Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services China stock photography trip report, October 4, 2004 to October 21, 2004 Updated April 20, 2006 Page 2 of 5 Previous page   Next page
	China continued... Oct 8, morning Took a taxi back over to the Kun Lun hotel to catch our hired ride to the Great Wall. How did we use the Kun Lun's hotel services without actually staying there? We claimed room 1518 (our original Hyatt room number). Just make sure they don't have to call you in you room! We made sure to show up in plenty of time to change money (you need a passport to do this and they want to know your fake room number). A nice Austrian dude working for the hotel also helped us find some throat lozenges to cut the edge off the smog. We rode in a Buick Century in style to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. Much more comfortable than a dingy taxi. Amazing traffic headed out of the city and wild sights. There are tons of people walking alongside the road who just wander in and out of traffic. We saw two car accidents, too. It's about one hour to a Cloisonné factory, one unexpected stop, to receive a tour. At first I balked but it was part of the driver's day so we went along with it. The Cloisonné process is quite fascinating and horribly time consuming for the real deal. We learned how to spot machine made fakes, too. The real thing requires the shaping of the basic copper bowel, twisting and adding 100's of hand cut copper ribbons to that bowel, add enamel to the surface, fire it, sand, polish and gold electroplate it. The electroplating part isn't shown because it's a secret process. How in the world did the ancient Chinese electroplate without electricity? They figured out chrome plating in the Qin dynasty (the dude who built the Terra Cotta warriors), 2000 before it was rediscovered in Germany and America. Patty and my English have actually been deteriorating due to the bad Chinese spoken English influence. It would be bad to come back home noticeably speaking worse than we had left. Finished the ride to Mutianyu. At the exit of the Great Wall was a walk of tourist shots, just like Machu Pichu but a little shorter. At least at this section of the Great Wall, don't know about the more popular Badaling. We paid for the tram up, using our student IDs for a student discount. Nice to know that still works. Make sure to buy the slide ticket for the slide from the top of the wall to the bottom car area. The Lonely Planet guidebook is definitely wrong with this attraction; it's the best slide I've ever been on and well worth the cost. You pay more at the top, 40Y ($5) but for that amount of money, you won't have a longer ride anywhere. It's much more fun that walking down 1000 non-descript stairs. We rode up a comfortable tram to the top of the Great Wall. Nixon's quote comes to mind, "It's a great wall built by a great people." Hahaha! I jogged my way to the 20th reconstructed tower on this section of the wall to take a look at the original wall. It's disintegrating and quite dangerous. Only three tourist hawkers were on that entire section of the wall, much more pleasant that I've heard from the Badaling section. From the tram to tower 20, give yourself a good two hours for photographs and exploration. You can also purchase postcards for 4.5Y here. Walked back and met up with Patty and we headed down the slide. Make sure not to leave your girlfriend for a significant time on the wall because she might not handle it too well... Oddly, I didn't feel euphoria I expected seeing the Great Wall. It was fascinating and yet not mind blowing. It's probably too built up in everyone's head. It's cool, but it's not like seeing the Mona Lisa or leaning tower of Pisa for some. Also, the smog/fog was too dense to get the grand vista views in. My mental image of the wall was seeing it stretch to infinity. That wasn't true and thus expectation didn't meet reality, causing slight disappointment, though unfounded. I expected to use my Nikon 70-300 lens to make wonderful compressed images but that was impossible with the fog. Perhaps that was my disappointment. The Great Wall was the entire reason I'd brought that lens to haul around China. It will stay home next time. The haze in the atmosphere might have actually been fog since the horizon was white and not brown. Later in the day on the wall had the best views for us as the air was much clearer. Almost saw blue sky for the first time in days due to the higher altitude. Saw very few people, in fact having several sections of the Wall all to myself. I can see that going here on a weekend wouldn't be a pleasant experience and I can't imagine how Badaling would be. We rode the slide down and ran through the "discount" tourist shops. Make sure not to miss the slide as it closes at 4pm.They wanted 60Y for a t-shirt! A rip-off for China, really. You have to bargain here and show them that their cotton shirts are thin and shrink horribly. Buy a shirt two times bigger than you normally wear because they're not pre-shrunk. Talked to a couple and discovered that if one takes the 1.60Y