China!!

So I’m finally getting my blog up about Beijing. The seas are significantly less rough now and tomorrow morning we port in Kobe, Japan. Last night there was a charity auction that ended up raising $25,000. Kids were bidding hundreds and hundreds of dollars, it was crazy. Other than some raffle tickets, I held onto my money. Anyway, Beijing rocked…

Our plane left on Sunday morning at 8:30 am, which means we left the ship at 6:30 am, which means our group met at 6:00 am, and which, in turn, means that I was up at 5:00 am. So yeah, my first day in Beijing was a tired one but since I got to sleep for three hours on the plane ride north it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
My group ended up having only thirty-three SASers on it, as opposed to the some of the other Beijing groups which had like ninety students. And our trip leader was Megan, a thirty-ish year-old Resident Director with a shaved head. She was really cool to have as our leader for our time in Beijing because she’s so laid-back and friendly.
So anyway, we got to Beijing around lunch time and were hit by a blast of cold air that made everyone cheer. Hong Kong had been hot and humid and Beijing was cold and dry. Man I loved it. Our guide for the entire time we were in Beijing told us to call her Jennifer, although it wasn’t her real name. If she had asked we could have easily memorized her Chinese name. I just felt bad calling her Jennifer the rest of the time she was with us. She was young, super knowledgeable about Beijing, and all and all a really good guide to have.
We went to lunch at this Chinese restaurant that served us a variety of dishes including chicken feet and then headed to the Summer Palace. Sorry, I’m feeling pretty seasick as I write this so my descriptions are lacking.
After the Summer Palace we were dropped off at the Novotel Hotel, where we would stay for the next four days. I was assigned to room with Cathryn Dargen Lumpkin from South Carolina. She goes by Dargen. On our way back downstairs to regroup with everyone for dinner, these American women asked where we were from. It turns out that one of them is the mother of Dargen’s brother’s best college friend and it was funny to watch them slowly figure it out as they talked excitedly in their southern accents.
For dinner our group met up with several other SAS groups for dinner at a restaurant that serves Peking roast duck. I wasn’t super excited about the meal and as plates of food with duck wings and pork came out I started wishing I had sat at the vegetarian table, but I held out and in the same meal ate both shrimp and duck. Go me. The duck was actually pretty good, although when I think about what I ate it sort of makes me sick.


My second day in Beijing was spent seeing Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Lama Temple. We first visited Tiananmen Square, which is amazingly huge. And then continued walking to, and through, the Forbidden City. We each were given a headset and allowed to go off on our own. So Anna, Dargen, and I explored, listening to the story behind each temple, or building, through the headsets. The Forbidden City was swarming with tourists, but I still enjoyed it. There was so much to look at! After each building you walked around behind it and saw another one about 100 yards away and it went on like this for quite some time.
We had been warned about the students who come up to you and say they are studying English and then want to show you their artwork. And indeed, we were approached. I told the twenty-year-old girl that we didn’t have time to see her artwork, but Anna said we did so followed her into the souvenir shop. The girl picked up painting after painting, telling us what it was of as though we couldn’t tell when we saw a painting of fruit or of the Great Wall. It was actually kinda funny. “I don’t think she’s going to stop,” I said under my breath to the Anna and Dargen as the girl continued picking up paintings and telling us what they were of. The paintings were really expensive and as we were leaving we saw other SASers being dragged in by “students studying English.”
We visited the Lama Temple next. It wasn’t anything too incredibly spectacular but the walkway to get to it was surrounded by yellow trees, which made my day. Aside from South Africa, Beijing was my first taste of fall weather this season so it was a big deal to me. Leaves were raked into piles and yes, I was tempted to jump into them.
After the Temple I took a cab with Dargen, Anna, and Ed to the Silk Market that Jennifer had recommended. It was the shopper’s heaven. We entered in the main floor and saw stall after stall of knock-off polos, coats, and jeans. Any article of clothing you wanted, they had it, and there was an entire other floor dedicated to clothing as well. On the bottom floor fake Pumas, Adidas, Nikes, etc, were for sale and knock-off designer purses took up the other half of the floor. There was also a floor of fabric and Chinese souvenirs and a floor full of jewelry and cosmetics. It was so overwhelming. I didn’t buy anything the first day and instead absorbed everything I was seeing. Women called me over saying “Lady, what purse you want?” They tried to get my attention, and everyone elses, time and time again as I passed by their stalls. I definitely got tired of saying “I’m just looking,” as they pointed to their merchandise asking if I liked it. I met up with my group at 5:00 and we hit up McDonald’s for dinner. I’m ashamed that I ate American fast food, but it was right across the street and I was low on Chinese currency at the time.
Ed turned out to be an impulse buyer and after eating we had to drag him away from the people running up to us and asking us to buy their merchandise. As I waited for him to buy his eight polos (he had just bought ten in the market), a man came towards me with fur draped around him. I backed away as he moved the head of one of the dead animals towards me. “I wouldn’t take that for free!” I said laughing as he continued in my direction.
The four of us took the Beijing underground Subway home but got off at the wrong stop and had no idea where we were once we walked up the stairs and were back at street level. It turns out we were only like six blocks from our hotel, but even so, none of the cab drivers had any idea where it was. We showed them the brochure for it and it was even written in Chinese, but they all shook their heads at us. We were in a big hurry since our bus to go to the acrobatic show that night left from the hotel within ten minutes so we finally just asked a guy to take us to Tiananmen Square since we sort of knew where it was from there. On the way we saw our hotel and had the man pull over. We made the bus just in time.
So yeah we then went straight to this acrobatic show which was amazing! It was an hour full of crazy balancing acts that just boggled my mind. The physics behind their performance is hard to comprehend. It was just really really cool. I watched with my mouth open in awe the entire time.



