China!!! (Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Beijing)

04/23/07

Hello!!! I’ll start by saying if I have ever in my life said I was tired, I didn’t mean it in the least bit. Traveling through China has left me absolutely exhausted! Like I said before, we decided to travel independently. In comparison to the trips planned through Semester at Sea, doing it independently is a quarter of the cost, zero percent of the convenience, and a thousand times the adventure! The group I traveled with was Michael, Celina, Greg, Sam from Denver, Dan from…can’t remember…, Nick from Pittsburgh, and Jay from LA – hey that rhymes ;).

I woke up bright and early to welcome the Hong Kong port and I’m glad I did. The skyline of skyscrapers seemed never-ending. The air seemed extra salty for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’m sick again. To be honest, I think I have only been “healthy” for about a once consecutive week and that was right after and during Malaysia. The rest of the time I’ve been congested and had a sore throat but I do my best to not complain because that’s one of my pet peeves I’ve noticed. Especially while we’re encountering so many people that actually have reasons to complain. But again, I digress. Anyways, the sight was amazing and I couldn’t wait to get off the ship. The ship was only docked in Hong Kong for a little over 24 hours, which is a main reason why I decided to travel independently and meet the ship in Qingdao. If we would have stayed on the ship, we would have had to leave the following evening, sail for two days, dock in Qingdao for a little more than a day, then leave for Japan. Since we’re already well aware of the experience of traveling by sea, we decided to do it by land which consisted of a one hour train to Shenzhen, a 24 hour sleeper train to Beijing, 2 nights in Beijing, then a 9 hour sleeper train to Qingdao (at least that was planned…you’ll see what happened in a few paragraphs).

The first thing we heard the morning we docked in Hong Kong was the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Our Dean addressed the news during what would normally be our diplomatic briefing. Archbishop Desmund Tutu also spoke about it. The overall atmosphere was very depressed. It was all over the news in Hong Kong as well but the number of deaths seemed to changed according to the source. Additionally, CNN was playing on a local station but it was in Cantonese and the headings along the bottom of the screen were blurred out. I’m not sure if that had to do with the censorship in China or not.

Celina and Val went their separate ways so they could finish up their souvenir shopping and Michael, Greg and I caught the ferry to another island to walk around. We ended up meeting up with our friends Zeke, Jared, Shaan from Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn respectively. Greg and I were in foul moods at the beginning of the day and even more so after we went to the internet café but our moods turned around soon thereafter. We went to a Chinese restaurant and I was, admittedly, a little apprehensive and scared to try “real” Chinese food because I have heard stories that it is not what we are used to or what is available as Chinese food in the States. Zeke and I decided to share something that was called ribs and an order of fried rice. Thank goodness we both didn’t order the ribs which was what we were going to do because the picture looked pretty good. I don’t really know how to describe what was served to us. They were about the size of cheetos and had the same crunch but didn’t have a bone or anything that resembled meat. I think they had something similar to barbecue sauce them. The rice was really good though. My chopstick skills have suddenly and drastically improved. I’m not sure why, maybe just because of the environment. Michael had some sort of cashew and spicy chicken dish; it was really good. Shaan had sweet and sour chicken which was very different from the States but still really good.

The rest of the day we just explored the city and went to the women’s market. I’m not sure why it was called that, maybe we weren’t even in the right place because the communication between us and our taxi driver was very limited. It was an outdoor market with a lot of cool clothes for guys. For the first time, they (the guys) had more of an option than I did. Usually there are a lot of clothes and items geared toward females and not so much for guys but this time it was the opposite. We started heading back toward the ship around 7:30 because there is a light show every night at 8:00. We took the subway back just in time for the show. It was really cool, the entire city lit up with music playing in the background.

Even though we had to wake up early the next morning to catch our 10:00 train to Shenzhen, we HAD to go out for our only night in Hong Kong ;). So we went back to the ship and got ready to leave at 9:00. Celina and Val got back a little later than us so they got ready and planned on meeting us at Dragon Eye. I didn’t bring many going out clothes so I ended up making a shirt out of a scarf I bought in India. I thought it was cute and an innovative idea that night but now that I look back at pictures, I wish I would have just worn a t-shirt or something. Haha. We went to 7-11 first to have a couple drinks because there was a rumor that the drinks were ridiculously expensive (like 13 US dollars each). After spending about 30 minutes there, we (Michael, Greg, Sam, Zeke, Shaan, Nick, Chingy, Jared and I) caught the ferry over to the city. Zeke, Shaan and Greg thought it would be a great idea to put on an impromptu concert for the city goers so they sang Usher acapella accompanied by great dance moves. Michael took great video of it! We got to Dragon Eye and met Val and Celina but for some reason, they wouldn’t allow our party in even though a huge group of semester at sea students went in just seconds before us. This is the third time this has happened to us and I find it hard to leave it to coincidence that the blondies get in without question but we’re left outside wondering why we can’t get it…The same thing happened in Malaysia. We were dressed according to the dress code and were willing to pay the cover charge but weren’t allowed in for some reason. Then Greg was told “No bargaining” when he was trying to order a drink and basically refused service. Coincidence? Hmm…I wonder. Despite that, I still had a WONDERFUL time even though we basically just hung out at 7-11 and in the streets of Hong Kong. We ended up getting home at 3 or 4 am and had to wake up and leave by 8:00 to leave for the train station.

