CHINA

China is a very interesting country and overall I enjoyed my trip! I went to Beijing and right outside the city to see the Great Wall of China.

• I slept the entire time on the flight over! At the last minute I was upgraded to 'economy plus' for some reason which was really nice! I had a little foot prop and a half wall thing between me and the person beside me.

• I woke up about 45 minutes before landing and outside the window I could see tons of beautiful rolling hills! The mountains here look very different than any I've seen before! 

• One of the first things I noticed after arriving to Beijing was the hole in the ground that I was expected to squat over and pee in instead of a toilet...had to get used to that one!

Walking to the hotel there were some college kids

dancing to music outside their school.

• The subway system in Beijing is huge! I tried to buy a ticket with my credit card but the subway is cash only. I had to go back into the airport to find an ATM then off to the hotel I went! The subway is so cheap!! 30-60 cents US one way! 

• The main streets were hardly lit with light. To get to the hotel I had go walk down a dark alley for about 10 minutes. There aren't any light posts on the side streets so it was really hard to see! There were lots of people walking around and biking though. While walking down the dark alleys at night alone, if I saw women and children I felt okay, if I saw only men I walked a little faster haha!

• Saw someone's dog with a collar and it followed me for about 5 minutes then I heard his owner call for him, super cute doggie! 

• Checked in to the hotel then set off to explore! It's important to go straight to the hotel after the airport because the hotel notifies the government that you made it or something like that. 

• Got stuck inside the huge door to the hotel when I tried to leave... it took two guys from the hotel to open it, I think I messed it up!

• Tons of bicycles, scooters and pedestrians everywhere and everyone is on their cell phones like America!

• I've gotten more obvious stares here than anywhere so far, I guess I look super weird. People stare then just look away lol

Hotel 

More hotel

Breakfast in the hotel  

Crossing the Street! Ekkkk!

Ghost Street

• It was a little lonely because people will stare then look away and not smile. I don't think anyone smiled back at me so I just stopped smiling after about an hour. I was a little discouraged and sad because it felt like everyone hated me or something lol It took me a while to realize the culture is just very different here than back home.

• They shut down the street at night to cars on Ghost Street so it's only pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and construction vehicles. I think they were working on the side walks.

• I stopped at two restaurants for dinner and asked the person at the front if they spoke English and both shook their heads no and just looked away... I learned later this is the wrong approach! I saw a huge restaurant named 'vegetarian' in English but it was closed. I decided to head back towards the hotel to eat a cliff bar lol

• There were tons of women with super fancy pixie cuts!

Street performer

Air in Beijing... 

• The air is intense because of all the smog! It's hard to breath and made me cough a lot. My eyes felt like they had dirt in them, nose was stuffy and lots of people wearing face masks. There was this white fuzzy stuff floating all in the air... I'm assuming it was from some kind of flower.

The Subway

This was everyone from the subway just trying to exit the tunnels!

So many people! I felt like a little sheep lol

• If there's no more room on the subway people just push and shove themselves in, sooooooo many people!

• Glass doors close when trains aren't here... I guess to keep people from falling on the rails

• The subway map was easier to read than I thought it would be. I'm used to memorizing letters in random order to make 20 letter words for work so I think that helped!

Forbidden City

• In line for the forbidden city a cute four year old kept smiling and saying hello over and over and the mom kept telling him to stop I think. I just smiled and waved because this was only the second person that even acknowledged me lol There were two teenage girls that asked where I'm from and said 'you're so tall' ?!? They also asked if I came by myself and if I spoke Chinese. I told them 'I came by myself and I don't speak Chinese.' They looked at me like I had three heads then laughed and looked away lol

• They only allow 80,000 people per day into the Forbidden City and are closed on Monday so I'm lucky I picked today because I definitely did not look that up in advance! 

"5th Avenue" of Beijing

• There was a street that kind of reminded me of 5th avenue in New York City. Saw some Nike shoes for $33!

• Got a green tea ice cream cone, delicious! Walked up to the stand and pointed to someone's ice cream cone and held up a number 1 and it worked! I slowly realized that to get anything here, you just have a be a little aggressive.

Temple of Heaven

• Afterwards on the walk to the Temple of Heaven, I started noticing things that are socially acceptable here are very different than in the US and caught me off guard and made me a little uncomfortable. This was the first time I felt very out of place in my travels because the culture here is so different than back home.

• The Temple of Heaven was very peaceful, calm and quiet and smelled like flowers everywhere.

• I'm assuming the white puffy things that are always flying in the air come from these flowers?

Hou Hai

• This was my second favorite part of the trip! Hou Hai is a little neighborhood/area in Beijing.

• I stopped at a little tea place to try the tea everyone was carrying around. It was a black tea and very yummy!

• Everyone seems to really enjoy sitting outside, there were tons of people just sitting outside and talking.

• There were lots of little shops and restaurants here. I saw a beautiful scarf from the street and went in to buy it!

