It Started in China

I recently visited China, and a friend suggested posting to a travel blog. I didn't really consider that. But then a couple weeks later I was thinking that sometimes things are funny and I want to write them down, and I considered starting to blog. A cynical and "un-agreeable" East Coast friend of mine noted that no one would really want to read my ramblings...and this may be very true. But I don't care. Because there are times - like when I'm sitting in the way back of my absolutely useless Global Marketing Management Class, where I really have nothing better to do than create blog postings. So there you go, my impetus to blog. I figured my best first entry would be the stuff I wrote that got me thinking about blogging: My China trip notes. Here it is. With love and milipedes, my first blog entry.

Neehow, peejow, shey-shey. This is the extent of my Chinese vocabulary – hello, beer, thank you. I had this extensive vocab prior to my trip, and now 8 days later, it's not any bigger. But I did add: about 200 photos to my camera's memory chip, four new handbags (2 Chloe, a Fendi, and a Tod's – all 100% authentic) to my collection, and a case of SARS (or so it feels) and about 10 pounds of Chinese-food-built weight to my body. It was absolutely amazing, so I'm willing to deal with the SARS and the weight. If you wanna take a look at the pics (I captioned them so they make some sense) check them out on the Snapfish link below, and if you want to hear the detes of my trip (my voice has vanished so I though email would be a better medium) here's a recount for you. Disclaimer: this is virtually a novel. It is ridiculously long, and best reserved for reading if you have absolutely nothing to do at work or are procrastinating from studying. Also good for hearing about all the ins and outs of traveling in China. Here we go…

Saturday: Meet the Rainbow Room
We leave LA at 10:45 (delayed flight) and arrive in San Fran just before our 2pm flight to Beijing. They kindly hold the plane for the SIXTY missing passengers – and when we get there we sprint through to the plane. I watch Walk the Line, take an ambien, and I'm out for the remaining 10 hours. We get into Beijing at 6pm, and a group of us heads out to find some food. We end up at the Rainbow Café (actually we have no idea what it's called, but it has this giant neon rainbow thing w/ small animals eating rice on the sign, hence our name) and split our three Chinese-speaking friends evenly between our three tables. My first taste of China includes some little tofu blob things (good!), bamboo shoots, scallion pockets, and other various meat and fish things. It's actually quite delish. (We will quickly learn that meals on our own are vastly better than meals with the tour group). Afterward, we hit up a KTV (karaoke) and get a private room where we sing the 10 or so English songs they have (all 80s hits), some more than once, and drinks some peejos, before turning in for the night.

Sunday: That's quite a large Mao you have
At 7:30 we get our wakeup call. This is 16 hours ahead of LA, so we're a bit groggy. Is it that I'm groggy and imagining that breakfast is pork buns and fried rice? No! breakfast really IS pork buns and fried rice! Yes! So we head out into the city. Beijing: what does it look like? We determined its closest cousin is an amalgamation of Midwestern cities. There's a little Indy, a little Dayton, a little Detroit. There are streets of skyscrapers, and then streets of tiny little baby buildings that look incredibly non-Western. It's an old city trying to become new, but it's a very slow shift and I doubt it will catch up w/ Shanghai anytime soon, although it's building like crazy in prep for the 2008 Olympics. Only 1 in 4 Beijing dwellers owns a car, so there are bikes everywhere. They weave in and out of traffic or occasionally are confined to bike lanes. Either way, it's nuts to see so many bikes. The city feels deserted in some areas, bustling in others.

All this aside, we learn that Beijing is a city with a rich ancient history. Our first stop is the Summer Palace, which was originally built in the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234!!!!). Throughout the succeeding dynasties, it just kept growing. Key themes of the Summer Palace: longevity! Everything is a symbol of longevity. Concubines! I've never heard the word concubine (from our tour guide) more times in a 24 hour period. Apparently the average emperor kept like 300 at one time – and would sleep with up to 7 or so a night (this was for protection – he'd jump from bed to bed so no one would know his whereabouts). The concubine deal was so nuts that on an emperor's marriage night (to the emperor) his mom would watch him consummate his marriage to make sure they actually slept together at some point. And the empresses were nuts too – they might start as a concubine and would kill anyone standing in their way if they were possibly eligible to be an empress. So anyway, after SP we take a boat over to lunch (freezing our rears off on the way) and are intro'ed at lunch to the food that we will eat as part of the tour group for the remainder of the trip. There is lots of celery and bok choy floating limply in grease, weird fish-based soups, and severely fried meats in sweet and sour sauces (apparently they Americanize it for us somewhat). I thank the very starchy sauces and general unhealthiness of the food for the major case of constipation (sorry I have to share this) that I acquired.

