Hey all, I will try to get an update up soon about our trip to the Laoshan Tea Plantation this last Sunday, it was splendid! I do have some videos for you though from the plantation! Check them out on youtube.com/shockwave33.
Enjoy!
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all comments have been approved!!! i am finally able to get through to wordpress without having to use a proxy and therefore all comments are now being shown!!!! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! ok, lets see how this post goes, i’ve been thinking of a format to help me write about qingdao…
Favorite things to do in Qingdao: Buy DVD’s… you know… that are not really real?… hahaa… i have about 20 dvd’s bought so far, including Kung Fu Panda… yesssssssssssss… I have Kung Fu Panda before anyone in the states… Skidoosh! DVD’s are usually 7 kuai each… thats a DOLLAR! hehe……… Go to Carrefour- Carrefour is kind of like the French WalMart and has really great prices on clothing and various other goods… they have really great t-shirts for like 20 kuai or about 3 american dollars, yay, and their supermarket is uber huge and very nice to walk through and just to look around in……….. Go to May 4th Square (Alex’s Nana… below you’ll find the explanation for May 4th Square hehe)- I actually reallllllly love going to May 4th Square, I dunno why, I really like the Winds of May sculpture and just the view of the harbor is really nice, I haven’t been there for the laser light show yet, but I will do that sometime soon, but the park around the sculpture is just really amazing and good for people watching and checking out Chinese leisure culture……… Play basketball on the courts outside of our dorm……. KTV (Karaoke)- some usual songs include Michael Jackson hits, Cher, boy bands, Rihanna… good times all around… we still need to take Tio, and oh we shall and it shall be epic!
Favorite Foods: Gongbao Jiding (Kung Pao Chicken)- spicy sauce over chicken, vegetable bits, and peanuts… soooooo yummy… we always get it when we go to Saturday’s (our hangout right by the campus… the stairs up to the place are uber-shady but the food itself and the fun times we have there are great)……. Gala (don’t really know the spelling but thats kinda how you say it in Chinese) these are basically small spicy clams that are really good, and why not, we are right by the ocean…….. Xihongshi chao jidan (Tomatoes and Eggs)- I am for sure cooking this for everyone when I get back (now that the salmonella scare is over)… basically its cooked tomatoes and scrambled eggs with a bit of sugary sweetness… its splendid and people tell us its a college student favorite in China………. Tomato Potato Chips- stick with me on this one… they are scrumpcious (omg spelling sorry) potato chips with Tomato flavored powder on them and they taste amazingggggggggggggg…. one of the best snacks here, hands down……… HuaCha (Flower Tea)- comes cold in a 16oz bottle and is so refreshing on a hot Qingdao day……
Favorite Experiences so far: going to watch Qingdao Jonoon, Qingdao’s China Super League soccer team, take on Liaoning FC and win 2-1… got to see a great penalty shot goal and then later an amazing semi-bicycle kick goal by Qu Bo, who used to be a star for the Chinese National Team, but has retired from international play……. During our first or second week here, 5 of us just followed these green lasers in the sky to where they originated and thats how we found May 4th Square for the first time, yaaaaaaay!………..
Gripes about Qingdao: I have three…
1. There aren’t any dryers in the dorm… so I have to hang everything outside my window on the bars… booooo. air dry is no good.
2. Why does China have to make all its cultural and historical relics and areas into marketplaces… seriously, you can’t take pictures inside some of the most famous buildings at the Confucius Temple in Qifu but you can totally buy an overpriced ice cream or coke, or some playing cards with ancient Chinese drawings on them. I went to Zhanqiao Pier today, which is a Qingdao landmark, and all along the pier and out by the pagoda, there were sellers, and it made the walkway so narrow it took like 10 minutes just to get out to the pagoda… seriously, it really messes up the awesomeness of these amazing places when you have 3 or 4 sellers yelling Hello at you, because thats the only English they know….
3. This one actually doesn’t have to do with China… it has to do with all the journalists and pundits in the States who can’t say a positive thing about China and the Beijing Olympics… Let’s see, you have never been to China and you are probably just writing this op-ed piece from your desk in a corner office right? But you hear on the news about how China is so bad and evil and unforgiving towards activists and the government is cracking down, etc…. ok, yeah, the Chinese government is doing some pretty uncool stuff and suppressing media and opinion quite a bit, but what government in the world isn’t doing uncool stuff? every government does dirty dealings, and every government cracks down before the Olympics, this isn’t some new phenomenon from governments before the Olympics… ok, great, I’ve already digressed…. I wasn’t going to talk about the Chinese government… what makes me mad is that these journalists are writing pieces that paint all of China as bad, not just the government but in general China… uh uh, don’t go there, for the past 8 weeks I have gotten to really like the Chinese people and am totally loving how pumped they are for the Olympics… they are all sooooooo excited for the Olympics to start, they all want the games to go well, they are ready to root on their country, they are making huge efforts towards making this country as welcoming as possible for foreign visitors… and what do they receive when they hear from the western media? criticism… uh uh, thats not gonna fly for me… The Chinese government and Chinese people, I feel, are two separate entities, with the government being pretty out of touch with its people…. the people of China are freaking excited about showing themselves off at the games, showing their country off, showing off their history, their culture off, and they have every right to be excited… China is so unique and the people are so genuine and nice that they deserve only praise and our equal excitement about these upcoming Olympic Games that are able to unite the world like no other event…. As far as I’m concerned, yes, I question the Chinese government, but not the people, not the culture, not the awesomeness that is China and its Beijing 2008 preparations…. Zhongguo Jia You! Let’s Go China!…. sorry if thats a rant, but yeah, just having to read negative articles about the games just really irks me…
For Alex’s Nana’s questions about May 4th Square… the name originates from the May 4th Movement, which occurred in 1919 as a response to the Treaty of Versailles. See, Germany held Shandong Province (where Qingdao is, and why there are so many German style buildings here) pre-WWI, and Japan entered the Allied side right before the end of the war along with China, and when it came time to reward the two countries, China was snubbed and Japan received rights to Shandong Province from Germany… this is no good… so students around the country, especially in Peking (Beijing), began to protest. This marked a huge cultural change in China… they dropping of Confucianism, which had failed to make China strong, and the adoption of a new culture which spawned a major intellectual flourishing and pretty much set up the beginning of the Chinese Communist Party. In the end, the May 4th Movement was majorly anti-imperialist and anti-feudalism, marking a big change in Chinese culture and easily opening the door for Communism to get a foothold in the country…. hope thats helpful heheheh!
