Did you go to The China?
This looks like its gonna be another huge post. So if you haven’t heard, Krystal, Lisa, and I just came back from China. How was it, you may ask? Well it has its good points and bad points just like everything else. Would I go back to China? Nah… I don’t think so. Was it worth it? TOTALLY.
So during the first week in May, Japan has 3 holidays in a row called Golden Week. Everyone in the country might use their vacation days to take a few days off so they can a have a full week to go sightseeing or just chill at home. We took this advantage and decided to go to a whole other country. Last year I went to Taiwan and Krystal went to Korea. So where to go to this year? We haven’t taken a trip with just Lisa since we were in Japan so this would be the perfect opportunity to go just the three of us. And it had been Lisa’s 26 year old dream to see the Great Wall of China. Since we were so close to China we had couldn’t pass it up.
So we left Japan on the 27th of April to go to Beijing. Our itinerary had us in Beijing first to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, then over to Xi’an to see the Terra-Cotta Statues, and then Shanghai for some city life.
Beijing: First impression… dirty and dusty. Krystal and my flight into Beijing were a few hours before Lisa’s so we needed to get to the hotel first. As soon as we got off the turbulent flight the first thing we saw was a KFC and Starbucks. This seems to be a running theme in China. Wherever you go, you never NOT see a Starbucks, KFC, or McDonald’s. Anyway finding the shuttle bus was pretty easy and we were off to the hotel in the city. As we took the hour and half bus ride, Beijing seemed like a normal city where you have huge sky scrapers and overpasses and anything else you find in a big city. We also noticed a lot of banners and posters getting ready for the 2008 Olympics being held in Beijing. We also noticed that the buildings were all huge. It might be because we came from Japan where everything is small and compacted but the buildings and the lots they were on were just huge. The air in Beijing was also somewhat unclean. The dust and sand that comes from the Gobi Desert created some kind of smog like yellow haze over the whole city.
We finally get to our stop and follow Lisa’s directions on how to get to the hotel. But it doesn’t seem to add up. You guys might laugh (Joel) but these weren’t really her directions. You see a good friend of Lisa went to China during Spring Break and gave Lisa lots of information on Beijing and she just regurgitated everything for Lisa. Anyway being a little of wary of Lisa’s directions I printed out a map to the hotel. But it turned out that both were wrong. Lisa’s directions had us going in the wrong direction and the map had the wrong names for some of the streets. After an hour or so of walking we decided to jump in a cab and have him take us to the hotel. It was a good thing too because we were totally in the wrong area and you had to go through a shaddy area and if we were on foot I would have probably turned around and gone back on the main road. But after a hectic hour we made it to our hotel. The hotel was located on a back street of a back street off the main road. The hotel was pretty nice with a few features that made our stay there every easy. It had a restaurant that stayed open until 12 midnight as well as a breakfast buffet that opened at 6:30 for about 3 dollars, a coffee shop where you could use the internet, a bar/lounge where you could play pool, foosball, or watch pirated movies on a big screen, laundry machines, a massage room, and even a travel agent. It was very convenient. The travel agent guy came in really handy because something happened to our train reservations to Xi’an and we needed to book a flight instead. It was a little more money but a lot better than waiting.
We arrived at the hotel at around 8ish and Lisa came at around 10. Luckily for us we had the restaurant in the hotel to eat at. The food wasn’t the best but it was good enough with things we recognized like Kung Pao Chicken, mixed vegetables, fried rice, and gyoza. It turns out that Lisa had the same trouble as us and was just grateful to reach the hotel in one piece.
