Hong Kong and China

Hong Kong
We arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday, April 3rd. I quickly got off of the ship to meet up with my friends from Syracuse who are spending the semester there studying abroad. I first met up with Alyxa who showed me around the city and the university where she is studying. After seeing where she has been spending most of her time in Hong Kong we met up with my other two friends, Chelsea and Claire for lunch. It was so nice to see people from home and to really be able to talk about things that I haven’t talked about in awhile (like Syracuse, our mutual friends, Theta, and missing American food).

After lunch we walked through one of a million malls in Hong Kong. I couldn’t believe how many stores and shopping malls there are in HK. It seemed like we had to walk past at least 10 stores before reaching our destination. After shopping for a little we decided to go back to their dorm rooms to hang out. I was able to use their internet without having to rush and worry about wasting precious minutes that I would normally have to pay for on the ship. I was also able to get a Syracuse course catalog to start figuring out my schedule for next fall which was very helpful. After relaxing and talking for a couple of hours we all decided to go out to dinner. We went into central Hong Kong where we ate at a local sushi restaurant then I headed back to the ship because I needed to pack for Beijing and talk to the boys about our upcoming trip.

The next day Chelsea, Claire, and Alyxa came and picked me up at the ship then we went straight to the bus where we took a nice bus ride up to Victoria’s Peak which is a mountain overlooking the city of Hong Kong. Although it was really hazy out it was still really cool to see the skyline of the city from a different angle. We walked around the top of the mountain for a while, got something to eat, shopped (again), and then headed to the cable car for our trip back down the mountain. After visiting Victoria’s Peak we decided to have a classy afternoon and went to have tea at the Peninsula hotel (one of the nicest hotels in HK).

We waited in line for over an hour, but once we got seated we realized that the wait was worth it. We were served hot jasmine tea, finger sandwiches, crumpets, and little pastries to eat as we laughed and talked together for over three hours. Acting classy in a really nice hotel while eating pastries and sipping tea was a nice change of pace after being in third world countries for the past couple of months. But more importantly it was so nice to be with people from home whom I love and hadn’t seen in a couple of months.

After tea we went to have a few drinks at one of their favorite spots in town hidden in a gorgeous back alley full of restaurants and bars lined with lit up trees and brick sidewalks. At 7:45 we headed back towards the ship to watch the famous Hong Kong city skyline light show. Although it was foggy, it was still cool to see the skyline light up with neon colors and spectacular spotlights. After the lightshow we went back to that same alley way where I took my friends out to dinner to thank them for giving me a tour of Hong Kong and hanging out with me for two days. After a long “see you later” not “goodbye” we parted ways and I headed back to the hostel my friends had gotten a room in for the night (because the ship had left to head to Shanghai). We were now on our own for the next 4 days and were expected to meet the ship in Shanghai on Monday, April 7th.

Beijing
7 boys, 1 girl, 3 days of traveling through China together. With the girl to guy ratio on the ship at 70/30% I really don’t see how this ended up happening, but I joined a group of guys to travel through China with. I obviously ended up planning our itinerary, booking the hotel and calling for wake-up calls every morning because as they jokingly liked to call me throughout the week, I was the “mom”. I didn’t mind this though because the guys I traveled with were great and I had such a good time hanging out with different people and not dealing with the usual girl drama I hear about everyday.

Anyways, we left Hong Kong on the morning of April 5th and took a ferry ride to an airport about an hour outside the city (because the flights were cheaper). We got on the plane and headed to Beijing. When we got to Beijing we checked into our hotel, unpacked our stuff then headed out into the city to find something to eat. We ended up finding a little Chinese restaurant. I ordered vegetable fried rice, but when the waiter brought my food out I realized it was pork-fried rice…this was the beginning of our hardest language barrier challenge yet which we would be struggling with throughout China.

The next morning we woke up early and met up with a professor from Semester at Sea who had been to China many times before and offered to show us around the Forbidden City and the major parts of Beijing. This was a blessing in discise because we would have been lost without him. He brought us to the Forbidden City, explained the different parts of it to us as well as the history. It was so much easier to have an American explain what everything was than trying to dissect heavy Chinese accented English from a tour guide. After the Forbidden City we headed out to Tiananmen Square then walked to the Temples of Heaven where we walked through a “Central Park” looking park in the middle of the city and visited the big brightly colored temple in the middle. After the Temples of Heaven we left our professor to explore the city on our own for a couple of hours.

