Hello lovely friends and family! Thank you for keeping us updated on your lives as we tell you about ours on this blog. We'll try to update this often, but who knows how busy we'll be and how reliable our internet connection will be. Don't feel obligated to read everything we write; we are basically using this blog as a journal of our experience here, so we may get a bit long-winded at times.
First, we'll update you on what's happened since we left.
Tuesday, August 21 and Wednesday, August 22
After saying our last goodbyes to Clan Russell in the (very early) morning, Papa Nelson drove us to the airport. On our way in, we got shuffled into a huge pack of missionaries - how exciting! There were literally hundreds. Eventually, we boarded our first plane to LAX. All went well on that flight, and it went by pretty quickly. We spent a couple of hours chatting with other China Horizons people at the LAX airport while we mentally prepared for the impending long long flight to Korea. We will tell you what, moving from Delta to Korean Air was a major upgrade. The airplane was like an all-inclusive Hilton in the sky: individual TV screens with over 100 movies, games, music stations, etc. for all of your entertainment needs; semi-hourly drinks and treats hand-delivered by blue-scarfed fancy matching Korean air hostesses; two full meals (we'll chat more about this); hot refreshing towels; and even a small shopping area where you can buy gifts, purses, perfumes, and much more. It had two levels of seating and easily held 700+ passengers. We sat in the second-to-last row, which we shared with a Korean guy who spoke zero English and produced strange noises. The two meals that they served were pretty interesting, but yummy. The funniest part was that they gave the Korean guy next to us completely different meal choices from what they gave us. The meals came in cute little-sized containers with fancy little utensils and such. This is what we wanted to take a picture of when we realized, after about 10 stressful minutes of searching, that we did not actually pack our camera. What a bummer. Anyway, this plane ride was pretty interesting because it was light outside the whole time we were flying. Because we were flying in the same direction that the Earth was rotating, our daylight lasted for something like 20 hours that day. Crazy. Eventually we got to Korea and made a quick transfer onto our last plane to Beijing. This is when the sleepiness really started to kick in. Basically, we boarded the plane, ate another tasty Korean Air meal, and next thing we knew, we woke up while flying in over Beijing. The city didn't look quite as huge as we had expected (height-wise), it seems to be much more of a sprawling city. After getting off the plane, grabbing our bags, and exchanging some money, we made our way to the hostel. (Again, we completely slept through the bus ride and woke up when we got there.) The area we're staying in is a pretty low-key traditional part of Beijing, so the streets were too skinny for the bus to drive down, so we got dropped off a few streets away. We got into our room (which was definitely nicer than we expected; we have our own room with its own bathroom and everything) and crashed.
Thursday, August 23
Jet lag is a weird thing. Even though our bodies were super tired, they still wanted us to get up early (by China time). So we woke up at 5 am. A group of us went to a little food place a few doors down and got roll-type-things for breakfast - this was a good learning-experience for us to figure out how to order at a Chinese restaurant. AKA we learned how to see something that looks edible, point at it, and hold up our fingers to ask how much to pay.
Then the tour began. We walked over to Tiananmen Square (which wasn't far away, but took some time to get there because of the underground crosswalks and security checkpoints), which wasn't too exciting, except it gave us many chances to learn how to turn down street vendors. We learned the helpful phrase "bu yao" (which means "I don't want"). Apparently Chairman Mao's body is in the mausoleum at the square, but we were not allowed in because we were wearing open-toed shoes. Also, we made friends with a couple in our group, Sharlie and Cory Erb. They have been kind enough to take pictures of us at everything until we got a new camera. They are probably the most like us of anybody in our group of 60-something people, so they're obviously pretty neat.