Day 1 of the actual seeing of China we went to the Forbidden City, the ancient city where emperors, empresses, and concubines lived. It was pretty cool to see stuff that has been around since like 20 B.C. The building seemed to be all original stuff other than the occasional re-painted sections. The original building just looked dirty and the re-painted stuff just looked fake. But we did get to see a lot of stuff. We rented those audio guides and walked the Forbidden City for a few hours. The funniest thing about the Forbidden City was all the pavilions devoted to the emperors. It got pretty ridiculous after a while. Like we would come up to a pavilion and the audio guide would tell us, “This is the Pavilion of Supreme Patience…where the emperor would change his robes after a so and so ceremony.” I mean that’s ridiculous right? A giant pavilion the size of two, two story apartment complexes just so the emperor could change his clothes after a ceremony. But nevertheless it was cool. Be prepared to be floored… we also found a STARBUCKS in the Forbidden City. What’s up with that? The Forbidden City basically took the whole day. On our way out we got our first taste of Chinese haggling. They had a few souvenir shops and we got hooked into looking at some marble seals. The guy ushered us to come to his booth saying that he could right your name in Chinese characters. He even had a book of names with the Chinese characters and the English names. At first he told us 50 dollars in Yuan, but that seemed a little expensive so we said no thanks and started to walk away. This made the guy make the price lower and lower until we all ended up getting one for 25 Yuan, which comes out to about $4 US. Proud of our first souvenir, we headed back to the hotel to recuperate and get ready for dinner.
Krystal and Me in front of the main pavilion in the Forbidden City.
Dinner was another situation worthy of telling. So we decided that it would be wrong if we didn’t eat duck in Beijing, especially Peking Duck, and Beijing being another name for Peking we had to have some. Anyway we kept seeing this duck restaurant on the main street close to hotel. We planned on going there but went down a local shopping street parallel to the main road. Only thing we didn’t know was that the street kind of skewed so when we came out to the main road we were way off. We took a cab which cost less that 2 dollars US and went into the restaurant. Unfortunately the restaurant was just about to close. Fortunately the restaurant closed because we saw a menu and it looked like a gourmet duck place. This meant that they had duck webbings, duck tongue, all other parts that I thought you don’t eat. We saw a perfectly good restaurant across the way and went in with the hopes of eating duck. They ran out of duck, but did get to order some really good lap chong stuff, mabo tofu, and some kind of slow roasted shoyu pork thing. The first night’s dinner was a success! Next day, The Great Wall of China!
The Great Wall of China… there’s a reason why they call it “Great.” It was one of the coolest moments of my life. I never really had a desire to go but once I was there I couldn’t help but get wrapped in the Wall’s majesty. Only thing bad about the day was the air was kind of hazy due to the sand and dust from the desert. They really need to do something about that dust. But other than that the Great Wall was a lot of fun. It looked just like Mulan. We even took a picture of us where we pretended that there was a grappling hook coming over the Wall. I think Krystal is going to photoshop one in later. There were a few ways in which you could go up to the actual wall. One was hiking up by foot or you could take a ski lift thing. Of course we took the ski lift one. When we got to the top it looked just like the movies where you can see the Wall arch over the mountain tops. We were able to “hike” to two stations on the wall. I say “hike” because it literally was. Although there were stairs the stairs weren’t normal. You had really short steps so it doesn’t even feel like you’re on stairs and you have to take those weird long steps. Or you had really narrow steps that were steep. Those were the hard ones. You would feel pain on the way up as well as on the way down. But it was still pretty cool, but the best part was still to come. On the way down you were given a few more options. You could take the gondola thing down, hike down, or take a toboggan. That’s right, I said “toboggan.” People were lined up in front of a giant metal slide and you were given a toboggan to go down the mountain. How awesome is that? I even came with a handle so you can control how fast you go down. But ultimately, how fast you go down was based on how fast the people in front of you were going. Still yet, it was AWESOME!
Pretty awesome huh?
Going up to the Great Wall...
Lisa and Me going back down.
That night we decided to go with the lonely Planet guide book and eat at one of the places that was recommended. It turns out that the restaurant we chose was the best restaurant to eat at in all of China based on the authors’ experiences. It took a while to get there since we had no Chinese ability and it was on the other side of town. But we still made it and it was the best meal that I had in China. The book recommended the deep fried spare ribs which were excellent. And finally we got a chance to try the Peking Duck in Peking. It was soooooooooooooooooooooo good! I would totally recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Beijing, it’s totally worth it.
Oh My God, so good...