Hope all is well!
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http://www.youtube.com/shockwave33x
here is my you tube page where you can check out all my videos… i just uploaded about 6 or 7 new ones with descriptions! enjoy!
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Wednesday
Wednesday morning was a free morning, and so Alex, Aaron and I went to an underground market near the area where most of the embassies are located. We went to the train stop YingNa recommended to us and when we came out we couldn’t find anything at all, and with lost expressions on our faces a businessman passing by began to help us out. He spoke really great English, and when we couldn’t find any cabs, he said that we could go to the next subway station down the line, and he would take us there because he needed to continue on down that line as well. We talked to him a bit more and then made it to that next stop and left, thanking him. We found the market and shopped around a little bit, buying a few things and after about an hour we had to head back to the hotel for the afternoon adventures. We went to lunch and met one of Antonio’s friends from BeiDa who is working on his Ph.D. and then we went to the Summer Palace, which was built buy the last Empress of the Qing Dynasty. They place was pretty cool and had lots of different buildings and temple areas around the main lake. We then rented paddle boats and split up on them and paddled around for about 45 minutes and then got back onto the bus and made our way to BeiDa, Antonio’s old stomping grounds. We got to see the building that Antonio taught most of his classes in, the building where the president works and some other famous areas around the campus. Beijing University is basically China’s Harvard and the campus reflected that as it was really nicely taken care of, large, and very pretty. We then went to a chicken wing restaurant right off campus that Antonio ate at for four day straight when he first got to BeiDa and hadn’t met anyone yet. The chicken wings and vegetables that we ordered were way delicious… all they needed was some breading and spice and some ranch dip, but otherwise they were scrumptious. We then headed back to the train, loaded our bus up and headed out to Beijing Railway Station to catch our overnight sleeper train from Beijing to Xian. The railway station was packeeeeeeeeeeed with lots of people just sleeping outside on newspapers and such… I don’t know if they were totally poor and just waiting for a chance to take a train back to their hometown with a stand-by ticket or something… it was just another world there. The sleeper train itself was pretty awesome… 4 beds to a cabin, bunk bed style. Each had a light at one end and then a personal TV at the other with about 15 channels. The beds were relatively comfortable and the ride itself wasn’t too bad, and we all got a pretty good amount of sleep and got into Xian at about 9am.
Thursday
Thursday found the 4 guys in my cabin WIDE AWAKE at 7am. Apparently they have a wake up information talk about the train and the area around Xian plus current Chinese and American pop songs afterward. Sounds great huh? Apparently they forgot that they turned the volume all the way in our cabin because it came on really loud in our cabin. So basically we have a Chinese lady yelling good morning at us and telling us that we are delayed an hour (as YingNa told us later one) and then another lady told us the same in English… minus the part about the hour delay… oh thanks. So, us four are all up and chipper while the rest of our crew slept through their soft wake-up calls. LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. Hahaha, so we sat around after everyone else soon woke up and talked about how much sleep we had gotten and how the train raid had turned out pretty cool overall. We got to the station in Xian about 945am and made it outside and found our guide from the university in Xian that we would be staying at. We showered (it had been a day and a half now… ewwwwwww) and relaxed a bit in the rooms before heading back out to experience Xian. We first went to lunch where we had to pick apart two loaves of gordita type bread into really small pieces for a soup and when we had done that the waitresses took the bread back to the kitchens and about 20 minutes brought it back as part of a soup with noodles and lamb on it… it was pretty good. The only problem is that the soup was uberrrrrr-greasy; it just sat on your lips after slurping up the noodles and bread pieces we had ripped up. Most of us only ate about half our bowls because it was so greasy and we had ordered various types of dumplings to accompany the meal. We then headed off to a museum that displayed and explained about the ancient cultures of the region of Xian, and there was a lot of pretty cool artifacts in the museum. We then made our way to the Great Goose Pagoda which was pretty cool and very tall. It was part of a Buddhist Temple area, and usually you can go into the pagoda and climb up into the different levels, but the Pagoda was actually damaged in the recent earthquake. Walking around here and taking in all the sights was pretty cool and the temple was very peaceful. I was able to take some pretty cool artsy photographs around the temple, especially at this one area in front of a small building with a Buddha in it where you could buy a number of different candles and light them and leave them on this upside down chandelier thing to let them drip their wax into the basin below. Lighting and letting the candles burn down is supposed bring good luck to your family. After the Pagoda we made our way out to dinner and then back to the hotel for sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. I think we also watched part of I Am Legend that night.
