China! thinking all along about Moulin

So my China trip began one very rainy day in Qingdao, our ship cleared pretty early but my trip didn’t leave until noonish, but I didn’t get off because it was a long walk to the port terminal, and as I have mentioned… I did not bring proper rain gear… and might I also mention, my mom was right yet again, always right that one, SAS trips were not quite as good as going independently, though as I will explain to you awesome none the less because they brought you to all the best restaurants and temples and mosques and the wall and the solders and museums and shops and explained everything with a lot of history and gave inside information I never would have known and yeah, it would have been better with a smaller group of friends, but would have taken weeks to organize and costed much more. And I have to say really the only down side was not being able to walk around and spend my own time at a few big sites, though if not on the tour I would have seen/experienced less than half of what I got to do, so China rocks.

Though honestly it was so polluted! I had a very hard time really being psyched about being there for awhile, I mean I was enjoying everything, but pollution was overwhelming. And smoke, smoking was allowed everywhere but airplanes it seemed. But on my trip we stayed and ate at some really nice places, others on SAS had a completely different experience, they saw the rougher side of China, I saw tourist sites in China and four star hotels in China and road around on buses from place to place and looked out my window – the biggest thing I’m taking away from this trip was the CRAZY mix of economically developed and very poor, lights and skyscrapers and SoHo Beijing, to women on the back of loaded trailers pulled by bikes on the freeway! I was also overwhelmed by the amount of people, once we were stopped at a light and slowly the amount of bikers packed in next to us – also stopped, and there were just so many! And some with women sitting on the back and some on cell phones and just packed in and crazy. AND BEIJING IS SO BIG! Man it was just gigantic, I had a hard time loving it because it was next to impossible to make sense of. I’m sure had I been there longer I’d figure it out but there for 2 nights I never had a single idea where I was, I was bused around and at night took cabs, sometimes it took like an hour to get from one place in the city to another, crazy.

--- So anyway, I should get on to talking about my trip – I just want to say that I thought about Moulin practically the whole time I was in China. Everything I saw I related back to a cartoon Disney movie. Even on the Great Wall I wasn’t like ‘ahh I’m on the Great Wall!’ I was like ‘man this would have been hard for that guy to run up to light the fire when the Huns attacked.’ And was picturing a lot of cartoon anchors attaching to the wall and all that. haha. so really it didn’t finally hit me completely until actually the last day in Xi’an. We got dropped off in the city center (Xi’an is surrounded by a city wall – though it has expanded beyond it – in the center is a bell tower that would ring when they were closing the gates and one had to come back inside… or else I guess) and as we were walking to the tower we walked down between these two roads and there were all these lanterns and people and I was like ‘whoa, it feels like we’re in…’ and I was thinking India or something (because we have all built India up as this really third world old foreign place), and my friend says “China?” and it was like… yeah. hahaha, well Xi’an is an ancient city and they have some regulations to keep things still old and stuff and there was a ton of development (a mcdonalds and a starbucks on that street) but it’s too bad I didn’t really feel like I was in China for so long but I’m glad it eventually came to me.

--- so rainy Qingdao day, and I was very happy because a friend of mine, Christina (my neighbor on the ship not Christina from Japan) was on my trip! And we became China traveling buddies, haha uh yeah. we sat down on bus B, which was fortunate because it ended up dictating our whole trip – there were like 80 some people doing the Beijing/Xi’an trip and everything was divided by bus.

Driving through this city on the way to the airport – Qingdao was not a nice city, only like 40 (or maybe 100? But I think 40) some years old it was… a trash hole. It was a small village then, now a bunch of falling down buildings with a ton of people, men without shirts on sitting in dirty open rooms with dirty air… trash everywhere, would have been hard to navigate, maybe that was only the port area though, because the airport was beautiful and nicely manicured and all that and Qingdao is the site for the sailing events of the Olympics so, I’m sure there are some nice things there.

That’s something I have to say about China as a whole, I feel like everything was in preparation for the Olympics next summer. Several major temples were under construction and there was a lot of road construction and everything, it was kind of disappointing but there were SO MANY PEOPLE, tourists and such already that I cannot imagine being in China during the Olympics and am also glad I made it to China before rather then after because thousands of people going through these places will just make them even more worn and all that. I guess I feel like things would be kind of wrecked and personally a little more special this way, haha, even though I missed out on the complete experience.

