Here's my top ten things that I like about China so far.
10. It's acceptable to burp at the dinner table.
- Not to say that I do it, but I think it's really funny when my host mom and sister belch them out while we eat.
9. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
-- I told my mom the other day that we should forget about going to Bermuda for family vacation, lets go to China! Once you get here everything is cheap, food, hotel rooms, travel within China, everything (excludes Hong Kong).
8. You're a celebrity.
-- Anyone who knows any English automatically is interested in talking to you, if you have blond hair and blue eyes, they'll ask you to pose for pictures and hold their children.
7. Spitting is socially acceptable.
- everybody hauks lugies (spelling?) all the time. From middle aged men to college girls, there is no problem with spitting anywhere (inside in some circumstances is also acceptable).
6. Infinite cell phone service.
-- Good thing about communism, if they say they're putting a cell tower up, it goes up, ASAP.
5. You can get anywhere from anywhere via train.
-- It might take 52 hours to get there, but I can sit on a train and be in Tibet in a few short days, all at the fraction of the price that you would spend to fly a relative distance in the US (probably even cheaper than driving).
4. You never know what you'll see.
-- Just the things people carry on mopeds surprises me everyday, from oxygen tanks to barrels of water. I don't think there's a day that goes by where I can't say "never seen that before."
3. You can have a full sit down meal for less than five dollars.
2. You can have a filling meal on the street for about 50 cents.
1. Everyday is an adventure with new things to see with seemingly infinite places to go and explore.
-AL
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Beijing Parts three, four and five.
Sorry I've been neglecting my blogging duties, I'm always really tired when I get a chance to do so that I sleep rather than type, but my batteries are charged right now so I'm going to try and recap the last three days of my life for you in about 500 words or less.
So Tuesday morning was the big day, we were going to visit the Great Wall. Got on the bus at 8am and drove about an hour and a half through some small towns surrounding Beijing up into the mountains and to a very small section of the Great Wall. I say small section for two reasons; firstly the Great Wall isn't just one Great Wall, it's many Great Walls, that is to say they're not all connected, so it's impossible to just walk continuously on the wall without having to get off at some point. Secondly, the Great Wall is 2,000 miles long, we might of covered two of them.
I think I might have mentioned in an early post that this was the part of the Beijing trip that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Where we were there were a few small villages, but no remnants of the vast city of 16 million people that we had just left, lots of beautiful mountains and other "natury" stuff (that's for you mom). Can't decide if it's more impressive that water carved the Grand Canyon or that man created the Great Wall. Very cool.
From there we drove through the country side for about an hour and visited the Ming Tombs where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried, not that cool.
Wednesday we visited the Olympic Village, also very cool. We were able to tour both the water cube and the Birds nest (Birds nest is a lot bigger in person and water cube much smaller). We actually got down to the floor of the birds nest where we could sprawl out under a perfect sunny day. Kind of a surreal feeling being there after so many great athletes competed while I was half way around the world watching on TV.
Thursday we visited the Beijing urban planning museum which wasn't that cool but it did have an awesome model of the whole city. From the museum we went and checked out some old Hutong neighborhoods which date back to the Qing dynasty (200 years). We toured a guy's house, rode on rickshaws and visited the Drum and Bell tours which were how they use to communicate time back in the day before clocks.
Going to go check out some street markets today then we're back to Shanghai via train later tonight, it's been a great visit that has gone really fast. Hope all is well.
-AL
So Tuesday morning was the big day, we were going to visit the Great Wall. Got on the bus at 8am and drove about an hour and a half through some small towns surrounding Beijing up into the mountains and to a very small section of the Great Wall. I say small section for two reasons; firstly the Great Wall isn't just one Great Wall, it's many Great Walls, that is to say they're not all connected, so it's impossible to just walk continuously on the wall without having to get off at some point. Secondly, the Great Wall is 2,000 miles long, we might of covered two of them.
I think I might have mentioned in an early post that this was the part of the Beijing trip that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Where we were there were a few small villages, but no remnants of the vast city of 16 million people that we had just left, lots of beautiful mountains and other "natury" stuff (that's for you mom). Can't decide if it's more impressive that water carved the Grand Canyon or that man created the Great Wall. Very cool.
From there we drove through the country side for about an hour and visited the Ming Tombs where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried, not that cool.
