Vicki’s family came to visit Dec. 19th-31st. Our visitors were made up of her parents,
Preston and Patsy, her 24 year old brother Sam, and our 10 year old niece
Trinitie. We sure had a busy two weeks. It went by so fast that Christmas and New
Years seem like a blur. Our trip
itinerary was as follows:
Monday, December 19th
The Miller’s flight arrived at Shanghai-Pudong Airport at
4PM, but it took them awhile to make it through customs. We didn’t get to our hotel until 6PM or
so. Being thrifty, Vicki’s family had
opted for the cheapest but still decent hotel in Shanghai – the Zhabei Holiday
Inn Express. We usually stay here during
weekend trips ourselves. However, as a
Christmas gift, we decided to upgrade them all to the Sky Fortune Boutique
Hotel – a 5-star hotel Mark’s company often uses, so we get a discount
there. They were all quite surprised and
really enjoyed the breakfast there. We
couldn’t afford a hotel like this in the States and we knew they were likely
never to experience something like it again, so it was nice to be able to do
that for them.
That first night we took them to dinner near the Bund at a
restaurant, called Lost Heaven, which serves food from Yunnan Province (similar
to Tibetan food). We ended the evening
with a walk along the Bund, looking at the night lights and contrasting
architecture. The Bund is the financial
district of Shanghai. The one side was
built during the early 1900’s (peaking in 1929) and the other was built largely
in the last 15 years. It is an amazing
contrast of the best from both sides of a century.
Tuesday, December
20th
We did a whirlwind tour of Shanghai, visiting the Jade
Buddha Temple, Old Town, Seven Corner Bridge/Yu Yuan Garden, and the Lupu
Bridge. We had never done Lupu Bridge
before and it was a relatively smog-free day in Shanghai, even if
overcast. It is the 2nd
longest arch bridge in the world (beat by 7 feet by another bridge in
South-West China in 2009!). We took an
elevator up to the base of the bridge and then climbed the 367 (short) steps to
the top of the arch of the bridge. It
was cool and gave us pretty good view of the city.
We then caught a 5PM train to Beijing. This fast train to Beijing makes the journey
of 800 miles in less than 5 hours. It
travels, on average, 200mph. It was a
pleasant journey. Getting to our hotel
in Beijing was a bit more of an adventure.
Since we had seven people (counting LiLi), travel almost always required
two taxis. Vicki’s taxi (with Patsy,
Trinitie, and LiLi) made it to the hotel with the driver only stopping once to
ask directions. Mark’s taxi driver (with
Sam and Preston) took them down tiny back alleys and all over the place (he
entered the wrong address in his GPS) before making it to the hotel only after
Vicki gave her cell phone to the hotel staff.
We were staying at a much cheaper hotel this time – a Chinese
business hotel 2 miles from Tian’anmen Square.
Vicki’s family was supposed to get a family suite with three beds, but
instead there were only two beds. This
meant Sam and Preston shared a bed and Patsy and Trinitie did as well. Not ideal, but manageable. The shower in their room also didn’t have a
shower curtain or a lip, meaning the water would come up past the sink once
someone showered. Additionally, their
room, which was two levels, would often lose its banister up to the second
floor. The first night when Mark was
looking for the stairwell in the hallway he went to open the door he thought
was it and the handle came off in his hand.
Yes, this certainly was a 3.5 star Chinese hotel.
Wednesday, December
21
In the morning we got a (very poor) Beijing map from the
hotel and set off to visit some sites.
We were heading for the Forbidden City but somehow ended up at the
Beijing Train Station instead. Once we
sorted out where we were, we took some interesting side alleys on our walk to
Tian’anmen and came upon an old Protestant church amongst some rundown
homes. The security guard told us we
could walk through their building. It
was neat to see an old church that survived the cultural revolution.
Before making it to Tian’anmen Square proper, we came upon
the Zhengyangmen – an old city gate to Beijing (Mark’s favorite part of
Beijing). We then walked through
Tian’anmen Square on our way to the Forbidden City. The size of Tian’anmen Square is
astonishing. Seriously, it screams
“perfect protest location”. It was a
cold and windy day though, so we quickly walked across the square and into the
Forbidden City, the old imperial palace.
