Merry Christmas from New Zealand!

Hello everyone! We just wanted to drop a quick note wishing everyone around the world a Merry Christmas. There's even a bit of snow on the mountains here in Queenstown so maybe we'll have a white Christmas after all! Also, we are obviously very far behind on the blogging but we will catch up as soon as we can. It's not even been two weeks since we arrived in New Zealand and I have been working a ton on the river and Steph has been busy preparing our Christmas feast. So in the next couple weeks look out for some posts on Hong Kong and Australia, but for now enjoy the Christmas festivities wherever you are! Merry Christmas!

Shanghai

Our last stop in China was Shanghai. There's not nearly as many world-famous landmarks to see here, but we were able to keep ourselves busy shopping. The knock-off markets of Shanghai was something I've been looking forward to ever since Steph came back from a work visit here a few years ago. It's a huge 5-story building filled with little stalls selling shoes, handbags, watches, jeans, jackets, and assorted souvenirs. We came armed with a list of souvenirs for friends and family back home and went to work. The fun is all in the negotiations. They use the calculator system here too and will usually show you a "joking price" to start things off. I think some people just take the intial offer and divide it in half for their counter-offer. The merchants have realized this so their intial offer is usually 5-10 times the actual price. Some of the merchants in China can get very animated during the process and it can be quite amusing. Somehow the most quiet merchant in the building somehow convinced me to buy a remote-controlled helicopter. Why in the world would I need a remote-controlled helicopter on an around the world trip? I have no idea, but it is very cool. $10 well spent.

fake North Face jacket anyone?

As I said earlier, Steph has been to Shanghai before on business with Kimberly Clark. One of her friends that she had dealt with in Shanghai is named Jane so we met up with her for dinner one night. She took us to a fairly traditional Chinese restaurant and we got to sample all kinds of foods, though we didn't try anything too crazy. They had a dish that tasted exactly like the Mongolian Beef we get in American Chinese restaurants, but when I asked her if the recipe was from Mongolia she just looked at me funny and said "umm, noooo...".

After dinner we went for a walk with Jane along the Bund. The Bund is the walkway along the Huangpu River, which cuts through the middle of Shanghai. It's a famous walkway and affords some amazing views of the skyline across the river. Maybe China has cleaned up it's act a little or we just got really lucky because we had a beautiful clear night.

We didn't do a whole lot worth mentioning besides shopping and eating in Shanghai. We spent an afternoon in the Shanghai Museum mainly because it was free, though the exhibits were very well done and pretty cool. They had a bunch of old Chinese coins with square holes in the middle and some pottery dating back 8,000 years! If you watched the 2008 Olympics, you'd know that China is pretty famous for it's acrobatics (even 10 year-old girls pretending to be 14). so we decided to see a show called 'ERA: Intersection in Time' (whatever that means). They didn't do anything that you wouldn't have seen at a standard Cirque du Soleil show, but it was still some pretty incredible stuff. The balance, skill, and flexibility of those guys is just ridiculous. Our favorite act was when a guy a girl swung around the ring holding onto a long piece of cloth. At one point the guy was holding the girl by her leg with only his flexed foot. Point his toe and she'd be a goner. Good show and only $10 bucks. Very good show.

I still can't believe it myself, but there are 4 girls here

Our last day in Shanghai we figured we'd better get out and do something. Shanghai has a lot of "canal towns" near enough for a day trip. We picked a town called Suzhou basically at the flip of a coin. The train ride out there was an attraction in itself - over 200 miles an hour smooth as silk! The canals themselves weren't all that interesting or attractive but we did go to some beautiful gardens. Hundreds of pictures followed, especially when we discovered the "oil painting" effect on our camera.

One last funny story about Shanghai: while wandering around town one day looking for somewhere to eat, we ended up in this really odd animal market. They had some rabbits and tons of birds, but most of the shoppers were more interested in the hundreds of grasshoppers of all shapes and sizes that were kept in individual containers. At first I just figured that Chinese people liked to keep them in their house and listen to the chirping as they fall asleep. Why else would you closely examine and buy a huge cricket? Fighting, that's why. So we've all heard about cockfighting, but imagine it on a much smaller scale with two grasshoppers going head to head in a battle to the death. Sounds amazing, right? The Chinese think so. Apparently it's serious stuff here. It wasn't cricket fighting season while we were there, but I hear you can buy the highlights from last season on DVD. Not even joking. What a wacky world we live in.