On to the Forbidden City! This place is massive. It's in the city's center and is a collection of palaces and squares where royalty has roamed for thousands of years. There are actually 9,999.5 rooms in the palace. Couldn't have 10,000 b/t the gods up in heaven have that many – and the emperors had to cut the number down to show that they weren't as rich and powerful as the gods (my, they were modest cutting off that .5 room). Follow through the end and you hit Tiananmen Square. It's GINORMOUS and there are commie guards everywhere – they most obvious sign of the square is the GINORMOUS portrait of Mao that presides over the square. A bit chilling. Later – post-dinner – we see the Beijing Opera. It sounds mostly like a small child banging pots and pans together – and people in really cool costumes dance around acting out stories about the God of the Monkeys pissing off the other Gods in Heaven. It's a bit hard to follow. I won't lie. The day was exhausting, and almost everyone fell asleep…

Monday: After your rubdown, try the delicious grease sandwich
We wake up, fuel up on buns, and head outside the city to hike up the Great Wall. We hiked the Juyongguan Pass which is about 50km from Beijing. When we arrived, the wind was whipping around our faces and it was COLD. We wisely purchased (matching) hats, gloves, and scarves (all hideous gray and yellow stripes) for a grand total of around $5 for the set. And it was a damn smart idea. It took about 2.5 hours round trip and was exhausting – straight up hill! The scenery was absolutely breathtaking – rolling green hills for miles – would love to see it in summer. The wall felt as ancient as it is – the steps were massive and it's not surprising that deaths were frequent during the building (apparently casualties of building were just thrown right into the cement). The Great Wall is one of the coolest things I've seen in my life.

Following the Great Wall, we saw one of the un-coolest things. We were dropped unexpectedly at a Cloisonné factory (it's a Chinese art form – copper based pitchers/jewelry/etc. that is then enameled). We knew the goods were tremendously overpriced and no one was interested in shopping – we wanted to EAT as we were starving. We later found out that this is part of communism – the trip to this government store is actually mandated for any tour group that comes through Beijing (and they know you're there – they collect and hold your passports for scanning when you check into your hotel). Lunch was more of the same – except there were bottles of alcohol on the table that tasted pretty much like rubbing alcohol – I think my breath was flammable after the tiny sip I ingested.

The afternoon was spent getting massaged. A 90 minute massage was 110RB (equivalent to about $15!!!). We were served a "snack" which was dropped off about ½ way through the massage – it was a greasy pork sandwich thing – NOT spa food – but I think that is what they think Americans like to eat all the time. The one girl on the trip who ate the thing had a tummy ache the duration of the trip.

After returning to the hotel, we showered and got ready – my roommate and I ran late, and we discovered that us and a few others had been left behind the bus. Lucky twist of fate. We returned to the Rainbow Room where we feasted on another tasty (NOT being sarcastic) meal – we had two types of fish (you pick your fish out of tank and they bring the flopping little guy over to your table in a bucket for approval prior to kicking it up), this awesome spicy beef dish, Peking duck, and pigs feet (a mistake order) among other things. The pigs feet actually had this spice on them that is illegal for import to the US –it's so hot that it numbs your tongue, pretty cool actually. For a shit-ton of food, over 10 bottles of peejo – it was about $5 per person. We closed down the restaurant after engaging in a game of Chinese Checkers (the Chinese dude kicked our friend Hans' ass) and headed off to find this one bar, which after driving around the city for an hour, we never found, so bed it was. That was a weird thing – the cab drivers never really seemed to know where anything was…