Friday
Friday was my favorite day of the trip because we finally got to go to the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, the Terracotta Soldiers. This was definitely my favorite part of the trip, because I have always wanted to see the Terracotta Soldiers in person and had only ever seen them in textbooks or in pictures. The park that the pits are in is settled between a major mountain range and a large river… and the area is really beautiful because they have taken a lot of time in the landscaping around the pits. The first, primary pit is in this huge shed/canopy/arena/thing and is not even fully excavated. You come in and there are just rows upon rows of these soldiers there, hundreds of them, and less than half of the complex is dug out. They left most of the soldiers buried because they really want to preserve them as much as possible because the ones that are uncovered have lost a lot of their original color because of their exposure to the air. The back half of the arena area is dedicated to the restoration of soldiers and horses that have been dug out from the pit. It’s pretty amazing that they are able to piece all these guys back together despite most of them all being broken into different parts after being buried for so long. After going through the First Pit area, we made our way into the Third Pit (not by accident… that’s how the tour goes, hehe) which is the Command Center of this emperor’s army. Here they found a lot of Terracotta Soldiers that represented upper level generals, as well as many 3 and 4 person chariots, of course only the terracotta men and horses remained, the wood rotted away long ago. This pit was climate controlled and was in a much sturdier building, and was at least 30 feet below ground level. We then moved into Pit 2 which was also a really big one but was also climate controlled. It was about 20-30 feet under ground level and there were multiple huge ramps for transporting the terracotta soldiers down into the pits. This was also another main contingent of the emperor’s afterlife army and has a huge amount of archers in one whole section. Many parts of the pit have been dug out but the roofing of clay and wood (now rotted) is still intact in many places where it covered the rows of terracotta soldiers. Those three pits are the extent of what they have chosen to dig out, even though they know there are about 3 more pits in the area. The problem is that they do not want to disturb and mess up any more of the soldiers in these remaining pits or ruin their original paintjob which remains on many of them. We then made our way through a museum that gave us much more detailed information about the history of the area, as well as this cool circular theater thing that had different scenes about the soldiers playing on about 10 screens around this big circle room. Sometimes, it would turn into a 360 degree movie shot or each screen would have a different scene as the narrator spoke in English (yeah, English, not Chinese, I thought that was interesting… maybe it alternates between Chinese and English every other movie.
After making our way back towards Xian, we came to another museum of a very old settlement from very early China. There were a few different rooms of artifacts and then another large climate controlled complex much like the terracotta soldiers’ complex that had remains and outlines of the original village, plus computers with continuous 3-D demonstrations of life in this old village. Overall, the museum just wasn’t as exciting or well-maintained as the others we had visited, and didn’t impress much overall.
We then went to Pizza Hut for dinner since it was July 4th and a few people suggested we eat American food. Overall, the food was pretty good, as is most fast food here in China… it was less greasy, seemed to have more care and time put into it and overall just better than United States fast food and pizza. I got a personal pizza plus some Tiramisu and it ended up being about 13 dollars or so, which is a bit more expensive than in the states I think. The thing about fast food restaurants in China however is the restaurant itself… what we consider quick and common fast food in the states is a night out to many Chinese people. So, KFC’s, McDonald’s, Pizza Huts, etc. are all considerably nicer and more upscale than their American counterparts. It’s like they are totally different restaurants from the ones in America, where you are supposed to sit down and enjoy your food and surroundings.
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Saturday!
So, around the old city limits of Xian is this huge 30 foot high wall that is a good 20-30 feet across, wider than the great wall, and it spans about 14 km around the old capital part of Xian, and the popular thing to do is go for a bike ride around it, and so of course we did. The bikes were fairly old and kind of sketchy, but riding around the wall was a lot of fun and it was a perfect day to do it. Clear blue skies allowed us to see the entire city around us as we biked around and it was a lot of fun just taking our time in biking around this wall. Some parts of the wall were pretty well kept and did not jostle the bikes around too much, but there were a few sections where I totally thought the bike was about to come apart beneath me and at one point I hit a good sized hole while not paying attention and almost ate ancient stone but escaped with a scraped ankle and sore butt area because I went over a good amount of bumps after hitting this hole and these seats had no padding whatsoever. After getting done on the wall we spent some time along a really nice market street that had a good variety of gifts and items, and we got some more buying done. We then headed to lunch by the old Drum and Bell Towers near downtown Xian, and then headed to the Great Mosque. This mosque was the first mosque built this far into China and its architecture is very Chinese rather than more Islamic style, in that the minaret, or where the priests will call for prayer, is a two-story pagoda in the middle of the compound. The site itself was very beautiful and well taken care of, and one of the signs said that the mosque had been founded back in the 1300’s. Talk about a city of history. It was time to head back to our hotel now to catch a plane back to Qingdao, and when we got out to the airport, we found out that our 645pm flight to Qingdao was delayed until 1145pm that night because of bad weather in Dalian, which the plane was continuing on to after Qingdao. So, now get this… the airline set all the passengers up in the airport hotel which the airline owns, with rooms in case we were stuck there for the night, as well as a free dinner (which ended up being pretty darn good), all for free. It was amazing, and was totally different then how we would have been treated had we been flying in the states. Try and find that kind of treatment with an American airline nowadays. So, we ended up being able to leave at around 1145, got back to Qingdao at around 145am, and got into the dorms at around 230am… SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP…
I will try and get a post about my internship and China and Qingdao observations up here in the next few days… hope all is well!
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Hey everyone… terribly sorry for the delay on everything.
Here is more of my write up on Beijing… the end of Beijing and Xian’s write up to come very soon and then life in Qingdao right after that… also, make sure you check at the bottom of this post for 3 youtube videos of mine!!!! Hope all is well!
Sunday
This morning would be the subject of our second paper for our Intercultural Communication class with Tio as we went to what he called “the mothership of all markets” at Pan Guai Yuan Market. This place was indeed huge, with tons of buildings and open areas and 4 different covered open market areas with tons of vendors set up in like 8X8 foot squares selling all sorts of stuff. I think a lot of them had raided old communist buildings at some points because there was cool stuff like old telephones and mailboxes, and Trey ended up getting a semi-fake pilot’s helmet with the red star on it. I bought a lot of gifts for everyone here, so you will either get it when I get back or you will get it at Christmas… pretty much you decide when you want it from me, hehe. One of the cooler things I bought that day was a carved name stamp with a rabbit on it, since my zodiac sign is the rabbit. I had my Chinese name carved on it… Qiao Chun Xiong 桥春熊。 It basically means Bridge Spring Bear, or as I say Spring Bear on a Bridge. I chose the Chun Xiong or Spring Bear part of it, while one of our Chinese teachers, Su laoshi, gave me Qiao because it sounds mildly like Joel. I even kept the piece of paper with the test stamp on it to show me it works and it looks really crisp… I love it. We then headed back to the hotel to rest after a good heavy lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then we went to dinner at a famous row of street vendors in WangFuJin… which Beijing is basically trying to make its Times Square before the Olympics. Big screens, music, high-end shops, KFC and McDonald’s, the usual. But this row of street vendors is pretty world famous because of the stuff they sell… you know, the usual like: scorpion, starfish, bell testicles, sea urchin, tea that bubbles because of the dry ice in it, sea snake, land snake, silkworms, centipedes, and other tasty critters… I actually tried none of these exotic foods because trying to eat crazy stuff like that is just not on my list of to-do’s in life. I stuck to chicken and dumplings. Everybody but me and Tio tried the Scorpion and said it tasted much like popcorn… no thanks, and that the Starfish was just way too fishy. That was about it for that night, as we headed back to the hotel as soon as we could once it started raining and then turned into a downpour.
