I'm Back to Beijing!

With massive amounts of news to tell you about the trip, where I left off a month ago. Get ready for this:

I'm Back!


I would say the last three weeks I spent traveling was a success, but now, settling down again in Beijing, I am able to relax without having to think about "that train I need to catch later today". I am also able to sit in my room at the end of the day and watch the sunset right before my eyes through my very own window.

But, what kind of person would I be if I didn't fill you in on the latter 2 weeks of my trip?
Shanghai:



I went to Shanghai immediately following the fiasco on Huangshan. We took another hard sleeper over to Shanghai, where we were met by Ivy's, our other friend on the trip, uncle. He was very friendly and way too willing to take us around. In our 8 days staying in Shanghai, until he had to leave to Taiwan, he made our trip very relaxed and filled with different food experiences. He treated us out to at least 5 meals, of which all probably cost over 300 kuai total per meal. We had authentic Sichuan, Shanghai, Taiwanese, Hot Pot (which actually made me FULL), and others. Ivy's other baller aunt took us out to a fancy dian xin (dim sum) lunch. Most, if not all, of the places we went to I ate more than my stomach could normally handle. Not only that, but Ivy's uncle also let us stay in his extra room of his apartment, which was very nice and clean with a personal A/C. Only one night we saw two cockroaches within 5 minutes of each other. It was quite hilarious actually, moreso than disgusting.

But aside from the food in Shanghai, we saw a lot of amazing buildings. Shanghai started to make me think of how forward and how much progress China was making towards becoming a developed nation. In fact, the technological advances that were present in your everyday (such as big screens on the outside of major buildings) made me think that the US may be a little behind this part of China. It was only 2 or 3 years ago that I visited Shanghai with my sister and now there is a building that is taller than the Jin Mao Tower (the tallest building at that time that my sister and I marvelled at).

In my second trip to Shanghai, it was definitely a much different experience. I could feel and see Shanghai's incessant need to build more, out and up. I would always see construction going on in unfinished buildings even until 10 pm at night. Chinese workers really don't sleep. They have about 7 railway lines in their VERY CONVENIENT subway system that we took everyday, by the next couple of years I hear they plan on making about 20 railway lines, that's not a very easy task.

I have to admit that hanging out in Shanghai and not being "forced" to see the monuments and attractions like usual tourists was fun, but I was ready to make it to our next desination: Fujian.

Xiamen:


Oh man. I was so excited to go here only because Fujian is the part of China that I am supposedly descended from, though we can never really be sure. But I mean...I understand Fujian hua and can speak some so I think that is enough evidence that I am from the region. We were going to go to Fuzhou, the capital, but found out that the time we spent in Shanghai cut the rest of our trip short, knowing that we had to start school pretty soon, relatively. We left Ivy back in Shanghai because she said she wanted to just hang out the rest of the time and stop moving aorund, which I understood because getting on trains was getting bothersome for me too. Instead of Fuzhou, we went to Xiamen, a stop next to Fuzhou which is famous for its technology and normal university. XMUT, XiaMen University of Technology, I think was compared to MIT. Either way, the friend we met on the train to Huangshan that was a student went to XMUT was going to be in the region so we sent him an email to meet up. We never did get a response back until we left Xiamen but it would have been really cool if we could have met up in his town and he could have showed us around. He was very sad that we didn't meet up but told us that he would be going to Beijing to hang out around October or November.

In Xiamen we met up with Alex and instantly decided that we were going to go visit local Gulangyu Island, a spot in Xiamen known for tourism and interesting architecture. We got to the island by ferry and spent an entire day exploring the backroads and seeing the European buildings that was commonplace in the area. We saw Roman Catholic Churches juxtaposed against small Chinese hole-in-the-wall type establishments. I bought a couple of locally made coconut souvenirs there. We visited a gigantic statue, whose history in Xiamen is very prominent, climbed to the top and took pictures on his gigantic foot. It was nice because the weather was cool and we were the only ones up there, considering it was already late and the area was going to be closed for the day in 5 minutes. On Gulangyu we also visited the Aquarium/Underwater World just like in Qingdao, though this one was a little better and cheaper because we were able to go to a dolphin and sea lion show. It was really fun.