Tuesday: Ha! I kill you!
The next day is free and unscheduled. Some of us pile into cabs and venture about 60km outside the city to the Tanzhe Temple, a super old Buddhist temple. Apparently it's one of the most "effective" temples in the world (as far as making sure your prayers are answered) so we picked up some incense and left it for the gods. I guess that Buddha will apparently read your thoughts so you don't even need to think of a prayer – and he will answer you regardless of your religion. The area was temple after temple – beautiful gardens – forest of bamboo. Incredibly peaceful and quiet and so nice to be away from tons of tourists. A couple nutty things: one temple that depicted terrible scenes of torture (hell we guessed), and the giant swastika that was adorning some of the Buddhas (before Hitler adopted it, it was a sign of peace and benevolence) – ironic, no? BTW – the cabbies took us an hour outside the city, waited for us for 1.5 hours, and then drove us back – 300RB/cab - $15 per person…amazing how cheap China is.

Once we return to the city, our friend Cindy (one of our Chinese speakers) takes us to lunch at some random little place. A miscommunication yields our table of seven 6 heaping plates of fried rice along with our other dishes. But we know it's so damn cheap that we don't push when they won't take it back.

Here's a good time to discuss Chinese toilets. I used them at this restaurant. When I returned to the table, I got the obligatory, "so, how was it?" "Western style" toilets were sparse in Beijing. Instead you get a hole in the ground with ceramic foot grooves so you don't fall in, although I developed a fear of slipping and doing just that. The toilets in general smell like 18,000 dead fish are rotting inside. I would've loved to have one of the surgical masks that everyone wears around the streets on China at my disposal. Toilet paper? Not an option. Soap and paper towels? I think not.

Continuing on. Our next stop is the Pearl Market. It is four floors of shopping heaven, if you're up for fake Prada loafers, fake Northface, fake bags, fake watches, fake iPods, fake damn everything, in addition to fish (smell permeated the first floor), ceramic chopstick sets, cloisonné jewelry, jade, anything else Chinese, and of course, pearls. It's our intro to bargaining. So first off there are about 20 shop owners coming at you and grabbing your from every direction asking you to buy shit. They grab your arm. They drag you to their booth. They shove a trinket in your hand, get out their calculators, and type in their starting price. You then take 10-50% of that price and type it into the calculator. You there hear one of many gem phrases:

§ Not a phrase – but a sound – hysterical laughter

§ You joking! You joking! Now serious price!

§ You have fever?

§ Ha! I kill you! I kill you!

§ I make NO money I give you this price!!! I kill you! You joke me!!

You continue to bargain. They say "ok ok ok ok. This final price. What you final final price? What you final final final price?" You walk away. They come after you. Bargaining continues. The smart shopper (don't even ask if I'm one of them – that's an insult to my years of expert shopping experience) will not budge from the original price. And eventually, it's yours. Even though they may put a hex on your as you depart their booth. I walk out of the market with about 5 jade bracelets, a bag, two Northface jackets, some chopstick sets, a tea set, three pearl necklaces. I think it cost about $60 total.

Dinner was unremarkable. What WAS remarkable was the Beijing Night Market. It's a street lined with such delicious items for sale as roaches, snakes, frogs, scorpions, and starfish. They are all on sticks and the vendors will fry them up for your. It reeks. I had two friends eat snake (apparently so spiced that you couldn't' really taste the fish) and one eat scorpions (apparently tastes like…yes…chicken…with lots of crunchy legs). Vomiting yet?

BTW – I mentioned that the night market reeked. What I didn't mention is that China in general, and I mean no disrespect, reeks. Yes, it smells. Like sewage. And the people hawk big loogies everywhere. As an American, I realized that one thing I undervalue is hygiene. That smelly guy on the metro standing next to you in the summer ain't nothing my friend.

