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China day 8: It all ends with a mall. Or five.

holly — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:55:41 +0000

Ahh, the final morning in China. It dawned sunny and fresh and relaxing. Today, I was on a mission. I had managed to get all the way though the trip without finding a gift for my Fiancee, and today I was going to fix that. But what do you get a guy who won’t eat anything produced in China, has a long torso that doesn’t fit Asian sizes well, and doesn’t really appreciate souvenirs unless they serve some practical use? There goes my go-to fridge magnet idea. Crap. Needless to say, all my friends were all taken care of and the one person I know pretty much better than anyone is getting nothing. So my plan for the free morning was to hit the malls and find him the awesome gift of awesomeness.

Our guide had said that all the shops opened at nine, and since I’m not really one for sleeping in, I left at 8 to walk through the bustling streets of Shanghai and find those mega shopping malls I had seen in the dark last night. I knew approximately which skyscraper they were near, so I just started wandering, getting a real taste for daily life in Shanghai. The streams of people pouring out of the metro stations, the people walking their small, well-clothed dogs (coveralls? Parkas? Adidas track suits with matching trainers? On a Pekinese? Really?), the shopkeepers rolling back their metal security screens… it was lovely. Incredibly peaceful to walk around in this incredibly non-peaceful city. I loved it. I also had thought it was going to take me longer to reach the malls, as it had seemed much farther away at night. So I found myself in a KFC playing Angry Birds on my iPad, sipping the drink I had bought simply to justify my using their bathroom and table. Side note – somehow I had managed to make it all the way to Shanghai without using a squat toilet. Pretty much everywhere had well-marked western-style toilets, or at least a wheelchair accessable one (turns out, disabled people can’t squat), and worse case scenario I’d had to wait a few extra minutes to get the stall I wanted. But Shanghai ruined my streak. Nice comfy seated toilets were a lot harder to come by, but it had been an unexpectedly good run, lol .

Turns out the shops didn’t open at 9. I was there, all ready and waiting, and all the windows were still dark. So I wandered the streets of Shanghai, observing, window shopping in closed stores, playing more Angry Birds in another KFC with another drink for another hour. Turns out that had been some bad information from the guide, as everything opened at 10am sharp. On the upside, I was now very familiar with all the streets around this particular area of Shanghai, so I had a very small chance of getting lost on the way back to the hotel. Time to shop, finally. There were 5 malls here, each larger than it’s predecessor, and all specializing in name brand everything. Minimum of 9 storeys per mall, times 5 malls… I went up and down all of them, not wanting to miss the one thing that would be the perfect gift, tucked in the back of the top floor. This sounds like shopping wonderland, but it wasn’t. The malls were hot, all of them, with no air conditioning (that was turned on, at least), everything here was expensive (this was the first plae we’d been where the Pradas were real, with real matching prices), and they all sold the same things. It doesn’t make sense to build another mall right beside the first, and then fill it in with the same stores and products, but they’ve done it. Five times. The only major difference from one mall to another is how modern it looks. By the time the last mall spit me out into the Shanghai sunshine, I was sweaty, tired, kind of dizzy from the countless escalator rides, and empty handed. There really was nothing here in my price range, and what was were household appliances. I just couldn’t imagine coming home and being all like “here, Babe, I got you a rice cooker. I know it looks exactly like the one you got at Wal-Mart, but it’s special because I got it in China”. I had battled and failed, and at this point I was throwing in the towel. He was getting nothing, and I had made peace with that.

Back at the hotel, I cooled off, changed, watched some Asian music videos and made sure all my final packing was done before checking out any joining the group for our ride to the airport. I didn’t want to pack, it meant we were leaving China, and I was having such an amazing time that I could have stayed for longer. But Canada meant I could sleep at normal times again… Right there in the lobby, seconds before we boarded our bus, I went on to aircanada.com and checked our flight status, and it said our flight was going to arrive 15 minutes early back in Vancouver. Great news. Forty five minutes later, as we were all queued up for check in, the guy in front of me mentions that our flight is seriously delayed. Not great news. A collective gasp rippled through our group. We were all overtired, somewhat homesick, and braced for an 11 hour flight across the pacific, so this did not sit well. One agent, missing her kids particularly badly, burst into tears. I was one of the lucky ones ending in Vancouver, but for a lot of the other agents, this meant massive flight rescheduling, overnight stays in Vancouver or red-eye flights across the country. For our patience during the 6-hour delay, Air Canada gave us CDY$70 (CAD$12) food vouchers. We made a bee-line to Burger King (basically, the only option that wasn’t the same meal we’d been eating twice a day for the last week), and went to town. Turns out Burger King in the Shanghai airport is super cheap. Hell, it wasn’t our money, so we were going to spend ever penny of it. Our tables looked like we were feeding a school group as opposed to just 10 people, with everyone adding side salads at at least two bottles of water per person to their orders, knowing they could pack them with them on the plane.

