Look at my photos from Hong Kong here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/HongKong2010#
On Thursday the 25th I said goodbye to Diana and left Taipei for Hong Kong. I arrived at the Hong Kong airport, changed my money, and bought an Octopus Card (so called because, besides 7-Eleven convenience stores, it's good for at least eight different forms of transportation in Hong Kong), and a train ticket. After a train ride and a shuttle bus, I arrived in the part of Hong Kong known as Kowloon (Hong Kong is made up of four areas: the New Territories and Kowloon, which are attached to mainland China; and Hong Kong Island and the Outlying Islands, which are to the south and accessible by ferry, train, subway, bus, taxi, and probably other means that I’m not even aware of). I divided up my sight-seeing by these four areas. I should also mention here that Hong Kong has an absolutely amazing public transportation system – efficient and extensive subway lines, frequent ferries across the harbor, and excellent English signs and directions everywhere. If you can’t find your way around Hong Kong, I’d be surprised that you even managed to get there in the first place.
I had booked a hostel at a place called the Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road, the chaotic, jam-packed main street of Kowloon. My guidebook has a hilarious and accurate description of Chungking Mansions. It’s long but I had to include it here (and don’t worry Mom and Dad, I was very careful):
“Say ‘budget accommodation’ and ‘Hong Kong’ in the one breath and everyone thinks of Chungking Mansions, a place like no other in the world. This huge, ramshackle high-rise dump of a place in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui caters for virtually all needs – from finding a bed and a curry lunch to buying a backpack and getting your hair cut – and more.
You may be put off by the undercurrent of sleaze and the peculiar odours – a potent mixture of cooking fat, incense and shit – but don’t seek sanctuary in the lifts; they’re like steel coffins on cables. Perhaps the best introduction to Chungking is Wong Kar Wai’s cult film Chungking Express (1994), which captures all the sleaze in a haunting series of stories.
For years there had been talk about tearing down this eyesore and fire trap. A crackdown on fire-safety violations finally came at the end of 1993, and many guesthouses were forced to shut down. Others survived by upgrading and installing smoke alarms, sprinklers, and walls made of fire-proof material. The block is now partially under renovation.
Much of the character of Chungking Mansions has changed. Many of the guesthouses now serve as long-term boarding houses for workers from developing countries in the India subcontinent and Africa, and matchbox rooms are often occupied by two, three or even four people. Backpackers have started migrating to guesthouses in other buildings, but Chungking Mansions is still the cheapest place to stay in Hong Kong and the place to meet fellow travelers and zany characters. One thing travelers should really guard against is drugs; a few grams of hashish in your backpack could leave you in a lot of trouble.
The entrance to Chungking Mansions is via Chungking Arcade, a parade of shops that face Nathan Rd. You will find lifts labeled A to E with hostels in each block listed. There are just two cramped and over-worked lifts for each 17-storey block, and long queues form at ‘rush hour’. Otherwise there’re always the less-than-salubrious stairs. Be grateful for the stray cats as they keep the rats in check.”
Chungking Mansions is just around the corner from where the bus dropped me off. It's a huge building, like a mall almost, filled with hostels, food stands, money-changing counters, and hundreds of men with no apparent employment except harassing people. As soon as I came around that corner, the touts swooped in. Anytime they see a foreigner, especially one with a suitcase, they just swarm around offering hostel deals, business cards, Rolexes and designer bags, spa services, etc. Luckily my hostel had warned me, very explicitly, ahead of time (“Our only caution to our customers, COMPLETELY IGNORE (meaning No eye contact, No talking, NOTHING) TOUTS OFFERING ROOMS. It's very dangerous. Beware of Fake!! Beware of touts (Chinese or Indian guys)!! Ignore any strangers around you. They will pretending that they are merciful to help you, in fact they will misleading you to another hostel to get their commissions. We located in a very busy commercial building; there are lots of unlicensed hostels around us. Due to popularity and with a world-wide good reputation of us, as soon as you get off the airport bus or taxi, there will be touts trying to tell you that they are the manager or the owner , OR show you our business card. This is a LIE and NOT truth. Absolutely do not believe them, go to the place written on the board by the NO. 2 elevator. Or ask the uniformed security guard at information desk. You will find us easily. We DO NOT have anybody waiting for you at downstairs of hostel.”), so I knew where to go without having to ask any of those “Chinese or Indian guys.” As you can probably guess even without reading Lonely Planet’s description, the Chungking Mansions building itself is a dirty scary hole, so I was pleasantly surprised when I finally reached my hostel, the Park Guesthouse - my room was very clean, and I did have my own (also very clean) bathroom and air-conditioning. And not only did I have a room key, but also a floor key, which meant that they locked everything up at night.
There is plenty to see and do in Kowloon; it’s where I spent most of my time in Hong Kong. Just down the street from my hostel was the Peninsula Hotel. I visited one afternoon, and after 20 minutes in line I was seated for afternoon tea. I had read about this in my guidebook, and it was wonderful – the Peninsula is a really gorgeous, luxurious hotel, maybe the best in Hong Kong, with live classical musicians and really beautiful food. It was a relaxing way to start off my time in Hong Kong. Also close to Chungking Mansions is Kowloon Park. It's a nice little oasis, closed off from all of the craziness on Nathan Road – there are fountains, plant sculptures, and even flamingos!
A short subway ride away are Flower Market Road and Yuen Po Street. Flower Market Road is, of course, dedicated to selling a huge variety of fresh flowers; the weather in Hong Kong lets you grow anything year-round. Adjacent to Flower Market Road is the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. This 'bird garden' was more of an alley filled with birds for sale. Apparently the Chinese like to keep songbirds as pets, and according to my guidebook, they are also supposed to be lucky. There were stacks of birds there - mostly little songbirds, but I also saw a few big parrots – along with a variety of cages for sale. And of course, birds have to eat, so you could also buy bags and boxes of live insects. The place was as noisy and as dirty as you can imagine, but it was fun to watch the vendors bagging up live grasshoppers with their bare hands!
I also visited a few street markets in Kowloon – the Temple Street Night Market and the Tung Choi Street Market, also known as the Ladies' Market. They sell anything and everything you can imagine at these places, especially the night markets. Neither was quite as lively as the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, but they were worth seeing just the same, and if you have a lot of energy it’s interesting to squeeze your way around and through the crowds. And like anywhere else, bargaining with the vendors is half the fun!
Just down the street from the Chungking Mansions, right in front of the Peninsula Hotel, is the Tsim Sha Tsui East Promenade, which runs along the edge of Victoria Harbor. This is the place to go for one of the most famous urban views in the world. You can look across the harbor to see the famous skyscrapers that make up the business and financial district of Hong Kong, on Hong Kong Island. And every night from 8pm to 8:20, there is a sound-and-light show, called the Symphony of Lights. Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHWmFkpondw&feature=related.
It was very foggy the night I went, so the show itself wasn't as amazing as I had expected, but just the view of the cityscape across the harbor is worth it. You can walk along the water in Kowloon any time of day just to take in that view.
In Kowloon I also visited the Chi Lin Nunnery, which looked like a temple to me except it was much quieter than the Chinese and Taiwanese temples I visited on this trip - there were none of the New Year's crowds and vendors, just a very peaceful place with a lot of Buddha statues and some beautiful ponds with lilies and lotus blossoms. I didn't see any nuns, although I did have a discussion with some random Chinese guy about Christian heaven vs. Buddhist heaven. He explained it to me with a nice metaphor – after Buddhists die, they go on learning about how to become better people for their next life, with the ultimate goal of attaining enlightenment. So depending on their lifestyle choices and behavior while they were alive, when they die Buddhists go through either primary, high school, or university-level learning to become better people and prepare for the next life.
My last stop in Kowloon was the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple (what a name!). It was beautiful and busy; by now I'm getting used to the crowds and vendors and being shoved around in places of worship, at least around the holidays. This temple even had guards hustling people along, and arrows directing the flow of human traffic from one shrine or incense pot to the next. I love seeing all the different offerings - for most of the temples I saw on this trip, as you get closer to them on the street you start seeing vendors selling, not only the incense sticks, but also little plates of flowers and different kinds of food. Then inside the temples are long tables where people pile up their gifts. I don't know enough about the religion to know who exactly they are meant for, but I always wonder who ends up eating all of it!
As for the Outlying Islands, they are home to one of Hong Kong’s most famous sites – the Tian Tian Buddha on Lantau Island. It is a huge statue of the seated Buddha, apparently one of the largest in the world. You have to take a subway to the end of the line on Lantau Island, ride in a cable car up a mountain, walk through a monastery, and then climb 260 steps to finally get to the Buddha. I was a little disappointed because it was incredibly foggy the day that I went (it was like that most of my time in Hong Kong actually, but down in the city it wasn't so bad. Anytime I went up above tree-level it got really thick). I could barely see my hand in front of my face, let alone the gigantic statue, but it was still pretty cool - I could still get a feeling for the size of the Buddha, the monastery itself was beautiful in the fog, I bought some postcards, and now I have an excuse to go back sometime! They also have a piece of the real Buddha's bone in a museum there, for what that's worth.
Hong Kong Island is the financial and business heart of Hong Kong. It’s a very modern and beautiful concrete jungle; my guidebook lists specific skyscrapers to just look at as tourist attractions! On Hong Kong Island I visited Hong Kong Park and the Edward Youde Aviary. The aviary is really cool - you walk along an elevated wooden bridge on level with the tree branches, and more than 600 birds fly around your head. You can get quite close to some of them. Also on Hong Kong Island is the Peak Tram to Victoria Tower. The Peak Tram takes about seven minutes to pull a car up a very steep hill to the Peak, the highest point around. Supposedly you can look down through the tram windows, and from a viewing platform on Peak Tower, to an amazing view of the city (actually looking down on all the skyscrapers) but of course it was incredibly foggy again once we reached that altitude. Not as bad as when I visited the Tian Tian Buddha, but it pretty much ruined the view. It wasn't a complete waste though - that part of Hong Kong is very green and pretty, and there are lots of gorgeous green walks with hardly any crowds compared to down on the street level. Again, it’s just another reason for me to go back someday soon!
Also on Hong Kong Island, I watched some Cantonese opera at the Sunbeam Theatre. The Sunbeam Theatre is something of a historical, landmark building and one of the very few places to see Cantonese opera in Hong Kong. I bought the tickets with a credit card before I left Korea, and had no idea what I was going to see - the ticketing website was entirely in Chinese, including the name and description of the opera. I wasn't even sure if the price I had paid was in Hong Kong or U.S. dollars until I checked my bank balance a few weeks later. I just really wanted to see Cantonese opera at this famous theatre, so I chose a show that had good seats available on one of the few nights I was in Hong Kong (luckily the price did end up being in Hong Kong dollars, so it was really cheap). Chinese opera can be difficult for Westerners to get used to, and now that I've seen it in Beijing and Hong Kong, I've decided that the costumes, sets, and music, which are always gorgeous, definitely make up for the singing, which can be a bit painful to listen to (here’s an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txtwR9GW_8E&feature=related ).
