not take any pictures of because my camera drains batteries faster than you can say "overpriced garbage" (which is something you say a lot).
The most interesting thing about the museum is actually the building itself. It was constructed out of these pillars, which are each about 3 feet thick. These pillars are solid wood, and they were built out of a single tree trunk each. The type of tree they were made from (now extinct) grew on the other side of China. The emperor made 500 soldiers carry 60 trees all the way across China, so he could have a spiffy place to be buried. It took them 10 years.
The other interesting thing about the tombs is what happened during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was Chairman Mao's attempt to push China back into communism, after it had been getting slowly capitalist. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Our tour guide said it was Mao's only mistake. Yep, just that one. No others at all.
Anyways, during the cultural revolution, the Red Guard, which was like a volunteer army of students stormed the Ming Tombs and set one of them on fire, because they were trying to show they were better then the feudalists. Nothing says you're better like fire, after all. So the Emperor and Empress's clothes, which were very well preserved, are now a little cripsy, as are the emperor and empress themselves.
After the Ming Tombs, it was off to the Great Wall. (The Chinese think everything is great. They have their Great Wall, Great Leader Chairman Mao....) The Great Wall is pretty famous, and it rather deserves that fame. It has several different sections, which total 100 000 km. That's more than the circumference of the Earth. It was not ENTIRELY successful at keeping the Mongols out, but it is impressive nonetheless. There's really not much to say about it, except for the way you get up it.
See, the Chinese were pretty clever, and they don't just have their wall any old place, they have it on top of mountains, which makes it extra difficult to get over. So, in order to go up it, you have to walk up a mountain. Or alternately, you can take the roller coaster. Yes, that's right, roller coaster. You get on at the bottom, and it pulls you up. Then you wander around, and come back down, which is about the greatest ride ever.
On the way back home, we first went to a Jade factory, which is pretty cool. Jade is very very beautiful, and they had some absolutely stunning jewelery and other things, which I would love to have taken pictures of, but lo: my camera was out of batteries.
After the Jade factory, we went to a silk factory, where they show you how they make silk. The silk they take off the worm's cocoon is very very fine, and it takes 8 strands to make a single thread. Then, they take those threads and turn them into flat pancakes of silk. THEN they stretch it out and turn it into a blanket. Make sense? It's OK, I don't understand, and I watched them do it.
The store they had after (because they always take you to a store) had some lovely silk kimonos and such, but not for men, and not for cheap. So, no one is getting a kimono, I am sad to say.
Because traffic was light, we got back to the hotel early, so I had about 4 hours to kill before I had to meet the person who was taking me to the train station. So, I decided to walk to Tienanmen Square, which was not too far away. That is where the fun began.
Tienanmen Square is on the opposite side of the Forbidden City from where I was, and the Forbidden city is quite large. So it was actually a longer walk then I thought it would be (about a half hour). When I got to the courtyard that separates the Forbidden City from Tienanmen Square, the PLA was doing some marching exercises, which I watched, but they had also blocked off Tienanmen Square for their marching. So, there was a huge crowd of people at the gate, which I slowly ambled towards. I should point out that a LOT of people were openly staring at me. In several instances, children would point at me to their parents, and their mom would go "shhhhh" and point them in the other direction. Also in this time period, a pair of women and a man came up to me and started talking to me about my trip, for no reason I could discern, but they were nice enough, and I really like talking to people who live in China, because that's how you learn things.
Anyhow, eventually I got into the square and it is pretty cool. Dead centre in the middle is Mao's Mausoleum (A Mao-soleum if you will). On every side are gorgeous buildings. Also, the army is EVERYWHERE in that square. I was actually kind of sad about that, since I was going to put on my hat and get someone take a picture of me pretending to order students shot. No reason in particular I wanted to do that, since nothing like that ever happened in Tienanmen Square, right Chinese government?
I didn't have much time in Tienanmen square though, because these two Chinese girls started talking to me, and offered to show me around old Beijing, so they could practice their English. This was a pretty awesome idea, since I wanted to see as much as possible, and having a local guide is super cool. Plus it was the same direction as my hotel, and I was pretty sure those two girls couldn't overpower me. I say girls, but they were probably my age.
