Friday, October 14th
This was our travel day to the southern Chinese city of Guilin. We had read that Guilin is a "small" Chinese city. By this, I mean it officially only has a population of 750,000. But then we found out the Guilin metro area has more like 5 million. Even then, it's still considered small by Chinese standards.
So driving in from the airport, I was really impressed with the countryside seemed relatively uninterrupted -- and that the air seemed clean. This impression changed once we got into Guilin itself, which has quite a bit of noise and traffic. It was certainly less overwhelming of a city than Beijing, but I realized that you just have to recalibrate when you are dealing with a country with the immense population like China.
We had a great room at the Riverside with our own bathroom and balcony with a view of the Li River -- all for the equivalent of about $30. After getting settled, we were pretty tired and didn't want to venture too far, so we ended up a couple of streets away where there was night market. We had dinner in one of the restaurants -- with English on the menu! and pictures! -- and tried one of the local specialities: Li River fish cooked in beer.
Saturday, October 15th
In the morning, we were picked up by a van that took us to a bus that took us to a boat. All of this was for our trip down the Li River. I have to say that China is very good with its organized tours (at least the ones we experienced.) The one involved a four-hour boat ride down the Li to the "village" of Yangshao. This entire region is spectacular. It's famous for its natural beauty -- mountains, rivers, etc. -- so much so that a scene of the Li River is on the back of their 20 yen note.
As I mentioned, the tour ended in the "village" of Yangshao. This was another time that I was reminded to recalibrate my expectations for the size of things. Yangshao has about 100,000 residents, and then is visited by 15 million people a year. Lonely Planet says it is the jumping off point for all things outdoorsy in the region. That means also that there are tons of Western-aimed, tourist-oriented shops and restaurants.
We only stayed there about an hour before we left in a van (again) to what truly fell into my definition of a village. In this village, we were able to get rides on a bamboo raft. There were some contrived things set up for our benefit, like a demonstration of how they use cormorants to fish and a herd of water buffalos waiting for us to pet them. But overall, it was nice and relatively calm. While it was a bit manufactured, it did seem like we saw a little sample of how people in the small villages live.
When we finally got back to Guilin, we were exhausted. And this is when we experienced our high or low culinary point -- depending on your point of view. We went to KFC for dinner. Let me preface this by saying I don't think I've been to a KFC since I was a kid and thought their mashed potatoes and gravy were the best thing ever. However, after putting in lots of effort finding restaurants in China, it was like a dream. Absolutely the best chicken sandwich/french fries/7-up meal I have ever had.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
No Great Wall. Not Even A Pretty Good Wall.
Thursday, October 13th
This must have been our most annoying/infuriating Beijing transit experience of the week. Before we left Seattle, we had booked two tours through this highly recommended company called the China Culture Center. The first was on Tuesday through the hutong, Tiananmen, and the Forbidden City. The second was supposed to be to the Great Wall on Thursday, with a stop at the Ming Tombs. (The bolded "supposed to be" is thinly veiled foreshadowing.) Since the one on Tuesday was really good, we were really excited to see the Great Wall with them.
We were supposed to meet at 8:45am in front of the China Culture Center office. We had an address, a phone number, and plans for the subway. I should mention that the subway system in Beijing is great – clean, lots of English, cars that come every few minutes. But Beijing is an ginormous city, so it just takes a while to do anything. We got off at the subway stop we thought we were supposed to at 8:30. We thought we could just jump in a cab and get the rest of the way by 8:45 or 9:00 at the latest, which is when the bus actually left. This was one of those times when we just couldn’t catch a cab. We went into two nearby hotels asking them to help us get one (they just basically pointed to the street). One conceirge was really nice and helped us call the number we had for the tour group, but no one answered. They were also nice enough to write down the address in Chinese.
We decided to give it one more try with the cabs -- still no success. When none of the regular cabs would come over, we decided to do something we had avoided so far: take one of the motorized pedicabs. When I saw “pedicabs” in this context, I mean a tin box attached to a WWII era motorcycle – and I’m not even kidding. KLC and I were not even sure it would hold our weight. We showed the driver the Chinese address and she motioned for us to get in. We went for say, less than a block, when the motorcycle sputtered and died. She motioned for us to get out and then we were back on the street trying the whole routine all over again. A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of us and told us to get in. Being even later for our now likely departing tour, we went for it. She took us quite a harrowing distance – especially in the context of what we had seen the night before. She dropped us off on the street we thought we were supposed to be on, but she couldn’t take us the whole way because the motorcycle started sputtering again. What we thought would take only a few minutes, ended up being probably a half an hour of walking and wandering looking for the right address. We finally found it – at 9:45am. The tour and our day at the Great Wall were gone. The people at the CCC were extremely nice and gracious, but there was nothing they could do. In hindsight, we could have planned a little more, but I think it was just one of those things that happens in a megacity like Beijing.
