Heading to Xiamen

S and I decided to spend an extra day in Hangzhou. It is a beautiful city that has the tremendous West Lake in the center. It is quite a sight and we spent the whole day walking around it yesterday. Today, we spent many hours looking through the guide book and figuring out what the next two months will look like. We had originally planned to head to rural towns just south of Hangzhou and take 3 days to get down to the southern coast but today we made the radical decision decision to change our plans and to just head straight down. We were warned this afternoon that finding a train would be impossible, as October 1st marks the 60th anniversary of Communist China and begins the national 7-day holiday. Luckily enough, tomorrow morning we will get on a 22- hour train to Xiamen in Fujian province. We have plenty of reading material, a deck of cards and intend to head to Carrefour tonight to stock up on water, noodles, fruit, bread and peanut butter. I am very excited for this train ride experience although I am sure there will be points of boredom. We plan to stay in Xiamen for a day, visit the roundhouses in rural Yongding county, then make our way to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, then Macau. As we are traveling during the busiest vacation time of the year, our plans might be subject to change but we are willing to roll with it. If this evening is any indication, it will take about an hour of research to find a hotel within our price range. Looking forward to the challenge!

Suzhou and Hangzhou

Venice of the East

We are now is Suzhou, the "Venice of the East", which is a canal town about an hour outside of Shanghai. It is very beautiful and a nice break from the big city lights. Last night, we took a walk around the city and the canals and bridges were illuminated- very romantic. Also, in some of these public spaces along our walk, older women were performing these simple choreographed dances to music blasting from a boombox. A man rollerblading by us told us the women do this frequently "for healthy". Today we took a bus out to a smaller canal town Luzhi this morning and it was very picturesque with cobble-stoned streets, quiet alleyways and aging canal boats. We ate lunch in the modern part of town and, as I followed S out of the restaurant, he was stopped by 3 of the waitresses and they all posed for pictures with him. They kept giggling and showing him the pictures. Once they saw me, they took one with me but then went back and took several more with S. This evening we are having dinner with a girl ShuLu from Suzhou that we met through couchsurfing.
We had an excellent time in Shanghai and our hostesses Sarah and Becky were so wonderful . As a thank you for hosting us, we took them to this delicious vegetarian restaurant where they tried their first fake meat dishes. As we left their apartment, they gave us the little blue mascot for the Shanghai Expo 2010. The Shanghainese have a lot of pride about the upcoming expo- they say it is the 2nd most important world event after the Olympics. There are posters about the expo and pictures of blue man Hei Lu is everywhere. What they don't realize is that nobody cares or knows about the expo. Sarah and Becky say that all of their schools have countdowns to the event posted and the kids are working on projects about the expo.
Tomorrow we head to Hangzhou where we will visit the West Lake, a popular tourist destination for the Chinese, and meet some couchsurfers for coffee.

Shanghai

Yesterday afternoon S and I arrived in Shanghai after taking the morning train from Nanjing. We quickly dropped our bags off at the left luggage counter and took the train into the city center. We had lunch at a delicious vegetarian restaurant where we ordered lots of fake meat. We checked out the free Shanghai Museum, which had great exhibits on painting and jade. I skipped the gallery with roof tiles- can't look at roof tiles anymore, so sick of them. It is refreshing to be in a really big, modern city where you can get any type of food you want. We are staying with two English ladies who we met through couchsurfing named Sarah and Becky. They are our age and have spent the last 8 months living in Shanghai teaching English and learning some Mandarin. They are really friendly and have opened their homes to us.