Anyhow, they showed me around (and Old Beijing is pretty nifty. It is rather old: 600 years in fact). After walking for a while, they said they were tired, so why didn't we stop in this teahouse? I thought that seemed fun, and agreed, but the second I walked in the door, I remembered something that the Aussies had mentioned the day before. They were walking around in Shanghai, when they met some students who took them to a teahouse. Then, they were given various "samples" of tea, asked to buy some, and then informed that the "samples" they had just drank were, in fact, rather expensive. I became very suspicious that this was about to happen to me.
And wouldn't you know it, I was right. I tried some very nice tea, and sampled some very nice fruit. You might know I am not the biggest fan of tea, but that was before I came to Beijing and had some of the best tea in the world. The English can stuff it. The sludge they and the countries they colonized are drinking is nothing compared to some of this tea.
That said, after all was said and done, each cup of tea (I had 8, I think) was 30 yuan ( = $4.10 CAD). That's a pretty steep price to pay for a cup of tea. But when you consider the fact that the tea cups were doll-sized (because they were samples), it becomes ridiculous. They also charge you for the fruit. All told, the bill was 1100 Yuan ($150 CAD). Then, ever so conveniently, the girls didn't have enough to pay for their share, so I had to pay half. I wasn't upset though, and I'll tell you why.
I have now been successfully conned. I don't think it'll happen again. And I don't think I could ask for a better con. In the process of being conned, I got shown around Beijing, drank some excellent tea, and had a nice chat with some locals. (The con, here being that I'm pretty sure those two girls were working with the tea house.)
Anyhow, after that (no I didn't leave immediately. I had already been duped, what more could they possibly do) we wandered around for a little while, and then they stated that I absolutely had to have some Peking Duck, that being the dish that Beijing is famous for. Well, I DID want to try some Peking duck, so we took a taxi to a restaurant, I ordered some duck for me, and some fried rice for them (this was what they were getting out of it). The duck was quite good, and I don't at all regret that part of it.
Afterwards, they helped me get a taxi back to my hotel. Or they kind of did. My hotel was kind of a hole in the wall, so they directed him to take me to the North Entrance to the Forbidden City, which is about a 5 minute walk from my hotel. He took me to this place, let me out, and I found myself promptly lost. You see, I had memorized the way back to my hotel, but I had done so in daylight, and it was now quite dark. I knew I was in the right area, and I knew the name of the street I was looking for, so I decided to walk along the Forbidden City until I found it.
I finally found the street (Jingshan Street, in case you're wondering) and started going down it, only to realize that it definitely was not the right street. At this point, I was late to my hotel to get picked up, lost, and by myself in a dark city whose native language I didn't speak. I was also dressed in a ridiculous manner. Luckily for me, I don't panic until after things have finished happening, because a split second later I figured out that Jingshan was a crescent, and I had come in the other side, so I only needed to keep walking. I made it to my hotel, and my contact took me to the train station.
Once on the train, I sat down in my bunk (which is TINY. They have four people in about the same space as your standard closet.) A family with a crying baby came in and took the other three bunks. I was not impressed. However, the girl from the family asked me, for some reason, if I spoke French, and when I said yes, she asked if I could trade bunks with her grandmother, which I was happy to do. I was also very happy to speak to someone in French. You see, since I've got here, I've been fighting the urge to spout French at the Chinese, because for some reason I think they'll understand. Somewhere deep in my brain is the idea that all non-English languages are the same. So, finally getting to speak French, and to a Chinese person was pretty excellent.
I'll pick up from being on the train in the next post. But first, let me allay some suspicions you might have. The topic of my having a girlfriend is of great interest to the Chinese. And when I tell them I don't have one, they usually call me handsome, and then tell me I should find a nice Chinese girl while I am here. You'd think I'd enjoy being called handsome, but the Chinese say that to everyone, except for Dr. Chen, who thinks everyone is ugly.
The thing with finding a nice Chinese girl while I am here is that according to these same people, in China, if you have a girlfriend, that basically makes her your fiance. Among the things on my list to-do, getting engaged to a girl who doesn't reside in the same country as me, or speak the same language as me is pretty low down. So, instead of fending off offers to help me with my love life, I've started telling people I have a girlfriend. So you know, she is short, skinny, 20 years old and very beautiful. I don't know what her name is, or what she's like, but no one is very interested in her. But she is apparently very lucky to be my girlfriend, because I am such a prime piece of real estate.
