It all started with getting my visa, which will allow me to come back to China after my month-long stint in Taiwan. I was able to get all my papers in order for that, or so I thought, but when I went to my visa appointment I was told that my new school, Xi’an International University (XAIU) was unable to get my Foreign Expert Card on time, so it would be submitted late. This led to my visa maybe being ready by Friday (the day that I leave), well that just leaves one other thing until the last minute.

I still need to be paid by SUST, desposit that money in the bank, submit my grade sheets, make sure everything is moved out of my apartment, move a good portion of my stuff to XAIU, leave a few things in my colleague’s apartment, and finally say good bye to quite a few people before going to the airport. It all sounded easily doable, but when the visa office, and the financial office at SUST decide to delay until Friday afternoon, things start to get a bit stressful.

Fortunately, everything seemed to workout, albeit with a lot of stress involved. There was a constant drizzle falling from the sky as I arrived at the Xianyang airport, a couple hours before my flight. I hoped this wouldn’t delay my flight too much, waiting for your flight for 45 minutes is already boring enough. Well, once again, a stroke of bad luck, my flight to Shanghai was delayed for 6 hours! Instead of leaving at 8:00 PM, we left at nearly 2:00 AM! I was sorta lucky that I had an all night layover in Shanghai, otherwise every other flight would have been messed up. On the plus side, Shanghai Airlines handed out 200 RMB to every passenger on that flight to Shanghai to apologize for the lengthy delay, bringing my flight ticket down to only 480 RMB (~$70)! You’d never seen an American airline company handing out cash like that!

Upon arrival in Shanghai at nearly 4:00 AM, I was welcomed to an empty airport. I looked for the airport hotel I had heard about, a decent and relatively cheap hotel right in the airport, which I would have gladly paid for the night for, if I had arrived at 9:30 PM when I was expected to. But now it was 4:00 AM and I had about 5 hours before I should grab a quick breakfast and be on my way to the gate for my next flight. So I simply asked the hotel for their hourly rate (a very common thing in China), and was told that they could only rent me a room if I paid the full night price of 500 RMB. We argued for a bit, me telling them that the night was nearly over and I wouldn’t pay 100 RMB per hour for a hotel room, them telling me that they “couldn’t” and that hourly room rates didn’t start until 9:00 AM. Often in China, getting what you want just takes a little bit of work by convincing them they can do what you want. Well this couple front desk attendants were particularly obstonant, resulting in a loss. I made them an offer of money, they could have made some money off of me, but instead the refused to budge and I said fine, I can spend a few hours surfing the internet in 24 hour Burger King.

When checking in for my flight from Shanghai > Hong Kong > Taipei, I was told that I would have to be quick because technically my flight tickets were against their rules of at least a 70 minute layover between flights. My layover between Hong Kong to Taipei was 60 minutes. This wouldn’t have been so bad if flights could leave on time, but Shanghai to Hong Kong was delayed by 45 minutes, I was sure I wouldn’t have enough time to make it onto my flight to Taipei. So I consulted with the agents at my gate, they did a little searching and told me that all the flights to Taipei were full so I would have to wait until I arrived in Hong Kong and possibly fly standby. Not a great option considering I’m supposed to be picked up at the airport, but perhaps my only option. Upon arriving in Hong Kong I hurried off the plane, prepared to find a departues board and start sprinting towards my gate. To my surprise I found a young and tiny Asian woman holding a board with Burkle/ShanePaul on it. “That’s me”, I told her. She then told me, we’ve got 15 minutes to get to the other side of the terminal, we’ll have to run. So this ticket agent takes off running in her heeled shoes, I could keep up, but damn if I wasn’t impressed, she was no slouch in her ticket agent outfit. We arrived at the check-in counter just in time for me to check-in to my flight, though they informed me that more than likely the gap was too short for my luggage to get on the plane so I’d have to check with the lost luggage counter in Taipei. Fantastic, that was just icing on the cake.