Today we left the house at 7AM when the girls left for work. We walked through Renmin (People) Square and the pedestrian commercial strip East Nanjing Road. We stopped into a McDonald's for some time to look through the Shanghai tour books our hosts lent to us during our stay. I never thought I would say this, but McD's is a great place to go when you need to kill time because it is really clean and quiet. As we were looking through the book, we saw cute, young Chinese girls getting trained as workers. They were lined up in a row next to the counter and, as the manager walked by them, they all said, "Good morning!" They really freaked out the first Westerners that walked through their line. After that, we walked through the Bund to see all of 1920-30 style buildings. It looks like NYC's downtown financial district. When we sat down for a rest, we met a nice Chinese man, whose English name is Fred Li. I was interested in talking to him because he was dressed and kind of looked like my grandfather Paco- thin frame, big glasses, high-waisted pants. He was also a gentle soul. He told us that he wanted to be an engineer but had to become an accountant. He was a vegetarian and told us he thought it was just common sense. At that point, S got really interested in the conversation.

We found a great Sichuanese restaurant (spicy) to get some noodles and, on our way to this internet cafe, we met this artist who tried to scam us. He asked us if we were Jewish and, when we said no, he said that Jewish people were very smart people. He perked up when S said he worked at a bank. He kept asking us if we liked art and said his art was on display just across the street. When we said we needed to meet a friend, he became very persistent and kept repeating, "Come with me. 5 Minutes! You like to buy art?" We are going to try to see an acrobatics show while here and will spend tomorrow wandering through the French Concession and checking out some modern art.

Shanghai

Kind Employees at McDonald's

Last night, S and I got on the 9:30 overnight train from Kaifeng to Nanjing. Having spent the last 3 days in smaller cities and getting harmless constant stares and friendly "hellos" from everyone we walked by, I was excited to be in a big city again and not stick out as much. (It is exhausting to have people staring at you all the time and feel that you have to be friendly to all of them.) We arrived into Nanjing at 4:30 AM and jumped in a cab to the Fuzi Temple area, which is where a lot of hostels and hotels, according to Lonely Planet, are located. We normally don't like to stay places recommended in the guide book because they are more expensive and we want to see China ourselves, not through Lonely Planet's eyes. But it was too early and dark to be picky about accommodations. The cabbie dropped us off in front of some hotels, which were out of our price range so we started to use the guide book's recommendations. Of course, the directions and the map in the book were awful and we get lost and had no idea where the hostels were. The only thing open that early in the morning was a 24-hour McDonald's. We decided to go in and ask the employees for a particular street. Shortly after we asked the cashier, he called to his fellow employees in the back and, in a matter of moments, there are 4 guys looking at our guide book trying to help us. The manager sleeping in the corner also got up and started overseeing the matter. One of the guys, named Ming, asked us in English where we wanted to go. We pointed to a hostel in the book and he said he would call the hostel. After a several minute conversation on his cell phone, Ming told us to follow him. With the manager trailing behind us supervising the escort, the kind McDonald's employee led us on a 10-minute walk to our hostel and told us where we could get good veggie dumplings that S and I have become obsessed with. As we stopped in front of the hostel, Ming wrote down his phone number in my notepad and told us to call him if we had anymore questions. We can't see the rooms yet and so we are using their internet until 8AM.

Nanjing

Stories from Smaller Cities

We have spent the last 3 days in Sanmenxia, Luoyang and Kaifeng, smaller Chinese cities in Henan province that are not as touristed as some of the other places we have been.

On the train from Xi'an to Sanmenxia, an older couple walked over to our empty side of the car and started talking to us in Chinese. When we said we did not understand, which is one of the 3 things I know how to confidently say, the man and his wife sat down next to us and, for the next 3 hours, talked with us and tried to teach us Mandarin.

When we arrived in Sanmenxia, a city not in the guide book, we first tried to find accommodations by the train station. We figured we could pay a lot less, around 60-80 yuan (9-11 dollars), because the area did not have any tourists, The first room we were showed in one hotel was 120 yuan. It had 2 twin beds and a private toilet and shower. There were cheaper rooms but the manager said we could not stay in them. We thought we could do better than 120. At the second hotel, the room we were shown was 40 yuan. We were told there was no shower and, when I asked where the toilet was, she led us to an alley that was full of bricks and pointed down the alley. There didn't seem to be anything on the other side and the alley did not smell pretty. That was a deal breaker. At the third hotel, the room was bigger even though it looked a little dirty. We were told the shower was on the third floor and, though the bathroom looked like it had not been cleaned in months, we just decided to take it for 50 yuan (7 US dollars). Using that bathroom was a traumatizing experience and it certainly made us realize that we do have certain standards and semi- clean toilets is one of them.

