Ni Hao! We just got back from a 10 day trek around China and are so excited to share with you our travels.
We began our adventure last Friday. Our flight left from Shenzhen quite early on Saturday morning, so we decided to take a bus on Friday night to the border and go through customs instead of risking being late on Saturday morning. Shenzhen is a border city in China in the same province as Hong Kong. It is considered to be a growing "financial capital" of the world... however we wouldn't recommend visiting. However, it is rumored that they have fantastic massages there... supposedly you can just go to Shenzhen on an afternoon, have a phenomenal massage, and spend the night in the massage chair! Then head back to Hong Kong the next day - we haven't tried it, but that's the "thing to do" in Shenzhen.
Once arriving to Shenzhen, we tried to pull cash out of the ATM - but since it was a holiday week, there was no cash in ANY ATM in the whole airport. We were so worried that our cards didn't work in China. Could you imagine the amount of trouble we would have been in? We found an ATM and headed to our hotel. After hopping in the taxi, we realized that our taxi driver wasn't turning on the taxi meter... it was Thailand all over again! The driver didn't speak English and typed in 100 in his phone once we arrived at the hotel - 100 yuan (about 20 USD) for a 1km taxi ride? I don't think so! We had to scream at him and help him to realize that we weren't two dumb Americans - we got him down to 20 yuan which was way overpriced, but much better than 100. It's absolutely crazy how much these people will try to scam any and every tourist. Ugh.
Saturday
Our flight left early on Saturday morning - we were off to Beijing!!! Once we arrived, we found our way to our FABULOUS hotel. We booked a 5 star hotel for only 30 USD per night! We couldn't believe that staying in this hotel was cheaper than every hostel in Beijing. It was great.
After checking in, we met Caitlin's friend from Bank of America at the Temple of Heaven. Let me back track just a bit, the Friday before we left was the National Holiday. Little did we know that the National Holiday, which was only one day in HK, is a whole week long holiday in China. We found this out just after booking our flight. It seems that all 3 billion Chinese residents were in Beijing/Shanghai this week. It was absolutely horrible. Everywhere we went was extremely crowded. Hong Kong is extremely crowded also, but the people in HK aren't nearly as rude as everyone in China was. They were pushing, pulling, nudging, shoving... etc etc you get the drift. I don't think there was anywhere that we weren't stepped on and pushed. AND, they don't find it rude! We couldn't believe it, but it made the whole trip that much more of an experience. We had to join in on the pushing and shoving fun to even get into the subway, let alone walk the streets in China.
We also discovered that the Chinese don't believe in lines. Basically, whether in line for tickets, the metro, the toilet, wherever, it was first come, first serve. Amanda even had someone reach their money across her from behind to purchase a ticket for the Summer Palace. It was ridiculous. We got so annoyed every time we were cut in line... so like before, we just had to join into the fun. It was so childish, we are so thankful of the ways in Hong Kong and America.
The worst part about the experience was the cleanliness. The people in China hawk the phlegm in their throats everywhere. About every 60 seconds you would hear the terrible hawking and spitting every where. No matter where they are - the restaurant, the street, tourist areas - everywhere! This sound was worse than nails on a chalk board. So hawking, terrible... but not as terrible as "squatty potties" (our nickname). Toilets are a rare thing in China. They have holes in the ground where you basically squat and do your business. And they were dirrrrrty, so dirty that you would need to pull the bottoms of your pants up before you walked into the bathrooms. Once you got the hang of the potty, it wasn't so terrible - but they would definitely not fly in America.
The most funny, yet most disgusting part of the whole uncleanly part of China were split pants. Children and toddlers didn't wear diapers, which makes sense given the level of poverty in China. So basically, these kids had a split in their pants, huge gaping hole exposing their entire area. Then when the children needed to relieve themselves, the parents would hold them over a trash can (if they were being conscious of others, sometimes they would hold them up over grass) and let them do their business. Strange, disgusting, terrible.