After wandering around there for a bit, we met up as a group again and headed over to the Forbidden City. There we again got many many opportunities to turn down street vendors. They were selling all sorts of funny things, mostly umbrella hats. About half of the Chinese people had either umbrellas or umbrella hats to stop the sun from tainting their nice light skin. It's actually kind of funny to watch - they hide from the sun the same way that we hide from rain or strong wind. Anyway, the Forbidden City was beautiful. It was basically just an extremely lavish and humungous palace with loads of courtyards and hoards of people. By the time we got half way through we had walked several miles that day and were tired and quite hungry, so we decided to buy an interesting little food tidbit we found at a side shop. It was in a (not refrigerated) box that had a picture of a hamburger on it and was labeled "Fried Drumstick Hamburger". Turns out it was a stale bun with a few little pieces of lukewarm fried chicken and probably like ¼ cup of mayonnaise. Needless to say, we didn't eat it. Luckily food is extremely cheap here, so it wasn't much of a loss. After another hour of wandering around the forbidden city and making our way through another crowd of street vendors, we had our first public bus experience. How exciting. We took it back to the neighborhood where our hostel is. It was slightly scary, but, as we would learn over the next few days, nowhere near as thrilling as a ride on the tour bus.
For the next few hours we had free time, which we filled with researching cameras and where to buy cameras. We also stopped by a restaurant on the main street in our neighborhood to get some lunch and totally got ripped off. The waiter gave us an English menu with pictures so we could easily order, AKA so they could put crazy prices on it without us questioning it. We paid 42 RMB (like 8 USD) for 10 dumplings. This is slightly expensive by American standards, but super super expensive by Chinese standards. For a comparison, the next day we paid 10 RMB for 20 dumplings. However, the experience was a success, because it taught us how awesomely delicious the dumplings are here.
That evening we all went to a family-style restaurant for dinner, where we had some Chinese people stare at us and laugh at our chopstick abilities. A few of them gave some of our table-mates chopstick lessons. This was our first experience truly eating family style: the food was put on a lazy susan and everyone served themselves using their own chopsticks – no serving spoons. After dinner, we went to a Kung Fu show.
It was really neat, but jet lag forced us to sleep through about half of it. It was actually kind of ridiculous, I literally felt like I had no control over my body. I eventually got so frustrated with the fact that I couldn't stay awake that I just stood up and watched from the sidelines for the rest of the show. The show had more of a plot than I thought it would, and the actors were pretty impressive. Sometimes you could tell that they were lip-syncing, but their kung fu moves were pretty awesome. After the show, we again got blasted by some street vendors, but eventually made it back to our hostel, where we promptly fell asleep (despite the less-than-soft double-sized bed that we share).
Friday, August 24
Near the Wall, we came across a donkey that someone had apparently taken up there. He was friendly.
The ride down from the Great Wall was quite fun. It was pretty funny that we went from being on this outstanding historical monument to being on an amusement park ride. It was the most expensive thing we've purchased yet (except for the camera) in China, costing 60 RMB (less than 10 USD). Unfortunately, we got stuck behind some timid Chinese people and had to go slow at some parts, but it was a blast anyway.
At the bottom of the street vendor hill, we went to another group lunch at a family-style restaurant and pigged out. There, I discovered this delicious dish that I will definitely be eating on a regular basis. It's basically just cooked tomatoes and fried eggs in some sauce – throw that over some rice and... YUM.
Afterward, we took the bus over to a jade factory, where we learned how to tell if jade is authentic or a fake and learned some history of jade in China. Then we were led into a big room with tons of jade jewelry, figurines, etc, and like 15 saleswomen. We felt like sheep that had been led into a lion's den. We overheard that the reason it's part of our tour is that they subsidize some portion of our Beijing tour so that it can be cheaper for us because they know someone will buy something after the factory tour. It was neat anyway.
Then we went to the Ming tombs. We didn't actually go to the tombs themselves because those are apparently pretty boring, but we just went to the walkway leading up to the tombs, which was really pretty. There was a big monument building thing with a turtle type statue in it. Apparently, if you touch the turtle's bottom, you will have good health, and if you touch the turtle's head, you will have good wealth. So we are set to be rich and have long lives.