Anyway, I ended up going on a good night because apparently it was a famous opera, based on a famous Chinese story, and the two main actors are among the most well-known performers in Hong Kong. I learned all of this from the lady I was sitting next to - we talked during the breaks between scenes, about her family and my travels; she also explained the story to me and tried to translate the title (I think what I saw was called “Dream of the Red Chamber.” If I’m right, this is another one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, like Journey to the West). Cantonese opera is notoriously long, so I sat through two hours of the show and only saw half of it! The lady I was talking to informed me that the whole performance would probably take about four hours, and only the most dedicated fans sit through entire operas!
I only spent one afternoon and evening in the New Territories, so I didn’t see as much there as I did in other parts of Hong Kong. That afternoon I visited the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery. The monastery itself isn't very remarkable – it just reminded me of the several dozen other temples I've now seen in Asia - but the amazing thing about this place is the walk up there. It's a steep walk of more than 400 steps, lined on both sides with thousands of Buddhas (all together, according to my guidebook, the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery actually has more than 12,000 Buddhas). It was a sweltering walk up to the monastery, and a bit surreal with all of those statues looking at me. However, as I was dragging myself up there, a little pack of monkeys came running through - they climbed over some of the Buddhas, crossed the path and disappeared into the trees, right in front of me! There was even a little baby monkey. Hong Kong is such an urban jungle that it's easy to forget you're actually in the sub-tropics. That evening I met Diana's sister Kate and her husband Brian, who live in the New Territories, for dinner. We had a great meal (noodles and Chinese dumplings) and chatted about living in Asia and our attempts at learning Asian languages.
All in all, I really enjoyed Hong Kong – it’s an incredibly diverse, mixed-up place. Sometimes it was glaringly obvious that I was in Asia, and other times I could have been in any major U.S. city, or even Wisconsin. Along with Taiwan, I definitely intend to go back to Hong Kong before I leave Asia for good.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Winter Vacation IV - Taiwan
Look at my photos from Taiwan here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/Taiwan2010#
Before I begin, here’s a little introduction to Taiwan that my friend and fellow EPIK-er Diana wrote for her blog (http://www.didiaway.blogspot.com/) after our vacation. Just in case you were wondering…
Taiwan is an independent republic located off the coast of China with a population of around 23 million. It is the second most densely populated country in the world and is largely Buddhist, with a small minority of Christians. The official language is Mandarin, with a minority of people speaking Taiwanese. It is a modern, dynamic country that relies heavily on electronics and machinery exports to survive. Taiwan has a complex political status and is struggling to be seen by the larger international community as an independent republic. They are currently fighting for membership of international organizations including WHO and the UN – China is doing its best to hinder these attempts and refuses to maintain diplomatic relations with any country which formally recognizes Taiwan as the Republic of China.
Scene set! (Thanks Di!)
On Sunday the 21st, the China Spree group checked out of the hotel and bused over to the Maglev train station. I won't pretend to understand exactly how the Maglev works; all I know is that it’s a special train that uses magnets and levitation, and we arrived at the airport - more than 18 miles away - in less than eight minutes. I said good-bye to Jeannine, Anna, and other friends I made on the China Spree tour, and a few hours later I was in Taipei! Warm, humid, tropical, green Taipei...it felt wonderful after freezing for the last few months in Korea and China. When the Portuguese visited Taiwan in the 16th century, they named the island ‘Formosa’ or ‘beautiful’; Taiwan is still sometimes referred to as Formosa, and it definitely suits.
A bus and taxi brought me to my hotel, where I met Diana and her sister Kate. Our hotel was in the Ximending neighborhood, which is a really cool pedestrian area known for shopping, theater, and food. Diana and I took a stroll around so I could get my bearings, and then we met up with Kate to head to the famous Shilin night market. Despite some misadventures (contrary to what the guidebooks said, it was actually a 45-minute walk from the subway, and Diana got sick before we could even find it so she turned back early), Kate and I persevered, and rewarded ourselves with a dinner of street food as we took in the sights and smells and pushed our way through the crowds. As my guidebook says of the Shilin night market, "If you can eat it, wear it or give it a name and bring it home with you [puppies, anyone?] you'll find it here." It was a great first night in Taipei.
The next day was a busy one. After coffee at Fong Da, we crossed the street to visit the Tien-Ho Temple. It's a really beautiful, tiny temple squashed between buildings in Ximending. Like the temples in China, Tien-Ho was really busy with people celebrating and praying for the New Year. Later that morning we walked to the 2-28 Peace Park (February 28, 1947 was the date of a civilian uprising against the government in which more than 10,000 Taiwanese were killed). It's a really peaceful, serene place, but it got interesting when we found the reflexology path. Diana and I saw some older ladies standing on the path, and had taken off our shoes and socks and decided to give it a try. We were just beginning to stumble around (yes, it's just as painful as it looks. We were literally hobbling) when an old man, maybe in his 70's, came over and started talking to us. As far as I can tell he spoke Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, a tiny bit of English and maybe a bit of Korean, too. He tried teaching us a few words of Chinese and then decided to give us a lesson on the proper use of a reflexology path. He pulled poor Diana along it, while I tried to follow, and then we got a lesson in stretching and massage techniques! We stretched our arms, backs, necks, and legs, and also massaged our faces for a bit. Then I saw the older ladies lying on their backs on the path. It looked like it might feel good (it certainly couldn't have been more painful than standing or walking) so when I tried it, the old guy kept trying to stretch me and pound on my back! You have to look at the pictures of this, they're absolutely hilarious. I look like I'm being attacked in a park by an old man - I'm just lying prone on the footpath while he digs his elbows into my back and pushes me around.
The Taiwanese are notoriously very friendly and laid-back people - while we were still talking to the self-proclaimed massage therapist by the footpath, two more men came up to us. The younger of the two just pointed to his friend and said, "He's 100 years old!" This was followed a multi-lingual discussion about tai chi, and the importance of exercise and flexibility to a long life. We even got a free tai chi demonstration from the centenarian. He was incredible - still walking around by himself, practicing tai chi and doing all these balancing moves, and I swear that he even reached down and touched his own feet! I have to say here that it can be really difficult for Westerners to gauge Asian people's ages, because they age beautifully compared to us. They almost always look younger than they are - I think it's true for both children (most of my students look too young to me to be in middle school) and old people. This Taiwanese guy definitely looked old, but I never would have dreamed that he was older than 80 or 85. You can judge for yourself from my pictures; maybe it will convince you to take up tai chi or massage therapy!
Here's another example of Taiwanese friendliness: on a different day Diana and I were trying to visit the Museum of World Religions. As we were in the subway, looking at a map and trying to figure out which exit to take, a gentleman approached and asked us where we were going. When we told him, he introduced himself as Reverend William Lo, said that on his way to the same museum for the 2010 Spring Peace and Tea Ceremony, and offered to share a cab with us. We found out that he is the president of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance – he gave us a business card, sticker, and brochure about Taiwan’s efforts to join the UN despite China’s interference (“We are a peace-loving people!”). When we arrived at the museum, Reverend Lo invited us to the ceremony. I'm not 100% sure what it was all about, besides peace and tea, but Diana and I got pretty little sash things to wear around our necks as we watched the tea ceremony, drank the tea, and listened to the prayers (most of which we couldn’t understand). Before saying goodbye to Reverend Lo, we had a huge, fabulous, and very expensive lunch in the museum's vegetarian restaurant. Then we finally moved on to see the museum itself, which is pretty cool and worth the trip in and of itself - there were exhibits on eight or ten major world religions, and scale versions of famous religious buildings, like the Dome of the Rock and Chartres Cathedral, with mini cameras so that you could look around inside them.
Other places we saw were the Longshan Temple and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. I won’t say much about the Longshan Temple here; I love visiting temples (if you couldn’t tell), and this one was really cool too, but similar enough to the others. Just look at my pictures. The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, however, was really interesting. Chiang Kai Shek was the leader (many say incompetent, oppressive dictator) of Taiwan for about 30 years. His Memorial Hall reminded me of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. – Chiang Kai Shek is a huge, seated figure in a huge hall – except this one had armed guards on either side. It’s in a huge plaza, with gardens, a theater and a concert hall. Taiwan was under martial law until the late 1980’s and now that things have turned around, there is a lot of controversy about memorials and monuments of this nature. Many similar statues glorifying C.K.S. have been removed all over Taiwan, and my guidebook suggested that this one might be removed as well and the park given a different name by the time I visited. However, when I got there, “General Cash-My-Check” (friendly local nickname, I guess!) was still sitting on his throne.
A visit to Taiwan is not complete without enjoying the hot springs. According to Wikipedia, “Taiwan has one of the highest concentrations (more than 100 hot springs) and greatest variety of thermal springs in the world varying from hot springs to cold springs, mud springs, and seabed hot springs.” There was no way we were going to miss that, so we spent one evening soaking at Beitou, just outside of Taipei. It felt wonderful - my allergies and sinuses were really bothering me, but all the sulfur and minerals in the air cleared everything up. It makes your skin feel amazing, and it was such a novelty to be in a swimsuit again! Outside! In February! On another day we went back to Beitou to hike around the geothermal valley, called Hell Valley, and it was beautiful too. We could see steam coming out of the sewer grates and cracks in the rock walls, and the smell, steam and heat (over 200 degrees F) coming out of these pools was incredible.
On another day we visited a suburb of Taipei called Danshui. Danshui is just north of Taipei on the Danshui River. It has a cool atmosphere - it's a college town, and sort of a beach town, and a little touristy too. We just strolled around, eating street food, sampling teas, checking out the souvenirs, and enjoying the view along the river.
One of my favorite things about Taiwan was the food. I drank tons of bubble tea (a cold, sweet drink that comes in lots of different flavors and has chewy tapioca balls at the bottom that you drink with a big straw; it's popular all over the world now but was first made in Taiwan) and ate delicious noodles with beef, delicious noodles with peanut sauce, and a huge variety of street food (fried milk, crispy bread, almond milk, fried pancake/omelet things, and my all-time favorite, fried squid with plum seasoning from Danshui). I think that Taiwanese food is at least as good as Korean food, and their street food is probably even better than the Korean equivalent.
I really loved Taiwan, and definitely plan to go back. Taipei is such a cool city, and there are things both in and out of it that I really wanted to see but didn't have time for (the Maokong tea fields and Taroko Gorge, to start with). If anybody plans on going while I'm still in Asia, I will meet you there!
