Our last day was very much what I expected it to be. I was somewhat surprised at how early everyone wanted to leave and start shopping (left at nine), but getting an early start meant more time to find what we were looking for. We went to Silk Alley first, and spent the morning there. Walking through all those stalls one last time made me realize that I was going to miss the Chinese shopping experience a lot. It'll be weird walking through the malls in America; I'll actually have to find a shopkeeper if I need help, and I'll probably have to wait... Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. But my point is that living in this environment for a whole month has left a strong impression on me, and I'll be keeping these experiences forever.
We finished up our last day with a little more shopping, then visited our favorite dumpling place for our last meal in China. I already really miss the food, and I'm trying to find some recipes for my favorite dishes. Don't get me wrong, it's been nice to eat cheese again, but the food was excellent over there, and very cheap. After dinner I headed back to the room and packed up what I wouldn't need in the morning and tried to keep myself up late so I would a) be able to sleep on the plane the day we flew back, and b) get adjusted to the time difference easier. I suppose it worked well enough.
That last day we left Beijing Normal University, our home for so many days, at nine. We drove the hour to the airport and got ourselves checked in and waited for the flight. At 12:30 we boarded up, and got off the ground on time at 1 (Chinese airlines are always right on schedule). The flight was long (13 hours, of course it's long), but it still seemed shorter than the flight over. There was much rejoicing when we landed and went through immigrations and picked up our bags. Goodbyes were said and promises to meet over the coming semester were made, then we all went our separate ways. Which for me meant down to the Delta terminal at JFK, which is where the fun began. It wasn't so bad up until about an hour before the flight was supposed to leave, when I found my plane had been delayed until 11:50 that night (it was 5 by now). I was incredibly saddened by this, but right as I was beginning to despair, they made an announcement that an earlier flight that had been delayed had room for us, so we were able to get on that one. That didn't cut out the three hours we still had to sit out on the runway before takeoff, but I was still on my way home at last. Finally lifted off at around 8:20, and landed in Philly at 9. I got to meet up with my family at long last, and that was a relief. Unfortunately, our bags didn't make it on the plane with us, but I didn't care at that point. They shipped them to us for free the next day, so it was hardly and inconvenience. Got in the car and drove home, got back and into bed at 11, at long last. Which gives me a total travel time of 27 hours, all on the third (yes, more than 24 hours of travel time within one day). It was awesome being back home, and I spent the next several days re-adjusting and getting ready for school.
And so this concludes my trip to China. I hope you all have enjoyed reading this as much as I have telling you about it. This will be preserved offline, and there's talk of making a book of sorts... Well, with nothing further to say, I'm off!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Temple of Heaven and the Final Days
I continue to delay the posting of my blogs, even though we're winding down to these last few days and we've got a bunch of free time. Only one and half left as I write this. It's really gone by quick, but I'm excited to be coming back to the states. I think there's going to be some reverse culture shock for a little bit, which will be fun :)
Day before yesterday (that being the 30th) we had classes in the morning and used our free afternoon to accompany Pong laoshi to the Temple of Heaven. Now, the Temple isn't really so much an actual temple as it is a place where the Emperor himself would go to pray and make sacrifices (animal, China never did human). It was built at the same time as the Forbidden City, and the similarity in style was immediately obvious. The construction is all done without nails (like the Forbidden City), and the temple itself is circular. Those two combined just kind of blow you away, though I suppose ancient carpenters were called "joiners" for a reason. The temple was really nice, gorgeous grounds (I can upload pictures now, yay!). After we thoroughly explored the grounds, we left and literally crossed the street to the Pearl Market. I was led to believe that the Pearl Markets would sell a whole bunch of pearls, but it was actually almost identical to Silk Alley, just with a little more room between the stalls. We didn't have a whole lot of time there, unfortunately, but I did get a great deal on some ties: seven for about two bucks each. I love that silk is made right here in China :)
Believe it or not, we didn't really do anything on the 31st. The language classes were all wrapping up with finals the next day, so everyone was studying for that, and we had presentations for culture class as well. So it was classes in the morning and homework in the afternoon for literally everyone. Today wasn't much different, except that now everyone is done with those presentations (had another culture class period this afternoon so we would have time to finish all of them). Nearly everyone here is sad to be leaving already, myself included, to some extent. I've had a blast over here, it's been a great experience, but I'm also looking forward to seeing friends and family again and sharing stories with them.