Wednesday: Try the Thai place around the corner
I just love waking up at 4am, it's my super favorite hour. So lucky for me that was our wakeup call for getting to the airport for our flight to Shang-HI!! Shanghai: NOTHING like Beijing. If Beijing is Indy/Detroit/Dayton, Shanghai is Manhattan/Chicago/Paris/London/any other awesome city in the world. It has some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, it has a bullet train (the magnetic suspension train – still has wheels), it has the Huangpu (unfortunate name no?) River, it is beautiful. Our first stop was the Yu gardens – they are a place of peace and beauty right in the center of the city. We grabbed lunch before heading to Bund Street. This is where old meets new. The Bund itself – which is a large promenade on the West bank of the Huangpu – is a road lined with buildings that reflect the myriad nations that have inhabited the country at one time or another; it has gothic, Renaissance, Baroque architecture, etc. And also delicious snacks such as candied crab apples on a stick. You try, you like.

Look across at the East Bank and it's another world – totally modern skyscrapers of all sorts of crazy shapes. It was all farmland, then one day the gov't said, hey let's build this shit up. So they dumped $18.5B into fantastic structures and in only 13 years an urban mecca has developed – the coolest buildings include the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the Jin Mao Tower.

So let us see. The day passes and we head back to our hotel, which kicks ass, with super cozy beds, cool views, and marbely-fancy pants bathrooms. We regroup to make dinner plans (we are not going tour group tonight), and decided that Indian food will be a pleasant change. So we get the name of the restaurant, and four of us head over to meet up with other friends. Now see, here is another thing about China. As a non-Mandarin speaker, you are pretty much screwed. I don't care how good you think your pronunciation of a given item/place is, it sucks, and the taxi drivers will never understand you. So what do you do? You have the concierge write down the name of the destination in Chinese for you. But even then you are frequently screwed. So our cab driver drops us at some place, and we scout out our restaurant, but we cannot find it. It's weird though – we're on this promenade that has an Italian restaurant, a French restaurant, etc. – and it's expat heaven. And what appears, but a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. They don't even have those in NY. But apparently, after LA, Shanghai is the next best-fit market… Also – a note – Paris Hilton and LA cover the walls in the shop – it's totally freaky. We think maybe they can help us find our place in there, but we are wrong. All we know is our restaurant is like a 15 cab ride from wherever the hell we are, and we are not feeling it. So we're standing outside deciding on a random restaurant when this Harvard B-School grad (he runs a textile factory, "like everyone else over here") tells us to hit up this Thai restaurant around the corner as it's totally good. It's not, actually it's quite bad Thai, but we sit outside beside heat lamps, drape ourselves in fleece blankets, and drink red wine, which, after days of lukewarm peejo, tastes like the nectar of the gods.

Afterward we head over to Face Bar (yes, totally expat) to meet up with friends. It's in an old mansion which apparently used to be an opium lounge. Personally, I swore to God that I was at the 18^th Street Lounge (for the DC kids). It could've been a bar in any major city. So I ordered a dirty martini and savored the cosmopolitan-ness. We then hit up the opium bed (remnant of days past) which were super cozy and chilled for the remainder of the night.

Thursday: Would you like some escargot with that triple-meat-supreme?
Are you still reading this? You crazy! Anyway, it's now Thursday, and the morning kicks off with some business stuff, b/c remember, I am an MBA student. We have a panel presentation featuring five American entrepreneurs and located at Café Fresh, the venture of one of these individuals. The speakers are working on a consulting company, a food delivery service, etc. It was cool to hear them speak of how speaking fluent Mandarin can be a disadvantage (you can get away with more if you play dumb), not speaking Mandarin but being a Chinese-born American is a disadvantage (they resent you), and how the communist government is still very much alive through corrupt taxation laws/business regulations even though they are allowed to run profitable companies. We work up an appetite…and it's time for lunch. What to eat. Chinese? We say now. At this point if I have to eat one more dish of fish vomit soup or see one more plate of sweet-and-sour anything dancing in grease, I will hurl. Others are with me.

We head to Pizza Hut (shut up). This ain't no PH you've ever seen. They seat you. They have cloth napkins and cloths and nice plates and silverware. There is pizza on the menu…along with fancy coffee drinks, shrimp appetizers, escargot, and French onion soup. While none of us could recall the last time we'd eaten PH pizza in the states, we orgasmed over the cheesy delight of our lunches. It totally hit the spot, and I'm proud to be an American.