Winter Vacation III - Shanghai
Look at my photos from Shanghai here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/Shanghai2010#
Friday the 19th was a really long day.We had an early morning flight from Xi’an to Shanghai, and started the touristy stuff straight from the airport after meeting our local guide, Mei. A little bit of background on Shanghai: It’s massive (the biggest city in China! 15 million people!!!), and very different from other Chinese cities. My guidebook describes Shanghai as a “Western invention” and it definitely looks and feels that way to me, in comparison to Beijing and Xi’an. This is mostly because it’s a port city with an ideal location, and has a history of being open to foreigners and foreign trade. Shanghai is also the center of banking and business in China. I think this description from my guidebook sums it up very nicely:
“You can’t see the Great Wall from space, but you’d have a job missing Shanghai. One of China’s most massive and vibrant cities, Shanghai is heading places the rest of China can only fantasize about. Somehow typifying modern China while being unlike anywhere else in the land, Shanghai is real China, but perhaps just not the real China you had in mind.
In a doddery land five millennia old, Shanghai feels like it was born yesterday. When you’ve had your fill of Terracotta Warriors, musty palaces and gloomy imperial tombs, submit to Shanghai’s debutante charms…This is a city of action, not ideas…The movers and shakers of modern China may give a nod to Beijing, but their eyes – and their money – are on Shanghai.”
Also, starting this May Shanghai will host the 2010 World Expo. They’re doing a lot of construction to get ready for this, and you can see the little blue mascot – Haibao – everywhere.
Just for reference, the Bund and Pudong are two well-known areas on opposite sides of the Huangpu River in Shanghai. The Bund is famous for big, historic, and old buildings – it has the foreign banks, trading houses, consulates, and government buildings of ‘old’ Shanghai. The best thing to do in the Bund is just stroll and soak up the architecture and views across the river; unfortunately, it’s under construction now, so we didn’t get to fully experience the glamour of old Shanghai!
On the opposite side of the river, Pudong is a completely different story. Literally 20 years ago – seriously, in 1990 – this area was farmland. Now it is a huge developed area; the financial center of Shanghai, and thus of the entire country; and home to China’s three tallest buildings (more about those later).
Our first stop that day was the Shanghai Museum. This is a really amazing place, and we didn’t spend enough time there. It’s all Chinese traditional artwork; I looked at paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, and ancient sculptures. Really beautiful stuff in a gorgeous museum – I definitely recommend it, and if I could go back I’d spend at least half a day there with an audio guide.
After the museum we had another ‘cultural experience,’ aka sponsored shopping trip, this time to a silk factory. This was the worst of the bunch – it was near the end of a really long day, I have absolutely zero interest in silk, and they were mostly selling expensive pieces for the home, like comforters and bed sets. I’m sure it was really nice stuff and if you have a nice home to decorate it would be interesting and worthwhile, but somehow I didn’t see anything there that would suit my one-room shack in Korea. :)
The last thing on that day’s agenda was a stop along the Huangpu River in Pudong. We had a few minutes to take in the evening view and snap some pictures; there were great views on either side. We had the Oriental Pearl Tower right behind us, and the Bund across the river, with river boats full of tourists cruising up and down in between. My camera doesn’t really take good night shots, so for the moment I just soaked in the view and had a cone from a tiny little McDonald’s stand that only sold ice cream!
Our hotel was the Shanghai Crowne Plaza Hotel. Of our three hotels in China, the Huabin International in Beijing had the best rooms, but this one had the best breakfast.
On Saturday, like in Beijing, we had a free day and a choice between going with Mei or exploring on our own. I opted to go with the China Spree tour this time, because they were going to do the same things I wanted to anyway and I didn’t feel like planning or finding my own way around the city. There were only about eight of us, so we switched to a smaller bus. It was nice to be with a small group for a change – I liked everyone else on the tour group, but 35 is a lot of people to always be around!
Our first stop was the Yuyuan Garden and the adjacent bazaar, in the ‘Old City’ part of Shanghai. There were lots of cool, old-fashioned buildings in the Old City, and it had more of a traditional feel to it; we could see the skyscrapers off in the distance, but there were none here and it really did feel like the oldest, original part of Shanghai.
We got to the Yuyuan Garden a bit early and so had it mostly to ourselves, for the first few minutes anyway! The garden was built by a rich family in the 1500s, and took almost 20 years for them to build (the gardens were originally much larger than what survives today). It was absolutely beautiful, exactly what you think of when you picture Chinese gardens – zigzag bridges, bamboo stands, carp ponds, and raised pavilions amongst trees, flowers, and dragons! My pictures don’t do it justice.
Just outside the Yuyuan Garden, the bazaar area was very busy and decorated for the New Year – lanterns hanging from every surface, tigers everywhere (including a huge one made out of cans), lots of signs, and the Expo mascot, Haibao. In China the color red symbolizes luck and prosperity, and it’s everywhere during the New Year – red signs, red lanterns, people wearing red, and red clothes and things for sale (including underwear! Check out my pictures). Besides all the decorations, the bazaar it was mostly little shops, lots of touristy stuff. It was just packed – there was another zigzag bridge that took us several minutes to cross, just because there were so many people trying to cross this pond. It was crowded and crazy, but a fun, energetic atmosphere.
After the Yuyuan Garden and bazaar, we headed to Pudong to visit the Jinmao Tower. Jinmao Tower is a huge (or ‘super-tall,’ as Wikipedia describes it) skyscraper and a landmark in Shanghai. When it opened in 1999, the Jinmao was the tallest building in China; then in 2007, the Shanghai World Financial Center opened right next door and stole the title. Now, the new Shanghai Tower is under construction and set to open next door to that in 2014. The Shanghai Tower will be the new tallest building in China, and the second-tallest building in the world – 128 floors! There must be something in the Pudong water that just makes them compulsive builders of skyscrapers.
Pudong's future cityscape, from left to right: Shanghai Tower, Jinmao Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Center.
Anyway, we visited the observation deck on the 88th floor of the Jinmao Tower. I think we went here instead of the Shanghai World Financial Center because, according to my guidebook, visiting the 88th floor of the Jinmao costs half of what a trip to the 94th floor of the W.F.C. would cost, and a third of what the 97th and 100th floors would be. The view was pretty cool – a bit smoggy of course, but that can’t be avoided. Shanghai is truly a beautiful city.
Our lunch that day was Mongolian BBQ. It wasn’t really barbeque, and from what I’ve read it’s not even from Mongolia, but it was delicious anyway. There are two buffet lines. One had several kinds of thinly sliced, frozen meat – pork, chicken, beef, lamb, and maybe another one. The other had a selection of vegetables and at least a dozen kinds of sauces and oils. We chose our meat, veggies, and flavors and headed over to a big round griddle (this may be an obscure reference, but the griddle reminded me of what they made pancakes on for the pancake feeds at my church!). Two guys dumped your bowls on the griddle and stir-fried it for a few minutes with huge long knives. The grill was big enough for several people’s food to cook at the same time. Then they threw it back into your bowl and served it to you. It was so good, especially trying all the different sauces, and there was rice and really good soup too. An excellent lunch.
After lunch we visited the knock-off market for a little shopping. It’s so funny that some countries, like the U.S., go to so much effort to protect copyrights and prevent piracy and knock-offs; then in China our guide for an official, organized tour with an American company takes us straight to the knock-off market as part of a day out! The market was crazy and weird, housed in a warehouse with several dirty floors of little stalls and very aggressive vendors. I asked one woman for something I couldn’t find in her stall, and she didn’t have it but she ran off for two seconds, came back with a little rolling suitcase from somewhere and dumped it out on the floor for me to look through! And in another place I went into the ‘back room’ (every stall had one) but there was nothing I wanted there, so the lady reached out and flipped the back wall around to reveal a second wall full of stuff! It was like the Egyptian pyramids for illegitimate designer goods – trap doors, fake exits, and hidden treasures.
Later we stopped for coffee on Nanjing Road. Nanjing Road is a really long, busy shopping street, full of department stores, high-end shops, restaurants and cafes, famous hotels, and old mansions. We sat at an outdoor café and just people-watched for a few minutes. According to Wikipedia, it’s the world’s longest shopping district, and over 1 million people visit it every day!
Our last stop before dinner that evening was an area of Shanghai known as the French Concession. The concession itself ended during WWII, but the area is still known as the French Concession. Now it’s just a really nice, pretty area for shopping, restaurants, bars, and fancy residences. Within the French Concession we visited Xintiandi, a small pedestrian district of very stylish, high-end shops and restaurants that’s famous with tourists; like the Bund, it’s a place people go to experience the glamour of ‘old’ Shanghai.
Xintiandi is also famous for having lots of narrow alleys full of shikumen, or traditional stone gate houses. They look just like Western townhouses, except for the stone gate in front of each one. They’re beautiful buildings and unique to Shanghai. According to Wikipedia, 80% of the city’s population used to live in shikumen houses (in the past they weren’t so much townhouses as tenement buildings in slums), but many were subdivided or demolished after WWII. The fancy ones in places like Xintiandi have all been renovated or even rebuilt, and are mostly used for retail shops or restaurants.
After dinner that evening, we went to a performance of the Shanghai Acrobats. It just blew my mind – I’ve never seen anything like it. There were quite a few different acts – contortionists, plate spinners, daredevils on motorcycles, group cyclists (more than ten people on one bike!), roller-skaters, jugglers, boys flying into the air off of teeter-totters, a magician, strong men, and more. It’s impossible to describe each act, but it was so beautiful, amazing, stunning, etc – there aren’t enough superlatives for it. I was a little surprised because I expected it to be more glittery and showy, like Vegas or something. Parts of it were, but other parts were so controlled and artistic it just hurt to watch. If I had to choose a favorite it would probably be the plate-spinners – each woman had a two handfuls of plates spinning on poles, maybe 10 or 12 each, and they did acrobatics and tricks while they whirled these plates around! It was so delicate – the music, the little tinkling sound the plates made, the plates reflecting and whirling in the lights...I would give anything to see it again (I know the acrobats tour around the world, so if you ever have a chance to see them, GO!!!).
So that was Shanghai. It’s a really beautiful, exciting city with so much to offer, and of the three cities I visited with China Spree, I liked Shanghai the best. I can definitely see myself spending more time there, if I ever get the chance!
http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/Shanghai2010#
Friday the 19th was a really long day.We had an early morning flight from Xi’an to Shanghai, and started the touristy stuff straight from the airport after meeting our local guide, Mei. A little bit of background on Shanghai: It’s massive (the biggest city in China! 15 million people!!!), and very different from other Chinese cities. My guidebook describes Shanghai as a “Western invention” and it definitely looks and feels that way to me, in comparison to Beijing and Xi’an. This is mostly because it’s a port city with an ideal location, and has a history of being open to foreigners and foreign trade. Shanghai is also the center of banking and business in China. I think this description from my guidebook sums it up very nicely:
“You can’t see the Great Wall from space, but you’d have a job missing Shanghai. One of China’s most massive and vibrant cities, Shanghai is heading places the rest of China can only fantasize about. Somehow typifying modern China while being unlike anywhere else in the land, Shanghai is real China, but perhaps just not the real China you had in mind.