Anyhow, my point is I made sure to tell these two Chinese Con artists about my fake girlfriend right away, so they were not at all trying to seduce me into anything. No, it was for pleasant company that I gave away so much money. What's more, I'm pretty convinced it was worth it, although I wouldn't do it again.
At any rate, here are some pictures of the Great Wall and Tienanmen square. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take some pictures of my shyster friends (of course).
Windows Live Spaces
My last day in Beijing was by far my most intense day yet. I think that's saying something.
It started early, when I met my tour guide at 8:00 am. Her name was Sunny, which aptly described her personality. She was a pretty great tour guide. She was funny, and had lots of interesting things to say, which you'd might think would describe EVERY tour guide, but this is not the case. Turns out, in Beijing, you have to be certified to be a tour guide. 20 000 people apply every year. Only 1 000 make it. Sounds like a martial arts tournament? Tour guiding is serious business in Beijing.
Anyhow, we went off to the Ming Tombs, which is oddly enough, where the Ming emperors are buried. The Ming emperors were also the ones who built the Forbidden City, and all the other stuff we looked at the previous day. The only bit that is open to the public is this one big room that they have converted into a museum. They had some neat stuff in the museum, which I did not take any pictures of because my camera drains batteries faster than you can say "overpriced garbage" (which is something you say a lot).
The most interesting thing about the museum is actually the building itself. It was constructed out of these pillars, which are each about 3 feet thick. These pillars are solid wood, and they were built out of a single tree trunk each. The type of tree they were made from (now extinct) grew on the other side of China. The emperor made 500 soldiers carry 60 trees all the way across China, so he could have a spiffy place to be buried. It took them 10 years.
The other interesting thing about the tombs is what happened during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was Chairman Mao's attempt to push China back into communism, after it had been getting slowly capitalist. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Our tour guide said it was Mao's only mistake. Yep, just that one. No others at all.
Anyways, during the cultural revolution, the Red Guard, which was like a volunteer army of students stormed the Ming Tombs and set one of them on fire, because they were trying to show they were better then the feudalists. Nothing says you're better like fire, after all. So the Emperor and Empress's clothes, which were very well preserved, are now a little cripsy, as are the emperor and empress themselves.
After the Ming Tombs, it was off to the Great Wall. (The Chinese think everything is great. They have their Great Wall, Great Leader Chairman Mao....) The Great Wall is pretty famous, and it rather deserves that fame. It has several different sections, which total 100 000 km. That's more than the circumference of the Earth. It was not ENTIRELY successful at keeping the Mongols out, but it is impressive nonetheless. There's really not much to say about it, except for the way you get up it.
See, the Chinese were pretty clever, and they don't just have their wall any old place, they have it on top of mountains, which makes it extra difficult to get over. So, in order to go up it, you have to walk up a mountain. Or alternately, you can take the roller coaster. Yes, that's right, roller coaster. You get on at the bottom, and it pulls you up. Then you wander around, and come back down, which is about the greatest ride ever.
On the way back home, we first went to a Jade factory, which is pretty cool. Jade is very very beautiful, and they had some absolutely stunning jewelery and other things, which I would love to have taken pictures of, but lo: my camera was out of batteries.
After the Jade factory, we went to a silk factory, where they show you how they make silk. The silk they take off the worm's cocoon is very very fine, and it takes 8 strands to make a single thread. Then, they take those threads and turn them into flat pancakes of silk. THEN they stretch it out and turn it into a blanket. Make sense? It's OK, I don't understand, and I watched them do it.
The store they had after (because they always take you to a store) had some lovely silk kimonos and such, but not for men, and not for cheap. So, no one is getting a kimono, I am sad to say.
Because traffic was light, we got back to the hotel early, so I had about 4 hours to kill before I had to meet the person who was taking me to the train station. So, I decided to walk to Tienanmen Square, which was not too far away. That is where the fun began.
