lightwavefoto.com

Disclaimer:

The commentary and notations below come strictly from my own observations and feelings as a documentary of my travels. Any opinions are my own and should not be construed otherwise. If you find this account to be boring then stop reading. If you are curious and wish to continue, then read on. Keep in mind that I am not a writer and I do not typically keep a diary. I only wanted to write this to remember the trip and to avoid having to repeat every detail multiple times. Enjoy!

March 17, 2011 – Thursday – 8:18 a.m. (Xi’an, China)

We are on our bus headed to the Xi’an International Studies University. Our dinner last night was at a restaurant where each place setting has a hot pot. You choose your veggies and lamb from the lazy susan and boil them in the pot filled with broth. There was also an area where many spices were set up and you filled a little bowl with what you wanted to add to your pot. You cook it yourself which was fine and I feel like I ate enough to satisfy myself.

Once we arrived back at our hotel, Bryan and I walked across the street to this huge shopping mall to pick up some bottled water. It was a really interesting mall with an entire floor dedicated to shoes, and another for cosmetics, and so on. Each of the 8 or so floors was a different type of item. After getting the water that we needed, we popped in a McDonald’s to get a milk shake. We were in the bed by 11 p.m. and I slept well.

March 17, 2011 – Thursday – 5:20 p.m. (Xi’an, China)

Wow! We’ve been busy today and no time to write until now. We are relaxing in our room. This is the first time since we left the U.S. that we have had any significant time to just relax and do nothing. Every day we are up and out of the hotel by 8 or 8:30 and we usually do not return until 9 or 10 at night. There is no down time. I do not consider napping on the bus in a smog filled city in stop and go traffic ample rest time. If there was one thing that I could suggest it would be to give the students a little more down time. But, I can understand some of the reasoning in keeping us so busy.

This morning’s lecture was alright. It was about Chinese History which one cannot possibly learn in a two hour meeting let alone even grasp a tiny bit of it. It’s such a long history – thousands of years. It’s hard to wrap my mind around. We sat through another PowerPoint presentation.

Bryan just left to go across the street to a little market to pick up some snacks for the flight tomorrow.

After our lecture we went to the Shaanxi History Museum. It’s a very modern museum and holds many Chinese artifacts from each of the dynasties. To enter the museum, you must first go through the market store. It was full of the usual stuff but the best part was that there is a master seal engraver inside the gift shop. These seals are sometimes also called a “chop” and are a person’s official seal, somewhat like a signature.

Dr. Peng told us that if we ever wanted to have a personalized chop made by a master, this was the place to do it. This was definitely something that Bryan and I wanted to do because it would be much more personally valuable to us as reminder of our trip. We first chose a stone about 4.5 inches tall and about 1.5 inches square. I have not measured it exactly. The top is carved with a dragon (for male) and a phoenix (for female) and they are intertwined together. We both of our first names and our last name engraved in Chinese on the other end – creating our chop!

While we were touring the museum, the engraver was busy making our chop. As we got ready to leave, we stopped at his area in the gift shop to find out if it was ready. Dr. Peng, Dr. Peoples, and Fred all came down from the upstairs where this man actually does the carving. They had watched him make our chop. He was so proud of it that he stamped it on a paper and then also wrote our names out in his beautiful calligraphy and he signed it with his own name. This is a special piece that we are very proud to have. Eventually, I will frame this piece of paper. This is truly the most memorable thing that I could possibly have from our trip.

Bryan had already walked out to the bus with some of the others and did not see the finished piece until I came out with it. We paid 2200 Yuan (about $340 USD) for this piece of art – the stone. It is absolutely beautiful and when I showed it to Bryan, he was very pleased.

We had lunch at a hotel restaurant that was considered a “Western” buffet – not completely American but a few dishes were. Neither one of us ate much on this lunch. After lunch, we actually were able to come back to the hotel and have 4.5 hours of free time! From 2 p.m. until 6:30 p.m., we have been on our own – and it’s been really nice.

