I left for Beijing very early in the morning. At the airport I tried my best to spend the last of my Hong Kong dollars since mainland China uses Yuan’s not HKD’s. I bought two gossip magazines which were a great investment because I had no idea what was going on in the world of Hollywood! We learn about world issues and problems in Global Studies but I had been lacking the celebrity gossip! Rihanna got beat up by Chris Brown? What?!? That’s probably old news to all of you guys. After the 3 hour flight to Beijing it was at least 30 degrees colder! Surprisingly I was happy! Since we left the weather has been so fricken hot everywhere so it was refreshing to wear a jacket and scarf again. I left when it was freezing outside so it actually made me feel like I was a little closer to home. Once we got there we went to a traditional Chinese restaurant where we had Peaking duck! I’ve already had that a few times cause its Gabe’s like favorite Chinese dish so I felt pretty cool knowing how to eat it and telling everyone else about it! After dinner we went to our hotel which was located on a university campus. The first night we were there our heat was broken so it was FREEZING cold in our room. I actually caught a cold because of it which sucked. We went to bed pretty early the first night because we were climbing the great wall the next morning!
I got up for breakfast and was looking forward to eating a bit cause I knew we’d be busy all day. Well all they had for breakfast was lunch food. Rice, chicken, beef, dumplings, and much more I was a little disappointed so I just ate lots of dumplings and got ready to go. The great wall was about an hour outside of Beijing. I slept on the way and when I woke up I was there! We piled out of the bus and were hit with a gust of wind. We were given 2 hours to wander around and I was thinking that was way too much time to just see a wall but I was wrong. We began the hike up and soon realized that climbing the great wall was going to be quiet a workout. We were taken to a really old part of the great wall where there haven’t been very many renovations. There are some areas of the great wall that have a gondola that takes you to the top then a toboggan slide that takes you down, we had neither. Oh well I say we had a more authentic experience. Climbing all the way to the top was honestly one of the hardest things I have ever done, I wanted to give up so many times but I knew if I did I would regret it and I couldn’t buy an I climbed the great wall t shirt and feel good about it! So we made our way to the top after quite a few stops. I was amazed at how many local Chinese people were there. They bring lunches and picnic at the top. The most embarrassing thing was when a 60 year old Chinese woman would pass us on the way to the top or when a 70 year old man smoking a cigarette would pass us! Ha well we made it and it was worth it! The views were incredible. From where we were we weren’t really able to see very much of the massive wall because we were at an end where the wall looped around. So we saw like a mirror image of where we were on the other side. It was just incredible being atop of something that was so old and had so much history. I couldn’t imagine being stationed at the top area and having to climb up all those stairs to work every day. One thing I didn’t really like was the little tourist shops that were on the way up. There were two shops that we stopped at on the way up, one of them was playing American music which we thought was pretty funny. After we climbed all the way to the top we realized we would have to climb back down too!!! Ha climbing back down was easier physically but harder because the steps were sooo tall it was easy to stumble down them! I am proud to say that I didn’t trip once! That’s a true accomplishment for me!
After the Great Wall we made our way to the Summer Palace. This was the palace where the emperor would spend his summers. It’s on a lake so it stayed a little cooler during the hot summer months. It was huge with so many differ
ent court yards and rooms. I really like ancient Asian architecture. There were beautiful blossom trees and shrubs everywhere. I especially loved the palace because the rooms had furniture in them, the same furniture that was actually used the time the palace was in full swing. I like places like this because it makes them feel more real some of the empty forts we go to I can’t really appreciate because I don’t know what they looked like, I mean I can imagine which is fun but sometimes seeing the real thing is cooler. On the outside of the buildings they have cool statues of all different types dragons. We found out that these were actually used to burn incense to scent the entire palace area. There was this old man performing music with his wife, it was some of the strangest sounds I have ever heard. The man was practicing the art of throat singing so it was more sounds than words and singing. It was so cool and nice because they were just performing for the sake of it. They weren’t begging for money just enjoying the afternoon which made me enjoy my afternoon a little more too! The palace was really cool and very peaceful. It was huge one of the biggest places I’ve ever been too we didn’t even see the entire thing and I can only imagine how many people lived there when it was in use.
