Day 1: Welcome to Shanghai!

Ryan and I were embarking on a 26 day tour of China through Wendy Wu tours. I had been staying with Ryan’s family for the past several weeks and I was so excited to be leaving Toowoomba. I love his family and the city is beautiful but it’s small and isolated and I was going stir crazy. I needed to get out of there, so why not take a trip to China? The real story behind the China trip is much longer but that's for another day! The flight from Brisbane to Singapore took seven hours and I was miserable at the end, I had not slept at all. We had a two hour layover then another five hour flight to Shanghai. Thankfully I was able to nap a little on the second flight so I wasn’t 100% dead when we got to Shanghai.

I was very happy to see other people getting off the plane with Wendy Wu tags on their bags. I always have the worse case scenario playing in the back of my head (in this case no one being there to pick us up and trying to find our hotel in a place where we couldn’t speak the language) so seeing other people we could group together with to solve problems if needed immediately put my mind at ease. My worries were unnecessary though (as always) as a girl with a big Wendy Wu flag was one of the first people we saw coming out of the customs terminal. 

There were three other couples with us as we took a bus from the airport to our hotel. The girl with the flag was Melody who was to be our local guide in Shanghai. I was expecting a quiet ride but she started right in with the history of the city, the development and layout and districts we passed on the way to the hotel.

For hundreds of years Shanghai was just a tiny little fishing community. Throughout the long history of China Shanghai was never in the spotlight or regarded as special in any way. Until the revolution and the decision to open China up to the world. Shanghai was chosen for its location to be one of the first cities to be developed. It is now home to around 24 million people and the richest districts in the country. The fascinating thing about it though is almost all the modern development is less than 20 years old. They built an entire bursting city in less than two decades. We also saw plenty of the old Shanghai as well. Parts that were still under developed, mini farming communities still living in the outskirts of town. It’s a city still under construction. Melody described the city as having three circles. The inner circle contains the business centers, the most expensive apartments and shopping areas. The second circle is where most of the apartments are and the lesser businesses. The third outer circle is the area still being developed, the cheap apartments and farming communities.

The most interesting thing I saw though was all the washing hanging outside the windows. Having a washer and dryer is still a luxury and most people hang their clothes out to dry. These massive apartment buildings would have clothes hanging out on a pole 20-30 stories in the air! Not to mention it wasn’t very warm out, it was the middle of February, the temperature was only 10 or so degrees above freezing. Those clothes must have been frozen stiff.  It was also hard to see buildings more than a few miles away. It was hard to tell the difference between smog and fog but the pollution was pretty bad in Shanghai.

When we got to our hotel we had about two hours to unpack and relax before dinner. We met our national guide, Gump. He was going to stay with us throughout the entire tour. Dinner was just inside the hotel and we met the group. There were actually two groups on this particular tour, we were group A with 28 people and then there was group B with about 23 people. I never quite figured out how they separated the groups. We went to all the same places and stayed in the same hotels but we did not socialize with the other group too much. I came to recognize their faces but except for a few words exchanged on various elevators we didn’t interact much.

Our group was Gump’s Family. We were 28 people. 21 Aussies, 6 Brits and I was the token American. We were split equally 14 females and 14 males. There were seven couples including Ryan and myself, five single females and six single men and then one Mother/Daughter team. Aside from the Daughter, who was our age, everyone else was 50+. Almost all of them retired, I think there were only two other couples who had to go back to work. The oldest in our group was 81 years old and walked with a fake leg. He moved a little slower but his mind was sharp and he was well looked after on the trip.

Gump's Family

Dinner was one of the best meals ever. I have always loved Chinese food but living in an isolated state on the other side of the world it was never as good as it should have been. Being able to eat real authentic Chinese food was one of the things I was looking forward to the most and they did not disappoint. We were seated around round tables that would hold 8 to 10 people then we were served usually 8 to 10 different dishes to share. It always included 3-4 meat dishes, a couple vegetables, a bowl of rice and a bowl of soup. And it was fantastic, every single plate. 