Tienanmen Square is on the opposite side of the Forbidden City from where I was, and the Forbidden city is quite large. So it was actually a longer walk then I thought it would be (about a half hour). When I got to the courtyard that separates the Forbidden City from Tienanmen Square, the PLA was doing some marching exercises, which I watched, but they had also blocked off Tienanmen Square for their marching. So, there was a huge crowd of people at the gate, which I slowly ambled towards. I should point out that a LOT of people were openly staring at me. In several instances, children would point at me to their parents, and their mom would go "shhhhh" and point them in the other direction. Also in this time period, a pair of women and a man came up to me and started talking to me about my trip, for no reason I could discern, but they were nice enough, and I really like talking to people who live in China, because that's how you learn things.
Anyhow, eventually I got into the square and it is pretty cool. Dead centre in the middle is Mao's Mausoleum (A Mao-soleum if you will). On every side are gorgeous buildings. Also, the army is EVERYWHERE in that square. I was actually kind of sad about that, since I was going to put on my hat and get someone take a picture of me pretending to order students shot. No reason in particular I wanted to do that, since nothing like that ever happened in Tienanmen Square, right Chinese government?
I didn't have much time in Tienanmen square though, because these two Chinese girls started talking to me, and offered to show me around old Beijing, so they could practice their English. This was a pretty awesome idea, since I wanted to see as much as possible, and having a local guide is super cool. Plus it was the same direction as my hotel, and I was pretty sure those two girls couldn't overpower me. I say girls, but they were probably my age.
Anyhow, they showed me around (and Old Beijing is pretty nifty. It is rather old: 600 years in fact). After walking for a while, they said they were tired, so why didn't we stop in this teahouse? I thought that seemed fun, and agreed, but the second I walked in the door, I remembered something that the Aussies had mentioned the day before. They were walking around in Shanghai, when they met some students who took them to a teahouse. Then, they were given various "samples" of tea, asked to buy some, and then informed that the "samples" they had just drank were, in fact, rather expensive. I became very suspicious that this was about to happen to me.
And wouldn't you know it, I was right. I tried some very nice tea, and sampled some very nice fruit. You might know I am not the biggest fan of tea, but that was before I came to Beijing and had some of the best tea in the world. The English can stuff it. The sludge they and the countries they colonized are drinking is nothing compared to some of this tea.
That said, after all was said and done, each cup of tea (I had 8, I think) was 30 yuan ( = $4.10 CAD). That's a pretty steep price to pay for a cup of tea. But when you consider the fact that the tea cups were doll-sized (because they were samples), it becomes ridiculous. They also charge you for the fruit. All told, the bill was 1100 Yuan ($150 CAD). Then, ever so conveniently, the girls didn't have enough to pay for their share, so I had to pay half. I wasn't upset though, and I'll tell you why.
I have now been successfully conned. I don't think it'll happen again. And I don't think I could ask for a better con. In the process of being conned, I got shown around Beijing, drank some excellent tea, and had a nice chat with some locals. (The con, here being that I'm pretty sure those two girls were working with the tea house.)
Anyhow, after that (no I didn't leave immediately. I had already been duped, what more could they possibly do) we wandered around for a little while, and then they stated that I absolutely had to have some Peking Duck, that being the dish that Beijing is famous for. Well, I DID want to try some Peking duck, so we took a taxi to a restaurant, I ordered some duck for me, and some fried rice for them (this was what they were getting out of it). The duck was quite good, and I don't at all regret that part of it.
Afterwards, they helped me get a taxi back to my hotel. Or they kind of did. My hotel was kind of a hole in the wall, so they directed him to take me to the North Entrance to the Forbidden City, which is about a 5 minute walk from my hotel. He took me to this place, let me out, and I found myself promptly lost. You see, I had memorized the way back to my hotel, but I had done so in daylight, and it was now quite dark. I knew I was in the right area, and I knew the name of the street I was looking for, so I decided to walk along the Forbidden City until I found it.
I finally found the street (Jingshan Street, in case you're wondering) and started going down it, only to realize that it definitely was not the right street. At this point, I was late to my hotel to get picked up, lost, and by myself in a dark city whose native language I didn't speak. I was also dressed in a ridiculous manner. Luckily for me, I don't panic until after things have finished happening, because a split second later I figured out that Jingshan was a crescent, and I had come in the other side, so I only needed to keep walking. I made it to my hotel, and my contact took me to the train station.