So tomorrow is our last day. It's completely open, and everyone is taking the entire day to go shopping. I still have a couple things to look for, but I definitely need to get a picture of what it's like in Silk Alley. Speaking of new photos, I've uploaded a bunch today already, so check them out. New material starts on page two with 18Suzhou18. Well, that about wraps this one up. I'll post about tomorrow, and I'll probably post some stories of reverse culture shock once I'm back home :) Until next time!
Day before yesterday (that being the 30th) we had classes in the morning and used our free afternoon to accompany Pong laoshi to the Temple of Heaven. Now, the Temple isn't really so much an actual temple as it is a place where the Emperor himself would go to pray and make sacrifices (animal, China never did human). It was built at the same time as the Forbidden City, and the similarity in style was immediately obvious. The construction is all done without nails (like the Forbidden City), and the temple itself is circular. Those two combined just kind of blow you away, though I suppose ancient carpenters were called "joiners" for a reason. The temple was really nice, gorgeous grounds (I can upload pictures now, yay!). After we thoroughly explored the grounds, we left and literally crossed the street to the Pearl Market. I was led to believe that the Pearl Markets would sell a whole bunch of pearls, but it was actually almost identical to Silk Alley, just with a little more room between the stalls. We didn't have a whole lot of time there, unfortunately, but I did get a great deal on some ties: seven for about two bucks each. I love that silk is made right here in China :)
Believe it or not, we didn't really do anything on the 31st. The language classes were all wrapping up with finals the next day, so everyone was studying for that, and we had presentations for culture class as well. So it was classes in the morning and homework in the afternoon for literally everyone. Today wasn't much different, except that now everyone is done with those presentations (had another culture class period this afternoon so we would have time to finish all of them). Nearly everyone here is sad to be leaving already, myself included, to some extent. I've had a blast over here, it's been a great experience, but I'm also looking forward to seeing friends and family again and sharing stories with them.
So tomorrow is our last day. It's completely open, and everyone is taking the entire day to go shopping. I still have a couple things to look for, but I definitely need to get a picture of what it's like in Silk Alley. Speaking of new photos, I've uploaded a bunch today already, so check them out. New material starts on page two with 18Suzhou18. Well, that about wraps this one up. I'll post about tomorrow, and I'll probably post some stories of reverse culture shock once I'm back home :) Until next time!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Down to the Last Four Days
I'm afraid that since I don't have any pictures to post, I've gotten lax in updating my blog, as well. I won't be keeping you waiting any longer, however. I present to you, in the usual format, the past three days.
The 26th, as I mentioned, was New Years Day. Up to this point, the fireworks continue, and I don't really expect them to stop any time soon. Not at the same intensity, of course, but you'll hear a few go off every couple minutes. The 27th was class in the morning with a free afternoon. A couple of us took this free afternoon to do a little work, then head over to the Olympic Stadium. It was really neat riding up to it, the highway kind of snakes around the Green so you get something of a panoramic view of it before you actually get there. We walked around for about an hour and a half, taking pictures and whatnot. Not sure if they mentioned during the broadcasts, but the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest are right next to each other, literally about 200 yards apart. We were there late enough to see them turn on the lights, which was pretty cool, especially with the Cube. That was really the highlight of the day, though. Afterwards we headed back and got dinner, then sleep. The next day was class in the morning (as usual), then a pedicab tour of the Putong area in the afternoon. When I say pedicab, I mean these little two-seater carriage things pulled by bikes. And when I say tour, I mean a 10 minute scoot around the edge of Houhai lake. Not like it was disappointing; to the contrary, it was really interesting. I just expected there to be a little more to it, is all. We got dropped off at a house back in this Putong area (one of the oldest areas in Beijing, it's a government-protected heritage-type place), and we got to look around inside. It's really strange, looking around inside people's homes like this, like we did during our first week here. But this house was made for tourism, so we weren't really intruding at all :)
The next day we had a break from classes because we were taking our day trip to Tianjin. We left bright and early (again, as usual) and took the two hour bus ride to the city (we hit traffic going there and coming back, so it was two hours both ways, unfortunately). Tianjin is China's third largest city by population, and is one of three that is its own province (the other two are Shanghai and Beijing). It's a pretty old city, and the first thing we got to see when we got off the bus was an old market street (also a fairly common occurrence on these trips). The main attraction was a shop that sold clay figurines that had been made by the same family for five or six generations. They were outrageously priced, of course, but they were certainly well-crafted. We got to wander around there for a while, and like most of the other markets there was a lot of the same stuff with a few new things here and there. Once we were done there we loaded back up and drove to a restaurant called Gou Bu Li, famous