Day 2 part 1: Shanghai Museum and the Bund

We were always given a free buffet breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was mostly Chinese dumplings, steamed veggies and fried rice. Most of the hotels also provided cereal, toast and eggs so we also had western food for breakfast. Oh quick note on the concept of being “western”. I had always thought westerners was the way to refer to England and America being we were west of Asia, but the Aussies were just as used to referring to themselves as western, even though they are more or less on the same longitude line as Asia, in no way west of anything significant. Western is clearly a lifestyle description, not related to actual location.

Anyway, after breakfast Ryan and I walked to the 7/11 next door (yes they have those and other similar stores in China) and picked up some water for the day. A bottle of water cost 2yuan, or approximately 30cents. Culture shock of the day: they also sold whine and whisky in that convenience store. It was just a rack like every other one it was just filled with alcohol. Out in the open.

We met with the rest of the group at 9am to begin our daily site seeing. Our first stop was the National Shanghai Museum. It had about twelve different galleries featuring artifacts going back thousands of years. That’s one of the things that fascinates me about China. Coming from America, our notable history only goes back about 300 years. Anything earlier is summed up in Native American history which unfortunately was not well preserved. But in China, they have solid evidence of their history going back over two thousand years! We saw artifacts made from jade, bronze and rock that literally went back almost three thousand years! There were old coins and currency dating back to the time of the Silk Road. They had a model showing how villages used to make clay bricks, a technique that wasn’t just used for a hundred years or so, the villages would go on for hundreds of years, generation after generation. You could study Chinese history for years and still not know everything that went on. 

Outside the Shanghai National Museum

The other fascinating thing was the museum itself. When we walked into the first gallery it was really dark, I thought how are we actually going to see the artifacts? But when I walked up to the display case, suddenly a light from within the glass turned on so we could see the objects. When I walked away the light dimmed again. I thought, what a great way to preserve energy.

Right outside the museum was the People’s Square with the Singing Fountain. It was a small park at the center of the city. The most amusing thing about this part was that on the left there were pigeon coups and you could buy food to feed the pigeons. Pigeons aren’t native to China though, and honestly they don’t have a lot of birds of any kind. They had to import the pigeons from Australia.

Our next stop that day was The Bund. There’s a river that separates the East and West parts of the city, similar to the river in Brisbane. Along the river is a long wall you can walk along, it runs parallel to the old downtown of Shanghai and across the river you have a perfect view of the new downtown (CBD-central business district) As we stood on the lookout facing the new developed area Melody told us that if we had come here 20 years ago that would have been nothing but farming communities. All of the new buildings, bridges, infrastructure is less than 20 years old. It is mind blowing what the Chinese people have managed to accomplish in less than 20 years. Also, an apartment on the river can easily cost about 60 million yuan, about $10 million dollars, for a simple two bedroom.

The Bund in Shanghai overlooking the CBD

There was another building under construction that we were told when it is finished, it will be the new tallest building in Shanghai. Dave, one of the camera happy guys in our group, took a picture of the building. A week later when we returned to Shanghai he took another picture of the construction and in just a few short days that building was already several stories taller.

We were given free time to walk along the Bund and told to be back at 12:30 sharp to go to lunch. The wall along the Bund was decorated with these beautiful yellow and purple flowers, but the weather was hardly above freezing, I wondered how can they keep those flowers alive? They must be fake. So I walked up to get a closer look, they weren’t flowers at all! They were cabbages! What a great idea I thought, it gave the place such a colorful springy look without having to deal with flowers in the winter! Then we saw down by the road a big bronze bull that reminded me of the big bull on Wall Street in New York. I ran down to get a picture and saw the plaque underneath the statue. Turns out it was designed by the same guy who built the New York Bull. Ahha.

I’m very anxious about being on time so we were back at the meeting point by 12:30. Our group headed back to the bus and as Gump was counting our heads he discovered someone was missing! It was our first day, none of us were really familiar with faces yet, and we had already lost someone! Gump ran back to the Bund to try and find our missing person while Melody took the rest of us to lunch. Lunch was on this gorgeous floating restaurant. I was so impressed. I had read a lot of reviews about Wendy Wu before I decided to book with them and 98% of them had been positive but I had read a couple comments about how they had skimped on food sometimes. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. We were taken to fabulous restaurants and always served way more food than we could eat. Everything we were given was delicious and even though we may have always gotten a chicken dish, it was always prepared different and unique. I loved the food on that trip. It wasn’t until after we had finished lunch when Melody got the call that Gump had found our missing lady, Dorothy, who had only been 10 minutes late to the meeting point only to find us all gone! 

