China

I should be working on a paper, but the seas have been rough all day and I finished a paper earlier today, so I’m sort of not in the mood to do anything productive for the time being. In fact, all I've been in the mood for all day is sleeping. Anyway, I was able to edit this blog entry between the sleeping, so here you go.

We docked in two ports in China – Hong Kong and Shanghai . Except Hong Kong, I soon learned, isn’t even really China . It’s basically its own country with its own currency and set of rules and you need to go through separate immigration procedures to go into Hong Kong and China, which was a major source of frustration for me in Shanghai, but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would’ve liked in Hong Kong and I didn’t get to see all the cool markets and things there, but I did go on the City Orientation on the first day. Apparently I did not read the description very carefully, because the orientation followed the description pretty well, but I hated it. We spent like 20 minutes admiring the Feng Shui of a bank, looked at some old houses that weren’t even that old, and took a boat ride of the old part of Hong Kong from which it gets its name. The boat ride was kind of cool, and on the plus side we did get to ride the tram to the top of the mountain behind Hong Kong , where we got a great view of the city. We also visited the temple with the incense coils hanging from the ceiling and a small street market, and I enjoyed them, too. Probably the main reason I disliked it so much was that there were hardly any students on the trip, and the Life-Long Learners that were there were incredibly annoying. There was one I sat next to and talked with a bit, and she was really nice, and there was one of the professor’s kids that I got to know during the trip, but otherwise I was not very fond of the group at all. While some of the LLL’s are really cool and nice, some of them are also incredibly culturally insensitive. I guess it’s the same way with the students, but I sort of expected better from the older people. I also didn’t like our tour guide very much, which didn’t contribute to the enjoyment factor.

But enough ranting about the LLL’s. The second day my friend and I spent a significant amount of time figuring out where we were going to spend the rest of our time in China, since we had previously decided that we were not getting back on the ship as it went from Hong Kong to Shanghai. We knew we wanted to birdwatch, and my friend had heard that Poyang Ho in the center of communist China was a great spot for endangered cranes and things. I honestly would have preferred to stay in Hong Kong a few more days and then go straight to Shanghai, since Hong Kong had good birdwatching as well and I hadn’t gotten a chance to really explore it yet, but in the long run I’m glad we went to Poyang Ho, because I can guarantee you that no other SAS kids were there, which was kind of nice, and it was quite an adventure.

Getting there was more or less easy – we took a train to Guangzhou and then took an overnight train to Nanchang . We did have a bit of trouble finding the train we needed in Guangzhou, since it was in a different part of the station from where we got off the train from Hong Kong, and I thought we had missed our train because we boarded it long after everyone else had because our order of dumplings was taking a long time to finish (at least they were fresh), but it worked out OK. On the overnight train we ended up sharing a compartment with a really nice couple who spoke no English, and they were very impressed with my friend’s chopsticks skills. I think they found mine depressing because I kept dropping the dumplings I was trying to eat.

Once we were in Nanchang , we decided to purchase our tickets to Shanghai . Unfortunately nothing was written in English anymore, but luckily my friend’s Lonely Planet guide had Shanghai written in Chinese script in it, so we were able to get our tickets after a short detour to a nearby hotel to ask them to write down the words “tomorrow” and “morning” for us. We had been looking for a phone to call a tour agency, but that didn’t work out. Anyway, after we got our tickets, I used a very nasty toilet I had to pay 1 yuan for where there were spiders crawling across the ceiling and then through the help of a very nice Chinese girl who spoke some English we hired a cab to Yongxiu, which was closer to Poyang Ho. We ended up getting a nice and cheap hotel there, and we were really lucky to run into one of the few adults who spoke English in the town who helped us arrange for a cab for the day to take us to the lake. We didn’t see anything super rare, but we did get some nice ducks, geese (there were THOUSANDS of Greater White-Fronted Geese), swans, and some common cranes.

Later that night, we were looking for an ATM that would accept my friend’s card (we didn’t find one) and ended up running into a nice youth whose name I can’t remember for the life of me who helped us search for an ATM and then brought us to what we believe was his family’s restaurant when we asked for a place to get noodles and dumplings. What was really nice and awesome is that when we were leaving and asked how much it was, he said it was fine and that we didn’t have to pay. We really felt like we completely didn’t deserve it since we had only talked to him a little and hadn’t interacted with his family at all, and I still feel like we should have given something in return, but besides money we really didn’t have anything to offer. Anyway, I still can’t believe how helpful and hospitable that kid was, or how good that food was.