The next day was kind of a free day since we saw all the major sites so we decided to go to Temple of Heaven. I thought it was going to be a few buildings with a nice lawn but its actually really big. This is the site where the emperors would come to pray/sacrifice things to heaven, so that they may get there one day. We went to famous pavilion and all the smaller temples on the grounds. We also got a chance to fool around with the Echo Wall. Its basically a wall the has a perfect circumference so when you speak to the wall someone on the opposite side of the lot can totally hear you. It was pretty cool. We even tested it out. Krystal went to the West side of the circle and Lisa and I stayed at the East side. Then we just started talking, like we were using a telephone. It was a cool thing to experience.
The Temple of Heaven, view it in all its majesty.
After the Temple of Heaven, the girls wanted to go shopping so we went to the Silk Road shopping complex. Its kind of like an indoors version of the International Marketplace in Waikiki, where you can buy anything from silk rugs to sports apparel. The crazy thing about this place is that everything is haggle-able. They over price everything and then you just haggle down until you get to the price you want. Even by some chance you over pay or find out you could of gotten it for cheaper lots of times when you do the math and covert the Yuan into Dollars or Yen it’s still really dirt cheap. My first experience in haggle was for a belt. It was a knock off Diesel belt and I ended up buying it for about 32 US Dollars. If I had more experience I could have gotten it for much cheaper maybe in the 10-15 US Dollar range. But hey you learn from your mistakes right? After that Krystal and I were haggling like there was no tomorrow. Krystal was able to get a SD card with 512 mg for only 20 US Dollars. I bought a lot o omiyage for pretty cheap as well．After the belt incident I didn’t pay anything over 15 US Dollars. We got so into haggling that we bought stuff for the sake of haggling. It was such a weird place. I even found a knock off DVD place where I bought 10 DVDs for 100 Yuan, which comes out to about 16 US Dollars. And not old movies too, I got some really new ones like Memoirs of a Geisha, Underworld Evolutions, and a couple more. It was a crazy experience. We also found a tailor where you can choose you own fabric to make dresses, suits, coats, and anything else that needs to be tailored. But the thing was it took 24 hours and we were leaving the next day. Finding a tailor was going to be one of the main goals for the rest of the trip. Anyway our time in Beijing was coming to a close but the next stop would be Xi’an.
So during the first week in May, Japan has 3 holidays in a row called Golden Week. Everyone in the country might use their vacation days to take a few days off so they can a have a full week to go sightseeing or just chill at home. We took this advantage and decided to go to a whole other country. Last year I went to Taiwan and Krystal went to Korea. So where to go to this year? We haven’t taken a trip with just Lisa since we were in Japan so this would be the perfect opportunity to go just the three of us. And it had been Lisa’s 26 year old dream to see the Great Wall of China. Since we were so close to China we had couldn’t pass it up.
So we left Japan on the 27th of April to go to Beijing. Our itinerary had us in Beijing first to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, then over to Xi’an to see the Terra-Cotta Statues, and then Shanghai for some city life.
Beijing: First impression… dirty and dusty. Krystal and my flight into Beijing were a few hours before Lisa’s so we needed to get to the hotel first. As soon as we got off the turbulent flight the first thing we saw was a KFC and Starbucks. This seems to be a running theme in China. Wherever you go, you never NOT see a Starbucks, KFC, or McDonald’s. Anyway finding the shuttle bus was pretty easy and we were off to the hotel in the city. As we took the hour and half bus ride, Beijing seemed like a normal city where you have huge sky scrapers and overpasses and anything else you find in a big city. We also noticed a lot of banners and posters getting ready for the 2008 Olympics being held in Beijing. We also noticed that the buildings were all huge. It might be because we came from Japan where everything is small and compacted but the buildings and the lots they were on were just huge. The air in Beijing was also somewhat unclean. The dust and sand that comes from the Gobi Desert created some kind of smog like yellow haze over the whole city.