On the train from Sanmenxia to Luoyang, the guy sitting next to us traded seats with a girl who spoke some, but very little, English. Her name was Cao Pei Pei and she was 23 years old. After chatting for a few minutes, she recommended a cheap and clean hotel that was in our price range. When we learned it wasn't close to the city center, we declined the offer. A few minutes later, she told us to move our plans for the day to tomorrow and invited us to her house. She seemed to be saying that her mother would cook for us and we could spend the night. S and I were not so sure but she was really friendly and decided that it might be cool to get a home-cooked meal. We got on the bus with her and she said she was calling her mother. After she made a few phone calls, she pointed to some blue and red building up ahead. We got off the bus and she said it was the hotel. As we couldn't really communicate that well with her, I assumed there had been a change of plans and that we would drop our bags off at the hotel and then head to her house. But something seemed weird. She walked into the hotel like she owned the place and got us a nice room in this business hotel for 50% off the rack rate. After she walked us to our room, she gave me a hug and said " bye bye" and left. We were very confused and we could only assume that her parents completely rejected her plans to hang out and, due to her limited English and wanting to save face, she was too embarrassed to say anything. We imagined the conversation went something like this, "No, you cannot bring over two American strangers that you met on the train. And I will not come home after a long day of work and cook for them and they most certainly cannot stay at our house. We don't even know them. What are you crazy?"

At the Longmen Caves in Luoyang, which was quite a sight yet overpriced, S and I decided to take a break and sat down by the river. There was some commotion behind us and, when I looked over, a man was holding his baby close to the ground and the baby was going to the bathroom in the street. They cleaned his behind with baby wipes, and walked on. This is a common sight in China as babies here don't wear diapers. There are slits in their pants that open from below the belly button to the top of their behinds. These are very common until the children are potty trained. We have only seen one diaper on a baby in our 3 and a half weeks in China. The child is just taught to tell the parents when they need to go to the bathroom and it happens, sometimes in public.

Kaifeng had an amazing night market. There were hundreds of stalls on the street, selling kebabs, bread, dumplings, soups, dessert and other snacks that we did not recognize. Most of the stalls were run by Muslims and they were selling kebabs with every type of meat, meat parts, fish and veggies you could imagine. The grossest looking kebab was one with bugs that looked like cockroaches on it. S and I ate dinner there one night, paying about $2 for the two of us- $1.15 for a plate of 35 veggie gyoza, 45 cents for a loaf of bread, and 40 cents for block of peanut brittle. We befriended the people who sold us the bread and went back several times to get more the following day. They were always veyr happy to see us.