After the Summer Palace we headed to Tsinghua University to meet up with some local college students. Tsinghua University is the most prestigious university in China, it is like the Harvard of China so we all felt pretty lucky to be visiting. We had a student guide whose English name was Andy. We asked him how they pick their English names and he said they just randomly pick them in English class. He took us for a tour of the university which was amazing. It was so cool being on a traditional college campus again. Seeing people studying outside, walking to class, riding their bikes, drinking coffee! I didn’t realize how much I missed being on a real campus until I visited here. We saw some of the school buildings and learned a lot about the students. At the university they turn off their electricity between the hours of 10pm-6am every single night. Andy said it was because if they didn’t the students would be awake all night long. Can you believe that? Nowhere in America would ever do that, I don’t even think a University would ever even need to do that. Also everyone that goes to school there has to live in on campus housing. The foreign students live in separate dorms than the Chinese students. I found this really strange so I asked our guide why it was like that and he said he thought it was their choice that those dorms were nicer so they wanted to live there. That didn’t quite match up with me, I doubt that every single student from abroad wanted to live in nicer more expensive dorms than the Chinese students. I think it had something to do with the government trying to keep the spread of ideas from reaching the youth of China. So crazy.
We ate dinner at one of the many cafeterias and it was one of my favorite meals of the whole trip! Ha I think it was because the Chinese food was like fast food Chinese for them so it was similar to the Chinese food we are used to at home. Anyways it was delicious! After dinner we met two other students who took us to the campus book store. On the way we talked to them about the things they liked to do. They told us they never had free time they just study all the time and on occasion go shopping or out to eat. I was shocked that they don’t drink ever or party or hang out with lots of friends. It just seemed so different than at home, granted it was the best school in China. All the students were so intelligent but still seemed so naive or innocent I don’t really know what the right word to describe them was. They seemed so misinformed and I know a lot of that has to do with the governments law on the press and education and things like that. The students were all very nice and hospitable I am actually friends with a few of them on Face book now. I told them to study abroad in America at University of Iowa! Andy said a few of his friends were actually abroad at University of Illinois! It was a really cool experience to see how people my age live on the other side of the world. It definitely made me appreciate my home a bit more.
The next day we went to the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is right across the street from Forbidden city so we began here. There were a ton of people here but our tour guide didn’t tell us much about it just that there is a
celebration there every year. She told us nothing about the Massacre apparently in China it is referred to as just a misunderstanding. There were guards surrounding the Forbidden City and a giant picture of Mao Zedong on the outside. We walked in and there were little kiosks selling knick knacks all over, not what I was expecting. Chinese people are soooo pushy. They seriously push you around like you are a piece of dirt. I dono where they are going in such a hurry, honestly we are all going to get into the forbiddedn city what’s the big rush? Anyways I was kind of disappointed in the Forbidden City which is actually just the Winter Palace. It was pretty in design with lots of gates to get to the main palace. The garden however was absolutely beautiful. They have these strange sponge rocks everywhere. After the Forbidden City we went for lunch. On the Way to lunch we noticed a strange pattern of young children wearing butt less pants. It was so disgusting they were everywhere I noticed it when I saw one climbing a fence yuck! And it was cold outside! I asked someone about it and I guess they do that to help them potty train. I mean it kind of makes sense it’s less expensive than diapers, not sure how much more hygienic but I sort of understand it. Another thing here that I noticed that is just as gross is the spitting. People in China spit everywhere all the time they just hock big loogies and spit them no matter where or who you are with! And like I said before the pushing and the budging oh the budging is just so bad. Like 10 of us girls were in line to use a bathroom and a group of 8 Chinese women come barging in. They just stroll right in walk past us (in line) and budge us to use the bathroom. By that point in the trip we had had enough. I understand cultural norms and such but they don’t budge other Chinese people only us and I was sick and tired of being walked all over. So there we were boxing people out in the bathroom and they still tried breaking through! It was ridiculous! We would be in the bathroom stall and before we got out we’d make sure there was a semester at sea person who was waiting for our stall! I guess during the Olympics people complained so much about the budging that the government has line days where waiting in lines for the trains, busses, or bathrooms are enforced by the police. Ok that was a highly unnecessary story I just told you but oh well!