After a 30 minute rest we went for a walk in the old Muslim quarter of Xi’an. There are many typical Chinese vendors and shops – this is how the people still live today. It has been the home of Chinese Muslims for over 1,000 years. We saw many kinds of exotic foods and interesting items.

A funny story… we needed some foot powder to put in our shoes. We’ve done so much walking and when your feet are in your shoes for so long, some deodorizing foot powder for them would be really nice! We found a tiny “pharmacy” and after about 10 minutes of attempting to communicate with the clerk, she handed me a piece of paper and a pencil. I wrote “talc powder” in English on the paper and she handed it to the older man behind the computer. I watched as he used the search engine “Baidu” to look it up. This at least helped them both to understand what exactly we were looking for. After a couple of seconds, the clerk reached down and took a small box from the shelf and handed it to me. I could not read anything on it but the little pictures were enough to tell me that what I needed was inside. It was just very funny that she and I went from back pain pills, to deodorant spray, to foot fungus spray, finally to foot powder.

We continued on and walked in a big square to get back to where we started. We decided to return to the hotel and actually rest for a couple of hours since we had time to get refreshed. It’s almost 6:30 p.m. so we are off to meet up with the group for our dinner.

March 18, 2011 – Friday – 11:00 a.m. (Xi’an, China)

 Last night’s dinner show was really great. We went to another hotel that had a theatre inside. They served us a dumpling dinner with 18 different dumplings. All of them were so good! Everyone enjoyed it and none of us were hungry! The cultural show that we saw was the Tang Dynasty Cultural Show and it started at 8:00 p.m. The costumes and headdresses were very colorful and beautiful. I’ll have to do some research on the Tang Dynasty later so that I can understand the parts of the show better. There was a lady playing a stringed instrument similar to a cello but lying flat across a stand – like a steel guitar would be set up. The music was beautiful and her movements as she played were fluid and sensual. You could tell that she was fully into the music she was creating. One dance was called “the dance of a thousand hands.” The girls were all dressed in yellow golden outfits and they looked like a spider with many arms. The entire show was about an hour and twenty minutes long. Everyone in our group loved it. It was by far the best show we have seen since we arrived in China. We all really like Xi’an. It’s a much nicer place than Beijing although it is equally as old, dirty, lacking of sanitation, etc.

Once we returned to the hotel, Bryan went back out to photograph the Bell Tower and our hotel in the night. I stayed in the room so that I could pack up our bags for the flight to Shanghai today.

We used the hotel laundry service to have our clothes washed both days that we were in Xi’an and that really helped so we didn’t have a bunch of dirty clothes packed in our bags stinking things up. We had a lot of things washed and it only cost us a total of $69 USD – which was much cheaper than we would have paid in a US hotel to have an equal amount of items washed.

Bryan came up and was so excited about the images that he took – I peaked at one frame and it is really cool. It was about midnight when we went to sleep but we were all packed up and ready to go on to the next stop – Shanghai.

This morning, we made sure that we were on time. We were some of the first people to get into the dining room for breakfast. Bryan and I were checked out of our room by 7:30 a.m. After loading our luggage onto the bus, we helped pull everyone else’s luggage out to the bus. We were about 10 minutes late leaving the hotel so that’s not too bad. Our flight was supposed to take off at 10:40 and we are on the runway just now taxing to the starting line and it’s 11:25 a.m.

Our lecture in Shanghai is supposed to start at 3:30 p.m. and run until 5:30 p.m. We may be a little bit late. Here we go! I’m going to take a nap now.

March 18, 2011 – Friday – 1:17 p.m. (Shanghai, China)

We just landed and are taxing to the gate.

Disclaimer:

The commentary and notations below come strictly from my own observations and feelings as a documentary of my travels. Any opinions are my own and should not be construed otherwise. If you find this account to be boring then stop reading. If you are curious and wish to continue, then read on. Keep in mind that I am not a writer and I do not typically keep a diary. I only wanted to write this to remember the trip and to avoid having to repeat every detail multiple times. Enjoy!