The ride back to the hostel from the Ming tombs was when we really learned about the space-warping technology that China has secretly developed. We are convinced that they have discovered a way to make it so more people and things can fit into spaces than is physically possible. There were so many times that the bus really looked like it was running a person or another car over and we apparently didn't (unless, that is, that we simply didn't notice because the bus was so big). It was pretty scary.
When we got back to our neighborhood we grabbed some delicious and cheap dumplings for dinner. Yum. Then we recruited our Mandarin-speaking buddy, Adam, to come to Walmart with us to check out the cameras there. That was the place we felt safest buying one so we could return it if it didn't work. As it turns out, Chinese Walmart is quite different from American Walmart. It was a two-story Walmart held within a large building, and it had escalator ramps that shopping carts could go on. Sadly, they didn't have a very good camera selection, and their return policy was only that we could return it within 7 days if it was broken. So instead, we went to a camera shop on the main street in our neighborhood (Qianmen street – the one where we got ripped off on the dumplings a few days earlier) and ended up buying a Nikon D3000 with Adam's help. Unfortunately, we learned about 5 minutes after and 100 feet away from the store that the camera has no video capabilities. All well. We are just happy to have a nice camera.
Side note:
Chinese people love using us Americans as a background for their photos. One thing we've gotten used to quite quickly on this trip has been the consistent desire of the natives to take sneaky pictures of us. Every time we turn around there's a Chinese person trying to take a picture of us without us noticing. When we notice, we always give a big smile and a peace sign. A couple of the people have been surprised to see that we knew they were taking the picture. It is funny to see their embarrassment when they know they've been caught. The blonds in our group have especially been bombarded with pictures.
Saturday, August 25th
We were up early the next morning to catch the tour bus and head over to The Summer Palace, this time with a new camera. We were super hungry, but were a little late, so we ran down the road where a little breakfast place was, and there was no English or pictures of anything. A local motioned us to walk into the tiny kitchen and show the cook what we wanted to eat. The lady pointed at an egg and opened a large pot that looked like scambled eggs so we thought she would make us a scrambled sandwhich type thing, which is what it looked like everyone else there was eating. Thirty seconds later, she brought out a boiled egg which was blue on the inside, and a bowl of soup with a blob of tofu in soy sauce. Alicia wouldn't even touch it. The taste wasn't terrible, but we didn't have time to sit down and eat because our group was passing and we had to leave. We just left some money on the table and ran off, learning our lesson that we need to plan more time for grabbing breakfast.
It's always hard not to sleep on the bus, so we aren't sure how far away the Summer Palace was, but it is essentially the place where all of the emperors of the Ching Dynasty would come to live for the summer when southern China was too hot. Everything was extremely extravagant, and as other historical places in China, was highly commercialized with vendors on every corner.There were a few artists who appeared not to be there for money, including an old man who sat at the bottom of a tree and hand painted a very intricate water color painting on the palace on the hill. There was another old man who used water as his medium and he was painting temporary Chinese characters onto separate blocks of the sidewalk. It was pretty neat. One of our group members who happens to be 67 years old decided to go up to the water painter and steal his paintbrush to write "neehow," which is spelled incorrectly. This immediately got the attention of everyone around and the old Chinese painter was soon painting portraits of people in our group.
There was an outdoor corridor that was the longest corridor in the world at some point. Each pillar was hand-painted. We walked through a few courtyards where we were shown the living quarters of the empress who was responsible for bankrupting China and eventually led to the fall of the Qing dynasty. She had 125 dishes served at every meal, no exceptions. She also built a huge marble ship that doesn't actually float, it just sits on the bank of hte lake. All of the buildings at the Summer Palace were located on a man-made hill which was made from the dirt that was taken out to make the man-made lake.