We were both pretty disappointed about not getting on the tour. However, we had some free time in Beijing and we decided to take advantage of having a less taxing day. We went back to the CCC and asked them for some recommendations of what to do. They directed us to another hutong, but one that has been renovated to include lots of shops and cafes. It was a little westernized, but at this stage of the game, we were good with it. We found some things for the kids, postcards to send back home, and were generally relaxed since there were no cars zooming past us at a million miles per hour.
After lunch, we took a taxi (successfully!) to the Temple of Heaven. This is a rather big park just south of Tiananmen Square – basically in the middle of the city. There are obviously temples and other structures, but the main thing for me was that there were trees and just lots of green space. It finally dawned on me that I just hadn’t seen much of that in Beijing and it just added to the stress of being in such an urban environment.
That night, we had the conference dinner at a restaurant that served the famous Peking duck. I pretty much stuck to my regular eating repertoire of eating vegetables and fish on this trip, but food is a big part of travel so it's worth venturing out a little bit. I wasn’t that blown away by the duck, but then again, it’s not really my thing. It was still a very nice dinner and a good way to end the conference and basically our stay in Beijing.
This must have been our most annoying/infuriating Beijing transit experience of the week. Before we left Seattle, we had booked two tours through this highly recommended company called the China Culture Center. The first was on Tuesday through the hutong, Tiananmen, and the Forbidden City. The second was supposed to be to the Great Wall on Thursday, with a stop at the Ming Tombs. (The bolded "supposed to be" is thinly veiled foreshadowing.) Since the one on Tuesday was really good, we were really excited to see the Great Wall with them.
We were supposed to meet at 8:45am in front of the China Culture Center office. We had an address, a phone number, and plans for the subway. I should mention that the subway system in Beijing is great – clean, lots of English, cars that come every few minutes. But Beijing is an ginormous city, so it just takes a while to do anything. We got off at the subway stop we thought we were supposed to at 8:30. We thought we could just jump in a cab and get the rest of the way by 8:45 or 9:00 at the latest, which is when the bus actually left. This was one of those times when we just couldn’t catch a cab. We went into two nearby hotels asking them to help us get one (they just basically pointed to the street). One conceirge was really nice and helped us call the number we had for the tour group, but no one answered. They were also nice enough to write down the address in Chinese.
We decided to give it one more try with the cabs -- still no success. When none of the regular cabs would come over, we decided to do something we had avoided so far: take one of the motorized pedicabs. When I saw “pedicabs” in this context, I mean a tin box attached to a WWII era motorcycle – and I’m not even kidding. KLC and I were not even sure it would hold our weight. We showed the driver the Chinese address and she motioned for us to get in. We went for say, less than a block, when the motorcycle sputtered and died. She motioned for us to get out and then we were back on the street trying the whole routine all over again. A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of us and told us to get in. Being even later for our now likely departing tour, we went for it. She took us quite a harrowing distance – especially in the context of what we had seen the night before. She dropped us off on the street we thought we were supposed to be on, but she couldn’t take us the whole way because the motorcycle started sputtering again. What we thought would take only a few minutes, ended up being probably a half an hour of walking and wandering looking for the right address. We finally found it – at 9:45am. The tour and our day at the Great Wall were gone. The people at the CCC were extremely nice and gracious, but there was nothing they could do. In hindsight, we could have planned a little more, but I think it was just one of those things that happens in a megacity like Beijing.
We were both pretty disappointed about not getting on the tour. However, we had some free time in Beijing and we decided to take advantage of having a less taxing day. We went back to the CCC and asked them for some recommendations of what to do. They directed us to another hutong, but one that has been renovated to include lots of shops and cafes. It was a little westernized, but at this stage of the game, we were good with it. We found some things for the kids, postcards to send back home, and were generally relaxed since there were no cars zooming past us at a million miles per hour.
After lunch, we took a taxi (successfully!) to the Temple of Heaven. This is a rather big park just south of Tiananmen Square – basically in the middle of the city. There are obviously temples and other structures, but the main thing for me was that there were trees and just lots of green space. It finally dawned on me that I just hadn’t seen much of that in Beijing and it just added to the stress of being in such an urban environment.
