Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Xian to Beijing - Part 3 Beijing and Shanghai

Beijing
(Capital of the largest country in the world)

I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to visit Beijing during a time that was not a chinese holiday (with millions and millions of chinese tourists) and also before the olympics next year. If you don't already know, the 2008 olympics will be held in Beijing and begin on 08-08-08 at 08:08pm. In preparation for the olympics, Beijing is one huge construction site and they have a ton of work to do in the next year.



My first day I rented a bicycle and rode to Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city. It is a really huge city, and as different from Shanghai as Washington DC is to New York or Hollywood. The streets are very wide and impressive. I also rode my bike to the olympic village which is one huge construction site. I saw the Bird's Nest - the building that will host the opening ceremony. And also the swimming building which is constructed to look like soap bubbles. There were quite a few tourists doing the same thing, holding their cameras over the construction fences to get a shot of the famous buildings under construction.




The next day I toured the forbidden city. It was STINKING HOT that day. I think I bought 5 bottles of water and had two popsicles. The front gate of the forbidden city (Gate of Heavenly Peace) has the famous huge painting of Chairman Mao hanging above it. The forbidden city is called that because for many years while it was home to several generations of Chinese emperors, it was forbidden for all but the royal court to enter.


Today it is a HUGE museum. There are many exhibits in the hundreds of buidings and temples and previous living quarters.




You need all day to visit it, especially if you like museums. I rather dislike them and went through them very quickly and it still took me 5-6 hours. You can get a guided tour which you probably need to arrange ahead of time, or you can rent the head phones which I found very confusing and annoying. It tries to guide you trough the buildings but I kept getting out of order and skipping things and back tracking to find the missed parts.



The walls are all an ochre red and the doorways were decorated with beautiful ceramic tiles.



My hostel was in the Hutong district (alleys of old one storey buildings), near the drum tower.




And when in Rome do as Romans. Or in this case Beijing eat as Beijing ren... eat Peking Duck.




Of course a highlight of any trip to Beijing is to walk on the Great Wall. I chose to visit a part of the wall called Simatai. Being a not-so-touristed section of the wall, it's also not-so-easy-to-get-to. I followed the directions in the Lonely Planet and took a local bus and was dropped off 70km from the wall. I then had to negotiate with the taxi drivers there to get to the wall. The new Lonely Planet has just been published and mine was about 3 years out of date. LP said it should cost 120RMB round trip. The taxi drivers wanted 120RMB each way. I managed to get them down to 160RMB round trip.


The views from the wall were spectacular and there were very few tourists there.




The steps were very steep in places. I walked all the way up and back down the mountain and along the wall. Most people took a cable car most of the way up the mountain to get to the wall and walked down.



It was thundering the whole time I was there and just as I finished the wall and was walking down the mountain it started pooring, so I ran down because I didn't have an umbrella or plastic bag to put my camera in.



The taxi driver and I had a great conversation, 100% in chinese. It was good practice for me. He was very good at speaking easy chinese to me. I think he listened to the vocabulary I could use and asked me questions at my language level. By the time he dropped me off, he said we were "hao pengyou" = good friends.
The last thing I did in Beijing was to tour some universities. My little sister Qiufeng's roommate's boyfriend (Yang Ming Yang) is a graduate student at one of the top universities in the country, Tsingtao University. He gave me a great tour of his university and Peking University as well as the nearby Beijing Language and Culture University.
A Shanghai Wedding
From Beijing, I headed back to Shanghai to join Ray at his cousin's wedding. The wedding was held in Jin Mao Tower, the tallest building in China (88 floors).



The top 30 floors are a Hyatt Hotel.



Ray and I decided to pass some time in Cloud 9 bar - the tallest bar in China. A very small beer cost me about 60RMB ($8). Concidering you can buy a beer twice the size for 4RMB in Liuzhou, that's expensive!!! Looking in the updated Lonely Planet, it only costs 50RMB to go to the 88th floor observation deck - better value since you get a full 360 degree view.

The wedding was very interesting for me. Ray's cousin owns an interior design firm in Shanghai and is very successful. The wedding was very expensive. I was the only foreigner there.


