Going the Way of the Dragon

Your Chinese word of the day is "mamahuhu" (pronounced mamahoohoo).  It means so-so, and I think that pretty much sums up how I'm feeling about leaving China.  While I'm super excited to see my family, friends and cat again, I'm also sad to have to leave this wonderful, magical place. It's been a whirlwind tour of China to say the least, and now we're heading home.  In China, the roofs of pagodas serve as a sort of compass.  Each corner of the pagoda has a different animal on it and each animal corresponds to a different direction on the compass.  The tiger is always on the west corner, the turtle on the north, the bird on the south and the dragon on the east.  Today we are going the way of the dragon, winging our way back to our loved ones while leaving behind some wonderful people that it's been our privilege to get to know.  I'd like to introduce you to some of them.

This is Alan, our Shanghai local guide.  He was awesome, so knowledgeable and funny.  We all loved him to death. Don't you think he looks like he's about 14 years old?  He's actually a ripe old 33. 

This is Susan.  She was our Xi'an local guide.  Isn't she adorable?  She looks just like a little doll.  She was super sweet and we all loved her hip China fashion sense.

And then there was David. He was our China national guide and also served as our local guide in Beijing, his hometown.  What can we say?  We all loved him.  He was so patient, kind and sweet, as well as keeping us entertained with his amazing knowledge of China and Chinese culture along with his wonderful sense of humor.   He escorted us around China with a smile on his face and looked after our every need morning, noon and night while always being ready to jump in and join in the fun.  We just can't say enough good things about him.   He was phenomenal!

Last but not least, I'd like to give a shout-out to our tour group.  What an awesome group of people!  It was a pleasure being "sticky rice" with them for the last ten days.  We were so fortunate that everyone in our group got along really well and we all kind of looked out for each other.  Every single one of them was super nice and super fun and there was no drama, which is amazing when you think about 28 people, most of whom didn't know each other before they came, being jammed together and herded around China while jet-lagged and sleep-deprived.  They were a super fun group to travel with and we feel fortunate that they are all a part of our China memories.

All of us are looking forward to seeing all of you very soon.  Thanks for joining us on our excellent China adventure!  Signing off from China now...

                                                            Peace out!

Feel the Burn - Beijing Style!

Surrounding the Temple of Heaven in Beijing is a large park where many Beijingers like to come to hang out.  You'll find people line dancing, playing hacky sack, doing tai chi and using the adult-sized playground equipment to work out.  It's like an open-air Chinese YMCA!  We had a great time people-watching and Jill and Brenda even got into the act.

    It's the Beijing version of the electric slide!

    OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Man of steel!

    Just hanging around. 

    Brenda monkeyed around with the locals.

    Jill tried out a Chinese elliptical machine.

    Tai chi

    Tai chi

    Tai chi ball - kind of a cross between paddle ball and      

   juggling. 

           Finally, Jill showed us all how flexible she is!  You go, 

      girl!

The Beijing Hustle

Our last few days in Beijing were action packed adventure for sure!  Thanks in part to Michelle Obama's visit to China, our flight from Xi'an to Beijing was delayed.  (She was flying from Beijing to Xi'an and we were flying from Xi'an to Beijing on the same morning.)  When we arrived in Beijing, we were supposed to go directly to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City but David decided that we should move that excursion to a different day because the Forbidden City was going to be closed that day.  The plan was to go to the Summer Palace and the Beijing Zoo instead, which we should have done on our last day in Beijing, and then we would do Tiannamen and the Forbidden  city the day we left.  It was a great plan in theory until our flight was delayed and the Summer Palace and zoo had to be postponed, too.  This pushed everything to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and boy have we run our hinies off!  

So on Tuesday on the way to the Great Wall, we visited a jade carving factory, followed by a stroll down the Sacred Way, the roadway to the Ming tombs.  

 

After our trip to the Great Wall on Tuesday, we went to a traditional Peking duck dinner (yummy!) and then a Legend of Kung Fu show, which was pretty amazing.  

On Wednesday morning it was the Temple of Heaven, which was an amazing sight to see.  The whole thing was built without the use of a single nail.  They used all dovetail construction to put this baby together.  The temple is completely round while the surrounding park is square because the ancient Chinese believed that heaven was round and earth was square.  

Then it was on to the pearl market and we all got our shop on.  It was a total shopping blitz - five floors of fake purses, electronics, jewelry, clothes and souvenirs and only two hours to bargain for it all!  Our group had a lot of fun hunting down the best deals we could find on stuff that none of us needed.  

After the pearl market, it was on to the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas.  They are so cute!  The pictures just don't do them justice, especially since they are behind a glass wall and it's hard to get a good picture of them because of the reflection and the fact that you are one of about 200 people all elbowing in at the same time to get the same shot.  China.  You've gotta love it!