The next day we had arranged (with the help of our English-speaking friend at the hotel and our Lonely Planet guide, which had a few useful phrases written in Chinese script in it) to meet with the cab driver again early in the morning, and we returned to Poyang Ho. We had hoped to see the cranes coming in as the sun rose, but they decided not to appear, so we went to a different part of the lake with some trees and cotton fields, where we got some new species. Oh, I should probably mention here that my friend had brought a spotting scope along (it’s like a really good monocular thing that looks like a telescope, sort of…anyway, you use it for birdwatching), which made us immensely popular with people driving along the road. Well, actually, the elder people tended to give us weird looks, but I’d say my parents’ generation and younger would often wave to us and sometimes even come and excitedly ask to take a peek in the scope. This got us into trouble later, when some of the rangers or something that patrolled the area told us to stop sharing our scope and to stop birdwatching. Well, actually, we had no idea what was going on at the time and we were sure we were getting arrested for something, but luckily some Nanchang university students came along around that time and explained to us that we were supposed to have a pass to birdwatch there…whoops. Anyway, we chatted with the students a bit, but by that time it was nearly time for our cab driver to pick us up, so after taking some pictures with the students we headed back to our hotel and then to Nanchang to catch our train. I think China is a place I’d like to just wander around some day in the future when I have enough time and money to just go and completely wing it somewhere for a month or two. If I’d had the time, I totally would have gone and visited the university students at their school. But I’m still young, so hopefully one day I’ll have the chance to do something like spend a month in China hitchhiking everywhere.

Anyway, we arrived in Shanghai that night, and luckily the first hostel we picked out of the Lonely Planet guide had a room available. Unfortunately, food was not as easy to find, and the only place we could find was a place where the rice had been sitting out who knows how long and I had what I think was tripe in the spiciest soup I’ve ever had in my life. The restaurant also had Mao propaganda all over the place, which was sort of funny because Nanchang and Yongxiu are themselves in the heart of where Mao came from and where the Cultural Revolution began. Without meaning to, two Americans had had a very communist-centric stay in China . Good thing my friend and I, as well as our hosts, were open-minded people, right?

The next morning, we rushed to the ship so I could be there in time for the Shanghai City Orientation. However, thanks to fun immigration policies, they wouldn’t let me on the bus until I had the stamp from the ship even though I’d already gone through immigration at the train station. So along with 2 other girls who hadn’t traveled on the MV Explorer between Hong Kong and Shanghai , I missed the first two hours of the orientation while we waited for our passports to be stamped. I was furious, to say the least, and on the verge of tears because no one had bothered telling us that it would be impossible to make any SAS trips unless we’d sailed between the two ports. The Purser said it wasn’t the ship’s fault because they hadn’t known about the strict policies until they docked, but really, how hard can it be to call ahead of time and get these things sorted out? I’m still mad at SAS about it, even though it probably wasn’t really their fault and whatnot. Anyway, after we had been waiting about an hour or so, SAS’s main informant for Shanghai , who was working at the Field Desk for the day, finally decided that we should pick our passports out from the pile so they could be stamped for us more quickly. Why they couldn’t have just done that to begin with is beyond me. Anyway, we FINALLY get our passports back and with the informant guy, get a cab to the restaurant where the orientation group was having lunch. It ended up being a really good orientation, so I’m glad I went on it, but honestly I was so fed up and stuff that if I had been able to get my money back for the trip, I would have just given it up altogether.

But like I said, it ended up being a good orientation. After lunch, we walked around the waterfront, had a very brief visit to one of the museums, visited the Jade Buddha Temple and tried different kinds of healing teas, had dinner, and saw an acrobat performance. Dinner was also a bit of a fiasco, because the restaurant we were supposed to go to ended up having its power shut off due to the big Shanghai fire that was in all the newspapers recently. After much deliberation, we ended up at a different restaurant, but it seriously goes to show you just how much can go wrong when you travel, even in an organized group. It’s somewhat ironic, I think, that completely winging it in Nanchang & Yongxiu went more smoothly than the City Orientation. But that’s life for you, I guess. Anyway, the acrobat performance was pretty cool, so it was a good end to the day.

The next day I had an FDP that I still have to write a paper for called Tasting the Daily Life of a Shanghai Citizen, which included a visit to a community center, local market, hospital, and a family for an amazingly delicious meal. I got to help fold the wantons, but as I am sure you all know I am not artistically inclined, so mine were the ugliest. I also picked up the most amazing thing ever in the market, which my lucky younger sister is going to get as her souvenir. Anyway, the meal was also interesting because the tour guide was in my group (there were 3), and so was my professor, so we learned some interesting stuff about Chinese life. Apparently there’s a park somewhere in Shanghai where all the parents with single adult children go to try to find a spouse for their children. They basically advertise their kids to people, displaying how much their kid makes, what they like, what they look like, and stuff like that. Our tour guide also had a single kid, but he said his son was too young (in his 20’s, I believe) to start worrying about him yet. Much joking ensued about the single female students at the table as eligible bachelorettes.

After we got back from the FDP, a few friends and I went to Old Town Shanghai to look at the stuff for sale. I didn’t buy anything, but my friend almost bought a knock-off North Face jacket (everyone on SAS, it seems, got one in Vietnam or China ) from this super shady place. I think a lot of the locals buy a bunch of the jackets or steal them from the factory or something and then hide them in these little rooms a bit off the main street of Old Town, and they must all share in the profits or something because a bunch of people brought us to this same place and we saw other people bringing tourists in as well. My guess is that because Old Town is a fairly obvious tourist attraction, the police cracks down on people selling these knock-offs in the open, so people resort to selling them in shady rooms in alleys. Anyway, after that we spent a few minutes in the Yu Yuan Bazaar, a giant indoor market. I really wish I’d had more time and money to spend there, because there were some really nice wigs I could’ve gotten for a good price there, among other things. Anyway, after that we went back to the ship. And that was China . I really do hope I have the chance to go back someday!