Ni hao all,
We’re home once again, and this time our Continental Flight on a Boeing 777 from Shanghai back to the USA was on-time and otherwise very uneventful.
Here is a final list of our thoughts on our experiences while in China and what we saw there. Sorry if there are some repeats that you may have already seen in our other trip reports.
But first, we’d like to share one last interesting adventure. On Sunday, we departed Shanghai to the airport - in flashy high-speed style. We got the opportunity to climb aboard the Chinese "Maglev" (Magnetic Levitation Train), and buzz on over to the modern Shanghai Pudong International Airport for our long flight home. The Pudong Airport, btw, is such modern architecturally delightful eye candy, and it reflects the modernity of other parts of Shanghai. But, we digress here.
Back to the Maglev. The Maglev is the fastest train in the world, capable of reaching ground speeds of 300+ mph, as demonstrated back in 2003 during the testing period. We hopped aboard the Maglev out to the airport, and traveled at a cool 200 mph. You can really appreciate these enormous speeds when you can see the trees, telephone poles, and other ground structures whiz by this sleek train at 200 mph, and feel the graceful banking of the train with each broad turn. It's almost like flying without leaving the ground! The distance to the airport is about 25 miles, and the train covers the distance in just under 8 minutes.
The People -- The Chinese people’s inordinate fascination with us is one of the biggest anomalies we experienced on this trip, bar none. People staring at length, or photographing our mugs as we pass by was by far, the most blatant. It seemed rude, and made us feel uncomfortable at the start, but soon, it became one of the expected parts of the trip. We’d even pose for them and wave whenever we’d see them photographing. They’d just laugh, and often an awkward but friendly conversation between us and them would ensue. Remember, we only know very 'simple Mandarin', so conversations with these people were very basic at best. But, we got to know many Chinese people that way, and soon made many new friends. But as Anne says about the stares we got from the Chinese - don’t even think about using that old saw to the Chinese - "Why don’t you take a picture, it’ll last longer?” -- because they will take you up on it!! And, they will want photos of you with each and every one of their accompanying family members standing in the picture with us too!
Pretty much on the whole, the Chinese people were extremely friendly to us. Especially the young people who are so excited when they hear we are from the U.S. -- and so many told us they want to visit here some day. And the little kids love to speak English with us -- they run over to us with their English language school books, so proud to show us that they are learning English. While staring may have been a concern at first, we can honestly report that we have never seen even one event of hostility or malice toward us. We made many new Chinese friends in spite of language barriers, and any other cultural differences.
We did find that some of the Chinese (especially older Chinese women) seemed to be very pushy especially in a crowd; they can be somewhat short tempered, and seemed to be always shoving us around. It was not necessarily pointed at white people or other foreigners, because we’ve seen the old ladies push the Chinese men around too. In one instance, an old Chinese woman pressed her handbag against Anne’s back and just keep bumping and bumping her trying to propel Anne forward making her run interference for the old lady through an impossible crowd. And a young girl in a similarly crowded situation kept trying to push Frank out of her way - multiple times. Really blatant, rude behavior, with many more examples just like these. We think this may be a cultural thing in its roots; Anne had read that during the years when Mao was in power, politeness was denounced as a bourgeoisie weakness -- so maybe this kind of thinking still pervades in certain circles, especially the old timers who lived thru Mao‘s domination and strange dictates.
Superstitions -- The Chinese people are, for the most part, very superstitious -- and are always looking for good luck and long life. We always asked many questions about cultural things and their specific relationships to these beliefs whenever we found someone who could speak our language. One question was why all the people put colored paper around their doorway. The people told us it was for good luck in the New Year. Also, why is the color “red” used so much in Chinese culture? We were told, for good luck. If you look at some of the doors in their temples (especially in places like “The Forbidden City”), and count the knobs on the doors, you will find 9 rows of knobs, and 9 columns of knobs. Yes, the number 9 was a good luck number thru out Chinese history (altho we’ve been told that 10 and 11 are also good luck too!).