Xi'an...the land of Ping-Pong and the Terra-Cotta army

Back in Beijing, we booked an overnight train to a town called Xi'an (pronounced She-an), home of the famous Terra-cotta Warriors. It seemed we were the only tourists on the train and possibly in the whole train station (one of the biggest in the world) since everyone was staring and pointing at us and some even came up and took a picture with us! So we were a little worried about the train but it turned out pretty good. We had the top bunk (3-high) across from each other and had a good night's sleep thanks to our sleeping pills. The only problem was the bathroom - how are you supposed to use a squat toilet on a moving train? Once in Xi'an we got a free pick-up from our hostel, which is always nice. All the hostels we stayed at in China were essentially the same. They offered a range of tours depending on location and had a bar/restaurant serving western food and Americanized Chinese food. No complaints there. The hostel in Xi'an was our favorite, though, because they arranged cool activities every day for all the guests. Our first night we had a big trivia tournament (my team got 2nd, but the 1st team cheated). The second day had the best activity of all - ping pong lessons from a professional. The moment I saw this guy I knew he was a ping pong master. He just had the look. Sure enough, the guy could ball. I consider myself an above-average ping pong player (Grand Mayan Puerto Vallarta champion), but this guy could literally beat me playing behind his back. The spin he'd put on the ball was mind-boggling. When he wasn't completely embarrassing me, he taught Steph and I a lot. He told Steph (through a translator) "I have seen your weakness. I will teach you in 10 minutes what it would take you a year to learn." He was a fan of Steph's game and gave her a lot of compliments ("you have the quickness of a 16-year-old"), but I think he did say my positioning was "beautiful," if I remember right. We had a great time in the presense of the master and are already trying to figure out we'll be able to get our own ping pong table. Gonna be a while.

The master, Mr. Zhou

The real thing you come to Xi'an is, of course, the Terra-Cotta Warriors. Steph and I went to the exhibition when it came through Atlanta a few years ago so we've been wanting to go ever since then. The site is an incredible archaeological discovery. It was built in around 210 BC for the First Emperor of Qin to help him rule another empire in his afterlife but was completely lost until one day in 1974 a farmer decided to dig a well. The spot he picked was at the very edge of Pit 1, which has the rows of soldiers that you've probably seen pictures of. Literally a couple feet the other direction and the site may have never been discovered. What came next must've been like winning the lottery for archaeologists. In the following few years, a total of three pits have been unearthed. Even today, just a small portion of the site has actually been dug-up. Who knows what else is under there. The first pit, as I said is home to the "army." Every soldier is different. There are foot soldiers, kneeling archers, standing archers, and horse's with accompanying carriage. I hadn't realized this before, but almost every soldier has been smashed to bits and has to be rebuilt piece by piece. Originally the rows of soldiers were in an enclosure covered by wooden beams and layers of woven pads and soil, all of which eventually collapsed and reeked havoc on the soldiers.  The peasants who rebelled against the emperor and raided and burned the place soon after it was built didn't help either.  A lot of the jigsaw puzzle of piecing these guys back together is still ongoing and probably will be for quite some time.  In Pit 1 then have uncovered about 2,000 soldiers, but estimate it to contain about 6,000!

Pit 1

this guy is in bad shape

Pit 2 has a lot more calvarymen but still another 1,300 soldiers. The original "roof" of the enclosure I guess is still in good condition and is largely still in place, so you don't really get to see the goods underneath. They have a little museum next to it where you can see a few of the different soldiers as well as some of the weapons they were buried with.

Pit 2: mostly just a bunch of dirt

kneeling archer

Pit 3 is somewhat of the command center - it's where all the military leaders and strategists were buried.

some of the carnage in Pit 3

Also at the site there is a big museum, which is home to the creepiest statue's ever. Apparently as some sort of goodwill gesture for the Beijing Olympics, they build a giant terra-cotta soldier holding hands with a creepy-looking little girl. The pair are the worlds largest marionette puppets, which makes it more strange.