March 16, 2011 – Wednesday – 8:39 a.m. (Xi’an, China)

Our train arrived this morning in Xi’an at 8:10 a.m. We are currently on our bus. I think we walked about a mile or two from the train station to get to the bus. They are taking us to the Bell Tower Hotel where we will stay for two nights and it is located in the center of the old walled city just across from the bell tower.

Xi’an is the capital of the Shaanxi province and is one of the oldest cities in China with more than 3,100 years of history. Our guide is a local woman who we call Linda. The ancient city wall was built from mud and something from rice, and then brick. There is a moat around the city wall with a park in between the moat and the wall. There are four gates to enter the walled city; North, South, West, & East. The base of the wall is nearly 60 feet wide and the top area is a little narrower. Bicycles can be rented to take a ride around the circumference of the wall which is about 12 kilometers. The wall is almost 40 feet in height and was constructed in 1370 during the Ming Dynasty. This is not the original wall however! The original city wall was started in 194 BC and took 4 years to finish.

There is a bell tower that rings in the mornings and a drum tower that is sounded at night. The city was laid out like a chess board with many blocks. The city has a population of about 8 million people.

March 16, 2011 – Wednesday – 12:05 p.m. (Xi’an, China)

I am currently sitting on top of the city wall near the main gate. The gate tower is to my left and the arrow building (now a Feng Shui museum) is to my right. There is a very pretty music playing in this area. It’s peaceful and quiet. The smog is pretty bad here too, unfortunately.

We arrived at our hotel this morning after coming from the train station. We were all very hungry and wanted to shower. There were no shower facilities on the train, just a washroom and a toilet. Luckily, we were able to go directly in to the hotel and eat breakfast. This hotel is much nicer than the one in Beijing. Bryan and I have two twin beds this time, oh well! I was just glad to be able to shower and wash my hair.

We will be leaving the city wall in about 15 minutes to go see the Terracotta Warriors. It should be fun. My allergies are still giving me a hard time but I’ll be ok. Xi’an has a lot of nice things near the hotel – such as shops and restaurants – and other stores we need for conveniences. It doesn’t seem quite so foreign.

We have had a couple of hours this morning up on the wall to wander around. We chose not to rent bicycles and instead walked in the vicinity of the main gate taking photos. I am not up to a nine mile bike ride. Four people in our group are off on the bike ride now and I’m sure they are all having a great time. This is relaxing whether you are riding a bike or just taking a quiet walk. It’s time to get with the group and gather up!

March 16, 2011 – Wednesday – 12:40 p.m. (Xi’an, China)

Guess what? We are back on the bus and driving out east of the city to the Terracotta Warriors. Linda is giving us a lecture on the history of the area. She is extremely knowledgeable and there is no way that I can write down everything that she is telling us. The Chinese history is very complicated with all of the different dynasties plus the fact that the history is so very old. The United States are mere babies in comparison to this. We thought learning American History in grade school was daunting? Try learning 4,000 years of history! And these people do!

March 16, 2011 – Wednesday – 6:30 p.m. (Xi’an, China)

It’s been a long day! We first stopped at a terracotta warrior factory. They gave the usually “presentation/sales pitch” of how these replicas are made in the same fashion as the actual Terracotta Warriors. They also had lacquered furniture and beautiful hand painted screens.

I almost let myself be convinced to purchase a beautiful embroidered silk. Good thing that I did not because Dr. Peoples told me that we would actually go to the silk factory in Shanghai and that is the place to buy silk because it’s definitely real.

(Footnote to myself – after the fact, 06-May-2011 – hindsight is 20/20: you should have bought the silk piece you wanted… the silk factory wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be, in my opinion.. when I go back on my own someday, I will steer clear of the “state-owned factories” and get off the beaten path to find some really nice things… but when this is a planned group trip, you have no control or flexibility… you have to roll with the punches! It was still an awesome experience!)