When passing thru airport security, one of the young security agents spotted a coin via the x-ray machine in Frank’s backpack. He rooted it out of Frank's sack and looked at it carefully, then blew on it, and handed it back to Frank. Of course, Frank, curious about the proceedings, ask why he blew on the coin. The young man replied - “it’s Buddha, and it’s for good luck.” Sure enough, when we looked carefully at the coin, there was an engraving of the Buddha right there on the front of the coin. Certain animals are also revered as symbols of long life. The crane (the bird), for example. In all the cities we visited, there were always a few statues of this bird in the squares, on top of buildings, or on busy street corners.
Lost in Translation -- Translations of Chinese to English leave much to be desired, and are often confusing, and even funny to read. For example: we saw a sign out on a large public square that warned all the English-speaking passersby - “No Striding”; we think they were asking people not to run thru the square (but we’re not really sure). Exit signs are typically marked in Chinese and English, with the English part reading - 'This way to go out'. And conversely, entrances are often marked 'The way in'. It was clear to us that there are extraordinary differences in the constructs of the two languages. Any English speaker could make a good living here, just cleaning up the translations, or teaching English. And these people are hungry to learn English, especially the youth. An often repeated mantra we saw hanging on billboards in the subways and elsewhere read “Success in English, Success in life.”
Nicknames -- Wherever we went, the young Chinese folks seemed to adopt American first names. We met Sherry, Luke, Aggie, Kathy, Lucy, Katie, Johnny, Sunshine, Kitty, et al. My personal favorites were a young girl who called herself "Cinderella", a young boy named "Magic" (after Magic Johnson), a little boy who named himself "Sunflower" (we figured he might want to change this name when he gets a little older!), and another who called herself "Sara". Sara's name used to be "Hillary". She told us that she changed her name to Sara when Hillary Clinton became big news a few years ago during our elections. She absolutely did not like the candidate Hillary, so she made the change to Sara! Haaaa!! An astute young lady! This whole thing about the names shows us two things: (1) the Chinese youth must have some serious admiration for the American people if they consistently take our American names; they are learning our language in their schools and even taking American namesakes that tighten the bond to America, and (2) they know our culture better than we think or ever expected. To adopt names like "Cinderella", or "Magic", or "Hillary", you must have some depth of knowledge about our culture, our contemporary news, and even our fairy tales.
High level of Customer Service -- Tourist areas in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai are incredibly clean. The government has obviously worked hard to improve their image. When we rode the train, they would wet mop the center aisle of our train car after every single stop!
Litter Flip side -- But the trashiness in the poor parts of the cities and in the countryside is atrocious. We saw front yards that looked like rubbish heaps, and apartment balconies piled high with all kinds of junk. A man in the train station waiting room ate an orange and was blatantly throwing his peels all over the floor at his feet, making the aisle slippery with orange skins. Tissues to blow his nose and wipe his fingers also went shamelessly right onto the floor too.
Here's another example: When we saw the 'Light Show' in Yangshuo, it was pouring rain; everybody was given free rain ponchos when we entered the performance. All the Chinese people immediately tore open their ponchos and threw the plastic cases on the ground. Worse yet, after the performance, they all threw their used ponchos on the ground. Imagine thousands of soggy plastic ponchos all over the place. And yes, they did have trash bins for the used ponchos (which is where we and a handful of others put ours).
Also while we’re on this topic, the smell of raw sewage is quite prevalent everywhere in China. You can be walking down a seemingly clean modern street in Shanghai, or hiking thru the pristine countryside with beautiful settings of mountains and streams, when whop!! The unmistakable odor of raw sewage will slap the olfactory sensors right in the chops. We think with the ever growing population of Chinese, this will be a major infrastructure and health problem that needs to be corrected soon.
Bathrooms -- China is a country where the “squatty potty” is the norm rather than the exception. Yes, in China, you do all your heavy duty business in a hole in the floor, while in the hunkered down squat position. And that's OK for us, we're used to squatties from other places in the world we've been. But for the most part, the bathrooms here are some of the most unkempt places we have ever encountered. The worst ones are just open troughs cut in concrete with no running water, and no flushing or dispersion mechanism. People squat and miss the hole, leaving no clean foot room for the next person who comes along. All you can do is find some good footing, hold your breath, and get in and out as quickly as possible.
