Archive for June, 2009

Beijing final update

June 24, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , ,

Alright… and now for the long awaited conclusion of: Tom’s trip to Beijing

Part 4 of 4 – View pictures from this day

Getting up was very difficult Sunday morning… the intensity of the trip combined with the sleep deprivation did not work well for getting up early. We had quite an agenda for planned, as we were hoping to hit all of the left over major attractions in Beijing and make our flight back to SJTU.

The first stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was a large park with various old style Chinese building around. The biggest attraction in the park was actually the people. Every section of the massive park was filled with older Chinese people doing some sort of activity. It was wild to see both the quantity of people, and the range in the activities being performed. There was dancing, sword practice, card games, Frisbee, and many other activities that I don’t even know the name of. Everyone was so active, lively, and happy. I really was thinking to myself that I hope I will be that happy when I am older. I even thought for a second about the feasibility of coming back and retiring in a community similar. At the minimum I think it would be worth a trip to China just to get ideas of what one might do to stay active.

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I just really liked this picture

I just really liked this picture I took

There are more great pictures from the Temple of Heaven on the web album.

The next stop of the day was Beihai park, an imperial garden to the northwest of the Forbidden City. I don’t know why, but I really wasn’t expecting too much from this stop. It was so close to our hotel that I figured it would just be an average park, but alas… as so many of my assumptions on things have been here was completely wrong. The park was actually very nice. It was more open then some of the other attractions, but there was still plenty of marvelous architecture and works of art. There was also a quite impressive street artist who was able to “paint” portraits of people in a matter of seconds with nothing but water. Tony kept telling us that we had to see the 9 dragon wall. I was expecting something quite massive and ended up getting my hopes up a little high… especially since my heel was still giving me trouble and it was on the complete other side of the park from where we started. The wall was still impressive just not at all what I was thinking it would be.

The Bai Ta (White Dagoba) is a 40 m high stupa placed on the highest point on Qiónghuá Island.

The Bai Ta (White Dagoba) is a 40 m high stupa placed on the highest point on Qiónghuá Island.

After Beihai Park, we rushed over to Olympic Park after stopping at our hotel to pick up our luggage. (Yes we looked stupid haling our large suitcases around) I knew my dad would be disappointed if I didn’t at least visit the olympic site while I was in Beijing. The two main attractions were of course the bird’s nest, and the water cube. The water cube looked very cool from the outside. There is also a nice fountain display on the outside of the building. The bubbles are a very unique attribute of the building, and I think that in order to truely appreciate the building I would have had to come at night when all of the light displays are on. The building itself is already showing some signs of wear, and I wonder how long it will be able to stay in its current form. Inside the water cube was alright, but there was not much to see. The stadium in the pool is large for a swimming pool, but it was still just a normal pool. The practice pool which was gigantic was actually more impressive to me.

The bird’s nest on the other hand was amazing  both on the outside and the inside. The stadium is just so amazing to look at and when you walk into it you can almost feel the Olympic spirit. The indoor of the stadium was a vibrant red for the most part, and they had some amazing videos of the olympics on repeat on some large monitors.

After the Olympic Park, we walked to a train that took us all the way to the airport and made our way back to campus, completly exhausted, but with an experience of a lifetime.

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Whose Alarm is that…

June 9, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , , , ,

This is post 3 of 4 about my trip to Bejing

Saturday: (View Pictures from this day)

Getting up Saturday morning was a little rough for two main reasons;
One: We got up very early again (We all end up yelling at whoevers alarm goes off first)
Two: We just spent the night on bar street

We ended up getting out of the hotel at a decent time (7:30ish) and made it to our first stop of the day… The Summer Palace. The Summer Palace Chinese name fittingly translates to “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony.”  I would describe it as a large park much of which is covered with water. There are many impressive works of Chinese architecture that looks especially good from across a lake. One of the things I have noticed about the Chinese buildings is that great thought was put into the actual location of each building. Often times buildings will be lined up with one another, on top of a large hill, or placed just perfectly for an amazing view from various vantage points.