Monday
We met our guide for the day early in the lobby of the hotel and took the subway about 3 stops over to the south side of Tian ‘anmen Square. I didn’t know this but Tian ‘anmen is in exact line with the Forbidden City and that Mao had his Mausoleum put right on this center line as well, and that many people were a bit irked by this because it really throws of the Feng Shui of the area. But the overall area is really amazing especially for all the history it has in this one area. On the south side of the Square is the old Guard tower and Arrow tower that guarded the south entrance to the Forbidden City, as well as the original Beijing Train Station, which is a very western looking building. Moving north there is Mao’s Mausoleum, which our guide says has a line of people all the way around the perimeter of the Square waiting for entrance on holidays. On one side of the Square is the People’s Congress, which has over 10,000 delegates, and includes delegates from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. We then made our way to the Forbidden City, which over the front gate hangs that famous picture of Mao, which seems to be the only thing that stays clean in Beijing everyday… go figure. The Forbidden City itself… well, I have to admit, it wasn’t as amazing and impressive as I thought it was going to be. Maybe it was the smog and grey skies or the scaffolds in different parts of the compound, but the awesomeness of it from the movies just didn’t seem to be there. Don’t get me wrong, it was really cool to walk through and look at and just absorb that what I was walking through had so much history in its past that I had only read about. It was pretty peaceful and interesting to walk around in and just hear all the stories about it from our guide. We then climbed a small mountain/hill that was man made from all the dirt removed from the construction of the City’s moat and removed dirt from landscaping to get a look at the Forbidden City from above. There is a picture on Facebook and on my Kodak Gallery that is a good indication of just how smoggy it is in Beijing, because we couldn’t see the end of the City from the mountain because the smog is so thick. It was pretty bad, but it was still a pretty OK view. We then went to lunch and then made a quick visit to the Lama Temple. The Lama Temple is a Tibetan style Buddhist Temple, which Lama indicates because the Lama sect of Buddhism is centered in Tibet, hence the Dalai Lama. This place was pretty cool and had lots of different Buddhas hanging around in various buildings around the compound. It also houses the Largest Buddha Carved out of a Single Tree (Sandalwood) and is 26 meters tall as determined by the Guinness Book of World Records… it was pretty cool to look at. We then headed back to the hotel for a quick washup and then we went to an Acrobatics Show. Now, I was thinking the usual Chinese acrobatics show that you see in the States or at EPCOT… but this troupe took it to a new level. The theme was like this prehistoric Mayan/Inca society, so it was these elaborate tribal costumes that they all wore as they danced around and did way awesome stuff. Stuff like 10 girls on one bike, swinging around in dual metal cages of DOOM, 2 guys balancing on 1 guys feet as he holds them up on his shoulders and neck upside down… the usual. The show was really great, but just kind of creepy… like I needed to be on LSD or immersed in the 60’s to understand it.
Tuesday
Tuesday was the big day of going to the Great Wall of China. Now, our original plan was to go to an area that was about a three hour drive away and was a 6 kilometer hike up and down the wall on a section that is less touristy and therefore not as well maintained as other parts of the wall. It was a good plan except that it had been raining quite a bit the past few days, mainly in the evenings while we were there, and that part gets especially slippery when it rains. So, Tio let us decide with some of his advice and we decided on a 3km part that is more touristy called Badalin. We got to this part after about a 1.5 hour ride, and bought our tickets to begin our climb. We had one of Tio’s students from Beijing University with us, Kong, who had just the day before come back home from his 9 day mandatory military boot camp, but he still wanted to go with us despite only getting 4 hours of sleep after a night of KTV (Karaoke) with his friends from BeiDa (Beijing University— University is Daxue 大学 in Chinese, so it is called BeiDa 北大 for short) The climbing was pretty intense, with some very, very steep parts and some very high stairs. It was a lot of fun despite it being pretty foggy at the beginning and then getting even more dense as we climbed on. We weren’t able to see the landscape or anything but it was kind of cool and mysterious to only be able to see the wall spreading out before and behind you for only about 25 yards. Very dream state. Beijing didn’t treat my stomach well during this trip and so I wasn’t feeling too great after about an hour and a half of climbing, and so Kong and I split off from the other 3 guys we were with and took the Cable Car down to the parking area. This was even more creepy than climbing the wall in the thick fog because the poles of the cable car would emerge slowly out of the fog and cars going the other way would slowly emerge as well. We couldn’t even see the car in front of us the fog was that thick. We got down to the parking area and I called Tio to meet up with him, and us three met up at the Starbucks that was on the main road. Yes… I am that American… I had Starbucks at the Great Wall of China… and you know what… it was totally good. I also bought Mom a Beijing/Great Wall mug for the Starbucks collection. I had started to talk to Kong about life at BeiDa and it was cool because he is involved in their student union, which in many ways is similar to American student unions, except that you can only join your freshman year and then you get to move up in rank, but you can only be chosen for positions by the people who held those positions the previous year. He was going to be the Director of Public Relations next year (his sophomore year). It was interesting because we both had the same worries about our involvement in our student unions, and that was how to balance involvement and maintaining good grades. We left Starbucks and called the rest of the group, who had reached the end part of the Badalin section of the wall, and we went to pick them up and then headed back towards Beijing by way of a pretty sketchy roadside restaurant that wasn’t too bad, just not too clean. We then went to this massive, multi-building, multi-story market that was mainly modern goods rather than traditional Chinese gifts and antiques. This place was huge and packed and was a different market experience than any we had been to before. After that, we made our way back to the hotel in the middle of Beijing rush hour…. Not a good idea. It took us quite awhile to get back and the market is not far from the hotel at all. After that, Meg, Tori, Alex, Aaron and I met up with YingNa for dinner and a trip to the Olympic sites. However, the folks at the noodle restaurant we went to had no idea how to give her directions, even though YingNa speaks Chinese, and