The Chinese National Holiday is traditionally the first week in October. However this year the National Holiday was limited to a day, later to be stretched back into a week in fear of a slowing economy. Fortunately I get to reap the benefits of this week long holiday with a semi-vacation/tour of China. Initially I had planned on traveling to Thailand during this holiday because a week long this is China’s busiest travel holiday next to Chinese New Year. But his plan quickly died because I only have a single entry Visa due to the Olympics and getting a re-entry visa is 太贵了 (very expensive). After some debating on which destination we wanted to see the most in China, we decided on Yunan Province. Yunan is the most south-western province besides Tibet and is home to the Tiger leaping gorge, which is the largest gorge in the world. This was a great plan until we looked up flights and saw that they cost about $450 round-trip, which is out of our budget.
That’s when we landed on plan C, Shanghai. We booked a flight leaving for Shanghai on Sat. Sept. 27th and returning on Fri. Oct. 3rd. I had originally anticipated on going to Shanghai later on during the trip when we have a 5 day weekend, but we are going to swap that with the Yunan trip instead and see if we can catch a cheaper flight. Shanghai is an amazingly westernized place for mainland China. The business district is the Chinese equivalent to Manhattan and with the geographic location of Georgia. There skyline is called the “bund” and rivals and other in China. Shanghai also has the Yellow Mountain where I think a group of us are going to hike and camp for a night, and a river town that is the Chinese version of Venice. We don’t know which order we are going to travel in but we do have Serena, a Chinese friend that we made during the Olympics. Serena lives in Shanghai and is an excellent tour guide and already said that we would show us around.
On a side note Beijing is starting to cool down. It is very noticeable that October is around the corner and the smell of fall is in the air. But I have heard that the 天气 (weather) in Shanghai is warm and on some days hot.
I think after this trip I am going to take a break and traveling within Beijing again. From the beginning of school on Aug. 26th I haven’t stayed in Beijing more than 6 consecutive nights without traveling to another Province.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tsingtao Beer Festival
Every year for two weeks in September Tsingdao holds a beer festival in the costal city of Qingdao to comemerate there 150 years of tradition. In honor of their achievements we rounded up 11 of our friends and decided to travel over 500 miles by train and cab to see this festival. Devin, Regis and I left thursday night (10:45pm) out of Beijing Central train station with a one way ticket to Qingdao (In China you can only buy a return train ticket from the place you are returning from, weird... I know). You also might be asking yourself...hey Jim, why are you spelling the beer and the place similarly Tsingtao and Qingdao. Well reader glad you asked. Thats because Tsingtao beer was founded by Germans and they couldnt say words like Qingdao, so they improvised. Anyway we left thursday on what seemed like the train from hell. Our seats were in a car that was over sold by about 50 tickets so people where standing, sitting, squating, and laying just about everywhere. Smoking was allowed and I've come to the realization that the Chinese only have one volume: loud. I sat in a six seater with 5 other chinese in a seat that didnt recline, luckly enough I had the window and did'nt get stuck in the middle seat. This was by far the worst part of the trip. Everything from here on out was clear sailing. (This is actually a whitty pun because Qingdao was where the sailing venue was for Olympics). Serina, a Chinese friend of our was meeting us and other friedns for the festival, bought our return ticket for us on a much nicer speed train that was only 5 hours to beijing.
Once we got there (6am)we checked in the hotel and slept until around noon. After that we just walked around and got to see a part of China that was unique and refreshing from the big cities. Qingdao is a nautical city with a specialty in seafood and their surf. We got a feel for the city and walked along the beach until we met up with Serina and her friends. They took us to this really small but delicious Chinese Seafood resturaunt. This was one of the highlights of the trip because none of them could speak english and they were big on chinese tradition. They taught us the proper way to give your friends a toast and that you should "根北" (pronounced "Gen Bei", literally meaning bottoms up) two glasses instead of one because odd numbers are bad luck. The chinese guys taught me the proper way to march in the Chinese army because some of them are in the chinese version of R.O.T.C.. After we went to meet our American friends who took a later train not to miss their classes of friday. Together we went out to a bar and saw a bar tender light bottles on fire and flare with them, and caught up with everybody else.
