A Week in China

I officially left the United States for the first time in my travels following college.  The plan was to write a post for each city that I go to, but you know what..... China blocks blogs and Facebook.  Imagine what Americans would do without it.   I am finishing this post in Seoul, South Korea, but I'm going to wait to get a fair assessment of the South Koreans, their culture and everything in between before I talk about them.


So I left the United States on May 31st at approximately 7 am from the Raleigh/Durham airport, meaning I had to get there by 4:30 in the morning.  (Appreciate the ride Alan)  A two hour wait in the airport, 2 hour flight to Toronto, a 4 hour layover in the Toronto Airport, and a 14 hour flight to Shanghai was all it took.  The professor from NC State, Dr. Parker, is a walking encyclopedia and one of the most interesting people I have ever met.  Some people talk like they know everything but he almost does.  (He did try out for Jeopardy in case you were wondering, but claims he knows nothing about the opera and got about 10 questions on it)  Out of the 300 questions I have asked him, he has responded with "I don't know" approximately twice.  He is one of those people who could start a conversation with anyone (Along with my mom, the game show host) and talk to you for hours on end on any subject you want to talk about.  The group I'm traveling with is awesome and we have become like family.  When you spend as much time in close quarters with a group, you get to know those people pretty well.  Onto to China now


Shanghai has about 19 million people and Beijing has about 14 million people (To put that into perspective, New York City has around 9 million people)  Our group stayed in Shanghai for 3 nights and Beijing for 4 nights.  Shanghai was much more Americanized and the financial center of China, while Beijing is more of the cultural capital and is more full on Chinese.  (Like Mr. Lee Ho... For anyone who has seen Grandma's Boy)  I enjoyed Beijing more, but I had a blast in both places.  Some highlights of the trip so far.......


1.  The Great Wall of China section near Beijing- Pictures don't do the Wall justice.  It spans close to 4,000 miles and the line of the wall is visible from outer space almost like the track of a river would be.  This was one of the things I was most excited for in China and it did not disappoint.  Driving up to it, I got that nervous/anxious/excited feeling that doesn't come around very often.  To get up to the 2 mile section in the mountains requires a chair lift (very similar to a ski lift).  Some parts were very, very steep while others were gentle slopes while some parts had stairs and others a path along it.  We went past the "no admittance sign onto the highest part in of section we could reach.  After walking back to the starting point, we took a toboggan slide back down on the metal race track to the bottom.  A pretty mind blowing thing on the Great Wall but it was super fun and our group flew down the track.  Too bad I couldn't really get a good picture of me on the track, but what???? A slide to get down from the Great Wall?.  It was an truly amazing experience I will never forget.

Our Group Sponsoring NC State

So I couldn't turn down an opportunity to drink a beer on the Great Wall...... Plus it was only 50 cents

 2.  A view of Shanghai from an observatory tower from the 88th floor of a hotel-  The same type of thing as going to the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower, but on steroids.  Shanghai has 30-50 story buildings that go on and on and on.  Too bad my camera died that day, but here is a picture of some huge buildings.  I just sat there staring out onto the city, trying to take it all in.  The big buildings go as far as you can see, but because of the smog in the Chinese cities you can't see for miles and miles. 

3.  The Market Places- If you think someone has tried really hard to get you to buy something, come to China, these people have no mercy.  The thing is, the median income in China is $3,200 a year. (No typo, thirty two hundred a year, so they are desperate for any business)  They will yell at you going down the street, grab your arm walking by, and even come down on their price 80-90% to get you to buy something.  I only tried to get everything for 1/3 of the original price because hassling these people for even more of a discount wasn't even worth my time, and they need the money way more than I do.  These people will sell you anything you can imagine, from t-shirts, to magnets, to mini Great Wall statues and many other souvenirs.  I can't figure out why no one thinks to sell different items than the person beside them either, but there are so many people selling things that it is hard to be different.


4. The Olympic Village- We only got to walk around the area for about 45 minutes, but it was an awesome area and the "Bird's Nest" (The huge stadium where the opening ceremony and many other events were held) was crazy.  Supposedly the people who used to live on the land were paid a good sum of money by Chinese standards to get up and move so they could build the Olympic facilities.  Here is a poorly narrated video of it.  

And then there was this "creature".  I thought it was pretty cool, and posed for a picture with my friend Jeff, a guy on trip.  Then this "creature" followed us around demanding money.  We tried to get rid of it, and then another guy came up and claimed that we owed it money, making a scene.  I finally gave the thing 10 chinese yuan (about a dollar fifty) and it went away.  Scary


5. Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City-  The square is where the famous riots were held in 1989 and I knew nothing other than that before coming.  It is a huge open area right in front of the Chinese equivalent of our Congress and a huge pedestrian area.  A cool place to visit, although it was packed. (About 30,000 visitors a day)  The Forbidden City is where the former emperors had their Summer and Winter Palaces to stay in.  These places were massive and never seemed to end.  It is called the Forbidden City because the common people weren't allowed to go into it.  I'm not sure the exact date but it hasn't been lived in for hundreds of years.  

