China Trip Diary:
Prelude: Ike: woke up nice and late (but still 30 mins before my alarm) on Saturday morning. Made sure everything was packed up and tooke off for the bus stop for my bus at 11:30. Caught it, got to Nagoya, and purchased my return ticket for when I get home on the 10th of January. Thanks to bethany, I had no problem finding the train station and catching my train on out to the airport. I then got my flight out to Korea with no problems, although it was either delayed (or the travel angency got it wrong) by 30 minutes, and I ended up getting into Korea about 8:25 and met up with bethany at 9. We then went to the hotel and got our room (which was actually really nice!)
Shenyang
We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to catch the first shuttle to the airport since our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:20am. Lucky duck us, our flight to Shenyang ended up being delayed by and hour, and then another hour. So we boarded just about 10:20 or so, which was when it was supposed to be taking off even after the delays. Since we hadn’t heard a ‘last boarding call’ yet, and had been grabbing a bite to eat with some vouchers we had been given by the airliine because of the delay, we hurried back to make sure we didn’t miss the flight. Lucky us, turns out that apparently everyone else was just taking their sweet time as well. We didn’t end up taking off until say, nearly 11 or so. The flight was still only about 1/3 full, so I’m not sure if people just bailed on their flight or it didn’t have many people booked.
Note on asian airlines: awesome. Metal silverware, a bit roomier, the vouchers, nice flight attendants (both in appearance, language skills, and overall demeanor), in flight meals on 2 hour flights, etc etc. Stuff like this makes the whole experience much better than flights are stateside.
So we arrived in Shenyang and immediately noticed that it was pretty blurry on the horizon, an ample combination of both the fog (that delayed us) and pollution. We met Brian at the airport and he took us back to his place to drop off our stuff. His apartment is fantastic! We were both overwhelmed by the scale of things here as opposed to our adoptive countries. The roads are huge, the buildings are huge, there’s just a much larger sense of space then as opposed to Japan and Korea. Oh, and the bonus was the weather up here in the NW part of China. On the flight, they said it would be -11 C, or a balmy 5 F. In other words, “Balls ass cold.” –Bethany.
So, Brian’s place is really nice, and it was very nice of him and his family to shack us up for a couple of days. We’re also big fans of the family portraits that are around the house, both because of the genuine cuteness of them and partially because of the LOL factor associated with them. The best are the portraits of brian, particularly in his room. Seems a bit narcissistic to have 3 large portraits (and 1 wall scroll) of yourself in your own bedroom. But I must say, I slept soundly with 4 pairs of brian’s eyes looking over me. “Diamond cuts diamond, indeed.”
After dropping off our crap at Brian’s apartment, we set out to find a travel agent. Well, it turns out the first place we went doesn’t sell train tickets. The next two places we went were “closed” but they still had people sitting there at the desk, lights and heat on. I mean, if they’re closed, why not just lock up and not pay any of those bills? After we gave up on the travel agents (since it was Sunday) we went directly to the train station and bought our ticket on an express 4 hour train to Beijing on Tuesday morning. Then Brian dropped us off on some main shopping district so he could go spend a couple hours with his girlfriend. Well, Bethany couldn’t last very long in the super cold weather since she didn’t have her long underwear on. We took refuge in a shopping mall where we got a popsickle to sooth our aching throats (from the pollution) and later in a McDonald’s where we got 2 peach pies to warm us up!! Finally we went back to meet Brian at 5:30, but he didn’t show up until 5:45, and we were pretty cold by that time! Then him and Camellia took us to an AMAZING restaurant and we ordered a million different dishes. I guess we had to order at least 400RMB worth of food for the big table that we wanted. It’s a good thing we had such a big table, because we filled it up with dishes. We tried frog, chicken, chicken head, chicken neck, fish, silk worm (you don’t eat the heart or the outer skin, and it was surprisingly delicious), pig kidney, aorta, beef “pizzle” (penis), taro cakes, delicious green beans, boiled dumplings, Ike had a super spicey chicken wing, local beer, and delicious plum juice, and many MANY other dishes. It was pretty amazing! And they were nice enough to treat us to the meal. After dinner we headed back to Brian’s house and after showering both of us pretty much crashed!!!
