I was excited. I had a great time in Taiwan, but it was finally time to go back to the mainland. In fact, according to Taiwan I had overstayed my visa by two days. not  exactly my fault, just a simple oversight when booking my tickets. Two-thousand Taiwan dollars, and a one-year “no-free-visa” ban later and I was on my way back to the mainland. Being in mainland China just has a certain feeling to it, something that HK, and Taiwan just doesn’t seem to have.

Shortly after I arrived in Shanghai, I felt kinda like I was home again. My phone worked, the street food smelled like stuff I knew, there wasn’t 10 7-11s on every street, I could buy things I liked again. It felt good. Later that evening I picked up Marina from the airport, as she had come to join me on my holiday.

Our first stop on the holiday tour was in Xitang “water town”, which is kinda like a Chinese Venice, Italy. With a river running through the middle, the city offered a great display in the evenings with hanging lanterns, floating candles, and romantic boat rides. Xitang isn’t really one of the “see things, do things” kinda places, it was more of a “sit on a porch, drinking beer and reading a book all afternoon” place; and the latter is precisely what we did.

Second stop on the tour was in the city of Shanghai. Shanghai, is full of high-end shopping, great eats, and beautiful sights. We spent a few days in Shanghai taking in the sights such as the area along the water full of huge, European-style buildings from the early 1900’s, commonly called The Bund. We also checked out the Science and Technology museum, did a little shopping, including checking out the newly-opened Apple store in Shanghai.

We also took a day to go to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo. The Expo itself was pretty crazy; the amount of people would pretty much blow you away. Many of the pavilions we wanted to see were swamped with 3 hour lines, Saudi Arabia had a line that was apparently 8 hours long! We were only spending one day at the expo and didn’t care to wait in line in the heat, so we only went to countries with short or no lines involved. Fortunately this included lots of little countries I’ve never been to, countries with great food, and great booze! Most larger countries also had restaurants outside their pavilions where you could have a local snack or brew. Wonderful.

Last stop on our trip, due in part to the giant beer festival and cheap last minute flight tickets, was Qingdao. In fact, it turned out that Qingdao was probably the best part of the entire trip. The beaches were beautiful, and the ocean air really cut down on the smog in the city. Not to mention everyone I met was really really friendly. I don’t think I could actually live there because it was too humid, in fact, my washed clothing never really dried, it just equalized with the humidity outside. But it is a great city. Marina and I enjoyed long walks and barbecues on the beach, and the most famous beer festival in all of China. The beer festival was great, but unfortunately it was way too expensive, 100 RMB for a liter of beer is a little extreme.

Finally it came time to head home, so Marina flew back to Taiyuan to spend some time with her parents before going to school, and I flew back to Xi’an where I’m now located at a new school and a new apartment, but that’s for another time. 

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