We decided to go to the Olympic Stadiums being built for the summer 2008 Olympics. The main stadium is so impressive. The architecture of it is unlike any other stadium I have ever seen and the magnitude of it is immense. We took pictures outside of the stadium because we couldn’t go inside and we walked around where the Olympic village is going to be. It was really cool to see this and know that in 4 months I will be watching the Olympics from home but will be seeing the same place I was just standing. After viewing the Stadium for a while 2 of my friends and I decided to get TGIFridays for lunch…it was amazing. I have missed American food for so long and to be able to have some mozzarella sticks and a burger was delicious (especially after the pork fried rice episode the night before). After stuffing our faces at our late afternoon lunch we headed back to the hotel to rest for an hour and get ready for dinner.

We met up with our Professor later that night and he brought us to a famous Peking-Duck restaurant. We sat around a big table and the waiters brought 2 roasted ducks out to us and carved them right in front of us. Me, being the picky eater that I am was hesitant to try it, but I sucked it up because I was in China and tried it…it was actually really good! We ate the duck and some rice and had great conversation talking about Semester at Sea and the faculties’ views versus students’ views of ship life. After dinner we headed to the lakes around Beijing where the nightlife is and walked beside the rivers talking and having a good time. We headed back to the hotel early because we had an early wake up call the next morning.

We woke up at 6:30am the next morning to meet up with a van to go to the Great Wall of China. We packed our stuff, checked out of the hotel, got in a van then drove 2 hours to the Great Wall. When we got there we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain then walked up and down the Great Wall for over an hour. Although it was a little foggy out, it was an incredible feeling standing on another one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I wished we had more time at the wall, but unfortunately we had to catch a flight back to Shanghai that afternoon. When it was time to go we walked back to where we started on the wall and tobogganed down the hill! We got on little toboggan like seats and zoomed down the mountain on a metal tube slide. It was a really fun and amusing way to end our morning at the Great Wall of China. When we got to the bottom we spent our last 5 minutes buying “I climbed the Great Wall of China” T-shirts, bottles of water and some snacks for our flight to Shanghai.

Although our flight was delayed 2 hours, we arrived in Shanghai with high spirits because of the amazing couple of days we had just experienced in Beijing.

Shanghai
During my one day in Shanghai, my friends and I decided to go to the markets. We got directions written in Chinese and in English then tried to hail a cab. This was more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Most Chinese taxi drivers don’t speak English so they feel intimidated if they pick up Americans; therefore, about 15 empty cabs drove by us before we got one to stop and take us to where we wanted to go. We got dropped off in a rural area outside the city which ended up not being where we wanted to be. We walked around trying to ask for directions and nobody seemed to know where to go. Finally we walked into McDonalds and the lady behind the counter nicely wrote down directions to the mall she goes to when she shops. We thought this was going to be a great local place.

We got to the mall and immediately were hounded by vendors and shop owners. I almost felt like a celebrity with everyone pulling at my shirt and telling me “For you- good price, come with me! Come with me!”. At first it was funny, but it quickly turned uncomfortable when we noticed we were being stalked by a couple of men trying to make us go to their store. We told them to go away and let us be, but being in such a local area where they are not used to tourists, this did not work. We ended up leaving this area because we couldn’t stop to look at something without being harassed by salesmen and took a cab back to the ship to regroup and try to find the right place to go.
When I got back to the ship I ended up meeting up with my roommate. We decided to go out to dinner instead of going to the markets however; it was just my luck that day when we walked outside and it began to downpour. We ran across the street to the closest restaurant and sat down to dry off and look at the menu. The menu consisted of dog meat, octopus, and many other unappetizing meals that we were not about to try. So we ordered two beers and relaxed until we had to head back to the ship. We got back to the ship half an hour before on-ship time (the time we are told we have to be back by on the last day of a port), and went up to the 7th deck to order a grilled cheese.

I wish I had more time in Shanghai because the city looked fun; however, my day there wasn’t my favorite of my days in China. Although my one day in Shanghai wasn’t as interesting as it could have been, I left China feeling great and proud of myself for being able to travel independently throughout one of the biggest and most populated countries in the world.