I like the Shanghai airport, I really do. It’s big and nice and clean and has wifi everywhere, but there is not a hell of a lot to keep you interested for 6 hours. I bought a bottle of whiskey for my Finacee at the duty free (real whisky, not that paint thinner stuff I’d had confiscated in Beijing), which actually made him very happy. Go figure, all that worry for nothing. We were going stir crazy, suddenly finding stupid stuff really funny, and pacing around just to keep the blood flowing before being confined to our airplane seats. It was after 11pm by the time our plane finally arrived at the gate, and the second we saw it coming we cheered. We then cheered for the people disembarking (hoping it would get them off faster) and cheered for the crews to load the meals and luggage as fast as possible. Hey, it was something to do. The flight itself was fine, and soon (but not as soon as planned!) we were back in Canada.

The fantastic China trip, AKA “the Amazing Race” was over. I hate this part, the goodbyes, the exchanges of email addresses, the wandering off into the night… but we made some amazing memories and have some incredible pictures. It was such a good trip, with the only complaints really being that it was too freaking cold in Beijing, they gave us too much food, and Air Canada delayed our flight home. In the grand scheme of things, that makes it pretty much a perfect trip. China was full of surprises, breaking all the preconcieved notions I had and just showing us an incredible time. I saw places that I never thought I’d see in person, biked an ancient city wall, seen snake on a stick, appeared in countless Chinese tourists’ photos… it was all good. If you ever considered visiting China, I strongly urge you to do it. You’ll love it!

China day 5: Here come the Big Potatoes

holly — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:58 +0000

Today was the second day this trip that crossed off one of my bucket list sights to see. I woke up Christmas-morning early, and then spent hours drinking my body weight in tea at the breakfast buffet as I killed time. I just wanted to get going! There was so much to see! I wasn’t the only one, though. Two of the other agents awoke at 4am, convinced we had another super early morning and in a total panic because they thought they had missed the wake up call and were going to be left behind. Luckily they called and woke up the tour leader (well, not luckily for the tour leader) before rushing downstairs. That would have been incredibly funny in hindsight…

An en route souvenir stop at a terracotta factory selling scale models to tourists (4 out of 10 on the nice bathroom scale), and then we were at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum. The excitement was palpable. Because, as the guide said, we were “Big Potatoes”, our tour van pulled right up to the entrance gates and let us out, a much shorter walk in than the normal one from the parking lot. Sweet. From the outside it looked nice, a cluster of modern airplane-hangar like buildings with a very clean, busy courtyard connecting them, but it was once you stepped through the doors of Pit 1 that it all becomes real. The vast expanse of space stretching football-field length out in front of you, with the dug-out rows of marching Terracotta soldiers and horses lined up in greeting. Damn, I’m really here. I kept reminding myself to put the camera down every once in a while and just drink it all in with my eyes, as there was so much to see and so many amazing photos to take. In person, they are even cooler than they look in the media. Individually, their details are striking, but seeing them all lined up together really is what makes this so special. In spots there are ladders and tables erected as workspace for the archaeologists who are still actively recovering more and more pieces and rebuilding more of the shattered warriors, and opened, unfinished pits show the piles of rubble (feet and hands and scattered bits of torso) that they have yet to work through. I can only imagine what this place is going to look like in ten years, when hundreds more of the warriors will be standing sentry and all the buildings would have to be extended to house them all. And keep in mind, they still haven’t unearthed the Emperor himself, the man of honour whom all these figures are guarding for eternity. He’s still somewhere beneath the giant pyramid of grass (it sounds silly, but it really is a huge, pointy grass hill), located a mile behind the warriors museum. This is a living, breathing wonder of the world, changing on a daily basis. Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to come back…

After the short movie showing the history behind the statues, we explored the gift shop (did you have any doubts?) and picked up copies of the souvenir guidebook. What was really cool was that the 85 year old farmer who had discovered the warriors while trying to dig a well back in the 80’s (he’s one of 5 men who found them, and one of only 2 surviving) was there in person, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Hell, he didn’t make much from his monumental discovery (go communism, the land belongs to the government, so they just take it back for free), so earning a living this way is dramatically better than going back to pig farming. He signed and dated my book, and having that date in there, commemorating this forever, is awesome.

Another giant lunch (really good) and then Pits 2 and 3. They have a dramatically different feeling from Pit 1, more polished museum style, as opposed to active archaeological dig, but really well laid out and informative. Many more pictures to be taken and souvenirs to be bought. It’s funny, in Beijing most of the tourists had been Chinese, but here, about half of them were the standard North American/European tourists, all clad in their fast-dry “travel” cargo pants and millions of pockets vests, giant cameras around their necks and two bored looking kids in tow, heads down in their smartphones, oblivious to the amazing sights beside them. There is definately a more adventure/backpacker vibe, and because of it the whole city had more of a tourist atmosphere. You could tell that these warriors really are the only reason most people come to Xian, that it’s more of a once in a lifetime pilgrimage than a place to come and stay for a while. I could have spent more time at the museum, staring down each figure in detail, but with the crowds (once again, this was super low season) you really had to keep moving to allow everyone a chance to witness the spectacle.

