Hong Shin Da Sha

(re-post from jenderle.modevia.com)
The long day has come to an end. You might actually call it two days. I left home at 5 am on Friday morning to make my flight in Kansas City. I flew to Chicago and had a connecting flight to Beijing. This was the long flight. About 12 hours. It wasn't so bad. They played four movies, and I slept through 2 of them. I watched the good ones, "She's the Man," and "16 Blocks." I was going to try and watch "Pride and Prejudice," but it was Pride and Prejudice and I feel asleep in the first 20 minutes and didn't wake up until the last 15 minutes of "RV." That was great, very refreshing. I originally had a window seat but moved to let 3 people our age traveling together, sit together. I took one of their seats which was on the aisle and had no one sitting right next to me. Much much more comfortable. I got to sit next to an Asian-American who was traveling with her daughter. They lived in New Jersey and she attended a college very close to where my parents live, Stoneybrook. This was my first experience with the friendliness of Asians and their willingness to give you food and lots of it. She shared with me her fresh avocados, grapes and donut peaches. We had some delicious meals on the plane, and as I had hear before what you got served changed as you crossed the Pacific. Towards the end of the flight, I ordered the same 7up I had at the beginning of the flight, only now everything was in Chinese on the can and it had a very different top, one much like a can of tomato juice or a little can of pineapple juice. All in all, the trip was very enjoyable.Then came Beijing, our transfer time was very short, too short to make our connect flight to Hangzhou. We had to go through quarantine, to make sure you didn't have bird flu, through an entry gate where they check your passport and visa, then wait for our bags and then go through customs. We of course missed the first flight, but meet a friendly worker who was glad to help us all the way through to security, for a nice tip of course. Walking on to the plane was my first feeling of being a minority, almost everyone on the plane was Chinese. Now if you walked on to a plane in the US and everyone was American this would be the normal thing. But there is a huge difference, and this I believe will be the reoccurring difference throughout my trip. America is diverse, you walk on to a plane and have every nationality represented and may have 5 different languages or more being spoken. When I walked on to the plane in Beijing, everyone had black hair and spoke Chinese. I was very very clearly the minority, and was being looked at by everyone on board. This I hear will be the usual thing. Once we got to Hangzhou we checked into our hotel. The Red Star Hotel or "Hong Shin Da Sha." It is a very nice hotel, something that in America would cost 100 dollars cost less than 50. A few of us took a taxi to West Lake. It is very beautiful and being a Saturday night was very crowded. People say, "There is heaven and there is earth, and then there is Hangzhou, or heaven on earth." Many people come here for their honey moons. And they also say it is the third biggest attraction in China. I can't wait till tomorrow to see it in the sunlight. Some interesting sights and sounds included Karaoke to John Denver "Rocky Mountain High" and battling outdoor opera singers, singing in the same park about 50 yards from each other. We stopped in at a German bar, 1918 and had some home brews. They had two girls singing on a stage behind the bar, Karaoke both in English and in Chinese, most of the time switching in the middle of the song. I think my favorite was the Joan Jett classic, "I love Rock and Roll," much better than the Britney Spears version. It's been an exciting and yet also very long and tiring day-2 days. I've been told we're going to Shanghai later this week. I will be fighting jet lag and looking forward to the sights and sounds tomorrow. I hope to have some pictures up tomorrow. Today's word of the day is "she she" thank you. I don't think the rest of the blogs will be this long, there's a lot going on right now. Its actually about midnight here, I have to figure out how to change the time zone, Good night. -James
Posted by James Enderle at 00:01 Comments (2) Trackbacks (0)