Shanghai to Beijing March 6, 2007

As I sit to post this, I have had time to absorb our entire China experience. Today is March 12. It has taken this long for us to do our whirlwind tour, fly to Hong Kong and tour there and try to catch our breath. Today we are at sea, headed for Vietnam. I have to tell you that I will try to do the best I can, but China has so much history, good, bad and ugly, that I may not do it justice. It was an eye opener for all of us. Here we go... We got up very early had help with our bags to leave the ship and I had my fingers crossed that our guide would be right outside the ship with a WELDEN to Beijing sign!! You see, as the days approached for us to leave the ship, we had been trying to decide if we had made a giant mistake by booking such an aggressive schedule to see China. We FINALLY decided that we were up for it and if the kids wore out, they could sleep when we got back! Looking back, the kids should have been worried about us! They never tired. Knowing this, you will understand why the palms of my hands were sweaty when we got off the elevators to leave our home away from home only able to say two things in Chinese, hello, which is Ni Hao. You say this like Knee-how, and thank you, which is Xiexie, you say this Saysay. Not a lot of ammunition to try to speak to their 1.3 BILLION people!! Nicky and I were going to try to meet them all!! Not possible, but we did the best we could. All of us smiled and nodded a lot. To our dismay, we found out quickly that Chinese people don't smile back. Some do, but they looked at us like we were nuts! They do however speak to you very loudly in Chinese when they realize you don't speak Chinese thinking that will help! Many Americans do this when they travel, so this time the shoe was on the other foot. We left China not really knowing what we had agreeded to. If you have a small Chinese family show up at your home soon it is because we agreed to sponsor their travel and they will be living with you!! Don't worry, not many kids, the one baby rule is WAY in effect here so their will only be one baby to worry about! Back to the trip.... As we got off the elevator on the ship, all my worries were washed away. Not only was someone standing there on the ship with a sign that said Welden and it was spelled correctly!! This was our guide Nadia Lim. She was wonderful. She is from Bangkok. She got her undergraduate degree from Boston University and her masters from NYU!! Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss. She speaks many languages and was a perfect fit for us. She was young and happy to have us. A little about Beijing. Bei in Chinese means north, and jing means capital. Therefore, Beijing is appropriately named because it is to the north in China and it is the capital. Most everything in China has a reason for why it is named what it is named, you just have to think about it and try to figure things out. I always thought Mandarin would be the hardest language to learn. Wrong. There are only 4 sound tones in Mandarin and they do not have an alphabet, they have symbols that you memorize! If you are good at memorizing, Mandarin could be you second language easily! Beijing used to be called Peking. The only way they use that word now is for Peking Duck, which is on most every menu!! There are over 9 million bicycles in Beijing! That was amazing. Most people have a person sitting on the back and some have someone on the handlebars too. The highest crime going on in Beijing is bicycle theft! Our guide had three stolen in one month so she was forced to buy a car! The streets and new highways of Beijing are crowded as you can well imagine. There are close to 20 million people living in Beijing! That is like taking the whole population of Alabama 4 times over and putting them in one city! It was congested, fast, loud, exciting. The buildings looked like what you would imagine a communist city to look like. Drab buildings, lowrise, laundry hanging out, not as pretty as the sleek buildings of Shanghai. China became a communist state in 1949. Many people fled the country then if they were educated people. Life for the Chinese then was unimagineable. People starved to death. Their leader, Mao Ze Dong, was responsible for over 20 million deaths. His face is still on all their currency and he is a beloved figure to may in China, mostly the farmers. Do you have any idea how many farmers they have? 900 million!!!! Many young farmers are trying to leave the countryside to get other work. The farmers near Beijing have plenty of work. They are getting ready for the 2008 summer olympics there! They say that one fourth of the world's construction cranes are in China right now getting ready for the olympics and I believe it! Construction was everwhere, thus causing more traffic confusion. I have NO idea how that city can handle the world coming to them for the olympics! It will be mass confusion!! I will be happy to watch from the televsion! However, for the poor farmers, it is providing many better paying jobs, that is good. There are many facts I should tell you and will try as we move through China but there are too many to type. You should make a trip here sometime in your life to really understand what we saw and felt as we made our trip. We flew on Dragon Air!! I thought is was supposed to be China Air, but this is a carrier for China Air and we were on it!
This first shot is out of the window of the plane looking at mountains. They have snow on them! The next is of farms we were flying over. Not many people living in these areas! Then you can see the first glimpse of the dense population of Beijing. Look how close together the buildings are.


These were some of the tallest buildings in Beijing.

Katheen and Charles excited to be in Beijing!

Nicholas and our China hostess, Nadia. She was great. Her fiance is Diego Azubel, he is from Argentina. He ate lunch with us one day. He was very interesting. He walked the entire length of the Great Wall! His stories were wonderful. It took him 15 months to finish the walk. He has a website www.thegreatwalk.com you might want to give it a look.

One happy family, ready to meet everyone in Beijing!

Should we eat it or not? When you can't read the label, what should you do? If you are hungry, you eat it! We did, it was carmel candy that Laura, our Bejing guide gave us.


Our first stop, The Temple of Heaven. This is the most holy of Beijing's Imperial temples. This is where the emperor would come in the winter and pray for good crops. Numbers are important to Chinese culture. Only the emperor could use the number 9. When you are walking at the temple of heaven, all the steps are in nines or they are numbers divisible by nine! All the huge doors had patterns of nine golden knobs on them. There is a new move in China now for the number eight to be the new nine! Eight is a very lucky number for them. It is also expensive. If you wanted to get a phone number like 888-8888, it might cost you almost $200,000 American dollars! However, the number 4 is a very unlucky number. It is unlucky because in Chinese the number 4 is Si. You say it quickly like "C" and the word death is much the same, so they relate the number 4 to death, so it is very unlucky. If you wanted the telephone number 444-4444, they would most likely let you have it for free. If you have the number 4 in your phone number anywhere it makes it less expensive!! Hard to believe but true.

They believe that the circular shape represents heaven and the square shape represents earth. Look at the temple of heaven. Round at the top for heaven and square at the bottom for earth!

Kathleen had to go to the restroom. We learned quickly that having you own tissue is a must. Laura saved the day with her roll of toilet paper she carries in her purse! We are standing on the entrance walkway to the temple of heaven.


There were two monks. Both wanted their picture made with Nicholas. It drew a crowd.

Many families decided it must be good luck to have your picture made with a nine year old boy from Alabama, word must have gotten out that he is a good Auburn man!!

Kathleen tries out the whisper wall. It was a circular wall that you could whisper into and someone standing way around the way could hear you. It was amazing.

Snow at the temple of heaven!

Chinese people retire when they are 55!! Working class people anyway. All these retired people excercise in the many parks or gardens in the mornings, many are ballroom dancing. This couple had a weighted tire ring. They were throwing it back and forth to each other and included Nicky and Kathleen in their game. The had a blast and got quite a workout!

This was our day. Our evening will be next. Got to go to a lecture about Vietnam! Hope you are enjoying China.