Having pushed LiLi pretty hard already (and it was cold!), she started
to melt down, so Vicki and LiLi hung out in a little coffee shop there for much
of the exploration of the Forbidden City.
We were at the Forbidden City until nearly closing time and then walked
to a nearby Chinese restaurant where we had a successful (success in China =
edible) meal which included Peking Duck.
The only suspect item we ended up with was a cold fish with strange
flavoring… which Preston still deemed edible despite its numerous bones.
We then began a cold walk back to the hotel since all of the
taxis seemed to be full. After a little
bit, LiLi (rightfully!) deemed it a silly idea and Vicki and Patsy were able to
catch an informal taxi cart back to the hotel.
Although we clearly negotiated the rate at 30RMB before getting in, the
driver must have thought he could pull one over the “laowei” (foreigners). Once at the hotel, the driver said we owed
him 90RMB – 30RMB each for Vicki, Patsy, and LiLi. Knowing this was an attempt to scam us, Vicki
argued with the driver and sent him on his way with just the 30RMB. It’s nice to know a little bit about how
things work here now, and to also know when we are being given the “Yankee
discount” as the expats like to call it.
Mark, Trinitie, Sam, and Preston took the VERY long way back
to the hotel and arrived about 40 minutes later. Upon reaching the location of the hotel
according to the map, there was no sight of the hotel. We asked some people for directions, which
were wrong, and we also misunderstood making the wrong directions worse. Anyways, we got to walk about mile to end up
about 100 yards from where we started.
Part of the problem is that Beijing street names are confusingly similar
to each other (ex. 朝阳门内大街 and 朝阳门南小街)
and they often list the road that is coming up, but fail to tell you what road
you are on. They were glad to make it
back at all!
Thursday, December 22
One of the sad things about touring cities we’ve never done
before is when we get things wrong – like the amount of time it will take us to
get from our hotel to the Beijing North train station. The plan was to take a morning train to the
Badaling section of the Great Wall (80K north-west of Beijing), but the taxis
took so long getting to the train station, that we would have had to sit for
awhile and not get to the Great Wall until after lunch. Once we regrouped at the train station, we
quickly changed our plans and decided to head to the Summer Palace instead,
since that was on the outskirts of Beijing and we were most of the way there
already. Even though taxis had just
dropped us off, they suddenly seemed scarce.
After some mild negotiations a black market taxi driver agreed to take
us for Y100 ($15)… but I quickly realized he could only take half of the group
and it would be $30 total. While Mark
was negotiating [“Correct, Correct, the price is Y100: Y50 and Y50 = Y100”],
Vicki continued to watch out for taxis and soon flagged one. As four of us piled into the taxi, it was
amazing to hear the price of the black market drivers come down [ok, ok, Y80,
ok, ok, Y60]! Apparently they didn’t
think we knew how to flag a taxi or what we should be paying. Vicki and her group made it to the Summer
Palace for Y30 ($4.50) per the publicly metered taxi. While still double the price, Mark decided it
would be worth it so that the rest of the group wouldn’t have to be kept
waiting while he tried to find a public taxi.
Our combined time was worth more than $4.50 in savings!
 |
| 利利 (LiLi) and 缇缇 (TiTi) at the Summer Palace |
The Summer Palace was pretty spectacular. While the particular location was an
important site for Chinese emperors from the 12th century on, it
wasn’t actually turned into the expansive gardens/summer palace retreat until
1750. It was torched by the Anglo-French
in 1860 during the Second Opium War and again in during the Boxer Rebellion in
1900. It was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902
when the out of touch last Empress of China diverted money from the (recently
annihilated) Chinese navy to rebuild the place.
The grounds of the palace are constructed to be reminiscent of other key
spots in China – like the lake is supposed to imitate the famous West Lake in
Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China and Suzhoujie (Suzhou Street), an area along
a ‘canal’ with lots of little shops, is supposed to imitate the ancient style
of shops in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China and serve as a place where the
Emperor and his concubines could feel like they were on a commercial
street. Apparently “when the royals went
there, eunuchs and maids of honor would playact as peddlers, customers and shop
assistants to mimic market activities” (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/summer/suzhou.htm). The canal was frozen over when we were there,
so they had little ice carts you could rent and cruise around on by digging
spikes into the ice to propel yourself.
