I
apologize for the delay, but I’m finally back to my blog! Since my last post,
I’ve had a long vacation around China (about 4 weeks) and I’ve been back
teaching for 3 weeks now… I know it’s a long time to neglect my blogging
duties, but I have been quite busy, and for those of you that know me well you
should know I am a pro at putting things off! Not much has happened since I
have been back in Chenzhou, so I’ll mostly focus on the travelling that I did
over my Spring Festival (or Lunar New Year) vacation. I learned the quote for
this blog from my headmaster and I thought it fit perfectly with the way I have
been feeling lately. “Chu cha den fen” means "rough tea, simple meal";
essentially, it is saying that it doesn’t matter my situation, as long as I
have a little tea and a meal everything will be ok. For our holiday we stayed
in cheap hostels (ranging from about $3-$20/person/night), ate cup-a-noodles a
lot, and were pretty stingy when it came to haggling, and I could not be
happier with the whole experience. It wasn’t perfect, but it was amazing.
First off, we went to Beijing for the first half of our holiday
for about 2 weeks. We went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City and it
was great to see something so historical with so many stories within those
walls. It wasn’t my favourite place in Beijing, but still worth seeing – I
mean, who goes to Beijing and doesn’t see the Forbidden City? My favourite
places by far were the Summer Palace and the Great Wall. We went to the old and
new Summer Palaces and managed to catch the new one around sunset. My god, it
was gorgeous and hard to believe that it is a completely man-made lake. The
Mutianyu Great Wall left me breathless (both from the magnificent view and the
hike) and made me feel so small and so big at the same time. It’s amazing what
you can accomplish with a ridiculous amount of hard work and dedication, but
standing on it made me feel like just a tiny insignificant speck in the world.
We also had a chance to see the Olympic stadium, watch the Beijing Opera, and
shopped at the Pearl and Silk markets (among other markets). We saw a few
temples (Lama Temple has the largest wooden Buddha carved entirely from one
piece of wood – amazing), a few parks, and just wandered a lot too.
Forbidden city
Old Summer Palace
New Summer Palace
Temple of Heaven
Trying out some new foods at the market
Rebecca, Alethea and I at the Mutianyu area of the Great Wall
Breakfast Club shadow haha
Trevor decided that he would take a little time off work to join
Alethea and I on our holiday so we planned to fly back to Guangzhou to meet him
at the airport… that was the plan. Unfortunately because of a mix-up, we missed
our plane and scrambled around for hours trying to figure out how the heck we
were going to get across the country in time to meet Trevor without completely
robbing ourselves. As luck would have it, Canada happened to be having an
atrocious snow storm that prevented Trevor from being able to get on a plane to
Guangzhou either. Eventually, Alethea and I found a slow train to Guangzhou for
a reasonable price and it would only take 20 hours on a hard seat! It was
terrible. Sleeping was impossible and I was tired of playing games on my iPad
and staring out the window. But just another experience, right? Of course, I do
not speak Chinese and no one on the train could speak English, but I still
managed to play cards with a little boy about 8 or 9 years old – it’s amazing
what a little pointing and waving of the arms can do. Finally, we arrived in
Guangzhou and managed to find Trevor and we were on our way again, headed to
Chenzhou for a night to drop things off and re-pack for warmer weather. I
showed Trevor around the school and some of our favourite places to eat and
shop in the neighbourhood. It was February 10th at this point, which is officially
Lunar New Year’s day so the school was empty and most of the shops were closed,
but we found tons of fireworks for sale and had fun with a few little ones to
celebrate.
Bringing in the Lunar New Year with some good old fireworks!
We're on our way! High speed train :)
We had planned to go to Shenzhen first, but because we missed so
much time with plane delays and long train rides, we just headed to Hong
Kong to stay there for an extra couple days. Hong Kong is technically part of
China, but you still need to go through customs and show your passport to get
in like it is its own country. Trevor even needed a double-entry visa because
this somehow counted as leaving China. We took a train there (high-speed this
time) and stayed in a 21-person room in a big hostel. This actually wasn’t as
bad as it sounds and apart from one night when a bunch of drunken girls came
stumbling in talking loudly and running into things, it was pretty quiet and
low-key. We went to Disneyland the first day in Hong Kong and holy cow it was
amazing! I have been to Disneyland (world?) in Florida, but it was different
here—and not just the fact that we were surrounded by Chinese people. They have
their own subway line to get there with Mickey Mouse windows, pictures of Walt
Disney inside, and various statues of Disney characters everywhere. They are
very efficient and the lines went really fast and they had a Toy Story Land!