So at the airport our flight was delayed (as all 3 of them were) so we spent some time looking around at all the crazy things, like bagged fish as airplane snacks, ice cream bars for 40 cents, holes in the floor for toilets only and no toilet paper (my eddie bauer purchased supply has come in handy).. etc.

Their flight system is crazy it’s like delay delay stand around, BOARD NOW! The gate changed everyone board now at once, and we walked out on the ground, all got in a little bus, and drove what seemed under 50 yards to our plane. I like walking up steps to planes but I’m not going to lie I was and still am a little nervous flying in foreign countries. Like elevators in Japan that have no sensor to stop closing, I really just don’t know the standard of these planes, and I know they’re fine and safe and all that but every time we were in turbulence… it was scary.

So we got to Beijing a little later then expected but it was still light out for awhile and we got to look around a lot, I was especially amazed by the construction methods, setting the roads and the sidewalks they did by hand! Like I saw this guy hammering in a tile, and the freeway construction, very manual! I was impressed. Our tour guide was named Nancy, she was really nice and funny. She brought us to a Peking duck dinner at a place called Hepingmen Quanjude Restaurant. Apparently it’s this really great/famous place and when George Bush Senior was in China he ate there, (they called him Daddy Bush, haha) but it was this 7 floor restaurant (we were obviously on a fairly touristy flour, all European and American people, but there was a ton of really good food, mostly duck dishes. They continuously bring food out and put it on a lazy susan like thing and everyone shares it. Also a cook comes out and carves duck right in front of you. Also every meal with chop sticks!! It was hard for awhile and even had some hand pains! hahaha, but I think I’m pretty good and warmed up for Vietnam (which by the way is TOMORROW! And we’ve had all our preports and I have to pack and stuff and we’ll actually be off quite early, so I’m kind of distracted while writing this, sorry!)

Our hotel was called the Jianguo Qianmen Hotel, my roommate was random, a really pretty girl form CA, she ended up being really really cool and smart and nice and we got along well so that was definitely good. It was a really nice hotel, some of us, myself included were on the 8th floor – which ended up being the VIP floor, so we had nice rooms and it was excellent. A bunch of us spent the night just walking around the general area and hung out for a bit where a guy was singing and playing guitar, he was Chinese but singing quite a few American songs, he definitely should have been on an American Idol show, I’d have voted for him, but it was pretty low key so I left early to go to bed.

Every morning there was a continental Breakfast at the hotel, it was good, you could get normal stuff like toast and eggs, you could also get noodles and… just lots and lots of really weird stuff. But I ate a good breakfast and tried some stuff, to be good and strong for our venture up the Great Wall! We were in the “Ju Rong Guan section” it was really packed with tourists so was kind of overwhelming but was defiantly very cool, the hike up was difficult. To say the least, some steps were really deep and some small. You would keep thinking you were at the top and then would see another tower above you.

It was so beautiful, the whole way up. We would climb, stop and take pictures all around us, climb, pictures, climb, look around. Also on the way up were vendors and stuff, I actually bought a Great Wall shirt up there, but waited for the way down to get it. When we finally got to the top it was really cool, you could see the great wall far far away from us, and it just stretched forever and ever. I wish we had the time to go along it a bit more or see it in a different area. It was hard to feel like it stretched all across China because we were just in this one jam packed part. It was surreal being on it though, I felt like it wasn’t real kind of, like the great wall is real and it’s real in other places, but here because there are so many millions of people on it – that it must have been replaced for tourists, like there were hand rails and stuff, which obviously were necessary, but, yeah that’s just how I felt I guess. But it was really cool and I very much enjoyed the walking and it was really rewarding to get to the very top and be able to see all over and yes, breathtaking even I would say!

After we went to another traditional Chinese lunch at Dayi Friendship Restaurant, it was a cool place to go because they had all these genuine crafts and jewelry, certified by… I don’t know the government I think? haha but yeah, again with the lazy susan thing and really good Chinese food and we were kind of pressed for time and I have discovered I am not good at bargaining or good at saying no at all, but yeah I bought a vase there, it was really cool because before eating they showed us how they made these really pretty vases with intricate designs all by hand and in all these steps, so cool the level of craftsmanship in all these things, like these people are artists! But here they are working in a restaurant for tourists, not looking very much like artists or being paid like artists, but so beautiful! I took a lot of pictures.