After leaving this replication making facility, we went for lunch. This was by far the best lunch or dinner we have had yet. The food was much better than in Beijing and seemed fresher. We sat at a table with Katie and Ale this time, with whom we had not dined with previously. They are really sweet young ladies. Our guide, Linda, is awesome and this lunch choice of hers was a favorite by all! There was a man that came in making noodles. It was like a long piece of dough and he was swinging it around and it kept getting thinner and thinner. Quite an interesting process and we had the option to purchase a bowl of the noodles for 20 Yuan if we liked. Of course, we did and they were great! People are always happy when you feed them well!

From the lunch restaurant, the Terracotta Warriors were only about a 15 minute drive. The parking area is a very long walk to the entrance of the site – at least a mile, maybe more. We were heckled by every vendor along the way.

The actual site itself is amazing! It’s the 8^th Wonder of the World and I believe it. I shook the hand of one of the original farmers who discovered the site. He’s a very old man now and I told him that it was an honor to meet him. He had no idea what I said. Oh, well.

We walked our butts off and our feet hurt for sure now! The #1 pit was huge! It’s where the bulk of the warriors are that they have excavated. There are many, many more that have not been uncovered yet. Unbelievable until you see it! There are also pits #2 and #3 which we also visited as well as seeing the bronze chariots.

A little bit of research on this amazing site reveals that this is a “collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China and the figures date from 210 BC.” They were discovered in 1974 by the six farmers and are located near the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. (Wikipedia website)

We are on our way to dinner now. It’s almost 7:00 p.m. and we are almost to the gate of the walled city. What an amazing day!

Our Chinese Adventure – Day 6: “Leaving Beijing”

Disclaimer:

The commentary and notations below come strictly from my own observations and feelings as a documentary of my travels. Any opinions are my own and should not be construed otherwise. If you find this account to be boring then stop reading. If you are curious and wish to continue, then read on. Keep in mind that I am not a writer and I do not typically keep a diary. I only wanted to write this to remember the trip and to avoid having to repeat every detail multiple times. Enjoy!

March 15, 2011 – Tuesday – 7:48 a.m. (Beijing, China)

We are all loaded and leaving the hotel on our way to the university. Dr. Pong took care of making sure that we were all appropriately checked out of our rooms. Our breakfast was good this morning and we made certain to load up on the basics! I had a small omelet, cereal, toast, yogurt, and coffee. I’ve been having them fix an omelet for me every morning. You really can’t go wrong with that in my opinion. This morning, Randall really wanted simply two scrambled eggs but didn’t know how to ask the young man who was at the omelet station. I was able to communicate with him enough to understand what to do with the eggs but when they were ready, he wouldn’t give them to Randall because he thought that they were for me. It was really quite funny when Randall came over to the table and I asked, “Where are your eggs?” and he replied, “He won’t give them to me.” I went over and fetched his eggs!

It’s sunny this morning but cold and I don’t see any smog in the air, yet!

The street vendors are out everywhere today, but I would bet that this is just a typical day in Beijing.

Uh oh, Ale just realized that she left a pair of high heels in her room! That sucks, but Dr. Peng is talking with the driver to make arrangements to have the room checked.

Today’s schedule is to hear a lecture on social change at the university, then have lunch near the Olympic Bird’s Nest. In the afternoon, we will have another lecture on history / culture. Around 3:30 p.m. we will drive to the Temple of Heaven and spend about an hour before having dinner at 6:00 p.m. We will then be headed to the west train station to catch an 8:10 p.m. overnight train to Xi’an. This will be an experience for both us. We’ve ridden on the Eurostar before but never on an overnight train.

Random information from Dr. Peng regarding the Peking Opera from last night…

He says that it is more about formality – there is no change, no originality. They imitate the previous actors and try to be exact even down to the individual steps. During the last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, the second to the last emperor made a rule that there could be no more than 24 concubines. There used to be as many as 3,000. Many emperors would step out into the red light district and sleep with prostitutes. When two of them got STD’s, their mothers were very upset. The Peking Opera became the entertainment for the men. Government officials were not allowed to sleep with women and homosexuality sky rocketed. There is a Hollywood movie about the Peking Opera.

More random notations…

All of the gas stations have attendants that pump the gas. There are only two choices of gasoline, 93 and 97 octane.