After Forbidden City we went to the Temple of Heaven. This place was really cool. After seeing lots of temples and palaces they all kind of blend together but this one was cool. It had a park area where people come and relax or play games. While we were there they had a senior citizens dance session in the park! It was really fun we joined in! At the temple they have this one section where the emperor would stand when addressing God. We stood on it and felt so cool! Ha anyways the temple was pretty cool there were lots of different parts to it and like usual it was HUGE! The coolest thing about this temple was probably the huge doors that were before every section.
Next we headed to the Chinese acrobat show. This was by far the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The way these young girls can move their bodies and bend them and support each other is just incredible. They fit like 20 girls on one single bicycle! They also did this crazy trick with these like hamster wheels it’s hard to describe I guess you just have to see it. But it was definitely one of the best shows I have ever been to.
After dinner we were able to go to the market and shop till we drop and boy did I! When I thought of shopping in China this was what I pictured. It was a shopping center 7 stories tall full of knockoffs and real designer items. After all my shopping experiences I have come to be a very good bargainer so my friend and I bargained away and bought away. I spent more money in China than I did in South Africa and Namibia combined! Haha oh well it was worth it the entire time I was spending I just kept telling myself when are you ever going to be in China again getting all these great deals? They had all types of purses, north faces, ugg boots, I was in heaven. In the mall they give you different colored bags to indicate if you are a hard bargainer (yellow bags) or a push over (white bags) let’s just say I always got the yellow bags!
The next morning we were off to go do the things I was most excited for during our trip to Beijing. We headed to the Panda zoo first! I LOVE zoos! I think they are so much fun and they make me sooo happy and I have never seen a real panda before so I couldn’t wait. We got to the Beijing zoo at like 10 am before the big crowds got there. The Beijing zoo was a free zoo except you had to pay for the panda exhibit. The panda exhibit was pretty nice it was similar to any of the exhibits at the Lincoln Park zoo. The pandas were soooo cool! They look like the friendliest little bears ever! Like you could pick one up and just hug it and hold it forever! They are much dirtier in person then you imagine them. One of them just sat there eating bamboo and staring at all of us like we were the animals it was really funny. After the Panda exhibit we had time to explore the zoo which was not so cool. It was such a letdown after seeing the panda exhibit. The rest of the zoo was so sad it was more of an animal prison than a zoo. The Cat house literally looked like a prison. The walls, ceiling, and floor were made out of the same cement. The cats were in prison cells, cement boxes with two sets of metal bars blocking them from the outside world. They had no toys in their cages except for car tires. I am not a huge animal rights activist person but I really don’t see how anyone could have thought that was a suitable environment for a large animal to live in. The elephant house was no better. The HUGE elephant was in a room probably as big as my kitchen. They could barely turn themselves around in the little box. The girl I was with couldn’t even stay inside those areas because they just upset her too much. None of the locals seemed to see any problem with it probably because it is what the
y are used to but to us it was very sad.