throughout China for its steamed dumplings ("baozi" in Chinese). They teased us with their normal dishes first (naturally), but the baozi were worth the wait. Definitely one of the things I'm going to miss most back in the states... After lunch we piled back onto the bus (again) and rode to the Tianjin museum. Unfortunately for everyone involved, we only had a half-hour to look around before the museum closed. I was pleased to find that Tianjin's museum didn't have huge exhibits with the usual jade and bronze works (sorry, they get dull after a while), and the displays were really dynamic and visually captivating. We were only walking around for about fifteen minutes before they started closing exhibits and shepherding people out, though, so there wasn't enough time to really take it all in. We hopped back on the bus and drove to the Italian concession in another part of town, looked at it for a few minutes, and then made the long ride back. Needless to say, with all this bus driving, literally everyone on the trip got in several hours' worth of naps, so people were awake and energized when we went out to dinner :)
Tomorrow we've got a free afternoon, which Pong laoshi is going to use to take a group of people to the Temple of Heaven. Pictures of that will be posted once February rolls around, so look out for those. Until next time, readers!
The 26th, as I mentioned, was New Years Day. Up to this point, the fireworks continue, and I don't really expect them to stop any time soon. Not at the same intensity, of course, but you'll hear a few go off every couple minutes. The 27th was class in the morning with a free afternoon. A couple of us took this free afternoon to do a little work, then head over to the Olympic Stadium. It was really neat riding up to it, the highway kind of snakes around the Green so you get something of a panoramic view of it before you actually get there. We walked around for about an hour and a half, taking pictures and whatnot. Not sure if they mentioned during the broadcasts, but the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest are right next to each other, literally about 200 yards apart. We were there late enough to see them turn on the lights, which was pretty cool, especially with the Cube. That was really the highlight of the day, though. Afterwards we headed back and got dinner, then sleep. The next day was class in the morning (as usual), then a pedicab tour of the Putong area in the afternoon. When I say pedicab, I mean these little two-seater carriage things pulled by bikes. And when I say tour, I mean a 10 minute scoot around the edge of Houhai lake. Not like it was disappointing; to the contrary, it was really interesting. I just expected there to be a little more to it, is all. We got dropped off at a house back in this Putong area (one of the oldest areas in Beijing, it's a government-protected heritage-type place), and we got to look around inside. It's really strange, looking around inside people's homes like this, like we did during our first week here. But this house was made for tourism, so we weren't really intruding at all :)
The next day we had a break from classes because we were taking our day trip to Tianjin. We left bright and early (again, as usual) and took the two hour bus ride to the city (we hit traffic going there and coming back, so it was two hours both ways, unfortunately). Tianjin is China's third largest city by population, and is one of three that is its own province (the other two are Shanghai and Beijing). It's a pretty old city, and the first thing we got to see when we got off the bus was an old market street (also a fairly common occurrence on these trips). The main attraction was a shop that sold clay figurines that had been made by the same family for five or six generations. They were outrageously priced, of course, but they were certainly well-crafted. We got to wander around there for a while, and like most of the other markets there was a lot of the same stuff with a few new things here and there. Once we were done there we loaded back up and drove to a restaurant called Gou Bu Li, famous throughout China for its steamed dumplings ("baozi" in Chinese). They teased us with their normal dishes first (naturally), but the baozi were worth the wait. Definitely one of the things I'm going to miss most back in the states... After lunch we piled back onto the bus (again) and rode to the Tianjin museum. Unfortunately for everyone involved, we only had a half-hour to look around before the museum closed. I was pleased to find that Tianjin's museum didn't have huge exhibits with the usual jade and bronze works (sorry, they get dull after a while), and the displays were really dynamic and visually captivating. We were only walking around for about fifteen minutes before they started closing exhibits and shepherding people out, though, so there wasn't enough time to really take it all in. We hopped back on the bus and drove to the Italian concession in another part of town, looked at it for a few minutes, and then made the long ride back. Needless to say, with all this bus driving, literally everyone on the trip got in several hours' worth of naps, so people were awake and energized when we went out to dinner :)
Tomorrow we've got a free afternoon, which Pong laoshi is going to use to take a group of people to the Temple of Heaven. Pictures of that will be posted once February rolls around, so look out for those. Until next time, readers!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Starting the Home Stretch
I do believe that when I last left off I had just gotten back to Beijing, having just returned from our trips to Xi'an and Shanghai. If that is not the case, then I'm afraid my reality has broken at long last, and I wish you all well from whatever plane of existence I happen to be currently inhabiting. But, seeing as how that's the last post, I'll assume we're still in the same world and continue with my story.