Chinese Karaoke! So neat!

In this area, a lot of people live in Hutongs.

The small homes are down alleys with a door like this.

There's about five homes down there, very cute and cozy!

Doggies!

Kung Fu Show

• The Kung fu show was amazing! Parts of it were in English so I could actually understand what was going on! On the way back to the hotel I broke and took a tax back because I was so tired and cold. Instead of 40 cents for the subway I paid $20 to go 3.5 miles! That's the only time I took a taxi!

• I got to use my little 'please take me to this hotel' card for the taxi. I think almost all of the hotels give them out because when I flagged him down he said 'hotel card?'. I think that was the only English the taxi driver knew.

Card to give to taxi driver asking them to please

take you back to you hotel because so few people speak English

There are so many tall apartment buildings....

hundreds and hundreds as far as you can see!

The 21 million people live here I guess!

The Great Wall of China

• The road to the Great Wall of China is lined with beautiful trees and flowers and the bottoms are painted in white to protect them from mosquitos and little bugs that dig holes in them to live. 

• The tour guide literally says everything in Chinese, then English. From what I can tell and from asking around, the only language options from the tour guides and the audio devices were English and Chinese. Don't quote me on that one though. 

• A couple on the tour from Sweden and Ukraine said they've been to every state in the US! They're traveling the world because they're retired and said the US was their favorite country out of the 60 they had been too... not sure if that was true or they just told me that because they knew where I'm from haha.

• The Great Wall was absolutely breath taking. I only cried once which was very impressive! It was when I first stepped on it and looked up and I saw it going over the hills... so beautiful!

• I walked as far as they'll let us go on this stretch thanks to the Manitou Incline practice with Stephanie and Dane!

• Side note: The tour guide said she thinks it's funny that we paint the inside of our houses and decorate for Christmas because in China you never do that, you always pay someone to do it!

• Afterwards we went to a restaurant for lunch and the bottom of my little bag broke. The guide got some sewing material from the restaurant and sewed it really quick. She was so sweet!

• So I actually don't like Chinese food but I had to break and eat some here because there were no other options... and it was delicious!!! People suck at making Chinese food in America! 

Ming Tombs (Ming Dynasty Emperors 1368-1644)

• We drove through lots of small towns on the way to the Ming Tombs. The roads are a combination of dirt and pavement and very narrow. They're lined with beautiful trees planted in rows. A lot of the towns are named after certain people (can't remember what they're called) and people originally moved to the towns to protect the tombs and now generations stay. 

We saw the place where sacrifices were made (top two pictures in the collage above)

The trees here are marked based on how old they are.

Green tree sign 100-300 years old, Red over 300 years old.

The huge tree is over 500 years old.

We climbed down 27 meters to see the tombs.

The bottom left picture in the collage above

is where the original bodies in caskets were laid.

 There's a hole that people throw money around for good luck here. 

The doors to the tombs and the tall tablet were made out

of one piece of stone. Everything that remains today is made

 out of stone. Everything else was made out of wood so it didn't

survive time.

Apparently red and yellow are emperor colors which

explains why so many buildings and things around Beijing are those colors!

Only the emperor is supposed to walk through the blue gate to the tombs so

we went around but a lot of people go through it. We can walk through the gate

on the way out and say 'I'll be back' in Chinese :)

Acrobatic Show

Streets on the way to the show during rush hour

The Acrobatic show was phenomenal! It was like Cirque du soleil on steroids! 

Little things I learned along the way...

• There is no access to google or Facebook in China because the government blocked it about 5 years ago. I thought that was so odd coming from America. People in China use BaiDu instead of google.

• The guide on the Great Wall Tour warned me about young Chinese people that say they're students and speak very good English because they will make friends with you and take you to a coffee shop then leave you with the bill. The restaurant owner will charge a very high amount because they're in on the scam. She said she warned me because I'm so nice lol

• People do not tip in China but I had to tip my tour guide! She was an excellent guide and I just couldn't not tip her lol

• Women wear tennis shoes with everything here... I fit in nicely with their fashion here according to my sister! 

Heading to the airport

• I ended up paying for the hotel with my leftover yuan so I didn't have to exchange money at the airport and after paying for the subway and airport express I had exactly 2 yuan left! This is about 30 cents in US dollars lol Everywhere takes cash only here! I got really lucky! 

• This is the first time I used the Eyewitness guide and I'm so glad I did! It was super useful and I would have been completely lost without it! It has the top 10 things to do, a great subway map and map of the city AND how to say simple things in Chinese like 'airport' and 'bathroom.' I ended up just pointing to the word lol

• A very nice old man asked me 'where you from' on the train to the airport, I told him and he said 'where's your passenger? You not travel alone?' I said yep just me! His eyes got really big and he laughed! He said he was heading to England for the first time, he helped me double check the terminal I'm going to on the airport express. He was by far the nicest person I met :)

           Beijing's first class lounge is on point! Fantastic and beautiful! Best one I've been to!