In a doddery land five millennia old, Shanghai feels like it was born yesterday. When you’ve had your fill of Terracotta Warriors, musty palaces and gloomy imperial tombs, submit to Shanghai’s debutante charms…This is a city of action, not ideas…The movers and shakers of modern China may give a nod to Beijing, but their eyes – and their money – are on Shanghai.”
Also, starting this May Shanghai will host the 2010 World Expo. They’re doing a lot of construction to get ready for this, and you can see the little blue mascot – Haibao – everywhere.
Just for reference, the Bund and Pudong are two well-known areas on opposite sides of the Huangpu River in Shanghai. The Bund is famous for big, historic, and old buildings – it has the foreign banks, trading houses, consulates, and government buildings of ‘old’ Shanghai. The best thing to do in the Bund is just stroll and soak up the architecture and views across the river; unfortunately, it’s under construction now, so we didn’t get to fully experience the glamour of old Shanghai!
On the opposite side of the river, Pudong is a completely different story. Literally 20 years ago – seriously, in 1990 – this area was farmland. Now it is a huge developed area; the financial center of Shanghai, and thus of the entire country; and home to China’s three tallest buildings (more about those later).
Our first stop that day was the Shanghai Museum. This is a really amazing place, and we didn’t spend enough time there. It’s all Chinese traditional artwork; I looked at paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, and ancient sculptures. Really beautiful stuff in a gorgeous museum – I definitely recommend it, and if I could go back I’d spend at least half a day there with an audio guide.
After the museum we had another ‘cultural experience,’ aka sponsored shopping trip, this time to a silk factory. This was the worst of the bunch – it was near the end of a really long day, I have absolutely zero interest in silk, and they were mostly selling expensive pieces for the home, like comforters and bed sets. I’m sure it was really nice stuff and if you have a nice home to decorate it would be interesting and worthwhile, but somehow I didn’t see anything there that would suit my one-room shack in Korea. :)
The last thing on that day’s agenda was a stop along the Huangpu River in Pudong. We had a few minutes to take in the evening view and snap some pictures; there were great views on either side. We had the Oriental Pearl Tower right behind us, and the Bund across the river, with river boats full of tourists cruising up and down in between. My camera doesn’t really take good night shots, so for the moment I just soaked in the view and had a cone from a tiny little McDonald’s stand that only sold ice cream!
Our hotel was the Shanghai Crowne Plaza Hotel. Of our three hotels in China, the Huabin International in Beijing had the best rooms, but this one had the best breakfast.
On Saturday, like in Beijing, we had a free day and a choice between going with Mei or exploring on our own. I opted to go with the China Spree tour this time, because they were going to do the same things I wanted to anyway and I didn’t feel like planning or finding my own way around the city. There were only about eight of us, so we switched to a smaller bus. It was nice to be with a small group for a change – I liked everyone else on the tour group, but 35 is a lot of people to always be around!
Our first stop was the Yuyuan Garden and the adjacent bazaar, in the ‘Old City’ part of Shanghai. There were lots of cool, old-fashioned buildings in the Old City, and it had more of a traditional feel to it; we could see the skyscrapers off in the distance, but there were none here and it really did feel like the oldest, original part of Shanghai.
We got to the Yuyuan Garden a bit early and so had it mostly to ourselves, for the first few minutes anyway! The garden was built by a rich family in the 1500s, and took almost 20 years for them to build (the gardens were originally much larger than what survives today). It was absolutely beautiful, exactly what you think of when you picture Chinese gardens – zigzag bridges, bamboo stands, carp ponds, and raised pavilions amongst trees, flowers, and dragons! My pictures don’t do it justice.
Just outside the Yuyuan Garden, the bazaar area was very busy and decorated for the New Year – lanterns hanging from every surface, tigers everywhere (including a huge one made out of cans), lots of signs, and the Expo mascot, Haibao. In China the color red symbolizes luck and prosperity, and it’s everywhere during the New Year – red signs, red lanterns, people wearing red, and red clothes and things for sale (including underwear! Check out my pictures). Besides all the decorations, the bazaar it was mostly little shops, lots of touristy stuff. It was just packed – there was another zigzag bridge that took us several minutes to cross, just because there were so many people trying to cross this pond. It was crowded and crazy, but a fun, energetic atmosphere.
After the Yuyuan Garden and bazaar, we headed to Pudong to visit the Jinmao Tower. Jinmao Tower is a huge (or ‘super-tall,’ as Wikipedia describes it) skyscraper and a landmark in Shanghai. When it opened in 1999, the Jinmao was the tallest building in China; then in 2007, the Shanghai World Financial Center opened right next door and stole the title. Now, the new Shanghai Tower is under construction and set to open next door to that in 2014. The Shanghai Tower will be the new tallest building in China, and the second-tallest building in the world – 128 floors! There must be something in the Pudong water that just makes them compulsive builders of skyscrapers.
Pudong's future cityscape, from left to right: Shanghai Tower, Jinmao Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Center.
Anyway, we visited the observation deck on the 88th floor of the Jinmao Tower. I think we went here instead of the Shanghai World Financial Center because, according to my guidebook, visiting the 88th floor of the Jinmao costs half of what a trip to the 94th floor of the W.F.C. would cost, and a third of what the 97th and 100th floors would be. The view was pretty cool – a bit smoggy of course, but that can’t be avoided. Shanghai is truly a beautiful city.
Our lunch that day was Mongolian BBQ. It wasn’t really barbeque, and from what I’ve read it’s not even from Mongolia, but it was delicious anyway. There are two buffet lines. One had several kinds of thinly sliced, frozen meat – pork, chicken, beef, lamb, and maybe another one. The other had a selection of vegetables and at least a dozen kinds of sauces and oils. We chose our meat, veggies, and flavors and headed over to a big round griddle (this may be an obscure reference, but the griddle reminded me of what they made pancakes on for the pancake feeds at my church!). Two guys dumped your bowls on the griddle and stir-fried it for a few minutes with huge long knives. The grill was big enough for several people’s food to cook at the same time. Then they threw it back into your bowl and served it to you. It was so good, especially trying all the different sauces, and there was rice and really good soup too. An excellent lunch.
After lunch we visited the knock-off market for a little shopping. It’s so funny that some countries, like the U.S., go to so much effort to protect copyrights and prevent piracy and knock-offs; then in China our guide for an official, organized tour with an American company takes us straight to the knock-off market as part of a day out! The market was crazy and weird, housed in a warehouse with several dirty floors of little stalls and very aggressive vendors. I asked one woman for something I couldn’t find in her stall, and she didn’t have it but she ran off for two seconds, came back with a little rolling suitcase from somewhere and dumped it out on the floor for me to look through! And in another place I went into the ‘back room’ (every stall had one) but there was nothing I wanted there, so the lady reached out and flipped the back wall around to reveal a second wall full of stuff! It was like the Egyptian pyramids for illegitimate designer goods – trap doors, fake exits, and hidden treasures.
Later we stopped for coffee on Nanjing Road. Nanjing Road is a really long, busy shopping street, full of department stores, high-end shops, restaurants and cafes, famous hotels, and old mansions. We sat at an outdoor café and just people-watched for a few minutes. According to Wikipedia, it’s the world’s longest shopping district, and over 1 million people visit it every day!
Our last stop before dinner that evening was an area of Shanghai known as the French Concession. The concession itself ended during WWII, but the area is still known as the French Concession. Now it’s just a really nice, pretty area for shopping, restaurants, bars, and fancy residences. Within the French Concession we visited Xintiandi, a small pedestrian district of very stylish, high-end shops and restaurants that’s famous with tourists; like the Bund, it’s a place people go to experience the glamour of ‘old’ Shanghai.
Xintiandi is also famous for having lots of narrow alleys full of shikumen, or traditional stone gate houses. They look just like Western townhouses, except for the stone gate in front of each one. They’re beautiful buildings and unique to Shanghai. According to Wikipedia, 80% of the city’s population used to live in shikumen houses (in the past they weren’t so much townhouses as tenement buildings in slums), but many were subdivided or demolished after WWII. The fancy ones in places like Xintiandi have all been renovated or even rebuilt, and are mostly used for retail shops or restaurants.
After dinner that evening, we went to a performance of the Shanghai Acrobats. It just blew my mind – I’ve never seen anything like it. There were quite a few different acts – contortionists, plate spinners, daredevils on motorcycles, group cyclists (more than ten people on one bike!), roller-skaters, jugglers, boys flying into the air off of teeter-totters, a magician, strong men, and more. It’s impossible to describe each act, but it was so beautiful, amazing, stunning, etc – there aren’t enough superlatives for it. I was a little surprised because I expected it to be more glittery and showy, like Vegas or something. Parts of it were, but other parts were so controlled and artistic it just hurt to watch. If I had to choose a favorite it would probably be the plate-spinners – each woman had a two handfuls of plates spinning on poles, maybe 10 or 12 each, and they did acrobatics and tricks while they whirled these plates around! It was so delicate – the music, the little tinkling sound the plates made, the plates reflecting and whirling in the lights...I would give anything to see it again (I know the acrobats tour around the world, so if you ever have a chance to see them, GO!!!).
So that was Shanghai. It’s a really beautiful, exciting city with so much to offer, and of the three cities I visited with China Spree, I liked Shanghai the best. I can definitely see myself spending more time there, if I ever get the chance!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Winter Vacation II - Xi'an
Look at my photos from Xi'an here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/XiAn2010?feat=directlink
The night on the train passed quickly. I was surprised by how well I slept – the train rocks back and forth quite a bit, but the noise and motion are kind of soothing and I had stayed up late enough that I slept really well. We woke up Wednesday morning with a little less than an hour left of our 12-hour ride. We met our local guide in Xi’an, Amber, at the train station and went straight to our new hotel, the Xi’an Jianguo Hotel. We had breakfast there and then an hour or so to rest and freshen up before heading out.
Xi’an is a relatively small town by Chinese standards, with only a bit more than 4 million people. Even though it’s not as big or famous as Beijing or Shanghai, it’s really important in Chinese history and culture. Xi’an was the political capital of China under several different dynasties; it is also the eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road trade route that has connected central China with Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia for thousands of years (you can still travel the Silk Road using rail – the line was completed in 1990).
Our first stop in Xi’an was the Wild Goose Pagoda. This pagoda is the most famous landmark in the city of Xi’an; it sits in the Da Ci’en Temple and was built in AD 652. The reason that the pagoda is so famous is that a Buddhist monk, Xuan Zang, left Xi’an in AD 629 and traveled across Asia to India via the Silk Road, studying Buddhism along the way. He returned to Xi’an 16 years later with hundreds of Buddhist texts and figurines from India. The Wild Goose Pagoda was built to house his souvenirs, and Xuan Zang spent the rest of his life there translating them into Chinese.
