Shanghai

After Zhengzhou, I went back to Beijing for a few days to regroup with some friends and relax. On the 13th, I left Beijing on a night train to Shanghai with one of my friends. We were both in the waiting room before the train departed, and we were astonished at the amount of people going to be on our train. We figured the train must have a lot of cars because that particular week was a holiday and a lot of people were going home to see their family. We walked over to our car and handed the attendant our tickets. We stepped on the train and couldn't believe what we saw net. The whole isle of the train was filled with people, standing. All the seats were full excluding our two seats, but our train had about 50 people who had bought standing tickets all the way to Shanghai. That train ride was something that even Chinese people have never heard of. When we got back to Beijing My friend's mom said the train company shouldn't really be doing that. But anyways we were on the train, and we at least had seats so I was happy. Luckily we sat on the side with two seats so we could switch off between sleeping on the window side and getting squished by other peoples behinds. In all the train ride was 14 hours and we were so happy to get out of that car. Neither of us moved out of our seats because even going to the bathroom would have meant squeezing through 30 people. We took the subway directly to the hostel which was really nice. We were in a eight person dorm which wasn't bad at all. They also had a laundry machine which only cost five RMB (I didn't have a laundry machine in Beijing so I was really happy when I got Shanghai).

The first day in Shanghai we just rested and watched the World Cup. Later we went out the Bund and took pictures. On day two we went to the Expo which was enormous. We only went to three countries' pavilion (US, Canada, and Tailand), but they were all pretty good. My favorite was the Canadian pavilion because the staff were incredibly professional and friendly. However inside was a bit small and all over the place. The US pavilion was really cool and the videos were distinctly American. Overall the US pavilion was good and I enjoyed the short movies they played. We walked around the rest of the Expo and took pictures next to other pavilions and just enjoyed the view. We left at 7:30 and had spent over six hours walking around the Expo. It was a cool experience, except the whole time I was in there I was wondering, what was the point of all this? Each pavilion barely scraped the surface of each countries culture. A big part of the Expo is that it allows the city to renovate their infrastructure and improve its pubic transportation. If you think about the Expo as a giant culture fest it makes sense. It's just there to give people a brief introduction to each country hoping people will want to learn more.

Day three we went to the Shanghai museum (merely because it was free and had air conditioning). It was fairly interesting but we spent about an hour or two in there briskly looking at the paintings and ceramics. Later we walked through the peoples' park and peoples' square which was relaxing.

Day four was really a waste of a day because we didn't have anything to do until our train left at 10 pm. We talked through Century Park in the suburbs of Shanghai which was the most boring part of the whole trip. After we went to the French Concession which was okay. We found a crepe place but decided not to go because it was even more expensive than if we were in France! Later we went back to the hostel restaurant to watch the World Cup because it was really close to the train station. This train ride was much more comfortable because there were only a few standers. We got back to Beijing at noon the next day and I've been in Beijing ever since. My Chinese program starts tomorrow and I won't be able to talk in English at all! I'm not sure if I'm going to be updating y blog because I don't want to break the Language pledge. We'll see how it goes because I want to keep this blog up. Maybe I'll have time tonight to write about Beijing.

Luoyang and Zhengzhou

We were incredibly happy to leave Huashan, even though it was an amazing place. Or next stop, Luoyang, is a relatively small city (which used to be the capital hundreds of years ago) of a few million people. We only had one day there so we decided to skip the touristy stuff and go straight to the old city and eat at the night market. We stuck around for four or five hours, eating shiskebab and enjoying the atmosphere and walked back to our hostel. The next day we took a train to Zhengzhou, where we only had one day as well. Zhengzhou is a much bigger city than Luoyang and we weren't sure what to do there because there honestly weren't that many tourist attractions, but that was no problem for us. We winded up going to another night market and eating street food which I think is better than many American restaurants. At some point in our stay in Zhengzhou we found a large shopping area for young people and sat down and people watched for a few hours. As it was getting late, the amount of younger people dwindled and we were suddenly approached by this old, old, old man who sat right in-between us and started talking an a indiscernible dialect. What made it even wielder was that he grabbed my friend's arm and started stroking his skin. At that point we got up and walked away, half laughing half wondering what the heck just happened. That might have been the highlight of our time in Zhengzhou, and  it's probably the thing I will remember the longest, funnily enough. These last two cities we visited were interesting, but after a while streets and buildings started blending in with each other. There wasn't much difference between all the cities we visited. All in all the trip was excellent and we were all glad to be heading back to Beijing anticipating more fun times.