The bride wore a traditional wedding dress before the wedding and then a light green one when she walked down the aisle to say the vows, followed by a dark pink one for dinner and a traditional red dress at the end of the ceremony.



They had a huge layered cake which they cut for show but we never ate. After the wedding I saw them taking it apart. It was made of wood with a little cake and icing around the outside. The flower girls had wings like little angels. It was a really nice evening. I met many of Ray's relatives and they were very welcoming to me.

The next day, Ray and I saw a park where parents do matchmaking for their single children. I had seen this on TV, but never in person. They make a profile for their child and post it on the bushes for prospective mates parents to review.
Getting married and having your one baby by age 30 is very important and saves your parents "face". Big cultural difference from America. What do they think about the independent 39 year old single American woman who would rather travel around the world than sit at home and cook dinners for her bread winner?


Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Xian to Beijing - Part 2 Dunhuang to Xining

Dunhuang - Gansu Province



Dunhuang is in the middle of the Gobi desert. I travelled there by sleeper train again - this time about 22 hours. The train was almost empty. Very quiet and comfortable. I woke up about 6:30am as usual and looked out the window to see the other-worldly landscape of the desert. Sand as far as you can see, but not flat and windblown like I expected, rather with craters and gulleys like dried rivers. There was a huge sand dune mountain running parallel to the railway line and snow capped mountains behind that.



The train line to Dunhuang is new. It's not on most maps. They haven't even finished the railway station yet. It's the first railway station I have seen in China that is not in the center of the city. It's about 10km outside of town and across the road from the small airport.



The two main reasons to come to Dunhuang are for the Mogao Caves and the giant sand dune which they call Mingsha Mountain .There wasn't a lot to do in Dunhuang unless you wanted to pay lots of money to go to the overly touristy Cresent Moon Lake and pay more money to do adventure sports like Jeep rides or quad bikes in the sand or camel rides or sand surfing, sledding, etc...


An eclectic crew of 4 foreigners (isreali, british, japanese & american) met on the streets of the sleepy desert town that day and decided to all go on a camel trek and camping in the desert.


This camel trek and camping in the Gobi desert was one of the highlights of my time in China so far. I have always wanted to ride a camel and camp in the desert but it wasn't something I ever thought I would do in China. Many people say they get really sore riding the camel. But I loved it. I found it really relaxing and almost fell asleep.


I love the camel's feet. I thought they would be like a horse's hoof, but they aren't. They are soft and hairy.

Camping in the desert was really fun. We climbed to the top of the sand dune to watch the sunset, then slept under the stars (actually it was cloudy like usual in china) so we slept under the clouds which were under the stars. It was so silent and black in the desert. So peaceful. When you camp in the gobi desert, you would never know you are actually in the country with the world's largest population.

I visited Mogao Caves too which I think was way over priced. There are hundreds of caves carved into the side of the sand mountain. Traders and rich merchants travelling along the silk road would sponsor a cave to be built and decorated with buddhist art (paintings on the walls, sculptures, etc. ) The third largest buddha statue in the world is here. It is 34.5m tall.

If you're really into Buddhist art, then maybe it's worth it, but if I had known how expensive it has gotten (100RMB = $13), I probably wouldn't have made the trip at all. But then I wouldn't have seen the desert and taken the really fun camel trekking trip. So I don't regret it.

Lanzhou - Gansu Province


From Dunhuang, I took another sleeper train (16 hours) back to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province. I was getting good at buying train tickets by myself by this point. As soon as I got to Lanzhou, I bought a ticket to go to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province which was about 3 hours away. I had about 4 hours to wait in Lanzhou, so I stored my luggage and set out to explore and find some lunch. Lanzhou is located on the Yellow River (Huang Jiang) which is really muddy.


I crossed the historic first bridge over the Yellow River, then visited the pretty temple (White Pagoda Hill) on the opposite side of the river. The temple was built on the side of the mountain and the view of the city and the river was great.


I also tried Lanzhou's famous beef noodles, yet another version of chinese noodles with lots of stuff to add to the soup and noodles. The picture above shows how it is delivered to you. You have to add all the little plates to the bowl of noodles (peeling the boiled egg first of course).