Technically, the rest of the day was scheduled as “leisure time”, but we were on such a tight timeline and everyone had such big dreams of what to see and do, we actually just divided up into two groups for yet another adventure. Half of us went with our guide to get a foot and neck massage, while the other half (me included) went to the Xian city wall for a little bike ride. This was no Great Wall, it was actually more sturdy looking, wide and fat, gray stone with big decorative towers and guardhouses spaced intermittently along it’s top. We rented our bikes from the south gate (CAD$3.50 with a CAD$8.50 damage deposit – technically we could have taken these bikes home with us for only CAD$12) and were off. Sort of. The bikes were circa-1950, so it took us a few tries to find ones where the chain didn’t fall off every time you tried to pull the pedal, or where the pedals themselves were rusted still. Eventually, one girl actually just took one with no brakes at all because it was the only one close to her size, and she just carefully coasted to a stop when needed. Needless to say, no one took the bikes home. This was so much fun. It’s so peaceful up on the wall, you’re still surrounded by the heart of Xian, but you feel removed from it, safe up in your perch in the clouds. You can look down and see the hustle below you, then keep pedaling on in comfortable (relative, this is China) silence. And it felt so good to get some exercise and (un)fresh air. The stone pavers were really uneven, being built 641 years ago and all, so we were swerving around like we were drunk, trying to avoid the potholes. Mainly because we thought that if we hit one the bikes would just start falling apart beneath us. Tourists and locals waved and laughed at us as we rode past, gladly moving out of the way of the crazy Canadians.

We returned the bikes (they did give us one of those surprised “you brought them back?” looks, leading me to believe they go though a lot of bikes. So, if you’re ever in need of a rusted and barely functional piece of crap for your biking pleasure, Xian is the place to go!) then kept our legs moving by walking from there to the Drum tower, which is conveniently also one end of the Muslim Market. En route we stopped in at a McDonalds for some drinks and fries, as there is very little more comforting than McDonalds’ fries when traveling internationally, and to use the bathroom. McDonalds always have good bathrooms. The market shopping was good tonight, we found a quieter side street that was just as filled with stalls, but had a third of the crowds. We brought home a pretty sweet haul, let me tell you. Talking a taxi back from the hotel was an adventure, too. We found a minivan taxi that didn’t have any real seats in the back, so we just sat on wooden planks slightly raised off the floor, and hopped in hoping the driver knew where we were going. I had shown him the address written in Chinese and the little tiny map on the back of the hotel’s business card, both of which he had nodded “yeah yeah” to, but taxi drivers are notorious for nodding like that and then driving around in circles for weeks, trying to figure out where to go. I like to call this a “cultural experience”, which involves a lot of blind faith, but in our case it worked out, and for a ridiculously cheap fare, too

So back to the hotel for one last night in my giant room, filled with a lot of “oh my god, how am I going to fit all this crap in my suitcase?” packing. Yep, you guessed it, 4am wake up call tomorrow!

China day 4: Face down in the dumplings

holly — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:17:12 +0000

4 am is just wrong. On so many levels. Especially when you’re traveling. Hotels just scream of sleep-ins and giant fluffy beds and lounging around in the complimentary slippers and robe, not hauling your exhausted ass up at 4am to check out and be on the bus by 430. About this time, we were are silently cursing whoever had booked us on the 8am flight from Beijing, and wishing the airport was closer. But at least the hotel supplied breakfast boxes for us, so we could get our systems started for the day ahead. Made it to the airport in plenty of time, lost my whisky at customs and waited. Going through customs in China is somewhat nerve-wracking. Because of CNN and BBC there’s always this horrible image etched in the back of your mind of the guards swooping in and hauling you off to a Chinese prison. In reality, the guards, even the one who had me open my bag and took my booze, were really lovely. He even offered to hold it for me if I wanted to wait and have my suitcase unchecked so that I could stick the whiskey inside it and keep it. But that would have taken forever and been such a hassle, so I forfeitted the CAD$3.20 and went on my merry way. Beijing has a nice, big, clean airport. Kinda looks like a Hong Kong’s in the International area and like Las Vegas’ in the Domestic. Needs more souvenir shops, though Side note – I love that, even paying airport prices, a bottle of Diet Coke here is only CAD$0.47! I seriously grabbed as many as I could fit in my purse and stocked my hotel minifridge when I landed.

Flight to Xian was fine, and we were thanking the Crowne Plaza Beijing when they served the in-flight breakfast of purple congee (that looked more than a little like vomit, just saying), a tea-boiled egg (one hard boiled egg out of the shell, but all the white was a disturbing shade of brown) a flaky bun with some unidentifiable meat on it, and an orange. The orange was awesome. Luckily I was still full from my breakfast box. Normally I really like airplane food. There’s something about a meal served in these little dishes on my folding tray that I enjoy. And the brownies/cookies are usually particularly yummy. Cathay Pacific has this green tea ice cream that is just fantastic. But congee + airplanes just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t actually like congee anyway (runny rice Jell-o with lemongrass or something? No thanks), but when I’m ten thousand feet above the ground, I don’t want something that looks like it came from my air sickness bag. This meal reminded me that I most definately was not in Canada anymore.

