(Another shot from the top of Lantau peak in Hong Kong.)
Hello from Beijing!
Wow how fast the time goes. While a part of me feels like I’ve been here for a month, I also feel the time flying by and so I’m doing my best to soak up as much as I can each day.
We arrived in Beijing yesterday around 3:45pm and have unfortunately found that our new hotel is quite a downgrade from the last one… The rooms are about half the size, quite dirty, have harder beds, and literally don’t have a bathtub or shower stall but instead there is a straight up shower head in the middle of the wall with a drain a few inches away from the toilet (see pictures). But before complaining too much I must admit that I had the absolute best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted for dinner last night. The Kung Pao Chicken and Sweet and Sour Pork and pretty much everything else was phenomenal. Plus, the night life in Beijing is much more lively and inviting and the streets are much cleaner than Shanghai. So there are pluses and minuses to both.
Anyways, let me do a little reflecting on Shanghai since we just arrived in Beijing yesterday and haven’t done too much here yet. First of all, I have to mention that we rode this bullet express train from the airport to a more central location in the city (to give you some perspective of Shanghai’s size, we were told it is 20% larger than the state of Delaware!) that literally went 430 km/hr (see picture) or what we calculated to be 258 mph. This was quite a rush, and thankfully “the patch” that I have been using for flying hadn’t worn off yet so I had no motion sickness issues.
As I mentioned briefly in the last post, our group of 46 people went on a walking tour throughout the city to check out the sites and one of the famous shopping markets of Shanghai. (I have still yet to really pick up any souvenirs because most of it is just trinkets that I don’t need. However, if anyone has something you’d like me to look for shoot me an email and I’ll keep my eyes open for it.) This was a fun though tiring excursion and I regretted wearing my Reef sandals at about mile 3 of what was probably 6-7 miles of walking.
The “Pearl Tower” dinner ended up being pretty legit. It was a very similar experience to eating at the Space Needle, though I think it was a bit taller with a larger slowly rotating restaurant at the top. It was here that I had my second exotic food of the trip – escargot (a.k.a. snail). This was rather chewy and was thankfully stuffed with pesto which made it taste decent (a third exotic dish was the bbq goose I had a few nights ago! I wasn’t a fan.). Also, in order to get to the Pearl Tower and back we had to go underwater on a small trolley type “experience” called “The Bund.” It turned out being this really trippy five minute ride that had a light show going on outside the trolley in the tunnel (see pictures).
The next day was our “Shanghai company visit day” so we went to one of the largest semi-conductor manufacturers in the country called “Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation” or SMIC (really original huh?). There were two expatriates from the States who worked there and told us about the company, how they do business, and why they’ve decided to invest their lives and the lives of their families in working in Shanghai, China instead of the US. This was an interesting visit though it didn’t convince me to want to work in Shanghai. After this lecture we went to an upscale shopping mall for lunch where a group of us ate some good Thai food. Then in the afternoon we visited Microsoft – specifically the China Research and Development group which was also rather interesting and informative especially learning about how the company is combating piracy issues which are so prevalent today.
Saturday was our free day in Shanghai. Some groups went on a shopping extravaganza and visited the 101st floor of the “Bottlecap Building” which is the second largest building in the world, other groups went to the Chinese Communist Propaganda Museum, and myself and another large group went to the Wild Animal Park which is similar to the zoo but larger and according to the locals much better. And, while this park was epic for reasons I’ll mention shortly, it was also an incredible adventure getting there. The group of eight students that I went with ended up asking the hotel receptionists to write down the name of the zoo and the necessary buses we needed to get on to get there for us in Chinese characters on a piece of paper. Once we had that we walked 15 minutes to a bus station where we asked the locals as best we could what time the bus was coming. After about 10 minutes of trying to communicate with our English to Mandarin dictionaries, the bus we needed happened to pull up to the station and we all got on. And unfortunately words can’t really explain the absolute chaos that defines the public bus system here. All I can say is there is “always room for one more” so you end up getting about 60 or more people on a bus sitting or standing up against each other as the bus weaves through the sea of taxis, mopeds, and pedal bikes throughout the city. You also pay while you’re on the bus by giving a lady the right amount of money in exchange for a bus pass. We had absolutely no idea how this worked and it took us about 10 minutes to actually pay for all of us. Furthermore, we showed a few locals where we were going and all of a sudden we had nearly 10 of them on the overcrowded bus yelling all at once at each other trying to help us find the best way to get there. Eventually (it was about a half an hour bus ride) one of them who knew broken English and was getting off at the stop where we needed to transfer at ended up getting off with us and explaining to the next driver where we were headed. This second bus ride was over an hour and took us through some very poor parts of the city which was a cultural experience in itself. We finally got there and the entire 1.5+ hours cost us less than $1.50!