We finally get to our stop and follow Lisa’s directions on how to get to the hotel. But it doesn’t seem to add up. You guys might laugh (Joel) but these weren’t really her directions. You see a good friend of Lisa went to China during Spring Break and gave Lisa lots of information on Beijing and she just regurgitated everything for Lisa. Anyway being a little of wary of Lisa’s directions I printed out a map to the hotel. But it turned out that both were wrong. Lisa’s directions had us going in the wrong direction and the map had the wrong names for some of the streets. After an hour or so of walking we decided to jump in a cab and have him take us to the hotel. It was a good thing too because we were totally in the wrong area and you had to go through a shaddy area and if we were on foot I would have probably turned around and gone back on the main road. But after a hectic hour we made it to our hotel. The hotel was located on a back street of a back street off the main road. The hotel was pretty nice with a few features that made our stay there every easy. It had a restaurant that stayed open until 12 midnight as well as a breakfast buffet that opened at 6:30 for about 3 dollars, a coffee shop where you could use the internet, a bar/lounge where you could play pool, foosball, or watch pirated movies on a big screen, laundry machines, a massage room, and even a travel agent. It was very convenient. The travel agent guy came in really handy because something happened to our train reservations to Xi’an and we needed to book a flight instead. It was a little more money but a lot better than waiting.
We arrived at the hotel at around 8ish and Lisa came at around 10. Luckily for us we had the restaurant in the hotel to eat at. The food wasn’t the best but it was good enough with things we recognized like Kung Pao Chicken, mixed vegetables, fried rice, and gyoza. It turns out that Lisa had the same trouble as us and was just grateful to reach the hotel in one piece.
Day 1 of the actual seeing of China we went to the Forbidden City, the ancient city where emperors, empresses, and concubines lived. It was pretty cool to see stuff that has been around since like 20 B.C. The building seemed to be all original stuff other than the occasional re-painted sections. The original building just looked dirty and the re-painted stuff just looked fake. But we did get to see a lot of stuff. We rented those audio guides and walked the Forbidden City for a few hours. The funniest thing about the Forbidden City was all the pavilions devoted to the emperors. It got pretty ridiculous after a while. Like we would come up to a pavilion and the audio guide would tell us, “This is the Pavilion of Supreme Patience…where the emperor would change his robes after a so and so ceremony.” I mean that’s ridiculous right? A giant pavilion the size of two, two story apartment complexes just so the emperor could change his clothes after a ceremony. But nevertheless it was cool. Be prepared to be floored… we also found a STARBUCKS in the Forbidden City. What’s up with that? The Forbidden City basically took the whole day. On our way out we got our first taste of Chinese haggling. They had a few souvenir shops and we got hooked into looking at some marble seals. The guy ushered us to come to his booth saying that he could right your name in Chinese characters. He even had a book of names with the Chinese characters and the English names. At first he told us 50 dollars in Yuan, but that seemed a little expensive so we said no thanks and started to walk away. This made the guy make the price lower and lower until we all ended up getting one for 25 Yuan, which comes out to about $4 US. Proud of our first souvenir, we headed back to the hotel to recuperate and get ready for dinner.
Krystal and Me in front of the main pavilion in the Forbidden City.
Dinner was another situation worthy of telling. So we decided that it would be wrong if we didn’t eat duck in Beijing, especially Peking Duck, and Beijing being another name for Peking we had to have some. Anyway we kept seeing this duck restaurant on the main street close to hotel. We planned on going there but went down a local shopping street parallel to the main road. Only thing we didn’t know was that the street kind of skewed so when we came out to the main road we were way off. We took a cab which cost less that 2 dollars US and went into the restaurant. Unfortunately the restaurant was just about to close. Fortunately the restaurant closed because we saw a menu and it looked like a gourmet duck place. This meant that they had duck webbings, duck tongue, all other parts that I thought you don’t eat. We saw a perfectly good restaurant across the way and went in with the hopes of eating duck. They ran out of duck, but did get to order some really good lap chong stuff, mabo tofu, and some kind of slow roasted shoyu pork thing. The first night’s dinner was a success! Next day, The Great Wall of China!
