Shanghai

We went for dinner with my friend Sisi and her boyfriend in Shanghai one night.

Then is Ben's favorite television tower: Oriental Pearl.

Ben finally found some american candy in China--Hershey's!

And He was very exicted taking picture with a giant pingpang paddle.

I was hugging a huge stuffed animal--Expo sign.

 

Huangshan

It was so foggy on the cold day, we can barely see the way. Everyone would get so exited when the fog went away for a minute!

Huangshan

The first day was so cold! We bought gloves, underpaints and krampons before we climb Huangshan. All the trees had icicle on the leaves...
But the next day all the ice melted and was so hot!

Huangshan!

Viewing Lotus Montain from another top.

Different day with or without fog~

Beijing

Trying to put old pictures up...

Beijing 2

Cities in China are always too crowded. Beijing is the only city that I always like.

It is so big that I always wish I knew more about it. Beijing has everything, if I can just find it.

Beijing is a place that combines rich and poor. I dont believe there are still that many really poor people who live in Beijing, but the Hutong are so dark and small that they are the best view of original old Beijing.

It's like a maze once you step into the narrow stone walkways, small and short rooms in a row,, post officers ride bikes in there to delieve letters. 

Mostly old people live there. I don't believe old people want to change their way of life. They appreciate the things they are use to like spending time with neighbours.

It is the same for my grandparents. They know the neighbourhood. Their friends and relatives all know where they live, so it's much easier to visit each other. Sometimes they just want to be with someone they know. They feel it is a waste to move out.

Paivi told me changes are always good, or at least there is a reason for it.

Things are changing here.

I don't know if the Hutong will still be there after this last old generation passes. 

Maybe there will be another museum to memorialize the Hutong, like with other lost cultures.

Now the goverment is trying to preserve some of the Hutong. They paint the outer walls, redo the tiles, making it nicer and newer looking. In the bigger Hutong homes where young people live they hang airconditioners, and change the old wooden doors to safety aluminium doors. 

I dont feel the Hutong are the same, but maybe that's the way they adapt to a new century.

Beijing has lots of conflictions. Things are so fancy and expensive, and there are things that are  so cheap and fake.

I always try to understand how a city can adapt to all the needs of its citizens.

Beijing is a dream place for most Chinese. I hope the hamorny can last.

Shanghai and the F1, part 2...

I would've done more research to learn anything about formula 1 racing prior to the race, but I was a bit worried about getting too in to the whole idea of going, and then being unable to get a ticket. So i figured i'd just go and see what would happen. After a semi restless night's sleep, we awoke early and hopped on a subway to the football(soccer) stadium, where we were promptly greeted by a gang of ticket scalpers doing their best to gain our business. At that point, we decided there was no turning back and hopped on the 50yuan roundtrip bus to the race course, which was about 50 minutes from the football stadium(near downtown.) We took the bus out there, and at that point it seemed clear that we had no choice but to go. Forget saving money, this was a once in a lifetime(hopefully not anymore) event, and we had to take advantage of our luck of being in the right place at the right time. Just to make it clear, we weren't even planning on coming to Shanghai, but finding the train to Wuyuan was basically impossible, we wen't straight to Huangshan instead(more on that to come.) Because of the skipping of the small village of Wuyuan, we had a few extra days, and being only a few hours via bus(we opted for a 12 hour and cheaper sleeper train) from Shanghai, we figured we'd come here.  So it was basically luck, being at the right place, at the right time. These are the moments you have to take advantage of when your travelling... The one in a million chance, the things you'd never thought you would see, never dreamed of, but that suddenly become the chance of a lifetime. The momentary decisions that become stories to tell for the rest of your life! We started bargaining(once again, "we" meaning Jin) and soon found ourselves shrugging off the cheap seats, standing room only, which were around 70US, and finding our way into some choice bleacher seats, at around 120 a seat..... still the cheapest of the seated seats. other tickets started at around 190US each, going up to well over 500. continuing to bargain, we eventually got a 2 for 1 deal and ended up sitting on the first curve, with a great view of the opening straightaway, first curve and some other fun curves a bit farther down the track... SICK!!!! Our tickets were amazingly not fake, and we ended up inside the stadium around noon, with the race starting at 3.... more to come...

A Day at the Races! Formula 1 2010 Chinese Grand Prix

Sunday in Shanghai!
What a rainy day! I will start off with saturday....We got back to our hostel saturday afternoon and tried to make friends with our hostel roomate. He spoke very little english, so when I say "we" tried to make friends with him, i basically mean Jin. He told us he was from a few hours from Shanghai, and had come to town for the weekend to watch the Formula 1 race, and that he had just come back from qualifying. The lonely planet guide says the race is in September, so I was a bit confused, thinking he meant some lesser race or something not that special. after grilling him for a while via Jin, i discovered that Shumacher, and whomever else is famous was racing, and that the race had been moved just this year to april! Getting more and more excited, i took to the internet to find out some more specifics, eventually learning that this in fact was a legit F1 race of worldwide consequence and that it def was not to be missed!!!!!!

More to come..........

Cute Pandas 2

Silly Pandas!

Here are a few of the pandas from the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center.... Sorry for the late update, but these guys were way too cute to not put up eventually! I hope these pictures bring just a fraction of the smiles to your faces that they brought to ours! This was definitely one of the funnest days of our trip so far!