The museum also has a lot more artifacts found in the pits and, in typical Chinese fashion, a bunch of propaganda talking about how great they are.

Considering we hung around for three days, I'd like to say we enjoyed the town of Xi'an. I wanted to. Thought I would. But, I did not. It was constantly ensconced in a cloud of misty smog. At first I thought it was just a foggy place, but it was definitely pollution. A whole lot of it. The town wasn't all that scenic either, though we did get to visit our first Walmart since leaving home! It was quite a different experience than we were used to, unless the Walmarts back home have started selling live turtles (and not in the pet section). Xi'an is the world's largest completely-walled city. There is a big wall that forms a rectangular around the downtown area. Our last day we decided to rent a bike and some gasmasks (not really) to bike around the top of the wall. Since, we had never done it before, we opted for the novelty tandem bike, which produced the humorous results you'd expect. We never crashed though, which was good, especially since Steph made it very clear what she'd do to me if I caused us to crash. The ride wasn't all that scenic, but you get a good view of some of the more interesting goings-on in town. They had a bunch of wacky light-up floats up on the wall for a celebration of some sort. Our favorite thing we saw was a small band playing some really strange (and not very pleasant) music with a lady singing that made it over the top weird.

yuck

lots of these strange statues

It was a nice, relaxing few days in Xi'an but other than wishing for more lessons from the ping pong master, we were ready for another overnight train to Shanghai!

The Great Wall

I assume that by this point everyone knows that the idea of the Great Wall of China being one continuous wall is a myth, or at least that it can't really be seen from the moon (unless you can pick out a human hair from 2 miles away), right? Well, I can assure you it is not one continuous wall and instead is made up of many different sections constructed piece by piece by different emperors from around 500 BC to 1600 AD. Because of this, I'm not sure how they come up with the estimated length of 5,500 miles. Either way, it's long and it's big. You can visit many different sections of the wall of course, but we ended up choosing the section at Mutianyu mainly because it's close to Beijing, not too crowded, and our hostel offered a tour. Sure, it's not the most "authentic" wall experience, considering you take a chair lift up the hill to the wall and a luge back down, but it would have to do. There are places where you can go, have the wall all to yourself and even sleep in one of the guardhouses, but I cannot stress just how cold Beijing was. We met one guy who tried to do this but quit because he was freezing and didn't want to leave the campfire. Ironically, we had a beautiful clear day when we went - probably our warmest day in Beijing. But who can turn down a chance to ride a luge?

took the cable car up. good call because it saved a ton of time

the snack vendors basically forced this pic on us, but it was funny

I don't know where we got our expectations from, but we were expecting a leisurely stroll along the wall where we'd just be happy to say we did it. Boy, were our expectations way off! Far from a leisurely stroll, it was steep with tons of stairs and we had an amazing time. Was better than anticipated. The views of the surrounding mountains were amazing but we really loved seeing the wall snake off into the distance along impossibly narrow mountain ridges.

the mountains surrounding the wall

the picture doesn't do it justice. Look at the walls along the mountain ridges

They gave us 3 hours to explore so we pushed ourselves and made it farther than anyone else in our tour. After climbing a ridiculously steep section we were rewarded with a brief walk on an unrestored section of the wall. The Mutianyu section was originally built in the mid-6th century but what is remaining today was built in the late 1500s. Most areas were really nice and well-kept but this one section was crumbling and overgrown with plants. Sounds kind of lame, but it was cool to see a different side of the wall.

that's a lot of stairs - around 450 actually

Steph on the crumbling wall

Overall we had a great day at the wall. Top 5 experience for sure. If we ever go back, we'll definitely spring for a 2 or 3-day overnight trip, but we were more than happy with our first visit. The luge ride down was just the cherry on top!

Happy Thanksgiving...China style!

Not having good internet in China has put us behind on our blogging, but we thought we should skip ahead a bit and talk about Thanksgiving!  Back to the Great Wall, Xi'an, and Shanghai later.

