CHINA – The final destinations of the voyage are starting to wind down and the long trek across the Pacific back to the motherland lies ahead. I’m coming to you off the east coast of Japan as we transit up to Yokohama arriving tomorrow morning for two days. China was the longest stop we had this trip with a whole week to explore the country. It’s also where I did my most independent travel and planning of exactly what I wanted to do. China was exhausting and being a culmination of by the time we depart Japan, 24 days in port over the last 34 days overall since we arrived in India. It’s been a wild ride and travel exhaustion is beginning to set in with two more days left in Tokyo.
The ship arrived in Hong Kong on Apr. 1 and as always I made sure to wake up early as we pulled into another stunning city. Many years ago, I traveled to Hong Kong and it was very cool remembering being in spots. The skyline of Hong Kong is a spectacular sight and is quite different from the rest of China. I liked Hong Kong a lot more compared to other cities in China mainly because Hong Kong is a S.A.R. because up until 1997 the city was a British colony. Therefore, HongKong has avoided the communist Chinese rule. S.A.R. stands for “Special Administered Region” so Hong Kong remains its own country, but is in agreement to merge into China in the next 50 years. I spent my only day in Hong Kong touring around the city going around the city center area, the SoHo district, and up to Victoria’s Peak. We also made a stop at a church, which actually was having Palm Sunday service when we arrived. It was a funny way to be reminded exactly what time of year it is as I’ve said having any concept of time on this trip is unheard of. I most enjoyed going up to Victoria’s Peak, which I remember doing the first time I was here. This is a mountain towering next to the Hong Kong skyscrapers offering great views of the city and surrounding harbor. At the peak they have restaurants, a shopping mall, and various walking paths that you can take. It is a very cool spot. In the evening, I headed out to Lan Kwai Fong, the best night district in the city to begin the 21st birthday weeklong celebration in China. It is a street lined with many clubs and bars filled with tons of people even on a Sunday night. I enjoyed just people watching out on the street as HongKong is pretty well known for its nightlife.
The second day was mainly making my way into the actual country of China and traveling up to Beijing, the capital city of China. I had a flight out of Shenzhen, which is located just across the border in mainland China. From Hong Kong, I took a bus that takes you across the border and to the Shenzhen airport. This was an interesting experience because I literally walked across the border into China. The bus takes you to a large building where you get out and walk through two sets of immigration, one for Hong Kong and the other for China. Then once finished a new bus picks you up on the other side and takes you to the airport. With an evening flight to Beijing, we arrived in Beijing around 11 p.m. andmade it to the hotel in downtown Beijing by midnight. The weather was quitedifferent in Beijing than what I’ve been used to this trip with a trip up to springtime weather. It was weird being somewhere where leaves were barely on trees and temperatures in the 50s and 60s.
The third day, my birthday I spent touring around Beijing hitting the major landmarks. First thing in the mourning I headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square area. It’s amazing just how massive the Forbidden City is. In the afternoon, I took a subway to the Summer Palace, which was basically the vacation home for the emperor located on a lake on the outskirts of Beijing. Riding the subway in Beijing is quite the experience as most of the time it’s jammed with people and when you think another person can’t get on, four more do. For an interesting bit of information that I wasn’t aware of until I got there, it was a national holiday for the time we were in Beijing so it was especially busy. The holiday on April 4th was National Grave Decorating Day where the Chinese go honor their ancestors a lot like Day of the Dead in Mexico. So nobody was working. That meant everyone was at the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, on the streets, and on the subway. It was just insane how busy it was and how many people there were. The line for tickets to get into the Forbidden City was hundreds deep but somehow they could get through to us in just 20 minutes. For my birthday that evening, I obviously headed out to the main nightspots in Beijing. Overall, it was lot of fun and will probably be a birthday I neverforget being spent outside of the U.S.A.
The fourth day I spent making my way to the Great Wall of China. It is about an hour drive outside of Beijing to make it there. I went to the Mutianyu section that typically has a lot less tourists than other spots while also being pretty close to Beijing. Interesting enough you can take a ski lift to the top of the wall so you don’t have to hike up. I choose that option to allow for more time actually on the wall. The Great Wall was just another spectacular site lining the mountain peaks and then darting steep straight down the mountainside and going on for miles into the distance. It’s hard to believe how they actually built it, as it’s also known as one of the largest gravesites in the world for all the people that died building it. The best part though was at the edge of the tourist section the wall turns into a worn down, overgrown section of the wall. This is what majority of the Great Wall looks like. Even with signs asking people not to go on this part many people still do and the best part was experiencing this authentic section. Actually, the best view of the day wasatop one of the watch posts on the worn down section overlooking the mountains and city of Beijing in the distance. The weather was great with a clear sunny sky and in the 60s making for a perfect afternoon.