We spent our nights about Xiamen in town looking for nice little local establishments that served local food. Above all, I wanted to taste the food and hear the languages of my ancestry even if it wasn't exactly the same thing. We found a bunch of really nice restaurants in a little nook across the street from our hostel. It had little stores too, though I felt like they were charging prices just short of the United States, maybe they got a lot of tourism. Anyway, Xiamen marked the beginning of our touring and travel solely by subway and bus as well as living accomodations completely hostel. The hostel we stayed in was called Xiamen International Youth Hostel and was apart of YHA, Youth Hostel Association. I guess this association has a bunch of hostels around the world with international standards for their accomodations. Best of all, paying for a bunk in a 6 person room was only 55 kuai a night. There we met a lawyer freshly graduated from Berkeley Undergrad and Stanford (hisssssssssssssss) Law School. She said Stanford has all the brain power as Berkeley with tons more money, we all agreed on that, maybe not on the brain power part though. Haha. Other than meeting that woman, we also met two Japanese people who were probably in their mid 20s, both of whom we "knew of" since the train from Shanghai to Xiamen. It was funny because we saw them board the train and they were trying to speak to the attendant in English, but she didn't understand. She told them to talk to us because we could speak English, I guess she heard us. Aside from a short interaction in which the guy asked me if a bag was mine, we didn't talk the rest of the long train ride. After the train stopped they got off and we thought it was the last time we would see them because we went separate
ways. It turns out that after asking someone what bus to take that they were already in the line to board the same bus. Not only were they on the same bus, but they took the same stop too and stayed in the SAME hostel. I guess it was expected since they looked like they were travelling, matching his and hers North Face Backpacking backpacks, both larger than their own bodies. It wasn't until the next night in the hostel that we actually exchanged more than a couple words, whereupon we learned that they were boyfriend and girlfriend touring the WORLD for one year. He ALSO seemed to have a picture with every famous basketball player ever, Yao Ming, the USA Men's Basketball Team, the AND1 Team, and more. He also told us about stories drinking with the teams. Ridiculous. We exchanged emails and he told us that he would be in the states, San Francisco! around February, that's pretty cool. They said they would hit us up when they get there and so we could show them around. That would be cool if we could visit them in Japan sometime, maybe have a place to stay too...haha.

We left Xiamen after seeing all the sites and walking through the Xiamen Universities Campuses, which Beijing Shi Fan Da Xue pales in comparison to. However, the means of transportation from Xiamen to Guilin, our next destination, was only available through bus, a sleeping bus...what? We soon figured out that this meant a nicer bus with beds/bunks, but nevertheless a bus. And a bus in China means zigging and zagging, cutting lanes, and driving through bouncy, rural roads (not really, just dirt paths). This kind of ride plus a car sick kind of girl = PUKE! Right?! So Tammy and I were playing cards on my bunk, very small but still had enough room, when this girl who looks disoriented stumbles over to our area and pukes all over the floor next to Tammy's bunk getting some on my leg, Tammy's leg and worst of all, our backpacks :( poor NorthFace. We used wetnaps to clean it and called the attendant in the front to clean it but I still felt grossed out. I let Tammy sleep in mine and slept in hers until we made it to Guilin, a total of 20+ hours of transportation. The bus wasn't too bad, just the stops where they brought us to eat.

Guilin:


Guilin was pretty sweet. The center of the city is situated on the top of a high mountain peak. The city is very integrated into the nature of the region, which is mountains resembling Huangshan and really beautiful flowing water. We basically spent time here checking out local culture, shopping a bit and having more dian xin. However, the main purpose of going to Guilin in the first place was to see the caves that were decorated with fluorescent lights shining on the amazing stalactite and stalagmite formations. The cave we went to was one of the most popular and well known, LuDiYan, also known as the Reed Flute Caves because of what the formations resembled. We spent a long time in the cave because it was a cool alternative to the boiling heat outside. On top of the hill where the famous cave was situated was also, as expected in China, a bunch of shops that sold personalized souvenirs, including fans with calligraphy names, where we bought two.

The city of Guilin is filled with some of the most spectacular views of natural beauty, which can be directly seen from inside the city itself. Just taking a short bus ride was amazing because we got to see mountains shrouded in trees and bamboos, beautiful flowing water, lakes and small waterfalls, not to mention some picturesque views of children rowing a man-made bamboo ferry across a green lilypad laden reservoir. Of course, to the side you can also find buses at least 20 years old still running, blowing pillows of black, carcinogenic exhaust and the usual local who knows a foreigner when they see one, selling everything from a map to a 500 kuai rip-off tourist package...ahem scam. But, overall the beauty of Guilin is astounding.

I also saw an ancient, antique looking red bridge and streets filled with mopeds and bicycles, it seemed like the more natural places like Huangshuan and Guilin, and later Yangshuo, were more inclined to using scooters and bicycles as opposed to driving cars in the usual Chinese traffic jams like you see in Shanghai and Beijing. I saw kids running across busy street intersections common practice in Chinese culture) after school let out and local stores selling the local favorite "mifen" with a Chinese sausage I normally eat in the states. Guilin was great except for one factor, the hostel was much dirtier than Xiamen's, a picture of what I thought a hostel actually was. It was dirtier than I thought it would be, I guess my expectations were high. Not only were we forced to use a squatty potty, but I saw a cockroach when we first arrived and the next night I saw a rat run across the living room into the bathroom area. When I told the attendant about it, she told me there were a lot, just don't tell anyone else staying in the hostel. She was a nice attendant though and coming from Yangshuo Flowers Hostel, we were able to ask her questions about it since it was our next destination. She assured us that there were cleaner rooms, western toilets and even a complimentary breakfast, which we sadly didn't take advantage of.

