please please cure me
I was told that I need to update about China, so here I am. Let me first mention that China was an awesome experience in the sense that it provided me with a greater appreciation for well, life. The last time I learned about Chinese history was back in sixth grade with Mrs. Pelican, which is a shame because it provided me with an naive expectation of China--one of a highly unindustrialized, poverty-struck rural China. I expected to see millions of bikes everywhere, bumpy dirt roads, beggars lined in front of shops, and actual holes in the ground as toilets (which, pathetically, was the one thing that truely concerned me). What I saw was perfectly paved roads with enough cars to cause traffic as bad as that of the bay area. What I saw was a country so modernized that it didn't feel like I was in China at all, but a more populated, humid, and breathtaking San Francisco Chinatown. This was the heart of Beijing. I dont' want to mislead you, however, into believing that all of China was this magnificent. There is of course the effects of the rapid industrialization on the environment that follow you everywhere you go--the pollution is so horrible in China that to the Chinese, "clear skies" are equivalent to the layer of pollution that you see almost everytime you cross over to San Francisco. In fact, when we flew from Beijing to Shanghai, as we were landing we were stuck between "layers" of clouds, one layer of actual clouds and one layer of grey pollution. It wasn't until the last couple days of Hong Kong that we were actually able to see CLEAR blue skies. Enough with the sky, I just missed California weather when I was in China. But once you left Beijing, there was a stark difference in scenary: The beggars on the streets with torn soiled clothing, the rundown seemingly uninhabitable "houses," the vendors on the streets, and the workers performing literally backbreaking labor. Actually, even in Beijing you could witness this desperation and low quality of life. At every tourist attraction we visited there was always a row of shops with local street vendors constantly calling out to the rich foreigners, lowering the price of their goods to the point where they're selling their products for a petty amount. Suddenly, all the hard work that went into making the product seemed to be wasted... and i all i could think as i saw this was that these people were trying to make a decent living, trying to make that 50 yuan for the day to feed their emaciated child in their shabby home and to the tourists, it was all a game, a game to see how far the vendor would lower his already cheap merchandise... Then at the end of the day, after witnessing how the locals live, we retire to our five star hotels, which happens to tower over crumbling buildings and homes... and if that wasn't bad enough, we walk into the room and begin to feel overwhelmingly guilty that us foreigners are depleting resources such as the fresh bottled clean water while the those who live in the country are forced to use the dirty canal water.. Sorry i dont know how this got so depressing.
let me take you through a very BRIEF picture summary of my trip...
May 26th, our family left at 9ish am to SFO to catch a flight scheduled to depart at 2 pm... yes for those of you who can count, we were 4 hours early. To pass the time, Lorraine and I entertained ourselves by weighing ourselves on the luggage check:
After a 12 hour flight, we landed in Beijing at local time 5 pm. We stayed in Beijing for the next three days and visited the forbidden city, summer palace, pharmacist, temple of heaven, Great Wall, Ming Tombs....
here Liz, Lor, and me are in front of the Forbidden City. We walked through the WHOLE thing which was very tiredsome because it was ridiculously humid and long. not to mention, all the buildings looked the same...
the forbidden city turned lorraine ghetto
this is the family in front of the gate to the Temple of Heaven.
At the summer palace where we wandered off and pissed off our tour guide. actually, she was so nice i don't think it was possible to make her mad despite the fact that we left for a good hour when we were suppose to stick around and have her show us where to go. Personally, i loved the summer palace, even though it was man made, it was so beautiful. Here, we are meditating. :]
lor, my adopted sister and me
summer palace
The Great Wall of China. hehee the whole time i had the song "i'll make a man out of you" stuck in my head. Who knew that you actually had to CLIMB the Great Wall?! There are actual steps, uneven steps, that you have to climb to get up there, which i find extremely ineffective when you're climbing up there during war. We were given a good hour and 20 minutes to climb up 7 towers to reach the end of this portion of the Great Wall. The weather was actually nice and breezy but still Liz and I were unable to reach the top. We got extremely tired towards the 5th tower with the only motivation to continue being Lorraine constantly pushing us. Needless to say, Lorraine ditched us, Lor, my dad, liz's dad, and the guys made it up while Liz and I reached the sixth tower and headed down. At one point, Liz asked me "is there something on my face?" (near the top, there were a lot of bugs flying around) and this little boy replied, "yes, your sweat." later, lorraine and the guys talked to the boy who turned out to be from Singapore and who said something along the lines of "it is difficult to climb all the way to the top but it's something that you just have to do". This boy was probably seven. I dont know what makes me feel worse: the fact that a little boy made it up to the top when i didn't, or my father, who hasn't exercised for the longest time, made it up to the top...
