China

Nǐ Hǎo!

That’s hello in Mandarin Chinese and about the only word I picked up while there. Now that the voyage is over, I figured I needed to get the rest of my updates finished. We were in China a month ago, from November 11-16 and then we had a few days on the ship before arriving in Japan. We had two ports in China, Hong Kong and Shanghai and most people opted to travel independently over land instead of on the ship. In five days we took a ferry to Macau and bungee jumped, flew to Beijing and toured the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Olympic Stadium, and Summer Palace, made dumplings, slept and hiked on the Great Wall, bargained to the point of exasperation, gasped at Chinese Acrobats, slept on an overnight train, and learned how to navigate through a city filled with 22 million people who don’t speak your language.
It all began with our arrival in Hong Kong on November 11th, which I realized when flipping through my passport, was the exact day that I had left Hong Kong four years earlier after visiting Jon. The port was connected to a huge mall, that took almost 30 minutes to exit. Because this was my second visit, I wanted to do something I hadn’t done there before, and that was bungee jump in Macau, off of Macau tower (the highest in the world). Though nothing can top my first time off the bridge in South Africa, this was still exhilarating! Afterwards, I had just enough time to take a cab back to the ferry station and catch the 4:00 ferry (with 3 minutes to spare) over to Hong Kong, which got me back to the port just in time to sprint through the mall and meet my group on the ship in time to leave for a field trip to the Cantonese Opera. This elaborate performance left my ears ringing for the next couple of days but was a rich cultural experience of an ancient Chinese tradition (even though I didn’t understand anything). The next morning about 200 SASers found their way to the Hong Kong airport and boarded flights to Beijing to begin our “Great Wall” trip, booked through The China Guide. After boarding buses and checking into our hotel, Ana, Kimmi, Issy, and I headed out to the Silk Factory. A big challenge was getting a cab, and once we did, communicating where we needed to go was difficult. More than once we had to ask around until we found someone who spoke English and could write down our destination in Chinese. Several times the four of us would just look at each other very confused, hoping that we would end up where we wanted to go, and usually we’d just start laughing. It wasn’t worth getting frustrated over and everything always worked out, but never in the way we expected. We made it to the Silk Factory, which is seven stories filled with vendors selling everything from winter clothes and silk robes, to bags and purses, to jewelry, electronics, and movies. Our priority was to get winter attire because freezing in the 20 degree Beijing weather was quite the climate change after sweating in Vietnam. I found some great stuff (a knock-off North Face jacket, gloves, hats, and boots) and it was the most intense bargaining I’ve experienced. I literally had to pry one woman’s fingers off my forearm before I could leave. I made several vendors angry, was called stupid, but usually got the price I wanted which would end up being around 20% of the price they started at.
The next morning, we got into groups of thirty outside of the hotel in a very unorganized fashion, met our guide, Rita, whom we fondly referred to as “piglet,” because instead of having a blue flag that said “The China Guide” for us to follow, she had a stuffed piglet attached to the end of the pole she carried. She was absolutely fantastic and kept us moving through both the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. They were both filled with other tour groups learning about the history, architecture, and significance of these sites. We stopped for lunch, which was the first of many “family style” meals with a variety of dishes –rice, chicken, dumplings, spring rolls, mystery vegetables and sauces, soups, pork, beef, salads. We made another stop at the Silk Factory (I wasn’t as overwhelmed this time and got used to people aggressively pushing past me in the crowded aisles) before beginning our three-hour bus ride away from the city to the Great Wall of China.
All eight buses arrived at the base camp around the same time. There was a restaurant and a couple of little shops full of “Great Wall” souvenirs, like panda hats, and “I climbed the Great Wall” sweatshirts. We ate dinner, and yes, I did buy a panda hat to wear over my other hat, and a sweatshirt (to add to my collection of “I climbed the Great Wall” stuff), which I later used as a pillow. Before making the trek up to the wall under a star-filled sky, everyone changed and added about three layers of clothing to prepare for the “high of 12 degrees” that night. I was wearing three layers of pants, two shirts and a sweatshirt, and a winter jacket, gloves, wool socks, a scarf and two hats. Luckily, we all got two subzero sleeping bags, a mat, and a flashlight. A couple groups had already gone up before us but we soon found room on the wall to “set up camp.” They had large boxes of snacks for us (which was actually breakfast, but we ate most of them that night) and lots of drinks. Some people promptly got into their sleeping bags, some were really loud and obnoxious, but we stayed up and explored the wall and celebrated Ana’s 21st birthday at midnight! Talk about an awesome place to be on your birthday. Finally, we settled down and I crawled into my sleeping bag and stayed surprisingly warm the whole night. In the morning, everyone was awake by around 6:30 in time to catch the end of the sunrise. It took all the willpower I could muster to emerge from my warm cocoon into the bitter cold. My bottle of water was frozen solid. But we were met with an incredible view of the glowing horizon, mountains, and the 4000-mile architectural wonder, the Great Wall, extending further than the eye could see. I munched on some of the leftover breakfast food, took off one layer of pants, brushed my teeth, and wished there was a bathroom (I would have been happy with a squat toilet even!). Anyway, we started our hike on the wall around 8:00 and despite the cold, it was a beautiful day. We ended a few miles later feeling exhilarated, accomplished, and excited that we had conquered our second of the seven wonders of the world. Once again, we piled back onto the buses and left the Wall behind us as we headed back to the city and toured the Olympic Stadium and Natatorium. And by toured I mean took lots of pictures jumping, doing handstands, and making human pyramids outside of it. Then it was off to a Chinese tea parlor for afternoon tea before a massage at the hotel and dinner with live entertainment.
On our last day there we went to the Summer Palace, a drum tower (where some of the drummers were those who performed in the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics), a nearby home to make dumplings, the Silk Factory for some last minute purchases, and a Chinese Flying Acrobatics Show! It was an awesome performance that displayed incredible strength and flexibility. After, we were all dropped off at the train station for our overnight train to Shanghai where the ship was now docked. Each cabin had 4 beds and somehow we managed to squeeze our luggage in as well. At one point, we had 18 people crowded into one cabin, hanging out, laughing, reflecting, and having some great conversations. We finally went to bed and were woken up early the next morning by a steward who peeked his head in our cabin saying “Shanghai? Shanghai?” It wasn’t our fault they didn’t announce the stops in English! We scrambled out of bed, threw our stuff back in our suitcases and boarded a bus that took us back to the ship. It was definitely a welcome sight. There were only a couple of hours left that day to explore Shanghai so I walked around the city and went out with some friends for a few drinks. I was so exhausted that it was nice to just take it easy; I definitely had some sleep to catch up on over the next few days in between homework. Well, that wraps it up for my trip to China. Next stop—Japan!

Heather