The Wild Animal Park itself turned out to be awesome. Needless to say we saw all sorts of animals. The panda’s and the ligers (a crossbreed between a lion and tiger which there are only 8 in the world) were incredible. The highlights were feeding these animals called “lemurs” who would grab chunks of banana out of ones hand or off ones head and climbing atop a full-sized elephant (see pictures)!
The ride back on the bus was very long due to rush hour traffic and I learned a very valuable lesson about traveling in foreign countries through this experience which is to always make sure you have emptied your bladder before getting on a bus during rush hour traffic. By about 45 minutes into our ride I was in pain and the bumpy roads and constant stops didn’t help. By around an hour and fifteen minutes in I was seriously considering either peeing in the water bottle in my hand or getting off the bus alone at a random stop in Shanghai to find a bathroom. My hopes got up when we finally reached the transfer bus. I spied a gas station and was starting to walk over when all of a sudden our connector bus arrived and the 9 of us piled on. I almost cried. It took another 35 minutes or so for us to get into a part of the city I recognized. As soon as we reached a spot where I knew we could get back, I told the group I was going to hoof it from there and thankfully 2 other guys got off with me. I frantically looked around for a bathroom on the street but when there was none in site I jogged over to a corner in the alley and took care of business as nonchalantly as possible for over a minute. Quite the experience!
That night a group of 9 of us ate at a traditional Chinese restaurant in the city. The beauty of food here is that you can eat well for around US$5. After dinner we went back to the hotel hung out for awhile and packed for Beijing.
Alright that’s all for now. I’ll update from Beijing in a few days after I’ve seen the Chinese Acrobats, the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Paralympics.
Kyle
Wow how fast the time goes. While a part of me feels like I’ve been here for a month, I also feel the time flying by and so I’m doing my best to soak up as much as I can each day.
We arrived in Beijing yesterday around 3:45pm and have unfortunately found that our new hotel is quite a downgrade from the last one… The rooms are about half the size, quite dirty, have harder beds, and literally don’t have a bathtub or shower stall but instead there is a straight up shower head in the middle of the wall with a drain a few inches away from the toilet (see pictures). But before complaining too much I must admit that I had the absolute best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted for dinner last night. The Kung Pao Chicken and Sweet and Sour Pork and pretty much everything else was phenomenal. Plus, the night life in Beijing is much more lively and inviting and the streets are much cleaner than Shanghai. So there are pluses and minuses to both.
Anyways, let me do a little reflecting on Shanghai since we just arrived in Beijing yesterday and haven’t done too much here yet. First of all, I have to mention that we rode this bullet express train from the airport to a more central location in the city (to give you some perspective of Shanghai’s size, we were told it is 20% larger than the state of Delaware!) that literally went 430 km/hr (see picture) or what we calculated to be 258 mph. This was quite a rush, and thankfully “the patch” that I have been using for flying hadn’t worn off yet so I had no motion sickness issues.
As I mentioned briefly in the last post, our group of 46 people went on a walking tour throughout the city to check out the sites and one of the famous shopping markets of Shanghai. (I have still yet to really pick up any souvenirs because most of it is just trinkets that I don’t need. However, if anyone has something you’d like me to look for shoot me an email and I’ll keep my eyes open for it.) This was a fun though tiring excursion and I regretted wearing my Reef sandals at about mile 3 of what was probably 6-7 miles of walking.
The “Pearl Tower” dinner ended up being pretty legit. It was a very similar experience to eating at the Space Needle, though I think it was a bit taller with a larger slowly rotating restaurant at the top. It was here that I had my second exotic food of the trip – escargot (a.k.a. snail). This was rather chewy and was thankfully stuffed with pesto which made it taste decent (a third exotic dish was the bbq goose I had a few nights ago! I wasn’t a fan.). Also, in order to get to the Pearl Tower and back we had to go underwater on a small trolley type “experience” called “The Bund.” It turned out being this really trippy five minute ride that had a light show going on outside the trolley in the tunnel (see pictures).