Once on the train, I sat down in my bunk (which is TINY. They have four people in about the same space as your standard closet.) A family with a crying baby came in and took the other three bunks. I was not impressed. However, the girl from the family asked me, for some reason, if I spoke French, and when I said yes, she asked if I could trade bunks with her grandmother, which I was happy to do. I was also very happy to speak to someone in French. You see, since I've got here, I've been fighting the urge to spout French at the Chinese, because for some reason I think they'll understand. Somewhere deep in my brain is the idea that all non-English languages are the same. So, finally getting to speak French, and to a Chinese person was pretty excellent.
I'll pick up from being on the train in the next post. But first, let me allay some suspicions you might have. The topic of my having a girlfriend is of great interest to the Chinese. And when I tell them I don't have one, they usually call me handsome, and then tell me I should find a nice Chinese girl while I am here. You'd think I'd enjoy being called handsome, but the Chinese say that to everyone, except for Dr. Chen, who thinks everyone is ugly.
The thing with finding a nice Chinese girl while I am here is that according to these same people, in China, if you have a girlfriend, that basically makes her your fiance. Among the things on my list to-do, getting engaged to a girl who doesn't reside in the same country as me, or speak the same language as me is pretty low down. So, instead of fending off offers to help me with my love life, I've started telling people I have a girlfriend. So you know, she is short, skinny, 20 years old and very beautiful. I don't know what her name is, or what she's like, but no one is very interested in her. But she is apparently very lucky to be my girlfriend, because I am such a prime piece of real estate.
Anyhow, my point is I made sure to tell these two Chinese Con artists about my fake girlfriend right away, so they were not at all trying to seduce me into anything. No, it was for pleasant company that I gave away so much money. What's more, I'm pretty convinced it was worth it, although I wouldn't do it again.
At any rate, here are some pictures of the Great Wall and Tienanmen square. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take some pictures of my shyster friends (of course).
Windows Live Spaces
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Emperor's Pads
Today was the first actual day of my tour, and it was pretty intense. But before we get to that, let me tell you something very important about Beijing that I forgot yesterday. It is VERY cold. Now, in terms of actual temperature, it is not that cold. I would say it hovered between 0 and -5 degrees Celsius today. But there was a cutting wind that I was not at all dressed for. I also made the silly mistake of not bringing any gloves. This is because in Canada, I just keep my hands in my sleeves. Thing is, when you're taking pictures, it is really hard to do that, and I took a lot of pictures. Almost 100, although not all of them were upload worthy. Indeed, only about 40 were. Point is, every time we left the bus, my hands went numb.
So, to begin with, we visited the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. The Forbidden City is the palace where the Emperor lived from the time it was built in 1420 until the last emperor renounced his throne in 1912. All told, 24 Emperors lived there. It is an incredible place. It was designed to copy the Purple Palace, where the gods lived in Heaven, since the Emperor was thought to be an Earthly manifestation of the divine. Because it was so holy, common people were not allowed inside, thus: Forbidden.
It is also a very big palace, with many different parts, for the emperor to do various kinds of activities. Indeed, the emperor would keep in shape just walking around to the different places he had to go. It was designed according to Feng Shui, with Earth in the middle, Water to the North, Fire to the South, Wood to the West and Metal to the East. It is incredibly designed and everything, down to the tiniest detail is so precise and beautiful. The emperor thought he was hot stuff, and he built the palace to prove it.
After the Forbidden City, we took off to the Temple of Heaven, which isn't so much a temple as it is a place where the Emperor went twice a year to nicely ask the gods for a good harvest. The Temple is even larger than the Forbidden City, except that it is mostly forested. There is something called "The Long Corridor" which is where they used to walk with the sacrifices. Now it is a place for street performers and street vendors to do their stuff. There were people singing, dancing, telling stories and selling you just about anything you ever wanted (more on this later).
Then we broke for lunch at a nice Chinese Restaurant, which obviously caters to Westerners, because not only did they serve us chicken wings and french fries, but the Chinese food they gave us was not prepared in the usual Chinese way. See, the Chinese like to eat all of the meat, not just the bits that we Westerners like to eat. So that means they don't bother to remove things like gristle, fat or bones, which combined with the fact that you can't exactly remove those things with chopsticks, makes for an interesting restaurant experience. But this place didn't do that. Everything was quite clean, and the food we did have was easily identifiable, which is not a trait most of the food I've eaten has.