For my last day in Beijing, I really wanted to go see the Olympic Park with the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube made famous in the 2008 Olympics and the Beijing OpeningCeremonies. More than anything it was interesting to see how they have turned these venues into something that is functioning and can bring in money instead of just being an empty stadium sitting there, which is always an issue after a city hosts the Olympics. Inside both the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest, they have shops and restaurants while still being able to go inside and tour the Olympic facility that people know it for. The area is quite nice and you could probably spend a whole day there but I had to leave in the early afternoon in order to make my way to the Beijing South Train Station. I had a 4 p.m. high-speed train ride to Shanghai. I had never been on a high-speed train before so this wasactually a very cool experience. The train reaches speeds of 300 km/hr, which comes out to about 186 mi/hr. It almost feels like you are gliding over thecountryside. The ride was 4 hours and 45 minutes putting me in Shanghai by 9 p.m. and giving me two full days to explore Shanghai. Views of the countryside provided the contrast of China, a country with many very rich people in the cities but extreme poverty outside them.
I definitely liked the ultra modern city of Shanghai a lot better than Beijing. It’s really just a cool city to look at with skyscrapers popping up everywhere and demonstrates the wealth that the city has. I toured around the city hitting the Yu Garden in the Old Shanghai part of town before making my way to the river area. Along the river is The Bund which stares across the river at the stereotypical skyline of the Pudong district. Pudong is the main business district of Shanghai filled with building after building. It’s amazing to here stories of how this area was all farm land in just 1990 and now it’s completely full. In Pudong, I went to the World Financial Center and went up to the Observation Deck on the 100th floor, the highest observation deck in the world soon to be surpassed in 2014 by a building they’re building right next door that will be even taller. Up top it provides spectacular views of the massive city of Shanghai including the river where you could see our ship docked. In just 30 seconds the elevator in this building can take you up and down 100 floors. The subway in Shanghai is super efficient, cheap, and not as busy as Beijing so it is a fun way to get around the city quickly.
For my seventh and final day in China, I had a tour of the business area of Shanghai. We stopped at the Museum of Urban Planning, which is a museum solely dedicated to how Shanghai has transformed over time and its plans as a model city of thefuture. Plans for the future are laid out that will make the city even better over time. I don’t know of any city in the States that has such a strategic vision as Shanghai does, as they are constantly looking to become larger and better. I’m sure it helps having a government to just say where a building is going to be built instead of oursystem where we have to debate where its going to be built and how we are going to raise funds for the project. Shanghai more than anything shows a lot of the wealth that we have given China in our trading. Next, we stopped by the spot where the World Expo was held in 2010. There at the Intercontinental Hotel, the CEO of the company hosted us to a lunch to eat some fantastic Chinese food but also learn about how the hotel business is expanding all over Asia. In the afternoon, I decided to take a long walk back to the ship through the city. I walked along the busy East Nanjing Street flooded with people on a Saturdayholiday weekend afternoon (Easter Weekend). This street is the main shopping district of Shanghai. I took this road up to The Bund where I stopped to have some drinks looking out at Pudong before making my way to the ship for the final time. Shanghai is another awesome sight at night with buildings flashing glitzy colors and changing designs every few minutes. So this departure from the dock was definitely one of the highlights leaving the very cool city ofShanghai.
I really enjoyed China but one of the parts I didn’t like about China is that people are very rude there compared to our standards. People will cut you in line, bump into, spit in front of you, sneeze in front of you without covering their mouth, and just stare at you. So as much as I enjoyed China I was ready to go and probably the place where I felt most unwelcome. I’m not trying to put down the country but it’s probably the place that it felt most culturally different to me. It’s also the one place where I was approached by the most scammers. I counted five in one day as they come up to you trying to be friendly and want to take you to some “tea ceremony.” This is one of the main reasons I really liked Hong Kong because it didn’t really have any of this since it is not technically part of China.
It will be a long 11 days to travel across the Pacific to Hawaii as the semester windsdown and crunch time begins. These 11 days are definitely needed though as it will be good to be at a relaxed pace after the craziness for the past month. I never thought I’d say this but I am getting quite used to ship life and it’s starting to feel like home. It’s going to be tough to leave. Stay tuned for the last main country update about Japan in the next week, hard to believe it’s already at that point!
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