Our first full day back in Beijing was New Year's Eve. We still had class that morning (unfortunately) and we had the afternoon completely free. Everyone was still exhausted from traveling, so no one did anything special for most of the day. I found No Country for Old Men online and watched that to while away my time. Once dinner-time rolled around, we all met up and walked about 15 minutes to a big karaoke place. We had reserved their largest room, and a buffet was provided. The room was pretty big (it easily fit our party of 31) and there was a big-screen TV that the videos/lyrics were displayed on. Mics were around the room, and whoever wanted to pick a song and sing was certainly encouraged :) It was a blast, especially considering the fact that more than a few people were feeling a good buzz at that point (no, myself NOT included!). There was great fun had by all, and at eight we headed back. The fireworks had been going all day, but they were picking up since it was finally dark outside. We stopped for a little bit outside a restaurant to watch them launch their array of fireworks... Of course, scientist that I am, I'm wringing my hands and bewailing all of the safety precautions that aren't being taken (like setting them off under trees, near power lines, etc.), but I still managed to enjoy myself (and no one was seriously injured). As I mentioned before, fireworks were going off across the city throughout the day, but the closer it got to midnight the more there were. At a quarter to eleven the city literally became a city of exploding light, and thunderclaps and explosions filled the air with brilliant stars of green, red, and purple. This continued until about a quarter after midnight. Yeah, and we think Fourth of July fireworks displays are spectacular :P Granted, fireworks were invented here, and they're a lot cheaper...
Woke up today (New Years!) and went to another part of the city for a Temple Fair. It wasn't actually in the temple, but it was nearby. Now, up to this point the streets of Beijing had been fairly quiet; one could readily believe that most of the population had gone away, or disappeared. But upon coming to this fair, it was obvious that China is certainly a large country, and Beijing is certainly a large city. Throngs of people filled the sidewalks of these temple grounds. Just imagine New York subways at rush hour, and you'll get an idea. There were stalls selling everything absolutely everywhere (in true China fashion), and it was really exciting being there amidst the festivities, in spite of the crowds. They had some interesting snacks, of which I partook (fried dough balls made of rice and ox cheese; they were really good). After wandering there for a while and seeing what was offered, we met with Pong laoshi and began the trek to the actual temple. The trek ended up being a journey of about two or three miles past dozens of vendors selling incense (for use at the temple) that concluded at the end of a ridiculously long line to actually get into the temple >.< So we missed that, but we saw plenty of the back streets of Beijing. We came back here and worked on classwork for a while, and went to a local dumpling restaurant for dinner (probably also the only one open today, aside from McDonald's).
The next few days are mostly class with free afternoons. On the 26th we're going to Tianjin, so look forward to that! Until next time!