at the ming tombs, the three
to be honest, i didn't pay attention to the tour guides because it was just more tempting to wander around and take pictures than to listen to them talk about the history of the places we visited. not to mention they mostly spoke mandarin which i don't understand. thus, the next three days we stayed at three different places-- Wuxi,Hangzhou, and some other place i don't know how to spell--which happened so fast that i can't seem to differentiate the attractions we visited in each place... but i'll try my hardest. In Wuxi, we went around Tai Lake, which is correct me if i'm wrong is one of the largest natural lake in China, big enough to fit five Hong Kongs. We took a boat around the lake and enjoyed the beautiful scenary.
this is the group we travelled with: my family, Liz's family, Liz's dad's coworker Brian (the white guy), Liz's dad's other coworker and his family.
In the other city that i don't know how to spell, we went on another canoe ride.
There, we saw one of the most beautiful gardens that China is famous for...
yuuuum pretty fish
garden
I think it was there too that we decided to roam around at night. Night life in China is great. There's a Pizza Hut on every corner and a MacDonalds and KFC on every other. Pizza Hut in China is also a RESTAURANT where youre required to dress up in order to be seated.
i think it was there too that we discovered the Jay Chow store :] Meters/bonwe
After that, we drove back to Shanghai and i think it should be here that i mention that drivers in China are CRAZY... if possible they make Phuong look like the safest driver. Cars wouldn't stay in their lanes, SOMETIMES THERE WERE NO CLEARLY MARKED LANES, and honking was a normalcy. Too lazy to post pictures of Shanghai, but there we didn't have a tourguide so we kind of just went off and did our own thing which included shopping, visiting Old Shanghai and New Shanghai, and of course the beautiful waterfront and european buildings.
by the waterfront
Finally we flew to Hong Kong which i initially hated because it was 80% humid which plainly sucked because it was 10 at night but still unbearably hot. In Hong Kong, we went shopping, had dim sum (YUMMMM) went to the Peak which overlooked all the skyscrappers, and we went to see the Giant Buddha. In regards to the Giant Buddha, which Joyce happened to go see while she was in Hong Kong too, as Lorraine says "We came, We saw, it was huge."
i saw this in Hong Kong. I still dont know what a naughty pet store is.. would anyone care to tell me?
it's crazy. my dad visited Hong Kong like 20 years ago with my Grandpa and he told us back then it would take like 20 minutes for the ferry to cross from one side to the other. Now it takes like five minutes for the same ferry to go across. While we were there, they were still building into the river.. i expect the next time if i'm lucky enough to visit again the river will be only 10 feet wide.
this is us riding on those two story buses... kind of scary. :\
on our way to the Peak
view from the peak
we went to Hong Kong park which had a bird sanctuary which i absolutely loved except for the birds constantly attacks me (i swear! they kept almost flying into me!) What really amazed me about the park was that it was a nature park with the background being the huge skyscrappers.what i hated aobut the park was was frickin mesquitoes... i got 9 from the park along... 22 throughout the whole trip.
my mommy! :]
random pictures!
people in china are short= short telephone booths
yuuuuuumm silk worms
fob hair cut. i guess that's what happens when you can't communicate with your hair dresser.
China turned me communist
there are A LOT more pictures than what i'm posting.. to be exact over 300 in all. But seeing as how i'm lazy i'm not going to post them all. if you want to see them though, i'll be more than happy to send you an invitation to my snapfish album. :]