Xuan Zang is an icon in China. His translations are still used by Buddhists today, and the notes from his travels were about stuff like politics and sociology as well as Buddhism, so historians still refer to him as well. Xuan Zang’s trip to India was also the inspiration for an epic Chinese novel – one of China’s ‘Four Great Classical Novels’ – Journey to the West. This book, published in the 1590s, and Xuan Zang’s adventures, which happened 1,400 years ago, are still a huge deal in China – they influence books, movies, TV shows, video games, comics, etc. to this day.
Sorry for the history lesson, but you can probably tell that I found the history behind the pagoda more interesting than the pagoda itself. It’s interesting-looking, and the temple around it was pretty and nice too, but I just really liked the story. Several years ago I read the book Ultimate Journey by Richard Bernstein; it’s his account of retracing Xuan Zang’s path along the Silk Road sometime in the late 1990’s. It was a good book that I forgot I even read, until I got to Xi’an and started hearing about this monk again.
That afternoon we visited the Shanxi History Museum. The artifacts and exhibits are organized according to which Chinese dynasty they’re from, so if you’re interested in a particular period you can just look at that. I saw some terracotta warriors and some interesting sculptures that I think were tomb guardians – really intimidating, scary-looking things.
The next day was Thursday, and we boarded the bus and headed east of Xi’an for the Army of Terracotta Warriors. Like the Great Wall, this was something I had been dying to see, and I couldn’t believe I was actually there! Here’s a bit from my guidebook:
“The Terracotta Army isn’t just Xi’an’s premier site, but one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world. This subterranean life-size army of thousands has silently stood guard over the soul of China’s first unifier for over two millennia. Either Qin Shi Huang was terrified of the vanquished spirits awaiting him in the afterlife or, as most archaeologists believe, he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life – whatever the case, the guardians of his tomb today offer some of the greatest insights we have into the world of ancient China.
The discovery of the Army was entirely fortuitous. In 1974, peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation. Over the years the site became so famous that many of its unusual attributes are now well known, in particular the fact that no two soldier’s faces are alike…The level of detail is extraordinary: the expressions, hairstyles, armour and even the tread on the footwear are all unique.”
The warriors are in three different pits; the biggest one is absolutely huge and holds more than 6,000 figures (archaeologists know of more than 8,000 figures total – not only warriors, chariots, horses, and officials, but also acrobats and musicians). The order and formation of all the Terracotta Warriors were planned out very specifically – they are east of and facing away from Qin Shi Huang’s tomb, ready to spot enemies and defend their emperor. There is several lifetimes’ worth of work for archeologists in this area – they believe that there are more warriors still buried in the pits that they know about, and possibly more undiscovered pits in the area. The tomb of Qin Shi Huang would be a huge project in and of itself, if archaeologists could get into it. My guidebook says that
“In its time this tomb must have been one of the grandest mausoleums the world had ever seen. Historical accounts describe it as containing palaces filled with precious stones, underground rivers of flowing mercury and ingenious defences against intruders. The tomb reputedly took 38 years to complete, and required a workforce of 700,000 people. It is said that the artisans who built it were buried alive within, taking its secrets with them.”
Archaeologists haven’t even tried to excavate the tomb, due to the possibility of damaging it in the process (as well as the implications of exposing ‘rivers of flowing mercury’ to the people living around the tomb today).
Sorry but you’re about to get another history lesson, just because I think it’s interesting. So this emperor Qin Shi Huang, “China’s first unifier,” is a very controversial guy in Chinese history. Beginning at age 13, in the year 246 BC, he was the first emperor of China and really vital in the development the country. He unified China by conquering seven other kingdoms; standardized measurements, currency and writing; and built roads, canals, and the first version of the Great Wall, besides his own palatial mausoleum and the Army of Terracotta Warriors to protect it. But Qin Shi Huang did all of this and more at the expense of hundreds of thousands of slaves. So it’s not too far-fetched to believe that he might need defending from spirits out for revenge in the afterlife!
This Army was just an amazing thing to see. The sheer magnitude of this project, and the history behind it, is indescribable. 8,000 of these things were just standing underground for more than 2,000 years, until farmers discovered it in the 1970s. We actually saw one of these farmers at the site – you could buy a really nice English book with lots of color pictures, and have him sign it! I guess he’s a big celebrity in China now (he even met Bill Clinton when Clinton visited the Warriors).
That day we also visited some place that was either a museum or factory about the Terracotta Warriors; I think it was where they made the replicas for other museums and the miniature figurines for tourists. Amber had already given us some information about how the warriors were made at the real site, so I wasn’t really paying attention here. I mostly remember this place because in Xi’an I realized that I was almost out of Chinese yuan (their currency) and I couldn’t remember the PIN number for my American debit card because I hadn’t used it in eight or nine months. There were about two days of panic and several frantic emails, one of which was from my bank informing me that they don’t keep records of PIN numbers and would have to request it from MasterCard and have it mailed to my permanent address, which would take several days. Running out of money in a foreign country is so scary. I’d just like to say here that both Korean cell phones and Korean banking exist within what seem to be an impenetrable bubble – my Korean debit card (which I’ve been using enough that I memorized the PIN number) didn’t work in China and most hotels don’t exchange Korean won for Chinese yuan; a bank would have but I was out with the tour group all day during bank hours. Anyway, I remember the Terracotta Warriors museum/factory because even though I didn’t buy anything, they were able to do a cash advance for me using my debit card and a signature. HUGE sigh of relief and lesson learned.
After seeing the Army of Terracotta Warriors and the mysterious museum/factory, we went back into Xi’an and spent part of the afternoon visiting the Muslim Quarter and Great Mosque. The Mosque is really beautiful; parts of it are off-limits to anyone except Muslims, but in my opinion the best part was the garden, anyway. It was walled-off from the rest of the city, and really beautiful and peaceful. The Great Mosque was also cool because of the mix of influences – it being a mosque, there were obviously Arabic and Islamic designs and script everywhere, but instead of a minaret there was a Chinese pagoda, and the gardens were Chinese too. A unique, interesting mix.
The Muslim Quarter was also quite interesting. It’s mostly cobblestone backstreets and alleys; close to the Great Mosque are mostly souvenirs and tourist junk (my old sunglasses broke before I even got to Beijing, and I replaced them in the Muslim Quarter with knock-off Gucci’s) but there was also a massive, crowded and crazy food market nearby. The food market had not only ready-to-eat street food but also lots of little grocery stores, plus some more tourist junk and crappy jewelry thrown in. It was such a trip – so many people to push through, and so much to see and smell. I got some really good snacks there, little crumbly cake things that I loved, but I don’t know what they were called or even what they were made of.
That evening we had a very fancy dumpling banquet. From what I can tell, the Chinese eat dumplings year-round (and at any time of day) but they are especially popular during the Spring Festival or New Year. Our banquet was held at a dinner theater (staying for the show afterward was optional, and unfortunately I didn’t because of the previously mentioned yuan crisis) and consisted of 18 courses of dumplings! Of course 18 courses is plenty of food, but it wasn’t as gluttonous as it sounds – everyone got one dumpling from each course, and they’re not that big. Each dumpling was different – some meat-based, some vegetarian, some spicy, some sweet, and lots of different shapes, like flowers or ducks or fish!
Xi’an was the one place I visited on my vacation where I regretted not doing more – nights I was usually too tired to go out and see the city on my own, and I definitely regret it now. For example, Xi’an has city walls that date from 1370; they’re almost completely restored and you can walk or bike all around them, and at night they’re all lit up – I wish I had gone! China is frustrating because it’s so close and really easy to get to from Korea; however, Americans need a stupid $150 visa while most other countries are free to us, so I doubt that I’ll go back in the near future.
The night on the train passed quickly. I was surprised by how well I slept – the train rocks back and forth quite a bit, but the noise and motion are kind of soothing and I had stayed up late enough that I slept really well. We woke up Wednesday morning with a little less than an hour left of our 12-hour ride. We met our local guide in Xi’an, Amber, at the train station and went straight to our new hotel, the Xi’an Jianguo Hotel. We had breakfast there and then an hour or so to rest and freshen up before heading out.
Xi’an is a relatively small town by Chinese standards, with only a bit more than 4 million people. Even though it’s not as big or famous as Beijing or Shanghai, it’s really important in Chinese history and culture. Xi’an was the political capital of China under several different dynasties; it is also the eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road trade route that has connected central China with Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia for thousands of years (you can still travel the Silk Road using rail – the line was completed in 1990).
Our first stop in Xi’an was the Wild Goose Pagoda. This pagoda is the most famous landmark in the city of Xi’an; it sits in the Da Ci’en Temple and was built in AD 652. The reason that the pagoda is so famous is that a Buddhist monk, Xuan Zang, left Xi’an in AD 629 and traveled across Asia to India via the Silk Road, studying Buddhism along the way. He returned to Xi’an 16 years later with hundreds of Buddhist texts and figurines from India. The Wild Goose Pagoda was built to house his souvenirs, and Xuan Zang spent the rest of his life there translating them into Chinese.
Xuan Zang is an icon in China. His translations are still used by Buddhists today, and the notes from his travels were about stuff like politics and sociology as well as Buddhism, so historians still refer to him as well. Xuan Zang’s trip to India was also the inspiration for an epic Chinese novel – one of China’s ‘Four Great Classical Novels’ – Journey to the West. This book, published in the 1590s, and Xuan Zang’s adventures, which happened 1,400 years ago, are still a huge deal in China – they influence books, movies, TV shows, video games, comics, etc. to this day.
Sorry for the history lesson, but you can probably tell that I found the history behind the pagoda more interesting than the pagoda itself. It’s interesting-looking, and the temple around it was pretty and nice too, but I just really liked the story. Several years ago I read the book Ultimate Journey by Richard Bernstein; it’s his account of retracing Xuan Zang’s path along the Silk Road sometime in the late 1990’s. It was a good book that I forgot I even read, until I got to Xi’an and started hearing about this monk again.
That afternoon we visited the Shanxi History Museum. The artifacts and exhibits are organized according to which Chinese dynasty they’re from, so if you’re interested in a particular period you can just look at that. I saw some terracotta warriors and some interesting sculptures that I think were tomb guardians – really intimidating, scary-looking things.
The next day was Thursday, and we boarded the bus and headed east of Xi’an for the Army of Terracotta Warriors. Like the Great Wall, this was something I had been dying to see, and I couldn’t believe I was actually there! Here’s a bit from my guidebook:
“The Terracotta Army isn’t just Xi’an’s premier site, but one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world. This subterranean life-size army of thousands has silently stood guard over the soul of China’s first unifier for over two millennia. Either Qin Shi Huang was terrified of the vanquished spirits awaiting him in the afterlife or, as most archaeologists believe, he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life – whatever the case, the guardians of his tomb today offer some of the greatest insights we have into the world of ancient China.