Next we took a tour of the summer palace. It was great because being on the bus we got a lot of information on the way and learned a lot of stuff we wouldn’t have otherwise. The palace was cool, it’s where one of the emperors wifes or daughters or concubines or something lived, and she was really beautiful and musical and smart and thin even though she was served meals with 136 courses – though I guess she only ate a very small amount of each, according to ol’ Nancy. But yeah it was a very beautiful palace, on a large man made lake, carved out to look like a peach… which I think means long life, and people were boating on it and I wish we had had time to boat but we didn’t! we did however run into some fell SASers and that was nice. It was hard to really appreciate the palace because we had to stay as a group and there were a ton of people there.

We had the option that night of going to an acrobatic show which I did and am so glad, it was really cool, and there were a ton of Chinese people there watching, our few SASers were the only non natives. There were contortionists, and rope climbers/swingers, flip doers, this ballet act done on top of this guys back, ah I just though it was so so cool. We ate popcorn while we watched too.

That night we had free, a bunch of us ended up at an all you can eat pizza and Chinese food place. hahaha. It was definitely not pizza as you would expect, but crazy weird pizza, and all the food was crazy weird, but it was only about $5 and was definitely interesting. After dinner we went to an area we heard was fun at night. There were some strange places but we eventually went into one called a disco bar and it was really funny because two Chinese people were dancing on a stage, the man very scantily clad! Haha but mostly it was fun because we saw a lot of other SASers, then we ventured elsewhere to a place called Blu and there… there…. I RAN INTO MY FRIENDS!!! Ah it was so awesome. I have decided that the best thing in the world is to run into your friends in foreign countries. Because it’s like how could this happen, what are the chances! So we screamed and hugged a bunch and it was wonderful and we also danced a lot, so all and all – very good night!

Every morning we had to be on the bus by 8am – with a 6:30 wake up call!! ahhh. So right away we headed to the Temple of Heaven. And it was cool because it was in the middle of a park, and I guess in China a lot of people are retired, so they spend a lot of time doing exercises in the park! Which was so cool to see, a whole group doing dances with ribbons and practicing with swords and doing tai chi, very cool! the temple was big and round and very pretty and up these really cool carved steps, and the coolest thing was this very old cool thing in the middle of a city, you could see big buildings all around it in the distance. The building was cool but the coolest part was the park.

Next was our very much awaited tour of Tiananmen Square, well awaited for me. and this was what sucked the most about the tour, we hardly got to spend any time there! We were in and then out again, I didn’t really look around much, didn’t get to walk around by myself, wait in line to see Mao, nothing! So I was disappointed about that, but we had a schedule to keep I guess and headed over to the Forbidden city. We had 2 hours in there, with a cool audio tour, but a lot of it was under construction…

Ah! I have so much to talk about but it’s almost midnight, I haven’t packed, my roomate’s asleep and we’re porting really early tomorrow and we’re (me Jackie Lauren) are getting picked up right off the boat by a friend of hers living in Vietnam! So I’m just going to out line and hopefully fill it in later.

One of the coolest parts of the Forbidden City was this giant rock formation with a pagoda at the top, and once a year the emperor and all his concubines would hike up there. The rock formation was a collection of rocks they just piled on top of each other and also carved some animals in there.
We had lunch at a place called the Afanti restaurant, it looked like a lot of fun at night – I guess you’re supposed to dance on the tables at night, but during the day it was good food but kind of… unsettling, we had so much warning about getting sick on the food and this was the one place – until the end – that I felt sick after.

Our flight to Xi’an was very much delayed, but we were served a meal on the plane!! Which is so strange, but it was surprisingly good! It was bad because we were served so much food on this trip! Even though we arrived late they still took us to dinner because it was our ‘one chance’ or whatever to experience the famous Xi’an Hot Pot, and they kept the restaurant open for us and all that, it was really cool, everyone gets their own pot of boiling water (very packed into each other and dangerous!) and you cook your own noodles and vegetables and meat and stuff, tasty!

