Vacation Day 5

Hello,
I will now begin my recollection of my China trip. =)

On the fifth day, we were in Hangzhou, after our flight mess up the day before, and so we went to the West Lake. There we went to a very nice park full of Magnolia and other trees. There was also koi in pools formed by the lake. It was very hot and humid, and so there were vendors selling fans all over the place. I didn't buy one though, as they seemed a little expensive.


This first image is of a tea house they constructed. It is not the original though, as it fell apart some time ago.


Koi in the pond beneath the tea house.


From the lake we went to one of the towers. There are three altogether. One is to represtent woman, the one we went to, and one a man. The men's tower was still the original, the the woman's had crumbled in 1924, and so they had rebuilt it. They had preserved the old structure of the tower in the basement though. According to the folk lore in the area, a snake ate a magic dumpling and gained the power of hundreds of years of magic, becoming an immortal and taking the form of a woman, but she was imprisoned in the tower. It was said that until the tower fell, all woman would be repressed, so the new;y contructed tower was a monument to her and her legend.


The old structure remains.



From the top of the tower, I could look over the west lake. Unfortuneatly, it was rather cloudy that day. Although it didn't help the heat much.


We had taken a boat around the lake to reach the tower and also crossed the broken bridge, where the magic dumpling had been dropped, and were the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliette took place. The walkway is lined with willows and juniper.


From the West Lake we went to 梅 tea village, where they make China's number one tea. It is only available in China due to the high demand and their love for tea. Longjing tea. The prices there were set by the government, and we later learned that else where the tea sells for a LOT more, so since we had gone to the source, we were offered a good deal. They had three different qualities depending on what month the tea was picked.



There was a lot of tea.

We then left Hangzhou and headed for Suzhou, on the way we stopped at Wuzhen, sometimes referred to as the Venice of the East. It is a village built on the water, hence its nickname, and is split into two zones for tourists. East, and West. The West is larger and you can stay overnight there, we went to the East Scenic Zone.






We took boats in and then proceeded to walk around the village and look at the small museums they had. As well, we went to a traditional Chinese Wine Factory and saw how they make and dye clothing. One of the museums we visited was a bed museum. They had beds from different time periods in China and it was very interesting to see how intricate and amazing the bed frames and designs were, along with how they differed through dynasties. They were all wood and hand carved.



Chinese catamaran?

We then continued on our bus ride to Suzhou.

Where we had dinner.

And then proceeded to see the night life of Suzhou. Suzhou has a lot of foriegn investers, especially from Singapore, and as a result it is a VERY nice city. It has the largest LED screen in world, which hangs underneath a skytrain over one of the most popular shopping streets by a river. Accros from which you can see a feris wheel and theme park. The city was full of night life and lights, and was very pretty. It also had a cool area which senced movement and lit up as people walked by.




I like Suzhou a lot. Haha. Thanks for reading!

Vacation Overview

So, my vacation was quite busy the last few days, and I wasn;t able to get onto the internet the vast majority of the time, so now I have six days to write about. I thought about writing about it all at once, but a lot happened and it would be ridiculously long and I highly doubt anyone would read it all at once. So, instead I'm going to post one day at a time each day, until I've finished it all.

Overall, the my vacation was a LOT of fun, and I enjoyed it very much. I was able to practice my Mandaric quite a bit due to going to so many shops and attempting to barter and buy stuff. I bought myself a jade necklace, and a pearl one for my mom, and bought a gift for the Jamals sho were very kind and looked after Aly-Shah (their daughter) and I during the trip.

When we returned, and the various members of the group went had left on their planes, I phoned a tutoring school where I am hoping to get a job, the woman I spoke to is going to see how I can get to their, since I don't know, and hopefully tomorrow I will have an interview. I need to finish unpacking and cleaning now. Thanks for reading! =)

Tour Day 3-4

Hello, so I was not able to post a new entry yestreday because we had to wake up very early today in ofer to catch our flight to Shanghai. So, here it is.

Yesterday, after breakfast we went to the Great Wall. We were told about Mao Zhedong's quote that you are only a hero if you go to the Great Wall, and how they put it at the top for people to reach. However, since then they have reevaluated his meaning and put it at the bottom so people do not really need to go through the effort of climbing the wall to be a hero.

Before reaching the wall we stopped at a Jade Factory, where they had the carving masters that designed the medals for the olympics and were carving many amazing things. We also learned about the pishu which is a ledgendary lucky animal which is supposed to bring fortune and prosperity. There I bought a monkey necklace pendent.