Yangshuo:


Transportation to Yangshuo was the shortest we've had throughout the duration of the entire trip. It consisted of a direct 1 hour sitting bus ride, with only 6 other people in an air-conditioned cab on a well paved road. WOW! Now was that so hard? Arriving in Yangshuo, we promptly went to the Flowers Hostel and checked in. The reviews and information that the receptionist at Guilin told us were right. The attendants were all really polite and helpful, even their English wasn't bad. But when we went to pay for the room, we started to feel a little skeptical. The price, instead of being 100 for a night, was 70...cheaper than Guilin. We thought this place wouldn't be that great, but when we got upstairs it was a quaint room with clean sheets and nice beds and a TV, bathroom, and all of it was clean. 35 kuai a night?

That's ridiculous. We were paying $5 per night to stay in a nice room. So, content with our room we explored Yangshuo, but it is quite limited to a couple of well known streets and a bunch of alleys. We were excited to explore, but were not too fond of the extreme heat that hit us, maybe because it was in the middle of the summer and closer to the equator.

We made it to Xi Jie and saw all these white people and foreigners and realized that all the stores were also catering to the massive influx of foreign people. There were more foreigners from other parts of the world than there were Chinese people. The stores on this street largely over charged for their products and all the restaurants charged around 25+ kuai per meal, imagine, paying for a meal that cost 1 night stay in a nice room. But the food, western food, was a good change, even though it wasn't that great. In the time I spent there, Tammy and I ordered a burger, fries, tuna sandwich, grilled cheese sandwich, pita sandwich with chicken, not so much of a pancake more like a crepe thing and more, in the two days that we spent there. It was over-priced but we enjoyed it. Aside from that and gift shopping for people, also on another street called BinJiang with less foreigers, we went to Li Jiang (the Li River), which was one of the main attractions of Yangshuo, aside from being in a city within mountains and infinite nature.

We took a bunch of buses through the countryside to finally get to the river, where we took a man-made bamboo raft of our own on the river. We saw cows swimming in the river and locals sifting through the dirt. The river was pretty big, but not that large. We went at the right time too since it had just rained and we went at the time when the sun was setting. Not only that, but we were told that the place we went to we could see the mountains that are on the 20 kuai Chinese dollar. We seriously took a picture that was the same as printed on the currency. It was cool. We also saw this thing called the Nine Horses Mountain, which you could really see a shape on the side of a mountain resembling horses. The sun setting on the water was nice, I fully enjoyed it here as I did in Qingdao as well. After staying for a couple days and finally getting some local food for only 8 kuai, some nice clay pot, we were headed back for a 26 hour train ride to Beijing, I couldn't wait.


The train was unbearably long, but we managed to make it back and have a little Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on the train, just me and Tammy sharing some good moon cake, we got the red bean and the green bean kind. When we got back we couldn't believe how cool it was in Beijing, I felt like I was back in the Bay Area. It was even cold. We told the taxi driver to take us to our new dorms, it was around 10:30 pm. We arrived and checked in, dropped our stuff off and went to see if McDonalds or Bao Zi (our favorite Chinese little hole-in-the-wall) were open...they weren't. We saw a little area that people were eating at, a good number and sat down. We made friends with a Korean guy who was studying to be a teacher internationally, his Chinese was really good. I ate 40 dumplings and 4 Chicken wings on skewers, it was amazingly good to be back in Beijing and eat good food and pay nothing.

For the last few days it's been randomly raining and having cool weather, I'm just glad to be back and with some familiar faces again and settled for the last time. I can't take another train. Being in Beijing at this time will be really cool especially towards December when we will start to see snow, hopefully to visit Gu Gong (Forbidden City) when it is snow laden. It will be really cool, but that's all that's been going on for now. Bored yet? Just got my internet so I'm able to put this monster blog up that I've been writing in Notepad. Going to get a haircut, get some supplies for school, maybe make friends with the massive amounts of Koreans in this International Apartment complex before Fall term starts. Oh yeah, and wait for my birthday on the 30th.

Wanna send me something for my birthday? Here's my address.

中国北京 100875
北京市新街口外大街9号
留学生二公寓 8027B
李伟康, George Dy