The Great Wall of China… there’s a reason why they call it “Great.” It was one of the coolest moments of my life. I never really had a desire to go but once I was there I couldn’t help but get wrapped in the Wall’s majesty. Only thing bad about the day was the air was kind of hazy due to the sand and dust from the desert. They really need to do something about that dust. But other than that the Great Wall was a lot of fun. It looked just like Mulan. We even took a picture of us where we pretended that there was a grappling hook coming over the Wall. I think Krystal is going to photoshop one in later. There were a few ways in which you could go up to the actual wall. One was hiking up by foot or you could take a ski lift thing. Of course we took the ski lift one. When we got to the top it looked just like the movies where you can see the Wall arch over the mountain tops. We were able to “hike” to two stations on the wall. I say “hike” because it literally was. Although there were stairs the stairs weren’t normal. You had really short steps so it doesn’t even feel like you’re on stairs and you have to take those weird long steps. Or you had really narrow steps that were steep. Those were the hard ones. You would feel pain on the way up as well as on the way down. But it was still pretty cool, but the best part was still to come. On the way down you were given a few more options. You could take the gondola thing down, hike down, or take a toboggan. That’s right, I said “toboggan.” People were lined up in front of a giant metal slide and you were given a toboggan to go down the mountain. How awesome is that? I even came with a handle so you can control how fast you go down. But ultimately, how fast you go down was based on how fast the people in front of you were going. Still yet, it was AWESOME!
Pretty awesome huh?
Going up to the Great Wall...
Lisa and Me going back down.
That night we decided to go with the lonely Planet guide book and eat at one of the places that was recommended. It turns out that the restaurant we chose was the best restaurant to eat at in all of China based on the authors’ experiences. It took a while to get there since we had no Chinese ability and it was on the other side of town. But we still made it and it was the best meal that I had in China. The book recommended the deep fried spare ribs which were excellent. And finally we got a chance to try the Peking Duck in Peking. It was soooooooooooooooooooooo good! I would totally recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Beijing, it’s totally worth it.
Oh My God, so good...
The next day was kind of a free day since we saw all the major sites so we decided to go to Temple of Heaven. I thought it was going to be a few buildings with a nice lawn but its actually really big. This is the site where the emperors would come to pray/sacrifice things to heaven, so that they may get there one day. We went to famous pavilion and all the smaller temples on the grounds. We also got a chance to fool around with the Echo Wall. Its basically a wall the has a perfect circumference so when you speak to the wall someone on the opposite side of the lot can totally hear you. It was pretty cool. We even tested it out. Krystal went to the West side of the circle and Lisa and I stayed at the East side. Then we just started talking, like we were using a telephone. It was a cool thing to experience.
The Temple of Heaven, view it in all its majesty.
After the Temple of Heaven, the girls wanted to go shopping so we went to the Silk Road shopping complex. Its kind of like an indoors version of the International Marketplace in Waikiki, where you can buy anything from silk rugs to sports apparel. The crazy thing about this place is that everything is haggle-able. They over price everything and then you just haggle down until you get to the price you want. Even by some chance you over pay or find out you could of gotten it for cheaper lots of times when you do the math and covert the Yuan into Dollars or Yen it’s still really dirt cheap. My first experience in haggle was for a belt. It was a knock off Diesel belt and I ended up buying it for about 32 US Dollars. If I had more experience I could have gotten it for much cheaper maybe in the 10-15 US Dollar range. But hey you learn from your mistakes right? After that Krystal and I were haggling like there was no tomorrow. Krystal was able to get a SD card with 512 mg for only 20 US Dollars. I bought a lot o omiyage for pretty cheap as well．After the belt incident I didn’t pay anything over 15 US Dollars. We got so into haggling that we bought stuff for the sake of haggling. It was such a weird place. I even found a knock off DVD place where I bought 10 DVDs for 100 Yuan, which comes out to about 16 US Dollars. And not old movies too, I got some really new ones like Memoirs of a Geisha, Underworld Evolutions, and a couple more. It was a crazy experience. We also found a tailor where you can choose you own fabric to make dresses, suits, coats, and anything else that needs to be tailored. But the thing was it took 24 hours and we were leaving the next day. Finding a tailor was going to be one of the main goals for the rest of the trip. Anyway our time in Beijing was coming to a close but the next stop would be Xi’an.
posted by Chris at 3:39 AM
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