China part II

So the second part of our trip in China was to a little town about 4 hours southwest of Shanghai. Here, we met up with Mr. Wu, a 70 year old retired English professor. This was definitely a highlight of this trip. Mr. Wu showed us around his town of Quzhou, and then we spent a day in the village where he grew up about 40km  from Quzhou. Interesting fact, the first American in Quzhou wasn't until 1987! So again, we were starred at a lot. The village was really interesting, as most of the young people have left to find jobs in the cities, and all the older people still farm their land. There is running water and electricity, but that is about it for modern conveniences. Since most of Mr. Wu's family (sisters and brothers) still live in the town, as well as his cousins and uncles, we were able to meet a lot of people. And by meet I mean wave hi and stand there and smile while Mr. Wu explained in Chinese why we were there. After walking around the town, his sister cooked the most delicious meal I have had since being in Asia. As you can see from the picture, there was a lot of food.
Oh and they had a dog. So I naturally asked its name and was then laughed at and told he doesn't have a name. I brushed that off, but wondered why they would have a pet and not name it. During lunch, I figured it out. In China, most meat is cooked with the bone in and fat still on the meat, so you have to pick through it, with lots of difficulty. When I asked what to do with the leftover bones and any other pieces that I needed to discard, he told me to throw them on the ground. The dog was the vacuum cleaner!
After lunch, Mr. Wu and his nephew took us to the three brothers monument where we hiked for about an hour and learned more about the cultural revolution and how it was to live through all the recent changes in China. We then were taking to another town, and hosted to a large dinner (only 4 hours after our large lunch). We ate Chinese style, with the turn table in the center and picking at food and it swiveled by. The food was of course, excellent. I'm convinced that in China, you will ONLY get the best of the best  if you can speak Chinese, so if you ever come here, meet up with some Chinese friends to get the true food experience.

All in all it was an absolutely amazing experience to spend time in such a remote area and be hosted by such a generous man. After our 5.5 hour experience in the train on the way there, we decided to try the fast train back to Shanghai which, thankfully, only took 3.5 hours. Dad spent one night in Shanghai then headed to Singapore to pick up my luggage for me and continued on back to the States. I'm still here in Shanghai, and I'm about to head to the airport to go to the Yunnan Provence for 6 days with Kyle to hike and get some fresh air!  I won't have access to my blog while in the west part of China, but ill update you on Shanghai and the west when I get back.

Ill add more photos on Facebook with better descriptions when I get back to the States, but its too difficult here in China since I can't seem to get constant internet access. Hope you all have a great rest of the week.

Love you and miss you!

China Part I

Hello from the land of the not so free! Bear with me for a bit, this is going to be a long one.  As I’m sure most of you know, Facebook is banned in China, and for whatever reason, so is access to my blog, so I will post when I can get access.  Here are my impressions and travels of the past two weeks in China.

First stop: Beijing. AMAZING city. Beijing is the political and cultural center of China, while Shanghai is financial center. Needless to say we visited A LOT of temples and learned more history then I’ll ever remember.  Dad and I stayed in Beijing for 5 days, and for three of them we hired a guide, which made life very easy. She was 26 so her and I had a great time talking about life for young people in China and she knew more history than Dad (if you know my Dad, that is hard to do), so she kept him happy with new facts.  We of course visited the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Bell and Drum Tower, Summer Palace, Night market, Ming Tombs, Tiananmen Square, Lama Temple and my personal favorite and most famous, the Great Wall. All were amazing, and all were larger than I could have imagined (Discovery channel does not give justice to these places on TV, even in HD).  We also had a chance to meet up with some of my friends from my MBA program who were studying Chinese (similar to when I studied Spanish in Spain), and who are now doing their internships in China. We went out two nights with them. The first was a typical Chinese dinner where you sit 10 people around a table with a swivel in the center and order as many dishes as the host feels necessary.  Between 10 of us we had about 15 dishes including Duck wish was Dad’s favorite. Best of all, it only came to about $25 USD per person.  I will certainly miss the great food prices in Asia. The next night the food wasn’t great, but after dinner all my friends and some locals and I went out for drinks in the night area. Dad being awesome, decided it was a night with my friends so we put him in a cab and sent him back to the hotel. Best part of that was no official cab would take him cause it wouldn’t have been a large fare so we had to find a ‘black’ cab (these are guys who drive around late at night and are not licensed drivers, just looking for some extra cash) and pay him double the price just to get him to the hotel safely.  As my dad is driving away, my friend screams at me to give my phone to my dad just in case…and then they drove off….

So Dad ended up getting home safe, I got home after a few hours, and then it was off to our next stop.

Second Stop: Xi’An. This is a check it off your list kind of place. This is the famous town where the Terracotta Warriors were discovered. There are supposedly about 6000 soldiers in this area, but only 2000 have been discovered and assembled. Truly amazing site considering it was constructed in 210 BC

Glad I did it, won’t feel a need to go back.  Upon leaving Xi’An to go to Shanghai, our plane got delayed due to landing gear malfunction. Under normal circumstances when issues arise in an airport with an airplane, I can fix it pretty quick. However, when you throw in a wholatta Chinese and a lil English, the world changes on you. Ironically, it was my Spanish skills that somehow got us out of the airport and kept us from being stuck overnight.  See there was this group of Spaniards (none spoke English) and they were trying to talk to a Chinese airline employee who had little English, so I offered to help. During my Perfect (ha, right) translation, I figured out that we could get on another airline. And because I kept trying to help the airline employees with the crazy Spaniards we got on an airplane!  See Karma works people, I’m telling you!

After the 5 hours in the airport, we finally arrived in Shanghai, and our plan was to catch a train to a small town called Quzhou.  Of course we landed too late and had to find a hotel in Shanghai for the night. Not a big deal, just that somehow, Shanghai airport has less signs in English than any other place in China. 

Oh and I forgot to mention, if you have been following my blog since I’ve been here, I bet you can guess what I’m going to say next……..

Yup, I’m sick again! Coughing my lungs out the past few days! Started the day we went to see the soldiers, got worse with the nasty pollution in Xi’an, now getting better thanks to good ol’ Dad bringing a Z-pak from home! Love my parents and them being prepared like a hospital.

Wake up Tuesday morning feeling horrible, but excited to meet up with Mr. Wu (more on him later), and see a side of China most people don’t get to see.  So we make it to the right train station and we have 30 minutes before we can buy tickets. Knowing just getting tickets could be an adventure we follow our fellow Asians lead and start lining up at the counter with 25 min until the counters open. Lucky for us, there is an ‘English Speaking Counter’, so we decide our best bet is to stand in that line. Turns out they only open two lines that day, and one of them happened to be ours, so with all our bad luck the day before, we were first in line and had an English speaking person to buy tickets from. With three cities in China named the same, I was just happy that we had tickets that said the correct name in English!

After a 5.5 hour train trip, in which I’m pretty sure my Dad and I were the only Caucasians on the train, which turned into 5 hours of getting starred at, and another 30 minutes of them watching Dad do Sudoku and trying to talk to us, we made it to our destination only a day later than expected, but with Mr Wu waiting happily for us at the gate!

I can’t wait to tell you about the rest of this trip. But that will have to be part two. I’m now in Shanghai and heading to brunch with some friends. Miss you all!