After we checked into our hotel and my roommate and I had a long good conversation and then went to bed! It was very important to be well rested for the Terra Cotta Warriors!! We stayed at the Jianguo Xian Hotel

Breakfast at hotel – this insane boy had the same shirt on as me ( a great wall shirt) so I was kind of pissed. Also there were some personalities on the trip definitely driving me crazy, like this really unintelligent girl that followed me and my friend around. Haha soooo the first place we went was the Big Wild Goose Pagoda – it was really cool, 7 levels, the picture of me with the Buddhas! Haha there was the big pagoda and all these little statues and very natural and cool, I lit candle there for my family, it was so peaceful! There was music coming from somewhere and gardens and birds in cages. Very cool, I got sad and missed everyone! But I liked being there.
Next we went to the Shaanxi Provincial Museum – which I went through with the tour leader… the new tour leader’s name in Xi’an was Shirley, it was a good idea to go with her because I learned a lot, it was a cool place and I just kept thinking how if I had done China indy I would have never made it there. So cool.

Next we went to a silk factory, learned some silk history, saw some girls at work, saw a silk fashion show… haha it was pretty funny, then of course had the opportunity to buy silk – but only in comforter and clothing already made, I couldn’t buy my mom silk to make stuff with! Here is where I had the best noodle I have ever had in my life. The places was called the Qinjintang Restaurant and it was inside the silk place… home of the hand tossed noodle or something like that? Anyway, this noodle (and I only got one) was the best noodle I have ever had, I don’t even know! Don’t even know how to explain it! I think it tasted like a donut or something, but that could be really off, it was just so good I could have died and been very happy. Haha. Seriously.

Then we went to the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum! And I was so pumped up and we had so much lead up to it that I thought it was going to be anticlimactic, BUT IT WASN’T! AHH it was so so so cool. We got to spend like 2.5 hours there. So crazy thinking they are everywhere so many, under you probably, cooler then the wall maybe, every single soldier is different, different heights, weights, faces, clothes, EVERYTHIng!!! Ahhh so so so cool.

Ah I need more outlying because I’m falling asleep.

After that we went right to the “Spectacular Tang Dynasty show and dinner” it was cool but really touristy, there was ribbon dancing, some cool musical stuff, this guy that did a crazy whistling thing with his mouth. It was cool, the dinner was all these courses one after the other, I sat at a table four girls, we laughed a lot and had a good conversation and it was a good night

That night I sat around for a bit, then did karaoke with some SASers and one random Chinese girl in this basement area of our hotel that I swear to god also could have been a brothel, in the basement of our hotel, it was nuts, I’ll explain more later.

Our tour was kind of lame because it was lead by the librarians… haha they were really sticklers on everything and not very good at leading or directing people. Also I have never been surrounded by so many brats! There were a lot of really rich kids, some so much so that they bought their own plane ticket to Hong Kong early despite already having paid big bucks for one just a few days our hours later! But to each their own I guess.

The last day we could spend the morning for ourselves (sleeping/shopping… whatever) or with the tour, so I of course went with the tour and am really glad that I did! After breakfast, I had an omelet! Yummm we went to a place called the Forest of Stone Tablets Museum, it had some really cool stone statues and thousands and thousands of tablets with writing on it, I think it said morals and stuff, obviously I could read none of it… butttt. It was cool, and peaceful, and one side had all these carvings on top of stone posts (see picture), after posing for this picture I found they were horse posts… but very elaborate cool horse posts! So, it’s a good picture if I do say so.

Next we went to a Calligraphy lesson ! which was awesome, we learned how to make a bunch of Chinese characters and wrote a few sentences, the teacher was really cute and spoke no English, I enjoyed myself and yeah.
We had lunch at a top floor hotel restaurant – I think it revolved but was… not turned on or something, but there was so much pollution and construction going on the view wasn’t too awesome anyway, but it was an okay meal, in Xi’an we found that almost everything had or had the option of having these little tiny shrimps in it! Ahh not my favorite. Well maybe they weren’t shrimps, they were these very small white animals with black eyes. Gross.
That day we
Tour to bell tower and peoples square
Tour muslim quarters and the Great Mosque
Shoped a little – I got an unsweetened iced tea from starbucks…
Airport to Hong Kong

Bah, I’m upset I’m so lame! I’ll try and fill it in asap. This sucks because I’m sure to forget…. :( and I feel like this entry is not very good. : ( I didn’t even talk about the people in my group or anything.. mmmm oh well!

It’s the morning and I just exchanged 100$ US for 1,600,000 dong. Oh my god. I’ll be released into Vietnam in 40 min and I haven’t packed or washed my face! Haha uhhh gross. <3

By the way I just looked out the window for the first time and we are definitely going down a river… not an ocean! Ah I have to go see.