Bye Bye Beijing

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Between the jetlag and recovering from whatever it was that had me under the weather my last day in Beijing, and whatever it was that followed Sharon back home to catch up with her here, we’ve been a bit tardy getting these last two postings posted; so, you have our apologies. Hopefully, Mao’s Revenge is behind us by now! We were grateful that we had a noon-time pickup for the airport, so we were able to take our time getting our stuff together for the trip home.

We caught our shuttle and got to the airport on time; only, this time there were no Viking Cruise porters to get our bags there and we had to juggle things for ourselves. We got our bags checked, managed our way through the security checkpoint, and understood fully what the lady who checked our bags meant when she said “long walk” (the only two words Sharon or I were able to pick out of the Chinglish she said as we departed. Indeed, we had a walk as long as any we’ve ever had, after a subway ride to the second stop, and then a walk to the far end of the terminal. Our plane was already at the gate, so we were confident we wouldn’t have a gate change for our overseas flight.

I managed to pick at the food that they served a little bit, and Sharon stuck with her peanut butter crackers. We did enjoy the vanilla ice cream they served mid-flight. And this jet had the individual entertainment consoles for every seat, so I was able to enjoy a couple episodes of “Pawn Stars”. Sharon just rolled her eyes and stuck with her Brain Game shows and a couple of movies. I played a couple of sessions of blackjack of a game that I sell on eBay. The thirteen hour flight back to Chicago actually only took about twelve and three-quarter hours, so we actually arrived about 15 minutes earlier than we left on Monday afternoon! The whole trip was uneventful; except, our landing needed to be aborted due to the closeness of the plane landing in front of us. I had looked at Sharon as I sensed the engines began to race and we seemed to be gaining elevation on final approach and said, “This can’t be good.” The captain came on right away and told us what had happened, and it took us about fifteen minutes to fly around and come in again.

We cleared customs and immigration quite easily, and only needed to catch the shuttle to the Country Inn and Suites. We called to request the shuttle pickup, and were told that he was on his way already to pickup someone else, and would be right there. Twenty-five minutes later, we still hadn’t been picked up. I tried calling again, in fact five times over the next fifteen minutes, and nobody was answering the phone. It was as if 5pm was dinner time and no one answers the phone. We decided to take a cab. As we were pulling out we spotted our van pulling up… oh well. We found a Burger King before retiring for the evening and trying to dispel the jetlag. We both agreed, it was about the best hamburger we’d ever had; well, at least in the last two weeks anyway! Sharon had almost forgotten what it was like to eat “real food”.

We awoke around 2 am on Tue morning so decided to hit the road about 4 to avoid the Chicago Rush Hour. That worked other than not obeying the GPS at one point that ended up taking us on a 1 hr delay thru northern Indiana. We stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel before Indianapolis and then made it home to start dealing with real life again. We both agree it was a great trip and well worth it (other than the food for Sharon but then again she lost 5 lbs so that’s not all bad). If you ever want to go to China we’d highly recommend doing this trip with Viking.

What I’d like to do with the rest of this blog is to provide stories or information that somehow slipped through the cracks while writing the previous blog entries. I’ve categorized them into four sections: Lost in Translation, Culture Clash, Travel Tips, and The Escorts.



Lost in Translation

While at the zoo, after viewing the Great Panda, we did a walk through the zoo to see some of the other animals. Our young guide spoke understandable English, but made us all take a double take when she announced that “Up ahead on the left you will see the people exhibit.” We approached the enclosure down below, that appeared at first glance to be empty. We only saw a deep grotto like enclave. At the far end was a door in the side of the enclosure, and indeed we saw two there and they closed the door as we all stared. We soon realized that this was the hippopotamus exhibit, and there were two massive creatures close to the wall directly in front of us (and the people we had seen were the animal attendants).

The next day when we were at the Terracotta Warriors our local guide was directing us to the “Happy House”. All of our local guide’s seem to be schooled in Arnold’s term for rest room; although, some of the other escorts have been heard to call them “facilities”. She instructed us “It’s up ahead on the left. Just go behind the bush.” We’re not sure she understood why we all thought that was so funny.