View from across the lake

We were rushing through the park, and it seemed as though people were slightly irritable with the lack of sleep. I ended up getting separated from my group after taking a picture, and spent most of the time wandering on my own. This seemed to be exactly what I needed. I felt refreshed and went from feeling dragged around, to having complete autonomy. I ended up exploring some of the many different natural features of the landscape on my own. I was climbing up a large hill when I found an old cave that was pretty interesting. It felt very Serene to be alone in nature just exploring parts of an ancient culture. I spent much of the day walking around a large lake exploring various sights along the way.

Entrance of the Cave

Entrance of the Cave

One of the more impressive features at the Summer Palace was the Temple of Buddhist Virtue which contained a large statue of Buddha.

After the Summer Palace we went to the the Niujie Mosque, which is the oldest Mosque in Beijing. It wasn’t exactly as big as you might expect, but the people there were very nice.

We finished the Mosque fairly quickly and were just able to squeeze in our next destination: Fayuan Temple. It was somewhat small, but it was pretty interesting to see actual monks walking around. There was also a very cute dog that kept following people around.

After are scheduled agenda was completed we decided to take an impromptu stop at the Pearl Market, which was basically a very large mall like building of knock off stuff. It was fun to go around bargaining for deals, and I ended up picking up a few souvenirs here. We debated on what to do for dinner and ended up heading back to Wangfujing to the night street vendors, where you could try all sorts of wild cuisine. This included stuff like snakes, spiders, scorpions, eels, and many other weird items. I stayed pretty conservative with my choices, but a few of the other guys tried some scorpions.

The day ended with a couple hours of books before bed, allowing me to get to sleep by around 2 or 3AM.

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I finally did it… (Friday)

June 5, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , ,

This post covers Friday’s activities on my trip to Beijing (part 2/4)

Friday: (Pictures from this Day)

Whenever you tell anyone about a trip to China, they always mention one thing: The Great Wall. I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to see it during my time here since I didn’t have much time off, but going to Beijing made it possible.

We arranged a day long tour with our hotel for about 200 rmb (roughly $30 US, catching on to the conversion rate yet… me either … dividing by 7 sucks). We knew it would take us to the Great Wall, a Ming Tomb, and lunch, but that wasn’t all they were going to do for us.

We ended up going to the Juyongguan section (I think) of the Great Wall, and believe it or not it wasn’t really what I expected. Instead of calling it the Great Wall they should have named it “The Great Stone Ladder” (at least for our section). I couldn’t complain though the landscape was beauitful mountainious- reminicient of out West in the states. We spent about two hours climbing the wall, and it was quite an experience. It was something I think I will remember doing for awhile. It was also fairly physically challenging.

View as we start climbing

View as we start climbing

Climbing the wall

Climbing the wall

After successfully making it up four towers and back down in one piece our tour proceeded to take us to what was to be the first of many combination stops/tourist traps. We ended up going to Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery where many different forms of Jade artwork were made. They gave us 50 RMB voucher (a prelude of what to come) then a very brief tour which included a glimpse of the process in which the jade was made into various pieces of art, and how to tell fake jade from real jade. Then we went into a large showroom area where we could purchase any number of jade items. To be fair the store was actually really fun and they didn’t make you feel obligated to buy anything.

Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery

Beijing Dragon Land Superior Jade Gallery

The next stop was to one of the thirteen Ming tombs. We were expecting to spend a decent amount of time here, but we ended up going to one of the smaller ones which allowed us to get in and out in record pace. I thought Mallory might like this combo turtle dragon statue they had there.

Turtle Dragon at Ming Tomb

Turtle Dragon at Ming Tomb

After the Ming Tomb we went to lunch at the SIWEI Friendship Store, before we actually got to eat as they “prepared our table” we were lucky ennough to be given a tour of how various urns were created and painted, something the friendship store just happen to sell a lot of. You could tell these stops were for tourists as the parking lot was filled only with large buses. Lunch itself was very good and a decent amount of food since it was included in our tour fee.