Tienanmen Square

Me in the Forbidden City

 The Chinese are really nice people.  There is basically no crime in China and it is safe for anyone to walk around at night.  It is a Communist country, but I feel that the lack of crime is more related to the culture of the Chinese people, not because of their government.  On the other hand, the Chinese are pretty goofy people.  The don't really have a style and basically anything goes when it comes to clothes.  In the words of Grayson, a friend on the trip, "Imagine wearing a normal t-shirt and then a colorful swimsuit on the street.... this is perfectly normal in China."  They love to wear T-shirts with some type of English words on it, but most of time, their shirts make no sense, or are just downright hilarious.  

????? Do you have any idea what your shirt says???

Nude Photography??? Huh???

The food here is awesome.  Real Chinese food is actually pretty similar to American Chinese food.  Ours is a little greasier and we eat only a small portion of their menu, but I was really surprised that we even came close, we can butcher anything.  Not to mention the normal things (Kung Pao Chicken, sweet and sour chicken, Peking duck to name a few) a lot of other dishes have been great.  I have tried some pretty interesting food items in Shanghai and Being, like bamboo, cabbage soup, centipede, octopus, scorpion, goose liver, pig neck, and uhhh well you know I kinda well umm yea there isn't an easy way to say this.....Donkey Penis. (Insert your own joke here) Believe it or not, it was actually decent, it tasted like a strange chicken dish served on a stick out on the streets.  Oh and at almost every sit down restaurant they have lazy Susan's, where you put the food on a spinning thing in the middle and just try a little of everything.

This was before it was jammed pack with food, and it spun around automatically

A Few More Observations

• There are over a billion people in China, and jobs here have about two or three as many people working.  For example, at the airport, there were like 20 security lines with 5 employees at each one.  In the U.S. there are about 3 with maybe 15 or 20 total employees.  There are people in almost every bathroom to clean, people constantly cleaning the streets, at least 3 bartenders for every 1 in a normal American bar, and usually about 3 servers for our group of 11 every time we go out to eat.
• The streets are very clean because of the amount of workers and as I mentioned before, very safe.
• The only down time was when I asked our tour guide how China felt about North Korea.  I know it isn't the best idea to discuss politics in foreign countries, but if someone asked me how I felt about our neighbors, Canada, I wouldn't feel offended.  But I didn't consider the millions of Chinese soldiers that died in the Korean War.  I really meant no harm, I was just curious.  Our bus got really quiet very quickly.  I apologized and our tour guide joked about it with me later, but hey, you live and you learn. 
• Chinese etiquette makes sense, well kinda.  At the dinner table, you eat when you get your food, you can grab anything on the table within reach, and you can slurp your food and make plenty of noise when eating with no consequences.  On a side note, it is common courtesy when eating with a family or at a nice restaurant to leave food on the table.  This lets the host know that they provided enough food.  But, even if you leave food on the table, that food is going in the trash, leftovers aren't an option in China.  
• If you thought you or any white person you know was a bad dancer, check out the "discos" in China.  These people put us to shame.  There is literally no dance move that is off limits with these people.  Their clubs are fun though, and our group had a pretty good time at one.  (Kaysee, Sarah, Bub, and Aimee.... Our dances would skyrocket in popularity in China) 
• Chinese people are loud.  When they get together at dinner, they scream at each other, but that is just their culture, they don't mean anything by it.  I keep thinking that a fight is about to break out because they seem mad and talk so loud sometimes, but they are a very nice group of people.
• Americans stand out so much here, people stare us down, but not really in a bad way.  In tourist areas, they love to take pictures of us.  Our group was meeting in front of a Starbucks and I couldn't figure out why they were taking pictures of the building behind us.  Come to find out, they were taking pictures of our group.... Another guy in the group and I have embraced it and just tell people to come up and pose with us anytime people try to sneak a picture of us.  Oh, and for whatever reason, they love the peace sign.

I can't help myself, I feel like a celebrity

Overall, China has been a great place, and other than the bad smog within the city (It really is bad, I felt congested the whole time) and the insane market place people, which really aren't that bad, I have had an amazing time.  I am finishing this post after winning $500 from a casino in South Korea but we will get to that next time.  If my dad was around, he would have won $1,000 sitting right beside me.  Stay tuned for the run down on South Korea!