taxis, it would cost 270Y to get you to Mutianyu and wait and then another 200Y back. Even though it's cheaper than our hired car of 700Y, the savings of 200Y wouldn't be worth the terribly uncomfortable ride. Make sure you don't loose the receipt for your driver, too. Everyone in China works with receipts and it's your only way out of tangles. Riding in the back of a Buick was infinitely more comfortable for a 2+ hour ride compared to a cramped red Chinese taxi. We had the driver drop us off at the Oriental Plaza for dinner and sent him on his way. We saw the opening of an Italian designer clothing store next to they Hyatt and it was funny to see the Italian designed blabbing about his $100 ties and $1000 shoes in a country like this. We took a taxi back to the Kun Lun, seeing an interesting street vendor area of Beijing and then walked from the Kun Lun to our lowly smoky hotel. Using a big hotel is handy for getting around the city. In the Home Inn, people smoke in the hall and it pours into you room. Gack! We discovered that the Chinese work on their skyscrapers 24 hours a day. No wonder they can put these things up so fast. It's loud. You need to bring earplugs to China because you need to keep the window cracked open to get air. Sat, October 9, 2004 Had a super cup of noodles for breakfast to get the day going. Patty and I packed up our things and prepared for our last day in Beijing. We decided to hit up the Temple of Heaven today. Having checked out our room (costing us 290Y/$36 per night), smoky and all making Patty catch a cold, we left our bags at the front counter and walked over to the Kun Lun to change some more money. The doorman hailed a 2.00Y expensive taxi, we balked and requested a 1.60Y taxi. The doormen looked at each other and exchanged the words of "cheap!". "They can afford to stay here ($160/night) and they want a cheap taxi??" Gotta have a little fun with the locals. The Temple of Heaven (buy the 35Y through ticket otherwise you'll end up paying 80Y for individual tickets) was around 40Y. Once again this place is huge! Inside the main gate, you immediately need the first of four tickets, going south to north. The center of the first monument is acoustically designed so your voice echoes back to you. It's the strangest thing and quite fascinating. The cow/calf burning alters abound in this place and everything is in multiples of nine here. Stairs, stones, cauldrons - everything. The second or third annex has an elliptically shaped wall that allows you to talk to someone around the corner of a building, like famous whispering chambers. You can't even see the person you're talking to across the courtyard and behind buildings. Several of the east/west side buildings request no photography as a note. The main temple was huge. What a surprise. The Emperor's sedan chair looked like it weighed at least 500 pounds. There was a great deal of construction going on for some big dance activity tomorrow. There was lots of signage in French, too. We were both starving, so we didn't explore past 4pm and we caught a taxi back across the city. Good thing we did take off at that time because we ended up catching our train by only 12 minutes! Rush hour in Beijing - you need 3 hours to cross the city both ways otherwise you won't make your destination. Perhaps we should have taken our backpacks with us. The overnight train ride from Beijing to Shanghai was very pleasant, especially considering we were sharing a berth with one other Chinese dude, Dong Fan Fong. He was visiting Beijing for National Week and was heading home. He chose not to eat the dinner being served - local wisdom. I was so hungry I couldn't resist and ate the whole thing. I had to put in my earplugs because there was just enough noise from the train motion to keep waking me up. This is the second time the earplugs have come in handy. Sunday, Oct 10, 2004 The train into Shanghai. What's called the soft sleeper car was very nice. Since there were no private berths available, we had to take the four to a berth option, much better than the dorm style/hard sleep berths we heard about. It saves you a hotel night and you don't waste you time fiddling with airplanes and airport taxes. We will also be using the train to go from Xi'an to Beijing as well and I look forward to it. But, I've read that it's very easy to end up with the wrong date for your train ticket. Before you say "okay" and seal the deal, write the date on a piece of paper so there is no verbal communication confusion. I made the mistake of ordering a verbal ticket at the train station and ended up with the Shanghai to Suzhou ticket on the 12-13th when we wanted the 13-14th. It didn't impact our schedule at all but it could have easily been a disaster. And that was at the English speaking window, too! I had a feeling the communication would be challenging. For the train from Xi'an to Beijing, there can be no mistakes. Also, don't forget to reconfirm the flights from Shanghai to Guilin and then on to Xi'an 72 hours in advance. If you don't do this in China, they WILL cancel your ticket and resell it. I'm