Working Painting an Urn

Working Painting an Urn

The next location we got to visit was the Beijing Dong Wu Silk Museum. The provided us with a fairly detailed tour of how silk was made, and we even got to help stretch out some silk that was being used in a blanket. The museum section wasn’t huge but it was very well done, and they even had an old machine that they used to process silk with. We then got to their showroom where they had loads of different blankets and silk clothes for our purchace. After we found the unmarked exit we proceeded to our next stop- Dr. Tea.

Silk Musuem

Silk Musuem

We were taken to a private room where our tour group was prepared various samples of Teas to try, along with information about each Tea. We tried Jasmine, Oolong, Litchi and Puerh tea. I was surprised that even I liked the tea, and they almost got my business, but I was able to hold off with the likely hope of finding a cheaper item elsewhere.

Our final stop was of the tour was a foot massage place. We each got to a herbal soak, then about a 2o minute foot massage. It really worried me how painful my feet had been during the past couple of weeks (particularly my heel) and when I was getting the massage I could definitely feel the pain localized in various areas. I may have to go to the doctor to get an x-ray if the problem persists. Anyway overall the massage was great. We then were told about the differences between eastern and western medicine. How eastern medicine was more focused on preventing problems while western medicine was focused on treating. The presentation was actually enjoyable. We were then asked if we would like to have some doctors come look at our palms if they were available. Pretty soon all the doctors came in and started talking to everyone. The guy who examined me went like this:

Doc: Any digestion problems?
Me: Not really
Doc: Any insomnia problems?
Me: Not really
Doc: Your pretty much healthy

Apparently I was the only one who got the you are  healthy answers. Everyone else was asked or told strangely similar things, and then were offered various medicine for their ailments. One of our members was taken in a private room to be told something serious. I believe it was something along the lines of he wouldn’t be able to have sex in the future unless he bought some meds that cost 600 rmb/bottle that need 2 bottles/month for 3 months… you do the math.

Anyway I actually enjoyed this as well, it was like I was at the fair while getting a foot massage, and we all had a good laugh about it on the bus.

This concluded our hotel arranged tour. We ended up seeing some great places and quite a few stops that weren’t expected but were fun anyway (most the time)

We were all starving after the trip and ended up eating dinner at a “Hot Pot” restaurant called Little Sheep, where you select various types of vegetables and meats and you put them onto a boiling pot in the middle of your table when you want to eat them. I enjoyed this hot pot much more then I did the hot pot on campus.

At night we ended up going to San Li Tun, a bar street. We quickly realized that like almost everything in China, the prices were negotiable. On a side note: many of us have almost started price negotitions as a hobby. We always are trying to see who can end up with the best deal. The first bar was very relaxing and we ended up having a couple of beers outside in the cool air. We ended up going to a couple more bars during the night including one where the was singing. We ended the night on with a bit of a tiff with a bar who basically doubled are drink order without telling us, but in the end it was only a few bucks.

They were singing Hey Jude

They were singing Hey Jude

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A Not So Small Detour – (Wed/Thur)

June 5, 2009 · Filed under Beijing, Trips · Tagged , , , , ,

This post covers day (wed/thur) of  Beijing 

Wed/Thur: (View Pictures from these days)

Surprise…

I went to Beijing with the other U of M students from Wednesday night through Sunday evening. We divided ourselves into three groups and each group made their own plans. My group consisted of myself Jonas, Chris (my roomate), Shravan, Wenting, Jiefu, and Tony. My group was extemly lucky because Chris and Wenting can both speak a decent amount of Chinese and Tony is fluent and can also read Chinese. I feel kind of bad how much work Tony had to do for our group throughout the trip in translating pretty much everything for our group and often times other groups.

 

We ended up staying at the Redwall Hotel, which was a fairly nice place near the Imperial Place and Baihai park. I have decided to divide up the trip into separate post because of how much we did while we were there. If you have ever played Oregon Trail before, you will understand what I mean when I say we were set at Grueling pace, and lost a couple oxen on the way.