we finally got there after about an hour to an hour and a half of searching and walking around. The place had really great food and noodles and you get to watch them prepare the noodles there. You have the option of a few different kinds of noodles: cut by chopsticks, cut regularly, or long noodle, plus a few others. We all got different kinds and watched them slice off little noodle strands and shoot them towards the wok from across the kitchen in one motion, while another guy was threading out one very long noodle into another wok while another guy was prepping and cutting noodles into a wok using just chopsticks. It was pretty cool to watch them at work and the meal was pretty good as well. We then subway’d and taxied up north to the Olympic sites, but we got there about 10pm to find out that the Aquatic Center and Bird’s Nest lights are turned off at 9pm. We could still see both buildings and they are pretty amazing looking, it just would have been really cool to see them during the day or all lit up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF38YN9FtAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_1joPixgZE
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We arrived in Beijing on Friday the 27th after a good old 8 hour train ride on a noisy, slightly comfortable, and pretty warm train from Qingdao to Beijing. We took a van from the Beijing Railway Station, which is huge, to our hotel, the Ministry of Education International Hotel. We got in and relaxed for a few minutes and then went back out to a lake area that kind of caters to foreigners. There we ate at a restaurant that is part of chain which sells the most duck in all of China. That was an interesting meal because each different part of the meal was some different part of the duck. To start was duck tongue in a gelatin… didn’t have that. Also, they brought out duck’s feet… I had a nibble of that. We didn’t find out what we were eating really until after the meal was over and our friend, Ying Na, who is a student at A&M and comes to Beijing for the summers, told us what everything is. I think I ended up having like 7 or 8 duck hearts which kind of grossed me out after I found out after dinner, but they were pretty good, just a bit chewier than regular meat but really tasty. There was also a lot of good entertainment during dinner as well, like some really great music and dancing, a lot of acrobatics, some cool traditional performances, some comedy and then a magician. We then came back to the hotel and passed out.
Saturday:
We met at 9am after Alex, Aaron and I went to go get a breakfast of McDonald’s of Sausage McMuffin and hash browns and coffee. It was cheaper than the hotel breakfast and the hotel breakfast was too traditional for our tastes. We then headed to the subway and went to the Temple of Heaven which is where the Emperor would go to pray for a good season of crops and a bountiful harvest. This Temple consisted of numerous large buildings, walks, forests, platforms, ovens for sacrifices, etc. and has become somewhat of a central park for Beijingers. There were numerous groups of older folks there doing Tai Chi, playing with streamer wands, batons, doing paddle ball dances (they basically have a paddle and a ball and they balance it and toss it in the air in time with some music, really cool to watch), a lot of folks playing with Chinese Hacky-Sacks (they are basically colorful badminton shuttlecocks on steroids, we bought a few!), singers and performers, as well as games of cards and Chinese Chess going on everywhere. The site is extremely beautiful and well maintained and there was greenery and flowers everywhere, kind of a good contrast to the drabbiness of Beijing. It is a joke among Chinese people and mainly Beijing residents that the Temple of Heaven is Beijing’s biggest and best Oxygen Bar. This place was pretty great, with a main temple for the Emperor to pray in, and then a major walkway from that temple all the way down to a complex that was surrounded by what was called the Echo Wall. We didn’t get to try this out but supposedly if you stand in the East and West parts of this circular wall and face north and speak you can hear the other person perfectly. So then you continue down this huge stone walkway and there is this meter wide stone path down the middle that is expressly for the emperor during his visits, so we all made sure to walk on that as much as we could so we could all be emperors. At the end of the walk, there is this huge platform of about 4 concentric stone circle platforms with dragon carvings all over them and a smaller platform in the middle for the emperor to use for further prayers for good harvests. After the Temple of Heaven, we walked to a famous noodle restaurant, which was pretty good and had these fried custard things that were amazingggggggg. We then went to the Famous Pearl Market which is this huge building that is about 5 stories high with the top three floors being pearls and other really nice stuff and the lower two being electronics, bags, clothes, shoes, etc. This place was crazy and amazing, because the aisles were fairly small and when you walked through the shoe zone they would like swing shoes at you and were yelling at you to come look… it was pretty intense. I got quite a few gifts for folks there as well as new shorts/Capri things for me since I don’t have enough shorts, as well as another Celtic Football Club jersey because a $25 jersey is better than a $70 one plus shipping from Scotland. This place was really great and had stuff to see everywhere, so it was a lot of fun and yet another great cultural experience at a market. We came back to the hotel and cleaned up a bit before heading out to a major theater downtown for the Poems of Kung Fu. This performance took select parts from each of the 9 Kung Fu poems and made them into 9 different acts which showed off elements of Kung Fu and other parts of the morals and ideas behind Kung Fu. The show was absolutely amazing and so much fun to watch. The crowd totally got into the show as they were using various different weapons, including swords, chains and whips, they ran off tables, swept with Kung Fu power, etc. One of the main characters of many of the scenes was this 10 year old kid who was absolutely amazing at everything and it was so cool to watch because he totally knew that he was the man and did really amazing things along with these adults and 20 year olds, and just as well. One act was a fight between good/evil… or possibly Yin and Yang and this had weapons and lots of stunts in it which was really great, plus the music, lighting, sets and choreography were all really awesome. There was also a scene where actors acted out the different styles of Kung Fu like Mantis, Monkey, Tiger and Frog. Tiger was great because these guys were leaping all over the stage and they were moving in a blur when they were doing punches and kicks. I kinda wish I had done martial arts as a kid and we were all trying to fake the moves when we got back to the hotel that night.
That was pretty much it for the first two days in Beijing…. More will come later plus some more write up about life in Qingdao….. I am also going to start loading videos on Youtube so I will give out links once that occurs!