After the Prison zoo we headed to the Birds Nest and Water Cube!!!! I was a pretty avid Olympics watcher especially the swimming and diving portion so I could not wait! We pulled up and I was sooo excited. We saw the birds nest first. It was so cool looking. It literally looks like a giant birds nest from the outside. We went through the security check where you weren’t allowed to bring in lighters which I found odd, dealt with more budging from the locals, then finally we were inside! Walking into that park was such an incredible feeling. I dono why but I felt proud for some reason! I know it sounds strange I think it’s just cause I got that Olympic pride feel all over. We were able to walk out onto the field, run around the track, sit in the stands, take pictures with the weird Chinese Olympic symbol people, it was so much fun. It definitely convinced me that I need to go to an Olympics at some point in my life. One thing that was odd about the birds nest were the lack of bathrooms, there were very few of them I was even more surprised when I finally found one and they were squatters. I thought that with the Olympics having so many foreign tourists they would put in western toilets but no!
Now we were off to the water cube. Before we got in we had to go and buy our tickets. The entrance was at one end of the cube and ticket sales on the complete opposite. I don’t know what genius thought up that layout but it took forever to walk all the way around the cube to buy a ticket to have to walk all the way back to the entrance! It was so worth it though. It was beautiful inside! The outside was obviously shaped like a cube and blue with water running around the perimeter. On the inside everything was white and modern looking. Some
of the walls were clear plastic that had water running through them. We walked into the main stadium and I was speechless! It was just so cool to be in the same room that Michael Phelps won all his medals in! Everything looked exactly the same as it did on TV. I loved it, it was so much fun being there and seeing all that. It was just so amazing cause while I was watching the Olympics never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that in a few months I would be sitting in the same stands as those fans. It was AMAZING!
After the Olympics area we had some time to kill so we went to another shopping mall. I did a bit more damage but not too much then got some pizza for lunch! Then we headed to the massive Beijing airport for our flight to Shanghai. The flight to Shanghai was the scariest plane ride of my life. The plane was massive which I usually like cause there isn’t as much turbulence but this was an exception. It was a double decker plane which I didn’t even know existed! The whole flight was just up and down and up and down, you know that feeling you get when a plane first takes off like when your tummy sinks a little? That happened the whole time! And it didn’t help that the girl sitting next to me’s dad was a pilot so she is sitting there telling me how this would never happen in the states and it’s a violation of codes etc etc. I have never been so happy to be on land ever before!
Shanghai
Unfortunately we didn’t get into Shanghai until like midnight so I was too tired to explore. The next morning however Win and I took on Shanghai! It was a bit difficult getting a cab though. We walked into a travel agency and had them write down our destination in Chinese. We would show the cab drivers and they would just say no. They wouldn’t give us a reason why just shake their heads and drive away. Finally we found someone who would drive us to the market. Once we got to the clothes market a group of about 7 men opened our cab door for us and tried to get us to come into their store. We told them we had no money so they immediately led us to an ATM. Literally for the next hour they followed us around the shopping center. We told them NO and GET AWAY and NO FRIEND but they wouldn’t listen. It was so strange never had we had someone follow us for so long just to get us to come to their shops. Finally after very much NO FRIEND they left. We figured out a good method to keep people like that away from us, we just started speaking a fake language to each other. They would come up say hi and we would say bonjour! Then fake speak French and they would just leave ha it was a great plan. After shopping I got some coffee with tapioca balls at the bottom of it which I am totally going to look for when I get back in the states. After shopping we walked around the area. We saw adorable little Chinese babies which by the way I never did see a family with more than one kid. Then we saw these puppies for sale in the basket of a bicycle for only 200 yuans which was like 50 bucks and they were SOO cute! We had a few yuans left so we went and bought some groceries for our rooms and headed back to the ship. It was really difficult getting a cab again. We even got into a cab and kicked out. When we got back to the ship we heard that other people had had similar problems. The language barrier was also really difficult in China it was hard to communicate with most of the people there. This was one of the first if not only countries where locals would come up to us and just speak to us in Chinese like we would just understand them! Do I look like I speak Chinese? Someone made a good point though in all these countries I go up to locals and ask them something in English.