 

So without further adieu: Wednesday Night

 

We arrived in Beijing very late after a fairly long day of traveling. If your not familiar with China Beijing and Shanghai are not exactly walking distance apart, so we decided to fly over a 10ish hour high speed train ride. We arrived at our hotel around 1am and unpacked. Jonas and I then decided to walk around our hotel and see what we were near. We ended up talking to a local shop guy for a bit (talking mainly consisting of hand gestures as neither group really spoke the other language). Finally we called it a night around 3am and went to bed.

 

Thursday – First Day of Activities.

 

We got up bright and early on the first day (and every day for that matter) and started our adventure in Beijing. One nice thing about Beijing was their fabulous mass transportation systems. They had buses going all over the city that cost 1rmb to ride, an ever extending subway network that cost 2rmb to ride, and a plethora of taxi’s that were great to fill in gaps where buses and metros were unavailable. This meant as long as you had someone who could read Chinese transportation was very cheap.

 

Our first stop of the day was Wangfujing which is a famous shopping street in China. We spent some time strolling through some of the shops and then ended up having “breakfast-ish” on the 7th floor of a large mall. (As I haven’t found anything that resembles anything like what I would consider breakfast, it is basically just lunch in the morning).

 

After lunch everyone except Wenting and Jonas went to Tienanmen square. Jonas had to shop for some new clothes since he had accidentally left his luggage in Shanghai. Tienanmen is a very nice area. It is a large open plaza for the most part with different government buildings placed carefully around.

We decided to go into the first building we saw which was Zhengyangmen, which was formally known as the front gate of the inner city of ancient Bejing. One of the nicest parts about going inside Zhengyangmen is the view of Tienanmen Square. We walked around the square for about an hour in a normal tourist fashion before heading the the forbidden city to meet up with the rest of our group.

Zhengyangmen Gate

 

 

When we first got into the Forbidden City I was a little disappointed. It was a beautiful from a nature perspective but there weren’t very many buildings and the ones they had were fairly small, although it was impressive that everything was hand painted and unique….. THEN our group realized we weren’t actually inside the forbidden city but a park just outside of it.

The actual Forbidden City was breathtaking. It was an incredible collection of building, many of which are connected together in a massive complex. It was incredibly large, and you don’t really get a sense of the scope of the place until you get into it and are able to get a view of how large it is. My biggest regret of the trip was not being able to spend more time there. We were trying to catch a Tea show performance and we didn’t realize just how large it was until it was too late. I still got some pretty amazing pictures of the city which you can see in my albums.

Just one small section of the Forbidden City

 

We ended up rushing to try to get to the tea show, but ended up missing it as our quest for a taxi kept taking us in the wrong direction until finally it was too late. This was unfortunate in more then one way as it turns out the performance was a special one for the holiday and was at a highly reduced price, and we decided later not to go back and pay the full price.

 

The next stop of the day was the Lama Palace which is a monetary of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism. We were able to go at a little slower pace throughout the temple as it wasn’t near the size of the Forbidden city, although impressive in its own right. The temple had many buildings with ornate statues of Buddha inside. Unfortunately you are are not allowed to take pictures of the Budda’s otherwise my web album would be stocked full of them (although I did manage to snap a few pictures ;) ). It had a very relaxing atmosphere and many Chinese people came to pray.

 

Lama Temple

A building in the Lama Temple

 

After the temple we rushed over to meet the other groups and a professor and his family for Peking duck for dinner. Our collective group ate six ducks along with many other side dishes.

 

Dinner was fairly late and long so it was night by the time we were done. My group split into two groups. One group going out to the bars and the other going back to the hotel. I really wanted to go out to the bars but I thought I should get some sleep and study a bit for my exam on Monday. I ended up catching a taxi with Tony. When we got back we decided to see what this light was near our hotel. It ended up being the outside of the Forbidden City. We walked along the outside of the city for awhile which was lit up before heading back and calling it a night.

 

Mmmmmmmm

Mmmmmmmm

 

 

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