Day 2 part 2: Women, Children and Fast Trains

As we drove around Shanghai to our destinations Melody told us about Shanghai women. The women of the city are very materialistic. Because there are so many more men than women (about 40 million or so) and because they live in a city surrounded by extreme wealth, the women basically get to be as picky as they want with their men, and they will always hold out for the richest man they can find. It is not uncommon nor is it looked down upon if a girl chooses money over love. She told us a story that people use to describe Shanghai women. There was a girl who had two guys who loved her. They both proposed but the girl wasn’t sure what to do at first so she told them both, “This world is a huge place, go travel around the world and when you get back if you can still say I am the most beautiful and you still love me, then I will marry you.” The first guy ran straight off to the airport. The second guy simply walked in a circle around the girl and told her, “You are my world, I have walked around the world and you are the only one I will ever love.” So in the end, who did the girl choose?

The one with the most money.

The Only Child policy went into effect in China in 1981. There were a few exceptions to the rule for farmers and minority groups, but most of China now is made up of single children. Because parents can only have one child that one kid tends to be very spoilt by both the parents and grandparents. The parents want the best for their kid, which is natural, so they try and influence their career, their lives, they will help the kid buy an apartment. They even will try to find good spouses for their children or at least try and have influence over who the child choses. Our guide Gump is an only child as is his wife and he told us that since they are both single children and neither of them work for the government, they are now allowed to have two children.

Back to the actual tour, we went to the Jin Mao tower, it is the highest lookout tower in China, going up 88 floors. Culture shock #2: As we were walking past the food court to get to the elevator there were men in business suits eating lunch and smoking inside the food court. Gross. At the top of the tower it felt like we couldn’t see more than 10-20 miles away, after that distance the city faded into fog and smog. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the rainy day or the pollution, probably both. There were these monopoly houses, groups of houses that all had red and blue roofs that I found very amusing. We were told that during the World Expo in 2010 the local government was trying to make the whole city look better so a whole bunch of apartments got new roofs. I thought that was a pretty good deal, free new roof, even if it is bright red, I’d take it.

After the tower we went and rode of the Maglav train. It’s the fastest train in the world but it’s completely useless. It only runs one place, from a suburb in Shanghai to the airport. The top speed it reaches is 430 km/hr , approximately 267 miles/hr. When it reaches 340 km/hr it passes the other train going the other way so there is a difference of about 680 km/hr or 422 miles/hr. They told us when the trains would pass so when we started getting close we were all watching for the other train then FOOMPFOOMP, it’s gone. It literally made me jump, both times.

Dinner was even fancier than lunch. We went to a hotel where every table had its own little private room with a fancy chandelier. One lady in our group, Anne, wanted soy sauce to go with her rice. Turns out soy sauce is actually not that commonly used in China. And the waiters who didn’t really speak English had no idea what she was talking about. She kept repeating it over and over like they would just magically understand but it didn’t work too well. Eventually with some help they brought her some soy sauce. 

Day 3: Welcome to Suzhou!

We had to have our bags down in the lobby of the hotel by 8am. We were leaving that day to drive to Suzhou. Suzhou is about a two hour drive from Shanghai, the city has about 5.8 million people in it and it is famous for its beautiful gardens and canals that run through the streets. I thought the whole city looked like a dump.

No, really, as we’re driving in we were seeing all these abandoned and broken down buildings, and piles of rubble everywhere. Turns out the Chinese can build entire metropolis cities in less than 20 years but they can’t take care of anything older than that so it all just gets left to break down.

Our first stop was one of the smaller gardens in Suzhou, it was built in 1290 and named The Master Of Nets garden (basically it was a tribute to fishermen). Can you imagine walking through a garden that was designed more than 700 years ago? It was very unreal. The house is built around the garden so that you have to walk through it to get to other parts of the estate.

Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou

The life of a nobleman in ancient China: The people who lived in this home were very well off. When they would have guests, the guests would arrive on a palanquin carried by servants because it was impolite to walk. There was a reception room for the servants while they would have tea and wait for the master to finish his meeting. The rooms were all disconnected so we had to step outside before stepping back in to the next room. There was always a step you had to get over to go into a room, which was designed so people were forced to bow in respect as they entered each room. The first room was the men’s reception room. The men would sit, chat, drink tea and conduct whatever business had to be done. Beyond that was the women’s reception room where the female guests would amuse themselves. The next room was the entertainment room where there was a little stage musicians could perform on. There were 17 total rooms in the entire place (and this was the smallest one in the city) including the meditation room, library and multiple bedrooms. Girls of noble families back in that time were expected to learn four primary skills in order to marry well. They needed to learn how to play an instrument, play chess, do calligraphy and how to paint. The garden in between all of the rooms was a beautiful thing. Lots of trees and bushes and wonky rocks. They were really into the wonky rocks back in the day. There was a pond filled with goldfish and a little pavilion where the family could sit next to the pond and eat snacks or meditate.

After the garden we went to the silk factory. We learned all about the life cycle of a silk worm and how they actually get silk. Turns out the life cycle of a silk worm is only 60 days, when the worm makes a cocoon to become a moth, the cocoon they spin is made of silk. What the factory does is take cocoons, heat them in hot water to loosen the strands, find the edge of the silk and unravel the cocoon. It takes six cocoons to make one single thread of silk. I had been hoping for a good deal on some silk things but turned out the factory was way more expensive than I anticipated it to be. They said the factories are the only places you can get guaranteed quality, and that’s probably true because China is the land of knockoffs, but if I can get something that’s 50% silk for a fraction of the price, I don’t really care. I have a story about that later in the trip.

After the silk factory we had lunch and made a short visit to an embroidery shop. These were the things made by the master embroiderers like the women who could make two separate pictures on one single piece of cloth. It was gorgeous and extremely impressive, but again, the average price of a high quality picture was about 80,000yuan, approximately $13,000. Even the smaller ones were over $100. I couldn’t believe it. In the showroom there was one huge masterpiece that I swear was about fifteen feet long that was selling for  1,500,000yuan, or approximately $227,000. Let’s put that into perspective, that’s more than my Mom paid for her house.

Our next stop before we went to the hotel was a boat ride down the famous lovely canals of Suzhou. The canal was bordered by houses on both sides like one continuous wall. The balconies were covered in junk and trash, the walls of the buildings were cracked. To me, it seemed more like a picture of poverty than a beautiful canal ride.

When we got to the hotel, I was tired, cold, and crabby. It was the middle of February and most of the buildings didn’t have central heating. Not even our bus so there was very little chance to warm up once you got cold. The hotels always had heating thank god, but we very quickly learned to dress as if we were going to be outside in the cold all day.

Dinner was inside the hotel that day. We sat at the table with the Mother and Daughter who were craving some good western food. “We were so tempted just to go to McDonalds and just get a burger and chips!” They were already wondering how they were going to survive on Chinese food for the next 24 days. Well when the food started coming, the second dish they brought out was a big plate of chips! The girls were so excited and we let them have first pick. As dinner was finishing, three of our table were talking about going and checking out the night markets. Ryan and I asked if we could join them, we were curious but afraid to go out by ourselves.

Turns out, Suzhou is a lot more interesting at night than it is during the day. The city is lit up in these colorful lights, all the shops are open late and there are people everywhere! We found an embroidery shop, the quality wasn’t as good but the price was right! These were a fraction of the cost of the ones at the fancy place. I got one good sized picture for only 25yuan! Ryan got one that even came with a frame for only 40 (about $7.5). Everything was so cheap in the shops, they had silk scarfs for only 10yuan and little trinkets for not much more. And the people! We were wandering around on a Tuesday night, in the back markets of a not so big city and there were people everywhere. Ryan began to believe that China was really home to more than a billion people. We also stopped at a fancy cake shop and got some nice dessert, they’re not big into sugar in China and I was craving some chocolate. I felt so much better when we returned to the hotel that night. I felt like we had finally gotten to experience real China instead of just being exploited at tourist factories, and it was fantastic.

