(Ok, so I was just thinking of good titles to the last installment of a movie series, and well I think I failed miserably on that one. Especially since I hear they're coming out with a new Indiana Jones, meaning that wouldn't be the last of the series. Enough with the introduction, on to the blog).
Part 4: Beijing – THIS WAS LIKE 2 MONTHS AGO!!!!!
I had to go and read some of the old blog to remember where I left off. There's so much more of Beijing to talk about, but I will attempt to fit it all in here. I had only told about our first night and day in Beijing.
Day two began with a journey back to Tiananmen Square. When we left the Forbidden City the day before TiananmenSquare had been closed off and we couldn't walk under Mao and the gate of Heavenly Peace. Tabitha especially wanted to walk under there, I think just because she likes cats. (In Chinese, mao is cat and also Chairman Mao, same word, different character and maybe different tones). We also got a closer 
look at the "Mascots Formerly Called The Friendlies" for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. I think their agent is Prince. They recently changed their name because "Friendlies" I guess sounds too much like Friend lie or something weird like that. There are five of them and when each of their individual Chinese names are put together it says "Welcome to Beijing." Personally I thought they didn't look too bad, and it was pretty genius to make five of them. Collect all five in your box of Lucky Charms Olympic Edition, after you send in 17,000 upcs. They are now known by a Chinese name and I think soon will only be called a symbol.
We then journeyed down to the Temple of Heaven. Our journey took a little longer than expected. First we took about an hour trying to get to the right side of the street in order to get to a subway station, only to find out when we got down into the station that it was closed for the holiday. WHAT! Oh right… Everyone's coming to Tiananmen Square so let's close that subway station, great thinking! Next our Lonely Planet showed a subway line that went straight south to the Temple of Heaven. How easy this would finally be. However after looking around where the subway station was supposed to be, I read a part under the subway heading, under construction. Ooops. So we took a taxi down to the park and found it to be a very pleasant atmosphere. The park the temple is located in is huge. There are actually only a few 
buildings, but acre upon acre of park. The park is nothing like Central Park, a nice city park, or the great parks of London. But the Chinese culture we saw all around us made it one of my favorite experiences in Beijing. Watching the unique form of Chinese exercise is quite fun, especially the old man who kept hitting his stomach and back while walking backwards. We also got to hear some traditional Chinese instruments that played none other than Jingle Bells (in October).
Our night continued with a dinner with some American friends, some who we had gone to college with. We were trying to find a pretty well known pizza place. Some Pedi cab drivers knew where it was and were willing to take us, but of course for a substantial fee, so instead, we decided to walk. The walk was along a beautiful lake so this was no problem for me. It was also funny to see workers from every restaurant we passed yell at us, "Come in!" "We have beer," and I think my favorite was a guy who just walked right up to me and said, "How many?"
The Summer Palace was day 3. Day 4 was the… Just kidding, I can't do it that fast. And I have to tell about the Summer Palace. Here again was a place that had a gigantic park. In both the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace you could see all the buildings in about 4 hours or so. Or you could spend all day. We split into groups here and I went with the group that walked around the lake that park was built around. We got to do some photo ops with a few more Chinese folks who wanted is in their pictures. We kept meeting one group and they even told us how to pose in one of them. Most of the buildings are located near a hill where I took this picture.
You can see the lake, the bridge with a billion arches and in the background, BEIJING. The highlight of the Summer Palace was when we stumbled upon a bunch of older Chinese men and women doing traditional dance. Earlier in the day we saw some younger ladies doing traditional dance and some acrobats. But here, they were all having so much fun! It was outside and we were right next to them. Couldn't have had better atmosphere. Here is a link to a video of the one of the dances they did. Check out the old guy and his fake mustache. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PoSHU16C8Y Follow this website to see the video of the dance
Dinner: The famous Beijing duck, and many other goodies.