"Its a marathon, not a race" was the theme for the Saterday. We woke up had a hearty breakfast of potatos, meat, and rice and headed to the festival. The festival was a huge venue of almost any type of European and Chinese bear you could think of. We started the day at the hofbrauhaus and ended up at the Tsingtao stand. Along the way I had the privledge of eating Shark on a stick for about 10 kuai. We ended up leaving the festival early because our 朋友 (chinese friends) wanted to take us to the beach. So we walked a few blocks and got to the beach and hopped into the Yellow sea for about 30mins. We dried off by playing soccer with a couple of chinese guys and left the beach for dinner a little while later. Again we decided to have seafood because it was so good the night before. We went to this bar street and had dinner outside on a patio with both sets of friends. At the resturaunt we met so Shanghainese men who I decided to toast to with the toast that I learned the night before. They went nuts because I knew this toast that they kept on toasting us back and one guy even gave me his hat and phone number in case I ever go to Shanghai. We ate and drank with them and celebrated Jeff's 21st birthday which was on this past monday. We had a great dinner and night went back to get some sleep beacuse our train early the next morning. The train I took back to Beijing was the same type of train that I took to Tianjin to see the olympic football game. I had so much space and was so comfortable that I got in a solid nap and studied some chinese.
The amazing thing about this weeked besides the seafood, drinking, 7hr train rides, chinese friends, and festivals was that it cost less than $150 American. We traveled a distance further than New York to D.C with hotel, food, drink and entertainment for next to nothing. The conclusion drawn from this weekend is that I am amazed in the amount of people that actually live in China. You hear about 1.3B people and you read about it in books but it takes a while to actually understand what that means. Qingdao is a city thats barely on the map in China and yet it has a population of 7M, only 1M less than NYC. This weekend I got an appreciation for what 1.3B people acually looks like and means in terms of country and infrastructure. I think I learned a lot more than I anticipated this weekend. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/TsingtaoBeerFestival?authkey=Ig9xQYC1LyU#
Once we got there (6am)we checked in the hotel and slept until around noon. After that we just walked around and got to see a part of China that was unique and refreshing from the big cities. Qingdao is a nautical city with a specialty in seafood and their surf. We got a feel for the city and walked along the beach until we met up with Serina and her friends. They took us to this really small but delicious Chinese Seafood resturaunt. This was one of the highlights of the trip because none of them could speak english and they were big on chinese tradition. They taught us the proper way to give your friends a toast and that you should "根北" (pronounced "Gen Bei", literally meaning bottoms up) two glasses instead of one because odd numbers are bad luck. The chinese guys taught me the proper way to march in the Chinese army because some of them are in the chinese version of R.O.T.C.. After we went to meet our American friends who took a later train not to miss their classes of friday. Together we went out to a bar and saw a bar tender light bottles on fire and flare with them, and caught up with everybody else.
"Its a marathon, not a race" was the theme for the Saterday. We woke up had a hearty breakfast of potatos, meat, and rice and headed to the festival. The festival was a huge venue of almost any type of European and Chinese bear you could think of. We started the day at the hofbrauhaus and ended up at the Tsingtao stand. Along the way I had the privledge of eating Shark on a stick for about 10 kuai. We ended up leaving the festival early because our 朋友 (chinese friends) wanted to take us to the beach. So we walked a few blocks and got to the beach and hopped into the Yellow sea for about 30mins. We dried off by playing soccer with a couple of chinese guys and left the beach for dinner a little while later. Again we decided to have seafood because it was so good the night before. We went to this bar street and had dinner outside on a patio with both sets of friends. At the resturaunt we met so Shanghainese men who I decided to toast to with the toast that I learned the night before. They went nuts because I knew this toast that they kept on toasting us back and one guy even gave me his hat and phone number in case I ever go to Shanghai. We ate and drank with them and celebrated Jeff's 21st birthday which was on this past monday. We had a great dinner and night went back to get some sleep beacuse our train early the next morning. The train I took back to Beijing was the same type of train that I took to Tianjin to see the olympic football game. I had so much space and was so comfortable that I got in a solid nap and studied some chinese.
The amazing thing about this weeked besides the seafood, drinking, 7hr train rides, chinese friends, and festivals was that it cost less than $150 American. We traveled a distance further than New York to D.C with hotel, food, drink and entertainment for next to nothing. The conclusion drawn from this weekend is that I am amazed in the amount of people that actually live in China. You hear about 1.3B people and you read about it in books but it takes a while to actually understand what that means. Qingdao is a city thats barely on the map in China and yet it has a population of 7M, only 1M less than NYC. This weekend I got an appreciation for what 1.3B people acually looks like and means in terms of country and infrastructure. I think I learned a lot more than I anticipated this weekend. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/TsingtaoBeerFestival?authkey=Ig9xQYC1LyU#
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My First Post
September 17, 2008
So this is my first blog and my first post on a blog so hang in there if its not up to par the first go around. The good new is that it will only get better from here on in! The first thing that I want to tell everybody about is this saying that a lot of Taoist people ( I think there Taosit) live by. "Everything is like water", meaning that everything in life can be compared to water in a really simplistic way. I like it because when it was explained to me the person used the metaphor of a river running, saying that a river has a set path and is guided but at the same time a river erodes the land and creates its own path. Another comparison is that when water is violent you cannot see the bottom however when its calm you can see things more clearly. I try to keep that in mind when things in China get a little difficult and it makes it a little easier.
