Being the exhibit at the Beijing Zoo and the overnight train outta there

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Our second and final day in BJ, the kids and I went to the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium (fine but really hot). Matt did his own thing and went to the Forbidden City. The weather was much warmer and we spent a lot of our time ducking in and out of air conditioning. We saw a few animals but we were often the most popular exhibit. People were a bit more aggressive in Beijing as far as taking photos without asking and touching the kids. I get very protective and a little fierce when the kids say they don’t want to do pictures and people aren’t respectful of that choice. Insert metaphor of lion protecting her cubs here. Even more appropriate metaphor since we were at a zoo. I kept saying "I am not an animal!" in Chinese but nobody got the Elephant Man reference.

We met Matt in the evening on the pedestrian street (kids and I hit the Foreign Language Bookstore; an expensive habit but one I feel obliged to feed). After failing to get a taxi back to the hotel, we hopped on a bus. Matt knew the bus to take as he had taken it earlier in the day to get into the city. The buses in Shanghai and Beijing are usually quite nice, but it's often hard to know which one to take. Concierges are handy that way. Storm even lent Matt a bus card!

Finally, we got ourselves back to the hotel, got our bags loaded into a taxi and were off to the train station. We had some trouble finding our train waiting area. I went up to the ticket taker in the waiting room, showed her my ticket and she shook her head and pointed me out. We went back out and I asked a couple more people and finally we found the right waiting room. Our train was boarding, we hurried to get on and find our compartment and settled in for the night.

We walked toward our car and saw the compartments with their window shades open. They looked small from the platform, and did not appear any larger as we entered our cabin. Overnight trains are fun. Overnight trains for kids are extra fun. The kids took the top two bunks, watched a movie together on one side, and then finally went to bed at about 11pm. I made them pause the movie at one point and brush teeth and use the bathroom. I figured it would get crowded if we didn't get that done at the start of the trip. Plus, cleaner bathrooms at the start. We did have some lovely slippers in four different colors. I’m guessing the colorful selection was to prevent confusion. I don’t know if individuals or couples end up in a car for four with strangers. That would be crazy. We felt very lucky to have an entire car to ourselves.

There was a stainless steel water pitcher with hot water and a bouquet of plastic flowers on our small table that was attached to the window and jutted out between the two lower bunks. We each had our own reading lights and headphones to plug into the flat screens in each of our bunks. The only shows were in Chinese and there was one with English subtitles. The theme was pretty adult, so we encouraged the kids to switch to a more appropriate pirated DVD we had brought along.

The compartment was very clean. Smelled a bit chemical-ish but that’s better than being dirty. The beds were made with clean, very bleached white sheets and pillows with equally bleached cases. The pillows were not foam nor were they feather. They appeared to be stuffed with some sort of bean. This made the folder over, faux double pillow stack impossible, but I am guessing it was a hygiene call. Can’t argue with that. We had very heavy blankets fitted inside clean, white duvet covers, but the room was not cold, even with the air on full blast. It was tolerable, but my blanket was more of a pad for the hard mattress than a utility for warmth. Oh yeah. The beds were hard just as all beds (with a very rare luxury hotel mattress exception here and there) are hard in China. That’s not really news anymore.

The kids were finally asleep at about 11pm. The train was due to arrive in Shanghai at 7:30am. I set my alarm for 6:30am, which was not necessary as I woke up about every hour from 1:30am to 5:30am when I stayed up. The kids were snoring until about 6:30 and then we were all up and ready for our train change. See, we weren’t just going home to Shanghai. We were switching trains to go to Hangzhou. And that second train—it left at 8:00am.

The train arrived about 7:35am and I was a little nervous we’d be in a big hurry to find our next train. We got off the train and went up the stairs. Some nice young men (how old do I sound saying that?!) helped me and Nathan with our bags and then we walked in search of our next boarding area. As it turned out, since we were already on the inside of the platforms where the trains board, we just had to walk down a bit and we saw Mark waiting for us. That was a happy reunion for all of us. Mark had been working hard while the rest of us went off on an adventure.

We spent a day and a night in Hangzhou and that was fun. We stayed at the Hangzhou Tower, a very reasonably priced Chinese hotel. Not too close to the lake, but it was fine. We found a lunch spot across the street from our hotel at the top floor of a mall. It was called Grandma’s Kitchen and it was awesome. The dishes were very cheap and the food was excellent. I later read that this is a popular spot, but we could tell that from the crowds and the 20 minute wait we had before we got a table.

After lunch, we went to the lake where we had been in the fall and took some of the same pictures with very different seasonal changes. For example, the lily pond was in full bloom whereas it had previously been a pond of dried up lily stems. There were many dragon flies buzzing about, which I wondered about. Perhaps the humidity ? It was by far the largest swarm (heard?) of dragon flies I have ever seen in one place. We listened to some musicians and singers and then took a bus ride around the lake. We did this bus ride before but this time we all dozed off and decided to jump off the bus early and head for a lakeside Starbucks for coffee and snacks.

The next day we went to Moganshan via private car (see blog I posted on the same driver taking us back to Hangzhou the next day for a wild story). Moganshan was lovely as always. We stayed at a much cheaper hotel and it was excellent. We were right next-door to the Lodge, where we liked to hang out last trip and we took advantage of the location and let the kids hang in the room while the adults drank beer outside. We also enjoyed feeding the kids pasta at the Lodge and then grabbed an adult dinner just down the path at a local Chinese spot. Very fresh, very tasty and cheap.

The train back was smooth and we arrived home in time for Mark to unpack and repack for his week away on business. Monday, we took Matt to get a Chinese haircut (not a Chinese style haircut, but a haircut performed in China) and then Matt packed up and left the next day for Thailand. This family is busy. I’m telling you. The kids and I have had a mellow few days on our own. It’s very hot and humid and I’m very clear on why the rest of the expat community left town in June.

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Comments

[Lee Nichols]

Great travel writer
Your blog is so informative that I am sure China will be much more fun for me because of it. I will arrive in September. Hopefully the weather will be a tad cooler.