Our itinerary had originally said we were to have the balance of the day to sit back and explore Xian on our own, but upon landing our new guide Jerry advised us that we were instead going to do a city tour and traditional dumpling dinner today, and have our free time after the Terracotta warriors tomorrow, so we could get to bed early and rest up before our second 4am wake up call. At the time it seemed like a great plan. More on that later. The drive from the airport to the hotel was past industrial parks, numerous used auto parts markets and a giant coal-burning power plant. That plant, and others, filled the sky with this disgusting thick gray haze that made it look permenently overcast despite it being sunny and cloudless today. Not the best impression of Xian, and I was thinking that “this place is horrible and thank God we only have 2 nights here.” Where do they keep all 8 million people? The smog was so bad that from our hotel, the Titan Times, you could barely see the ancient Xian city wall (and we’re talking a wall that’s 12 meters high and 12 meters wide, not exactly your backyard fence) despite the fact that it was accross the road.

The hotel itself was incredible. I really think the reason it’s only a 4* and not a 5* is that the pool isn’t finished yet. For me alone I got an executive suite with a full bedroom, separate living room, bar and 2 bathrooms. This place was substantially larger than my last apartment. I felt like they had put me in the wrong room, that this room could easily accommodate 6, not just little ‘ol me. But we got a full tour of the hotel, and even the standard rooms were way larger than usual, so you really couldn’t go wrong with any room here. My room just made me want to throw open my arms, spin around (without hitting anything in this vast expanse of space) and dramatically dive onto the bed like they do in all those Princess-moving-into-the-castle movies.

There was just enough time to drop off our bags and sing a few choruses of “Movin’ on up” before we were back on the van and heading to another giant lunch. This was the only one we really didn’t enjoy, as the food was more generic (pasta reminiscent of Chef Boyardee, Campbell’s vegetable soup, and the standard array of bland veggie dishes) than we had grown accustomed to. We were seriously starting to sound like Survivorcastaways, lamenting about the lack of noodles and what we would do for a piece of “white chocolate cheesecake”, despite the fact that we had a giant table laden with food in front of us. It was pathetic, really, especially since we all left full, despite not really liking the food. The lack of noodles did surprise me – we had a total of ten of these identical meals, and we had three noodle dishes the whole time. When I think of mall Chinese food, noodles are ususally at least half of the options, and here we were in China, craving noodles. Even the rice was sparse. But I guess they know that when they give you so much food and such a large selection, you don’t need any of the filler to keep you happy, you can get straight into the good stuff.

Xian now looked nothing like it had on the drive in from the airport. Apparently our hotel was one of the first gateways to the modern metropolis that is Xian. It was your standard downtown core, with giant shopping malls and boulevards and Baskin Robins and Pizza Huts. Now this was more like it. Right in the middle of it all was the Wild Goose Pagoda, a funky leaning tower and Buddhist temple. On all my other trips to Asia I had been to lots of Buddhist temples. They are so ornate and expansive and important that they are mandatory stops on all the tourist trails, but here in China, where freedom of religion is a relatively new thing, you visit the important palaces and gardens instead. It caught me off guard how much I love the distinct smoky smell of the burning incense (they must have a standard “Buddha” scent, because it’s the same in every country), the familiar statues and carvnigs, and the orange and gray robes. There’s something about these temples that is comforting and calming and just makes me happy. Surrounding the temple is a giant shopping/movie/entertainment/condo complex that they’re almost completed building, though it is all done as a throwback to the classic Han Dynasty style, so in five years, when the paint has started to fade and weather, the whole area is going to look like it’s been there for centuries. Very cool. Like the Chinese version of Main Street USA at Disneyland.

Then the Provincial Museum. It was about 3pm at this point, and the 4am wake up was starting to get to us. The hotel had recommended shopping at the Muslim Market, so we had arranged with our guide to do the museum in 1 hour instead of 2, squish in an hour to shop, and then go to the dumpling dinner as planned. I’m a bit of an archaeology nerd, so I loved this stuff, but most of the group was propped up against the wall, trying not to let the cool, dark atmosphere put them to sleep. And our guide was amazing. He gave the most detailed, professional museum tour I’ve ever had, moving at double speed. It was as if someone had hit his fast forward button, and he powered through every important item and historical fact without missing a beat or getting frazzled. Total rock star. It was a good thing, too, as if it had taken longer, we would have had to go back and find our scattered group curled up in the fetal position in random corners, completely out. The museum itself was really, really well done with a beautifully laid out collection and fantastic modern displays. Definitely impressed.