Anyway, we took a dragon-headed ferry across the man-made lake, and that is where we met the real Chinese Gandalf. It was as if he just appeared. He was very tall, and wore wooden platform shoes. He wore a large-brimmed straw hat and deep red flowing clothes with Chinese characters written on them. He had a long black beard as well. Everyone wanted a picture with him, although I don't think worked for the park, he was just a regular tourist. As we finished taking our picture with him, we heard his voice and knew that he was indeed the real Chinese Gandalf. His voice was deep and booming, and his smile was big and bright.
Apparently, half of the group was so mesmerized by this man that we lost track of the tour guide, and were lost for about fifteen miinutes. We just sat and waited for somebody to come find us. On our way back to the bus, I watched a watch salesman latch onto one of our group members and wouldn't let go. He followed him across the street and down the sidewalk. I found this amusing, and decided to take a few pictures of it. Quickly I became his new target, and had to battle with him about how already had a watch and didn't need a new one. It's amazing how relentless the street salesmen can be.
After seeing the Summer Palace, we took a tour of a silk factory. I think we did this for the same reason that we toured a jade factory. It was neat to see how silk is made. The lady showed us the whole process, from a silk worm egg to final silk quilt. Our experience there was much like the jade factory: we were shown how silk is made, then how to tell if it is real, then told how their product is of the highest quality, and then led into a huge show room of silky things, and many many sales ladies. Tom accidentally used face wash that was on display as hand lotion, and three Chinese ladies ran off to get him something to clean it off. After carefully inspecting the softness of each silk article in the store, we walked out empty-handed, headed to the pearl and silk markets to buy fake versions of everything we just saw. Not really, but the pearl and silk markets were something to remember.
Some people saw the pearl and silk markets at an incredible opportunity to get good deals on 100% knockoff products, and other people saw them as a bad dream, where you're walking down a hallway and small Chinese women are shouting English phrases at you every 3 seconds. "You want to buy?" "Hello pretty lady!" "You need a bag?" "Hello!" "Good price here!" "Come in now!" "Look, look!" (Imagine all of these in a terrible Chinese accent, and being said over and over again.. And also imagine no escape.) If we hadn't learned it yet, the pearl and silk markets taught us how to have tough skin when it comes to turning down a vendor. We did eventually end up buying a "silk" shirt for me. (Tom adds that it looks really good.) This was quite an adventure. I tried on 5 or 6 shirts at this lady's booth, which, unlike in America, led to me feeling like I had to buy something from her. The first several shirts were too small or just fit weird; the Chinese are simply built differently from us. But I finally found one that fit pretty well and decided to get it. Then came the fun part: bartering. Any friendship that you feel you may have built with the sales lady goes straight down the toilet when bartering time comes along. We would explain our reasons for not being able to pay so much, and she would explain her reasons for not being able to sell it for so little, and eventually we agreed on a price. Tom really revelled in this experience. That was at the pearl market. Then we hopped over to the silk market with some people in our group and continued shopping. The silk market was a bit fancier than the pearl market; all of the little shops were in glass cubicle things instead of just booths or tables (at least on the higher levels of the market). Tom liked this because once they got you to come into their little store, the tiny glass room acted as a playing field for the bartering. Pretty exciting. We ended up buying one of those fold-out fans and a little trinket thing. We made buddies with the guy who sold us the fan. Buying the little trinket (a little painted wooden figure) was an adventure for me, because Tom was out trying to barter with someone else over an SD card. Luckily, I held my ground. To get back to the hostel from the silk market was our first experience on the Beijing subway system. It went pretty smoothly, and I don't think we lost anyone in our group for too long of a time.
( Had a similar experience in Wal-mart where a chinese man picked up one of the shavers on display and did a quick test run on his face and then put it back in the display box and went on his way.)
And to always have adventures with a "SMILE" on your face.
I had so much fun reading about the beginning of your adventures in China! I'm glad you are both safe and doing well : )
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