Ok, enough grossing ya'll out. Back to the fun... We headed to the Temple of Heaven, which was crowded! This temple was visited by the emporers of the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray for a good harvest for the upcoming year. The architecture was gorgeous and surrounded by beautiful lawns. After checking out the view, we hopped in a cab and headed to a Japanese Hot Pot restaurant. Hot Pot is a very common food in many Asian countries. Each person has their own pot filled with some type of liquid, some spicy, some meat flavored. You name it. Then the table orders meats, veggies, noodles, and sauces. Each person can choose how to build their own meal and drops the food into the hot pot to cook their food themselves. After letting it simmer for a few minutes, you can pull the delicious food out of the pot and add your special creation of sauce. It was great!!! Finally, we headed to Propaganda, a bar near the university in Beijing. The drinks were cheap and the company was great. What a fun way to end our first night in Beijing.
Sunday
The next day we headed to some popular tourist sites in Beijing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. Each of these sites were historic ruins of Beijing. Tiananmen Square is the largest, and most busy, historic square in the world and has great cultural significance to many important times in Chinese history. It is positioned right next to the Forbidden City which is the imperial palace to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. This large historic site was once forbidden but to only the emperors and their households, but have been open to the public for many years. After seeing these sites, we headed to the Summer Palace which was really gorgeous. But, each of these sites were extremely, extremely crowded! We could hardly enjoy the sites, let alone even know what we were looking at because there were SO many people there. We were so annoyed that we quickly saw what we came to see and headed to Houhai, a lake in central Beijing with great shopping and dining. After ducking into a busy Chinese restaurant, we were pleasantly surprised with some wonderful food. We ordered Sichuan beef and Kung Pau chicken and enjoyed both dishes. Such wonderful Chinese food - we will definitely miss this back in the U.S. Next, we headed off to the Silk Market for some shopping and even more bargaining. Unfortunately, we arrived just as the market was about to close but we were able to make a few souvenir purchases. This market in Beijing is 7 stories high, each filled with cubes of individuals selling "hand made" Chinese goods. It was so much fun to shop and see what kinds of great finds we could make. We definitely learned how to haggle, but really enjoy shopping at places with set prices. It's quite a terrible feeling to leave a store and not know if you got a fair price. After shopping, we headed back to the hotel for some R&R.
Monday
Monday morning, we went to 798 Factory. This was our favorite part of Beijing. This area, which was quite large, used to be an old factory which was reconstructed to be an art district. There were rows and rows of galleries and exhibitions wedged between cute boutiques. When we first arrived, we enjoyed a nice lunch outside on the patio - which was a terrible idea. What I forgot to mention is how very scarce white (for lack of a better word)/blonde haired/blue eyed people are. We were bombarded with requests for photographs with adults, their children, basically everyone. Also, many people felt that it was OK to take random pictures of us, like we wouldn't notice. Caitlin thought it was so rude and would give a scowl whenever she caught someone snapping a pic. Our whole lunch was spent taking photos with passerby's. Anyhow, we spent hours shopping and admiring the artwork with occasional stops for coffee and tea. Such a delightful day. After exhausting ourselves completely, we stopped for a bottle of Spanish wine and tapas at a cute restaurant. Our waitress spoke English and entertained us with the story of her life and many questions about American history. We finished our drinks and headed off to Wanfujing road, aka shopping and snack street. This very tourist area was lined with small shops, snack outlets, and lots of lights. When many people think of China, they thing of crazy food... well this was it. Many of these snacks weren't quite snacks, but bugs and wild animals on sticks. Amanda had went to this street with the intent of trying scorpions on a stick (of course, Caitlin wouldn't dare given family experiences with scorpions). Once we got up to the window and inspected the scorpions, we realized that they were STILL ALIVE. We believe that they would have fried them before serving them, but didn't dare take a chance. We grabbed another snack and headed home after a long day.
