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Published: August 6th 2007
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A good reason to go away
Look what the weather was like before we left! It was snowstorm! Dad, lift us up please. Our butts are cold... China - Jean-Claude's second home
A few days ago dad brought us to China.
Jean-Claude is writing this: For me it's special to go to China because I am born in China. You see, dad rescued me from shop in Beijing 6 years ago. The shop wasn't fun so it's better to live with mum and dad. But China is still important to me and going there is for me to visit my second home.
Emma is writing this: For me it is also special because Jean-Claude has talked so much about how he lived when he was in Beijing. He was sitting there in that shop. His twin brother had gone missing a few days earlier when a Chinese girl adopted him. Jean-Claude was totally miserable and thought nobody loved him. And there, out of the blue, came a man so tall that he could touch the sky and with such a big nose that when he sneezed he could trigger a hurricane and with such kind eyes that you could not avoid just loving him. And the giant man with the nose roared "I want to buy that dog because I know where his twin brother
Us and Mr Mascot
We met Mr Mascot at Beijing airport. But he was not nice. He was being arrogant when we tried to be friendly. is and I am going to bring them together again". The man with the nose is of course dad. It turned out that dad and the dog buying girl were good friends. So Jean-Claude now know where his brother lives and that he is having a good life.
Jean-Claude is writing this: After a while I learned that dad doesn't really have such a big nose after all. It's just that Chinese people have such small noses. Dad's nose is a standard size nose. It is even smaller than mine actually... Did you know that Chinese people sometimes refer to westerners as "Big Noses"?
Jean-Claude's old home was in Beijing but this trip was not meant to give us any time in Beijing. We were only supposed to stay in Beijing for little over an hour each way to change planes. But we are not only cute little cuddly toys. We are also cunning. We might have a trick or two up the sleeve that could give us more time in Beijing... Well get back to that later.
When we came to Beijing airport we met a cuddly toy that looked nice. But it turned out that
Snakes in a jar
We found a jar with snakes. Dad said they were dead. We believe him but we were still afraid that they might jump out and try to eat us. he wasn’t. Let us write down our conversation and you'll understand what we mean.
Emma to Mr Mascot: “Hi I’m Emma.”
Jean-Claude to Mr Mascot: “Hi I’m Jean-Claude. What is your name?”
Mr Mascot: “I am Huanhuan, but I am more known as the Olympic Mascot.”, he said in a superior tone looking down at us like we were lesser toys than him.
Emma: “Olympic Mascot…? That’s a funny name…? Well, it’s nice to meet you Mr Mascot. You know Mr Mascot. I’ve never been to Beijing before. But Jean-Claude here has. He has actually lived in Beijing.”
Mr Mascot: “So what if he has. What do I care. I am Beijing.” He said in an even more arrogant tone.
We stopped talking right there and then. It was obvious to us that he was not a very nice toy. What a prick! “I am Beijing.” What a silly thing to say. We didn’t like him. He was not nice to us. The only reason we took a photo of him was so we could post it on the Internet and ridicule him.
After the short stay in Beijing we flew to central China to see the
Sitting on a holy vase or whatever it is
We were actually not allowed to sit on that. It is holy to the locals. But we didn't know that. Sorry. Hope they don't send us to Hell for that. Three Gorges and the Three Gorges Dam. The Three Gorges are a section of the Yangtze River where the river cuts through some mountains and thus creating some famous gorges. However, we realised that the Chinese can't count. We didn't count the gorges but we know for sure that there are at least six of them. It was probably the idiot in Beijing, Mr Mascot, who counted them. If we had told him where we were going he'd probably say "I am the Three Gorges".
On the way to the Three Gorges we stopped by Chengdu and Chongqing. But we only had time to stop by each place for a few hours so we didn’t see much there.
While travelling through the Three Gorges we stopped by some of the sights along the river. There are many temples, scenic tributary rivers and of course the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the World, all sights well worth visiting. We really liked a place called the City of Ghosts. It was a temple where death, demons and ghosts are important in rituals and in decorations. We met some very friendly ghosts there. Their purpose was to scare
The highlight of the visit in Chongqing
Paris has Eiffel Tower, New York has Empire State Building, Rome has Colosseum. What landmark does Chongqing have? This! It's pathetic, isn't it? people but to be honest they were a total fiasco. They were much too cute a far too friendly to scare anybody.
After three days on Three Gorges we reached the Three Gorges Dam. It's big but it really is hard to see how big it actually is. We could only see it from a distance and you can't really get a good perspective then. But it's interesting to have seen it and know that there is no other dam in the World that is bigger than this.
On the way back to Chengdu we stopped at a place called Dazu. There we saw many really old statues. Many of those statues were actually over 1000 years old. We were amazed that the statues looked so good. Don't statues grow old? I mean dad is only 35 and he looks pretty old sometimes. We have met people who are 70 years old and many of them look really old and tired. But statues seem to be able to grow to any age and still look like teenagers. That is strange. We hope someone can explain that to us.
When we left Dazu we travelled to Chengdu and
City of Ghosts
This place is called City of Ghosts. Very strange name for a temple... There is also Ghost Palace and Ghost Street... We don't understand... from there we were supposed to fly to Stockholm only making a short stop in Beijing. But we wanted to stay a little bit longer in Beijing than we were supposed to. Remember, Beijing is Jean-Claude's old hometown. So when we landed on Beijing's airport we did some mischief. We managed to sneak away from the other passangers and took a back door out to the plane. We found a wrench, a bolt cutter and a screw driver and we managed to undo some bolts and cut a few wires without anyone really understanding what we were up to. You'd be surprised how easy it was for us to do that. The security is as tight in Beijing as in any other airport. But people usually don't pay attention to what cuddly toys do so we could pretty much roam around as we liked. One passenger did see us and he muttered "Holy shit! I'm seeing two cuttly toys with a pipe wrench. No more whiskey for me!". Wonder what he meant by that? And one guard who saw us actually said "Oh how cute. The cuddly toys have found some workman tools to play with." The guard must've been
City of Ghosts - Snake on a stone
In China they not only have snakes in jars but also on stones. Dad says it's a dragon. But it looks more like a snake we think. But why is it called City of Ghosts? nuts. Really, who plays with a bolt cutter? We were not up to doing cute stuff, our mission was destruction!
We succeeded! We messed up the plane bad enough so they had to replace it. That gave us a few additional hours in Beijing. We admit that this was not a nice thing to do. But we so desperately wanted to stay a little longer in Beijing and we couldn't see any other solution. They didn't first realise that there was something wrong though. They let us board the plane and started to prepare for takeoff. But soon they realised that the plane was out of order and let us leave the plane and go back into the terminal again. So we got ourselves another 10 hours in Beijing before the aircraft was replaced and we could fly back home.
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Harvey Follender
non-member comment
Talent
Ake, You are immensely talented and your blogs are so entertaining. How did you get the time to leave your job and go to China?