That night, we had the conference dinner at a restaurant that served the famous Peking duck. I pretty much stuck to my regular eating repertoire of eating vegetables and fish on this trip, but food is a big part of travel so it's worth venturing out a little bit. I wasn’t that blown away by the duck, but then again, it’s not really my thing. It was still a very nice dinner and a good way to end the conference and basically our stay in Beijing.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Getting Settled in Beijing (Sort of)
Tuesday, October 11
Our first full day in China included work for me (giving a talk at the conference), then an excursion with KLC in the afternoon. The idea was to go to the Summer Palace, which is relatively close to our hotel to give us something manageable to do for a couple of hours.
Let me start by saying that Beijing, as everyone probably suspects, is massive. I’ve heard estimates of the population between 17 and 22 million people – at least two times that of NYC. And so far what have I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem nearly as dense as New York. There are some tall apartment buildings, but it feels more spread out yet completely congested with people, bikes, and cars all at the same time.
I say this because it turns out that the Summer Palace was relatively close to our hotel as far as being in the same neighborhood, but it was still a good ten metro stops away. We made it there after a while and did find an entrance (there are several to this giant former complex for the emperor). We wandered around for a while and then headed back to the hotel. Our small trip ended up being aridiculous amount little more tiring than we expected.
The next day was one of the big days that we had planned outside the hotel. KLC had researched reputable tour companies and we had booked a day-long trip through the hutong (dense old neighborhoods), Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. There is a lot to say about this very full day, but the short story is that we saw a lot. I really liked the hutong portion of the day – that included my first ride in a pedicab – and the Forbidden City is overwhelming in just about every way. It's a giant, truly enormous, complex designed to demonstrate the power of whatever particular dynasty was in charge. Mission accomplished. I was exhausted just walking across it.
We finished off the day with dinner on Ghost Street – a busy street with lots of restaurants and bars – with my cousin Paul. I haven’t seen Paul in at least twenty years, but it turns out that he’s living in southern Beijing. It was quite a random thing to get to see him again, but we had a lot of fun catching up.
Wednesday, October 12th
I went back to my conference for this morning, while KLC explored the Lama Temple on her own. In the afternoon, she met up with us when the conference took a field trip went to the Beijing Planetarium and the ancient observatory. The Planetarium (which was right next door to our hotel) is a fairly typical modern one with exhibits and a digital theater. The ancient observatory, however, was much more interesting. It was built in the 15th century and looks great for its age. Today, it sits in the middle of uber modern and urban Beijing.
The eye-opening experience was the bus ride from our hotel on the northwest side of Beijing to the observatory roughly in the southeast of the city. Beijing has a series – maybe five? – of ring roads. These are multi-lane highways that always seem to be full. When we left for the observatory, it was bumper-to-bumper, crawling traffic and it took us over an hour to get a few miles. Basically, the traffic in Beijing always seems horrible unless you are driving around at midnight (like we did in our cab the first night we landed.)
That night, KLC and I left directly from the observatory because we had bought tickets through the hotel for a kung fu show. We left ourselves plenty of time (we thought) to grab a cab, get something to eat, and make it to the show. Here’s when we encountered another problem we found most of the week: it’s not always simple to catch a cab in Beijing. There are long stretches of very busy roads where you think you should be able to hail one of the seemingly zillions of taxis whipping down the road. However, many times we were obviously doing something wrong because we could never get a cab when we needed one.
The next frustrating thing -- at least for those of us who don't speak Chinese -- was that if we did find a cab and driver parked on the road and they agreed to take us, it was off the meter for some huge price. The last major, but perhaps the most significant, issue is that most of the cab drivers we found don’t speak English. And, of course, they don’t read it. Unless you have an address written in Chinese, then chances are you are going to have a really hard time getting there.
We did finally get to a good place for dinner (recommended by Lonely Planet which was our saving grace the whole time) and then, after much walking, we found another taxi to the show. On the way, however, we saw what we realized was an inevitability in Beijing: a taxi (not ours) crashed into a scooter. Hard. Like one of the scooter guy’s shoes was in the grill of the taxi and the other was flung down the street. When we drove by, he was on the ground not moving. Hopefully he was OK …
If you saw the way traffic works in the city, you would realize this must happen all of the time. The intersections are huge, the drivers are super aggressive, and no one on bikes or scooters wears a helmet. We were late to the kung fu show, but it was really good. No matter what the entertainment, however, the image of the guy on the street after being nailed by the taxi is something that was hard to put out of our minds.
Our first full day in China included work for me (giving a talk at the conference), then an excursion with KLC in the afternoon. The idea was to go to the Summer Palace, which is relatively close to our hotel to give us something manageable to do for a couple of hours.