On Tuesday, as the black T-shirt I bought says, “I climbed the Great Wall.” It was over a two-hour drive to get to the section of the Wall that we visited, but we were still within the city limits of Beijing. Once outside of the downtown traffic, the drive was beautiful. Trees lined the final stretch to the Wall, their bare shadows covering the road.
Once we got to the foot of the mountain of the Great Wall section that we were seeing, everyone did the bathroom thing. I assumed that because we were at a major tourist attraction that the bathrooms would be at least decent, but they were disgusting. The darkly lit room was shaped in a set square with all the stall doors open, showing the “squatters” we would have to use rather than the standard western seated toilet. The squatter toilet was found nearly everywhere we went in China actually, even in airport bathrooms. Thank goodness that most bathrooms had a handicapped stall with what we considered to be a “real toilet.” Anyway, the bathroom reeked of urine so badly that I had to hold my breath. A Chinese woman using a squatter left the door wide open so as we rushed to get out of the bathroom while taking turns so that we could hold each others belongings, we also had to look at this woman, who apparently had no qualms about letting everyone who came into the restroom see her pee. I mean, the bathroom experience wasn’t that bad. After traveling to seven other countries I’ve seen some pretty bad ones. This is just one of the many examples.
We had the option of climbing the up to the Great Wall or riding the chairlift. Originally I was all for the chairlift but the landscape was so beautiful so Anna and I decided to hike it up. The hike ended up being stairs pretty much the entire way. For the first half of it a 70-year-old man, who was on our SAS trip, was in front of me and the fact that he was doing so well made me determined not to take a break. After about a half an hour of hiking we reached the Wall.
For the next two hours Anna and I walked around, climbing up and down stairs, taking way too many pictures, and admiring the amazing view. The Wall is surrounded by mountains and the trees around it still had some fall color on them, although most were bare. The sun was out and although I had been cold, I ended up taking off my coat and sweatshirt at one point because it was beating down on us so strongly.
The area of the Wall that we went to was less touristy then some of the other main sections. It was nice because, in turn, it was quiet and peaceful. Before going to the Great Wall I was excited but it wasn’t one of my priorities in life and I wasn’t overly interested in seeing it, but man, am I glad I went. It could have been the awesome fall weather or the amazing view surrounding the historical site, but I just loved being there. I felt so at peace.
To get back down to the buses we had three options: either hike down, take the chairlift, or slide down this metal toboggan slide. I, of course, had to do the slide. It winded around the trees, going back and forth for what seemed like forever. Teenage boys who were supposed to be watching sections of our descent and telling us to slow down, leaned against the trees, sleeping.
Once back down to the real world we were all bombarded by vendors selling Great Wall T-shirts, NorthFace coats, postcards, and everything else you could possibly imagine. I never ended up buying any postcards in China because the vendors intimidated me so badly that I didn’t want to say to one of them, “Yes, I want postcards,” because I knew if I did a group of them would surround me with other things they were selling such as the huge brown fluffy hats with the communist star and the Chairman Mao watches, which many students returned to the ship with.
We did the two hour ride back to Beijing and Jennifer, our guide, had our driver drop us off at the Silk Market. Anna didn’t have much money to spend so she followed me around as I took forever to decide on a black purse, the first I’ve ever owned, and a pair of sneakers. We explored the jewelry floor together, but didn’t have as much time as I would have liked before it was time for us to run downstairs and meet Dargen. The three of us ate Subway for dinner because it was cheap, familiar, and nearby. As we ate I decided that I wanted to find a plain black NorthFace coat and Dargen decided she wanted more pirated DVD’s. So back into the market we went. I found my coat, but was totally being overcharged for it. I was super-stubborn though and refused to pay more than like $25 American dollars for it since everyone else had been getting coats for that much. The young Chinese girl finally gave in, telling me that because I was getting it for so cheap that I had to go buy her and her two friends ice cream. She knew if was a far-fetched request and looked as though she was going to laugh as she said it. I didn’t end up getting it for them.
I was really glad to have a coat when we left the market because it was 7:30 pm by then and freezing out. We walked towards the subway station that would take us directly to the hotel and were sidetracked by a Baskin Robbins. After eating icecream despite how cold we were, we tried getting a cab because the subway station was nowhere in site. Once again, no one knew where our hotel was and none of the drivers spoke English. We eventually gave up and continued walking. We did find the train station and made it back to our hotel rather smoothly from there.
Dargen went off to call home and I lay in our room flipping through the Chinese television stations, wishing I could understand why the live audience in some shows was laughing so hard and just in general, what the heck was going on.