Wednesday we visited the Olympic Village, also very cool. We were able to tour both the water cube and the Birds nest (Birds nest is a lot bigger in person and water cube much smaller). We actually got down to the floor of the birds nest where we could sprawl out under a perfect sunny day. Kind of a surreal feeling being there after so many great athletes competed while I was half way around the world watching on TV.
Thursday we visited the Beijing urban planning museum which wasn't that cool but it did have an awesome model of the whole city. From the museum we went and checked out some old Hutong neighborhoods which date back to the Qing dynasty (200 years). We toured a guy's house, rode on rickshaws and visited the Drum and Bell tours which were how they use to communicate time back in the day before clocks.
Going to go check out some street markets today then we're back to Shanghai via train later tonight, it's been a great visit that has gone really fast. Hope all is well.
-AL
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Part Three Beijing: Summer Palace
So yesterday (Monday) got up and went to this cool little cafe/library called the bookworm where we have all of our talks in the morning. Talking to us was one of my professors friends who is an American born Chinese but lives in Beijing today. His name is Kaiser and was and is a big part of the Chinese rock n'roll movement, he certainly looks the part also, long hair, blue jeans and a leather jacket he certainly looked like a rocker. So the first half of his talk was all about his story and the evolution of rock/pop/metal in China, then in the second half he changed hats and started talking about his life as an Internet guru and how the Internet has shaped China (especially the young people of China) today.
Following Kaiser's talk we headed out to the Summer Palace which is like the summer home for the emperor. It's pretty impressive to say the least. There's a great big man made lake that a few of my pengyous (friends) and I cruised around on in a paddle boat. There's also a huge stone ship that was built at the end of one of the Dynasty's (can't remember if it was the Ming or Qing) anyways it was built by the emperor's concubine who is basically blamed for the down fall of the dynasty.
Overall had a great day. Forgot to mention that for lunch in between Kaiser's talk and the summer palace we went to a western restaurant right by the bookworm where they had 1 quai wings. Anyways if you ate 40 wings you got a free t-shirt. A couple of my buddies and I couldn't turn down a challenge, only problem was we needed to eat the last twenty in like 15 minutes so we could catch the bus to the summer palace. It was a challenge, but we got it done.
-AL
Following Kaiser's talk we headed out to the Summer Palace which is like the summer home for the emperor. It's pretty impressive to say the least. There's a great big man made lake that a few of my pengyous (friends) and I cruised around on in a paddle boat. There's also a huge stone ship that was built at the end of one of the Dynasty's (can't remember if it was the Ming or Qing) anyways it was built by the emperor's concubine who is basically blamed for the down fall of the dynasty.
Overall had a great day. Forgot to mention that for lunch in between Kaiser's talk and the summer palace we went to a western restaurant right by the bookworm where they had 1 quai wings. Anyways if you ate 40 wings you got a free t-shirt. A couple of my buddies and I couldn't turn down a challenge, only problem was we needed to eat the last twenty in like 15 minutes so we could catch the bus to the summer palace. It was a challenge, but we got it done.
-AL
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Part Two: Tiananmen Square/ Forbidden City
So after getting off the train we met our tour guide for the week, Robert (he's Chinese but a lot of Chinese people have English names also), from there we got onto our bus and went and checked into our hotel (that's another blog) and had breakfast. This was all to be done in an hour and then be back on the bus to go to this little cafe/ library where we are going to be having guest lectures all week. Lecturing us yesterday was one of our professors friends who is an American but has been living in Beijing for the last twenty years working as a journalist for United Press International (UPI). He was actually at Tinanmen Square in 1989 when the Chinese army rolled in (I'll explain below for those not familiar with this incident). He was giving us a talk on the last 600 years of Beijing history and the different phases its gone through. It was a really good talk, but it would of been a lot better if the only thing on everybody's mind hadn't been trying to stay awake.
So after we broke we went to lunch (pizza, first time while in China), and then thanks to the begging and pleading of our class our professors agreed to let us go back to the hotel to take an hour long nap (a bit of a tease, but much needed). Following the hour to nap/shower/whatever, we were back on the bus headed to Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square is most famous for the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, a lot of you probably remember this, but for a while there had been protests happening at the square when the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) rolled in and turned their guns on their own people, kind of a big deal. So the square is directly in front of the Forbidden city where all of the emperors lived since the Ming Dynasty (a long time ago).