China was a really amazing country to visit. I think I liked it so much because it was so different from the United States. Vietnam was a communist country but only in rare instances did it feel like it. While being in Vietnam it felt normal and natural not like what I think of when I hear the word communist. China on the other hand was much different. I mean the news papers there have nothing of substance in them. Fluff articles fill the pages of the Chinese Times. Many websites are blocked, phone lines tapped, the government goes through everyone’s emails, you can’t speak about politics, have your own opinion on anything it was just crazy. The strangest thing is that the people don’t seem to have a problem with it at all. Actually I’m not sure if it’s that they don’t have a problem with it so much as they can’t talk about it. Can you imagine not being able to talk politics? Ever! I mean what would our family do on holidays? We wouldn’t have anything to talk about! It’s just crazy mind boggling even how different people live over there.
I got up for breakfast and was looking forward to eating a bit cause I knew we’d be busy all day. Well all they had for breakfast was lunch food. Rice, chicken, beef, dumplings, and much more I was a little disappointed so I just ate lots of dumplings and got ready to go. The great wall was about an hour outside of Beijing. I slept on the way and when I woke up I was there! We piled out of the bus and were hit with a gust of wind. We were given 2 hours to wander around and I was thinking that was way too much time to just see a wall but I was wrong. We began the hike up and soon realized that climbing the great wall was going to be quiet a workout. We were taken to a really old part of the great wall where there haven’t been very many renovations. There are some areas of the great wall that have a gondola that takes you to the top then a toboggan slide that takes you down, we had neither. Oh well I say we had a more authentic experience. Climbing all the way to the top was honestly one of the hardest things I have ever done, I wanted to give up so many times but I knew if I did I would regret it and I couldn’t buy an I climbed the great wall t shirt and feel good about it! So we made our way to the top after quite a few stops. I was amazed at how many local Chinese people were there. They bring lunches and picnic at the top. The most embarrassing thing was when a 60 year old Chinese woman would pass us on the way to the top or when a 70 year old man smoking a cigarette would pass us! Ha well we made it and it was worth it! The views were incredible. From where we were we weren’t really able to see very much of the massive wall because we were at an end where the wall looped around. So we saw like a mirror image of where we were on the other side. It was just incredible being atop of something that was so old and had so much history. I couldn’t imagine being stationed at the top area and having to climb up all those stairs to work every day. One thing I didn’t really like was the little tourist shops that were on the way up. There were two shops that we stopped at on the way up, one of them was playing American music which we thought was pretty funny. After we climbed all the way to the top we realized we would have to climb back down too!!! Ha climbing back down was easier physically but harder because the steps were sooo tall it was easy to stumble down them! I am proud to say that I didn’t trip once! That’s a true accomplishment for me!
After the Great Wall we made our way to the Summer Palace. This was the palace where the emperor would spend his summers. It’s on a lake so it stayed a little cooler during the hot summer months. It was huge with so many differ
ent court yards and rooms. I really like ancient Asian architecture. There were beautiful blossom trees and shrubs everywhere. I especially loved the palace because the rooms had furniture in them, the same furniture that was actually used the time the palace was in full swing. I like places like this because it makes them feel more real some of the empty forts we go to I can’t really appreciate because I don’t know what they looked like, I mean I can imagine which is fun but sometimes seeing the real thing is cooler. On the outside of the buildings they have cool statues of all different types dragons. We found out that these were actually used to burn incense to scent the entire palace area. There was this old man performing music with his wife, it was some of the strangest sounds I have ever heard. The man was practicing the art of throat singing so it was more sounds than words and singing. It was so cool and nice because they were just performing for the sake of it. They weren’t begging for money just enjoying the afternoon which made me enjoy my afternoon a little more too! The palace was really cool and very peaceful. It was huge one of the biggest places I’ve ever been too we didn’t even see the entire thing and I can only imagine how many people lived there when it was in use.After the Summer Palace we headed to Tsinghua University to meet up with some local college students. Tsinghua University is the most prestigious university in China, it is like the Harvard of China so we all felt pretty lucky to be visiting. We had a student guide whose English name was Andy. We asked him how they pick their English names and he said they just randomly pick them in English class. He took us for a tour of the university which was amazing. It was so cool being on a traditional college campus again. Seeing people studying outside, walking to class, riding their bikes, drinking coffee! I didn’t realize how much I missed being on a real campus until I visited here. We saw some of the school buildings and learned a lot about the students. At the university they turn off their electricity between the hours of 10pm-6am every single night. Andy said it was because if they didn’t the students would be awake all night long. Can you believe that? Nowhere in America would ever do that, I don’t even think a University would ever even need to do that. Also everyone that goes to school there has to live in on campus housing. The foreign students live in separate dorms than the Chinese students. I found this really strange so I asked our guide why it was like that and he said he thought it was their choice that those dorms were nicer so they wanted to live there. That didn’t quite match up with me, I doubt that every single student from abroad wanted to live in nicer more expensive dorms than the Chinese students. I think it had something to do with the government trying to keep the spread of ideas from reaching the youth of China. So crazy.