On the last day, Dargen and I, packed everything we bought in Beijing into our one allotted book bag plus purse, for the plane ride home. Dargen bought a lot more than I did and it was much more of a challenge for her, but all the same, I had trouble. I was afraid my fake NorthFace bag would break as I squeezed everything into it, and the purse I carried overflowed with my belongings.
After breakfast at the hotel our bus headed to the Temple of Heaven for our last stop in Beijing. We walked through the first gates and entered onto a wide walkway that led to the temple. Along the cement, a large group of Chinese women practiced tai chi, a few yards away a group of adults played hackey sack with badminton type object. As we continued our walk we saw couples taking dancing lessons, music blared out of a boombox as the men twirled their wives. The whole stretch was alive with retired Chinese men and women taking part in a variety of activities. I loved it.
Further down we went through another gate and walked up nine stairs to a circular platform that apparently the emperor stood at the center of because there are great acoustics from this one spot and he could address large crowds from it. A bit away from that was a temple, outside of it large rocks were implanted in the rest of the cement in a straight line away from the building. Apparently if you stand on the first rock and clap you can hear one echo, from the second rock you can hear two, from the third you can hear three, and so on. I tried it but was unable to hear this so-called echo, probably because there were Chinese men around me clapping randomly, trying to hear their echo as well.
After our visit to the Temple of Heaven we headed to the airport for our 12:55 flight. Inside Beijing Airport we met up with nearly a hundred other SASers who were also on our flight. We sat around on the ground, waiting for our boarding passes, and soon learned that our flight was delayed by three hours. Later, another flight with SAS kids was even further delayed. Some said it because Bush is coming to China and there are threats on the airlines, others said it was delayed because the control tower was down. Either way, I had to sit in a crazy crowded terminal for three hours. There were at least two hundred SASers in the terminal, lying on the ground and taking up most of the seats, their bags sprawled out around them. I ran into Carrie, Kathryn, and Janelle as they too were finishing up their Beijing trips.
When our flight finally began boarding students shoved through the narrow passageway to the bus outside that was waiting to drive us to our plane. I tried my best to be polite until the girl, Morgan, bet me that she would beat me through the mob, so of course I had to win. After four days in Beijing though, I learned that being polite really isn’t an issue in China. I don’t know if it’s because we’re foreigners or what, but the Chinese sure didn’t give much thought to pushing us out of the way while in their country. On the airplane, some Chinese men tried passing people in the aisles, something you don’t do. When I was in the cafeteria line in the airport, a man just budged in front of me like I wasn’t even there. In fact, many times in the airport, Chinese people just budged in front of us, ignoring our presence. As I waited with the mob of people on flight CA109 to board, this woman next to me was pushing through and in turn, caught on my book bag and dragging me with her. There was no space for her but she kept moving. Back on the ship Carrie was saying that she’s never felt as shoved around before as she did in China.
So anyway, we eventually got on the plane and it left by 3:30. At the Hong Kong airport, my group quickly got together so that we could be the first SAS group out of the airport and, in turn, be the first group back on the ship, meaning the line would be shorter for us. Getting back on the ship with tons of bags that need to be inspected, takes forever, especially on the last night in port so the fact that we were first back and that I was at the front of the line was awesome. Kathryn was on the same flight as me but I showered and unpacked before she got through security and back on the ship. I guess one flight with SAS kids was majorly delayed and they didn’t get back to the ship till around 11:00 pm, two hours past the on-ship time.

So yeah, China was awesome. In fact, it now ranks as one of my favorite countries, but it may be because I was absolutely in love with the weather there. For once I wasn’t sweating constantly (they say SAS stands for “sweat all semester”) and I got to bundle myself up and smell the cold air that makes me think of home. My mood was completely affected by the pleasant late-fall weather. Regardless though, I had a great time and am so happy I made the decision to pay a bunch to travel up to Beijing, it was totally worth it. So yeah, eight ports down, one to go (if you don’t count Hawaii). I can’t believe how fast this voyage is going.