The Muslim Market was nothing like I had imagined it to be. Firstly, I expected the Muslims to be larger, bearded, middle eastern men, not Chinese. It was a horrible stereotype, I know, but it was what came to mind and I couldn’t help wondering where all the Muslims were, despite the fact that they were standing right beside me. Also, it looked just like a nicer, cleaner version of the Temple Street night market in Hong Kong, with the crowds, the hawkers, the neon signs all over. I loved it instantly. Neon and cheap souvenirs, I had found my natural habitat. Four stalls in I spotted a Terra Cotta Warrior figurine I loved, and went in for the sale. Undoubtedly they were going to be ten times the price tomorrow at the Warriors Museum, and I had just seen one this size at the provincial Museum for CAD$25 (which was still a good price. Back in Canada, even a tacky sculpture that big would be around CAD$50). I got it for CAD$5! It was such a good deal that more of the people in my group went back in and did the whole “I’ll have what she’s having” thing and also got it for the same price. Now that has a featured place on my mantle We did some damage at that market, let me tell you, and made plans to come back the next day.

And finally, for today anyway, to the traditional Xian dumpling dinner and Han Dynasty cultural show, which were in the same place, dinner theatre-style. Really nice theatre, by the way. What makes Xian dumplings so special is that, depending on the contents of the dumpling, the outside is shaped like that animal/vegetable. The pork ones are little tiny pigs with sesame seed eyes, the duck ones have little tiny beaks, the cabbage ones look like cabbage. Super cute. I’m not a dumpling fan, so I found the taste fairly bland, but they were a big hit with the group and this was one of the lightest meals we had all trip, which was much appreciated. Immediately after dinner they clear the tables, sell you some overpriced sweetened popcorn and dim the lights for the traditional cultural show. This was beautiful, the costumes, the pageantry, the traditional instruments – we would have enjoyed it more if we had been able to stay awake. The combination of the happy, just eaten feeling, the dark room and comfortable chairs was all it took and pretty soon we were all doing the head-bob, “no, I’m awake, I’m awake” thing. There were people playing freaking gongs ten feet from us and it still could not keep us up! One of the agents took a picture with three of us sitting there with our eyes closed and a fourth with her head down, sound asleep on her plate. Brutal. We would pop up just in time to clap after each performance and then drop again. Needless to say after that show we crawled back to the bus and from there straight into bed. I literally woke up the next morning and discovered I was only wearing half of my pajamas, the other half were still on the foot of the bed where I had set them out to change into. It was one of those days.

China day 3:All in all we’re just another tourist on the Wall

holly — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:35:57 +0000

This morning we were all up and rearing to go nice and early, partially out of excitement, and partially because we wanted to have a nice relaxing breakfast with enough time left to then go up to our rooms and add on all our bulky layers for the trip to the Great Wall. After yesterday there was no way we were going to risk loosing toes in China. We all had insurance (as everyone who travels internationally should. At all times. Without exception. Deal with it. That’s like CAD$30 that could save your life), but no one wanted to test it, we still had a lot more of China to see! When we packed onto the bus I swear all our suitcases were up in our rooms, empty, as we were wearing practically everything we’d brought withus. I was rocking the always sexy look of three pairs of socks, jeans, leggings underneath, a thermal workout tank top, hoodie, turtleneck sweater, down parka, scarf and gloves. All I was missing was a hat, but seriously, these locks do not handle hats well, and if I was desperate, every ten feet in this country someone is trying to sell you one of the plush panda hats, so it wouldn’t be hard to pick one up.

The typical “break up a long drive with a stop at a local handicrafts/tacky souvenir shop” stop brought us to a Jade factory. I understand why every tour operator in every country does this, I mean, over an hour into a drive, people will want to stretch, use the bathrooms, and get a drink, so why not combine that with stores that give kickbacks to the tour guide for every tourist that buys something? But after you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Gold in Costa Rica and Hong Kong, gemstones in Thailand and Singapore, pewter in Malaysia… I don’t care how you make it, polish it, or what the history is. Chances are I’m not going to buy anything more than a few dollars, so just let me look around in peace and then enjoy the bathrooms. Usually after one of these stops I can’t remember the presentation at all, but I will always remember if the bathroom was immaculate.

Like the over-excited travel nerds we are, the second we started seeing mountains we all had our cameras out and pressed to the windows for that first glance of the great wall. And there it was. Just a glimpse in the distance, and the road turned and it was gone. Then another taste, and it was gone again. And then there was the sturdy citadels of Juyong Pass and we were all thinking, “wow, we’re here!”, but no, the van just drove right through and back to the highway. A few minutes later, after being stopped to let some high ranking Nepalese official and their motorcade through, we were dropped off at Badaling, right beside the KFC. We come all the way to the Great Wall of China and find a freaking KFC? Can you get any less exotic? A short walk up through the giant gates and we were there, oohing and ahhing and spastically snapping photos, as every where you turned there was more Wall. It’s not that tall, actually, or maybe it’s the vastness of the mountains and countryside that makes it look small, but it is everywhere. No matter where you turn, there’s another section snaking the most improbable course along the mountain ridge, seemingly curling back on itself as it follows the angular topography. Right at the bottom we had our souvenir group photo taken (professional group photo with the Wall perfectly in the background, all nicely bound in the Great Wall souvenir guide book, for only CAD$15? Sold!), then divided into 2 groups to sightsee. Half of us wandered around at the bottom, taking pictures, shopping, stopping for hot chocolate, while the other half of us climbed. I climbed. There was no way I was coming here and not climbing the Great Wall.