Let me start by saying that Beijing, as everyone probably suspects, is massive. I’ve heard estimates of the population between 17 and 22 million people – at least two times that of NYC. And so far what have I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem nearly as dense as New York. There are some tall apartment buildings, but it feels more spread out yet completely congested with people, bikes, and cars all at the same time.
I say this because it turns out that the Summer Palace was relatively close to our hotel as far as being in the same neighborhood, but it was still a good ten metro stops away. We made it there after a while and did find an entrance (there are several to this giant former complex for the emperor). We wandered around for a while and then headed back to the hotel. Our small trip ended up being a
The next day was one of the big days that we had planned outside the hotel. KLC had researched reputable tour companies and we had booked a day-long trip through the hutong (dense old neighborhoods), Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. There is a lot to say about this very full day, but the short story is that we saw a lot. I really liked the hutong portion of the day – that included my first ride in a pedicab – and the Forbidden City is overwhelming in just about every way. It's a giant, truly enormous, complex designed to demonstrate the power of whatever particular dynasty was in charge. Mission accomplished. I was exhausted just walking across it.
We finished off the day with dinner on Ghost Street – a busy street with lots of restaurants and bars – with my cousin Paul. I haven’t seen Paul in at least twenty years, but it turns out that he’s living in southern Beijing. It was quite a random thing to get to see him again, but we had a lot of fun catching up.
Wednesday, October 12th
I went back to my conference for this morning, while KLC explored the Lama Temple on her own. In the afternoon, she met up with us when the conference took a field trip went to the Beijing Planetarium and the ancient observatory. The Planetarium (which was right next door to our hotel) is a fairly typical modern one with exhibits and a digital theater. The ancient observatory, however, was much more interesting. It was built in the 15th century and looks great for its age. Today, it sits in the middle of uber modern and urban Beijing.
The eye-opening experience was the bus ride from our hotel on the northwest side of Beijing to the observatory roughly in the southeast of the city. Beijing has a series – maybe five? – of ring roads. These are multi-lane highways that always seem to be full. When we left for the observatory, it was bumper-to-bumper, crawling traffic and it took us over an hour to get a few miles. Basically, the traffic in Beijing always seems horrible unless you are driving around at midnight (like we did in our cab the first night we landed.)
That night, KLC and I left directly from the observatory because we had bought tickets through the hotel for a kung fu show. We left ourselves plenty of time (we thought) to grab a cab, get something to eat, and make it to the show. Here’s when we encountered another problem we found most of the week: it’s not always simple to catch a cab in Beijing. There are long stretches of very busy roads where you think you should be able to hail one of the seemingly zillions of taxis whipping down the road. However, many times we were obviously doing something wrong because we could never get a cab when we needed one.
The next frustrating thing -- at least for those of us who don't speak Chinese -- was that if we did find a cab and driver parked on the road and they agreed to take us, it was off the meter for some huge price. The last major, but perhaps the most significant, issue is that most of the cab drivers we found don’t speak English. And, of course, they don’t read it. Unless you have an address written in Chinese, then chances are you are going to have a really hard time getting there.
We did finally get to a good place for dinner (recommended by Lonely Planet which was our saving grace the whole time) and then, after much walking, we found another taxi to the show. On the way, however, we saw what we realized was an inevitability in Beijing: a taxi (not ours) crashed into a scooter. Hard. Like one of the scooter guy’s shoes was in the grill of the taxi and the other was flung down the street. When we drove by, he was on the ground not moving. Hopefully he was OK …
If you saw the way traffic works in the city, you would realize this must happen all of the time. The intersections are huge, the drivers are super aggressive, and no one on bikes or scooters wears a helmet. We were late to the kung fu show, but it was really good. No matter what the entertainment, however, the image of the guy on the street after being nailed by the taxi is something that was hard to put out of our minds.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wake Up Early. Wait All Day.
[I wrote this on Monday, October 10th, which was really Sunday, the 9th, for everyone else in the US. Whatever. This describes the first day or so of our trip.]
Let’s start with the punch line: we are in Beijing! Now, let’s back up. We were supposed to fly from Seattle to San Francisco around 7:20am to get our flight to Beijing, which left SF around 11:00am. I say “supposed to” because I got a text – not even a phone call, mind you – saying our flight from Seattle to San Francisco was canceled when we woke up at 5am. Thanks, United!
So I immediately got on the phone with the airline reservations while we scurried around to get ready for the car that was coming to get us at 5:30. We figured that we should just go to the airport because, surely, there had to be a flight that could get us to San Francisco before 11am.