Our last meal in China happened to be Thanksgiving Day so we decided to go all out.  We weren't going to let being half-way around the world stop us from celebrating one of our favorite American holidays...it was time for a feast!  They don't have turkey in Shanghai, so we went with the next best thing, Peking Duck.  Peking Duck is from Beijing (Peking is the traditional name for the city), so we did some research and found an authentic restaurant that serves it in Shanghai.  I think we made a good choice because the place was packed with Chinese and there was a big cart of ducks being carved up at a station near the door.

carving up the duck

Since it was Thanksgiving, we wanted to have a full table of food, so ordered several dishes to share.  This is a typical Chinese way to order at restaurants, so it worked out pretty good.  We went for anything that sounded remotely "Thanksgiving-ish."  We had...

a feast

Peking Duck - They brought us a platter of thinly sliced pieces of meat, sauce, some crispy and thin slices of greens, and Chinese "pancakes".  We had no idea what to do with all of this, so we tried to sneak a peak at what other people were doing.  We never had a good view so we are not sure we did it the right way, but what we came up with was dipping a couple pieces of meat in the sauce and putting it on the pancake with a little bit of the sliced greens and then wrapping it up and eating it.  Seemed right.  Adam wasn't too fond of it, but I actually didn't think it was too bad.  I liked that the meat was wrapped up and I didn't have to look at it when I ate so I didn't have to think about the fact that I was eating duck.

Chinese Yams with Pomelo Sauce - We knew when we ordered this that pomelo is a type of citrus fruit, so the combination didn't sound good...but yams fit in with Thanksgiving so we were hoping to be surprised.  Unfortunately, we were right and it wasn't good.  It tasted like cold mashed potatoes topped with sour fruit sauce. I ate a little bit but Adam was done after his first bite.

Broccoli - Doesn't scream Thanksgiving, but it's hard to go wrong with steamed broccoli.

Apples cooked in toffee - This one wasn't too bad.  It was a mound of apple chunks covered in rock hard caramelized sugar.  The only problem was we weren't sure how to eat it since all we had was chopsticks and they weren't putting a dent in the toffee.  The waitress set a little bowl of water by the plate and pointed to the apples, but we weren't sure what it was for.  She saw us struggling with it a little later on and brought over a knife which made it a lot easier.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie - We couldn't believe it when we saw this on the menu.  How perfect!  We had a feeling that it wasn't going to be normal pumpkin pie since it was the cheapest thing on the menu at only 1 RMB, about 15 cents, but it was worth a shot.  When this dish came out it was a big surprise.  Hard to explain, but it was a kind of sticky steamed dough with a Chinese design stamped into it and filled with red bean paste.  Didn't taste the least bit like pumpkin although it did have a slight orange color.

It turned out to be a very memorable Thanksgiving dinner.  Probably not our favorite turkey-day meal, but still a memorable one!  We have so many things to be thankful for this year...being able to see so many amazing things and places, meeting new people, and having the support and love of our family and friends back home. Plus there's each other, but after almost 4 and a half months of being together 24/7 we're more thankful that the trip is almost over! No, just kidding, it's been an amazing journey so far with it's up's and down's, but we're both thankful to have somebody to share it with. All that said, we do hope it's the last Thanksgiving we ever spend in China!    

Highlights of Beijing

We weren't going to let the chilly weather or a silly tea scam ruin our time in Beijing, so we spend most of our days out seeing the sights, always making it back to the warmth of our hostel just after sunset. We weren't prepared for weather like this. Beijing has some amazing tourist sights, many of them I'd consider 'world-listers' or 'bucket list' or however you want to put it. Here's a few...

Forbidden City
Officially known today as the Palace Museum, the Forbidden City is where the Emperor and his court lived. It is a huge complex covering 14 square kilometers of temples, courtyards, living quarters, and everything else you would need for a private, secluded city. Completed in 1422, the Forbidden City housed 24 emperors until the revolution of 1912 and from then, the Forbidden City was forbidden no more. Today it serves as a huge museum, as most of the buildings have been restored or are left relatively unchanged, and many smaller buildings house small collections of art, clocks, jewelry, tableware, carvings, etc. It would take you at least one full day to cover it all, but not having the energy for that, we sought out what we thought looked cool and wandered around some of the quieter courtyards and alleys.

