Best/Worst Vacation Ever

Looking back on the past week has made me appreciate Shanghai more than ever. Although there were some trying times (see below), I think everyone on this trip grew a lot closer. Plus, our stories are funnier than the kids who went to Beijing and Hong Kong.

I'll start where I left off last time...

After two nights in the most boring place on the face of the planet - Ejina County, Inner Mongolia - we left at 6:30 AM to take a 6.5 hour bus ride back to Jiayuguan so we could catch a 17ish hour train to Xi'an. Around 7:30, our bus broke down on the side of the rode. Apparently, our oil had frozen in the -10 ° C weather, and we needed some more number 20 oil. Guess what Ejina County doesn't keep stocked? Number 20 oil.

We spent over an hour on a freezing bus waiting on our incompetent tour guide to fix the sitch. She decided that it would be best to hire taxis to drive us six hours to Jiayuguan. RMB 800 (per cab - we had five) and 4 hours later, we were in Jiayuguan. Along the way, we stopped in a nuclear test field/secret Chinese military base to use the bathroom, drove 80 miles and hour through a sandstorm, ran off the rode a few (read: many, many, many) times, and complained like there was no tomorrow. Only after safely reaching the train station in Jiayuguan did Teacher Li let us know that he had absolutely no idea who our drivers were and that they easily could have killed us/taken us for ransom. He said something to the effect of "They could have been playing Ma Jiang the night before, drinking a lot, and got a phone call saying 'Hey, you wanna make 500 yuan? Ok!'"

Train ride was great, mainly because I don't remember it. I took the recommended dosage of NyQuil (for like a 600 pound man) and had a peaceful night's sleep.

When we finally got to Xi'an, it started snowing. I have to admit Xi'an is beautiful in the snow, but it's really inconvenient when you're trying to walk around in it. The first day (right after getting off the train), we showered, ate, and went to see a few sites around the city, including the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, the Shanxi History Museum and a mosque (China says it's a mosque; IMHO it's just an excuse to get tourists over to the souvenir stalls).

Here's the Bell Tower at night in the snow. Breathtaking in real life, blurry in my picture.


That night was tragic for many reasons. We had dinner at a really famous dumpling restaurant that was delicious. Thanks 小人 for suggesting it.

Then we went back to the hotel, got ready to go out, and off we went. Turns out, you need your passport to go anywhere in Xi'an. So after traipsing around in the snow with wet feet and an inappropriately scant amount of clothing, I was mad.

When I'm angry, my Chinese gets really fluent. Sadly, this did not convince various bouncers that I am, in fact, Chinese and that my father is the mayor of Shanghai, despite the uncanny resemblance.

The next day, we went to visit the famous Terra Cotta Army or 兵马俑 in Chinese. I've seen the best preserved Terra Cotta Army soldiers and horses in various museums before, but the sheer number of these things is breathtaking, and it's hard to comprehend the manpower and resources used to make them all.


After spending a few hours there (we played in the snow for almost an hour right outside the exhibition halls), we went around Xi'an. Since it's been almost two weeks since I got back, my memory is kind of faded, but you're not missing out on much because of it. Don't get me wrong; I really enjoyed Xi'an and definitely hope to go back one day, but 90% of China's most famous sites look the same in every city.

For example, we went to another pagoda...


...and another temple...


...and another shopping street...



Gotcha! The last one is from Shanghai :) But we did go to a shopping street that looks exactly like that. I bought my mythical Chinese flying horse 飞马 there.

Srsly tho, every place in China has its own history, but they're all so similar and intertwined, sometimes it seems like maybe there are just a lot of tourists traps.

The next day, we climbed Mt. Hua or 华山, China's most dangerous mountain. We climbed it in the icy snow. It's probably the closest I've ever come to dying, although death on that mountain would have been beautiful.


We took the cable cars up, which was scary/awesome.

In China, a lot of couples have their names engraved on a lock, tie a red ribbon to it, and "protect their marriage" by locking it to a chain on the top of random mountains. Weird? A little. Really beautiful? No doubt about it.


This is me at one of the peaks. We couldn't go to the highest one because we for sure would have died. We could have gone to the closer one that's supposed to be the most beautiful, but my laziness got the best of me, and I just sat down at a little cafe (not really a cafe, but whatever) and enjoyed the stunning views.


These are the steps we were climbing. I will reiterate this once more: I almost died. Obviously I didn't, but I could have.



OVERVIEW: The trip, although we complained the entire time, was really fun. Looking back, we all see that we got to experience things that most people living in or visiting China don't get to see - real China. Sure, places like Shanghai, Beijing and even Qingdao serve as great representatives of new China, but it's places like Ejina County, Inner Mongolia, and Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, that make up the bulk of both China's land mass and population. The big coastal cities show a pretty face for the rest of the world, but if you dig a little deeper, you see that it's a gilded surface that's hiding a completely different world - a world that has not benefited nearly as much from globalization and China's newfound "power" as it should. Western China isn't immune to globalization (Americanization), though, as evidenced by the McDonald's we found in Jiayuguan and Dunhuang (which, if you'll remember, are two very important cities in both Chinese and international history as related to trade along the Silk Road). But I'll let someone else decide if that's a good or bad thing...

CIEE is sponsoring a Thanksgiving celebration Thursday at the Mayfair Hotel at Zhong-shan Park! Aunt Pan and Uncle Zhou are also going.

Until then,

Matthew