Late September and October are good times to visit Beijing, as well as Spring in late March and April. The cherry blossom and peach trees are all starting to bloom even now. There are beautiful pink and white blooms everywhere. I can only imagine how beautiful it is when they are in full bloom.

110 is the equivalent of our 911 service. In the larger cities you have the option of English or Chinese but in the rural areas, you best be able to speak and understand Chinese.

The government does not allow access to Facebook and many other Internet sites. It is heavily censored. Pornography is illegal.

Some of the U.S. restaurants that we have seen are KFC (many!), Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and of course Starbucks. I have also seen a few Dairy Queens! I wish I could get an Oreo Blizzard right about now.

Dr. Peng says that the reason we see so many strange looking buildings – designs – is because architects “try out” their designs here in China. They don’t know if a building will collapse or not and they really don’t care. They just want to be different and there are not many structural regulations. He says that it will be even more amazing in Shanghai.

It’s 9:15 a.m. and we have arrived at the university. We are fifteen minutes late so we must hurry. Traffic!

March 15, 2011 – Tuesday – 11:30 a.m. (Beijing, China)

We are on our way to lunch. We are going to a Dai restaurant near the Olympic stadium (bird nest). Dai and Taiwanese are very similar. Our lecture this morning was interesting. It was sort of boring though because the professor preferred to do it all in Chinese and that made Dr. Peng have to translate. Her PowerPoint presentation had an absolute ton of photos and far too much text. And, to top it off, she went so fast, we could not read it, even if we wanted to.

March 15, 2011 – Tuesday – 4:31 p.m. (Beijing, China)

We are back in the bus driving to the Temple of Heaven. Of course, the traffic is insane. I am still having a lot of trouble with allergies today. I am tired of blowing my nose.

Our lunch was very close to the Olympic stadium (bird nest), almost directly across the street from it. There was a short performance of Dai (Thai) music before we ate. The first girl that came out onto the stage was playing a Thai flute. I loved the sound of the instrument! It was very calming and I could probably listen to it for hours. She was a beautiful girl with long silky black hair. I took some great photos of her since we were seated in the front.

March 15, 2011 – Tuesday – 6:01 p.m. (Beijing, China)

Wow, we jumped off of the bus at around 5:00 p.m. at the Temple of Heaven. It was sudden and I was in the middle of writing about our lunch. Bryan did not care for much of anything at lunch and that is irritating when there are not any other choices. It’s not like you could grab something off of the menu that you might like better than what was put out in front of us. We didn’t get any choices. We haven’t gotten any choices since we have been here and I would be willing to bet that things are not going to change anytime soon.

I am glad that I did not have to go to the ladies room while we were at lunch because Candyce said it was the worst yet. As soon as we finished eating we all jumped back on the bus and were taken to Dr. Tea. Guess what they sell? Tea! We were all ushered into a room and seated around a large table or around the perimeter of the room. The young lady that “performed” did an excellent job of explaining the five different teas that we tasted. I call it a performance because at this point I was starting to catch on to how things work here.

Oh, we are about to get dinner near the west train station. More Later.

March 16, 2011 – Wednesday – 2:40 a.m. (on a train, between Beijing & Xi’an)

I cannot sleep so I decided to get caught up on my writing. Back to the tea house episode in Beijing. I really enjoyed the demonstration and getting to taste the different types of tea. I found that interesting and I learned a lot about the health benefits of each type. The young lady was extremely entertaining and funny. Prior to this, I only knew about Arizona Green Tea, and that is nowhere close to these types of tea. She explained to us the proper way to hold the teacup. Ladies should hold the cup with their thumb and first finger at the rim, middle finger underneath the bottom, and last two fingers held out. Men should tuck the pinkie finger in or they will be called “lady boys!” Ha. Ha.

Once the presentation was finished, the vultures swept in with a vengeance. All of a sudden there were probably 12 ladies in the room with us. The ratio of them to us was seemed like two to one. It might have been the other way around but it was like bees on honey and extremely overwhelming to be pressured to buy right then and there. I hate high pressure sales. Bryan and I (along with Candyce) escaped as quickly as we could.