We ate dinner at one of the many cafeterias and it was one of my favorite meals of the whole trip! Ha I think it was because the Chinese food was like fast food Chinese for them so it was similar to the Chinese food we are used to at home. Anyways it was delicious! After dinner we met two other students who took us to the campus book store. On the way we talked to them about the things they liked to do. They told us they never had free time they just study all the time and on occasion go shopping or out to eat. I was shocked that they don’t drink ever or party or hang out with lots of friends. It just seemed so different than at home, granted it was the best school in China. All the students were so intelligent but still seemed so naive or innocent I don’t really know what the right word to describe them was. They seemed so misinformed and I know a lot of that has to do with the governments law on the press and education and things like that. The students were all very nice and hospitable I am actually friends with a few of them on Face book now. I told them to study abroad in America at University of Iowa! Andy said a few of his friends were actually abroad at University of Illinois! It was a really cool experience to see how people my age live on the other side of the world. It definitely made me appreciate my home a bit more.
The next day we went to the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is right across the street from Forbidden city so we began here. There were a ton of people here but our tour guide didn’t tell us much about it just that there is a
celebration there every year. She told us nothing about the Massacre apparently in China it is referred to as just a misunderstanding. There were guards surrounding the Forbidden City and a giant picture of Mao Zedong on the outside. We walked in and there were little kiosks selling knick knacks all over, not what I was expecting. Chinese people are soooo pushy. They seriously push you around like you are a piece of dirt. I dono where they are going in such a hurry, honestly we are all going to get into the forbiddedn city what’s the big rush? Anyways I was kind of disappointed in the Forbidden City which is actually just the Winter Palace. It was pretty in design with lots of gates to get to the main palace. The garden however was absolutely beautiful. They have these strange sponge rocks everywhere. After the Forbidden City we went for lunch. On the Way to lunch we noticed a strange pattern of young children wearing butt less pants. It was so disgusting they were everywhere I noticed it when I saw one climbing a fence yuck! And it was cold outside! I asked someone about it and I guess they do that to help them potty train. I mean it kind of makes sense it’s less expensive than diapers, not sure how much more hygienic but I sort of understand it. Another thing here that I noticed that is just as gross is the spitting. People in China spit everywhere all the time they just hock big loogies and spit them no matter where or who you are with! And like I said before the pushing and the budging oh the budging is just so bad. Like 10 of us girls were in line to use a bathroom and a group of 8 Chinese women come barging in. They just stroll right in walk past us (in line) and budge us to use the bathroom. By that point in the trip we had had enough. I understand cultural norms and such but they don’t budge other Chinese people only us and I was sick and tired of being walked all over. So there we were boxing people out in the bathroom and they still tried breaking through! It was ridiculous! We would be in the bathroom stall and before we got out we’d make sure there was a semester at sea person who was waiting for our stall! I guess during the Olympics people complained so much about the budging that the government has line days where waiting in lines for the trains, busses, or bathrooms are enforced by the police. Ok that was a highly unnecessary story I just told you but oh well!After Forbidden City we went to the Temple of Heaven. This place was really cool. After seeing lots of temples and palaces they all kind of blend together but this one was cool. It had a park area where people come and relax or play games. While we were there they had a senior citizens dance session in the park! It was really fun we joined in! At the temple they have this one section where the emperor would stand when addressing God. We stood on it and felt so cool! Ha anyways the temple was pretty cool there were lots of different parts to it and like usual it was HUGE! The coolest thing about this temple was probably the huge doors that were before every section.