Suzhou at night

Day 4: Garden, Ice Cream and Intro to Haggling

Today we visited the largest garden in Suzhou. The Humble Administrator’s garden was built in 1509 and was famous for its massive bonsai collection. They had some 500 bonsai trees or something crazy like that, including one that was 400 years old and a handful that were over 100 years old. Except by the time they get to be a couple hundred years old they’ve grown so big it’s hard to call them mini trees anymore. It also had a bunch of wonky rock hills. Man are they into their wonky rocks, and there were tiny little hidden stairways and we got to climb over them and under them and it was great fun.

Bonsai collection at Humble Administrator's Garden

It was raining out that day, like it did many days in the first two weeks. Our guide told us the wise man appreciates the rain. As we were walking along the lake Ryan commented how cool the water droplits were when they hit the water. I told him he should have been the wise man sitting by the lake composing haikus. He was quick to retort that haikus were a Japanese thing. But then he came up with his water haiku.

“Watching the water
Doesn’t he have stuff to do
What a big loser.”

We left the garden and left Suzhou. It was a two and a half hour drive to the next city Hanzhou. We took a break half way at a rest stop. At least, they called it a rest stop but there was like a whole mall in there. It was obvious I wasn’t the only one suffering from sugar deficit, there was an ice cream stand and, even though it was only a few degrees above freezing, at least half of our group flocked to that ice cream stand. They did well that day.

When we got to Hangzhou we got to visit some markets after dinner. Gump introduced us to haggling. He said all the stands here have different prices, they have the local price and the tourist price, and the tourist price is about 100 times what they actually paid so never pay what they ask for. Always haggle them down, if they say 100yuan you offer them 50 and then you’ll be able to get them to a better price. We wandered around the markets for about an hour. It was hard to fully enjoy them with the rain, but they had some interesting things. 

Ryan and I only had one watch with us (in this technological age I always use my phone to tell time and my phone wasn't going to work in China!) and with so many deadlines every day we decided to buy a cheap pocket watch for the other person. We started looking at some and the lady said 65yuan. Or rather she typed the number into her calculator. Turns out my minimal effort to learn Chinese before I left was completely useless. Even the stand owners who couldn’t speak English at least had calculators to negotiate with. We haggled her down to 45yuan for the watch and we walked away feeling pretty good with ourselves. After all, 45yuan is only about $8 and we got a really awesome pocket watch! How silly we were, if we had been in the same place at the end of our trip we probably could have gotten that watch for 10yuan. Oh well.

Day 5 part 1: Welcome to Hangzhou and Temple

Hangzhou is a city of about 8 million people and is one of the richest provinces in the country. Throughout the history of China Hangzhou got to be the capital city twice, from 908 – 979 AD and again from 1121 – 1179 AD. Today it is a very privileged area to live in. Everyone is very well educated, our guide told us that it’s common for even the street sweepers to have college degrees. A cheap apartment in Hangzhou is easily $5 million dollars (dollars, not yuan). It is also one of the safest cities in the country. The police have set up over one thousand micro cameras on the streets so they can see everything….EVERYTHING. Kind of freaky but just don’t think about it. Also, they have zero crime so it works. Their buildings are much better maintained as well. I didn’t see the piles of rubble that lined the streets of Suzhou.

That morning we visited one of the largest Buddhist temples in China, the Lingyin temple. It was built in 300AD by an Indian monk trying to spread Buddhism. It stands along a mountain and as you walk up to the front gate there are statues carved right into the side of the mountain side rocks. It is gorgeous.  The temple has several buildings with massive statues and used to house more than three thousand monks. Monks still live there and learn and teach, many of the monks have university degrees and are well educated.

The place was crowded with people and the courtyards were filled with smoke from the incense burning. The ritual for prayer, our guide told us, was to take three incense sticks. Three to represent the past, present, and future. Then bow three times to pay respect to the three levels of Buddhahood in each of the four directions to symbolize that the spirit of the Buddha is everywhere. There were people with big stacks of incense sticks in their hands. Our guide jokingly referred to them as the “one day Buddhists”, the people who only go to the temple when they have a problem and act like the more incense they burn, the faster their prayer will be answered. He said right before exam time the temple will also get filled up with students praying for good results.