I am half way thru my first week of school and I think my classes are going really well so far. The thing about TBC (The Beijing Center) that I like the most is the classroom atmosphere of the classroom. Never have I ever felt so welcome to participate and felt like my opinion really mattered in a class discussion. My Sacred Texts of China teacher is a really knowledgable person on the subjects, he has studied in China, Shirlanka, and Iwoa. The class has 6 people including me and has a very laxed atmoshphere. The first class we went over the orgin of Buddism and the first stories of Buddha. In that class we are going to go over the texts of Buddism, Taoism, and Daoism. My next class was Chinese and that was intresting because the whole class was Chinese, not a word of english. I understood about 40% of what was said in class, but on the flipside I am going to get a lot out of this class and learn a ton of Chinese. My next class was Art of China and my teacher super smart and young. She graduated from Dartmouth, masters from Harvard, and she is going for she PHD from Harvard in Chinese Art. Her class is going to be tuff becuase I have to memorize a lot of dates and names. I am actually excited for this class becuase we are going to learn a lot of histoy too. My last class that I have from 7-10pm on tuesday nights is Management and this class was made a ton better because it is about Chinese business and what it means manage Chinese people with their work ethic and values. Today I am trying to get into this Chinese Economic and tomorrow I have Chinese and marketing. After class tomorrow I am going to the beer fest in Tsingdao for the weekend. Not bad for my first post right? I try to keep them shorter next time, I guess. I am going to try to post every other day during the week and take the weekends off. Hope you enjoyed and don't forget to send me email so I know whats going down in your neck of the woods!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/SilkRoadTrip?authkey=bBrRcbYLG_w#
So this is my first blog and my first post on a blog so hang in there if its not up to par the first go around. The good new is that it will only get better from here on in! The first thing that I want to tell everybody about is this saying that a lot of Taoist people ( I think there Taosit) live by. "Everything is like water", meaning that everything in life can be compared to water in a really simplistic way. I like it because when it was explained to me the person used the metaphor of a river running, saying that a river has a set path and is guided but at the same time a river erodes the land and creates its own path. Another comparison is that when water is violent you cannot see the bottom however when its calm you can see things more clearly. I try to keep that in mind when things in China get a little difficult and it makes it a little easier.
I am half way thru my first week of school and I think my classes are going really well so far. The thing about TBC (The Beijing Center) that I like the most is the classroom atmosphere of the classroom. Never have I ever felt so welcome to participate and felt like my opinion really mattered in a class discussion. My Sacred Texts of China teacher is a really knowledgable person on the subjects, he has studied in China, Shirlanka, and Iwoa. The class has 6 people including me and has a very laxed atmoshphere. The first class we went over the orgin of Buddism and the first stories of Buddha. In that class we are going to go over the texts of Buddism, Taoism, and Daoism. My next class was Chinese and that was intresting because the whole class was Chinese, not a word of english. I understood about 40% of what was said in class, but on the flipside I am going to get a lot out of this class and learn a ton of Chinese. My next class was Art of China and my teacher super smart and young. She graduated from Dartmouth, masters from Harvard, and she is going for she PHD from Harvard in Chinese Art. Her class is going to be tuff becuase I have to memorize a lot of dates and names. I am actually excited for this class becuase we are going to learn a lot of histoy too. My last class that I have from 7-10pm on tuesday nights is Management and this class was made a ton better because it is about Chinese business and what it means manage Chinese people with their work ethic and values. Today I am trying to get into this Chinese Economic and tomorrow I have Chinese and marketing. After class tomorrow I am going to the beer fest in Tsingdao for the weekend. Not bad for my first post right? I try to keep them shorter next time, I guess. I am going to try to post every other day during the week and take the weekends off. Hope you enjoyed and don't forget to send me email so I know whats going down in your neck of the woods!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/SilkRoadTrip?authkey=bBrRcbYLG_w#
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)