Back From the Latest Adventure......China!

Well, I have just returned from my latest source of adventure - the People's Republic of China! After flying almost 13 hours from Shanghai to Kuwait, I am tired but had a lot of time to think back over my trip and I have to say, China met and greatly exceeded all my expectations!! :)

This is Bill and I waiting for a taxi outside of Pudong International Airport shortly after our plane touched down in Shanghai.......

The last 12 days were spent exploring, traveling within this giant country and seeing some of the world's coolest heritage sites. We started out in Shanghai, then to Xi'an and on to Beijing before returning to Shanghai to fly back home to Kuwait.

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We were told on one of the many tours we took, that there are three main cities that represent different time periods in China. Xi'an represents China's past, with buildings and various artifacts dating back as far as 5,000 years. Beijing represents China's present with old history mingling with new. Shanghai represents China's future and this can be easily seen with all the new and modern structures, the push for investments and the drive to be a "world" city with Expo 2010 starting up there in May. These 3 cities are almost equidistantly apart........about 1400km give or take. We did travel to each of them within this Chinese triangle, and saw and did almost everything there was to see and do!

The People

Communicating was not as hard as I thought and had been told it would be. I did have all our hotels' addresses and the places we wanted to go translated into Mandarin before we left Kuwait and that definitely helped out, but overall the Chinese people seemed to be very used to English speakers using hand gestures and facial expressions to get their message across! Most people we had to speak to for tourist purposes did not know ANY English, but we were still somehow able to communicate.

I did not expect to be met with such open kindness and a willingness to help regardless of the language barrier. In all three big cities, we met amazing people who just wanted to help us find whatever we were looking for, practice their English or proudly show us their country and culture. I have many email addresses, business cards and pics of the people we met and have already received emails from them! I guess to sum up the general impression of the people of China - genuine and sincere. So often in North American culture we take someone's number or email and say we'll contact them, get together or whatever, but never follow through or really mean it. This doesn't seem to be a prevalent action in Chinese culture. If you say something, you mean it and WILL follow through. :)

The Weather

It was COLD!!!! Shanghai was a very damp, bone-chilling cold with all the humidity and being located on the coast. Xi'an was more of a dry-cold, and was far more comfortable than Shanghai with regards to the temperature. Beijing however, had a record breaking cold snap with temperatures dipping below -10 Celsius and SNOW!! For this girl who has been used to living in the desert for the past 5 months, that felt insanely COLD! Everyday we went out walking around for hours, exploring different parts of the city and surrounding countryside and every evening I had to take a very hot shower and or bath to warm up. I'm sad to admit my strong Canadian cold genes seem to have disappeared from my system these past few months. What have I become!?!? LOL

The Government

Considering the People's Republic of China is run by the Communist Party, you would expect to see a lot of evidence of this and a general feeling of oppression, at least that's what I expected to find in China. Oddly enough, it was quite the opposite feeling! There didn't seem to be much evidence in the various cities we traveled. The odd time something would strike me as being "communist" such as all the ministry sanctioned tourism workers, or the fact that the Chinese government has banned and blocked all access to Facebook, Blogger and Youtube. Apparently these sites aided in the recent political unrest in some of the more southern provinces, so the government blocked them in order to exercise control over communications. Other than that, the feeling was one of efficiency (in Shanghai), cultural integrity (in Xi'an) and a desire to show the world their history (in Beijing). Promoting their image in a positive light is a main priority, and I guess that alone makes sense considering the government. I don't know though, it's hard to put into words, but I just didn't expect to feel that comfortable in a communist country. Granted, I didn't get any opportunity to discuss religious rights and freedoms(or lack of them) with anyone and perhaps that may be where one would see the great divide. There was a definite police presence in the cities, but again it wasn't a threatening one, at least not to a Western visitor. The parts of China I experienced definitely left a good and positive impression on me. However, I would love to see more of the rural countryside and visit the smaller villages and farming areas to see if my feelings of comfort would change.

Alright, so I know people are looking forward to seeing some pictures and I am currently trying to figure out how to go about sharing them as I have almost 1,000 pics to go through! I will try to do it in a few posts, going in chronological order of the trip, starting with Shanghai. Please be patient as I go through the ridiculous amount of pics and decide what to write in my posts during the next week! Hope you enjoy them! :)