Hope all is well with everyone…. And stay tuned!
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Hong Kong claims itself to be Asia’s World City, there is a Disney World there, it has a currency and passport system separate from mainland China, and there are way too many white people there. Haha. All of us missed being the rockstars that we are in Qingdao because a lot less foreigners come through here rather than Hong Kong… oh well…
THURSDAY!
Yes, Thursday… we got out of two days of class last week which was splendid because we had a China Eastern flight down to Hong Kong at about 900am. We made it in OK and were met by Ben Petty, who is a director for the Confucius Institute at Texas A&M, but taught at Hong Kong Baptist University for 25 years prior to that, so he knows Hong Kong well. We actually stayed at a place called the NTT International House at HKBU which is for all the international visitors to the University. The rooms were really really nice, and we got pretty spoiled with them. We got settled and then headed back out for lunch, where we had a family style seafood and dim sum meal, which was very good, and many of us claimed was our best meal up to that point… this claim would be surpassed a few times on this trip. We then took a bus down to the water and walked around outside the Convention Center and opera house before getting on the famous Star Ferry and heading over to the Hong Kong Island side. We then traveled to the station for the Tram up the famous Peak on Hong Kong… its just called the Peak… imaginative, hehe. This tram is way cool, because you are just sitting on these wood seats and then you start going up the mountain and then at one point it gets uber-steep, we are talking about a 70 degree angle up the side of the mountain with a couple points of really great views of Hong Kong. We then get to the top, inside of a really cool building which has a lot of touristy shops, high end shops, and even a Madame Toussaud’s (spelling?) Wax Museum… with of course Hong Kong’s golden boy, Jackie Chan, there. We escalatored up to the top of the building which has an amazing view of the city below, and we spent about 15 minutes just soaking it in. We wanted to wait for nightfall, so Ben recommended a hiking trail around the peak and so a few of us did that to wait for nightfall. It was a good and humid walk with some more great views of the area, and we saw a lot of really nice houses and Lexuses and Jags… yeah, people live at the top of the peak…. I want their job and now. We got back and sat around for a little while until it got dark and then we took in the sight of the city lit up for a little while from a pretty good vantage point. We then trammed back down the mountain and got some more good footage of the city all lit up. Once we got back down, Ben took us to a pretty yummy Thai restaurant. We then subwayed back over to the mainland/Kowloon side and went to a pretty cool night market and shopped around for a bit. We then made our way back to our hotel to turn in for the night at about 11pm. This running us ragged all day thing is common with Ben.
FRIDAY!
Friday was a 9am meeting time and the plan of seeing the “Largest, Seated, Bronze, Outdoor Buddha in Asia”, but it had been raining all night and was pouring on and off, and once we finally got out to the area where we could take a bus (it was back out near the airport, a long way), we found out that the area at the top of the peak where the Buddha was was pretty flooded and the road had been partially blocked by a landslide, so there was no bus service. Boo. So, back onto the subway and we shifted our afternoon plans down into the morning slot. We first went to a Buddhist Temple that is still active. This place was amazing and sooooooo serene. The grounds were very beautiful and well taken care of, the architecture and gardens were great and just the whole calm feeling of the place was very fun. We then went to lunch in a mall where the food was also pretty good. We then headed back out and this time went to a Taoist temple…. whcih was neat, but definitely not as cool as the Buddhist Temple we had just gone to. We then bussed over to an area which has a fresh-water resevoir, but get this… is also home to a huge group of wild monkeys… yeah… kinda creepy. Sooo… Ben is like “Just stare the males in the eyes, and you’ll be fine.” Gee, thanks, Ben. So, we are walking around this area, and yep, there are monkeys just hanging out all over the place, and we get to an area where there is a pretty big group of them. We don’t really have any problem until one of the dudes starts coming up pretty close and then, to the freaking out of many of us, jumps at Aaron and grabs onto his backpack and yanks out his maroon poncho which he had been using…… AHHHHHHH! Very scary and crazy, so we are all freaking out as the male drags it off a bit and then lets it go once he has inspected it. We see this as a prime opportunity to high-tail it out of there and so we grab the poncho and get outta there pretty quickly. We grab taxis back to the hotel and catch some showers because we were all pretty gross from the humid heat and rain. We then meet back downstairs and head back down to the Kowloon side area where the Star Ferry comes, and go to dinner at a place called Palace Garden. This place is really really really really nice, and Ben had ordered ahead for us. We had Peking Duck, which is famous and verrrrry good plus a variety of other really great food and was our best meal there in Hong Kong. This place also has a dish called Fragrant Chicken, which you have to order way ahead because basically it is chicken stuffed with a bunch of different spices and then wrapped up in lotus leaves, and then encased in a block of mud and then baked for about 9 hours. Then, they bring it out to your table and you get to break the block of mud with a special hammer and then they get all the chicken out and serve it to you. We got to see a couple of these broken and served which was pretty cool. They also have a noodle making show which was cool, becuase this guy started off with just a big ball of dough and ended up with a great looking set of noodles using just his hands. After dinner, we were all pretty tired and decided to head back to the hotel, so we bussed back, and by this time it was downpouring, so those of us lacking umbrellas basically ran back to the hotel from the bus stop, including our Communications professor, Antonio “Tio” LaPastina. And sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
SATURDAY!
