The Penalty Box

For those of you who didn’t know, I’ve been in China and Hong Kong for the past two and a half weeks. I got back earlier this week and have been recovering from jetlag. It seems coming back from the other side of the world is always tougher than going there. 15 hour time differences kinda suck. I still have about 900 pictures to go through, many of which consist of people walking through my shots. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped; the sheer number of people (17 million in Beijing alone) often causes no actual open shots. Other times it was just mindless douchebags. Speaking of douchebags, the tour guide in Xi’An was one. But let’s do a small breakdown of the trip.

Day 0 - Travel: A grand total of 16 hours in the air (around 13 to Hong Kong, then 3 to Beijing). One flight attendant was wearing some pretty rank perfume on Cathay Pacific. Flew Dragon Air to Beijing, and got food on a 3 hour flight. Hear that Air Canada? Also, a 5 star hotel in China is not the same as a 5 star hotel in North America. Though for note, China apparently operates on a 7 star scale. Still, the one thing I learned about hotels in China: if you stay at an international hotel (like the Hilton), you’re okay. If you stay at a hotel run by Chinese people not from Hong Kong, make sure it’s less than 2 years old because maintenance is awful. The shower leaked in my room and water stains on the wall.

Day 1 - Beijing: Met the tour guide today, her name was Rain. Apparently English teachers there helped pick English names for the students out of a dictionary. Rain has a friend named Apple (and not Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid). First stop was the Summer Palace, where the Emperor went during the summer to cool off (as much as one can cool off in a Chinese summer). If there’s one thing Chinese emperors knew how to do, it was to use manpower for luxury. There’s a 780 metre corridor at the Summer Palace to keep the emperor out of the rain. Every inch of the corridor’s ceiling has paintings on it, from parts of the known world (at the time) to nature to people. It’s amazing how it’s held up for so long. It’s a shame there hasn’t been more money put into restoration; in fact, they’ve actually turned a couple of the old buildings into bloody coffee shops. That’s the government for you. Oh and the reason why China lost the Opium Wars: the money that was supposed to build a navy was used to build this palace.

Day 1 also involved going to Tianamen Square. Unfortunately, Mao’s mausoleum was closed. There were, however, 5 CCTV cameras on one pole. Suck on that, UK. The Forbidden City was also on the stop list. It is big. The architecture and stone work is absolutely amazing though. Each building was crazy detailed and had symbols to determine who could go where and who lived where. The place had thousands of rooms; given the number of servants, concubines, officials and caretakers, the number of rooms isn’t surprising but I still had to stand in awe of the sheer size of it all. Even with the size of the place, people STILL got into my shots and I had to elbow my way into good shooting positions. Fortunately, I was like Yao Ming in comparison so moving people out of the way wasn’t a problem. Oh, another thing learned from China: don’t make eye contact with vendors and they’ll leave you alone; otherwise they’ll follow you for a block or two trying to hawk whatever trinkets they have.

Day 2 - Great Wall: There are two sides you can climb when you get to the Great Wall. One is steep, sort of like the Grouse Grind. The other side is near vertical. I’m not kidding. It still is something you have to see in person to appreciate the vastness of it all. The number of people needed to create such a monstrosity with no modern machinery to lift the stones. The bad air did make it more difficult to climb, but it was completely worth it in the end. The smog unfortunately did make the pictures not as awesome as they could have been, but the view was still spectacular. Second half of the day involved viewing the Ming Dynasty tombs (some funny signs there…gotta love the typos and literal translations) and an acrobatic show. The show was as good as Cirque de Soleil acrobatics-wise, but Cirque has the more creative and colourful costumes.

Day 3 - Travel to Xi’An: Here we met Frank, he was like a bad history teacher on meth. He rushed through everything: we got pushed through the Xi’An History Museum in 45 minutes. All in all, a general douchebag. If you ever go to Xi’An and your tour guide says his name is Frank and his name means “Great Ordinary,” you’re going to get rushed through everything. Slow down on purpose.

Day 4 - Terra Cotta Warriors: Movies don’t do this place justice. The scale is just ridiculous. Just before going to the tomb, we visited the factory where warriors are made in the same fashion they were when the first emperor ordered them made. It takes days to weeks to scuplt them (depending on size) and baking in the kiln for hours a day. All in all, one full size warrior takes about a month. Seven thousand have been uncovered so far. There are MORE. The level of detail is insane. Each warrior is painted, his face, armour, everything. Oh yeah, each one is also 6 feet tall and 300 pounds. Hollow. There are currently 3 pits open. One has infantry, another has calvalry and the third pit has warriors not yet put back together yet. And they still haven’t found the actual entrance to the tomb, which is supposed to have a non-full scale replica of the known world. Just thinking about the sheer manpower needed to create such a tomb, A TOMB, is nuts. The whole thing took about 45 years to finish, back when the average lifespan was about 50. So two whole generations built this tomb for the emperor. All under heaven indeed.

Overall China thoughts:

• Food was average to terrible on the trip, but since it was all covered by the tour, I think they just took us to the cheapest possible places.
• Sights, entertainment and culture are fantastic.
• I’m surprised hotel service is so poor given how complainy western tourists generally are.
• Manners in Beijing are fare better than Xi’An, likely from orders handed down from the government for the Olympics. In Xi’An, you can’t walk a block without hearing someone hock a loogie. In Beijing, only the people from the provinces spit.
• Driving is a “make up your own rules” kind of thing. The following things seem to be optional: lights, following traffic lanes, not driving on the sidewalk. Fortunately, everyone’s going only about 30kph because of the sheer number of vehicles so there is time to stop if something crazy is done. Which is all the time.

Hong Kong was a lot of eating. Every. Day. I have a bunch of aunts and uncles, and of course everyone had to take a turn buying dinner. And lunch. I don’t think I ever felt hungry during my time in Hong Kong, I just shuttled between meals. What I really liked was the Octopus card. Public transit is cheap, efficient and fast. Kind of the exact opposite of Translink. What made the Octopus card awesome was that it wasn’t just a transit pass; it’s essentially a cash card. You can use it to buy drinks from the vending machine or buy stuff from stores if they accept Octopus cards. Stuff is also really cheap there, given the exchange rate (currently about 7 HKD to 1 CDN). Cheap doesn’t mean bad quality either; quality control at most stores is even more strict than here in Canada. Clothes shopping was somewhat difficult though, since I’m not exactly your typically sized Chinese person. XL shirts barely fit and even the largest pair of pants was about 4 inches too short.

Oh in terms of more funny names, I saw a waiter named Box and a bride named Ice. Dictionary names ahoy!
All in all it was a pretty fun trip, douchey tour guide and jetlag aside. I only wish I could have stayed longer if only to see a few more things in Beijing, see Shanghai and spend a little longer in Hong Kong. I don’t know if I could live in Hong Kong though; everything is just so bloody busy.