Sanmenxia, Luoyang, Kaifeng

Taking It Easy

After a difficult overnight train from Pingyao on to Xi'an Thursday night, with the person in the bunk below me snoring and the music blasting from the train speakers from 6AM on, I have been feeling under the weather, with a stuffy nose and a slight sore throat. With the excitement of being in a new place, I ignored my sickness and S and I explored the city on our first day here, visiting the city's Great Mosque and eating in the Muslim Quarter. We have been eating lots of noodles, as they are the staple in this province. While we have been ordering spicy food, the taste here has been different from anywhere else we have been so far. It is more hot than spicy, with the heat leaving a numbing sensation in your mouth. The heat, I think, is closer to what you would get in a hot Indian curry. We are staying at a youth hostel and, at night, the restaurant area turns into a lively bar full of locals pounding down beers, smoking lots of cigarettes and playing drinking games. It also seems to be where some people from the immigrant African community come to play pool and drink also. It makes for an interesting scene and everyone here seems to know each other. Yesterday, we ventured outside the city and visited the Army of the Terracotta Soldiers, which is a 2200 year old tomb that houses over 8,000 terracotta soldiers, horses and chariots in army formation. It was built by the first unifier of China and is just about 2km from his tomb. The tomb took several decades to prepare by hundreds of laborers in 3rd Century BC and was built to protect the Chinese leader in his death. Interestingly enough, there were no historical documents of this tomb's construction or its existence so it was accidentally discovered by farmers building a well in the mid 1970's. There are 3 pits that have been excavated, with work still being done on the 2nd largest tomb. The largest tomb is quite remarkable, with rows and rows of soldiers in army stance protecting the tomb's entrance, followed by elaborate horse chariots. All the soldiers, horses and weapons are quite life-like and many of the soldiers have different facial expressions. Worth a look to check out images online. Today, I am enjoying doing absolutely nothing. I have spent considerable time on the internet and am thinking of renting a movie and doing some reading. I need to listen to my body and take it easy so I can get over this cold. I am sad not to be out exploring but I think this is what my body needs. S has been bringing me food in the room and being a good caretaker. This afternoon he is off to the Shaanxi History Museum, one of China's best museums, and then taking care of our train reservations for tomorrow. We continue to run into the same travelers at every place we stop and are getting a little tired of feeling like we are on the tourist trail. Tomorrow, en route to Luoyang, we will spend the day and night at a city that is not recommended in the guide book, Sanmexia. There aren't any sights there but we want to just check out a city that is not used to getting tourists and see what happens. If all goes well, we are going to try to do a lot more of this.

Xi'an

Pingyao's Ancient Walled City and Laura

S and I had two lovely two days in Pingyao in the Shanxi province. In the center of the city proper, there is a walled city that has been around since the 16th century. All the houses within the wall were built in Qing-style architecture and, at night, all the houses' red lanterns cast a beautiful glow on the city streets. It is exactly what you would imagine of a traditional Chinese town. While it was painfully touristy and we tried to escape all the stalls selling chotchkes, we spent our two days there with a lovely Pingyao resident named Laura, her English name, who we met through couchsurfing. Before we arrived, she told us that she was in the middle of classes at her university but would try to make it into town to meet us. When we arrived to Pingyao off the night train from Datong, she emailed us saying that she planned to cut classes for two days and going to take an hour long bus ride that morning to meet us.

She showed up at our hotel at 6PM and we spent the evening chatting with her in our hotel and then headed to one of her favorite restaurants outside the city walls what was amazingly delicious and very cheap. The next morning, she met us at our hotel and we spent the next 8 hours talking, laughing, eating and sharing our lives with each other. She is a senior at university in Shanxi province studying English and, as she told us many times, her dream is to be a backpacker. She really enjoys meeting people from around the world through couchsurfing and learning about others' lives and their cultures, as well as practicing her English. She hopes that one day after she graduates she can travel to America and visit NYC, Ohio (because she thinks the name sounds happy) and California. However, a sad look came over her face when she told us that she did not think it would be possible- that China is too strict and she might not be able to get a visa.

She brought her notebook with her where she jots down English phrases she doesn't understand and where she writes down conversations between characters on TV shows so she can speak more like an American and not speak "Chinglish". She went over some of the phrases and this icebreaker activity led to really open conversations with her about her life, what she thinks of China and her hopes and dreams. After we ate dinner, she told me that she had purchased some small presents for us to welcome us to China and so we do not forget her. She gave us a shear red bag (red means good luck) with 6 (6 is good luck) pieces of Pingyao beef, a local specialty, and a statue of a baby dragon (dragons are also good luck). We all were so grateful to have spent all that time with each other and we told her we would send her postcards along our travels. As she left the restaurant, we hugged and told her she will always be one of our greatest memories of China.