moat and guard tower around the Forbidden City

Steph loves this shot so I put it in

one of many walkways separating different parts of the city

Tiananmen Square
Many people do a 'superlatives tour' of China - they have a lot of the world's biggest, longest, tallest, etc. to be proud of here (and some maybe they shouldn't be proud of). Well, here is the most populated country in the world we have the largest public square on earth. I must say, it is huge, but I don't really understand what's so great about that. It's just open space. Couldn't anybody tear down a few buildings and have a big open space within a city? The history of this square, though, cannot be disputed. From the proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949 to the massacre of protesting students in 1989, a lot has happened here. Being so big, I didn't find it all that recognizable, except for the famous portrait of Mao on the Tiananmen Gate.

famous spot

the square

Sunset from Jinghshan Park
Beijing is very flat, which is part of the reason the bike is the traditional transportation of choice for the locals. Maybe it was the cold weather or the fact that owning a car is a hot commodity in modern China, but the bike lanes were largely empty while we were in town. Anyways, the city is flat except for 3 hills. At least one of these is the home to Jinghshan Park, just north of the Forbidden City, which makes it an excellent place to watch the sunset.

looking down on the Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven Park
The Temple of Heaven is a famous temple where the emperor would go every year to pray for a good harvest and fair weather. The grounds of the enormous park surrounding the temple were originally closed to the public, until 1912 on the Republic of China's first national day. Today is a sprawling area of trees, grass, and walkways where many locals come to play cards or Chinese chess, practise some dancing, or play music. We didn't care much about seeing the temple and instead just strolled around watching the locals. For some reason, whenever it's their turn to play a card or make a move in chess, they slam down the card with authority. Then there's also the old ladies swaying and gliding around the park as they practise their traditional dancing and sometimes singing.

all the old people gathered to play some cards

these guys are playing chinese chess

Olympic Park
Since the 2008 Olympics, who didn't want to go see the bird's nest and water cube in person? I know I did and they did not disappoint. You walk out of of the subway station and bam! there it is! A huge, jumbled, beautiful mess of twisted steel. It's an amazing sight. We were there at dusk so got to see the water cube first light up and watched as they slowly lit the bird's nest level by level. Two amazing structures, surrounded by some equally enchanting buildings like the big IBM building next door.

the Bird's Nest! so cool

Asian photo in front of the Water Cube

not to be outdone, the Bird's Nest is lit up nicely at night too

Oh, ya, there's also some big wall near here that is pretty famous. It was so good that it deserves it's own post.  Stay tuned...

The Beijing Tea Scam

I guess it was bound the happen eventually. All around the world people have tried and we've always been wise to it, but our first day in Beijing we were finally scammed. Bad. By three friendly Chinese ladies, too. Let's start from the beginning. We had just finished visiting the Forbidden City and were standing just outside the gates alongside Tiananmen Square. As we were taking some pictures in front of the famous Mao Zedang portrait, three Chinese started chatting with us. Where are you from? First time to China? That sort of thing. Happens a lot. Eventually the mentioned that they were just about to go get some tea before a flag-lowering ceremony in a couple hours in the square, and wanted to know if we'd like to join them. This happens fairly often, and normally we just make up an excuse and politely refuse. Maybe we're cautious, maybe we're anti-social. This time, we couldn't really think of a good excuse. It was cold, hot tea sounded good. The ladies were nice. Many Chinese will literally pay you to practise their english on you, so it didn't seem out of the ordinary at all. So, we agreed to tea. We set off to find a place and the ladies were busy firing off questions and chatting us up. No warning bells whatsoever.

scammer's hunting grounds

We wondered around for a bit, and almost passed a place that said "Tea/Coffee" outside. One of the ladies stuck her head in the door to see if it was open. At first we thought it wasn't and were going to keep looking, but finally someone did come out and showed us to a room. They presented us a menu that listed the types of tea and quoted "39 RMB/per person/per person" which was not only expensive (about $6), but also didn't make a whole lot of sense. Reluctantly we agreed that this was okay, since we were enjoying the conversation and it was just that cold outside. We settled in and had a good time chatting it up with our new friends. They were from somewhere in the north and were having a ladies holiday in the capital, while their husbands were home working. We chatted about everything from Jackie Chan to a secret Chinese boiled-Coke and ginger sore throat remedy. They were really nice ladies. Still no warning bells.