Today we got up and went the the Shenyang Forbidden Palace. It was built as a contemporary to the Forbidden palace in Beijing (both were built by the ruling Qing (ch-ing) dynasty that came out of Manchuria and were originally based in Shenyang. The palace was pretty even on a cold day like today (but luckily there had been a light dusting of snow the night before). The best part was probably either a few of the architectural features or the main courtyard area that had collections of weapons / armaments of the ‘8-banner army’ of the Qing, whom apparently Brian’s family can claim membership to. (The yellow banner section at least.) Afterwards we briefly looked through a little shopping/schmaltzy souveneir shop. We were all wrapped up by 1 and ready for Brian to pick us up.
But then he didn’t show up. Then it was 1:30, and we thought, maybe brian got the times mixed up (since he had briefly suggested 1:30, but we changed to 1), then 1:45 rolled around. And we were freezing. At ten til 2 we started to try and figure out where the hell we could call him from to figure out WTF was going on, as the public phones we had seen all required a card. Meandering around in the cold and bewildered state in a country in which neither of us could speak a lick of the language made for some frustrating decisions. We even tried the tourist information section at the palace but were just pointed to another card-phone. By pure luck, we spoted white guys #6&7 (yes, we’re keeping count) and asked if they spoke English, and by the grace of god, they did. And they had a cell phone we could borrow. We called Brian, and found out his car had broken down and he was 5 mins away. Whew.
Afterwards we went and snagged some food with him at another local place (which was again quite delicious, and cheap) and then proceeded to head around town for a bit. We snapped a couple of pictures of a Giant Mao statue in the middle of town and then made our way out to a museum about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, but unfortunately it was closed so we didn’t get to check it out. Briant took us by Shenyang’s huge Mao statue on the way home. This is one of the perfect Mao statues not only for it’s embracing of Maoism but also because it was built to last and is huge. Next we proceeded to do was come back here and while Brian is out having dinner with his g/f for her b-day (with both sides of her family) we’re writing thise and just relaxing. We may be heading out for karaoke later if we feel up to it, but we’ll see.
Initial impressions of China:
BUSY: tons of people, everywhere, all the time.
Dirty: both bethany and I had sore throats after several hours yesterday from the pollutions, luckily the breeze today kept the place pretty clean and easier on our lungs.
Loud: first, there’s no nice way to put it: Chinese is an ugly language. Particularly in the advertisements. It’s like aural assault. Not a fan particularly.
Materialism in Asia, and China in particular, is rampant and seems to be the new diety of the area (and this will come home even more in Beijing and Shanghai.)
People here spit all the time, everywhere. In Korea this happens a lot and while isn’t polite, isn’t terribly out of order (while blowing your nose in public is….) Here though, it’s everywhere and including inside of restaurants. Weird.
No TP in the public restrooms, another WTF. Including at the palace today which had a really modern bathroom, but no TP. What’s that all about?
Bethany’s surprised by how many bicycles there are here, Ike not so much (reminds him of Osaka, but they’re very run down here.)
Driving in China is absolutly out of control. If there aren’t stoplights, there’s no signs at all. I haven’t seen a stop sign yet. Lots of places say no left turn and instead have you turn right and then flip a U-turn. Also, people cross the street any and everywhere. Frankly, I think it’s a miracle I haven’t seen more people getting just wrecked by the cars.
There is a HUGE variety of makes and models here, a large percentage of them are new as well. Since China has plants that built tons of different cars, we see all of these different brands, but with the local chinese plant also listed on it. So you may see a Ford that says it was made in Shanghai, or a Toyota made in Beijing, etc. Whereas in Korea you only see Hyandai or Kia and Japan you’ll only see the Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Daihatsu, etc.
Beijing:
We woke up just shy of 6:20 to get prepped for our train to Beijing. Brian was kind enough to help us out by calling our hotel to make sure we could come a day early, as well as writing a couple of notecards so we can hopefully take care of the stuff to get to Xi’an. We then made our way to the train station. We bid farewell to Brian not far into the train station, as we had to get our tickets checked. We then hopped in line to catch our train, and boarded at about 10 til 8. It was an express train and was very nice. Pretty similar in design to the Shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan, and hit top speaks of about 250 kph (right around 150 mph). It was a four hour ride from Shenyang to Beijing. We dozed for the first couple hours and then watched part of The Golden Compass for the last bit. (fyi, that movie is pretty blech, unless you’re a fan of heavy-handed attempts to talk about how the Catholic Church is an evil entity that tries to stifle free throught, then go right ahead.)
