CHINA!!! (part 1/3)

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HELLOOOO GANG!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d like to start this entry with an apology. I feel that I have really neglected this blog over the past month, and have therefore neglected you all. But it should be duely noted that I tried very hard to keep up with the entries throughout our journeys in China, its just towards the end, I fell a little behind, and then in Hong Kong Jen and I seriously just shopped everyday for a week :-S

In any case…the entries that I will include below are the ones I did along the way…so the way in which they’re written (the tense and such) will be different for each city…as well, the entries are substantially longer then they’ve been (which is what has inspired me to just post what I have now, then give your tired eyes a break before I post the last bit of our china adventure…well that, and I don’t want to cause you all to slam your heads on the keyboards from boredom so ill be sure to only include the really monumental stories, and put the rest of what should be mentioned in point form!

Ahhhh China! The land of 1,000,000,000,000 designer knock offs, squat toilets with no doors or toilet paper, stores that sell strictly Kleenex box covers, rear-view mirror charms and cell phone attachments, the world’s greatest mandarin oranges, more domestic tourists then the entire population of North America, food where the first or second ingredient is oil or sugar, and about 1.3 billion locals to share all these wonders with!

So we arrived in Beijing from Kathmandu and it was fairly clear sailing. We got a cab, picked a hostel, and settled in for a comfortable first night. Did a whole lot of shopping at the Pearl Market the next day and then packed our bags to catch an overnight train to Shanghi for…you guessed it, more shopping! Once there, we got down to business. Put our game faces on and got ready to bargain like mad for all sorts of goodies.
As we soon discovered, and as can be expected, the ways of china differ greatly from India and Nepal. This includes the way in which you are expected to bargain.

The prices for EVERYTHING start at around 12x what they actually expect you to pay. IE: a purse you would pay around $15 at home… started at around 900yuan (that’s roughly $150canadian) obviously they expect that you will pitch a price lower then that, and you’ll settle somewhere in the middle. The key here, is being assertive and staying firm with what you’re willing to pay… and to make sure that you low ball, but remain reasonable enough not to be kicked out of the store (yes, we were “shooed” out of a few stores for being too cheap. And at one point we were both told to leave the country. (clearly they don’t have much of a sense of humor when it comes to requesting a full sized luggage bag for 50yuan (roughly $8 Canadian) hehee lesson learned.

So after a lot of shopping we did the standard touristy things: the highest observation deck in the world (which was Jens idea…and hey Jen…high five for great ideas!!! We happened to go on the foggiest, smoggiest day EVER and found that aside from the cars directly below us, we really couldn’t see anything…but non the less, we have bragging rights to say we went to the 100th floor and were 400m from the ground) then we went to the Pearl Tower (which also included free admission to the aquarium and sex health museum (CHA CHINGG!!! This was indeed the first museum I have visited to date that I actually enjoyed ;-)

And then back to Beijing on an overnight train, which is where the real fun and in-your-face culture of china began…

We purchased “hard sleeper” tickets because there were no other tickets available for this 13 hour train ride, and we found ourselves in a seat with 6 other strangers. (yes, this is possible…our train seats were set up much like a booth in a restaurant; two long benches facing each other and divided by a really, stupidly, impractically small table- which I could not reach from my outside spot on the bench. It was a tight fit, and our two travel backpacks, plus purses, plus two new rollie bags filled with shopping made for a cozy fit. A couple hours into the ride I realized there was no way I was going to get any sleep in the rigid upright position I was stuck in and upon a quick overview of the situation, I briefly considered breaking into song and turning our cozy overnight train into a scene out of High School Musical, but I figured the bulk majority of people wouldn’t know the words to ‘Old McDonald’.

Why did I feel inspired to sing this childhood classic you ask?

Well in addition to the sweet scent of natural manure wafting its way to our nostrils from the squat lavatories at the end of the cart, I noticed (as we were being pushed and shoved in a mad swarm of people) that the train station personnel were controlling the masses with sticks and herding us onto the carts in large numbers, with merciless force and in a manor similar to the way livestock is herded.

In addition, it was apparent that when the seats fill up, they do not stop selling tickets. The number of people who paid for a ticket to stand on the train between seats, in the hallway, in between carts or next to the dreaded squat lavatories, hiding between bags in the overhead storage compartments… drastically exceeded the number of people in seats.
This was an entertaining sight at first, but when the lights went out so we could sleep, these people remained standing. They just tilted their heads to the side a little and closed their eyes…just like how cows sleep!

…old McDonald had a farm E I E I Ohhhh…..