the most expensive tea and snacks ever

Everyone ordered a different tea and they came out and did a little ceremony for each one. It was fairly interesting - some teas they made you smell and one of them they poured a little bit over a small "tea Buddha" figurine before serving it to us. I still can't decide if this was a total croque or legit tea-ceremony rituals. For each tea they gave all of us a small shot glass-size taster. We made it through our 5 teas and decided to have one more since 6 is a lucky number in China, or something like that. Everything was going good, of course, until the bill came. Originally we had a tiny little girl serving our tea, but for the bill they brought in the stern manager, who showed us a calculator reading "302." At first I thought this was the total bill, which should have been about what we were expecting. Slowly we realized, with horror, that this is what EACH of us owed. Our heads were spinning. What is going on? How much is that? We did the math - almost $50 each. Over $90 for tea?!? Wait, that can't be right. I kept looking at our Chinese friends and they were just counting out their money. They were billing us $6 for each tea we tried, plus essentially $15 for a "private room fee", as well as for each of the two bowls of bar snacks they had brought for us, as well as a 10% service fee on top of all that. We just couldn't believe it. We didn't even have that much money on us, but they kindly informed us they took credit cards. Nowhere in China takes credit cards. That should have been yet another clue that we were getting scammed, but still we just couldn't see it. We were just so confused and shocked. We paid up and got out of there as fast as possible, fuming. Still with no good excuse, we simply told the Chinese ladies we couldn't go to the flag ceremony and parted ways. At this point we're fuming, confused...what the heck just happened? Then we got back to our hostel, got on Google, and looked on in horror as we read the hundreds of accounts of the Beijing Tea Scam. Account after account of the exact same story as ours. How had we not heard about this?

if in Beijing, don't go here!

After reading people's postings on their Tea Scam experience, many of which went back and got their money back, we went to bed determined to do the same. First thing the next morning we headed back by the tea shop to take some "surveillance" pics and get the address to show the cops. The little girl that had served our tea saw us and asked us if we needed help. It started cordial enough, but eventually I got into her a little bit and told her I was going to the cops if she didn't give me my money back. She immediately offered half the money, but wouldn't go past giving 400 of our 600 back. We were determined to get 500 back, as even though 100 RMB ($15) is a lot for tea, it is about what we had agreed to pay. So, we went and found a policeman to help us. He hardly spoke a word of english, but when he heard "teahouse" he made a slight grin, nodded his head and said "I know, I know." Eventually we ended up in the back of a Beijing policecar with two cops who spoke no english at all. They knew the place. The second they walked in the doors with us in tow, the girls at the teahouse turned real friendly again. They immediately offered to refund our credit card and did, but reminded us that "in China, nothing is free." We agreed and paid them 100, which we thought was more than fair and they took happily. Probably shouldn't have given them a cent, but didn't feel right about it even if they had scammed us.

So that was it. We originally weren't going to tell anybody about the whole ordeal and just forget about it. When you try to explain it to someone, you feel like a real idiot for falling for that, but I can't tell you how flawlessly this rouse was pulled off. It was brilliant. From the acting jobs of the 3 Chinese ladies, to the way they almost missed the teahouse, to the confusion of the menu, to the stern manager demanding money just when we were shocked from the bill. To this day I have a hard time believing those three sweet ladies were in on it. How could they? And that brings me to the most depressing thing from the whole ordeal. When traveling, you simply cannot trust anybody you meet on the street. We ran into this in Egypt, South America, Thailand, and now in China. There are lots of people that genuinely love to talk to a foreigner (especially an American) and to practise what little english they may know. But there are also people that pretend to be interested in talking to you but are only looking to scam some money out of you. You can't tell the difference. It truly is a shame. From now on, if people try to talk to us on the streets, we basically say "no thanks" and keep walking, and that really sucks. I hate wondering if anybody we talk to is just trying to scam us. Meeting locals is one of the best parts of traveling, and now we are suspicious of anybody we talk to. Ugghh. It's frustrating. At least we learned a valuable lesson and have a good story to tell. We weren't going to let it dampen our spirits too much though, because we have a lot to see in Beijing!