The discovery of the Army was entirely fortuitous. In 1974, peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation. Over the years the site became so famous that many of its unusual attributes are now well known, in particular the fact that no two soldier’s faces are alike…The level of detail is extraordinary: the expressions, hairstyles, armour and even the tread on the footwear are all unique.”
The warriors are in three different pits; the biggest one is absolutely huge and holds more than 6,000 figures (archaeologists know of more than 8,000 figures total – not only warriors, chariots, horses, and officials, but also acrobats and musicians). The order and formation of all the Terracotta Warriors were planned out very specifically – they are east of and facing away from Qin Shi Huang’s tomb, ready to spot enemies and defend their emperor. There is several lifetimes’ worth of work for archeologists in this area – they believe that there are more warriors still buried in the pits that they know about, and possibly more undiscovered pits in the area. The tomb of Qin Shi Huang would be a huge project in and of itself, if archaeologists could get into it. My guidebook says that
“In its time this tomb must have been one of the grandest mausoleums the world had ever seen. Historical accounts describe it as containing palaces filled with precious stones, underground rivers of flowing mercury and ingenious defences against intruders. The tomb reputedly took 38 years to complete, and required a workforce of 700,000 people. It is said that the artisans who built it were buried alive within, taking its secrets with them.”
Archaeologists haven’t even tried to excavate the tomb, due to the possibility of damaging it in the process (as well as the implications of exposing ‘rivers of flowing mercury’ to the people living around the tomb today).
Sorry but you’re about to get another history lesson, just because I think it’s interesting. So this emperor Qin Shi Huang, “China’s first unifier,” is a very controversial guy in Chinese history. Beginning at age 13, in the year 246 BC, he was the first emperor of China and really vital in the development the country. He unified China by conquering seven other kingdoms; standardized measurements, currency and writing; and built roads, canals, and the first version of the Great Wall, besides his own palatial mausoleum and the Army of Terracotta Warriors to protect it. But Qin Shi Huang did all of this and more at the expense of hundreds of thousands of slaves. So it’s not too far-fetched to believe that he might need defending from spirits out for revenge in the afterlife!
This Army was just an amazing thing to see. The sheer magnitude of this project, and the history behind it, is indescribable. 8,000 of these things were just standing underground for more than 2,000 years, until farmers discovered it in the 1970s. We actually saw one of these farmers at the site – you could buy a really nice English book with lots of color pictures, and have him sign it! I guess he’s a big celebrity in China now (he even met Bill Clinton when Clinton visited the Warriors).
That day we also visited some place that was either a museum or factory about the Terracotta Warriors; I think it was where they made the replicas for other museums and the miniature figurines for tourists. Amber had already given us some information about how the warriors were made at the real site, so I wasn’t really paying attention here. I mostly remember this place because in Xi’an I realized that I was almost out of Chinese yuan (their currency) and I couldn’t remember the PIN number for my American debit card because I hadn’t used it in eight or nine months. There were about two days of panic and several frantic emails, one of which was from my bank informing me that they don’t keep records of PIN numbers and would have to request it from MasterCard and have it mailed to my permanent address, which would take several days. Running out of money in a foreign country is so scary. I’d just like to say here that both Korean cell phones and Korean banking exist within what seem to be an impenetrable bubble – my Korean debit card (which I’ve been using enough that I memorized the PIN number) didn’t work in China and most hotels don’t exchange Korean won for Chinese yuan; a bank would have but I was out with the tour group all day during bank hours. Anyway, I remember the Terracotta Warriors museum/factory because even though I didn’t buy anything, they were able to do a cash advance for me using my debit card and a signature. HUGE sigh of relief and lesson learned.
After seeing the Army of Terracotta Warriors and the mysterious museum/factory, we went back into Xi’an and spent part of the afternoon visiting the Muslim Quarter and Great Mosque. The Mosque is really beautiful; parts of it are off-limits to anyone except Muslims, but in my opinion the best part was the garden, anyway. It was walled-off from the rest of the city, and really beautiful and peaceful. The Great Mosque was also cool because of the mix of influences – it being a mosque, there were obviously Arabic and Islamic designs and script everywhere, but instead of a minaret there was a Chinese pagoda, and the gardens were Chinese too. A unique, interesting mix.
The Muslim Quarter was also quite interesting. It’s mostly cobblestone backstreets and alleys; close to the Great Mosque are mostly souvenirs and tourist junk (my old sunglasses broke before I even got to Beijing, and I replaced them in the Muslim Quarter with knock-off Gucci’s) but there was also a massive, crowded and crazy food market nearby. The food market had not only ready-to-eat street food but also lots of little grocery stores, plus some more tourist junk and crappy jewelry thrown in. It was such a trip – so many people to push through, and so much to see and smell. I got some really good snacks there, little crumbly cake things that I loved, but I don’t know what they were called or even what they were made of.
That evening we had a very fancy dumpling banquet. From what I can tell, the Chinese eat dumplings year-round (and at any time of day) but they are especially popular during the Spring Festival or New Year. Our banquet was held at a dinner theater (staying for the show afterward was optional, and unfortunately I didn’t because of the previously mentioned yuan crisis) and consisted of 18 courses of dumplings! Of course 18 courses is plenty of food, but it wasn’t as gluttonous as it sounds – everyone got one dumpling from each course, and they’re not that big. Each dumpling was different – some meat-based, some vegetarian, some spicy, some sweet, and lots of different shapes, like flowers or ducks or fish!
Xi’an was the one place I visited on my vacation where I regretted not doing more – nights I was usually too tired to go out and see the city on my own, and I definitely regret it now. For example, Xi’an has city walls that date from 1370; they’re almost completely restored and you can walk or bike all around them, and at night they’re all lit up – I wish I had gone! China is frustrating because it’s so close and really easy to get to from Korea; however, Americans need a stupid $150 visa while most other countries are free to us, so I doubt that I’ll go back in the near future.
Winter Vacation I - Beijing
Look at my photos fom Beijing here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/Beijing2010?feat=directlink
My vacation started with nine days in China, as part of a tour group with the company China Spree. Also part of the tour group were three other EPIK-ers from Daegu – Jeannine, Chris B. and Elizabeth – and Jeannine’s sister Anna, who came from Minnesota to visit her sister in China and Korea. We had decided to join a tour group because it seemed like the easiest way to see multiple cities in China. Even though I like independent travel better and am fairly competent at getting around by myself, frankly I was a bit intimidated by the thought of navigating around China – especially since many famous sites, like the Great Wall and Army of Terracotta Warriors, are actually outside of the major cities. I also did all the planning for my trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong, and just didn’t have the time or energy to figure out China on top of everything else.
So after researching and comparing companies, dates, and prices, China Spree seemed like the best option. Using a cash discount, we paid about $680 each for the land-only tour package (excluding airfare) and met the rest of the group in Beijing. I think it was a pretty fair price – it included seven nights in 4-star hotels, the majority of our meals, entrance fees to all the sites we visited as a group, the soft-sleeper overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an, and the flight from Xi’an to Shanghai. We also had really smart and helpful local guides in every city - Shirley in Beijing, Amber in Xi’an, and Mei in Shanghai (they were all Chinese, we just used their English names). Our tour group was about 35 people.
The first day, Saturday the 13th, felt a lot longer than 24 hours. Jeannine and I spent Thursday and Friday of that week celebrating her birthday with our other Daegu friends. We were careful to get home early on Friday night, by 1am, so we could freshen up, finish packing, and make it to the Daegu bus station by 4:30am on Saturday morning. After 4.5 hours on the bus we were at the Incheon airport.
Jeannine and I had different flights and even though they were only an hour apart and we had planned to, we couldn’t find each other once we arrived at the Beijing airport. Luckily, we were able to make our separate ways to the Beijing Huabin International Hotel. Poor Jeannine had to go back to the airport later to meet her sister’s flight, and I went for a brief walk around our hotel with Chris. We kept it brief because it was freezing, and there also wasn’t much to see or do. We were expecting more hullabaloo because it was New Year’s Eve, and while there were a lot of fireworks and firecrackers (and the noise and smoke to match) not many people were out and about. We heard and saw fireworks almost every night of our stay in China – apparently they’re not regulated during the New Year, even within the city limits!
The next day we breakfasted at the hotel (all our breakfasts were full hotel buffets, generally pretty good) and gathered with the rest of our tour group and local guide Shirley. That whole first day is very hazy in my memory now, and I can’t even use jet lag as an excuse (there’s only a one-hour time difference between China and Korea. By the way: China is gigantic but only uses one time zone! I had no clue). We saw the Summer Palace and a pearl factory in the morning, and then Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City after lunch.
The Summer Palace was really beautiful, and has a lot of interesting history associated with it. It was a summer retreat from Beijing for the royal family, and is basically a huge garden with temples, pavilions, lakes, and the infamous marble boat that the ‘Dragon Lady’ built with funds meant for the imperial navy. The Dragon Lady was the Empress Dowager Cixi; she started out as a very ambitious concubine in the royal harem and ended up overthrowing the ruling group of regents in a coup. She ruled China until her death in 1908, in the last of the Chinese dynasties.
After the Summer Palace we visited a pearl factory. Tours in China are infamous for these arranged shopping trips, where tour guides get kickbacks from shop owners for bringing their groups in. I think it’s almost impossible to avoid, and China Spree pulled it off by telling us about them ahead of time and also pretending they were ‘cultural experiences.’ Each factory we visited was about something special to China (pearls, jade, and silk), we had to learn a bit about whatever was being sold – the historical significance of each item, how to tell real pearls from fakes, etc – and we were only allowed to stay for 40 minutes in each factory, including the discussion and shopping time. Whatever. It’s all part of the experience, I guess!
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City were both just massive and kind of overwhelming (Tiananmen Square can hold one million people! I can’t even picture it). Especially by the time we walked underneath Mao’s portrait, through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, and into the Forbidden City, I was just out of it. The Forbidden City is said to have 9,999 rooms (in China, the number 9 – the greatest single-digit number – is traditionally associated with the emperor or royalty) and takes up 7.8 million square feet, so even at your best visiting this place can take all day. The thing that I remember most from that whole day is how cold we all were, just frozen to the bone all day long. Except for lunch we were outside all day, and it was so windy and bitterly cold. I wore layers but definitely underestimated how bad it would be.
On Tuesday our first stop was a jade factory. We learned a bit about jade – it’s very valuable and symbolic to the Chinese (they say that ‘Even gold has a price, but jade is priceless’) and a sort of national treasure. The medals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics were even made with it. FYI, the way to tell a piece of high-quality jade is to clink it against something else –the best piece has a higher-pitched ‘clink’. I bought a ring from the factory.