The flight to Taipei was very nice, and despite being the absolute last peson to check-in for the flight, I still had a good aisle seat rather than the terrible, middle-of-the-row seats. The A330 was actually pretty comfortable and had nice video-on-demand screens, unfortunately the flight was too short to finish the movie I had been watching. Upon arriving in Taipei and getting my 30 day visa I went to look for my luggage. The luggage was coming up from, what was presumably the basement, like a magical geyser spitting out gray and black boxes instead of water. There on the conveyor belt was a wooden board with English words on it,

“MISSED LUGGAGE CONNECTION

BURKLE/SHANEPAUL”

This confirmed that my luggage hadn’t made it on the plane, so I went to have a chat with the luggage service counter. They asked me to fill out a form or two, and they then took down my information. Then they asked “where are you staying?”, to which I replied, “I really don’t know”. A couple phone calls later and they had most of the information they’d need. The friendly luggage agent then asked me to check the carousel one more time for my bag, just to make sure. I strode to the carousel  expecting to see boxes of every shape, size and color, but nothing belonging to me. Lo and behold, the 2nd bag I see, looks an awful lot like mine, a quick weight check and glance over and I know it’s mine. All the fuss for nothing, my bag is right here!

Despite the time-crunch, it seemed that my flight from Hong Kong to Taipei had been successful all the way around.

After getting into Hong Kong, we left the ferry station, into the attached building, which turned out to be a mall. That was convenient I guess, we found an ATM machine so that we could get some Hong Kong dollars, since they don’t even use the same money as mainland China does. We had two options to get to the place we were staying, take a taxi or take the metro. The only difficulty was we weren’t exactly sure where we were, and couldn’t find any sign of a metro station nearby. So we eventually conceded to taking a taxi. It took a few tries, but finally we found a driver who knew where we wanted to go. It wasn’t easily noticeable at first, but oh shit, these guys drive on the other side of the road! Clearly Britain had been here before. The driver happily took across the harbor to Kowloon (a section of HK) and the place we were staying. Chung King Mansion, was the name of the place. Sounds pretty swanky right? Hardly. It’s actually a huge converted “project” building that has more than a dozen “guesthouses” some licensed, some not. As soon as we got out of the taxi there were quite a few middle eastern and Indian guys trying to help us with our bags, and get us into their guesthouses. We declined and walked through the lines of restaurants, net bars, and people selling random crap, this place seemed pretty shady, and on first sight, scared me a little that we were even staying here. Finally we managed to find the only one, out of 12 or so elevators that went where we needed it to. Upon arriving on the 12th floor and getting our tiny and expensive room, I actually felt rather comfortable. Looking online the night before, I had read many good reviews, saying that this guesthouse was pretty respectable and not too expensive compared to some of the others in the building.

After finding some good Indian food we went out to explore the area a little bit. Every time we left our guesthouse, walking outside we’d be accosted by Indian guys trying to sell us fake Rolexes or get us into their tailor shop. It never failed, I must have been asked if I wanted a copy watch or tailor like 20 times each day. Down near the pier, I saw something that I would never expect to see anywhere that belonged to China. But apparently the people in Hong Kong enjoy a fair number of civil rights that even the Chinese aren’t privy to. I don’t want to mention exactly what these things are on my blog out of fear of being blacklisted by the great firewall of China, but perhaps the following picture will explain a bit.

Hong Kong is a much different feeling that China, even a big city in China like Beijing. It’s just different. In fact, I kind of felt like I was in New York City Chinatown, only the entire city was Chinatown. There is just so much English, so many foreigners (not tourists), it just doesn’t feel like China. After living in China for the last 6 months, it’s just a different feeling, I could definitely tell after being there for only a few hours. I’ve even come up with a list of things I noticed, just in comparison to mainland China.

Money: Hong Kong dollars vs. Chinese Yuan. They’re worth almost the same (1 HKD = 0.88 RMB), but compared to mainland China, things in HK are crazy expensive. Also the notes in HK are interesting, as they are printed by one of 4 different banks, all with slightly different designs, rather than one central mint.

Smoking: Smoking is banned practically everywhere in HK, as opposed to mainland China where you can smoke just about anywhere. Good for people who don’t smoke, bad for people who do.

Spitting: Everyone in China spits, it’s a totally normal thing. Do that in HK and you might have a $950 HKD fine on your hands.

English: Many people in HK speak English, all the signs are in English, there’s too much English. Helpful for tourists, but it doesn’t feel like China.

