Mike In China

Sorry for the delay in the posting. We went to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City the next day. It is INSANE how big the Forbidden City is. We started at the south entrance and would walk through a gate and there would be a huge, beautiful building that we would take pictures of and then we would walk through a little gate on the side and then there would be another even bigger one, and then we would take pictures of that and walk through the little gate on the side, and then there would be another one! It just kept going and going and going. It was really cool though. I will now educate you on a common scam to get you to buy things. If I have already told you, then skip this part. Two college age Chinese people will come up and start a conversation with you in English, ask you were you are from, through in some compliments. After a nice conversation and you thinking, wow, Chinese people are nice, they inform you that they are art students from a local University. You think, wow, that's cool. Then they ask you to come see their exhibit, NO. They are not real art students, it is not a real art exhibit, it is all the same junk you find in all the same stores, they just want you to come shop in theirs. Now back to the trip. The next day we had a private driver take us to the Great Wall. I fell asleep the whole ride there and back and Barone told me the ride was absolutely horrific. On top of already crazing driving in China, apparently our driver was insane running tractors off the road and passing semis on curves of hilly, curvy, two lane roads. Too make things worse, I guess our driver was falling asleep the whole drive back. Good thing I was sleeping too! The Great Wall was amazing though. Because we went to the furthest of the three spots to climb the wall and the fact that it was freezing in the winter we had the Wall to ourselves. Well, that is except for the Chinese man and woman that followed us around for the entire two hour hike being nice and telling us information just so that we would buy something from them at the end. I wasn't going to give in, but they had a really cool t-shirt I wanted and I caved. I apologize to all white travelers visiting the Great Wall for perpetuating the stereotype that white people will buy anything you put in front of them. DOH?! Barone was mentally exhausted from the car ride so that was all we did that day. For our last day in Beijing we had lunch again at the hot pot restaurant and then checked out the Temple of Heaven before packing our bags and jumping on the train back to Shanghai. Luckily, for this train ride we had a soft sleeper room so we had plenty of room to sit, talk and sleep comfortably. Our time in Shanghai was a lot more laid back. I still had some teaching and grading to finish up and Barone came with me to my classes to see me teach. We did most of the touristy things in Shanghai although there are not as many because Shanghai is more of a modern city than Beijing is. One day we went to the Science and Technology Museum which was pretty cool. I hope the museum is still under construction because it was enormous but had very few exhibits. The ones that where there though we very cool. However, I did feel like I was just reading out of a sixth grade science book. As in, I feel like I should be learning something when going to a museum but all the information was very basic stuff that everyone learns early on in middle school. I think China has a pretty good education system too so I was confused as to why everything seemed so dumbed down. Perhaps something was lost in the English translations to the exhibits. I would say the highlight of our time in Shanghai however was the night we went to the sushi restaurant. I took Barone to the all you can eat sushi restaurant because she said she really likes sushi. We got there and the place was packed so they ended up seating us at some tiny table in the back room. We realized that we were actually in a private room and that the 30 other people in the room were all a private party! They were all business men and women from a Chinese paper company that were having an office party. They were clearly not there for the sushi and were only there to get very drunk and were playing drinking games and such. Of course we had to watch and after awhile they had us join in! The people were very nice and we had a ton of fun. They even ended up paying for our dinner and drinks all night! I think it was also good for Barone to spend some time with local Chinese people. It was a blast, we got really ridiculously wasted and Barone actually ended up puking during the cab ride home. I was super excited because she started not feeling well and told me she was going to throw up and then I summonned my inner Chinese language master and remembered the word for vomit and started yelling it at the cab driver until he gave me a bag for her to puke in. "OUTU! OUTU!" My foreign language skill definitely improves after I've been drinking. Then Barone left and now my mom is here. Today was our first day and we went to Old Town, then Walked to the French Concession. After that we came home and then went to dinner at a steak house that had an awesome view of the Bund from across the river. Then we went up the Pearl TV Tower and now we are home resting up for tomorrow. So far, she hasn't driven me crazy yet, let's hope things stay this way! I will hopefully have the time to update again before we head down to Yunnan. Make sure you keep checking my picture site also because I am putting up pictures that go along with all the stories I tell on my blog!