After lunch, we went to the Emperor's Summer Palace, which is a huge expanse of land, even bigger than the Forbidden City. This Palace had an even longer "Long Corridor", the longest in the world. It also had a man made lake that some emperor had made as part of a garden for his mom. Those emperors really thought they were something special, let me tell you. They just loved to show off.
And that was the end of the tour. Except for the rather significant parts that I left out. First of all: the other members of my tour. They were all from New Zealand and Australia, and holy crap were they ever walking stereotypes. No one said Bruce, but I kept expecting them to. They were loud, crude, laughed a lot, and drank a bunch of beer. And that was just the women!
Secondly, our tour twice stopped at these Government stores. The first one was a pearl store, where the lady showed us some pearls inside an Oyster (which was still living when she pulled it apart). Then we were expected to look around and buy something. In this case, I rather defied their expectation. The cheapest thing there was some tiny Pearl Earrings, and they were $40 USD. Now they were very beautiful, and some of the necklaces there were the loveliest jewelery I have ever seen. But when prices start at $40 and rise steeply from there, I'm sorry, but there's no one I love that much.
You see, the reason we come to these government stores is for them to recoup the costs of the tour, which is subsidized. So the prices there are higher than what you might find elsewhere. I knew this going in, and so there was no way I was going to lose the advantage of my incredibly cheap tour by spending ridiculous amounts of money on jewelery.
Another place we went to was a Tea House. We were ushered into a room with a nice Chinese girl in a Kimono-y thing who gave us samples of various types of tea. Now this tea was very spectacular. I am not the biggest fan of tea, but I am a fan of this tea. She also explained the culture around tea, and it turns out there is a tea tree that is 1700 years old. I find that pretty darn impressive. Tea from this tree is rather expensive, as you might imagine.
Another thing: everywhere you go, there are people selling you stuff. And not in booths or something, just running around with merchandise in their hands, pushing it at you, nattering at you in Chinese. The things they were selling were this: Rolex watches, Gucci purses, Olympic toques, postcards, and occasionally food. You can be quite sure that none of these things were actually what they purported to be (with the possible exception of the food. But I wouldn't bet on that). These people flock where the tourists are. Now I usually just ignore them. But the Aussies (I'm going to lump the New Zealanders in with them), LOVED to play with these people. Some vendor would come up to them, and the Aussie would say, "One Yuan" (One Yuan = $0.13 CAD) The seller would say something like "50 Yuan", and the Aussie would repeat "One Yuan." This would go on for quite some time, with the seller lowering and lowering his price, until eventually the Aussie would start coming up and they'd meet somewhere around 15 Yuan = $2 CAD (which is ridiculously cheap, even for imitation Gucci). Thing was, these Aussies weren't buying things they needed. Nope, they were just screwing around for the heck of it, and would usually end up mocking the poor street vendor for a while before they eventually bought whatever crap they were selling.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was very cold. I did not pack enough warm clothing, because I did not think it would be so frigid. So, I wanted to buy some gloves. They were a very nice pair, they say "The North Face" on them, which is a good brand (except they are likely not actually North Face). The guy offered me 40, and I got him down to 15, with some help from the Aussies. I also got a Toque, for an extra 5 yuan. That's about $2.75 CAD for a nice pair of gloves and a Toque. Thing is, I don't have the heart for bargaining. I like to see a price, decide if I like it, and then buy something. I don't want to argue with some guy over it, because he has no qualms about rambling on and on about how I am cheating him out of money, which makes me feel bad, although he is clearly lying, or he wouldn't sell it to me. Anyways, it is quite an experience, but I prefer the old "read the flier" method. I like me some price tags.
Then, once I got back to the hotel, I decided I need a new coat. I am going to the Great Wall tomorrow (which is north) and then to Xi'an, which is just as cold as here. So, I went to one of the shops on the street, half-heartedly bargained with the guy, and bought me a bitchin' coat:
This is the same style of coat and hat that the People's Liberation Army (China's national army) uses. I bought this coat for three reasons:
1) It is really really warm. The second I put it on, I was warm outside for the first time since I got here.