We got to the train station without too much difficulty and were able to buy our tickets to Shenzhen with minimal confusion. Once in the train station in Shenzhen the confusion began. We had to go through about three security checks and were in a little bit of a rush to make the 1:00 train to Beijing but if we missed that one, there was another one at 3:00 that we could get on. It took us about an hour to find the place we were supposed to buy tickets. We waited in a line for about 15 to find out that it was the wrong line and we had to find the other ticket booth that was upstairs. We finally found the booth but both tickets were sold out. We had to get tickets for the next day at 11:00 am and it was an extra 6 hours being 30 hours long! And a hard sleeper!

After buying those tickets we had to find a place to stay in Shenzhen so we wandered around and found a guy who said he would take us to a hotel that would cost around 5 US dollars each. We followed him for a pretty long walk into an ally next to what looked like an elementary school. We went up to the room which had three medium sized beds and a couch. We figured that we could share beds and make do with it but the cost suddenly tripled. We were able to bargain him down a little but we decided to go find another place for a little bit cheaper. We walked around for a few more minutes and the same guy told us he would take us to a different hotel that was the original price he told us so we followed him again. The lobby of this hotel was really fancy but the room only had two beds and wooden floors so we would have had to get at least two rooms. So, again, the price doubled. We were getting tired of walking back and forth between hotels so we decided to get lunch then continue our search. Half of us went to McDonalds and the other half went to a Chinese restaurant. Greg and I shared fried rice, Celina had a moodle dish (it may have just been noodle spelled incorrectly), and I can’t remember what Nick had. All of it was really good though and there was no duck cartilage surprise like Jazmin had warned us about. The second we stepped outside of this restaurant, the same man was there telling us to follow him to different hotels for cheap prices but by that time we had lost faith in his low costs. Sam and Dan had ventured while we were eating and found a hotel in a really good area (near lots of city life) for a cheap price, I think it was around six US dollars. We ended up getting two rooms with three beds each. We took a quick nap and walked around the city to look for an internet café but could only find a Starbuck’s so we used their free wifi. There were a lot of people with physical deformities on the streets. It looked like muscular dystrophy but I’m not sure what exactly it is. Some even looked like what Agent Orange victims looked like.

Later that night we went to a Mexican restaurant that served Indian food. I order chicken enchiladas that was definitely not chicken enchiladas but it still tasted alright. I don’t even know why we decided to eat there but it was an interesting experience although kind of pricy in comparison to our other meals. After dinner, we went to a bar where we were the only customers but we got VIP service. Ladies had free drinks so Celina, Jay and I enjoyed a couple drinks that were well covered and paid for after all the guys ordered their beer. The owner brought us a fruit tray that was really fancy. We didn’t stay too late because we had to wake up for our 30 hour train ride – bleh! But after returning to the hotel we decided to play cards so we didn’t end up going to sleep until about 3:00 am anyways.

We woke up at 7:00 (without much sleep again) and went to the train station. We saw our friends Roberto and Mary (from Puerto Rico and Texas) and tried to get some breakfast for everyone. Sam, Greg, Nick, and I walked around to look for food while the rest of the group stayed with our bags. We were gone for about 10 minutes and when we finally found a place, I went back to tell them what was on the menu but everyone was boarding except our group. Apparently they were about to close the gate so I ran to get the other guys. We had to run through the train station and barely made it on the train.

The second we stepped onto the train, we all started sweating. There was no air circulation whatsoever and our rooms were a quarter of the size of our cabins on the ship but with six beds. It was hard to imagine being in such a small place for 30 hours but it actually went by really quickly. We played lots of card games and had good conversations. The most entertaining was a card game called camps. Good times! They turned the lights off on us at 10 pm so we laid down soon after but didn’t go to sleep for a while. I woke up the next morning to the stench of cigarette smoke and the sound of slurping noodles. Not a pleasant awakening. We taught one of the train workers how to play a card game. She caught on surprisingly fast. It was hard to believe that she caught on so quickly because we didn’t even speak the same language but were able to teach her through hand gestures. She even won a game!

The 30 hours passed quicker than we all expected. The moment we stepped off the train, we immediately tried to book our tickets from Beijing to Qingdao; we were afraid that those would be sold out also and we would be stranded in Beijing. NOBODY spoke English in this train station. We went to just about every counter possible. At one point we thought they were sold out again. A couple of us went upstairs to try to find the right ticket booth and finally found one that said “English Speaking” so we stood in line. The rest of the signs were in Chinese characters so there were no words that we could even attempt to translate. I anticipated it being difficult to communicate but this was no joke! Even the English speaking counter had VERY little English. Basically, all of China was a game of charades. We were going through this train station with about 20-30 extra pounds on our backs, which were all twisted from the lack of space in our hard sleepers. The tickets we were trying to buy were sold out and the only ones available were for seats rather than beds. The tickets only cost $12 US but I would have gladly paid the extra money to be able to lie down.

