Only in China...

...have people perfected the art of the Asian squat and use it anywhere and everywhere.  

You have to give them some credit.  I tried Asian squatting and could only last a few minutes before my legs started to fall asleep.  These guys probably sat like that for a good half hour or more.

...can you catch a ride in this Mr. Bean car:

...can you enjoy the convenience of allowing your kids to wear split pants:

...can you find this kind of Engrish:

Excuse me, can you tell me where the oilet is?

It's important to protect those precious railings!

Which strees is the restaurant on??

The spelling is almost right....but the spacing makes it look so funny

Only tow persons allowed on the lift up to the great wall.

I love going to the tfmpif and musfum! 

It's exciting to know what the ttiptop air temp for today is!

This sign was up on the great wall at Mutianyu.  I didn't realize they allowed safe driving up there.  And what exactly is civilized sightseeing?

???

My favorite: Better watch out, there's a strong wino force today!

Beijing

Now to relive our time in Beijing!

We arrived in Beijing and managed to find our little hutong hotel (which was not an easy feat as it was tucked away in the maze of hutongs that makes up Beijing).  Hutongs are the old streets and alleys filled with courtyard style homes made of an open courtyard surrounded by rooms.  It was a fun place to stay, although the design made for rooms that were not the most private and sound-proof.

Our view of the courtyard.  In the mornings, they served light breakfast in here.

Andy standing in the doorway of our room.

Our first day in Beijing was full of sightseeing.  We visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

This is the building where Mao's body is on display.  If you look closely, you can see thousands of people lined up to get a glimpse of the Chairman.   We opted not to wait in line....the line stretched all around Tiananmen Square, it was crazy!

Chinese doing what they do best...the Asian squat

Now on to the Forbidden City.  The place is massive!

River running through the Forbidden City

The basketball court of the emperors.  Andy mentioned that nylon had not been invented yet so they didn't use nets.

Entrance to Forbidden City - lots of people!

After a morning of walking around the Forbidden City, we moved on to Beihai park:

The white dome is called the White Dagoba.  What is a Dagoba?  I have no idea....it sounds suspiciously like a dyslexic version of Pagoda...maybe they just had a bad spell checker when they named it...

Us in front of the Five Dragon Pavilions in Beihai Park

A view of one of the Dragon Pavilions and the White Dagoba across the lake

The next day we set out early for...some more sightseeing!  We went to the Temple of Heaven park

An old man writing calligraphy on the sidewalk with water.

Temple of Heaven's most famous sight - the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest.  Apparently this was constructed without a single nail, using wood joints instead.  Those smart Chinese!

The Confucius Temple:

This little kid stood there "unprompted" for about 5 minutes while his mother unsuccessfully tried to get a good iphone picture of him

Andy taking his place amongst the wise men lineup at the Confucius Temple.  I had to make him squat because he was about a foot taller than all of them...

Then we trekked north to the Olympic Park. 

Jumping in front of the Bird's Nest

No Beijing experience would be complete without some Peking Duck! Here's the duck master in action:

Our yummy dinner

On our third day, I started the day off with a migraine.  But, by lunchtime I was feeling much better so we had a nice lunch and then went to the Summer Palace

The highlight of our trip was definitely our last day in the Beijing area.  We hired a driver to take us out to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.  We spent the afternoon hiking the wall - and boy was it a hike!  We climbed the whole section of the wall and even explored a little bit of the "wild wall" which is basically unrestored.

I was originally just taking a picture of Andy, but a vendor nearby shoved these hats on our heads and made us take this picture.  She kept saying "no money, no money" and told us to salute Mao.

There's a....donkey....on the wall!  One of the vendors probably used the donkey to haul up his stuff...and the poor donkey has to stand around all day until he's done selling.  I couldn't resist taking a picture with the donkey.

The Great Wall.  See that long section of stairs at the end - that was brutal!  When we got to the top of that, there was a cheering committee to welcome us.

This is me after climbing that ridiculously long section - I was so happy I busted out a dance move.

Andy's thinking, "Boy it's a long way back to the start...."

 

Climbing to the top wasn't enough, we had to go out a little further and get a glimpse of the unrestored sections of the wall.  Some spots were a little scary, just a narrow crumbling path with no side railings.  After awhile, I had had enough (plus it was beginning to rain) and we made our way back.  That night we splurged and spent a night by the Great Wall at the Brickyard Inn.  It's an eco hotel with rooms that have great views of the countryside.  One wall of the room was a two-story window so you could lie in bed and just gaze out to the mountains.  Pretty neat.