Saturday was also another drizzly 9am start, and our first stop was the Bird Market, where a lot of older men bring their birds in the early morning to have singing contests. It was pretty cool to walk through and just see all the birds and was pretty noisy too. We then travelled down Flower Street where all the fresh flower vendors set up shop. This street was also pretty neat and of course, smelled good as well. We then walked to the Jade Market nearby which was really cool and had a lot of really great stuff in it. Aaron, Alex and I bartered for awhile with one lady, and we ended up buying quite a bit between the three of us and held our own in bargaining and got some great deals. The place was really cool because although a lot of the vendors had a lot of the same stuff, many had some really unique sculptures that were really amazing and cool looking. A few people bought some pretty expensive pieces but I think it was well worth their Hong Kong Dollar. We had a light lunch and then headed out to the South Side of the island to a town called Stanley which houses the more famous Stanley Market. Stanley is more high-end and a bit more expensive, and I remember I had gotten a couple of rugby jerseys from a shop there when I went with Mom and Dad a few years ago. I found that shop and was really hoping for some soccer jerseys to be there, but there were none and I got really bummed. We did a little more looking around and some of the guys bought some stuff, and we had to leave before we could even get through most of the market. We then bussed out to an area called Aberdeen which houses a lot of houseboats, yachts and fishing vessels. We took a small boat out to the famous floating restaurant called Jumbo and walked around it. They have an area where patrons can come and pick their own seafood and we played around here for a bit, trying to pull these huge lobsters out of the water by their feelers which were sticking up out of the water. We didn’t eat here becuase the price was at about 400 HKD per person, which is about $60 or so. We then went by boat back to the mainland and bussed to what we all called “One Ka-jillion people street”. Seriously, I think there were more people along this street in the middle of the city on Kowloon side than are in College Station. We walked around here for awhile and split off for dinner. I dragged a few of the guys with me to the 9th floor of a building to check out a soccer shop, but their jerseys, being real, were about 400 HKD a pop. No thank you. So, Alex and I split off from Aaron and Clark and hit up McDonald’s, which was the easiet and best looking choice at that point. Now, HongKong McDonald’s are pretty legit, and have McCafe attached to them, which is basically a McDonalds Starbucks. They are always clean and pretty nice. So, I decided on the new Shogun Burger with Egg, which was basically this teriyaki burger with an egg on it and was verrrrrrry yummy. We then went to another night market called Ladie’s Market, whcih was really cool and had a lot of great stuff. And I found my soccer jerseys there! Yes, they are fakes, but they look pretty good and were full kits, and only cost 170HKD, which is about $25. I got the China National Team, Japan National Team and Celtic Football Club kits and was pretty pumped about it. I also bought a very cool new backpack, so it was a really good nite of bargaining and buying overall. We then made our way back to the hotel and hung out, with Alex, Aaron, Clark and I watching a Jackie Chan movie in Chinese while Aaron gave us a summary because he is a big Jackie fan and had seen the movie before… oh yeah, I forgot, but Friday morning, we were walking to the bus stop and we passed by Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong headquarters for all his work in Hong Kong and stuff, so that was pretty cool.
SUNDAY!
We had a 1225 flight back to Qingdao, and we took Ben (who is in Qingdao for about 3 days) and Tio Antonio out to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Xingqi Liu or Saturday’s, for a little Father’s Day shindig. Today, Monday, was just classes and some basketball and hanging out.
Hope all is well with everyone…
PS. for pictures and a video, go to Alex’s blog, alexinchina.wordpress.com, he has a permanent proxy in place on his computer that allows him to get through the block on uploading pictures and videos which I still have on my temporary proxies. So yeah, check out his site for some pictures and our official Hong Kong Video!
bird, flower, jade, lunch, stanley, aberdeen and sampans, dinner, ladie’s market
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So, Monday was a holiday in China so all classes were cancelled, so we got to just hang out and walk around the city that day. four of us bought phones so we could stay in contact during the summer and during our internships around the city. It was quite an ordeal just because the place we went to was really crowded because of the holiday, and the whole different languages thing didnt help either, but we got phones at least. after that ordeal, we walked across the street and got some starbucks, which was probably just a bit more expensive than starbucks in the states, but it was good to ahve a solid cup of coffee again. Outside, in the plaza of this mall area, there was a band playing some jazzy blues music so we sat down and started to watch them play and chilling out, listening to the music. they were pretty good, and we noticed this random guy in a really nice three piece suit and fedora was standing off to the stage, and we thought he was like their manager, but like 10 minutes later he got up and started belting out some U2 and Led Zeppelin, which wasn’t too bad. We did some further walking around that night and did some clothes buying for one of the guys in our group because he was running out of shirts, and then we had some pretty good japanese ramen at a mall.
TUESDAY
The usual 3.5 hours of Chinese class in the morning followed by some lunch at the canteen on campus. Unfortunately, I didnt look closer at what I was about to order and got apparently a dish that Chinese people love, its basically like tofu and eel cut in like slices right thru the main bone. So, I basically just ate the tofu and rice it came on top of and just left the eel alone because overall its not that great and just way too many little bones to even be worthwhile. After taht, we came to our Intercultural Communication class, and then a few of us went off campus right after to go buy SIM cards for our phones. In China, basically you pick your number and you just buy minutes for your SIM card and it is totally separate from your phone and there are no plans to buy, its mainly just buy your SIM card with minutes and texts and then get a phone to stick it in, and voila! So, I now have a working phone for China which should come in handy over the next 8 weeks. We were all hungry for dinner and so we decided to hit up the food court of the mall we were in, Jusco, which is Japanese based, and they had beef bowl in the food court which I’ve been craving since I left Japan because I had it all the time over there. Only problem iwth the food court is that you have to buy a separate card to buy stuff within the food court, so we had to get that, whcih was fairly annoying, but oh well, we are here for 10 weeks, I’m sure we’ll eat there again. So, I had a kimchi beef bowl which was delicious and made me super happy. We basically just hung around the rest of the night on campus.
TODAY WEDNESDAY
So today’s 3.5 hours of Chinese today was a little different and much more fun. It was SONG DAY!! We had this 24 year old guy local guy who spoke really great english come in and teach us two older but popular Chinese songs. We would listen to it on the CD a few times first and then we would sing it with him playing on his guitar. It ended up being pretty fun, and the guy, Jackie, was pretty cool, and was saying “I don’t want this to be a teacher-student kind of thing, we should be able to hang out and everything” so that was interesting, so I don’t know, we might go Karaoke with the guy at some point soon, be we will have him for songs again next wednesday. We then grabbed one of our professors, Randy Kluver, and we all went to lunch at a restaraunt right off campus that has become one of our favorites. We had some eggs, somewhat sweet, mixed with tomatoes and tomato juice, yummy, and then some big green bean pods that are really salty but very good, then we had diced chicken with peanuts, cucumbers and carrots, which was also really good. Good food for lunch! We also explored the north side of campus a bit with Randy and we found another student store, this one much bigger and awesomer including a dry cleaner, yay!!!! I bought a FuWa cell phone dangly (FuWa are the 5 little mascots for the Olympics, I got the green guy) and some coffee for tomorrow since we are heading out to Hong Kong on an 8am flight and leave the dorm at 630am… ugh.