Pingyao, Shanxi

Six- Hour Train Ride on Hard Seats

We have just arrived in Datong, in the Shanxi province. S and I had a great time in Beijing. P and Senorita V were amazing people to spend time with. We got the inside scoop on what it is like to live in Beijing and ate a lot of amazing food! Before we left, P helped us reserve our tickets for our 6-hour train to Datong. S and I wanted to
go cheap and we wanted an experience. We got the cheapest tickets we could get. Most trains in Beijing seem to have a letter before it, signaling possibly some kind of rating system. We were booked on an unlettered train and we booked to hard seats which, according to the guide book, " have a bit of a cushion but can be hard on your sanity." We said, what the hell? This morning, we had to take a cab to the train station and the 15-minute cab ride was the same cost as our train ticket- 4 bucks. Our gate was the only one where the employees were not checking your tickets. I guess no one wanted to try to sneak onto our train. We were packed in a crowded line for about 45 minutes before we could get on and, when we got on, there was a lot of pushing and shoving from others around us.
As we boarded, we got many stares as we were definitely the only non-Chinese on the entire train (there were probably 500 people on the whole train). The car smelled like cigarettes and before we could sit, we needed to push cigarette butts and ash off the seats. No one really talked to us for most of the ride but the older couple across from us kept staring as we read our travel books and wrote in our notebooks. Throughout the whole trip, we could hear a constant sound of people getting ready to spit on the floor of the car. During the 5th hour of the trip, I was writing out some Chinese characters and the woman started slapping my left hand and pointing to my right, as others here have done when they see we are lefties.
The last hour of the trip, after the married couple left, a bunch of 20-30 year old dudes sat beside us and were really amused by our guidebook. They wanted to look through our phrasebook and were getting a huge kick out of it. We tried to ask them in Chinese how much longer until our stop and the youngest of the men responded in English. We spoke with him for a little while and, as we did, everyone within
earshot was listening even though they did not understand. As we got out at our stop and left the train station, there were many more stares. Apparently, Datong does not get a lot of Western visitors.
We are staying two days here and are planning on taking two day trips out of the city: one to the Hanging Monastery and the other to the Yungang Caves. After that, we will take an overnight train to Pingyao.

Datong

The Great Wall, P amd Senorita Vita

Steve and I have spent the last 4 days in Bejing and are loving it. We have decided to extend our visit here by 2 more days. We have been hanging out with Cheddar Ben's brother, P and his lovely girlfriend Senorita V (they chose their code names) and they have been taking us to delicious restaurants across the city. Last night, we went to this amazing dumpling restaurant where, in addition to our veggie dumplings, we got pork and shrimp, crab leg meat and pork in hot oil. Unbelievable! We are obsessed with the dumplings here and we have been getting them almost every day.
One of our most memorable experiences has been our trip to the Great Wall, which would not have been possible without P. We all got on a public bus for an hour to transfer to another bus but, when we arrived at our transfer point, we were told the second bus not longer ran. P negotiated for a driver to take us to the wall, wait for us for 3 hours and take us back to the bus stop for the equivalent of 12 dollars. Although I have seen hundreds of pictures of the Great Wall, it is quite another thing to see it in person. It is huge and built on the ridges of the mountains so there are spectacular views from every direction. We hiked on a cloudy day so it felt very mystical. We walked through an overgrown section of the wall that has not been upkept and that many people don't walk through. We walked through parts of the wall where half of it had collapsed and where the whole walkway was covered in weeds and flowers. We were the only ones on this part of the wall and had to crawl under spiderwebs and got lots of little scratches on our legs from the weeds- but it was worth every second. A funny way to end our walking over a 400-year old wall was to take a toboggan down to the bottom of the mountain. It is raining today so we are not yet sure of our itinerary but we head to Datong in the Shanxi province in 2 days. We have booked the cheapest tickets on a local train- we have heard that the seats are hard, uncomfortable and we will be traveling with lots of locals who might offer us some rice wine along the journey.

Beijing