Next we headed to the Chinese acrobat show. This was by far the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The way these young girls can move their bodies and bend them and support each other is just incredible. They fit like 20 girls on one single bicycle! They also did this crazy trick with these like hamster wheels it’s hard to describe I guess you just have to see it. But it was definitely one of the best shows I have ever been to.
After dinner we were able to go to the market and shop till we drop and boy did I! When I thought of shopping in China this was what I pictured. It was a shopping center 7 stories tall full of knockoffs and real designer items. After all my shopping experiences I have come to be a very good bargainer so my friend and I bargained away and bought away. I spent more money in China than I did in South Africa and Namibia combined! Haha oh well it was worth it the entire time I was spending I just kept telling myself when are you ever going to be in China again getting all these great deals? They had all types of purses, north faces, ugg boots, I was in heaven. In the mall they give you different colored bags to indicate if you are a hard bargainer (yellow bags) or a push over (white bags) let’s just say I always got the yellow bags!
The next morning we were off to go do the things I was most excited for during our trip to Beijing. We headed to the Panda zoo first! I LOVE zoos! I think they are so much fun and they make me sooo happy and I have never seen a real panda before so I couldn’t wait. We got to the Beijing zoo at like 10 am before the big crowds got there. The Beijing zoo was a free zoo except you had to pay for the panda exhibit. The panda exhibit was pretty nice it was similar to any of the exhibits at the Lincoln Park zoo. The pandas were soooo cool! They look like the friendliest little bears ever! Like you could pick one up and just hug it and hold it forever! They are much dirtier in person then you imagine them. One of them just sat there eating bamboo and staring at all of us like we were the animals it was really funny. After the Panda exhibit we had time to explore the zoo which was not so cool. It was such a letdown after seeing the panda exhibit. The rest of the zoo was so sad it was more of an animal prison than a zoo. The Cat house literally looked like a prison. The walls, ceiling, and floor were made out of the same cement. The cats were in prison cells, cement boxes with two sets of metal bars blocking them from the outside world. They had no toys in their cages except for car tires. I am not a huge animal rights activist person but I really don’t see how anyone could have thought that was a suitable environment for a large animal to live in. The elephant house was no better. The HUGE elephant was in a room probably as big as my kitchen. They could barely turn themselves around in the little box. The girl I was with couldn’t even stay inside those areas because they just upset her too much. None of the locals seemed to see any problem with it probably because it is what the
y are used to but to us it was very sad.After the Prison zoo we headed to the Birds Nest and Water Cube!!!! I was a pretty avid Olympics watcher especially the swimming and diving portion so I could not wait! We pulled up and I was sooo excited. We saw the birds nest first. It was so cool looking. It literally looks like a giant birds nest from the outside. We went through the security check where you weren’t allowed to bring in lighters which I found odd, dealt with more budging from the locals, then finally we were inside! Walking into that park was such an incredible feeling. I dono why but I felt proud for some reason! I know it sounds strange I think it’s just cause I got that Olympic pride feel all over. We were able to walk out onto the field, run around the track, sit in the stands, take pictures with the weird Chinese Olympic symbol people, it was so much fun. It definitely convinced me that I need to go to an Olympics at some point in my life. One thing that was odd about the birds nest were the lack of bathrooms, there were very few of them I was even more surprised when I finally found one and they were squatters. I thought that with the Olympics having so many foreign tourists they would put in western toilets but no!