Dispite this, I still really wanted to get to the top, since it would be much more fun to brag about than just going. Haha. It was very beautiful there, and the sky was clear and blue that day. Aly-Shah and I climbed all the way to the top. We were racing a little bit, and resting at the towers, it was very fun. Before the first and second tower there were a lot of people, but the climb to the second tower is very long with a lot of steps, so after that hardly anyone was in the way, so the pictures from then are nicer and it was a more relaxing (if not easier) climb.

I'm just going to post the pictures, since it's hard to think of things to say about the wall.






And then I reached the top.


Afterwards, we went for lunch. We went to the only large retuarant anywhere near the wall since it is government controlled, and they want the business. It is situated over a tourist gift shop and vase making factory. They serve a lot of food though, since they know that after the wall people tend to be hungry, and allow one free meat dish refill and one free veggie dish refill.

Then we headed outside of the Water Cube and Birdsnest from the Olympics to take pictures, and then headed off to see a kung-fu show.


The show was very good, and far cheaper than when it came to Canada. It was the story of the Birth of Kung-fu through a Warrior Monk named "The Pure One" and his journey to enlightenment and abbothood.

Dinner. And, an early bed for our early day at the airport.

Today I had to get up at 4:30 in order to meet the rest of the group at 5 to go to our flight. We arrived at 6, got our tickets to Shanghai, and then waited for our boarding time at 7:00, the flight left at 7:30.

At 7 o`clock, our gate changed from 29 to 44, and so we had to go through the terminal to reach it, luckily dueto the layout of the terminal, it was not very far and just down an escalater down the hall. We waited there for about half an hour, until we realized the rest of the passengers had disappeared. It turned out that the gate had been changed back to 29, and so we headed back. And then we waited. They were not allowing anyone on the plane, and after a while the plane left. Linda, a woman in out group who speaks fluent Mandarin and some of the other group members joined the other passengers to find out what was going on, it turned out there were some mechanical difficulties and no one could go on the plane.

At nine o`clock it was decided that we should take a plane to Hangzhou instead, and then take a bus over to Shanghai to meet our guide. And so after a while we were able to go and get our luggage and check in again. By 10 o`clock we had our luggage and were re-checking them in for our new flight to Hangzhou. We then heard that our old plane had been fixed and was leaving at 12:30, but we did not feel like changing our flight again. Our new flight left at 1:30 so we each went off for lunch. Went through security again, and then waited another hour until 1:00 to bourd our plane. At 1:35 we were let on and able to leave.

In Hangzhou, since we had been in contact with our tour guide in Beijing, our new tour guide was waiting, and he was as tired as we were since he too had had to wake up early, take a train to Shanghai from Hangzhou, wait for us, take a train back when he heard our flight had been cancelled, get the bus and come get us. In the end we ended up staying in Hangzhou and went to see a famous dance theatre show at a park which told different famous Chinese stories from Hangzhou. It was very, very good. Then we went for dinner.

Our hotel is really nice too, even the smoking things are engraved with its logo.

Anyways, I am tired now and it is nearly midnight so I'm just going to list the pictures with captions rather than find thier prper place in the text. Haha.

Thanks for reading!


Park with show entrance


Interactive water show

Building with lights

Dinner, there were other dishes, but they came out later so I didn't get any pictures.




Nice hotel

(Click for larger pictures)


Hello,

The second day of my tour just ended, and as it turns out, our hotel has free internet so I am able to post an update of my trip so far. =) Starting from yesterday.

Yesterday was the first day of my trip along with Aly-Shah, her parents and the rest of our 旅游团。I woke up at 4:30, Aly-Shah got up shortly after, and shortly before we left to grab a taxi, I filled the bathroom with RAID and it ended up smelling horrible, but hopefully when we return the cockroaches will be dead. I did witness a fly fall victim from the fumes, so my hopes are high.

We caught a taxi just outside the gate, by 5:10 we were on our way to the airport. It took about an hour to get there, and our flight wasn't until 10:00, but we were worried about becoming lost so we decided it was best to get there really, really early. As it turned out, everything went smoothly so I bought a breakfast of noodle soup and sticky rice before we went through security. Afterwards, we still had some time so I used the airports internet for a while, but it was really slow, and ended up watching 喜洋洋 and a Chinese version of Wipeout on the television. Aly-Shah went to a teashop for breakfast and bought a tea, which as it turned out, was ridiculoussly large, and so she was not able to finish it.