Food: Diverse area with many options for other ethnic foods, such as Indian, middle eastern, or western. Maybe it’s just my experiences there, but I thought most of the Chinese food I had was pretty bad compared to what I’m used to.

Other Good Things: big motorcycles (great on the windy island roads) and better than the 250cc limit China has on motorcycles, nice weather, good public transportation (very good metro system), ethnically diverse, open internet (no GFW), pretty girls, beautiful cars (everyone has a Benz or BMW, saw many Porsches and Lamborghinis), Disneyland

Bad Things: Speak Cantonese, Cantonese pinyin, always foggy

I think what I’m trying to say is, I liked Hong Kong, but the benefits don’t outweigh the drawbacks as far as ever wanting to live there. It is however nice to visit. Tyler and I spent a few nights shopping in the night markets, enjoying the food street food and cheap beers from the 7-11. In fact, I thought it drinking $15 bottles of beer from 7-11 outside at a restaurant was more fun than going to a bar and paying $55 for the same beer. A trip to Victoria Peak provided us with a great picturesque view of the harbor, where so many people take their “postcard” shots of Hong Kong.

After three days in Hong Kong, quite a bit of sight-seeing, shopping, and a visit to Disneyland I took Tyler to the airport for his return trip to the US. It was a little disappointing that he was going home, but at the same time I was pretty tired of traveling and just wanted to go back to Xi’an and relax. A day later, and a 5 hour flight delay in Shenzhen I was finally able to make my way back home.

Guangzhou was the first stop on our tour of southern China. Getting off the airplane was nice, I didn’t need to wear my coat, and what’s this? There was actually green vegetation outside! Something Tyler nor I had seen for at least a couple months. Since we were only in Guangzhou for about a day, we simply roamed around, checked out the Pearl River, sampled some of the good local foods (Egg McMuffins are nothing compared to the egg biscuit I had!) and in the evening went tor a night ferry ride on the Pearl, to see the beautifully lit up buildings and bridges.

The next day, about an hour train ride later and we were in Shenzhen, mere kilometers from the border to Hong Kong. We didn’t do a lot in Shenzhen because it’s mostly just a border city and shopping haven for those coming from Hong Kong to buy cheap goods. Not to mention, so much of the shopping and eateries were still closed for the Chinese New Year “golden week” (what they call their week long national holiday). Thus there wasn’t a lot to do in the city, but it was alright, we relaxed and had some really spicy noodles as well as some local beer while we planned on how to get to Hong Kong, as well as what we’d do when we arrived.

Marina advised me  of a lesser-known ticket office semi-near my school so I went there. I was rather nervous because I’ve never bought a ticket before and don’t think I know enough Chinese to complete the transaction. Being the helpful girlfriend that she is, Marina sent me a text message to show the ticket clerk telling him exactly what I wanted. Long story short, I arrived at 7:30, waited til the window opened at 8 AM (3rd in line), showed the clerk my message and had my ticket in about 5 minutes. Pretty smooth actually!

So now that I’ve got my train ticket, and Marina booked us another train ticket as well as airline tickets, I can actually say that I have solid plans for this trip. It looks a little something like this:

(click the city link for info about the location)

• 2/3 – Pingyao, Shanxi
• 2/4 – Taiyuan, Shanxi (Marina’s hometown)
• 2/5 -2/9 – Beijing (Great Wall, Forbidden City)
• 2/10 – 2/12 – Harbin/Yabuli (Ice festival and skiing)
• 2/13 – 2/17 – Xi’an (Chinese New Year with my Chinese family)
• 2/18 – 2/25 – Shenzhen/Guangzhou/Hong Kong

My buddy Tyler from the U.S. is going to be joining me on this trip as well, and I’ll be picking him up from the airport in Beijing. This will be his first experience in China and we’re going to make it well worth it. Marina is also coming with as well for the first half, after Harbin/Yabuli she’ll be heading back to Taiyuan for New Years with her own family. Outside of Beijing and Xi’an, I haven’t been to any of these places either, so it’ll be an exciting trip for me as well.

I’m also really excited for Chinese New Year, as I’ll be spending it with my Chinese family. Just like the wedding in Xunyang I posted about a month ago, I don’t really know what to expect so it’ll be an adventure. I plan to have quite a few blog updates as well as pictures in the coming month.