CHENGDU

PANNDAAASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This city is home of the biggest panda reserve in the world and we got to see about 30 of the 50+ that they have living there!! (This included babies that were in little incubators and were being fed with bottles…it was heart-melting stuff!)
Quite an informative day as well...we learned about the mating rituals, the incubation period (which is suprisingly only around 180 days..which accounts for how difficult successful reproduction is- thus playing a large role in the population decline in pandas over the years)
but honestly...other then pandas...Chengdu was just plain rainy.



LESHAN & EMISHAN

Leshan was a small city where we trekked our way to the largest stone-carved Buddah in the world. (this big ass Buddha just celebrated his 1200th birthday) but looked to be in pretty good spirits about the whole situation…he was just sittin there with a smug look on his face…like he was all enlightened or somthin…
Hehee

Emishan is a small city on a mountain and it made us feel a little more at home. We stayed in a Buddhist temple for three nights, and of course, the day it started to rain like there was no tomorrow was the day we had planned to go hiking. (staying in good spirits, we happily bought a couple of tacky tourist ponchos and had a photo shoot…fully capitalizing on the opportunity to strut our stuff in such a flattering article of clothing.) Turned out that the hike was a lot longer then expected and we didn’t reach the top until 3 rather tiring hours of stair climbing later. Good news: it stopped raining. Bad news: the clouds didn’t lift, so we couldn’t see the top of the gold temple we did all that climbing for. Good news again though: I found a nice old woman selling corn on a stick (like a pogo stick…or a popsicle stick…but it was corn!!) And it was gooood. So I got over the initial upset of not seeing a world renowned, historical religious monument.

For those of you who were curious, we decided to count all the stairs we had to climb on our way down, and we got 3,838. Needless to say, after a long day of physical activity…it was time for a good meal…or maybe more corn on a stick!!
So we head to the local market where there are restaurants scattered about and settled into a place called ‘Nathan’s’ (Nathan is a personal friend of our tour guide. He also happens to be the best bun steamer in the whole city, and makes a mean eggplant and pepper dish :-P In order to get to Nathan’s we passed countless fish tanks and caged animals. I thought it was kind of an odd place to keep pets, but figured I’d just add that to my growing list of interesting observations and things to learn more about in this country.

It wasn’t until a man with a menu in hand walked up to one of the caged chickens and pointed that my naive mind started to play a little catch up. These animals and fish and frogs weren’t pets. They were meals waiting to be prepared. This realization really upset me, and seeing the birds tied up at the wings and weighed in order to determine their life’s monetary value was enough to spoil my appetite for the evening but also inspired the great Emishan rescue of 2008!

I gave it some thought and realized there wasn’t a whole lot I was going to be able to do about saving the lives of chickens or birds because there was no where to release them. But there was pleanty I could do to save the lives of the frogs sitting in a bucket awaiting their inevitable fate. So I marched up to the lady who was weighing the animals and either simmering them in a wok or sending them off with people for a home-cooked meal, and I asked her for the two fattest frogs in the bucket (I figured they would have been the first ones to go) so I bagged them, paid, and headed out of the market in search for a pond to release them in!

Neither one of us knew where we were going, but I had two freakin huge frogs in a little plastic bag, and they were not happy! Their powerful little legs were strong enough to start ripping the bag, so literally in the middle of the road when I discovered that two legs were hanging out of each side of the bag, I forgot where I was, and lowered the bag to the ground so I could get a good grip on each of their tummies. Jen starts running to the nearest store for new bags and I’m standing there with two frogs, in the middle of the road frantically waving at the cars to please refrain from making this whole rescue redundant by running the three of us down. (They clearly didn’t understand what I was saying, but we made it to the side walk alright!)

After a little walking around, we found a nice pond to release them in, and as soon as I opened the top of the bag, the first one jumped out and swam away to freedom. The second one hopped onto a rock and sat there, staring out at the open water for a little while before diving in and stretching his legs out. We waved goodbye to the two frogs and so concluded the great Emishan escape!


********HALF TIME******

Id like to take this opportunity to insert a half-time break…as well as to congratulate you all on making it about 1/3 through the China blog!!! I shall paint a brief picture for you all, to give you a taste of the setting I am currently in.
It should be known that it is a real feat to be able to type anything that makes a recognizable amount of sense when in an environment such as the one I am in right now. The bland, boring white screen with black letters in front of me is no comparison to the colorful and exciting world of War Craft unfolding on the screen to the right of me. Actually, its on the screen to the left of me as well, and on the four screens I can see in front of me, and I think it’s a safe bet to assume its on the screens behind me. I can hear bombs going off, machine guns are firing, vigorous and aggressive clicking of mouses, and keyboards is constant, and I can feel the tension I am surrounded by. The gentlemen across from me has broken into a rather heavy swear and just lit a cigarette to calm himself. And looking around now… holy cow! This place is PACKED!! Another farm reference…and there it is again…the overwhelming desire to break into song

…old McDonald had a farm…

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