It was a fun activity to do – though LiLi (who stayed on shore with
Grandma except for when Grandpa gave her a ride) would get upset if Mama or
Baba fell!
The Summer Palace didn’t open to the public until 1990, but
today it seems to be a community location (you can buy season passes for
cheap). There was a community singing
event going on when we were there, and also lots of the older Chinese there
doing their morning calisthenics.
We then decided to head over to the Old Summer Palace around
2:30PM, even though we hadn’t exhausted the grounds of the Summer Palace by any
means. The Old Summer Palace was pretty
disappointing though. First, it wasn’t
as old as we would have liked (build during the 18th & 19th
centuries). And second, there weren’t
really many ruins left (at least we didn’t find them), so it felt like we were
just walking through a pretty park.
We decided to call it a day for tourism (most stuff closed
at 4:30PM) and go eat an early dinner.
So we took the subway back to a local street food market we had passed
the day before on our (long) walk back to the hotel from the Forbidden
City. This food market had lots of fun
things like fried pumpkin, shrimp on a stick, fried bananas, fish, etc. as well
as a lot of strange items like starfish, scorpion, and snake on a stick… or
fried silk worms. Most of the group had
a fun time at the market and our family ate until overly full, though it would
have been better if it was a little warmer outside. It’s hard to eat dinner in the cold wind!
We managed to get taxis back to the hotel (not even thinking
about trying to walk it this time!) after a little bit and headed to bed early
so we could get a much earlier start the next day.
Friday, December 23
Not wanting to miss our train to the Great Wall again, we
left the hotel by 5:15AM and had no problem catching two taxis. We made it to the train station with plenty
of time to buy our tickets and wait to board the 6:12AM train. We got to Badaling just after 7AM. The Great Wall was said to open at 7AM, but
we exited the train station to a ghost town.
Oh, and it was very, very cold (~20F) and windy. We had hoped to kill some time at the Great
Wall Museum while the morning warmed up a bit, but the building we were told
was it was vacant and locked. We finally
found a noodle shop that wasn’t technically open but had the door unlocked (for
staff) so we went in to warm up while Mark ran ahead to see if he could gather
any other info for the group. He found a
little shop at the entrance to the Great Wall that was open and selling warm
clothing (ski gloves, face masks, scarves, etc.) and hot drinks. So after spending a bunch of money there, it
was decided that Vicki and LiLi would stay back (still too cold to put a
toddler on the Great Wall) and the rest of the group would venture out. The Great Wall gets very repetitive very
quickly, so Trinitie, Patsy, and Preston returned after about 45 minutes,
satisfied that they had climbed the Great Wall though surprised at how
disappointing the vigor of the moment actually is! Mark convinced Sam to pick up the pace and
actually go run the wall with him. Roundtrip
the two of them did about 3.5 miles of the wall, often trying to keep their
balance as they ran quickly up and down uneven steps. At least Mark gave Sam a memorable
experience!
We then caught the 11:20AM train back to Beijing. We took the subway to the Temple of Heaven
where we spent the rest of our afternoon.
Vicki’s family must have been really been suffering “emperor fatigue” by
the time we did this tourist spot since their favorite part seemed to be the
outdoor exercise equipment so prevalent all around China! It will likely be a memorable experience for
them though to see so many people gathering outside in the cold to exercise
together! Vicki’s dad Preston was even
applauded by a Chinese woman when he did a flip on some parallel bars! They would have stayed longer playing there,
but we made them leave to go see the actual attraction of the Temple of Heaven!
At 3PM Mark, Preston, and Sam left to go gather our luggage
at the hotel before we all met up at the train station again to catch our 5PM
train back to Shanghai.
While a lot of stuff in China has started to seem the same
to us, Beijing was different. It was so
Emperor-focused. Everything had to do
with the Emperor’s family and Emperor worship.
And the Great Wall is such a long-lasting landmark of their national
fear of outsiders. It was quite the
contrast to modern Shanghai! It would
have been nice to be better versed in that history BEFORE we went though. So if you want to visit us in China and visit
Beijing, make sure you do some reading on the Emperors of China, the First and
Second Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Cultural Revolution. It will help to provide a more meaningful
experience!
Next up: A summary of
our visit to Suzhou, Sanmen County (our home), and YanDangShan
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