The day was more than I could have imagined and we managed to get around to
every part that we wanted to. We were successfully exhausted by the time we got
home after 11 hours at the park (and apparently I wanted to stay even longer as
I got left behind because I didn’t hop on the subway fast enough.. oops)!
Disneyland!!
Getting left behind meant this sweet picture on the subway :)
The next day we headed over to Lantau Island in Hong Kong to see
the Big Buddha. When you get there you can get over to the statue by taking a
cable car or hiking the mountain… obviously we chose the cable car and boy,
that was a good choice! Between the water and the green rolling mountains and
seeing the Buddha in the foggy distance, it was pretty surreal. We saw the Big
Buddha (it really is huge and my pictures don’t really do it justice), but also
went to the temple on the island too. It was beautifully detailed with dragons
and gold and flowers everywhere. Only one small mistake: I bought an apple from
one of the shops around because I was hungry and after eating half of it,
realized that those apples are meant to be bought as a sacrifice to the gods
and are to be left at the altars in the temple. I felt so dumb and sheepishly
hid the rest of my apple until I could find a garbage bin to throw the rest out
before I offended more people. I would do something like that, but I think the
gods understand and I’m sure I’m not the first foreigner to do this. We then
ate some lunch by the water and decided to take a ferry back from Lantau
Island. It was pretty cool to see so many buildings all over the island on our
way over. I have never before seen so many apartments and high-rises in my life,
with layer after layer intriguing your eyes to try and see more as they climb
up the mountain; it was never ending! I took some pictures, but again, it
doesn’t really do it justice to how it made me feel—I am very small and Toronto
really isn’t as big as I always thought it was growing up. Some of the other
sweet features of Hong Kong were the Lan Kwai Fong bar district (so many
bars!), the markets (they went on forever and were unbelievably cheap), the
waffle place with delicious mango smoothies near our hostel (the Yesinn at Causeway
Bay), and the fact that more people could speak a little English and less
people stared at us for looking foreign.
The cable car on Lantau Island. You can see the Big Buddha in the distance.
Big Buddha
Shanghai was awesome, but also a bit bittersweet knowing our
holiday was coming to an end. We spent our first day there heading to an area
near the water called “the Bund”. The morning was spent walking around and
checking out the beautiful sights around. We saw the Pearl Tower and amazing
architecture of the buildings around, and took a ferry cruise around the
Pudong. The weather was wonderful and we shopped around a little, and then took
the subway to the Pudong to check out the Oriental Pearl Tower a little closer.
It’s the 5th highest
tower in the world and was definitely an interesting experience. The many
features include a glass floor (momentary freak out because heights give me
legs like jelly), an indoor roller coaster (unfortunately way too expensive to
actually experience), and the highest floor was decked out like a spaceship
(complete with chrome jumpsuits and an alien video). But the best part was that
the city around looks beautiful from way up there, especially lit up at night!
Boat cruise around the Pudong
In the Pearl Tower
We decided to head to Nanjing for a day as it’s relatively close
to Shanghai. Nanjing is an old city with a lot of history and used to be the
capital of China before Beijing (I believe they have actually had quite a few
cities that used to be the capital as China has such a long history). I had a
lot of places planned for us to visit including old city walls, Confucius
temple, parks and a museum about the historical massacre that was described as
being “gruesome” in Alethea’s China tour information book. They don’t speak
English very well and you know, apparently it’s hard to get around when you
can’t read the signs… so we got lost. It wasn’t a waste of a day though. We did
see the old city walls and took a boat cruise around the Confucius temple with
different statues and scenes set up. We also walked around some beautiful
shopping areas and other places around the city. We tried to make it to the
museum, but because we had gotten lost before, it was too late and we had to
catch our train back to Shanghai.
We like boat cruises... this one in Nanjing
Our last stop was to an area on the outskirts of Shanghai called
Zhujiajiao, or Water Town. This was definitely one of my favourite places of
the trip and it was gorgeous. We took a 30 minute bus and then a rickshaw to
the water! It is basically the Venice of China with lots of lovely shops,
bridges and boats. We walked around enjoying the picturesque little town,
bought a few things (including a hand-painted fan and a cute little scenic
painting) and just enjoyed the day. We had lunch in a restaurant basically by
ourselves by the water complete with a chicken foot! Heading back to the bus we
took another rickshaw, only this time the man put all three of us into one to
pull us around and had a smile the whole time :).. overall, the day was really
nice.
Beautiful Zhujiajiao (Water Town).