After the jade shop, it was time for the Great Wall! It was amazing, of course. We visited the Badaling section, which is among the most intact and developed sections of the Wall, and the part that most tourists see. We had the option to climb either a steeper portion or a flatter one; I chose the steep side, and parts of it were seriously steep, like I wanted to use my hands as if I were on a ladder! It was very cold and windy again (up in the mountains) but I was warm while I was hiking! The farther I went, the fewer people there were, so I got some cool pictures that actually weren’t full of other tourists. The Wall is beautiful, and now I’ve seen one of the 7 Wonders of the World! I don’t really know what else to say about it; it’s just something that has to be experienced. It’s worth any amount of hassle or money to come to China, even if the Great Wall is all you see.
Once we got back into Beijing, we stopped for a photo opp at the sites of the Beijing Olympics – the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube buildings. We didn’t go inside either of them, but just had a few minutes to walk around. The Bird’s Nest is especially cool; it really gives you a sense of how important the Olympics were to China and all the effort they went through to prepare Beijing for the spotlight.
After dinner that night we had the option of seeing a performance of the Peking opera. I went with a few others and just loved it. The actors did their makeup in the lobby before the show so we could watch them, and the three acts included some traditional singing as well as acrobatics and martial arts. The costumes and performances were amazing, but my favorite part was the music – the small orchestra was just off-stage, and the music was very intense and bare. As opposed to Western opera, where the music accompanies the singing and the actors follow it, in this show the music accentuated the actor’s movements and facial expressions; the musicians took their lead from the actors as there was very little singing or dialog. It was so beautiful and controlled; I could have watched that all night.
Our last day in Beijing, Tuesday the 16th, was jam-packed. We had the option of staying with Shirley for a guided tour, or having a free day in Beijing. Jeannine, Anna and I planned our own day, and filled it with all of the main sights in Beijing that we hadn’t seen yet. We headed out bright and early to the Temple of Heaven Park. This complex was built in the early 1400s. The most important building in the whole park is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. This building, besides being really beautiful and old, has three tiers, is 38 meters tall and completely wooden, and is held together without any nails or cement! Every year, the emperor, or ‘Son of Heaven,’ had to drag himself out of the Forbidden City, walk in a procession through the park, and conduct the annual prayers and rites of worshipping heaven and praying for good harvests.
When we arrived at the Temple of Heaven, there were very few people there – mostly old folks doing their morning tai chi – but as the morning wore on, the pavilion in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests started filling up. During the Spring Festival, or week-long Chinese New Year’s celebrations, they re-enact the emperor’s procession through the park up to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests – complete with music, hundreds of ‘soldiers’ in costumes, and the Son of Heaven himself. It was really difficult to see because of the crowd; my pictures are good, but that certainly wasn’t my view – I was holding my camera over my head and just pointing and clicking. I still really enjoyed the show though – all of the soldiers, in different kinds of gorgeous costumes, moved in groups to face the Hall of Prayer and perform different kinds of salutes to the music. It was all very rigid and strict – it reminded me of something like a changing of the guards ceremony, only more extravagant and set to music.
We left the Temple of Heaven complex and moved to the White Cloud Temple. Jeannine got a great picture of me buying our entrance tickets; you had to get them from a white van parked outside the temple, so it looks like I’m buying drugs. Inside, the temple was packed and crazy with New Year worshippers stocking up on luck and prosperity to last the rest of the year. We bought coins and threw them into a well, aiming for some sort of drum that was hanging in it, and walked along a wall with carvings of the 12 Chinese zodiac animal signs, rubbing each one and paying special attention to our own sign for luck. This is the year of the tiger, and my own birth year, so according to Chinese superstition either really good or really bad things could happen to me this year.
Then we went to an area north of the Forbidden City called Shicha Hai. It’s a really pretty, scenic area that’s good for walking and has tons of historical stuff like temples, mansions, and gardens, as well as three connected lakes. We saw paddle boats, but they were frozen in the lake and people were ice skating instead! We did walk around taking pictures for a bit, but the main reason we came to Shicha Hai was to visit some hutong. As my guidebook says,
“A journey into the city’s hutong [translated as ‘narrow alleyways’] is a voyage back to the original heart and fabric of Beijing. Many of these charming alleyways have survived, crisscrossing east-west across the city and linking up into a huge, enchanting warren of one-storey, ramshackle dwellings and historic courtyard homes…According to official figures, hundreds of hutong survive but many have been swept aside in Beijing’s race to manufacture a modern city of high-rises. Marked with white plaques, historic homes are protected, but for many others a way of life hangs precariously in balance.”
Shicha Hai is surrounded by hutong, as well as really aggressive rickshaw drivers touting hutong tours. We decided against the rickshaw ride and just walked around instead, snacking on dumplings and taking pictures. I tried some mysterious drink that was being sold on the sidewalk in front of a tiny store – just a little clay pot, with a piece of paper rubber-banded around the rim. I punched a straw through the paper and it turned out to be home-made yogurt – it was so good! I finished it and returned the clay pot to the store for the next customer.
Within the hutong in Shicha Hai were the Drum and Bell Towers. They’re just across from each other and you guessed it – one has a bunch of huge drums in it, and the other has the most gigantic bell I’ve ever seen. In ancient times they were used both for musical purposes and to keep time for the city. Although they’re not skyscrapers by any means, both towers are pretty big, and to get to the top of each one we had to climb the LONGEST, scariest, steepest, most rickety flight of stairs. I was winded by the time we got to the top, and just hanging from the railings on the way down! Each one was worth it though – in the Drum Tower they have a team of drummers perform every half-hour, and the views from each Tower were great.
To wrap up our day we had a delicious and extravagant dinner of Peking duck. Peking duck is one of China’s most famous dishes, and rightfully so – it was really expensive, but so delicious. They carved our duck in front of us (we even got a serial number for it before we left!) and showed us how to wrap it up with onions and a dark sauce in a thin little pancake. They served us the meat, skin, and the head to eat! There were also plenty of side dishes, including more meat and dessert at the end, so we were stuffed by the time we left.
After dinner we met the rest of the group at the hotel and left together for the train station. We had an entire car to ourselves for the overnight ride to Xi’an. Our tickets were soft-sleeper, and apparently are a very hot commodity. China is a huge country with millions of migrant laborers; we were told that especially during New Year’s, overnight train tickets are almost impossible to get as laborers will fight to get even standing room on an overnight train to get home to their families! And to get soft-sleeper tickets, you have to know someone in the ticket department! I don’t know much about the different kinds of tickets, but our soft-sleeper compartments had four bunks with bedding in a tiny room (I think the hard-sleeper has six bunks) and we could control the light and heat. It was definitely cramped, and there were only two bathrooms (no showers) for the entire car, but it was a fun experience – rail is the way that most Chinese travel around China, but it’s just something that we do very rarely in the U.S.
So that was Beijing! Next stop, Xi’an!
My vacation started with nine days in China, as part of a tour group with the company China Spree. Also part of the tour group were three other EPIK-ers from Daegu – Jeannine, Chris B. and Elizabeth – and Jeannine’s sister Anna, who came from Minnesota to visit her sister in China and Korea. We had decided to join a tour group because it seemed like the easiest way to see multiple cities in China. Even though I like independent travel better and am fairly competent at getting around by myself, frankly I was a bit intimidated by the thought of navigating around China – especially since many famous sites, like the Great Wall and Army of Terracotta Warriors, are actually outside of the major cities. I also did all the planning for my trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong, and just didn’t have the time or energy to figure out China on top of everything else.
So after researching and comparing companies, dates, and prices, China Spree seemed like the best option. Using a cash discount, we paid about $680 each for the land-only tour package (excluding airfare) and met the rest of the group in Beijing. I think it was a pretty fair price – it included seven nights in 4-star hotels, the majority of our meals, entrance fees to all the sites we visited as a group, the soft-sleeper overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an, and the flight from Xi’an to Shanghai. We also had really smart and helpful local guides in every city - Shirley in Beijing, Amber in Xi’an, and Mei in Shanghai (they were all Chinese, we just used their English names). Our tour group was about 35 people.
The first day, Saturday the 13th, felt a lot longer than 24 hours. Jeannine and I spent Thursday and Friday of that week celebrating her birthday with our other Daegu friends. We were careful to get home early on Friday night, by 1am, so we could freshen up, finish packing, and make it to the Daegu bus station by 4:30am on Saturday morning. After 4.5 hours on the bus we were at the Incheon airport.
Jeannine and I had different flights and even though they were only an hour apart and we had planned to, we couldn’t find each other once we arrived at the Beijing airport. Luckily, we were able to make our separate ways to the Beijing Huabin International Hotel. Poor Jeannine had to go back to the airport later to meet her sister’s flight, and I went for a brief walk around our hotel with Chris. We kept it brief because it was freezing, and there also wasn’t much to see or do. We were expecting more hullabaloo because it was New Year’s Eve, and while there were a lot of fireworks and firecrackers (and the noise and smoke to match) not many people were out and about. We heard and saw fireworks almost every night of our stay in China – apparently they’re not regulated during the New Year, even within the city limits!
The next day we breakfasted at the hotel (all our breakfasts were full hotel buffets, generally pretty good) and gathered with the rest of our tour group and local guide Shirley. That whole first day is very hazy in my memory now, and I can’t even use jet lag as an excuse (there’s only a one-hour time difference between China and Korea. By the way: China is gigantic but only uses one time zone! I had no clue). We saw the Summer Palace and a pearl factory in the morning, and then Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City after lunch.
The Summer Palace was really beautiful, and has a lot of interesting history associated with it. It was a summer retreat from Beijing for the royal family, and is basically a huge garden with temples, pavilions, lakes, and the infamous marble boat that the ‘Dragon Lady’ built with funds meant for the imperial navy. The Dragon Lady was the Empress Dowager Cixi; she started out as a very ambitious concubine in the royal harem and ended up overthrowing the ruling group of regents in a coup. She ruled China until her death in 1908, in the last of the Chinese dynasties.
After the Summer Palace we visited a pearl factory. Tours in China are infamous for these arranged shopping trips, where tour guides get kickbacks from shop owners for bringing their groups in. I think it’s almost impossible to avoid, and China Spree pulled it off by telling us about them ahead of time and also pretending they were ‘cultural experiences.’ Each factory we visited was about something special to China (pearls, jade, and silk), we had to learn a bit about whatever was being sold – the historical significance of each item, how to tell real pearls from fakes, etc – and we were only allowed to stay for 40 minutes in each factory, including the discussion and shopping time. Whatever. It’s all part of the experience, I guess!
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City were both just massive and kind of overwhelming (Tiananmen Square can hold one million people! I can’t even picture it). Especially by the time we walked underneath Mao’s portrait, through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, and into the Forbidden City, I was just out of it. The Forbidden City is said to have 9,999 rooms (in China, the number 9 – the greatest single-digit number – is traditionally associated with the emperor or royalty) and takes up 7.8 million square feet, so even at your best visiting this place can take all day. The thing that I remember most from that whole day is how cold we all were, just frozen to the bone all day long. Except for lunch we were outside all day, and it was so windy and bitterly cold. I wore layers but definitely underestimated how bad it would be.