not sure why they do that but that's the system there and don't miss this critical detail. We had one taxi tout try to get us to go to his hotel but he wasn't nearly as aggressive as the touts in Beijing. We caught a taxi to the Peace Hotel on the Bund, a five start joint. Many heads of state have stayed there, including Clinton, Kissinger and other faces I recognized but couldn't name. Unfortunately they only had a suite available for 2100Y/$262. Ouch. However, after calling around and finding all the hotels in the LP China book either having the wrong phone number or full, I quickly ran down to the lobby and got the room. The other five star option I found was much more expensive and probably not as fun as this place. We had a very nice room with a separate living room with a door so I can entertain myself with Chinese TV while Patty sleeps off her cold. I went down and set up the hotel in Guilin but couldn't get a hold of any place in Suzhou. I'm getting tired of getting into cities and not finding hotels because it's Golden Week. I'm breaking my rule but not having a place to stay in China isn't a good option. I hope to have more success tomorrow. The two weeks of Golden Week make a tiny bit of early planning more of a necessity. I'm learning to try and get a hotel nearest to the center of the city as possible. It means less walking, shorter taxi rides and seeing interesting morning activities. Our next day's hotel (East Asia Hotel) is Shanghai's Golden Mile of shopping, Nan Jing Road. Hopefully it's good because there are few places available here. (Later found out it was a rough place to sleep...) Patty Slept while I wandered out to find some snacks for her. Need to do more of this wandering stuff because there's endless interesting opportunity. Picked up some tiny pastries to take the edge of hunger off and get going. We went down to Yu Yuan Garden bazaar. Quite the shopping location, it's also on another ancient garden. However, you have to lean to divide the prices of things by 5x to get down to what the real price of things is. It's pretty fun to haggle with stuff like that. Even then, we're still probably paying too much. We had an excellent dinner - it's easier to select food in the main food hall area. Just point to something and they cook it fresh for you right in front of your eyes so you don't have to worry about it. Though, you do have to pay 3Y for napkins here. Yu Yuan Gardens is much more attractive at night than in the day, just like Shanghai itself. The haze left in the afternoon so we could see across the river and enjoy the view. What a beautiful city. After enjoying the fancy jet powered bath with the coolest faucet ever, we were able to set up a hotel in Suzhou and headed off for our backup hotel. East Asia Hotel is a 2 star hotel. Didn't know you wanted to claim that. We dumped our stuff, found some lunch and took off for the Jade Buddha Temple. Driving in Shanghai is even crazier than it is in Beijing. The drivers here seem much more motivated to drive faster and erratic. This seems like a much more metropolitan city than Beijing. The Jade Buddha Temple was quite incredible. There were several large gilt Buddhas inside with people burning incense and praying outside, monks walking around and people tossing money into the various offering receptacles. The actual Jade Buddha was quite stunning. It was adorned with thumb sized jewels and a jade pearl necklace, golden arm bands and various other adornments to make it a sight to see. They request that you don't take photographs in there and keep an eye on you. The rest of the temple was in stark contrast to the rest of super-modern Shanghai. You could enjoy a hundred year old temple while looking at a 40 story high-rise next door. Leaving the temple, we did a little exploration around the Buddhist area. Unfortunately I'd tweaked my neck/shoulder this morning and was battling the starting signs of a cold so I wasn't in the best humor. But, we forged on in spite of my pain and Patty's being in the full throws of a cold. The area around the temple is incredibly poor. People were doing their dishes in the gutter using gray water coming out of crusty hoses. Homes had no electrical lighting that we could see, dark caves of homes. A woman was sitting sewing on a late 1800's vintage sewing machine. A baby was pushing himself around in one of those hanging scooters, IN THE STREET, chewing on a moped while cars whipped by inches away. This was a gray area of life. We've discovered that the panhandlers and beggars are more aggressive here than in Beijing. The younger mothers have their children in their arms and will follow you, trying to hit you up for money. You look like a walking wallet. We gave the lady a few Yuan but the lady kept pestering Patty because apparently it wasn't enough. That broke us on giving to beggars here, though it was a good way to get rid of heavy coins that dragged down your pants. Oddly, coins are circulated in Shanghai but are almost completely absent in Beijing. Previous page   Next page
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