Around 9:00 we headed over to our gate, and by 9:30 we got on the bus that took us to our plane. And then we waited... After a while, it was announced that the flight was going to be delayed twenty minues, and then another twenty, until an hour and a half had passed. It was not completely unexpected as before we had left we knew that a lot of flights were being delayed coming out of Hangzhou, likely due to the weather, but it was rather boring waiting.




Finally, at 11:30 our flight left for Beijing. As it happened, we had also booked an earlier flight than we thought would be necessary and arrived at 2:00, the same time as Aly-Shah's parents arrived and were able to head off with the rest of the group.

When we got to the hotel, we had a few hours of rest before an early dinner and then returned to the hotel. Aly-Shah and I walked ten minutes down to Caressfore (LIKE Wal-Mart) to buy water for the next day and spent a while looking at hats and key-chains and pianos. We came back to the hotel intending to go swimming, but we needed to have swimming caps so instead we just went to bed.

The room is very nice and large.

Today, I woke up at 6:30 and had breakfast at 7, by eight we were headed to the Forbidden City.

Before entering the city we walked through 天安门 and looked at the Arrow Gate and War Memorial and other sites there. And then we bagan to walk into the Forbidden City.


The Forbidden City is huge, only 1/3 of it is open to the public, and we only saw 1/3 of that, but it took us about two hours to walk through it. The main points of interest we saw there were the three palaces of Harmony, used for celebrations, preparation for celecbrations and imperial exams/senior parties if the Emporer lived to be eighty. The bedroom and study room of the Emperor and the Dowager Empress/Dragon Lady. The bedrooms of the cuncubines. We also saw the small garden they had filled with special rocks, and the many, many 四合院。 It was extremely interesting and fun to see how they lived there.
Afterwards, we headed off to lunch, (breakfast by the way was a buffet) and I proceeded to eat until stuffed again. The food was similar to that of Shanghai apparently since it was a little sweet. We also had Peiking duck there, which was very good.

We then went to the Summer Palace (颐和园) which was built during the Qing dynasty by the Manchurians, since they became bored with the Summer Palace as they were used to a more active lifestyle. Although far larger in area than the Forbidden City, the vast majority of the Palace it a man made lake, modeled after the West Lake in HangZhou. It was also where the Dragon Lady retired to. The lake is shaped as a peach to symbolize longevity and the walkway we went along was shaped like the nose piece on glasses to symbolize good luck because of her request. Also, the room in which she worked and met officials there was different from other buildings at the time because instead of the dragon (Emporer) statues being situated on the inside and pheonix (Empress) statues on the outside, they were switched.


This is a picture of a Buddist Temple there.

Hey Spencer and Connor:


It's The Water Dragon Temple. =O


Getting to the Island



Bridge on the other side.

At the Summer Palace we walked along the lake and covered walkway, which was covered in unique paintings from painter's travels/flowers/depictions of famous tales, to the boat stop, which we then took across the shallow lake bad a little while down from where we had started and got back on the bus.


The Lake.

We headed to the Panda Zoo.

At the zoo, we saw pandas. Most of which were very lazy and either slept or ate. However, the Olympic panda, which they had brought to the Zoo for the Olympics, was extremely active! And very cute. It was extremely entertaining as it climbed all over the jungle gym in it's enclosure and swung on it's swing and kept nearly falling down/fell down through as it pranced from one area to the next. Our tour guide said that it was the first time she had ever seen a Panda do anything interesting, and that we were very lucky. =)

We then went on a 胡同tour through the old part of the city where people still lived in 四合院。Before entering a house you could tell the rank and job of a family was by how many steps they had to their front door, what shape of stones worked as door stops and how many beams were above the door. One family allowed tourists to visit their home as a source of income and we were able to see the layout from the inside. We also were allowed into some of the rooms to take a look at the structure and furniture.

Then we went for dinner. And, it was very good.


I took a picture of all the food. Rather, I took a little of all the dishes and piled it on my plate for a picture. =)

Before heading back to the hotel, we spent about a half hour at a night food market on the street, there they served foods like fried scorpion, centipeed, beetle, silk worms, along with deep fried cream, dumplings, bubble tea.

Aly-Shah had a 糖葫芦 and I bought a 'deep-fried banana/cream' but on the inside there was nothing but air. =(
I'm now back at the hotel, writing this. I hope to write a new update tomorrow!

Thanks for reading! =)