China - The Middle Kingdom

We’re on our way to Thailand and so much has happened since China. It feels as if it’s been months since I was there, but that was only 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately I don’t have much time to devote to writing at the moment. I’ll cover the highlights of my time in China and I will upload some pictures when I get to the hotel in Phuket, Thailand:

After Japan, China was bound to be a bit of a disappointment. The part of Qingdao that the port was located in was in bad shape. On the bus ride to the airport we saw piles of rubble in the middle of the road, homeless people living on the side of the road, and there was a persistent odor of burnt rubber in the air. This was a stark contrast to the cleanliness and order of Japan. In the bathroom of the airport in Qingdao there were Chinese men spitting on the floors, and no western-style toilets. Many of the public rest rooms I ended up using in China reeked of urine and other unidentifiable odors.

As different as Qingdao was, it didn’t prepare me for Beijing. There are 3 million private automobiles registered in Beijing, many of which are motorbikes. As a pedestrian in Beijing, you risk your life crossing the street because drivers don’t bother to swerve out of the way. The other strange thing about Beijing was the patchwork of newer buildings interspersed with older buildings that were abandoned and collapsing. Most of the meals we had in China were excellent. In all but the last one, which was a buffet, we shared plates of food that came out much faster than we could eat them. I noticed that at every meal there were always three types of meat served (chicken, pork, and beef) with fish, noodles, rice, and several plates of dark green vegetables (usually bok choy and something else). The Peking duck (which is more correctly known as Beijing duck) we had after our arrival in Beijing was especially tasty.

On our second day in Beijing we drove out to a section of the Great Wall and had a few hours to walk on it. I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the Great Wall as I had expected. I think the main reason for this is that you simply cannot grasp the size of it from the ground. Walking on it was really tiring though, I can’t imagine how they built it over the mountains. After the Great Wall we went to a restaurant that had a store and a pottery workshop attached to. We got a tour of the workshop and then had a great lunch. After eating we had some time to shop at the store where I bought some gifts including some tea. On another occasion we had lunch at a restaurant next to a silk factory and had the opportunity to see how they made silk garments.

That evening Michael and I took a taxi to the other side of Beijing and met Steve who used to be Cheryl’s neighbor in Santa Barbara but had moved to Beijing with his wife Danling. He took us to a restaurant that served Uyghur food from Xinjiang province in western China. He also drove us by the Olympic stadium and the swimming center both of which are still under construction but look very impressive already. He then took us to get a foot massage which he recommends to everyone who visits Beijing. It was a great massage (especially after climbing the Great Wall) and it only cost a few dollars! We then went to his apartment to meet his wife and he let us use his phone and the internet to call home and check our e-mail. He was very kind to both of us and it feels great to meet someone like that in a country where everyone is a stranger and speaks a different language than you. He made us feel at home.

The following day we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City both of which would have been a lot more interesting if they weren’t packed with tourists and street vendors that wouldn’t leave you alone. I thought that many of the street vendors in China were annoying and rude, even after telling them ten times you weren’t interested they would continue to follow you around. The Chinese apparently have a very different concept of customer service than the rest of the world (the vendors on the streets and the markets of Vietnam and Cambodia were much nicer). We also visited the Temple of Heaven which was pretty impressive especially since it was only built for the Qing dynasty emperors to use only once or twice a year to pray for good crops for the kingdom.

In the evening we flew to Xi’an and the following day the main attraction was the Terracotta Warriors museum. I had woken up that morning with a sore throat, a runny nose, and what felt like a fever. Apparently in China no one uses tissues and there is no toilet paper in the public restrooms. I took as many tissues as I could from the hotel and stuffed them into my pockets. By the time we got to the museum I had no more tissues left and my nose was running worse than ever. I was feeling very annoyed and the afternoon heat wasn’t helping matters. I wandered around grumpily on my own for a bit trying to find a bathroom. I stopped into a few of the excavated pits and was disappointed to find one entirely empty and the other filled with terracotta warriors and twice as many tourists. I ran into Michael, Emily, and Brittany and we all agreed that the museum was a disappointment. I think at this point most of the group had had enough of constant sight-seeing and wanted some time to explore on our own. Our day ended with a wonderful dinner and a Tang dynasty show which featured traditional dancing and music from the Tang dynasty. I think it was one of the best parts of the trip, the music was really cool.

On our last day in Xi’an we had a calligraphy lesson which was very fun. We all kept the paper that we wrote the Chinese characters on. The other highlight of the day was our visit to the market in the Muslim quarters. Michael and I ran into Doc Nancy, the Ecology/Biology professor who was looking for wooden cricket cages. Apparently they sell crickets for good luck and sometimes people buy them and make them fight each other. She taught us how to bargain and told us interesting stories about her previous travels such as the time she ate fried crickets in Africa. We flew to Hong Kong that night and I went to bed early hoping I would feel better in the morning.

The next morning the sneezing and the runny nose had cleared up and I thought I was getting better. Michael and I went with our friend Hua to downtown Hong Kong and ate a delicious Dim Sum lunch followed a few hours later by some Malaysian food. We were intent on eating as much as possible before we had to go back to the ship. The following morning I woke up with a sore throat and I felt really delirious. I made it through the morning but around lunch I started having stomach cramps. I made it back to the room just in time to spend the rest of the day either in the bathroom or in bed. Thankfully I was feeling better by the time we reached Vietnam.

In a comment to one of my previous posts my Dad had asked:

What does C.E. mean or stand for after the date? I, who know everything, have never seen that before.

C.E. usually stands for Common Era though it can also stand for Current Era or Christian Era (the last one doesn’t make as much sense). B.C.E then means Before Common Era and they are used often today (at least in the books and articles I read) to replace B.C. and A.D. because they are religion-neutral. For historians or other people in non-Christian countries B.C. and A.D. are meaningless. The other advantage to B.C.E and C.E. is that they are suffixes and are used after the date whereas B.C. is a suffix and A.D. is a prefix.

Now you will have to tell me how you compare China to Japan after you go there. I am willing to bet China is more like the USA than Japan.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. China was a lot different from Japan but I don’t think it was very similar to the U.S. at all. In what ways do you think China and the U.S. might be the same? One thing I found interesting about China was that many people wanted to speak English to you but few people knew it very well whereas in Japan few people knew English and they never tried speaking it to you unless you asked them something in English. In the markets in China the merchants had a set of memorized phrases in English which they would repeat and you could tell right away that this was so when you started speaking to them because they would just stare at you blankly. In Japan if you tried to explain something in English and they didn’t understand they would make an effort to understand you. On the other hand, I saw waitresses in some of the restaurants we ate at walk away from people after they couldn’t understand what the person was asking for. Of course I can’t make valid comparisons between the two countries because I’m only visiting a tiny percentage of the population in just a few cities in each country. Additionally, I had time in Japan to do independent travel which gives you more time to interact with the locals and explore the neighborhoods. It’s the independent travel that I have really enjoyed the most both in Japan and also in Vietnam which I will tell everyone about soon.

I hope everyone is doing well at home and for everyone that is going to Disney World I hope you have a great time, I’m sure Christopher will love it.