I was told by the first human being on the phone at United that I was able to speak with that, no, there were no more flights that would get us there for our Beijing trip. However, they had rebooked us through Chicago on a flight the next day that would arrive in Beijing at 3pm on Monday. Since my talk at the conference is at 11am on Monday, this was not a good option. When the representative put me on hold to “look again,” my call somehow got dropped. Thanks AT&T/iPhone!
By now, we were in the car on the way to the airport and I was on the phone with a second agent, going through everything from scratch. Soon we were in the airport with everyone else from the canceled flight, and United staff looking like they’d rather be anywhere else than in front of a semi-irate mob.
After the second agent on the phone told me (again) that there was nothing, I unconsciously tried a new tactic: I didn’t say that was OK. Instead, I just reiterated we needed to get to Beijing before Monday. Silence had some effect because, magically, she said there might be a direct flight on Delta from Seattle to Beijing leave that night. And maybe she could get us on it.
Well, we got on the direct evening flight. We went back home and actually had a nice day in Seattle, got to see the twins a little, and then headed back to the airport late afternoon. Other than having a gaggle of high school kids in front of us, the flight was fine. We both slept a little, got to the hotel and slept a little more (as I said), and we ready to start our first full day in China.
Let’s start with the punch line: we are in Beijing! Now, let’s back up. We were supposed to fly from Seattle to San Francisco around 7:20am to get our flight to Beijing, which left SF around 11:00am. I say “supposed to” because I got a text – not even a phone call, mind you – saying our flight from Seattle to San Francisco was canceled when we woke up at 5am. Thanks, United!
So I immediately got on the phone with the airline reservations while we scurried around to get ready for the car that was coming to get us at 5:30. We figured that we should just go to the airport because, surely, there had to be a flight that could get us to San Francisco before 11am.
I was told by the first human being on the phone at United that I was able to speak with that, no, there were no more flights that would get us there for our Beijing trip. However, they had rebooked us through Chicago on a flight the next day that would arrive in Beijing at 3pm on Monday. Since my talk at the conference is at 11am on Monday, this was not a good option. When the representative put me on hold to “look again,” my call somehow got dropped. Thanks AT&T/iPhone!
By now, we were in the car on the way to the airport and I was on the phone with a second agent, going through everything from scratch. Soon we were in the airport with everyone else from the canceled flight, and United staff looking like they’d rather be anywhere else than in front of a semi-irate mob.
After the second agent on the phone told me (again) that there was nothing, I unconsciously tried a new tactic: I didn’t say that was OK. Instead, I just reiterated we needed to get to Beijing before Monday. Silence had some effect because, magically, she said there might be a direct flight on Delta from Seattle to Beijing leave that night. And maybe she could get us on it.
Well, we got on the direct evening flight. We went back home and actually had a nice day in Seattle, got to see the twins a little, and then headed back to the airport late afternoon. Other than having a gaggle of high school kids in front of us, the flight was fine. We both slept a little, got to the hotel and slept a little more (as I said), and we ready to start our first full day in China.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
We're Back!
What, you might be wondering, happened to posting regularly from China? Well, it turns out one of the first things I learned is that you can't access many sites from mainland China including things like blogspot, US/everywhere else Facebook and Twitter. I'm sure there are many more websites that just don't exist for most Chinese people because they've never seen them, but those were sort of shocking to me.
Since I didn't get a chance to post while I was there, I'm going to put up several entries retroactively beginning tomorrow. It won't be exactly a day-by-day account, but it will give a pretty good idea of what our trip was. KLC will be sorting through her many photos and so those will get uploaded in the not-so-distant future as well.
At the moment, KLC and I recovering from just making it back to Seattle after a fairly grueling 12-hour flight to Beijing with another several hours going through customs and the connecting flight from San Francisco. There's a difference of 15 hours between China and here so, when combined with all of the flying, we're a little bit out of it. The twins are being dropped off tomorrow morning so we're hoping to get ourselves together and restock the house with food before then.
Since I didn't get a chance to post while I was there, I'm going to put up several entries retroactively beginning tomorrow. It won't be exactly a day-by-day account, but it will give a pretty good idea of what our trip was. KLC will be sorting through her many photos and so those will get uploaded in the not-so-distant future as well.
At the moment, KLC and I recovering from just making it back to Seattle after a fairly grueling 12-hour flight to Beijing with another several hours going through customs and the connecting flight from San Francisco. There's a difference of 15 hours between China and here so, when combined with all of the flying, we're a little bit out of it. The twins are being dropped off tomorrow morning so we're hoping to get ourselves together and restock the house with food before then.
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