We arrived in Beijing and got off the train and went on out. Brian told us to go ahead and try and take a cab to our place, so we got in line for the cabs and walked until we found a cab to get into. The guy put our stuff in and we hopped in and showed him our paper. He read it for a bit, then proceeded to ramble on in Chinese, which of course we can’t understand. So then he makes it clear that he won’t be taking us. We’re both pretty baffled as to why, so we find another taxi and point to the map and ask him, he says no as well. So now we’re both pretty flustered as to why the taxi’s refuse to take us to our stop, but we assume that it’s because it’s only about 3 KM or so away, and they only charge 2rmb/km so it wouldn’t be as profitable for them. We think. So we make our way back out of the taxi area and there are lots of people out there who bug you if you want a taxi, we figure, what the heck, if they’ll take us, and ask them. They say 200rmb (32$) and we laugh and say no, we’ll take the subway, the guy says we should name our price. So I said 50 rmb, and he says 50 each, 100 for both. I told him to forget it and we went to find the subway. We had some difficulty finding the subway but after wandering around for a bit we were able to find it. The tickets were 2rmb each (so all of $.75 total) and made our way to the subway. As part of the Olympic preparations, they have a brand-spankin’ new subway, and it’s as good as anything I’ve seen in Japan. We got to our stop and headed on up. We were able to use our map inside the guide book coupled with a map from the website for our hotel. Traveling along the large road we took all the turns we needed too and were able to figure out the roads we needed to take, but it increasingly got more and more secluded and a little more, lived-in shall we say. After walking down an alley (which was also a street but was called an alley) we passed the hospital that we new was on our map and turned at the next cross-alley thinking it was the route. Luckily it was, and we spotted our hotel and checked in. The receptionist gave us an option for for either a king-sized ‘single’ with two windows or the ‘standard double’ with no windows. The king one was much better so we took that. The hotel has a nice quant feel to it, along with a fantastic staff to lend us a hand. We then went out and found a place for lunch which was very cheap and the staff even spoke some english as well as having a menu in english for us. Our entire meal with drinks was $4 ahha. We also stopped by the convienance store next door to snag some stuff for our hotel, i.e. water drinks and fruit. We then went back to the hotel, fired off the e-mails to let people know we had made it, and then took off again, this time for the shopping section not too far from us (since it was coming to later afternoon.) The walk was a bit far but we had no problems getting there, which was a plus. The shopping district was pretty busy and had tons of upscale places as well as the more typical touristy places. We also stopped by a church that is out front and met a guy who told us he teaches at the Sunday school there. He showed us an art exhibition that they had in the Sunday school as well as some things they are selling as a fundraiser for the church. We bought a wall scroll they had there for a smidgen more than the wall scrolls they were selling out on the shopping stalls but have since noticed that the guy wasn’t entirely honest with us about the scroll. We’re on the fence on this whole thing because on one hand: it was in the church complex and was in the basement of the Sunday school area (the church’s area was all fenced off) and we’ll feel pretty bad if even the Churches are running scams here, but who knows. Live and learn huh? We picked up several red traditional chinese ‘tassels’ for lack of a better description. Bethany also got a pretty doll in traditional Chinese dress. By this time it was getting dark so we made our way back home. The rest of the evening we’ll be relaxing and watching a movie before we try and go to the Summer Palace tomorrow.
Interesting things for Beijing: Day 1:
Interesting mix of modern and traditional archetecture. Again, the sense of scale here is pretty overwhelming. In some respects, it’s almost like a large city in America multiplied by 6. So when you see a large building in America, here you see 6 of them all going up side by side. On the train platform we also saw a van driving, like, down in the station. We saw several nuclear plants on the way to Beijing from the train. Bethany noticed that there are many more corn fields here than in Korea. She also noticed that the greenhouses here have these mats made out of straw to cover the greenhouse or could be rolled up to let the sun in or down to help trap the heat.
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