Tuesday
Today was the big day for our journey to the Great Wall of China!! We followed the guidebook and got on a bus direct to Huairo to then switch to a minibus to take us to a less touristy section of the Great Wall. Turns out that the guidebook is 3 years old and the bus numbers have changed. After 30 minutes on the bus, it stopped and all of the people at the stop were motioning for us to get off the bus. I showed the Chinese word for Huairo to another passenger and he nodded for us to get off. We discovered after we got off that the stop was far from Huairo. We were surrounded by men telling us they would take us in taxies to the Great Wall. We walked away to escape them but some of them followed us into a store where we tried to get help from the store employees who told us to go with the "taxi drivers". Our Thailand trip and research taught us to NEVER take gypsy taxies. We ended up yelling in mixed Chinese and English to get the gypsy drivers to leave us alone. We then ran across the street and walked to the next bus stop to head back to Beijing or grab a metered taxi to the Great Wall. Luckily, after almost an hour of walking around stressed looking for a taxi, we found one who was willing to take us to where we needed to go. Once we finally made it to the Great Wall, it was all worth it. We took a lift similar to a ski lift up to the Great wall where we hiked around and took in the majesty of one of the seven wonders of the world. We took tons of pictures and got a good workout climbing the millions of stairs of the Great Wall and then headed to the Toboggan! We sat on plastic seats that had a stick to pull or push for brakes and speed. We coasted down a curvy silver metal toboggan route all the way to the bottom. It was the perfect way to end our Great Wall Trip, but would have been better if the grandma in front of us hadn't been slowing us down!
We latched onto some British travelers who knew Chinese and followed them onto a bus back to Beijing so we would avoid the debacle we had on our first trip. We were exhausted but were determined to find a Beijing Style Peking Duck restaurant. The metro stop we wanted was closed so we got off at the next one and stumbled upon a huge duck restaurant. After sitting down to begin our meal we realized that this was one of the top duck restaurants in Beijing. It was HUGE! The restaurant had 3 stories and had a team that had an incredible system to get hundreds of people seated fed and out of there in record time. We started off with duck egg rolls as an appetizer. The waitress helped us order and then she taught us how to eat the duck in the traditional way. A chef came out and carved the whole duck in front of us and then the waitress took slices of duck and dipped them in a sweet sauce. She then put the duck and Chinese onions in a tortilla and wrapped it up. The meal was absolutely incredible and we have to find a duck restaurant in Hong Kong as a substitute on Thanksgiving.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to leave the "5 Star" hotel with no air conditioning, to head out to Nanjing. Our friend Grady is studying abroad in Nanjing, which is known as the grandfather of Beijing. Nanjing used to be the capital of China and is home to the Ming tomb site. On the flight, Caitlin met the girl next to us who was studying at a local university in Nanjing. When we arrived, everything was in Chinese and we could tell we weren't in Beijing anymore! Luckily our new friend called our hotel and got directions for us and helped us on our way. After taking a long bus ride we got off and did not find the hotel across from the stop as promised. After getting some help from locals and wandering around for a while, we discovered that "across the street" really meant turn right then go straight and take another right after 15 minutes... go figure.
After checking into Motel 168 and discovering how nice it was, we headed out to a Singaporean restaurant. The menu included: bull frogs, pigeon, pig intestines, brains of some sort, the list goes on and on but I think you get the picture of what types of entrees were available. We settled on curry and chicken wings to be safe, and we were very happy with our decision. After lunch we went to the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum and the Ming Tomb area which was not too exciting. The area was pretty but we didn't really know the history behind the historic monuments so it wasn't as meaningful to us. Ming's Tomb was weird because he was buried beneath a building which had 2 floors of tourist shops in a building with traditional Chinese architecture. The commercialization of his tomb was especially entertaining because they sold scorpion juice with a scorpion in the bottom.