Our first full day back in Beijing was New Year's Eve. We still had class that morning (unfortunately) and we had the afternoon completely free. Everyone was still exhausted from traveling, so no one did anything special for most of the day. I found No Country for Old Men online and watched that to while away my time. Once dinner-time rolled around, we all met up and walked about 15 minutes to a big karaoke place. We had reserved their largest room, and a buffet was provided. The room was pretty big (it easily fit our party of 31) and there was a big-screen TV that the videos/lyrics were displayed on. Mics were around the room, and whoever wanted to pick a song and sing was certainly encouraged :) It was a blast, especially considering the fact that more than a few people were feeling a good buzz at that point (no, myself NOT included!). There was great fun had by all, and at eight we headed back. The fireworks had been going all day, but they were picking up since it was finally dark outside. We stopped for a little bit outside a restaurant to watch them launch their array of fireworks... Of course, scientist that I am, I'm wringing my hands and bewailing all of the safety precautions that aren't being taken (like setting them off under trees, near power lines, etc.), but I still managed to enjoy myself (and no one was seriously injured). As I mentioned before, fireworks were going off across the city throughout the day, but the closer it got to midnight the more there were. At a quarter to eleven the city literally became a city of exploding light, and thunderclaps and explosions filled the air with brilliant stars of green, red, and purple. This continued until about a quarter after midnight. Yeah, and we think Fourth of July fireworks displays are spectacular :P Granted, fireworks were invented here, and they're a lot cheaper...
Woke up today (New Years!) and went to another part of the city for a Temple Fair. It wasn't actually in the temple, but it was nearby. Now, up to this point the streets of Beijing had been fairly quiet; one could readily believe that most of the population had gone away, or disappeared. But upon coming to this fair, it was obvious that China is certainly a large country, and Beijing is certainly a large city. Throngs of people filled the sidewalks of these temple grounds. Just imagine New York subways at rush hour, and you'll get an idea. There were stalls selling everything absolutely everywhere (in true China fashion), and it was really exciting being there amidst the festivities, in spite of the crowds. They had some interesting snacks, of which I partook (fried dough balls made of rice and ox cheese; they were really good). After wandering there for a while and seeing what was offered, we met with Pong laoshi and began the trek to the actual temple. The trek ended up being a journey of about two or three miles past dozens of vendors selling incense (for use at the temple) that concluded at the end of a ridiculously long line to actually get into the temple >.< So we missed that, but we saw plenty of the back streets of Beijing. We came back here and worked on classwork for a while, and went to a local dumpling restaurant for dinner (probably also the only one open today, aside from McDonald's).
The next few days are mostly class with free afternoons. On the 26th we're going to Tianjin, so look forward to that! Until next time!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Last Little Bits of Shanghai
Whew! Unfortunately for me I forgot that last post, so I'm having to play catch-up now. Just so we're on the same page here (the days blur together for me, at least, especially nearing the end here), my last few posts have covered Xi'an and most of Shanghai, up to the 21st. What follows are the events of the 22nd through the 24th. This will probably be the last big post, because it's mostly classes and open afternoons from here on out (though we are taking a day trip to Tianjin on the 29th). Allons-y!
We set off in the morning for Zhouzhuang (bright and early, since we had a drive ahead of us). Zhouzhuang is known as a water town, and has been called the Venice of Asia. There aren't any roads, only sidewalks and waterways (like Venice!). It was really pretty, and there were some new shops to see as well (new things being sold, actually). I will definitely be posting more from Zhouzhuang once February rolls around.
After Zhouzhuang we headed to Suzhou. Now, you're aware of the Silk Road, and Silk Alley, and how China developed the process of actually manufacturing silk goods? Suzhou is where it all comes from. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, or at least not historically correct, but Suzhou is the cradle of Chinese silk-making. If you're unaware, silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms (who would have thought?). Silkworms grow incredibly fast, their whole lifespans lasting about 60 days, and most of that eating whatever mulberry leaf they happen upon. It takes a newborn worm about 25 days to mature and begin spinning its cocoon. The cocoons take about 36 hours to make, and once they're done they'll metamorphosize into an adult moth, then break out of their cocoon to mate, lay eggs, and die (out in the wild, at least). In factories, once the cocoons are spun, they are plucked from the branches and cooked in boiling water to kill the worm and dissolve the natural adhesive the worms use in spinning the cocoons. Then they are dried and sorted; if any are discolored or damaged, they are discarded. Then they go into another steamy bath and get brushed by a machine. This gentle brushing starts to dislodge the silk, and the loose end sticks to the bristles. Once the ends are collected, the move on to unspinning machines, which rapidly pull the thread off the cocoons and weave it into silk thread at the same time (that's the machine on Flickr). This silk thread is spooled, then shipped off for dyeing and whatever else it's destined for. The accompanying shop was naturally overpriced, and we left shortly after our tour to go to Suzhou's famous gardens. All I can say is that they were gorgeous. Most of my pictures are going to come from here and the Yuan gardens, simply because I can't really put it into words. It was so meditative and tranquil, just slowly walking along those stone paths and looking at the old buildings. I suppose it wasn't really so much the beauty of the gardens as it was being there, having a place to just let your mind meander as you did. I'd always try and drift off in a different direction from the group so I didn't have people talking history and asking questions, and there were always interesting places to find, if you take the time to look. That's all very Taoist of me, I know :P Just look forward to those pictures, I might have been able to capture it...