The only consistently clean bathrooms are found in the big cities in museums, hotels, and well-cared for buildings. Once in a great while, you might even find a “western” toilet in one of the fancier places. Fortunately, Frank brought his “squatty potty” sitting tool, a home-made, compact, light-weight, aluminum, spanning bar (with support legs) which really did get quite a good workout whenever a western toilet was not to be found (most of the time). But remember, ALWAYS bring your own clean-up paper when visiting the Chinese hoppers. And when you use paper, don’t even think of throwing it into the toilet or the hole in the floor. The Chinese septic systems are not designed to handle paper. Used paper gets put into a trashcan that is almost always found right next to the potty - thus increasing the "odor factor" around you by manyfold.
Scammers -- Whenever we were approached by people who were overly friendly, we, like any alert Americans, had alarm bells sounding off in our heads. What does he (she) want? The answer, of course, is YOUR money. But in China, the people can be so sincerely friendly and engaging, that it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Most of the time, all they want to do is talk to you for a few minutes, ask how you like China, where are you from, what sights you've visited while in China, etc., and maybe even take a picture of you gathered around all their friends. We experienced many instances of just plain old folksy friendliness with the people, with no chicanery as the underlying intent. We did get snookered one time when a well-spoken Chinese “professor” who alleged that he taught art at the local university engaged us in an innocuous conversation. No hint of foul play. But, next thing we knew, we were in some Chinese art store, and he was trying to sell us some of the art (which he claimed was done by him). When we refused to buy any, he led us to his sister’s tea shop right around the corner (no, we were not going to get snookered a second time, but we were headed that way anyway), and tried to sell us some overpriced tea!! Needless to say, we felt scammed by this dude, but fortunately walked away a little smarter, and with all our money intact.
Internet -- We had free landline and/or WI-FI in almost every one of our hotels (even in the backwaters). We also had no problems accessing Google which gave us info on the Tibet earthquake and Iceland volcano (although one of Anne's favorite sites, the Philadelphia Inquirer, was blocked and Yahoo news was limited). And all the social networking type sites were blocked including Facebook and Anne’s Fodor’s Travel Forum.
Television -- TV was mostly a bust; a few of our hotels had at least one English Language news channel, usually about Chinese news (as opposed to world news), and put out and controlled by the Chinese government; but two hotels even had free HBO (in English!) .
Air Pollution -- Pollution is some of the worst we have ever encountered. The big cities had lousy air quality, especially in Xi’an. China is not a good country to visit if you have sensitive sinuses or lungs. Anne spent half the trip blowing her nose and coughing! Most days, the air was grey and smoggy, and for most of the trip, the only time we saw blue skies was when we were in a plane above the clouds!
Another major pollutant was cigarette smoke. The Chinese (men especially) are incorrigible smokers who insist on smoking in places where it is posted as a "no smoking" area (such as in restaurants, hotel lobbies, and even on elevators). Nobody seems to stop the offenders even when the signs are quite clear that smoking is not permitted.
Expenses -- In general, China is a cheap destination. Food and lodging are very cheap, compared to Europe or even America. Our most expensive hotel cost just under $90/night in Beijing and our countryside hotels were less than $30/night. And as long as you like Chinese food, you can eat like kings for less than $30 a day.
Accommodations -- We enjoyed the comfort and amenities of our big city hotels, but the places we will remember are the small, traditional ones full of character and delightful support people -- like our hutong hotel in Beijing and our guesthouse in Pingyao where we slept in a "kang bed". The kang bed, in case you don't remember, is a rather large bed made of stone block.
Private Guides -- We did have the added expense of hiring private guides in difficult-to-access places, but this was money well-spent. A private English-speaking guide is an indispensable asset in a country where you cannot speak or read the language. Private guides gave us a break allowing us to relax and let someone else take care of all the details for a day. But best of all, our private guides gave us "inside info" unavailable from the tour groups. It gave us the chance to learn more about the Chinese people, and provided our best look into real Chinese life.
Food -- We loved all the different kinds of Chinese food (even when we had no clue what we were eating). Groups or families of Chinese people seem to order a table full of little bowls and platters, and then leave half of the food on the table when they leave! Seriously. In a country struggling to feed its huge population, this seemed outrageous, but we saw it almost daily.