After buying the tickets, we caught the number 2 bus to our hostel: Jade Youth Hostel. It was much nicer than I imagined a hostel to be. They were set up in rooms with eight beds each but they didn’t have a complete room available so we had to split up four in one room and four in the other. Celina, Jay, Michael, and Greg were in one room and the other room was me, Nick, Sam, and Dan. They kind of reminded me of the dorms. There was a communal bathroom and shower with five stalls. We got ready and headed to dinner at a Chinese restaurant that was about a block away. Again, the food was really good. I had spicy sautéed chicken and fried rice and was very satisfied. I guess we just luckily picked good restaurants. After dinner we went to a street lined with bars. One of our roommates in the hostel was from England and had been traveling for nearly a year. He went to dinner and out with us that night. He was very interesting to talk to and to see his perceptions of Americans. He was so surprised that we could walk into a bar and dance without drinking. He said that he wasn’t used to that; where he comes from, people don’t usually dance and if they do, it’s only after several drinks. We ended up going home around 3 or 4 am (i know, irresponsible since we had to wake up at 6:30 to leave by 7 for the Great Wall but when’s the next time we can go out in Beijing?). I decided to use the internet café at the hostel instead of going to sleep right away. I ended up being on the internet for way longer than I expected and didn’t go to my room until it was time to wake everyone up. Everyone was rushing around trying to pack and get ready in the short amount of time. So I left to see the Great Wall of China without a wink of sleep. Luckily, it was two hours away so I was able to get a little bit of a nap time before. It was pretty cold when we got there. This was the first time we had been cold since the day we left. All the other ports have been extremely hot.

The wall was amazing! We took a cable car up instead of hiking since we were limited on time. We only had our driver for six hours including commute time. After we walked around for a while, we took an alpine slide down (I think that’s what they’re called). We accidentally kept rear ending each other. Jay didn’t pull up her break in time and gave Michael whiplash! I think Greg ran into Nick so hard that he actually fell off his cart and into the slide. I’m a responsible driver and didn’t hit anyone ;)

After the Great Wall, we went to Tiananmen Square and to the Forbidden City which wasn’t too far from our hostel. Our train left at 11:00 pm that night so we didn’t book a room for the next night since we were going to leave. We didn’t have a bed to take a nap in so we just hung out in the hotel lobby until we had to leave for a train. I took a short nap in a wicker chair and think I woke up more tired than I was before. We got to the train station in plenty of time to have run-around-confusion time. It turns out that a lot of SAS students were on our same train. One couple actually bought tickets to Mongolia by accident and didn’t realize till just a few minutes before they boarded.

I was sooo exhausted and not looking forward to this 9 hour train ride with no bed. Our seats didn’t even recline a little bit. Fortunately, we were all sitting together. Jay, Nick, and I sat next to a man from Qingdao that had been studying English for 10 years. He was very interesting to talk to and welcomed all sorts of questions. For Jay’s HIV class, she asked him if he thought AIDS was a problem in China. He replied that he didn’t think it was a problem at all and if anyone had a problem it was Chinese women and they got it from American women. I wasn’t too sure how to interpret this answer but I think he meant that they are influenced by our promiscuous behavior as depicted through television. He said that he had never met any American women and that the only thing he knew about them was what he saw on TV. He also said that he thought that American women were beautiful because they had big eyes and his girlfriend likewise. He emphasized big eyes when describing beauty and said that skin color played no part in physical beauty. He was able to communicate pretty well but sometimes we would have difficulty understanding each other. He taught us how to say happy birthday since it was Nick’s 21st at midnight. I’ve already forgotten :(.

After talking for a little while longer, we decided to try and get some sleep since we hadn’t had very much the past few nights. We all tried just about every position possible. At one point, all of us had our heads on the tiny table we shared. Another time, I was sleeping on Jay’s shoulder. Once, Jay had her had on my back which was bent because my head was on the table. Another time, I had my forehead on Nick’s knee who was across from me. None of which were very comfortable and we didn’t get much sleep again.

We got into Qingdao at 6:45 am and went straight to the port. It took us about an hour to find the ship though, nobody spoke English so we were just walking around. I doubted that we were even near the ocean because it was very industrial all around us. The only reason we stayed there is because there was a sign that said “Welcome to Qingdao Port”. We walked past train tracks, construction, iron rods, and huge tractors to finally see the ship in the distance. We had breakfast on the ship and took a nap until noon. Michael, Celina, Val, Jay and I went to the market which ended up being an indoor mall complete with a Wal Mart. We had Pizza Hut for lunch which was like a fancy restaurant. There was what looked like a Wedding exhibition going on with photographers and cakes and decorations but then there was Mickey and Minnie mouse there so I’m not quite sure what it was.

I’m getting really sad that the voyage is nearing the end. I’m excited to see everyone back at home but I don’t want it to end just quite yet.