After Dinner: Dairy Queen – But we never arrived, traveling with 20 people who have been walking all day, and who all walk at different speeds is not a well advised idea. My group ended up at McDonalds and had a nice ice cream cone.
We had nothing really planned for our fourth day in Beijing but a few of us decided to go out early to this place called the Silk Market. One of our American friends said he would be selling things there and we could meet him. We got there very early though so we hung out at a Starbucks near by. (It's nice to have some familiar things every now and then). Our friend still wasn't arriving until a lot later, so we decided to make our own journey into the Silk Market. The name's a little deceiving. It surely is a market, but only one of the 5 floors sells markets. The other floors sell everything from Gucci bags, to Chelsea football jerseys too, Sampsonite luggage, to chopstick, to little Chinese nick nacks, to IPODS, to watches, to T-shirts, to winter jackets, to the kitchen sink. Ok, everything but that last one. Now, you have to know, that most of these things aren't real, but you can find real things, and some very useful things. I bought some paintings that were painted by hand. And when I say hand I mean hand, no brush, all hand and fingers and one very long finger nail. You'd never believe that they were done in this way, but I saw him doing them. I also bought a Chelsea jersey with shorts, for about $10 American dollars. This would cost about, $150 if you bought it in London.
What made the Silk Market so much fun is the way you buy everything. You walk down the aisles and all the vendors yell at you, "Look, Look!" "You buy a purse" "You buy a bag for your lady" "Hey pretty lady, Purse!" Then if that doesn't work, they grab you and pull you into the store. And then if that doesn't work, they will flirt with you. Finally they will resort to crying and calling you a bad man, with a black heart, when you refuse to buy their fake Oakleys.
Pretty much any place you buy something in China, you can bargain. Well if every other place in China is an amusement park, the silk market is your Cedar Point with 3 kagillion roller coasters. They start out with ridiculous prices. one T-shirt – 100 yuan. (I bought 3 for 50) My Adidas bag I bought, 300 yuan (60). They do this because, when transferring to American or whatever other currency it is a reasonable price. But in fact they are ripping you off. Many people will pay this price so they will do this. You must keep lowering the price, even after they say final offer. And of course if they don't, walk away, then they will yell down the aisle the price you wanted. If you didn't walk away, and haven't made them about to cry, then you haven't done a good job of bargaining.
Bracha, Tabitha and I ended the night at the Lao She Tea House. I recommended this place to everyone we meet the next few days while we were in Beijing. It was a great medley of Chinese performing arts, all shown to you while you're sitting enjoying tea and great snacks. A stupendous time! Back at the hostel we continued our fun of meeting more foreigners, this time, a group of Swedes who were traveling Asia for the next 4 to 6 months. The most intriguing thing about meeting all the foreigners we did, is that you really see how English is the universal language. We met a ton of European folk, who all spoke great English. It made things so wonderful to be able to converse so easily with all of them.
We woke up the next morning excited for our trip to the Great Wall. We had a four hour bus ride to look forward too also. While we waited for our bus to pick us up (30 minutes late) and then to take another 30 minutes to pick up people from other hostels, we became friends with a very friendly couple, a man from Germany and a woman from Mexico who had met during this years world cup.
The bus trip was one of my most out of this world experiences. What I mean by this is, one of the many times in the last few months that I look at all the things around me and go, am I in a movie, 'cause this surely can't be reality. The bus began playing music from the time we got on. And this wasn't just music, but it was a lovely mix cd including all of your favorites: "This is the Rhythm of the Night", "I Will Always Love You", "Dancing Queen" – by an Abba cover band/techno band, and all of the rest of you favorite bad 80s songs but to Techno beats, plus some generally bad Chinese music. But the music itself wasn't what made it great. It was the middle aged Jewish guy from New York banging on the speaker over his head as soon as the music started. Then he tried to hold his hand over the speaker to make the music stop. Also across the way were a group of college students from Shanghai who could careless about the music on the radio. They were all asleep/passed out from the night before. And again, these are all odd situations but remember, I'm on my way to see the Great Wall of China. And the last song I hear before departing to journey to one of the wonders of the world… "Everything I do I do it for you" by Bryan Adams. Really, I'm not in a movie?