Now we were off to the water cube. Before we got in we had to go and buy our tickets. The entrance was at one end of the cube and ticket sales on the complete opposite. I don’t know what genius thought up that layout but it took forever to walk all the way around the cube to buy a ticket to have to walk all the way back to the entrance! It was so worth it though. It was beautiful inside! The outside was obviously shaped like a cube and blue with water running around the perimeter. On the inside everything was white and modern looking. Some
of the walls were clear plastic that had water running through them. We walked into the main stadium and I was speechless! It was just so cool to be in the same room that Michael Phelps won all his medals in! Everything looked exactly the same as it did on TV. I loved it, it was so much fun being there and seeing all that. It was just so amazing cause while I was watching the Olympics never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that in a few months I would be sitting in the same stands as those fans. It was AMAZING!After the Olympics area we had some time to kill so we went to another shopping mall. I did a bit more damage but not too much then got some pizza for lunch! Then we headed to the massive Beijing airport for our flight to Shanghai. The flight to Shanghai was the scariest plane ride of my life. The plane was massive which I usually like cause there isn’t as much turbulence but this was an exception. It was a double decker plane which I didn’t even know existed! The whole flight was just up and down and up and down, you know that feeling you get when a plane first takes off like when your tummy sinks a little? That happened the whole time! And it didn’t help that the girl sitting next to me’s dad was a pilot so she is sitting there telling me how this would never happen in the states and it’s a violation of codes etc etc. I have never been so happy to be on land ever before!
Shanghai
Unfortunately we didn’t get into Shanghai until like midnight so I was too tired to explore. The next morning however Win and I took on Shanghai! It was a bit difficult getting a cab though. We walked into a travel agency and had them write down our destination in Chinese. We would show the cab drivers and they would just say no. They wouldn’t give us a reason why just shake their heads and drive away. Finally we found someone who would drive us to the market. Once we got to the clothes market a group of about 7 men opened our cab door for us and tried to get us to come into their store. We told them we had no money so they immediately led us to an ATM. Literally for the next hour they followed us around the shopping center. We told them NO and GET AWAY and NO FRIEND but they wouldn’t listen. It was so strange never had we had someone follow us for so long just to get us to come to their shops. Finally after very much NO FRIEND they left. We figured out a good method to keep people like that away from us, we just started speaking a fake language to each other. They would come up say hi and we would say bonjour! Then fake speak French and they would just leave ha it was a great plan. After shopping I got some coffee with tapioca balls at the bottom of it which I am totally going to look for when I get back in the states. After shopping we walked around the area. We saw adorable little Chinese babies which by the way I never did see a family with more than one kid. Then we saw these puppies for sale in the basket of a bicycle for only 200 yuans which was like 50 bucks and they were SOO cute! We had a few yuans left so we went and bought some groceries for our rooms and headed back to the ship. It was really difficult getting a cab again. We even got into a cab and kicked out. When we got back to the ship we heard that other people had had similar problems. The language barrier was also really difficult in China it was hard to communicate with most of the people there. This was one of the first if not only countries where locals would come up to us and just speak to us in Chinese like we would just understand them! Do I look like I speak Chinese? Someone made a good point though in all these countries I go up to locals and ask them something in English.
China was a really amazing country to visit. I think I liked it so much because it was so different from the United States. Vietnam was a communist country but only in rare instances did it feel like it. While being in Vietnam it felt normal and natural not like what I think of when I hear the word communist. China on the other hand was much different. I mean the news papers there have nothing of substance in them. Fluff articles fill the pages of the Chinese Times. Many websites are blocked, phone lines tapped, the government goes through everyone’s emails, you can’t speak about politics, have your own opinion on anything it was just crazy. The strangest thing is that the people don’t seem to have a problem with it at all. Actually I’m not sure if it’s that they don’t have a problem with it so much as they can’t talk about it. Can you imagine not being able to talk politics? Ever! I mean what would our family do on holidays? We wouldn’t have anything to talk about! It’s just crazy mind boggling even how different people live over there.
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