The next day was our “Shanghai company visit day” so we went to one of the largest semi-conductor manufacturers in the country called “Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation” or SMIC (really original huh?). There were two expatriates from the States who worked there and told us about the company, how they do business, and why they’ve decided to invest their lives and the lives of their families in working in Shanghai, China instead of the US. This was an interesting visit though it didn’t convince me to want to work in Shanghai. After this lecture we went to an upscale shopping mall for lunch where a group of us ate some good Thai food. Then in the afternoon we visited Microsoft – specifically the China Research and Development group which was also rather interesting and informative especially learning about how the company is combating piracy issues which are so prevalent today.
Saturday was our free day in Shanghai. Some groups went on a shopping extravaganza and visited the 101st floor of the “Bottlecap Building” which is the second largest building in the world, other groups went to the Chinese Communist Propaganda Museum, and myself and another large group went to the Wild Animal Park which is similar to the zoo but larger and according to the locals much better. And, while this park was epic for reasons I’ll mention shortly, it was also an incredible adventure getting there. The group of eight students that I went with ended up asking the hotel receptionists to write down the name of the zoo and the necessary buses we needed to get on to get there for us in Chinese characters on a piece of paper. Once we had that we walked 15 minutes to a bus station where we asked the locals as best we could what time the bus was coming. After about 10 minutes of trying to communicate with our English to Mandarin dictionaries, the bus we needed happened to pull up to the station and we all got on. And unfortunately words can’t really explain the absolute chaos that defines the public bus system here. All I can say is there is “always room for one more” so you end up getting about 60 or more people on a bus sitting or standing up against each other as the bus weaves through the sea of taxis, mopeds, and pedal bikes throughout the city. You also pay while you’re on the bus by giving a lady the right amount of money in exchange for a bus pass. We had absolutely no idea how this worked and it took us about 10 minutes to actually pay for all of us. Furthermore, we showed a few locals where we were going and all of a sudden we had nearly 10 of them on the overcrowded bus yelling all at once at each other trying to help us find the best way to get there. Eventually (it was about a half an hour bus ride) one of them who knew broken English and was getting off at the stop where we needed to transfer at ended up getting off with us and explaining to the next driver where we were headed. This second bus ride was over an hour and took us through some very poor parts of the city which was a cultural experience in itself. We finally got there and the entire 1.5+ hours cost us less than $1.50!
The Wild Animal Park itself turned out to be awesome. Needless to say we saw all sorts of animals. The panda’s and the ligers (a crossbreed between a lion and tiger which there are only 8 in the world) were incredible. The highlights were feeding these animals called “lemurs” who would grab chunks of banana out of ones hand or off ones head and climbing atop a full-sized elephant (see pictures)!
The ride back on the bus was very long due to rush hour traffic and I learned a very valuable lesson about traveling in foreign countries through this experience which is to always make sure you have emptied your bladder before getting on a bus during rush hour traffic. By about 45 minutes into our ride I was in pain and the bumpy roads and constant stops didn’t help. By around an hour and fifteen minutes in I was seriously considering either peeing in the water bottle in my hand or getting off the bus alone at a random stop in Shanghai to find a bathroom. My hopes got up when we finally reached the transfer bus. I spied a gas station and was starting to walk over when all of a sudden our connector bus arrived and the 9 of us piled on. I almost cried. It took another 35 minutes or so for us to get into a part of the city I recognized. As soon as we reached a spot where I knew we could get back, I told the group I was going to hoof it from there and thankfully 2 other guys got off with me. I frantically looked around for a bathroom on the street but when there was none in site I jogged over to a corner in the alley and took care of business as nonchalantly as possible for over a minute. Quite the experience!
That night a group of 9 of us ate at a traditional Chinese restaurant in the city. The beauty of food here is that you can eat well for around US$5. After dinner we went back to the hotel hung out for awhile and packed for Beijing.
Alright that’s all for now. I’ll update from Beijing in a few days after I’ve seen the Chinese Acrobats, the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Paralympics.
Kyle
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