[ed. note: This is the first in a series of posts by my good friend Juliana who is traveling in China for the next two months. Intrepid world traveler, adventure enthusiast, sometime ski bum, she is the epitome of a Poverty Jet Setter. Make comments! She's love to get them. Do read on! Stay tuned for photos!]
Nee How from China!
Everyone here says, “nee how” for hello and that is pretty much the only Mandarin I have learned. It is a tonal language so it is super difficult for me to actually correctly say many of the words, we have been getting around just by pointing to locations on a map, but sometimes, that does not even work. I think my most interesting moment was arriving solo at the airport and just figuring out how to get to Kim’s office downtown. I had to say “Jeng Wai Soho” about 3 times until I exhausted all ways of saying it like a local. Anyways, I made it and we immediately headed for a dim sum restaurant!
Jessica and I are staying at Kim’s apartment, which is really nice. There are probably over 300 construction projects going on right now that are all planned to be completed before the Olympics, so the city is really developing fast.
We have checked out lots of temples and museums in Beijing so far, including the Forbidden City, (same spot if you saw The Last Emperor) Tian-an-men Square (huge concrete plaza with 10,000 Chinese and site of Mao’s body and lots of little kids with slits in their pants so they can pee in the street…Chinese method of potty training), lots of Buddhist and Confucius temples, and cool neighborhoods called “hutongs.” Everyone rides bikes here, but the city is one of the dirtiest I have ever seen and the countryside or mainland China is even more disgusting! Coal is the main culprit as well as tons of cars. I think we passed 200 power plants on the drive to a ancient village town the other day and 500 or so more smoke stacks. In the middle of all this exhaust and black grey air and 8 hours in a bus watching Kung Fu movie after Kung Fu movie (there are all kinds…kung fu comedy, kung fu drama, kung fu violent,…) anyways, after a rather interesting journey inland, we made it to Pingyao, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that was actually just discovered without outside development in 1996.
The towns here are amazing, the culture very weird, but interesting, the food incredible, and the landscape a bit of both. We did a 3 day trek along the Great Wall and got back last night! I think our little guide Kevin thought we were 3 crazy girls, since we wanted to camp on the wall atop the guard towers, and supposedly that is illegal. Anyways, after hiking along the un-restored sections for 2 days, and not seeing any tourists we were woken the first night by 28-year old canadians who thought we were Mongols (they were playing pretend and drunk) and threw fireworks at us! Then at 5:30 AM about 20 Chinese were surrounding our tent on the watchtower taking pictures of us in our tent. I am not sure where they came from, but since it is Chinese Holiday, there are travelers everywhere!
Jessica and I head to Chengdu tonight, and we plan to visit a panda preserve and probably more temples and teahouses and then I head to Tibet!
Technorati Tags: travel, backpacking, adventure, povertyjetset, china
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Lexie