After the gardens we boarded up on the bus and took the long ride back. I got some pork fried rice from a street vendor (it's safe, trust me, and it's definitely cheaper than a restaurant: 8 kuai for a nice serving, which equals about $1.25).
I can see this is going to be another long one already... The *next* day (we're on the 23rd now, last day in Shanghai) I went with a few other people over to Shanghai's version of Silk Alley and looked around there. It was mostly clothing stores, so I didn't buy anything, but it was still fun to walk around. We grabbed lunch at a street vendor outside and took a cab to the Pudong area. There is a river that runs through Shanghai called the Pu river. The words for east and west in Chinese are "dong" and "xi", respectively. So the Puxi area (where the hotel is) is on the west side of the river, while the Pudong area is on the east (the Chinese are good at giving things easy names). Anyways, the Pudong area has all of Shanghai's magnificent skyscrapers, and we decided to go up the Pearl Tower (you can see it in the picture I took at night; it's the one with the three orbs, or pearls, going up). The view was really impressive from up there, got several good pictures of the skyline. We spent an hour and a half in the tower's revolving restaurant, sipping overpriced cappucino and watching the view. Then we made our way down and headed across the street to a huge shopping mall. I have to say I was a little disappointed, and I laughed to myself when I realized why. All of the stores were Western, or trying to be, and there was all this open space, like in American malls. I realized that if I was going to go shopping in China, I wanted to be squeezing past people in little hallways with vendors yelling things like, "Rolex? Buy watch? Bag? Give you good price." Haggling, too. I'm going to miss that coming back. It's a lot more fun when you can bring a shopkeeper down from some outrageously high price to an outrageously low one. A lot more fun than just handing the cashier a coupon, at least... Anyways, I digress. We wandered the mall and I grabbed something to eat at KFC (I know! I can get that here, I sound like a hypocrite, but I just wanted something easy, and didn't feel like finding something around our hotel again). We took cabs back to the hotel and I used up the last hour or so of internet, then chilled for a while and went to bed. We left that morning and got back here with enough time to settle in before dinner.
Alright, all caught up! My posts will no longer be retroactive, since I have internet in my room here. The 26th is New Years (also known as the Spring Festival since that's when winter starts to end and people prepare for the coming spring) so expect a lot of culture then :P It's the year of the Ox ("niu" in Chinese), so I wish you all a Happy Niu Year! :)
We set off in the morning for Zhouzhuang (bright and early, since we had a drive ahead of us). Zhouzhuang is known as a water town, and has been called the Venice of Asia. There aren't any roads, only sidewalks and waterways (like Venice!). It was really pretty, and there were some new shops to see as well (new things being sold, actually). I will definitely be posting more from Zhouzhuang once February rolls around.