No matter how cold it was, after about ten minutes, layers started peeling off. The combination of uneven steps and practically vertical sections warmed us up fast, and just when you think “this might be a good time to catch my breath” some little old lady in kitten heels(what do I wear to climb a wall? Why, my heels, of course!) saunters past you like this is nothing. Every few hundred feet there’s another watchtower, which were really fun (and if I was a little kid, would have made the coolest hideout!), provided some great photo spots through their arched windows, and opened up the wonders of a new section of Wall on the other side. After about 25 minutes of climbing and picture taking we had reached one of the higest points in the area, so we turned back, not wanting to get so engrossed in Wall climbing that we went too far, missed our bus and were stranded here. But that would have been so easy. I could have easily wandered along here all day if they’d have let me. It just stretches on forever, and no matter how far away it seemed, there were always the little specks of people walking up every part. It still seemed crowded, despite it being low season, but, as our guide pointed out, you could actually see space in between the people walking the wall, so it was an exceptionally quiet day. On a busy day this must be more like getting swept up in a riptide than actually walking, as the movement of all the people packed around you would propel you forwards. I wonder how many people a year are accidentally pushed off?

Now hiking up might have been hard on the thighs, but carefully walking down slopes and steps that steep is a whole ‘nother challenge. I started noticing that the sides are not that high, and the back of my mind began to nag that if I trip and fall, it’s an awfully long way down to the ground, and I think I’d bounce and roll a while… whenever a guard rail was an option, I held on to it. There was really no way to find a comfortable walking rhythm, as the pavers were so irregular, and we were getting frequently stopped for photos. Yep, like celebrities. Me, Brad and Angelina. Chinese people get really excited when they see white people, let me tell you. They just kinda grab your arm, point with their camera and you smile. There are going to be people all over China now proudly displaying my “random white woman on the Wall” photos on their mantles. This is ridiculously fun, by the way. By day 4 of the trip I had started grabbing random Asian people for photos, too, and they were just as excited

At the bottom we hit the souvenir stalls, where I discovered that you really do need to barter pretty much everywhere here. I got so caught up in the tacky tourist wonderland that I failed to realize there were no set prices here, and I ended up paying CAD$60 for my “I climbed the Great Wall” tee, fridge magnets and postcards, which I could have probably got for CAD$30. Damn you, bartering! Not my favorite thing to do, mainly because I feel like I’m cheating the vendors out of their money, when in reality they’re actively cheating me out of mine. Grrrr. That bothered me for the rest of the day.

All too soon we were back on the bus, and driving to a massive enamelware factory/restaurant clearly designed for nothing but foreign tour groups. We were like the 30th bus in the parking lot. That being said, there really wasn’t a hell of a lot else around here. This was probably the best meal we had all trip. The food was incredible, the service good, for the one and only time we had unlimited drinks and we discovered Chinese Whiskey. Ahh, Chinese Whiskey. Maybe that’s why we all remember this as the best meal… We should have known what we were in for when the cups they give you to drink out of are literally the size of thimbles. They looked like egg cups for Barbie’s dream house. Not kidding. This stuff was like 95% alcohol, smelled like nail polish remover (actually, nail polish remover probably has a lower alcohol content and is softer on your hands), and halfway though your thimbleful most of us brave enough to try it were coughing and sputtering. I have the alcohol tolerance of a gerbil, so I wisely chose not to partake. The only one in the group who could really stomach it was the one woman originally from Poland, and after three thimbles full, even her strong European disposition could barely handle it and she was bright pink. Rumour has it there may possibly be pictures floating around from this meal with a lot of us two-fisting Chinese beer, pink faced over the whiskey, and smiling like idiots. But that claim is unsubstantiated and if asked I will deny it. On the way out I bought some bottles of the Whiskey for CAD$1.60/bottle!!! for my bridesmaids back home (who have a slightly better alcohol tolerance. I should start preparing for my Bachelorette party now, lol), but they would later be confiscated by customs at the Beijing airport (I know, I know, I should know better, but a momentary lapse of judgment meant I put them in my carry on and now they’re probably being enjoyed in the lunch room of PEK), so sorry girls!

To the Ming Tombs, otherwise known as the tourist attraction least likely to be recommended by me or the other agents. Due to the season and the freezing weather (and the fact that Chinese don’t actually like to visit tombs, go figure), it was pretty empty, and we wandered around giant, somewhat unremarkable wooden buildings that looked an awful lot like the ones we’d seen yesterday at the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, looking for a bathroom. The bathrooms there are pretty good, by the way. It was so funny, there was this American tourist who clearly hadn’t read her guidebook flitting around the bathroom, poking her head in all the stalls in search of toilet paper. There are like three bathrooms in the country that have toilet paper in the stalls, most have nothing and you have to bring your own, and the rest have a dispenser on the wall by the sinks. This one went a step farther, and, like all the other Asian countries I’ve ever been to, had a table outside the bathroom selling packets of TP. The American woman, bouncing like she was going to wet herself at any moment, was wailing to her husband that “this can’t be toilet paper, this stuff’s for sale! You don’t buy toilet paper!” Welcome to Asia, Ma’am. Just go with it.