2) I wanted, as I have wanted for years, a long coat. This is the only style of long coat 'round here that isn't a woman's coat.
3) I love the style. I happen to think the PLA has really stylish outfits, even if they are supporting a repressive reigeme.
I see poor people wearing these all over the place, because it is very cheap, and very warm. In fact, by purchasing this coat, I have gone from Rich Tourist to Possible Homeless Person, and people have started treating me accordingly. If they don't look too closely at me, people will happily push me out of the way (not violently, just taking my place in line), and if they DO look to closely at me, they have this look of surprise, and then they gape for a second. Every time. I haven't got this many double takes in a long long long time. Although I think that is largely the hat and coat together.
Anyhow, I am in love with this coat, and I may never take it off. My hotel room is also very cold, because I have a remote control for the heating system, but I have no idea where to point it, so my room is about 13 degrees. Last night I had to sit wrapped in a blanket, but TONIGHT, I have my coat. I am warm warm warm.
OK, so here are the pictures. Flickr was going to make me pay for more storage space, so now I have moved on to Windows Live Spaces. This blog is rapidly becoming a "Picture Storage Sites of the Internet" tour.
Windows Live Spaces
So, to begin with, we visited the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. The Forbidden City is the palace where the Emperor lived from the time it was built in 1420 until the last emperor renounced his throne in 1912. All told, 24 Emperors lived there. It is an incredible place. It was designed to copy the Purple Palace, where the gods lived in Heaven, since the Emperor was thought to be an Earthly manifestation of the divine. Because it was so holy, common people were not allowed inside, thus: Forbidden.
It is also a very big palace, with many different parts, for the emperor to do various kinds of activities. Indeed, the emperor would keep in shape just walking around to the different places he had to go. It was designed according to Feng Shui, with Earth in the middle, Water to the North, Fire to the South, Wood to the West and Metal to the East. It is incredibly designed and everything, down to the tiniest detail is so precise and beautiful. The emperor thought he was hot stuff, and he built the palace to prove it.
After the Forbidden City, we took off to the Temple of Heaven, which isn't so much a temple as it is a place where the Emperor went twice a year to nicely ask the gods for a good harvest. The Temple is even larger than the Forbidden City, except that it is mostly forested. There is something called "The Long Corridor" which is where they used to walk with the sacrifices. Now it is a place for street performers and street vendors to do their stuff. There were people singing, dancing, telling stories and selling you just about anything you ever wanted (more on this later).
Then we broke for lunch at a nice Chinese Restaurant, which obviously caters to Westerners, because not only did they serve us chicken wings and french fries, but the Chinese food they gave us was not prepared in the usual Chinese way. See, the Chinese like to eat all of the meat, not just the bits that we Westerners like to eat. So that means they don't bother to remove things like gristle, fat or bones, which combined with the fact that you can't exactly remove those things with chopsticks, makes for an interesting restaurant experience. But this place didn't do that. Everything was quite clean, and the food we did have was easily identifiable, which is not a trait most of the food I've eaten has.
After lunch, we went to the Emperor's Summer Palace, which is a huge expanse of land, even bigger than the Forbidden City. This Palace had an even longer "Long Corridor", the longest in the world. It also had a man made lake that some emperor had made as part of a garden for his mom. Those emperors really thought they were something special, let me tell you. They just loved to show off.
And that was the end of the tour. Except for the rather significant parts that I left out. First of all: the other members of my tour. They were all from New Zealand and Australia, and holy crap were they ever walking stereotypes. No one said Bruce, but I kept expecting them to. They were loud, crude, laughed a lot, and drank a bunch of beer. And that was just the women!
Secondly, our tour twice stopped at these Government stores. The first one was a pearl store, where the lady showed us some pearls inside an Oyster (which was still living when she pulled it apart). Then we were expected to look around and buy something. In this case, I rather defied their expectation. The cheapest thing there was some tiny Pearl Earrings, and they were $40 USD. Now they were very beautiful, and some of the necklaces there were the loveliest jewelery I have ever seen. But when prices start at $40 and rise steeply from there, I'm sorry, but there's no one I love that much.