Guess what was across the street? McDonald’s! It was great for a quick bathroom break and to get something to snack on. More so for Bryan than for me since he didn’t eat anything for lunch. We had to hurry back to the bus so that we could go back to the university for the afternoon lecture.

While on the bus though, Susan made what seemed to me to be a very derogatory remark about McDonald’s just being “trash” food and how she doesn’t eat it. That was just rude and it’s getting on a lot of people’s nerves. I am not a “lover” of McDonald’s myself and I don’t eat there often at all but for goodness sake when a person is sick of rice and not getting enough to eat, then whose business is it anyway if they choose to get a burger and fries from McDonald’s.

Our afternoon lecture was with Professor Gu. He was wonderful! Even though he spoke only Chinese, and Dr. Peng translated, Professor Gu was very funny and entertaining. He discussed the Chinese culture. He is a very traditional Chinese teacher. He used an old school slide projector and designated me as the person to turn off and on the lights since I was sitting nearest the switches. Professor Gu teaches tourism and he trained the volunteers for the Olympics. He loves to show photos of himself when he was very young and travelling all over China to the historical sites. He is interesting to watch because he is extremely animated in his teaching, pointing and raising his hands, and such. Also, his eyebrows do this funny up and down motion constantly while he is talking. It looks like he is “making eyes at you” and it reminds me of when my daddy used to wiggle his ears for me. He loves Bill Clinton and he has an extreme respect for women. He quoted Chairman Mao, “Women hold up half the sky.”

Our lecture was over at 4:00 p.m. and after a few quick photos with Professor Gu, we headed over to the Temple of Heaven. When we got there, we walked for a very long time to get to the actual entrance, only to find out that the last entrance time was 4:00 p.m. All we could do was walk around the outer wall and take a few photos. I do believe that this “fly by the seat of your pants” method we have been on for the last few days really sucks. At every event or location, we are told to wait while Dr. Peng goes to get our tickets. I suppose I am just used to having my tickets already in hand and knowing when things are open and closed. Logistics and planning are very important.

One cool thing is that Ale’s shoes showed up at the Temple of Heaven!

After the Temple of Heaven fiasco, we went for dinner near the west train station. Our food was on the table when we walked through the door. Again, no choices. What did I tell you!

I finally fell asleep on this train at about 3:40 a.m. – it is now only 6:15 a.m. and I am awake again.

We drove from dinner last night over to the train station. We had to be dropped off by Mr. Lu across the street. So, we all had to carry our own luggage and bags up a long flight of stairs to a pedestrian crosswalk. It was tough for some and it was very cold and windy. The rolling suitcases were the worst to have to drag up those stairs but we all tried to help each other. I am thankful that Bryan and I have REI backpacks. It allows me to move through the crowds much easier. After passing through several entrance points and walking a very long distance, we finally arrived at Platform 9. Our train was waiting on the tracks. We went so fast through all of the people in the train station that by the time we got on the train, we were exhausted. Bryan and I are rooming up with Jordan and Adam. When we first got into our cabin, with our luggage, all four of us were sitting on the two bottom bunks just staring at each other. It was a moment to exhale. None of us cared to do anything but say, “Whew, that was crazy!” We talked about how psycho the last five days had been and we wondered what Xi’an would be like. I think we just sat there for about 45 minutes chatting. Several others in our group stopped by the door to see how we were doing, and what we were doing. Finally, we put away our things so that we could all function in that cabin. Bryan and I went down to the dining car to get a Pepsi.

We met three young men that were part of a group of 90 students from a Belgium university and another few from a group of 16 from Australia and New Zealand. From the conversation, every one of them is only concerned with getting completely wasted while on this train.

The power supply did not work in our cabin and that is not good when you (rather Bryan) need the power for his CPAP machine. I had prepared myself mentally for a night of his snoring but neither one of us actually slept much anyways so it didn’t much matter.

Here are just some random photos from the last few days in Beijing.. just interesting things..