The sequence in which the restaurants serve your food is often baffling to us, tho. The waiters will bring almost everything to the table in a delayed serial fashion. If you order 4 things, for example, a plate of veggies may come out first. Next, and 10 minutes later, a dish of meat will arrive, then a bowl of soup later on, and finally the rice. By the time the rice has arrived, the other foods are mostly devoured, and you now have lots of rice that you originally wanted to combine with the other dishes, but those dishes are in fact mostly gone. We were never savvy enough to be able to tell our waiter/waitress to bring the rice first!!
Wherever we went, we had to remember to use bottled water, and not tap water. It can be quite easy to forget yourself, and inadvertently brush your teeth using tap water, or eat something that had been washed with tap water. It’s a nuisance, but unless you enjoy “the runs”, you need to always carry a bottle of the palatable stuff.
We finally resigned ourselves to the undesirable conclusion that good Chinese wine is impossible to find here in China. Those who know us, know we like wines from almost every country, and often seek them out wherever we go. But, in China, I think we may have found the exception. The many reds that we sampled were watered down and bodiless, tasteless, or had off-flavors. You can buy imported stuff in high-class stores, but that is not Chinese wine; it's usually French, and we even saw some cheap lower-shelf American stuff. The wine industry has a long way to go here. Also, the Chinese stores do not know how to take care of wine when it is displayed in their stores. You will find wines on shelves that are exposed to the sun every day, or varying temperatures. We even found a store where the boxes of bottled wine were standing outside in front of the store on the sidewalk, exposed to every thermal change that came along. Rice wine, on the other hand is everywhere, but it's not the same as the reds and whites we enjoy. It's not bad, but it's a completely different taste experience. Bottom line: Bring your own stuff, or do without if you come to China!!
Craziness -- This is a word Anne never used before, but found herself saying daily here in China -- every day was an adventure. We were constantly amazed by the things we saw: A Chinese woman sitting next to Anne on one of our internal plane flights was totally enamored with a moisturized towelette the stewardess had handed her. The old woman must never have seen one before because she played with it for the entire flight -- wrapping it around one hand and then the other; holding it up against her left cheek and then her right (It was really creeping Anne out!). A mom helping her little boy to take a pee-pee into a drain along one of Shanghai's most prestigious streets. Insistent shop owners always trying to sell you things you don't want. For example, Frank went into a shop looking for a small flashlight. Ths shop owner had none, but was determined to sell him something. First, she tried to sell him a pack of Marlboros; when he told her that he does not smoke, she tried to sell him a t-shirt; when Frank refused, she pulled out some scarves and went for the sale. Even tho it drives you crazy, you have to admire their determination. Lunatic driving, of course, and incessant spitting also populate the list. The list goes on and on.
Still Developing -- For all the modernity of the big cities, the peasants in the surrounding countryside still live in basic shacks, wash their clothes in streams, and plow their fields with a water buffalo. Frank doesn't see much of a world threat from these people at this time. There seems to be too much infrastructure and education yet that needs to be put into place to get this country up to speed. Yea, they have a great quantity of people to get the job(s) done, but the country is still mostly illiterate and agrarian. And besides, we saw no hostility toward us; these are not war-like people. Maybe their government is, but the people we met are just regular folks like us. And someday the youth of that nation will take over, and they certainly showed us a friendliness and welcoming like none other; hopefully, this attitude will continue to grow. Perhaps these same people will be part of the government of the future, and things will therefore continue favorably for America. The big cities are coming along, but we don't think they are representative of the entire country.
China is a fascinating place -- both to look into their past and to ponder their future. Their evolution from the oppressive Mao years to ramping-up capitalism may be one of the most amazing transitions in human history. Frank believes that the drive toward capitalism is unstoppable while Anne thinks that they may have one more counterrevolution in their future. In any event, China is a country to watch. Stay tuned for more craziness!
It's good to be home; this was not a trivial trip by any means, altho it went smoothly due to Anne's good planning. It was a bit draining, and took lots of energy from us at times, but it was well worth a look at this interesting country. We learned a lot, and wouldn't trade the experience for all the tea in China!!
Happy travels to all,
Frank and Anne