We also saw what our guide refers to as "the naughty monkey."  This handsome fellow loves to terrorize his visitors by walking over towards you, climbing a branch and then suddenly hurling himself full throttle at the glass wall that separates him from you.  Even though we knew it was coming, most of our group screamed when he did it. There's nothing like 100 pounds of crazed monkey hurling straight at your head to get your blood pumping!

    The naughty monkey in flight!

When we had recovered from our monkey trauma, we headed for the Summer Palace.  Like most of the landmarks we've visited in China, it was a very pretty place.  It's situated on a lake so we got to take a dragon boat ride to one end of the palace grounds.  Then we walked back through the longest corridor in the world.  There are 14,000 paintings adorning this covered walkway and no two are alike.  It was amazing!  

The Beijing hustle continued today with our trip to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  We were all wondering what David was going to tell us about what happened in Tiananmen Square or if we were going to hear the People's Republic's version of events or even a complete denial that anything ever happened.  Turns out that he was one of the student demonstrators who had been demonstrating in the square for days and he escaped death or imprisonment by virtue of the fact it was his birthday the day before the military took action against the demonstrators and he and his friends had been partying and drinking all night and were sleeping it off at a friend's house when the tanks rolled in.  He said that he doesn't know how many people were killed but that the whole square had to be repaved because they couldn't clean up all the blood.  And FYI, Tiananmen Square is absolutely huge, so it's pretty bone chilling to think that the whole thing had to be repaved to eliminate the blood stains.  

So if Tiananmen Square is huge, then the Forbidden City is super mega gigantic!  The Forbidden City served as the main palace complex for China's emperors once the capital of China moved from Xi'an to Beijing.  David said that the walk from Tiananmen Square through the Forbidden City is two miles.  We all think he lied.  It has to be longer than that.  It took us three hours to make the trek and we rarely slowed down, let alone stopped.  I didn't get very many good pictures of either Tiananmen or the Forbidden City.  For one thing, it was super duper smoggy today, so everything was covered by a thick haze of pollution.  The other thing is that there are 1.3 billion people living in China and I think that at least half of them were trekking through Tiananmen and the Forbidden City today, so if you stopped for even a few seconds to take a picture, your entire group would just disappear into the swarm so you had no choice but to raise your camera over the throng, point it in the general direction you were hoping to capture, press the shutter button and hope for the best.  The sheer volume of people was absolutely staggering.  It wasn't too bad in the huge open courtyards, but in areas smaller than that, it was like Disneyland after a parade on Labor Day weekend.  Times ten.

It's been an exhausting but fun few days in Beijing, but it will be good to get home.  We're all gonna need a vacation from our vacation!  

The Hucksters

So your new Chinese phrase for the day is "Bu hao, xièxiè."  (Pronounced boo how shay shay)  Roughly translated, it means "I don't want it, thank you."  It's a phrase that we're all grateful to David, our wonderful national guide, for teaching us.  We use it often.  Sometimes every 30 seconds or so.  It seems that every time we exit our tour bus, the hucksters are on us like white on rice.  They just materialize out of nowhere, and they come in droves.  You can buy everything on the street from fake Rolex watches to what we all like to call "genuine fake" silk scarves.  These people are nothing if not persistent and if you're not interested in buying what they're selling, you'd better not make eye contact of any kind or they'll stick to you like glue until you give in and make a purchase.  Saying no doesn't discourage them.  Shaking your head or waving your hands back and forth doesn't deter them.  And if you've made eye contact and then tried to walk away, you've just lit the torch for the bargaining olympics.  Everyone in our tour group has gotten a kick out of buying the occasional trinket from the hucksters and then comparing their bargains.  The conversation usually goes like this:  
"How much did you pay?"  
"Oh, they wanted one for 120 and I got them down to three for 50."  
"Really?  Bob just got five for 50."  
It's absolutely hysterical and so much fun!  We even had one lady huckster come barreling down the street today chasing after our group to try to sell us funny hats.  She practically knocked people over trying to catch up to us while calling, "Hallo, hallo!!! Okay, okay, okay, one dollar!  One dollar!"  Needless to say, that got our attention and our group made her day by buying about ten of her little hats between us.  Almost free!

Below are some choice huckster moments from today.

The Great Wall at Last!

Today I fulfilled a dream I've had since I was a little girl.  I stood atop the Great Wall of China.  It was incredible, truly the experience of a lifetime!  And the fact that I got to share it with my mom, my sister and our friend made it all the more special.  If you look at the above picture, you'll see three towers.  Mom climbed to the first tower and Brenda, Jill and I made it about half way up to the tallest tower.  We went slow and stopped often to rest, but we just couldn't make it to the top.  I don't know if you can fully appreciate how steep the wall is by looking at the pictures, but let me tell you, it was pretty intense in places.  We're gonna be feeling this one in the morning!  

Here we are after our adventure with our "I climbed the Great Wall" medals.  We felt like Olympians after our accomplishment!