Extravagant is one word that immediately comes to mind when describing the Forbidden City, huge is the other. It is 72 hectales (not entirely sure what a hectale is), something like 900m by 600+ m, with 8,004 rooms. You get in there and you just keep walking through these huge doors and it keeps leading to more and more city, it looks like it's never going to end. Of course all of the rooms are painted with unbelievable detail, stone carvings, everything fit for an emperor.
Finally, after climbing this hill overlooking the whole city, we climbed on the bus and headed back, shower, dinner, bed. Headed to an art district today, supposed to be pretty cool, I'll let you know how it goes.
-AL
So after we broke we went to lunch (pizza, first time while in China), and then thanks to the begging and pleading of our class our professors agreed to let us go back to the hotel to take an hour long nap (a bit of a tease, but much needed). Following the hour to nap/shower/whatever, we were back on the bus headed to Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square is most famous for the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, a lot of you probably remember this, but for a while there had been protests happening at the square when the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) rolled in and turned their guns on their own people, kind of a big deal. So the square is directly in front of the Forbidden city where all of the emperors lived since the Ming Dynasty (a long time ago).
Extravagant is one word that immediately comes to mind when describing the Forbidden City, huge is the other. It is 72 hectales (not entirely sure what a hectale is), something like 900m by 600+ m, with 8,004 rooms. You get in there and you just keep walking through these huge doors and it keeps leading to more and more city, it looks like it's never going to end. Of course all of the rooms are painted with unbelievable detail, stone carvings, everything fit for an emperor.
Finally, after climbing this hill overlooking the whole city, we climbed on the bus and headed back, shower, dinner, bed. Headed to an art district today, supposed to be pretty cool, I'll let you know how it goes.
-AL
Beijing Part one: Getting there
Ni Hao wo de pengyous he jia (Hello friends and family). So I've made it safely to Beijing, had a good time on train (didn't sleep much, but had fun). So we were supposed to leave campus for the train station at six sharp on Friday evening, we didn't end up leaving till about 6:30 and trying to get through rush hour traffic to get to the train station in time was a little terrifying, but we made it. So their are 33 students on this trip and three teachers so we had enough to have a whole car to ourselves, which was nice since we didn't have to worry about disturbing others with our rowdiness. It was dark for the whole time we were on the train so the only time we able to see outside of the train was in about the 15 minutes before we pulled into the station while we were all waking up.
My professor having done this trip a few times before was thinking ahead when he brought his guitar or as he called it "a karaoke machine" (karaoke is actually really big in China). So about 12 or so of us climbed into a cabin built for four and started belting out classics. Needless to say we had a pretty good time.
So we rolled into Beijing at seven am on Saturday, almost exactly twelve hours after we had boarded the train. While we did have soft sleepers, and were theoretically well rested, sleeping on a train is not exactly sleeping well, combined with having to be up a lot early than most of us are used to, we were all very tired. This was not ideal because as you'll see in the next segment of my 'Beijing series' we had a jam packed Saturday.
-AL
My professor having done this trip a few times before was thinking ahead when he brought his guitar or as he called it "a karaoke machine" (karaoke is actually really big in China). So about 12 or so of us climbed into a cabin built for four and started belting out classics. Needless to say we had a pretty good time.
So we rolled into Beijing at seven am on Saturday, almost exactly twelve hours after we had boarded the train. While we did have soft sleepers, and were theoretically well rested, sleeping on a train is not exactly sleeping well, combined with having to be up a lot early than most of us are used to, we were all very tired. This was not ideal because as you'll see in the next segment of my 'Beijing series' we had a jam packed Saturday.
-AL
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Headed upta Beijing
Hello all, so after four weeks of class and five weeks in Shanghai, it's time to take a break from it all and head north to Beijing, the capital city of China. So for all of next week till the 28th I'll be "reporting live" from Beijing (I'll try to write lots while I'm there ala). So we get on a bus here in Shanghai at six tonight that takes us to the train station for a 7:30 departure, then we have a nice 12 hour train ride to our final destination. Fortunately the program forked up the cash to get us soft sleepers on the train so we should be able to catch some zz's on our way up (I'm actually really looking forward to the ride, never been on a train before).