After Zhouzhuang we headed to Suzhou. Now, you're aware of the Silk Road, and Silk Alley, and how China developed the process of actually manufacturing silk goods? Suzhou is where it all comes from. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, or at least not historically correct, but Suzhou is the cradle of Chinese silk-making. If you're unaware, silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms (who would have thought?). Silkworms grow incredibly fast, their whole lifespans lasting about 60 days, and most of that eating whatever mulberry leaf they happen upon. It takes a newborn worm about 25 days to mature and begin spinning its cocoon. The cocoons take about 36 hours to make, and once they're done they'll metamorphosize into an adult moth, then break out of their cocoon to mate, lay eggs, and die (out in the wild, at least). In factories, once the cocoons are spun, they are plucked from the branches and cooked in boiling water to kill the worm and dissolve the natural adhesive the worms use in spinning the cocoons. Then they are dried and sorted; if any are discolored or damaged, they are discarded. Then they go into another steamy bath and get brushed by a machine. This gentle brushing starts to dislodge the silk, and the loose end sticks to the bristles. Once the ends are collected, the move on to unspinning machines, which rapidly pull the thread off the cocoons and weave it into silk thread at the same time (that's the machine on Flickr). This silk thread is spooled, then shipped off for dyeing and whatever else it's destined for. The accompanying shop was naturally overpriced, and we left shortly after our tour to go to Suzhou's famous gardens. All I can say is that they were gorgeous. Most of my pictures are going to come from here and the Yuan gardens, simply because I can't really put it into words. It was so meditative and tranquil, just slowly walking along those stone paths and looking at the old buildings. I suppose it wasn't really so much the beauty of the gardens as it was being there, having a place to just let your mind meander as you did. I'd always try and drift off in a different direction from the group so I didn't have people talking history and asking questions, and there were always interesting places to find, if you take the time to look. That's all very Taoist of me, I know :P Just look forward to those pictures, I might have been able to capture it...
After the gardens we boarded up on the bus and took the long ride back. I got some pork fried rice from a street vendor (it's safe, trust me, and it's definitely cheaper than a restaurant: 8 kuai for a nice serving, which equals about $1.25).
I can see this is going to be another long one already... The *next* day (we're on the 23rd now, last day in Shanghai) I went with a few other people over to Shanghai's version of Silk Alley and looked around there. It was mostly clothing stores, so I didn't buy anything, but it was still fun to walk around. We grabbed lunch at a street vendor outside and took a cab to the Pudong area. There is a river that runs through Shanghai called the Pu river. The words for east and west in Chinese are "dong" and "xi", respectively. So the Puxi area (where the hotel is) is on the west side of the river, while the Pudong area is on the east (the Chinese are good at giving things easy names). Anyways, the Pudong area has all of Shanghai's magnificent skyscrapers, and we decided to go up the Pearl Tower (you can see it in the picture I took at night; it's the one with the three orbs, or pearls, going up). The view was really impressive from up there, got several good pictures of the skyline. We spent an hour and a half in the tower's revolving restaurant, sipping overpriced cappucino and watching the view. Then we made our way down and headed across the street to a huge shopping mall. I have to say I was a little disappointed, and I laughed to myself when I realized why. All of the stores were Western, or trying to be, and there was all this open space, like in American malls. I realized that if I was going to go shopping in China, I wanted to be squeezing past people in little hallways with vendors yelling things like, "Rolex? Buy watch? Bag? Give you good price." Haggling, too. I'm going to miss that coming back. It's a lot more fun when you can bring a shopkeeper down from some outrageously high price to an outrageously low one. A lot more fun than just handing the cashier a coupon, at least... Anyways, I digress. We wandered the mall and I grabbed something to eat at KFC (I know! I can get that here, I sound like a hypocrite, but I just wanted something easy, and didn't feel like finding something around our hotel again). We took cabs back to the hotel and I used up the last hour or so of internet, then chilled for a while and went to bed. We left that morning and got back here with enough time to settle in before dinner.
Alright, all caught up! My posts will no longer be retroactive, since I have internet in my room here. The 26th is New Years (also known as the Spring Festival since that's when winter starts to end and people prepare for the coming spring) so expect a lot of culture then :P It's the year of the Ox ("niu" in Chinese), so I wish you all a Happy Niu Year! :)
A Forgotten Post
(Apparently I missed a retroactive post when I put up the other two >.< But here it is. This means I'll have this one up until tomorrow, then I'll post what I did for the last few days in Shanghai. Back in Beijing now, with internet!)
Cue Shanghai, day three... And, action!
Got up and had our hotel's continental breakfast again. I was delighted to find that there was a different selection of dishes this morning, which was a pleasant surprise. Finished there and headed over to the Shanghai National Museum. This is museum number three that we've visited here, and I recently learned that these three that we have visited are ranked as the top three museums in China, which is pretty impressive. They had a great variety of exhibits, but to be honest it can get dull seeing bronze works, calligraphy and jade sculptures in museum after museum. There was a really nice furniture exhibit, though, and I took pictures of my favorite pieces. (I'll be deciding what pictures to post when I get internet. I'll be getting another 100mb in February, and I'll use that up to post some fill-in pictures before I come home.)