There were many buildings with statues. We weren’t supposed to take pictures inside of the temple but we could stand outside and take them through the door. I thought the most interesting building was The Hall of 500 Arhats. It houses 500 life sized sitting solid bronze statues, each of which weigh two whole tons, and the shape of the building was in a giant swastika. We actually saw lots of swastikas in religious settings while we were there because it was a symbol of peace back in the day. 

Day 5 part 2: Tea, Pagodas and Chicken

In the afternoon we visited the famous Dragon Tea village in Hangzhou. Everyone in the tea village is very rich. They have a deal with the government to give them one fourth of their spring tea harvest and then after that they don’t have to pay taxes on the rest of their sales. There are 191 kinds of green teas in the world and green tea is the only one with the powerful antioxidants.

History of Tea: The monks of the temple were the first people to drink tea. Being monks they weren’t allowed to drink alcohol but water just got kind of boring sometimes so they flavored it with bush leaves. When they started noticing the positive health benefits of the tea leaves they encouraged everyone else to drink it too. Random fact of the day, green tea and black tea actually come from the same bush. Once tea became widespread in the east they began to ship it out to Europe in the west. Except it took so long to get there that by the time the European nobles got it, it had fermented and turned the water a murky black color. The great thing was though that the Europeans didn’t know any better and thought that’s what tea was supposed to be like. They added milk and sugar to supplement the taste and called it black tea. When the Chinese traveled over to the west they were shocked at the state of the tea the Europeans were drinking but they didn’t want to admit that any mistake had been made, so they went along with it and started purposely fermenting the tea leaves to be shipped to the west. So the world now has green and black tea.

How tea is harvested: We learned about the operations of the village. Tea leaves are picked from the bushes once a week from March to October. They’re picked and dried by hand by the women because women have smaller more sensitive hands that can more easily pick the best leaves. The first leaves in the Spring are the best and sell for the most money. The leaves in the summer and fall are not as good and those are the leaves that are usually ground up and used in tea bags.

Tea Village in Hangzhou

That day we also got to go on a quick boat tour on one of the lakes. There are five main lakes in Hangzhou and each one has a specific function. The lake we went on is specifically for casual boating and has islands many people visit during festivals. This lake also has pagodas scattered around, there are three near an island that are actually pictured on the back of the $1yuan note. Another lake is used specifically for fishing but you can only fish three days of the week. Another one is used for harvesting clams.

Next to the lake was a pagoda we visited called the Six Harmonies Pagoda. We climbed 200 stairs up seven levels to the top and it was really cool because every level you went up the view was different. The six temptations represent, the body, mind, speech, wealth, and abstinence from temptation, and I missed the last one. Each level had unique hand carved pictures right in the stone framework of the building. There was a small inner chamber with the outer wall with the windows. It was rainy and cloudy that day and there was no artificial lighting except on the stairs. Ryan called me into one of the middle inner rooms. There wasn’t anything in the room that I could see and he told me to look up. It was dark and I couldn’t see much but I could sort of see a pattern on the ceiling. I decided to take a picture and it was a blind shot because on the screen it just looked like a black abyss but when the flash went off, the image that appeared on my camera screen was this spectacular blue, white and green dragon. I’m sure it was painted hundreds of years ago and is perfectly preserved thanks to the fact that room gets zero natural light in it.

For dinner we got to try and local specialty. It was chicken cooked in a clay pot for four hours. It was delicious but I got a surprise when I stood up to scoop some more meat out of the pot. I looked down and saw the whole chicken head staring back at me! I didn’t realize when they said they were going to cook us chicken they meant they were going to throw in the entire chicken into the pot!

That night Ryan and I went out and wandered around the shopping streets. He got himself some new shoes because his old ones weren’t keeping out all the rain and his feet were getting damp. During the rest of the trip he got several comments on the shoes. Our guide Gump noticed them first, apparently Ryan had bought some very popular and trendy shoes backed by one of the most famous athletes in China. A while later another one of our local guides also noticed and commented on Ryan’s good taste in shoes. It was quite amusing.