hey there all and happy summer to those in the northern hemisphere....happy winter to those in the southern....i am hanging in the states in a few places this summer, but much of my time will be in pennsylvania....if you are in the area of philly, get in touch.....sorry it has been about a month since the last update, but i haven't had much time for covering the adventure after singapore til now.....i was in seattle for almost a week and had a blast...and i head to denver next week and i am sure i will have a great time there too....
this time around the pictures and stories are from the second half of my spring break....my friend kat came to visit and for the last part of the week we headed up to beijing.....china's capital city and one of the most polluted places on earth....while there you will find ancient treasures and crazy food at the night market and some really great versions of "chinglish"...all of these you will see below....
even though it was just a weekend trip, we had a blast and made it to the wall and the forbidden city and the old olympic village....we even stayed in a hutong - an old style chinese house that has a courtyard and rooftop garden....more on that later.....probably the highlight though was the street food at the night market....really, if you have never been to beijing....you should come and spend some time....maybe not in the spring, as that is when the sand from the gobi desert comes blowing in....but it is a place you should not miss if possible.....on with the pictures.....
we decided to take the bullet train up to beijing from shanghai....a normal train ride from shanghai to beijing is an overnight affair...but now that the bullet train is running its only about 4 - 5 hours to get there....as you can see the train maxs out at about 304 km/hr....for those who don't know metric, that's just under 200 mph....pretty darn fast.....we were traveling in style in first class for the trip and it was great!!!! the way back was not as much fun as we had a really obnoxious child on the train....his mom was not keeping him occupied.....this is rather normal with chinese kids...as you are only allowed to have one and many of them are treated as little emperors and empresses....kind of annoying.....
once we got into beijing we took three metro lines to get to our hostel....rather crowded and extremely far down in the ground...but very efficient and easy to use.....the hostel we stayed at was a hutong....these are alleyways that are formed by old style chinese houses....called shikumen in shanghai....these old style houses have courtyards and used to be shared residences either by many members of one family or many families together...in the courtyard/shared portion would be the space for the kitchen and then each family/portion of the family would have their own living quarters/sleeping space radiating off the main courtyard....many times these did not have running water or electricity....and that is still true today for some of them...our hostel did have both amenities.....the doorway you see above is the entrance to our hutong....always red - for good luck and prosperity!!!!!
during our nights in beijing, we went to the pedestrian area where the night market was located...unfortunately we did not eat there the first night and had some american food, that was not so good, but we were starving....luckily we ended up finding the market and did have dinner there the second night....it was amazing how many things had really bad english translations on them....you can see one of my favorites above....if you figure it out, let me know what it means :)
saturday we headed to The Great Wall....we went to the most touristy part...mutianyu....as you can see from the picture above, we caught a chairlift up to the wall....i think most people have a hard time grasping just how enormous and majestic and powerful the wall is....8850 km (5500 miles) long....but this does not include all of the branches off of it....its simply amazing.....
as you can see from the sign, we were in the land of civilized sightseeing....and don't worry, there is no driving on the wall...actually i have no idea how a car would even handle the wall with its steep steps and bumpy parts, at times you did better to use both hands and feet when going up and down certain parts of the wall....i can only imagine how long this took and how many people died while building it....insane....
here's a shot of the two of us on the wall....this was after kat had heard enough kumbaya from a church group who was visiting the wall from the states....as you can see i have adopted the traditional korean girl pose....this seems to be what i do these days in pictures...amazing how things rub off on others
i took this picture so you could see just how steep the stairs are on parts of the wall...its incredible to think that soldiers needed to patrol this wall, that there is a full marathon held on the wall and that a fashion show was hosted on the wall....i have no idea how the models did it without killing themselves in heels....simply crazy!!!! but a must see if you can....you can also see how the stairs are slanted to the left...and that means they are leaning towards the chinese and not mongolian side of the wall....they did this so they could collect water from the rains and would not have to carry it up from the villages below...smart thinking!!!!
the way we came down from the wall was tons of fun....yep...we tobogganed down on a luge....it rocked....here you can see kat getting ready to take off....you can tell from the picture she was just a bit excited about the entire experience.....
this is a view looking down the luge to where kat is.....for much of the ride i did not use the brake at all...so a few times i needed to slow up and wait for kat to get out of my viewso then i could go as fast as i wanted.....zoooooooooom!!!!! if you do go to the wall, this may seem like the cheesy, touristy thing to do...but really, its a heck of a lot of fun :)
we also made a stop in the beijing olympic village....here you see the bird's nest....the chinese have been quite smart with these buildings....the bird's nest is used for concerts and such and the swimming cube is now a huge water park.....so they have made them useable for all....of course we saw the folks selling all of the previous olympic paraphernalia and per normal there were people selling the small opera mask kites....the color of the sky here in this shot is more of what we experienced in beijing while we were there....blech.....