We left Ming's Tomb, checking off another world heritage site and concluding that we prefer non-touristy activities while traveling. For dinner, we met up with Grady for an all you can eat and drink Japanese teppanyaki restaurant. The chef came in wearing a typical chef's hat and moved his knives ridiculously fast as he chopped and cooked the dishes. Grady ordered eel, oysters, beef, shrimp fried rice, lamb chops and fresh mango. We had a few sake bombs throughout dinner to wash down the delicious Japanese dishes while sharing our stories and views of our travels in China so far. Once we were completely stuffed we headed to a dance club where there were only locals sitting around tables playing dice games. Tables ended up being 800yuan which is absurdly expensive, so we headed to the dance floor which could be used for free. The only catch.... there was no one dancing - so the three of us decided to start our own dance party. Everyone stared at the crazy foreigners who were dancing up a storm by themselves at only 8pm. After a while, one guy thought it would be fun to get a picture with us and join in on the dancing. Soon it caught on and we started a huge dance party with everyone dancing around us. It was a blast to watch the locals have a dance off and to get the shy girls out of there shells and dancing. We got pretty tired after an hour of dancing so we decided to head to an American bar where all the exchange students got free beers and signed their names all over the walls. We both signed our names to leave our mark on Nanjing! We ended the evening by playing drinking games with the Grady's friends who were all from UofA (we put aside rivalries for the night).
Thursday
Thursday morning we headed to the Nanjing Train Station to grab a train to Shanghai. We knew that this was definitely going to be an issue - but definitely didn't foresee so many problems. We had asked a few people how to purchase a train ticket and what the best way to get to Shanghai was and received many answers: "oh, it's too busy because of the holiday weekend, so get a bus," "they are sold out," "I don't know"... the suggestions went on, and on. So, we went to the train station, can't hurt to try, right? Once we arrived, every single listing was in Chinese - no English or pinyin spelling of where the train went to. We were approached by a nice Chinese lady who asked if we needed help - since we had had so much luck with the Chinese and been so blessed with trustworthy help, we decided to take her advice. She didn't speak any English, so this was clue #1 that this was a bad idea. We had thought that she said the trains were sold out, so take a bus. She kindly wrote down the Chinese version of "bus to Shanghai" and we proceeded to follow her out to the bus station... or what we thought was the bus station. We get outside and are trying to communicate with her about where we should go next - but no luck. She begins to write down what she means in Chinese and shows it to us like we would understand the Chinese writing... whatever. She then proceeds to try to get one of the younger people standing close by to translate, but he couldn't understand what she wanted and started making weird looks on his face like it was a bad idea. We realize what was happening, she starts screaming at the boy, and we run (with our luggage) far, far away. So we are outside a "mini-bus," that we believe her husband owns, and she basically wanted to take us to Shanghai for 150 yuan. YEAH RIGHT... 150 yuan and an organ. No way, Jose. We quickly walked back to the train station, waited in line, and actually received a 1st class train ticket to Shanghai, departing in about 30 minutes. Talk about luck.
It was an extremely quick train ride from Nanjing to Shanghai. Once we arrived, it took us about 2 hours to find our way around the city to our hotel. But we made it and headed out to People's Square for a traditional Shanghai dinner. One of our classmates from HK PolyU made some pretty phenomenal suggestions for our trip and suggested Lau Zhengxing for dinner in Shanghai. We arrived at the brightly lit People's Square and found the restaurant. It was so great - we ate crab, crab dumplings, vegetable wontons with great chili sauce, and fried chicken wings with peppers. It was so amazing! After dinner we headed to the Bund, which is an area on the edge of Shanghai that looks across the harbor to the beautiful skyline in Shanghai. On our way, we stopped at a tourist shop where we were mesmerized with these heating pad, massage things. This young Chinese salesman enticed us with these strange pink pockets of goo. When you bend around a piece of metal inside, the whole entire pack turns colors and heats up. He was quite the salesman and sold us quite a few of these babies, at a discounted price, of course. Turns out, we were scammed - we used ours on the way home and they became hard once they got hot. Oh well - after reading the directions, we found out how they actually worked, and didn't feel so scammed. Watch out family - you may be getting one of these as a souvenir. Anyways, back to the Bund... We decided that we enjoyed Shanghai's skyline more than Hong Kong. The Bund is filled with beautifully maintained, European style, historic buildings, then you are able to look across the harbor to the modern style of downtown. We enjoyed the view while people watching (which is never boring in China) before heading home for the night.