On Tuesday our first stop was a jade factory. We learned a bit about jade – it’s very valuable and symbolic to the Chinese (they say that ‘Even gold has a price, but jade is priceless’) and a sort of national treasure. The medals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics were even made with it. FYI, the way to tell a piece of high-quality jade is to clink it against something else –the best piece has a higher-pitched ‘clink’. I bought a ring from the factory.
After the jade shop, it was time for the Great Wall! It was amazing, of course. We visited the Badaling section, which is among the most intact and developed sections of the Wall, and the part that most tourists see. We had the option to climb either a steeper portion or a flatter one; I chose the steep side, and parts of it were seriously steep, like I wanted to use my hands as if I were on a ladder! It was very cold and windy again (up in the mountains) but I was warm while I was hiking! The farther I went, the fewer people there were, so I got some cool pictures that actually weren’t full of other tourists. The Wall is beautiful, and now I’ve seen one of the 7 Wonders of the World! I don’t really know what else to say about it; it’s just something that has to be experienced. It’s worth any amount of hassle or money to come to China, even if the Great Wall is all you see.
Once we got back into Beijing, we stopped for a photo opp at the sites of the Beijing Olympics – the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube buildings. We didn’t go inside either of them, but just had a few minutes to walk around. The Bird’s Nest is especially cool; it really gives you a sense of how important the Olympics were to China and all the effort they went through to prepare Beijing for the spotlight.
After dinner that night we had the option of seeing a performance of the Peking opera. I went with a few others and just loved it. The actors did their makeup in the lobby before the show so we could watch them, and the three acts included some traditional singing as well as acrobatics and martial arts. The costumes and performances were amazing, but my favorite part was the music – the small orchestra was just off-stage, and the music was very intense and bare. As opposed to Western opera, where the music accompanies the singing and the actors follow it, in this show the music accentuated the actor’s movements and facial expressions; the musicians took their lead from the actors as there was very little singing or dialog. It was so beautiful and controlled; I could have watched that all night.
Our last day in Beijing, Tuesday the 16th, was jam-packed. We had the option of staying with Shirley for a guided tour, or having a free day in Beijing. Jeannine, Anna and I planned our own day, and filled it with all of the main sights in Beijing that we hadn’t seen yet. We headed out bright and early to the Temple of Heaven Park. This complex was built in the early 1400s. The most important building in the whole park is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. This building, besides being really beautiful and old, has three tiers, is 38 meters tall and completely wooden, and is held together without any nails or cement! Every year, the emperor, or ‘Son of Heaven,’ had to drag himself out of the Forbidden City, walk in a procession through the park, and conduct the annual prayers and rites of worshipping heaven and praying for good harvests.
When we arrived at the Temple of Heaven, there were very few people there – mostly old folks doing their morning tai chi – but as the morning wore on, the pavilion in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests started filling up. During the Spring Festival, or week-long Chinese New Year’s celebrations, they re-enact the emperor’s procession through the park up to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests – complete with music, hundreds of ‘soldiers’ in costumes, and the Son of Heaven himself. It was really difficult to see because of the crowd; my pictures are good, but that certainly wasn’t my view – I was holding my camera over my head and just pointing and clicking. I still really enjoyed the show though – all of the soldiers, in different kinds of gorgeous costumes, moved in groups to face the Hall of Prayer and perform different kinds of salutes to the music. It was all very rigid and strict – it reminded me of something like a changing of the guards ceremony, only more extravagant and set to music.
We left the Temple of Heaven complex and moved to the White Cloud Temple. Jeannine got a great picture of me buying our entrance tickets; you had to get them from a white van parked outside the temple, so it looks like I’m buying drugs. Inside, the temple was packed and crazy with New Year worshippers stocking up on luck and prosperity to last the rest of the year. We bought coins and threw them into a well, aiming for some sort of drum that was hanging in it, and walked along a wall with carvings of the 12 Chinese zodiac animal signs, rubbing each one and paying special attention to our own sign for luck. This is the year of the tiger, and my own birth year, so according to Chinese superstition either really good or really bad things could happen to me this year.
Then we went to an area north of the Forbidden City called Shicha Hai. It’s a really pretty, scenic area that’s good for walking and has tons of historical stuff like temples, mansions, and gardens, as well as three connected lakes. We saw paddle boats, but they were frozen in the lake and people were ice skating instead! We did walk around taking pictures for a bit, but the main reason we came to Shicha Hai was to visit some hutong. As my guidebook says,
“A journey into the city’s hutong [translated as ‘narrow alleyways’] is a voyage back to the original heart and fabric of Beijing. Many of these charming alleyways have survived, crisscrossing east-west across the city and linking up into a huge, enchanting warren of one-storey, ramshackle dwellings and historic courtyard homes…According to official figures, hundreds of hutong survive but many have been swept aside in Beijing’s race to manufacture a modern city of high-rises. Marked with white plaques, historic homes are protected, but for many others a way of life hangs precariously in balance.”
Shicha Hai is surrounded by hutong, as well as really aggressive rickshaw drivers touting hutong tours. We decided against the rickshaw ride and just walked around instead, snacking on dumplings and taking pictures. I tried some mysterious drink that was being sold on the sidewalk in front of a tiny store – just a little clay pot, with a piece of paper rubber-banded around the rim. I punched a straw through the paper and it turned out to be home-made yogurt – it was so good! I finished it and returned the clay pot to the store for the next customer.
Within the hutong in Shicha Hai were the Drum and Bell Towers. They’re just across from each other and you guessed it – one has a bunch of huge drums in it, and the other has the most gigantic bell I’ve ever seen. In ancient times they were used both for musical purposes and to keep time for the city. Although they’re not skyscrapers by any means, both towers are pretty big, and to get to the top of each one we had to climb the LONGEST, scariest, steepest, most rickety flight of stairs. I was winded by the time we got to the top, and just hanging from the railings on the way down! Each one was worth it though – in the Drum Tower they have a team of drummers perform every half-hour, and the views from each Tower were great.
To wrap up our day we had a delicious and extravagant dinner of Peking duck. Peking duck is one of China’s most famous dishes, and rightfully so – it was really expensive, but so delicious. They carved our duck in front of us (we even got a serial number for it before we left!) and showed us how to wrap it up with onions and a dark sauce in a thin little pancake. They served us the meat, skin, and the head to eat! There were also plenty of side dishes, including more meat and dessert at the end, so we were stuffed by the time we left.
After dinner we met the rest of the group at the hotel and left together for the train station. We had an entire car to ourselves for the overnight ride to Xi’an. Our tickets were soft-sleeper, and apparently are a very hot commodity. China is a huge country with millions of migrant laborers; we were told that especially during New Year’s, overnight train tickets are almost impossible to get as laborers will fight to get even standing room on an overnight train to get home to their families! And to get soft-sleeper tickets, you have to know someone in the ticket department! I don’t know much about the different kinds of tickets, but our soft-sleeper compartments had four bunks with bedding in a tiny room (I think the hard-sleeper has six bunks) and we could control the light and heat. It was definitely cramped, and there were only two bathrooms (no showers) for the entire car, but it was a fun experience – rail is the way that most Chinese travel around China, but it’s just something that we do very rarely in the U.S.
So that was Beijing! Next stop, Xi’an!
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Only in Korea...
Here's another article, much less depressing than the last one, courtesy of the New York Times.
"Seoul Police Link 1,700 Pairs of Shoes to 2 Feet"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/world/asia/07shoe.html?hp
It's so funny! Just for the record, I've always found my shoes exactly where I left them, or neatly rearranged by the shoe-minders, whenever I've taken them off in public places.
"Seoul Police Link 1,700 Pairs of Shoes to 2 Feet"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/world/asia/07shoe.html?hp
It's so funny! Just for the record, I've always found my shoes exactly where I left them, or neatly rearranged by the shoe-minders, whenever I've taken them off in public places.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
I'm Back!
Hello everyone! I’m finally back in Korea after 17 days of bouncing around East Asia. Vacations like this are one reason that I sometimes think I want to stay in Korea forever – it cost me next to nothing to visit China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong for more than two weeks. Technically, I got paid to do it, since I used my paid winter vacation!
I’m currently working on blogging about everything I did, but it’s taking me awhile – I arrived back in Daegu late Monday night and started the new school year (the Korean academic year follows the calendar year) on Tuesday morning! I’ll definitely go into more detail and put up lots of pictures, but for now I’ll just say that Taiwan was probably my favorite of the three, with Hong Kong coming in a close second. I tried to learn a few words of the languages – Mandarin in China (except Shanghai, which has its own dialect) and Taiwan, and Cantonese in Hong Kong, even though most people I came into contact with spoke English.
After freezing for the last few months in Korea (and in China, too) the warm, humid weather in Taiwan and Hong Kong was amazing. And now I’m back in the cold again, at least for a few more weeks! My school schedule is still a bit up in the air because they haven’t figured out the after-school programs yet; as of now I have 17 teaching hours within the normal school day. It’s an improvement over last semester’s 20 hours plus two after school classes! However, I’m sure they’ll find something for me to do to make sure they get 22 full teaching hours out of me every week.
Anyway, while I’m working on those blogs, check this out, from ABC News:
“Game Addicts Arrested for Starving Baby to Death”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/TheLaw/baby-death-alleged-result-parents-online-games-addiction/story?id=10007040&page=1
Obviously the couple in this article is an extreme case, but my students are obsessed with computer games, so none of the statistics were a surprise to me.
I’m currently working on blogging about everything I did, but it’s taking me awhile – I arrived back in Daegu late Monday night and started the new school year (the Korean academic year follows the calendar year) on Tuesday morning! I’ll definitely go into more detail and put up lots of pictures, but for now I’ll just say that Taiwan was probably my favorite of the three, with Hong Kong coming in a close second. I tried to learn a few words of the languages – Mandarin in China (except Shanghai, which has its own dialect) and Taiwan, and Cantonese in Hong Kong, even though most people I came into contact with spoke English.
After freezing for the last few months in Korea (and in China, too) the warm, humid weather in Taiwan and Hong Kong was amazing. And now I’m back in the cold again, at least for a few more weeks! My school schedule is still a bit up in the air because they haven’t figured out the after-school programs yet; as of now I have 17 teaching hours within the normal school day. It’s an improvement over last semester’s 20 hours plus two after school classes! However, I’m sure they’ll find something for me to do to make sure they get 22 full teaching hours out of me every week.
Anyway, while I’m working on those blogs, check this out, from ABC News:
“Game Addicts Arrested for Starving Baby to Death”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/TheLaw/baby-death-alleged-result-parents-online-games-addiction/story?id=10007040&page=1
Obviously the couple in this article is an extreme case, but my students are obsessed with computer games, so none of the statistics were a surprise to me.
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