You see, the reason we come to these government stores is for them to recoup the costs of the tour, which is subsidized. So the prices there are higher than what you might find elsewhere. I knew this going in, and so there was no way I was going to lose the advantage of my incredibly cheap tour by spending ridiculous amounts of money on jewelery.
Another place we went to was a Tea House. We were ushered into a room with a nice Chinese girl in a Kimono-y thing who gave us samples of various types of tea. Now this tea was very spectacular. I am not the biggest fan of tea, but I am a fan of this tea. She also explained the culture around tea, and it turns out there is a tea tree that is 1700 years old. I find that pretty darn impressive. Tea from this tree is rather expensive, as you might imagine.
Another thing: everywhere you go, there are people selling you stuff. And not in booths or something, just running around with merchandise in their hands, pushing it at you, nattering at you in Chinese. The things they were selling were this: Rolex watches, Gucci purses, Olympic toques, postcards, and occasionally food. You can be quite sure that none of these things were actually what they purported to be (with the possible exception of the food. But I wouldn't bet on that). These people flock where the tourists are. Now I usually just ignore them. But the Aussies (I'm going to lump the New Zealanders in with them), LOVED to play with these people. Some vendor would come up to them, and the Aussie would say, "One Yuan" (One Yuan = $0.13 CAD) The seller would say something like "50 Yuan", and the Aussie would repeat "One Yuan." This would go on for quite some time, with the seller lowering and lowering his price, until eventually the Aussie would start coming up and they'd meet somewhere around 15 Yuan = $2 CAD (which is ridiculously cheap, even for imitation Gucci). Thing was, these Aussies weren't buying things they needed. Nope, they were just screwing around for the heck of it, and would usually end up mocking the poor street vendor for a while before they eventually bought whatever crap they were selling.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was very cold. I did not pack enough warm clothing, because I did not think it would be so frigid. So, I wanted to buy some gloves. They were a very nice pair, they say "The North Face" on them, which is a good brand (except they are likely not actually North Face). The guy offered me 40, and I got him down to 15, with some help from the Aussies. I also got a Toque, for an extra 5 yuan. That's about $2.75 CAD for a nice pair of gloves and a Toque. Thing is, I don't have the heart for bargaining. I like to see a price, decide if I like it, and then buy something. I don't want to argue with some guy over it, because he has no qualms about rambling on and on about how I am cheating him out of money, which makes me feel bad, although he is clearly lying, or he wouldn't sell it to me. Anyways, it is quite an experience, but I prefer the old "read the flier" method. I like me some price tags.
Then, once I got back to the hotel, I decided I need a new coat. I am going to the Great Wall tomorrow (which is north) and then to Xi'an, which is just as cold as here. So, I went to one of the shops on the street, half-heartedly bargained with the guy, and bought me a bitchin' coat:
This is the same style of coat and hat that the People's Liberation Army (China's national army) uses. I bought this coat for three reasons:
1) It is really really warm. The second I put it on, I was warm outside for the first time since I got here.
2) I wanted, as I have wanted for years, a long coat. This is the only style of long coat 'round here that isn't a woman's coat.
3) I love the style. I happen to think the PLA has really stylish outfits, even if they are supporting a repressive reigeme.
I see poor people wearing these all over the place, because it is very cheap, and very warm. In fact, by purchasing this coat, I have gone from Rich Tourist to Possible Homeless Person, and people have started treating me accordingly. If they don't look too closely at me, people will happily push me out of the way (not violently, just taking my place in line), and if they DO look to closely at me, they have this look of surprise, and then they gape for a second. Every time. I haven't got this many double takes in a long long long time. Although I think that is largely the hat and coat together.
Anyhow, I am in love with this coat, and I may never take it off. My hotel room is also very cold, because I have a remote control for the heating system, but I have no idea where to point it, so my room is about 13 degrees. Last night I had to sit wrapped in a blanket, but TONIGHT, I have my coat. I am warm warm warm.
OK, so here are the pictures. Flickr was going to make me pay for more storage space, so now I have moved on to Windows Live Spaces. This blog is rapidly becoming a "Picture Storage Sites of the Internet" tour.
Windows Live Spaces
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