People say you're not a man until you have seen the great wall. I don't know what this means for all the girls, but I can say this. Pictures can do no justice, and neither can my words. From the moment we claimed up the hills, all I could say was… "wow" and "amazing", and "unbelievable." This went on for 5 hours. The only thing more astonishing then the wall and the view of the majestic hills around us, was the moment I climbed up one of the towers to find 2 couples eating their lunch. These elderly couples were talking to the Jewish fellow from New York, and I could tell he was talking to some more New Yorkers. And yes, they did live down the street from my parents in Dix Hills. Doesn't everyone find people on the Great Wall of China that live near their parents?
I was one of the last of the entire group to finish the nearly 5 hour trek (which they said they were only giving us 4 hours to do it in) since I almost never put my camera down. It was too hard. Everything was so perfect, and I wanted to capture as much as possible. If I'm going to the Great Wall of China, I'm not going to let someone tell me I can't stop and talk a ton of pictures!!!!!! I walked most of the way with the German/Mexican couple and then met some cool college kids from all around the world all studying together at Hong Kong University. We saw a few workers restoring a part of the wall. It was at this point when one of the workers pointed a stick at me several times and threatened to pelt me with rocks for reasons I'm still unsure off. The Great Wall was definitely the definition of breath taking, not only for the rigorous 5 hour, 10 km or more hike, but also the one of kind views.
We had to leave early the next morning to catch our flight back to Hangzhou. There at the airport we collectively felt our first bad experience of culture shock. After spending a week around millions of people, we reached a boiling point in the early hours of the morning, as the multitudes around us at the airport did not make lines and continued to shove. This is what they do, and have always done. There are no lines, and it’s a push your way to the front mentality. We all made it through alive though and sat in the airport chairs with a complete mixed look of exhaustion, frustration, and marvel. We had finished our trip to Beijing and it was simply, unforgettable.
Part 4: Beijing – THIS WAS LIKE 2 MONTHS AGO!!!!!
I had to go and read some of the old blog to remember where I left off. There's so much more of Beijing to talk about, but I will attempt to fit it all in here. I had only told about our first night and day in Beijing.
Day two began with a journey back to Tiananmen Square. When we left the Forbidden City the day before TiananmenSquare had been closed off and we couldn't walk under Mao and the gate of Heavenly Peace. Tabitha especially wanted to walk under there, I think just because she likes cats. (In Chinese, mao is cat and also Chairman Mao, same word, different character and maybe different tones). We also got a closer look at the "Mascots Formerly Called The Friendlies" for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. I think their agent is Prince. They recently changed their name because "Friendlies" I guess sounds too much like Friend lie or something weird like that. There are five of them and when each of their individual Chinese names are put together it says "Welcome to Beijing." Personally I thought they didn't look too bad, and it was pretty genius to make five of them. Collect all five in your box of Lucky Charms Olympic Edition, after you send in 17,000 upcs. They are now known by a Chinese name and I think soon will only be called a symbol.We then journeyed down to the Temple of Heaven. Our journey took a little longer than expected. First we took about an hour trying to get to the right side of the street in order to get to a subway station, only to find out when we got down into the station that it was closed for the holiday. WHAT! Oh right… Everyone's coming to Tiananmen Square so let's close that subway station, great thinking! Next our Lonely Planet showed a subway line that went straight south to the Temple of Heaven. How easy this would finally be. However after looking around where the subway station was supposed to be, I read a part under the subway heading, under construction. Ooops. So we took a taxi down to the park and found it to be a very pleasant atmosphere. The park the temple is located in is huge. There are actually only a few buildings, but acre upon acre of park. The park is nothing like Central Park, a nice city park, or the great parks of London. But the Chinese culture we saw all around us made it one of my favorite experiences in Beijing. Watching the unique form of Chinese exercise is quite fun, especially the old man who kept hitting his stomach and back while walking backwards. We also got to hear some traditional Chinese instruments that played none other than Jingle Bells (in October).Our night continued with a dinner with some American friends, some who we had gone to college with. We were trying to find a pretty well known pizza place. Some Pedi cab drivers knew where it was and were willing to take us, but of course for a substantial fee, so instead, we decided to walk. The walk was along a beautiful lake so this was no problem for me. It was also funny to see workers from every restaurant we passed yell at us, "Come in!" "We have beer," and I think my favorite was a guy who just walked right up to me and said, "How many?"
The Summer Palace was day 3. Day 4 was the… Just kidding, I can't do it that fast. And I have to tell about the Summer Palace. Here again was a place that had a gigantic park. In both the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace you could see all the buildings in about 4 hours or so. Or you could spend all day. We split into groups here and I went with the group that walked around the lake that park was built around. We got to do some photo ops with a few more Chinese folks who wanted is in their pictures. We kept meeting one group and they even told us how to pose in one of them. Most of the buildings are located near a hill where I took this picture.
You can see the lake, the bridge with a billion arches and in the background, BEIJING. The highlight of the Summer Palace was when we stumbled upon a bunch of older Chinese men and women doing traditional dance. Earlier in the day we saw some younger ladies doing traditional dance and some acrobats. But here, they were all having so much fun! It was outside and we were right next to them. Couldn't have had better atmosphere. Here is a link to a video of the one of the dances they did. Check out the old guy and his fake mustache. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PoSHU16C8Y Follow this website to see the video of the dance
Dinner: The famous Beijing duck, and many other goodies.After Dinner: Dairy Queen – But we never arrived, traveling with 20 people who have been walking all day, and who all walk at different speeds is not a well advised idea. My group ended up at McDonalds and had a nice ice cream cone.
We had nothing really planned for our fourth day in Beijing but a few of us decided to go out early to this place called the Silk Market. One of our American friends said he would be selling things there and we could meet him. We got there very early though so we hung out at a Starbucks near by. (It's nice to have some familiar things every now and then). Our friend still wasn't arriving until a lot later, so we decided to make our own journey into the Silk Market. The name's a little deceiving. It surely is a market, but only one of the 5 floors sells markets. The other floors sell everything from Gucci bags, to Chelsea football jerseys too, Sampsonite luggage, to chopstick, to little Chinese nick nacks, to IPODS, to watches, to T-shirts, to winter jackets, to the kitchen sink. Ok, everything but that last one. Now, you have to know, that most of these things aren't real, but you can find real things, and some very useful things. I bought some paintings that were painted by hand. And when I say hand I mean hand, no brush, all hand and fingers and one very long finger nail. You'd never believe that they were done in this way, but I saw him doing them. I also bought a Chelsea jersey with shorts, for about $10 American dollars. This would cost about, $150 if you bought it in London.
What made the Silk Market so much fun is the way you buy everything. You walk down the aisles and all the vendors yell at you, "Look, Look!" "You buy a purse" "You buy a bag for your lady" "Hey pretty lady, Purse!" Then if that doesn't work, they grab you and pull you into the store. And then if that doesn't work, they will flirt with you. Finally they will resort to crying and calling you a bad man, with a black heart, when you refuse to buy their fake Oakleys.
Pretty much any place you buy something in China, you can bargain. Well if every other place in China is an amusement park, the silk market is your Cedar Point with 3 kagillion roller coasters. They start out with ridiculous prices. one T-shirt – 100 yuan. (I bought 3 for 50) My Adidas bag I bought, 300 yuan (60). They do this because, when transferring to American or whatever other currency it is a reasonable price. But in fact they are ripping you off. Many people will pay this price so they will do this. You must keep lowering the price, even after they say final offer. And of course if they don't, walk away, then they will yell down the aisle the price you wanted. If you didn't walk away, and haven't made them about to cry, then you haven't done a good job of bargaining.
Bracha, Tabitha and I ended the night at the Lao She Tea House. I recommended this place to everyone we meet the next few days while we were in Beijing. It was a great medley of Chinese performing arts, all shown to you while you're sitting enjoying tea and great snacks. A stupendous time! Back at the hostel we continued our fun of meeting more foreigners, this time, a group of Swedes who were traveling Asia for the next 4 to 6 months. The most intriguing thing about meeting all the foreigners we did, is that you really see how English is the universal language. We met a ton of European folk, who all spoke great English. It made things so wonderful to be able to converse so easily with all of them.
We woke up the next morning excited for our trip to the Great Wall. We had a four hour bus ride to look forward too also. While we waited for our bus to pick us up (30 minutes late) and then to take another 30 minutes to pick up people from other hostels, we became friends with a very friendly couple, a man from Germany and a woman from Mexico who had met during this years world cup.
The bus trip was one of my most out of this world experiences. What I mean by this is, one of the many times in the last few months that I look at all the things around me and go, am I in a movie, 'cause this surely can't be reality. The bus began playing music from the time we got on. And this wasn't just music, but it was a lovely mix cd including all of your favorites: "This is the Rhythm of the Night", "I Will Always Love You", "Dancing Queen" – by an Abba cover band/techno band, and all of the rest of you favorite bad 80s songs but to Techno beats, plus some generally bad Chinese music. But the music itself wasn't what made it great. It was the middle aged Jewish guy from New York banging on the speaker over his head as soon as the music started. Then he tried to hold his hand over the speaker to make the music stop. Also across the way were a group of college students from Shanghai who could careless about the music on the radio. They were all asleep/passed out from the night before. And again, these are all odd situations but remember, I'm on my way to see the Great Wall of China. And the last song I hear before departing to journey to one of the wonders of the world… "Everything I do I do it for you" by Bryan Adams. Really, I'm not in a movie?
People say you're not a man until you have seen the great wall. I don't know what this means for all the girls, but I can say this. Pictures can do no justice, and neither can my words. From the moment we claimed up the hills, all I could say was… "wow" and "amazing", and "unbelievable." This went on for 5 hours. The only thing more astonishing then the wall and the view of the majestic hills around us, was the moment I climbed up one of the towers to find 2 couples eating their lunch. These elderly couples were talking to the Jewish fellow from New York, and I could tell he was talking to some more New Yorkers. And yes, they did live down the street from my parents in Dix Hills. Doesn't everyone find people on the Great Wall of China that live near their parents?
I was one of the last of the entire group to finish the nearly 5 hour trek (which they said they were only giving us 4 hours to do it in) since I almost never put my camera down. It was too hard. Everything was so perfect, and I wanted to capture as much as possible. If I'm going to the Great Wall of China, I'm not going to let someone tell me I can't stop and talk a ton of pictures!!!!!! I walked most of the way with the German/Mexican couple and then met some cool college kids from all around the world all studying together at Hong Kong University. We saw a few workers restoring a part of the wall. It was at this point when one of the workers pointed a stick at me several times and threatened to pelt me with rocks for reasons I'm still unsure off. The Great Wall was definitely the definition of breath taking, not only for the rigorous 5 hour, 10 km or more hike, but also the one of kind views.
We had to leave early the next morning to catch our flight back to Hangzhou. There at the airport we collectively felt our first bad experience of culture shock. After spending a week around millions of people, we reached a boiling point in the early hours of the morning, as the multitudes around us at the airport did not make lines and continued to shove. This is what they do, and have always done. There are no lines, and it’s a push your way to the front mentality. We all made it through alive though and sat in the airport chairs with a complete mixed look of exhaustion, frustration, and marvel. We had finished our trip to Beijing and it was simply, unforgettable.
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