Zhangjiajie2

Here are a few more of the more than 500 pictures I took at Zhangjiajie(not a joke!) i'm a little embarassed by the amount of pictures i took there, but hey, that's what 320gb portable hard drives are for!!!! Hope you enjoy the fabulous views from the view of the camera lens, it was absolutely spectacular in person. Amazingly(and somewhat unbelievably) it was actually cooler than Avatar, because it was REAL! Next update, coming up soon!

Zhangjiajie

Sorry for so many pictures at a time without enough illustration. We were amazed by the view of Zhangjiajie, and Ben took tons of pictures there. So it was very hard to decide which pictures to put on the blog.

The rocks go wild there, and the No.1 Bridge of the world is surprisingly pretty.

The last picture is trying to show the movie Avatar chose the view here.

Mountains of Zhangjiajie (avatar)

This is the first time i've been online in over a week! I feel so disconnected. the boat trip was great, then we went to zhangjiajie(avatar), which was ridiculously cool! the mountains there are so amazing! it is like bryce canyon or monument valley, but covered in forests and rivers like humboldt(minus the big trees.) we stayed with a really nice family in t he park for a few days for super cheap, so that was great. We spent the last two days in a small village called Dehang, where only a few hundred people live. There are lots of trails and hikes to go on. one of the trails leads to the highest waterfall in china, somewhere around 500ft! so that was really cool, and once again we stayed with a family in a small guest house for super cheap! now we have a train from 2pm to 7am tomorrow, then another train from 1 to 7 to get to huang shan... which is supposed to be the most beautiful mtn in china! we will spend a couple days there, then go somewhere else! huang shan is semi close to shanghai, over by the east coast of china, and north of here. from there we will probably head back south to the Li River and the city of Guanli, or maybe somewhere else, then head over towards laos eventually. it has been raining, or more like misting for the past 3 days, so the clothes we washed 3 days ago are still wet and being dragged around strapped to the outside of my bag!Zhangjiajie was soooo cool! it has the most beautiful, cleanest mountain streams with beautiful lush forrests on both sides of them... then when you look up, there are 1000ft(some shorter, some taller) spires of rock shooting up all over. Some mountains are larger and more solid.... and some are just tall needle like mountains maybe 100 feet wide, and some only 50 feet wide. some are short and fat, some are tall and skinny... some are one tall point, some are many tiny points clumped together....all have trees and bushes growing on every flat spot and crack in the rock! it is really beautiful and unique. you start off at ground level, then eventually the trails break off, and you can choose to hike to the top(where everyone lives and the hotel(guest houses) are. The first trail we took to the top is literally stairs for 1.8kilometers straight(just about a mile), and well over 1500 stairs!.... it took over 2 hours of straight walking up stairs to get to the top!we paid someone 5 dollars to carry my bag(the heavier one) up the stairs and through the trails for us the first day, as we had only slept for about 3 hours on the "hard seat" train from Yichang and 3 gorges dam. I carried Jin's backpack, and Jin carried my day pack up the mountain! it was sooo tiring. after resting and walking around up top the rest of the day, and next morning, we took a bus on the top to another location, where we found another family to stay with, they were much nicer and had a much better view from their place. we hung out there for the afternoon and walked around the short trails there. The next morning(friday, i think!lol) we walked for 2 hours down another trail, as in 2 hours straight down steps! Then we walked around the bottom for a while again, then began the hike up on another trail, making a circle. The hike up was 4 straight hours of climbing steps!!!! it was soooo insane. then we got back to our hotel and went to bed around 8! we woke up and took our bags down on the gondola, which is the way most tourists get around in the park... The gondola was cool, but really expensive for china... 52 yuen a person, or 7.50 dollars.... our hotel was 40yuen a night for both of us to have a private room, bathroom with hot water, tv, and an out of this world view!We left the park and headed to Dehang, then chilled in the tiny village for the last couple days and relaxed and went on easy hikes through the mountains and checking out the beautiful scenery! it was sooo nice, and very relaxing. So now we have a day and half of travel to get to huang shan, then another giant mtn of steps to climb to get to the top. And that is about it for our plans for now.

Hot Water

Just thought i'd give a little update about everyday life here in China. As Jin told me(and I didn't believe back when I was in the U.S.), Hot Water is everywhere here! They have giant coffee maker looking things at bus stations, on the train, in museums, airports, hostels, and glasses of hot water are served at restaurants, peoples houses, and basically anywhere else you can imagine. I have tried to tell people about the Ice Water in the US, but people simply look at me with astonishment. After a month of drinking warm water, it is almost getting normal, but still not quite as refreshing. Everyone here caries around a jar or hard plastic waterbottle and fills up there water wherever it is convenient. Every family boils water before they drink it, but brushes their teeth with tap water. People have special Nalgene like bottles with tea filters at the top so they can make tea throughout the day and carry it with them. Nobody here drinks tap water. I asked if it was because of bacteria in the water or chemicals in the water used to purify it, but no one has a concrete answer. Drinking hot water, and boiling your water at home has been described to me as a sort of Chinese tradition. When I told Jin's Uncle that people in the US always drink cold ice water, even on the coldest of days, he simply asked, "do you take cold showers as well?"