As of Thursday I hadn’t planned on anything exciting for the weekend; maybe

Navigating the 6 km from hell

go downtown, have a beer, watch a movie, whatever, a relaxing weekend. Well that all changed Thursday evening when my Chinese father texted me asking me if I wanted to go with them to visit 姥姥 or “laolao”. After a couple messages back and forth I gathered that we were going to visit my mother’s mother (apparently that’s what laolao means, as 奶奶 or “nainai” is father’s mother, who lives here in Xi’an) since we we’re going to be gone from Friday to Sunday, we must be going far away.

Either way, I was rather unclear as to what was going on, but I had wanted to meet my other grandmother since I got here, so now was a good opportunity. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I wasn’t really told why we we’re going to visit, just that we were. So I prepared, threw a couple videos and an audiobook on my iPod in case I needed to kill some time, fortunately that time never came.

My father came to pick me up on Friday afternoon at about 4PM and we headed to my mother’s office to pick her up. I wanted to ask him why we were going to visit laolao this weekend without sounding like I was complaining; I just figured there must be another reason. So I asked. Then he tells me, Tianyu’s 三姐, or “3rd sister” (read: cousin) was getting married! Heck yes, another wedding! And this time it was a family wedding, I was pretty excited.

Arriving at the Xi’an Le Garden Hotel where my mother works, I discovered that we’d have a full car, Yang Fei, my mother’s oldest niece, and the second oldest niece’s boyfriend were riding along with us. Being the tallest amongst them I always get to ride shotgun, though I do feel guilty about it sometimes. For the first 150 km or so, we were on the highway. The highways in China are an interesting concept, they’re pretty much all toll roads, so there aren’t many big construction trucks, no motorcycles, no motorscooters, nothing to slow down traffic. Not to mention, it cost nearly 100 yuan to drive this route, so the highway wasn’t exactly busy. Yet the speed limit is still 80 KPH, or 50 MPH, which is super slow for an empty highway! We may have been speeding some of the time, but not by much as there are many speed cameras along the highway as well. What would take us two hours to drive in the US was going to take about 5.

For the first couple hours, the drive was rather uneventful. It took about an hour to get out of traffic to the actual highway. By then it was dark so there was nothing to see on the drive. That is, until we got to the tunnels, there were sooo may tunnels through the mountains, there must have been 20 small tunnels, and what I was told is one of the longest tunnels in Asia, an 18.3 km monster tunnel! Granted, the inside of a tunnel looks like the inside of a tunnel, it was cool how it just kept going. Finally after turning off the highway we’d have to take a county road another 76 km, I thought it’d be quick like the highway, but I now understand why it’s not. The road is wide enough for 2 cars, but there’s small villages and building clusters lininig the road every few kilometers, along with construction trucks parked on the side of the road, people walking along the road,along with rubble and building materials piled on the shoulder. Not to mention this road was quite windy as it followed the Xun river all the way to Xunyang. With all the turning, speeding up, and slowing down; there was no sleeping now. It’s a good thing I didn’t, because I would’ve been woken up by the next part. It’s totally normal here to have to drive through the middle of a construction site, but since they’ve been building the hydro-electric dam on the Xun river, there’s now a 6 km construction site where the road is simply terrible. The ruts are deep, there’s deep water, we’re constantly scraping the bottom of the car, wouldn’t have been so bad in an SUV, but we’re in a Buick sedan here. Eventually all of us end up getting out of the car and walking along the road, in order to identify

Huge trucks, no patience

the best path for my father following in the car. It wasn’t impassable, but it wasn’t easy, and definitely took some maneuvering to get through the crappy road, the whole time while being hassled by huge construction trucks wanting us to get out of their way. It took an hour to go 6 km. Think about that for a second, it’s a little under 4 miles. One. Hour.

Finally after escaping the 6 km from hell, we quickly arrived in Xunyang where we went to Yang Fei’s house, which is also where laolao happens to live, and had some dinner. After dinner, it was late and my father and I headed to the hotel where we would be staying, while my mother stayed at her families home. Already an interesting trip, and there’s still 2 days left.