Friday
We woke up bright and early and headed to a nearby hotel to meet up with a tour group to get tickets to the World Expo. We got on the bus and discovered that the guide did not speak a word of English. Once she gave us our tickets - we bolted from the group and went to go explore the expo (tickets were sold out everywhere so we just used the tour for the ticket access!) We decided to go the USA pavilion first since we heard that natives get to skip the line for their home country pavilions. The Americans at the gate let us in after jokingly testing to see if we were Canadians faking as Americans. The pavilion was run by American student interns who all knew Chinese which was pretty cool. We entered the exhibit and saw a short film with photos of places across America and made us slightly homesick. We then went into the next room where we watched a film with Americans trying pathetically to learn to say phrases in Chinese. It was funny and hit home with us since we struggle to make the bizzarre sounds of the Chinese language, but were also slightly embarrassed with how dumb it made Americans look. The next part of the exhibit was another video which was a cheesy but kinda cute fiction video about a girl who creates a garden in a city slum area and overcame adversity. It had decent special effects including wind and mist during the part when it stormed on her garden. It was okay but we didn't leave the exhibit feeling very proud of the pavilion. We went to the Theme pavilions which were awesome artistic exhibits with themes around how different families live their lives around cities around the world and how people from all countries impact the environment. One part of the exhibit showcased new technologies that can help advance cities and create new sources of energy. The theme pavilions were a nice break from every other square inch of the expo which was covered wall to wall with pushing and shoving people.
We took a break and had a Turkish lunch before heading off to see the unimpressive country pavilions from Brazil, Peru, Ukraine and Africa. Canada and Australia had decent exhibits but weren't much better than the USA's. We were supposed to have a group reservation to the China exhibit from our group tour but when we reached the China exhibit we found out that we weren't within the first 50,000 people of the day in the expo so we couldn't get in. Along with China, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India were all countries with amazing exhibits that we didn't get to see because we didn't have the patience to wait 4 hours in line for a 15 minute exhibit. At least we got to see the outside of the exhibits which had impressive designs and architecture. We were exhausted after walking around all day so we finished the night by satisfying our longing and homesickness for Mexican food. We grabbed nachos at the Mexico exhibit and were practically scraping the plate clean at the end. Getting our fill of guacamole and cheese was a great way to end the day!
Saturday
After the exhaustion and crowd fighting of the world expo, we decided to explore the small alleys within the art factory of the French Concession area of Shanghai. We meandered and got lost within a maze of brick alleyways filled with unique galleries, boutiques, cafes, restaurants and other shops. The first store we went into was a photo studio where we fell in love with black and white photo prints that highlighted objects in red. The prints captured the culture and essence of China. The photos of winding streets and temples were accented by red lanterns to create beautiful and unique depictions of scenes across China. After sorting through stacks of prints we each picked out too many that we liked and had a hard time deciding which ones to buy. We left to go think about it over lunch and found a phenomenal Italian cafe where we had pizza and pasta. We wandered around buying jewelry and admiring the different art forms in all of the cute boutiques. We stopped for a coffee break before buying some more souvenirs and then heading back to the photo studio to decide which photos we wanted to buy. We ended up having the photographer help us narrow it down and then purchased the art slightly discounted.
With our stomachs rumbling, we headed in search of dumplings and found a Shanghainese restaurant. We ordered chicken, pork & crab dumplings, garlic oysters, dry green beans and fresh mango & orange juice drinks. Dinner was awesome and we were so happy to have a plate of green beans since that seems to be a rare thing in Hong Kong! After dinner we headed off to see an acrobat show but it was cancelled so we found a near by wine bar where we did a wine tasting and enjoyed the rest of our evening!
We headed home on Sunday - so happy to be safe and sound back in Hong Kong!
Since we took so many pictures, here are the links to Caitlin's albums:
