China!

Well, I think one of the most important lessons I learned from China is that it is nothing like Japan.

My impressions of China began very poor, but I left very intrigued by the country. I loved the food and historical sights of Beijing and the environmental impacts of the population and pollution are really astounding.

Anyway, we docked on Wednesday in Qingdao (“Chingdao”) which is on the northern coast of China. It is maybe 400 miles from Shanghai. Shanghai was in the middle of a typhoon when we docked and we definitely felt the brunt of that. Our day spent in Qingdao was wet and windy! We walked off the ship and explored the city. It was quite an awakening to go from modern Japan to the slums of China. This beach city is small and very run down. Each alley way was lined with corrugated tin shacks. Hardly anyone spoke English so it was tough to get around and we spent about an hour at the bank trying to exchange money, but eventually found an ATM that worked. We were trying to find a restaurant for our friend Kristi’s birthday dinner that night. We were pretty miserable after being refused cabs by drivers because we were white and not feel much friendliness from the people of Qingdao. We did meet a very nice young woman who stopped to help us and knew about 20 words in English, took us up to her office on the 22^nd floor, and had her secretary help us figure out that we wanted to find a nice restaurant for that night. It took about 20 minutes to get our point across. Then she had another one of her employees walk us to this restaurant. So meeting these friendly people really helped brighten our view of the Chinese. It was raining so hard that we didn’t end up going back out for dinner and ate on the ship for Kristi’s birthday. The rain did settle and we headed back out for a few hours to the Tsingtao brewery (also pronounced “Chingdao”) so Kristi could have a beer on her 21^st birthday. We met a lot of very nice Chinese people here too and had a lot of fun. One family that was eating very adamantly offered us roast cockroach and my friend Alex and I tried them. It actually tastes like burnt chicken skin, not that bad.

The next day was the beginning of my SAS sponsored trip to Beijing. We signed up for these trips this summer, and I got lucky because my good friend Jess and my roommate chose the University trip as well and we were placed at the same University. I am so glad I did this trip through SAS because I saw and experienced way more than I could have if I had traveled independently because the city is huge and it was nice to not have to worry about planning or paying for anything. We had air conditioned buses take us everywhere and two hosts from the University who had everything planned for us. We took a flight out to Beijing on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to Tsinghua (“Chingwa”) University for dinner with the students. Dinner was awesome, the main dish was Peking Duck and there were many other Chinese dishes. Jess, our friend Brett, and I were befriended by Alan. Alan is ridiculously smart. He is doing graduate research at Tsinghua in Biology but now he is working for Yahoo! China and has decided to switch into the computer field, but spits when he talks and always has food in his teeth. He was a hoot.

Our hotel was very nice, but I didn’t know they made mattresses so hard. It was a rough sleep. The next morning we headed up to the Great Wall. This was an awesome experience. It is about 45 minutes outside of Beijing and the surrounding mountains are beautiful. The smog still carries outside the city, but is not as bad. It was a hard hour and half climb up to get to the highest point, but it was so worth it. Each step is worn differently; one will be six inches up, the next a foot and a half. It was a hot day, but after the downpour in Qingdao it was so nice to be inland and away from the storm. Our guide took us to lunch a Mongolian hot pot restaurant which was really cool. Each person gets their own pot of boiling water with a few things in it. They bring plates and baskets of veggies, meat, and noodles and while the noodles cook you drop the meats in for about two minutes and they cook. It was really good and fun to eat. We spent the afternoon at the Panda zoo. The pandas were adorable, but very secluded and the zoo is really run down. But it was cool to see Pandas in China. We spend the rest of the afternoon on the campus of Tsinghua hanging out with students and had dinner with them at a pizza parlor on campus too. It was so great to interact with these students. It was so different from Japan because their English was great and we could actually talk about things like education, government, population, stuff like that. I went bowling with a few after dinner and that was a great time. It was actually sad to say goodbye to Alan and the other people we had met, they were really cool. I already have emails from a few of my new Chinese friends. One of them is interested in post-grad in Communication at UCSB so I plugged the school and am working on contacts for her.

Our next day in Beijing was really packed. We visited Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City in the morning. These were beautiful sights, but it was a Saturday so it was soo packed. In Tiananmen Square you couldn’t walk one foot without being hounded to purchase kites or postcards or Chairman Mao memorabilia. We were able to get an audio tour through the Forbidden City, which were the grounds for the emperor’s palace hundreds of years ago. Lunch was great again at a Chinese restaurant where the main dish was dumplings. That afternoon we visited the Temple of Heaven which was beautiful. Then we got about an hour and a half to spend at the Silk Market and grab dinner. The Silk Market is a five story building with rows and rows of people selling clothes/jewelry/electronics/etc. Needless to say dinner never really happened for most of us. The art of the Silk Market is bargaining, which was fun at first but got really tiring especially because my time was so limited. You have to spend ten minutes bargaining to get the price down, but I became pretty good. It was quite an experience. After that we went directly to a Chinese Acrobatics show. They did tight rope tricks, bicycle tricks and lots of stuff very reminiscent of Cirque de Soleil. This was an awesome day and I was really thankful for our trip coordinator who put it all together because I can’t believe we packed so much in.

Our last day in Beijing, we spent the morning at the Summer Palace where the emperors used to move in the hot summers. There was a large lake in the center and we took paddle boats around and enjoyed the huge park around the lake lined with willow trees. It was a really beautiful area and there were a lot families spending Sunday there. We would say hello to little kids and their parents would make sure they stopped and said hello and goodbye back. It is obvious that learning English and interacting with Westerners is seen as really important in China. They start learning English in preschool now and you can’t get into a University without passing an English test.

While we were in Beijing, our ship sailed down from Qingdao to Hong Kong. So that afternoon we flew from Beijing to Hong Kong. Our 40 minute ride to the ship was awesome. All of buildings in Hong Kong are high rises and everything is lit up. Our next day in Hong Kong was rainy and I didn’t do much of anything you might consider educational. I pressed our tour guide on the bus from the airport to find out if there were any can’t miss sights if you are only in Hong Kong for a day. Her main recommendation was shopping. So I did that. I mentioned previously that I packed light under SAS’s recommendation and wish I had brought more clothes. (My laundry day was supposed to be yesterday, it has been over 20 days!!!) So, I shopped and the bargain hunter I am, I found almost everything on sale. I got seven tops and a sweater for barely over $100 USD. So now I won’t have to wear my sweaty or rain soaked clothes over and over again. Hong Kong is pretty dangerous as far as shopping goes; that is their number one industry. I mean, our cruise terminal was a mall!!!! You couldn’t leave the ship and walk outside without walking through the largest mall I’ve ever seen. (We got lost A lot!) People come from all over, especially mainland China, for the shopping because things are cheap and there is no sales tax.

Pulling out of Hong Kong was another amazing sight. The city is just so brightly lit and every building has some colorful changing lights on it. One whole side of a building was flashing letter by letter “Goodbye Semester at Sea.” It was really cool.

So, all in all I had a wonderful time in China. I feel like I learned a lot about their society, it really is fascinating. It might be close to surpassing Japan as the second largest economy in the world, but I saw so much poverty. Beijing is a massive city and still the overpopulation is obvious by the overcrowded bus lines, and never-ending high rise apartment buildings that are always in view. By the third day it was really painful for me to breathe. I had a coughing fit and after that my lungs really hurt when I breathed. The smog blocks the view of many buildings that may only be ¼ mile away. They have a lot to work on before the Olympics on that front. I heard the athletes are going to have to come to Beijing early and learn how to work in the different air. I did like the yuan though, that is their currency. I spent less than $60 USD in 5 days on food, drinks, small souvenirs, and bottled water (you can’t drink the tap.) Many of my meals where covered by my trip, but not all.

Next I am off to Vietnam. We are docking near Ho Chi Minh City and I don’t have any overnight travel plans. I am doing a variety of day trips and am looking forward to spending the nights on the ship. Traveling really takes a lot out of you and I am probably gonna have to do a little school work during the week. I still plan to see a lot of cool things. I will keep you updated! =)