45 minutes of nice relaxing driving later we were back in Beijing. They really have nice highways here, though all major roads are tolls. We drove past the Olympic village and the Bird’s Nest stadium, snapping some pictures, though they didn’t turn out as well as planned as the clouds had rolled in, causing the heavy layer of smog to descend and sit on the city like a foggy blanket. Everything was hazy gray. Would have liked to see the Water Cube, but there just wasn’t time. We were supposed to go straight to our Peking Duck dinner (which, surprisingly, has not been renamed Beijing Duck yet), but we were all still so full from lunch and had money to burn, so we arranged a stop at a nearby knockoff market/shopping mall thing with an unpronounceable name. We wanted some hardcore bartering and cheap fake Fendis! Holy crap, this place was insane. 5 storeys, hundreds of tiny stalls packed in there like Lego blocks, and the sales clerks and buyers were both aggressive. You had to drive a really hard bargain, and I saw one sales lady grab a client by the arm and try to drag them back into her stall as they walked away. This was bartering in the big leagues. I mainly looked, as I’m not really one for knockoffs or hardcore bargaining, buying only a small souvenir painting (that I probably paid too much for, it was that kind of day), and then fled to the coffee shop for some hot chocolate. By the time we got to the Peking Duck dinner at 7 we were still not remotely hungry, and honestly I remember very little about this meal. There was so much food wasted on us, we started picking at our meals just to be polite, and tried the duck (I don’t even like duck, but this was pretty good, it tasted like roast chicken. I’m sorry if anyone is offended by that), but had we skipped this meal altogether and hand nothing but a granola bar, we would have been happy. Too. Much. Food.

Back at the hotel it was time for frantic packing, hot showers and getting to sleep as soon as possible, as we were tired from all the nonstop amazing sightseeing/shopping/driving and tomorrow was going to be a super early wakeup to get to Xian. I don’t know about the others, but I fell asleep with visions of the Great Wall dancing in my head

China trip day 2: The Icy Toes of History

holly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:45:53 +0000

Gotta love jet lag. I was dead tired, barely functional the night before, and here I was waking up at 4am, wide awake and ready to go. Unwilling to conceed defeat to the sleep monster, I lay there for the next two hours, but ended up mentally going through the order teams had been eliminated from the Amazing Race, all 19 seasons, instead of getting more much needed shut eye. Up at 6, but not needing to meet the group until 830, I bundled up against the elements and went for a walk around the block. I love mornings like this in a new city, getting to see the place wake up, as the working class hits up the food carts (not the ones with the snake on a stick, or at least I hope not…) for their bag lunches to go, and parents walk their kids to school. I feel invisible, but that’s a good thing, as I don’t get the standard cheezy tourist treatment and can just enjoy the everyday life of this great place. Beijing was dawning beautiful and sunny, and the hustle and bustle was there, but still not the craziness or the crowds I had prepped for. Instead it was just comfortable, and being comfortable in a place is a huge, huge factor for me. When I, as a single woman, can walk around a city and just relax and enjoy it, that is the best sign that a city is going to be fantastic.

After a giant breakfast at the typical Asian “everything you could possibly imagine – fish and pizza and congee and Cocoa Pops” hotel buffet (they always have Cocoa Pops. Every country I’ve ever been in. Go figure. For this sole reason they have become my strange vacation obsession), we loaded our gloved and scarfed selves into the minibus and headed for Tianamen Square. Our adorable guide Jimmy – if keeping him in our luggage had been an option, we would have kept him throughout the whole tour – paraded us around carrying a bright red fabric fish on a telescoping pole, which, despite the fact it looked ridiculous, was amazingly easy to see in a forest of tour groups whose leaders were all carrying identical flags. There were thousands of people here, and every one was with a tour group, all moving in little flocks through the vast expanse of the square. If you turned your back on your group to take a picture, you had to be careful that when you turned back you were still with the right people, as it was so easy to get swept up with another group and before you knew it you were on the bus with a bunch of Israeli tourists. The square itself is pretty plain, a big white expanse of concrete with some cool statues on one side, the Mao’s portrait-clad entrance to the Forbidden City on another, and the giant queue to see the refridgerated body of Mao on the other. The lines were too long, we missed him on this trip, but I’ll get it next time… We found out after the fact that there are a lot of plain clothed securirt patroling the square and the Forbidden City, but you’d never know it, it feels so open and friendly. Got some great pictures, the cloudless blue sky made everything look spectacular, but once again it was really cold and windy, so we spent a lot of time huddling together and trying not to die.