Window wall

View from our patio

It was definitely a fun trip and especially meaningful because it was like a trip to the motherland for me.  My grandparents were born in China, but had my parents in Taiwan so I had never been to China before, only Taiwan.  It was definitely interesting to see the cultural differences over there.  Another awesome chapter in the Adventures of Jennie and Andy.

Shanghai

A couple of weeks ago, we got back from an epic trip to China.  We spent 4 days in Shanghai, followed by 5 days in Beijing, then returned to Shanghai for another 2 days.

As usual, I took way too many pictures, thus explaining my delay in posting because I have just been putting off weeding through my pictures.  But, finally, I have succeeded and can now post about our great trip.  I've posted a few pictures on my blog, but if you want to see all the pics, you can click on these links to see my albums for Beijing and Shanghai.

The first day, we arrived in Shanghai and were greeted by some college friends. They took us out to an awesome hot pot restaurant (to which I failed to bring my camera and thus have no pictures to show).  This place was off the hook! The waitress brought out hair ties for women with long hair and eye glass wipes for those with glasses.  Not only was the food amazing, but they even had a hip-hop-dancing-gymnastics-noodle-pulling-man.  If you order the la mian (pulled noodles), the guy comes out with a piece of dough and whips it around doing a whole dance routine and turns it into some noodles that he dunks into your hot pot.  Great food, great entertainment, and great service (which apparently is rare in China).

The next day, I did lots of shopping, hit up the fabric market:

I am clearly in fabric heaven here.

We hung out with our friends, or I should say, our friends took us to all the places we wanted to go....like the fabric market, the pearl market, got massages.....it was fabulous!  Then at night we ate some steamed dumplings for dinner and went to The Bund for drinks and desserts:

Us on the Bund

Pretty night views

The next day, we spent more time with friends.  One friend and I had a little girl time and did a little more shopping at the craft/beads/notions market and checked out the scene at Yuyuan gardens.  I should really say that I did all the shopping and my friend was a trooper and tagged along, providing me with wonderful company.  Andy chose to spend some downtime playing Wii at our friends' apartment.

Yuyuan gardens - lot of people!

Afterwards, we all met up again for dinner and had some great Mexican food.  It's funny how Mexican has now become a delicacy for us.

While I was waiting for the rest of our party to join us before dinner, I snapped a shot of the scene at the street intersection.  Traffic is pretty crazy in Shanghai.  Even if the green man says walk, you better look both ways and watch out for those bikers....they don't stop for anyone.

There are people going in every direction possible here.

The next day, we headed out to Beijing.  We spent 5 days there, but I'll skip forward to our second weekend in Shanghai and leave Beijing for its own post.  For our second entry to Shanghai, we opted to take the Maglev train from the airport to the city.  The train takes about 8 minutes to do what would take about 40 minutes in a cab.  It goes up to 431 km/h (268 mph):

For our final full day in Shanghai, we took a hi-speed train out to Suzhou.  It's not as fast as the Maglev, but still gets up to 300 km/h.  It should have only taken 20 minutes to get from Shanghai to Suzhou, but we were too busy chatting with friends and didn't realize we got off one stop too early.  So...we sat around waiting for the next train to show.

The Gao Tie - or G Train

Once we got to Suzhou, the transportation woes continued.  It was a national holiday and the locals and tourists were out en masse.  We skipped the mile-long taxi line and opted for the bus, thinking it would only be a short ride.  The first bus rolled around, but we couldn't force our way onto it because it was so packed.  We then had to "illegaly" push our way onto the back of the second bus, getting yelled at by the bus captain because we were supposed to board in the front.  We didn't care though, as long as we made it on we were happy.  Then, about 30 minutes later, we managed to travel the 3 stops necessary to get where we wanted.  Now I see why the tour books warn against travelling in China during national holidays.

Canals of Suzhou.  They call it the Venice of the East.

Suzhou is known for its gardens so we checked out the Humble Administrator's Garden, which is one of the more famous ones.

All in all, our time in Shanghai was awesome.  We got to spend lots of time with our college friends, ate good food, and did lots of shopping.  We were definitely sad to leave.