After the museum we visited Sun Yat-sen's old house. He is considered the father of modern China, and had great visions for the modern nation that China could become (this was China before Mao, but after the Qing Dynasty). The house was certainly nice, but most of the items on display were mundane (a bottle opener he used, for example), and I failed to really get the impact of his significance... Just around the corner from his house was the room where the first Congress of the Republic of China was held (this distinction is important: it wasn't the People's Republic yet. That was Mao in 1949). It was a really tiny room, and there were only a dozen people there, but that certainly was interesting; such a huge nation starting out in a little dining room at a girl's school. But as Chuangzi says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
This girl's school happens to be located very near the French Concession (an area granted to French citizens in trade agreements when the Europeans arrived here). All the buildings are in a Western style, and I was surprised at the differences I was noticing in the architecture. I usually don't pay much attention to that, but it kind of hit me after being here for so long. We were given some time to check out the area, and I wandered around checking out the shops and the park with a few other people. We got the absolute worst dinner ever on the fifth floor of this supermarket/department store complex, then came back to the hotel and checked out the nearby internet cafe. If you're thinking, "Hey, if he got internet, how come he didn't post these blogs?" it's because they had computers there, not wi-fi, so these retroactive posts that I have saved on my computer were useless. Until tomorrow night, that is! Tomorrow we're heading to the nearby city of Suzhou for the day, but when we get back that night I'm getting internet for the room so I can update everything. Day after tomorrow's a free day, then it's back to Beijing and the home stretch! It's going by so fast... Later!
Cue Shanghai, day three... And, action!
Got up and had our hotel's continental breakfast again. I was delighted to find that there was a different selection of dishes this morning, which was a pleasant surprise. Finished there and headed over to the Shanghai National Museum. This is museum number three that we've visited here, and I recently learned that these three that we have visited are ranked as the top three museums in China, which is pretty impressive. They had a great variety of exhibits, but to be honest it can get dull seeing bronze works, calligraphy and jade sculptures in museum after museum. There was a really nice furniture exhibit, though, and I took pictures of my favorite pieces. (I'll be deciding what pictures to post when I get internet. I'll be getting another 100mb in February, and I'll use that up to post some fill-in pictures before I come home.)
After the museum we visited Sun Yat-sen's old house. He is considered the father of modern China, and had great visions for the modern nation that China could become (this was China before Mao, but after the Qing Dynasty). The house was certainly nice, but most of the items on display were mundane (a bottle opener he used, for example), and I failed to really get the impact of his significance... Just around the corner from his house was the room where the first Congress of the Republic of China was held (this distinction is important: it wasn't the People's Republic yet. That was Mao in 1949). It was a really tiny room, and there were only a dozen people there, but that certainly was interesting; such a huge nation starting out in a little dining room at a girl's school. But as Chuangzi says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
This girl's school happens to be located very near the French Concession (an area granted to French citizens in trade agreements when the Europeans arrived here). All the buildings are in a Western style, and I was surprised at the differences I was noticing in the architecture. I usually don't pay much attention to that, but it kind of hit me after being here for so long. We were given some time to check out the area, and I wandered around checking out the shops and the park with a few other people. We got the absolute worst dinner ever on the fifth floor of this supermarket/department store complex, then came back to the hotel and checked out the nearby internet cafe. If you're thinking, "Hey, if he got internet, how come he didn't post these blogs?" it's because they had computers there, not wi-fi, so these retroactive posts that I have saved on my computer were useless. Until tomorrow night, that is! Tomorrow we're heading to the nearby city of Suzhou for the day, but when we get back that night I'm getting internet for the room so I can update everything. Day after tomorrow's a free day, then it's back to Beijing and the home stretch! It's going by so fast... Later!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
ATTENTION!
Hey, as you may or may not be aware, I have had minimal access to the internet for the past few days, so my posting has been belated. There are two before this "advisory" post, and I just wanted to point out that it's in chronological order from bottom to top. So read the one about Xi'an before the one about Shanghai. That is all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)