You’re going to notice a trend in these blogs – that we were freaking freezing. The whole time we were in Beijing it stayed subarctic, and, despite the fact that some of our group were from tropical cities like Halifax and Calgary, we just could not get warm. The wind permeated everything, and before going to the Great Wall we were even warned to really bundle up so to not loose toes to frostbite. There’s nothing more comforting than that. It got to the point that our drivers, who spoke no English, knew the words for “crank up the heat!!!!” by the time we were done with them. I’m from Vancouver, where we don’t really get weather aside from mild temperatures, sun and rain, plus I traditionally run a little colder than the average person, so I should get a free pass for being so cold. But the people from the Praries really have no excuse

Then through the underpass to the Forbidden City. This was the first of many surreal moments on the trip, seeing in person those iconic red buildings and carriageways we’ve all seen on TV a million times. It’s more like the Forbidden City within a city within a city, as you would pass through one massive gate to a giant plaza, explore that, then pass through another massive gate into a larger version of the exact same plaza, with a more gigantic courtyard and even grander building. One of the things tat really surprised me here was how 90% of the tourists were Chinese. I had expected the standard flocks of overbearing white people (ourselves included), but practically everyone (and there were a lot, despite it being low season. I, for the record, never want to be in China at high season, that would be insane!) was Chinese. That’s actually a really amazing thing, though, as so often we forget to visit the awesome treasures in our own country, and these sites are definately once in a lifetime, bucket list places. The second half of the Forbidden City, the residential area, definately has more character and less pagantry than the first half. Smaller spaces, the details still ornate, but more homey feeling, cute little courtyards with trees, and a beautiful garden with gazebos and giant limestone rocks (because a traditional Chinese garden is not complete without a rock). This is also where I learned that the best way to get a bathroom stall is to literally grab people and pull them out of the way (they didn’t seem to mind, everyone was doing it, and I’m bigger than the average Chinese woman, so I can take them, lol), and that the tip to always carry a roll of toilet paper in my purse paid off in spades, as I became the defacto supplier for the group, whenever someone ran out.

After the grandeur of the Forbidden City, it was time for the first of many massive Chinese meals. The drill goes like this – you sit in a private room, because they clearly don’t want us in the general population, around a big table with a giant lazy susan in the middle. There’s unlimited tea and one small class of water, beer, Coke or Sprite. Waiters just stary bringing giant plates of food and you eat whatever you want. Sometimes you don’t really know what it is, so you make an educated guess. Normally most of the dishes are a variation veggies and some meat, not really spicy, theres a bowl of egg drop soup, one bowl of plain rice, and dessert is always either watermelon or oranges. At this point in the trip, it was all new and exciting food, and we all went to town, so much that only 2 out of the 10 of us even bothered to have dinner that night.

Today was one of those “but wait, there’s more!” days, because everywhere we went there was always another stop on the itinerary, and they were all great. From Lunch we walked through Tientan Park and saw the awesome Temple of Heaven. Lesson learned, everything is bigger here than it looks in pictures. Especially on the nice sunny day we had, it looked really spectacular, and you nearly forgot that the chaos of Beijing was just meters away. An hour commute (which in Beijing commuter minutes is a really short drive) brought us to the Summer Palace. I had always thought this was outside of Beijing, as when they say in the guidebook it’s more than an hour from the city centre, you assume it’s out in the ‘burbs. But as I was coming to learn, Beijing is so expansive that to get to the ‘burbs you have to practically get to Korea. Instead of spreading up, like so many major metropolises (metropolii? Whatever), it spread out, and as far as the eye can see from the highest point you can get to, it’s still central Beijing. Back to that “everything’s bigger in China” thing. It’s hard to wrap my brain around just how giant this place is, and how many people are here, but I’m trying.

The Summer Palace, the tranquil garden escape of the “Dragon Lady” (look it up), is incredible. She may have been domineering and ruthless as she took over the Empire, but she did build a pretty sweet garden oasis. The fifteen foot stone walls really do keep the outside world out, and if you didn’t see the telecom tower in the background, you’d think you really were away from it all in another world. Vast, beautifully landscaped, with a giant lake, rolling hills and pagodas lurking off in the mist (read:smog), more classical buildings and pedal boats that would be a fun way to explore if it had been warmer. The highlights here are the sprawling riverside corridor covered hundreds of detailed paintings, each one different, and the marble boat, a gaudy, immobile boat used for the sole purpose of sitting in and sipping tea. The ultimate display of self indulgence. Personally, I would have added a slide

At 5 we were deposited back at the hotel. It had been a long day of sightseeing, but an incredible one, and we were all more excited and energetic than tired, bouncing around like caffinated hamsters. I set off for a little geurilla shopping, as I had an hour and a half to kill before meeting with the local Chinese sales rep I deal with all the time (super nice, sweet guy, great to meet him in person, boring to blog about), and a giant shopping mall to explore. Moving as fast as possible I hit up all the stores, only to discover China doesn’t carry my shoe size except in Men’s, at Sephora it’s easy to have an entire conversation with a sales clerk using nothing but hand signals to bridge the language barrier, and that I love tacky souvenirs so much that I chose to save my cash for them rather than spend it here on any of the actual functional stuff.

Now that’s what I call a good day. Tomorrow, the Wall!