while we were walking down our street to the hostel we kept seeing these makeshift hub caps....we had no idea why folks did this, unless they didn't want to scratch their "real" hubcaps, so we nicknamed it the "beijing boot"....also interesting to see how many bicycles were chained in car parking spots to reserve the spot for the owners....the bikes were being held upright by two taught chains...one to the front wheel and one to the back wheel....interesting method that works!
now on to the night market.....what you see in these pictures is a selection of foods you could have fried and/or eat off a stick....kat and i were daring....but we did not try the grilled starfish....i just couldn't imagine eating one of these, but we saw many folks enjoying their very crunchy snack...if you look closely you will also see above the starfish, spiny sea urchin and the long things to the right of those that are darker in color are eel.....
in this shot however, you can see something we ate....it was not the silkworm larvae or the big black scorpions....but we dared each other to eat the smaller scorpions....there were two on the stick...one for each of us....simply perfect....they take these sticks and fry whatever you see on them for the person to eat.....
me with our tasty and rather crunchy snack....really they did not have much flavor and it was like eating plain old potato chips, because they did have some salt and a lot of grease on them....sorry i did not post the picture of the empty stick...but hopefully you believe me when i tell you we ate them ;)
before we move into some more non-traditional choices...i figured i would show you the caramelized fruit sticks....these things are amazing and you can find them in shanghai too...they take the fruit, pour liquid sugar over them and then add heat so they will harden....kind of like candy apples....and they use many different types of fruit...i have to say i love the strawberries this way....yummy!!!!!
back to the non-traditional....in china you can get lots of meat things on a stick...beef, chicken, pork...plus you can get parts (chicken feet and heads) or organs (liver, heart, tripe) specifically to fry as well....in the shot above we were given the opportunity to fry up some sheep penis....that's the one with the double sticks.....i can honestly say both kat and i passed on this rare treat....would you pass?????
however we did not pass on the fried snake.....this was quite possibly the most chewy food i have ever eaten....i don't know if the guy didn't cook it long enough or what, but it was impossible to bite off a piece here...this shot was taken before we both gave it a try and had rip off a piece....needless to say, we did not eat the entire thing...things we also ate that were very tasty were veggie dumplings/goyza, crab dumplings, a type of chow mein noodle and fried ice cream on white bread....the last creation was sickeningly sweet, and definitely not a favorite....it was a great experience walking up and down and trying all of the different treats at the night market.....
the morning before we left we went to the forbidden city....this is where chairman mao's picture looks out over Tienanmen square and where many of the emperors lived when they ruled....mao's body lies in the square in a mausoleum....but we did not have time to see him....this is the picture of mao that is updated each year over chinese new year....they say that each year his picture is getting younger and younger....kat is just helping him stay aloft :)
i decided not to include many pictures of the forbidden city, as ih ave already been there and if you go into past updates here in this blog, you can find other shots....however, i was intrigued by the sun dials in the forbidden city and happy to see that they all agreed and seemed to still be working....how cool is that :) i know, i know....always a science geek!
this last shot from beijing is me with one of the imperial guardian lions for where the emperor's throne room was.....i have opted to have my picture taken with the female lion, as she has her left paw on her baby....these lions are known as the "shishi" and can be found in front of important places because of their protective benefits.....they are always found in pairs in china, to represent yin & yang....the male with his paw on a representation of the world and the female restraining her playful cub...you can find of these many places within the forbidden city.....this specific pair is from the Qing dynasty...roar!!!!!
overall beijing was a great weekend trip from shanghai....it was great to go with my friend kat there and if you head that way, please let me know and i will meet you if possible....of course, i also recommend you head south to sparkly shanghai where i live....free bedroom included.....i will be there for at least one more school year, but after next june i cannot make any promises i will still be there.....it was a crazy year for me with work and i have not decided if i will be staying for a third year in shanghai....but when i make a decision, i promise i will pass it along
i still have africa and australia to live on for continents....and who knows what will happen....but i do recommend a trip to china....so much to see and do....so much history....it is an incredible place....and although i am happy i am on vacation from there at the moment....i am really happy i live there and i really do like shanghai.....so that's the latest update.....i probably will not send another this summer, as i am traveling a bit and head back to work at the beginning of august....feel free to drop a line and say hi....and remember, if you are in the philly area, get in touch.....
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