So, with that, I will leave off here to resume the blog after the weekend and the Hong Kong trip. Hope all is well state side!
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So, my quadriceps are like KABOOOOOOOOOM… or so it felt once we got to the top of Mt. Tai or Taishan.
FRIDAY
We had a dumpling breakfast as usual before our Chinese class, and then Chinese class went well as well. Two of the guys who have taken 2 semesters of Chinese, Trey and Alex, who were in a more advanced class, joined us because their other class was pretty intense and they wanted a better base of Chinese to work off. So we learned a bit of bargaining language and how to talk about the cost of stuff… still haven’t wrapped my head around how something that is 21 kuai is only 3 bucks…. people told me I would lose weight coming over here, but no way, too much good, cheap food, whereas I think I’m going to lose weight when I get back to the States because everything is going to be so expensive compared to China and I’m not going to want to buy anything at all.
So, after class, we all got packed and got some quick lunch, and then at 1 we left from Qingdao on a 5 hour bus ride out to the city of Tai’an. We got there and had some ok dinner and then got checked into our hotel that had A/C but not really, haha. We then all met up again and hit up a cool street of vendors and just walked a bit around the city.
SATURDAY
We woke up and ate breakfast and left the hotel by 730 and drove out to Taishan. Taishan is one of the 5 holy mountains of Taoism and has like 3 peaks and numerous different temples at the top. You start off by taking a bus to the halfway height of the mountain and then you are on your own from there. Actually you have the option of taking a cableway all the way up or climbing up it yourself, and of course, we wanted true enlightenment so we decided to take the stairs. Now, when I say stairs, I mean like hundreds and hundreds of vertical meters of stairs and about 1 hr and 45 mins worth of climbing and sweating and heavy breathing and having to shake off sets of gifts from sellers along the stairways. It was definitely a long trip but a lot of fun doing it with everybody, and the views were absolutely amazing despite the smoggy air. There were quite a few temples around the area at the summit where many people were buying these hugeeeee sticks of incense and burning them and praying and making wishes which was interesting to watch. We had lunch at the top of the mountain, and then taking in the fatigue and the fact that none of us really wanted to walk back down the stairs and/or trip and fall all the way down them, we decided to take the sky tram down for 80 kuai.
SUNDAY
We got up and had breakfast nice and early again and got going to Qifu at about 8am. There were three parts to the Confucius relic areas, the Confucius Temple, the Conficius Mansion, and the Conficius Forest. We came to the Confucius Temple first which was really cool and had a lot of older tablets in it that were from various dynasties and were erected to honor Confucius. These tablets were usually placed on a stone creature who is said to be the 6th of 9 sons of the dragon. They have a dragon’s head, a turtle’s body and a snake’s tail, making them perfect for carrying these heavy tablets. Our tour guide spoke pretty good English and mentioned that one of the dragon/turtles had its mouth open because it had to take a breath when this especially large tablet was placed upon its back. Also in the Temple area was one major building which is over 1000 years old, which was also pretty neat and had I think 9 columns on it each with 2 flying dragons on them, and it was said that they would have to cover them up when the Emperor came to pay respects at the Temple, otherwise the Emperor would become jealous of Confucius, since only the Emperors were really supposed to be represented by the dragon. After that we walked over to Confucius’s mansion and walked through the grounds there, which were quite expansive and cool. I totally need like 3 different areas where visitors have to pass through and either pay respects or get checked. The last area we went to was the Confucius Forest which was way cool. It was basically this huge area of land with pines everywhere, and on the grounds is buried over 10 million……………….. yeah…. 10 million descendants of Confucius. Also on part of the grounds is Confucius’s tomb as well as the tomb of his son and grandson. The Forest was definitely quite cool but also at the same time somewhat creepy just becasue there are millions of people buried in this area and there would be random tablets on the grounds sticking up from the tall grass. After some lunch and final bits of looking around the area, we got back on the bus and headed home for what we thought would be a 5 hour drive but ended up beign about a 7 hour hot ride back with our bus seeming to almost break down about 30 km outside of Qingdao…… yay? It does feel good to be back however, and we have already hit up our favorite street vendors off-campus. We had grilled lamb which was really really good. Alex and I are doing laundry right now as well, it should be interesting having to dry our clothes off outside on the poles since they don’t have any dryers here. I’ll let you know how that goes next time I post.
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To everyone asking why comments are not getting posted… I can see them but cannot approve them because I think there are quite a few government filters going around wordpress and blogging in general, and me and Alex are having to use proxies to get to WordPress anyway, but they won’t allow us to approve comments, so I am going to paste what everyone has been saying here and leave you all with 2 youtube videos to hold you over for the weekend while we are away at Qifu, the hometown of Confucius, and Mount Tai, one of the 5 holy Taoist mountains.
Hope everyone is well!
Dear Joel,
Thank you for filling in all the blanks from Alex’s blog. Between the two of you I am getting a good feel about what you’all are experiencing. I wish I were 45 years younger!! Enjoy yourselves and keep writing.
Nana G
Joel,
What a great adventure!! Have fun and watch out for the “moving” street food…
love ya,
dadio
antiques market = gifts for lowell
Joel,
What a great way to follow your adventures… we’re really excited for you and know you’ll have a great time! Don’t say no to any opportunities!
dadio…
PETTIGREWWWWWWWWWWW!!! I’m glad you arrived in China safe and sound. Have a blast, and try to keep in touch when able….take/post LOTS of pictures! Oh…and buy me stuff………. chinese stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoS7Y2fHco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNhpNwULwHk
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