Xining - Qinghai Province
My first meal in Xining was, you guessed it,....... noodles again. :) This time they were called Kuan Gan Ban. There are so much variety in chinese noodles though that I don't get bored. Always fun to try something new and compare. My favorites are still Liuzhou Luosifen and the dry noodles I had in Chengdu next to Ray's apartment.


About 80km from Xining, I visited Xinghai Hu, the largest lake in China. It was really beautiful.

Very blue water reflecting the blue blue sky. It is so nice to see blue sky in Chinan again. :)

Snow capped mountains in the distance, tibetan tents, yaks, and over priced entrance fees to cheezy tourist attractions.


A fellow traveller, Anthon, and I paid 5 RMB to a local farmer to let us walk down to the lake avoiding the 100RMB cheezy tourist trap theme park. It was nice and peaceful.

I had a surprise when the pre-packaged Yak meat I bought in town ended up looking like a dog bone. It was a fun day.


The next day I took a tour to a small tibetan lamasery (temple) in the mountains. It used to be a huge complex of monestaries. But aparently, the head Lama was instrumental in Mongolia breaking away from China and the Chinese government destroyed much of the city. A few of the temples have been rebuilt.


It is now home to the controversial 15th Dalai Lama, a 7 year old boy. My tour guide knew some of the monks and was able to get me in to meet him. He is a very serious little boy. He now belongs to the tibetan people and is not allowed to see his family. It is his destiny to rule a country in turmoil.


I was impressed with one of his children's books which had pictures and the corresponding Tibetan, Chinese and English words.


What I was told was that the Chinese government and the current lamas (religious leaders) of tibet chose this boy to be the next leader of Tibet. He is supposed to take the place of the current 14th Dalai Lama who has been in exile in India since 1959 when China took over Tibet by force (when he was 23 years old).

They searched all over Tibet and reviewed hundreds of children. China wants to take part in the 15th Dalai Lama's education so that when he becomes the leader of tibet, he will feel like he is not only a Tibetan but also chinese and help to bring Tibet peacefully under Chinese rule. It is yet to be seen if the Tibetan people will accept this leader because the tibetans believe that the spirit of the current Dalai Lama will transfer to his successor at death. Interesting!

I also did some shopping for yak meat (not on a bone) and climbed another hillside temple. This one was a taoist temple. At the bottom of the hill is a huge market of construction materials. It is like a huge outdoor Home Depot or Lowes.


From Xining, I travelled by train to Beijing (25 hours). See "Xian to Beijing - Part 3 Beijing"





























































































Xian to Beijing - Part 1 Xian

Xian
Since my contract was cancelled, I had some free time. So I decided to travel a little and see some of more of China. I have always wanted to see Xian. So I headed there in search of the Terracotta Warriors.


Visiting the terracotta warriors is a little frustrating because there are so many tour groups and it's so crowded. But it is cool to see them. Glad I did it.


Xian is a cool city. Lots to do. There is a city wall all around the city and there are an old bell tower and drum tower and the city is all lit up at night.

There is a big muslim district in Xian. There is a nice muslim Great Mosque. Other than the prayer mats on the floor in the main temple, I would have never known that it was a muslim temple and not a buddhist temple or taoist or something.

The food is delicious and interesting and there is a lot of really good souvenir shopping. And a market where they sell dried fruit which is really good and really cheap too. Qiufeng's best friend Ju Ying is a graduate student in Xian. She was a good guide and we toured the warriors together and had some nice meals in the Muslim Quarter. She also helped me a lot when I had to go shopping for a new camera.


Xian was a cool place even if the crowds at the terracotta warriors are a bit annoying. The one bad experience in Xian was being pickpocketted. My new camera was stolen right out of my camera bag while I was walking in an underground walkway. I think it was a little kid. As I was shopping for a new one, many people told me there are many thieves in Xian. Many stories of theft.
From Xian, I decided to go to Dunhuang. There was a direct sleeper train all the way there, 22 hours. Very convenient. Very comfortable. See Part 2 Dunhuang.