Huashan

Originally it was our plan to climb up and down Huashan in one day and move on to Luoyang, but as our day of departure to Xi'an neared, we decided to stay on top of Huashan for a night just for fun. We set off for Huashan expecting an easy three hour walk up to the north peak where we planned on dropping our stuff and heading up to the west peak. My Lonely Planet book had been pretty accurate for most of the trip and we decided to do take the longer way up, the three hour walk, instead of the cable car. We got off the train in Huashan and were immediately bombarded by a bunch of guys who tried to make us get in their car and go to the base of Huashan. They said the bus was nine RMB per person and was very slow. But after about five minutes of arguing with these guys, who couldn't speak very good Mandarin, we decided to opt for the public bus (not that we were going to take the sketchy guys' cars anyway). As it turns out the bus was only three RMB and took us to a very close stop next to the base of the mountain. The way to the base was through an old temple and up a small hill which was very scenic but unnecessarily large. After going through the main gate we were making good time. However, after five minutes we all decided to stop and eat because we hadn't had lunch yet and it was already noon. After an excessively long lunch break we proceed up the mountain and start encountering some fairy steep inclines. My two friends with me were looking warily at the inclines and decided to take another break after 20 minutes. By this point we had maybe moved 400 meters and had at least 90 percent of the mountain to climb. To cut a long story short, we ended up at the top of the mountain at 4:30 and incredibly tired from the near vertical inclines we had to go up. We all dropped our heavy bags in the room and just sat there thinking we were crazy to be bringing such big backpacks up such a tall mountain. After half an hour's rest, one of my friends and I decided to go up the rest of the way to the west peak. This part of the hike was much better because we didn't have any backpacks to worry about and the sun was going down so we were not being burned anymore. When we got back to the room it was dark and there were hardly any light on in the "hotel" which had no running water and really dirty sheets. The next day we got up at 7 to catch a train at 10. We took the cable car down this time which wasn't cheap (72 RMB which could maybe buy two days' meals). Once we got down the mountain we then needed to take another bus (10 RMB) to another stop where we had to take a 30 RMB taxi to the train station. At the train station we were glad to be done with our Huashan experience and were ready for our next stop, Luoyang.

Xi'an

Xi'an was the first place I visited and was definitely one of the most enjoyable parts of my trip. Like I said in a previous post, I got in at 4 in the morning on a night train and proceeded through the deserted city like something from 28 Days Later. The next day in Revolution Park (with the big stone book) was a bit dull but we strolled through the Muslim quarter afterwards which was very cool. If anyone reading this blog gets a chance to go to China, please check out a Muslim restaurant because I have only found good food in them. You will know if it is a Muslim restaurant if the men are wearing small white hats. On day two we went to The Terracotta Warriors which was really boring (just take a look at my pictures and imagine you went). Although it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, I really wouldn't recommend it. On my third day (my friends' fourth day) and last day we went to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (the tall brick structure). It was okay, but since I know virtually nothing about China's ancient history I didn't quite understand why it was significant. Fortunately one of my friends knows an unhealthy amount of Chinese ancient history and acted as a tour guide for us. Apparently it was built for a returning monk who was to translate all the scriptures he collected on some epic journey (probably got the story completely wrong but I think I'm close). Later that day we biked around the city walls which was a lot of fun because we got to see Xi'an from a different perspective. In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to bike the wall right before we went to Huashan, which we barely made it up all the way. Next post will be about us scaling Huashan.

Blog Status

Hello followers! Sorry I haven't been able to update my blog for the past three weeks but from now on I will have constant internet access and the posts should be flowing from now on. I feel like I haven't kept y'all up to date on everything so expect a few long posts with pictures shortly.

So Far So Good, For The Most Part

This is the first time I've been able to get internet access the past week. I just got back from my trip to Xi'an, Huashan, Luoyang, and Zhengzhou. My flight went pretty poorly, to say the least. I got delayed in Detroit one day because Delta's entire 747 fleet decided to malfunction on the same day. I missed my original train to Xi'an but was able to get another train the next day which left Beijing at 1 in the afternoon and arrived in Xi'an at 4 in the morning. My friends picked me up at the train station and we walked back to our hostel which was on the other side of the city. It was eerie walking through Xi'an at 5 in the morning. No one was out and everything looked deserted. We got the the hostel at 5:30 and had to wake up the clerk to open the door. We were originally going to go right out and see the sights, but when we got to the room we all collapsed on our beds and slept for another three hours. More on Xi'an in the next post.