So we're doing a lot of sight seeing in Beijing, I know we're going to some old emperor's tomb, touring an old Beijing neighborhood, checking out the Olympic stuff, but the part that I'm am most excited for is the day we visit the Great Wall. One of my friends here who has visited before said that it's "awesome" and "won't let you down" (of course now I'm terrified it'll let me down). But it sounds like it has a lot of the same characteristics of the Grand Canyon in that pictures don't do it justice.
We are getting on a train for twelve hours that's headed in the northern direction, so the weather is going to feel a little more like Maine rather than Shanghai where everyday it's a little more like Memphis (Probably hit 70 yesterday, starting to get a little humid too, but no rain for a while now so everyone is happy). Not everyone is thrilled about traveling back into winter, but I think everyone is excited not to worry about Chinese homework for a few days.
So I'll be writing next from Beijing, hope all is well.
-AL
So we're doing a lot of sight seeing in Beijing, I know we're going to some old emperor's tomb, touring an old Beijing neighborhood, checking out the Olympic stuff, but the part that I'm am most excited for is the day we visit the Great Wall. One of my friends here who has visited before said that it's "awesome" and "won't let you down" (of course now I'm terrified it'll let me down). But it sounds like it has a lot of the same characteristics of the Grand Canyon in that pictures don't do it justice.
We are getting on a train for twelve hours that's headed in the northern direction, so the weather is going to feel a little more like Maine rather than Shanghai where everyday it's a little more like Memphis (Probably hit 70 yesterday, starting to get a little humid too, but no rain for a while now so everyone is happy). Not everyone is thrilled about traveling back into winter, but I think everyone is excited not to worry about Chinese homework for a few days.
So I'll be writing next from Beijing, hope all is well.
-AL
Monday, March 16, 2009
Modern China
Once again my Aunt Lee Ann is supplying the material for my blogs. In my last post she commented that she didn't realize that China was a developing nation, and she cited a few movies that make the argument for China as a super modern nation very effectively. Actually last Friday I had to go to this conference for one of my classes where a whole bunch of people who know way too much about China and have all written books proving it were talking about Shanghai's future. One professor was talking about how Shanghai in particular has always been at the forefront of modernization in China and how it's often served as the back drop for science fiction novels and movies because a lot of the city looks like IT IS science fiction.
Do a google image search of "Shanghai, China" sometime and just look at the pictures of the skyline, it's packed with not just skyscrapers but with some strange looking architectural feats. The maglev train that runs from the the airport into the heart of the city "is the first commercial high speed mag-lev train in the world" traveling at the mind boggling rate of over 300 mph (Wikipedia). And Shanghai, or china in general show no signs of slowing down (that's a whole other post).
But China is a developing nation, even though you would probably never guess it if you visited the Bund (that's what all the pictures are of). Some of you might remember a China that was by all means a communist state with a government operated economy (as opposed to a capitalist system). I'm sure you've all heard of Chairman Mao, it wasn't long ago that his campaigns in many ways nearly destroyed an entire generation in attempt to industrialize rapidly. But in 1978 the Reform years began with Deng Xiaoping who basically reinvented China's economy, opening things up and giving birth to the rising power that China is today.
So in just over thirty years China has gone from being almost a non-factor in global terms to a rising power that, by the way, just recently took the title from the Japanese of owning the most US bonds. China's growth is nothing short of incredible but it is still a developing nation.
Do a google image search of "Shanghai, China" sometime and just look at the pictures of the skyline, it's packed with not just skyscrapers but with some strange looking architectural feats. The maglev train that runs from the the airport into the heart of the city "is the first commercial high speed mag-lev train in the world" traveling at the mind boggling rate of over 300 mph (Wikipedia). And Shanghai, or china in general show no signs of slowing down (that's a whole other post).
But China is a developing nation, even though you would probably never guess it if you visited the Bund (that's what all the pictures are of). Some of you might remember a China that was by all means a communist state with a government operated economy (as opposed to a capitalist system). I'm sure you've all heard of Chairman Mao, it wasn't long ago that his campaigns in many ways nearly destroyed an entire generation in attempt to industrialize rapidly. But in 1978 the Reform years began with Deng Xiaoping who basically reinvented China's economy, opening things up and giving birth to the rising power that China is today.
So in just over thirty years China has gone from being almost a non-factor in global terms to a rising power that, by the way, just recently took the title from the Japanese of owning the most US bonds. China's growth is nothing short of incredible but it is still a developing nation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