It’s been years since I’d heard the term “Watergate” used, and now it’s come up twice in less than two weeks on our trip to China. The first time was when a local guide was talking about using water in the Yangtze to water farmlands along the river. Her exact words were “We use watergation in our fields along the hills facing the river.” The second was used by Arnold when referring to the various gates in the wall that once protected Beijing. One of these gates was called the Watergate; because, it was used to bring water into the city. Arnold at least was aware of the other Watergate as he smiled and shook his head saying, “No, not that Watergate.”



Culture Clash

On the Viking Emerald one night for dinner, they served a California roll appetizer on a small plate. I ate mine before noticing the tiny smidge of wasabi on the edge of the plate. My California roll must have slightly touched the wasabi, because I detected the strong green horseradish condiment I enjoy with sushi. Sharon of course wasn’t about to eat her appetizer, so I made sure that I got all, of the tiny bit of wasabi on her piece before eating it. I noticed that the wasabi wasn’t like the pasty wasabi I was accustomed to in the States, but more of an oily substance. One bite and my eyes opened, and I realized that I was probably very close to going into respiratory arrest. I wasn’t the only one affected this way.

While at the Three Gorges Dam, there was a large red LED panel presenting the smog levels of various contaminants, showing their current parts per million measurements. The rainy day that we were there all of the measurements were between 50 and 150, and by all consensus, the air quality was pretty darn good.

Arnold had told us that there are 80,000 Chinese characters. He knows about 10% of these, sufficient to be literate and able to look up any characters that he doesn’t know. But consider, how you might look up something that is not exactly alphabetized for a word you don’t know (or even have any idea how to pronounce). The strokes of the characters can suggest meanings, and when combined with other strokes can build a new meeting. For example, a square can symbolize a wall around a city (such as Nanking and later Beijing). Some strokes added to this might indicate a particular gate to the city (such as the Watergate). Or a single vertical line through the square might be the meridian splitting the Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City, and when the two are combined be the symbol for China. Arnold said that these ancient characters are fixed; and, new characters aren’t being created to make new words. New words instead come from attaching a new meaning for two existing characters that are connected to convey the new meaning. For example, the word computer translated literally from its two Chinese characters would be “electric brain”.



Travel Tips

Sand storms from the Gobi desert can sometimes cause major visibility and breathing problems from Xian to Beijing. The windy season can stretch from late spring into the summer. The monsoon season starts in May. The best travel times for vacationing are March to April and September to October; but, you want to avoid the National Holiday Week (October 1 to October 7) when Arnold indicated 90%!o(MISSING)f China is on vacation.

The wall around Xian is the only remaining city wall still intact in China. Exploring its inner city and some of its gates requires more than a one or two night stay.

While having breakfast at the Sheraton in Xian, Sharon and I joined another couple from our tour. They had just gotten coffee, and I had brought a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice to the table. I left to get the rest of my breakfast, and when I returned, I noticed that the others had also gone to get more to eat from the buffet as well. Then I noticed that my orange juice was gone; and, when the other couple returned, their fresh cups of coffee had also been bussed and the table reset. So from then on Sharon and I always made sure that we didn’t leave the table empty, or anything that we expected to still be there when we returned would probably be bussed away.



The Escorts

To a group, everyone believes that their tour escort is the best. To be sure, they know their job, they do it well, and they know how to make being in China easy for their guests. The suggested tip per person for your tour escort is $10 per day, and it is a bargain. The recommendation for the local escort is $2 per day and for the driver $1 per day. When we were in the same city more than one day, we would have the same local escort and driver, so it was fine to tip when it was time to say good-bye to them.

We had just gotten on the bus after our first night in Beijing, and Arnold asked us “Where are your passports?” A couple of us were panicked as they realized, they didn’t have their passport. But that was fine because Arnold still had our passports after checking into the Sheraton, and he was keeping them for our departure the next morning for Beijing.

The escorts all have a pretty good sense of humor, and are personable and get along well with their American, Canadian, British and Aussie guests. One escort was looking for one of his people who was missing. He questioned the person asking where Jim was, “I should know his face from his name? All you Tom, Dick and Harry’s look the same to me!” I will say that Arnold was expert at matching faces and names in his group.





Thanks for following along. The next planned trip is to Israel and Jordon in December but now that we’re both retired we could head out somewhere before that.

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Comments

[Geraldine Girling]

Thank you
Your blog of this trip has been a pleasure to read and so informative, my husband and I are due to go on this trip in August and after reading your blog that has given us a great deal of useful information in our preparation for our holiday. Thanks again Geraldine