After lunch, we take in some culture at the Shanghai museum, which features among other exhibits, a jade room, a calligraphy room, a pottery room, and a room that displays costumers and masks (freaky!) from the various tribal people of China. The cultural reprise leads into an afternoon of shopping. Our destination: the Xiangyang Market, which seems to be acres and acres big and features counterfeit goods of all shapes and sizes. Little men run at you with catalogs in their hands offering "watchdvdbag" (all one word). I believe I was also offered "sex tapes," I turned that offer down. This is a notch up from Beijing shopping. Here, if you are willing, they will lead you through back alleys where people are splashing sewer water out their windows and up winding staircases to shady attic rooms where they keep the good shit – the super "highest collity" (you have to hear the pronunciation) goods. The bargaining is tougher. They may rip the bags from your hand and tell you to "leave and never come back." They may put a hex on you. They offer you not just the "more shee-per" price but the "very good best friend handsome man" price. (I never knew I had so many best friends in China). They seduce you through cries of "pretty lat-ee" (got me every time) and scream "lookah lookah!!!" several more purses and some HOT red Pumas (I will never wear these things in the rain) later, we peace out. We grab a snack, drop our stuff at the hotel, and head to the Shanghai Theater (the most modern theater in Asia) to see the Shanghai acrobats. This is Cirque de Soleil, with really terrible costumes. I am thinking of taking some design classes and lobbying for a job as the new costumer designer for them, b/c people that can do such wicked cool stunts deserve way better clothes. Check out the pics for their stunts.

Post show we grab dinner at the Japanese place in our hotel; it's traditional style where you get to take off your shoes and all that good stuff. We go crazy with the sake bombs which our waitresses find highly amusing. We are more amused when a hotel employee approaches one of our friends in the bathroom and asks if for 600RB he'd like to have what we assume to be sex (what else does a hand gesture where one inserts his index finger into his opposing fist). Speaking of sex, we discover that our hotel spa is open to 3am. This is weird right? Being such young ingénues, my friend Melissa and I are totally unsuspecting. So at 12:30am we, along with Mel's BF Jason, hit up the spa for pre-bedtime massages. My massage is mediocre, and Melissa's is apparently terrible. Only notable moves include a LOT of butt-massaging as well as liberal and highly uncomfortable massaging of the inner thigh… The next morning at breakfast, Jason describes the end of his massage, where his masseuse gently tapped her crotch area and exclaimed, "sex? Sex?" She also made a gesture that we think infers an erection….

Hey guys! If your hotel (even if f it is 4 stars) spa is open till 3am and features cute women running around in tight pink outfits, they aren't just open for massages!

Friday: We have about 24 hours of travel beginning at 7am, so how bout we stay out till 4:30?
For the first day of the trip, we sleep in. I am of course well-rested following my lovely massage… Today is more shopping, but I venture out from the market to actual boutique shopping to purchase some wares. In the first store, I am accosted: I walk in. Two clerks grab a dress off the rack, pull me over, stick my arms out, and force the dress on me (it is super cute though). They button me up and tie the sash. They then gesture for me to take my jeans off. We exchange this gesture several times to confirm understanding. Then, they spin me around in front of the mirror and give me a repeated thumbs up sign. As a side note, over here, I'm a size four. I'm not so much used to purchasing clothing in size XL. It feels great, really does a lot for the ego. I also discover that in these shops, there is no bargaining, and they really don't give a shit if you want to buy anything or not.

The evening begins with cocktails atop the Jin Mao tower, at Cloud Nine lounge which resides on Floor 87. It's one of the sweetest views I've ever seen, and I would move into that hotel in a second. Drinks are followed by a final unremarkable tour group hotel to really seal the deal on giving my stomach a heart attack, but we end it right, out at some sweet club that plays great music including a live salsa band. It's an awesome time and we get to bed around 4:30am.

Saturday: 10 hour flight with a fat man
This concludes the trip folks. If you read this far, you either REALY REALLY love me or are REALLY REALLY BORED. As far as the ending of the trip goes, the plane flight back sucked, as I was in and out of sleep and wedged against a fat man. But definitely worth it, China was pretty damn amazing.