Shanghai
Monday
We arrived late
Monday so all we did was go to our hotel, the highway was really big and well
kept, it was pretty impressive. It was pretty hard to communicate with people,
since no one spoke any English, not even the people at the hotel. The hotel was
a super 8 hotel, but it was a little shady. There was no wi-fi and the LAN internet
was really slow, especially google pages, as for facebook…completely blocked.
Tuesday
We got in touch
with our friend Richard, who we had met in Bhutan and he suggested that we buy
of those bus tours. We took a cab that took us downtown where we bought our
passes. The idea is that these buses run continuously around the city and you
can get off and back on at any station (14 total I think). So we got on the bus
which took us through the historic part of the city, it’s always cool to see
cities that conserve old buildings and have a nice looking downtown.
We got off at
this stop where there was a little
shopping area, we looked around and bought some stuff, my dad bought this
little portable speaker of which all of his brothers wanted one back in Colombia.
Still walking around we got to a spot where there were a bunch of people who
approached/harassed us offering stuff to buy for really cheap, these included
watches, iphones, ipads, designer clothing and other stuff that we didn’t
really want. Later on, we saw this group of guys selling roller skate
attachments for your shoes. They were kind of like those shoes they sell now
that have wheels under them, but these were attachments so we thought it would
be a really cool idea, initially they asked for 500 yuan (7 yuan to a dollar)
and we told the guy to get serious and leave us alone, so he came back and kept
offering lower and lower prices until eventually we bought a pair for 100. Then another guy came up and started
offering me another pair for 100…80…60! ok 60, I thought it was a good deal so
why not? My dad gave him a 100 bill and he reached in his pocket and gave us 2
20’s. Alright, good, no big deal.
We went into a
McDonald’s, ordered lunch and when my mom went to pay for our order the cashier
laughed and told us that 20 bill was not from there. After more careful
examination it was pretty obvious that the bills, although they were the same
color as the Chinese 20 dollar bills were Russian which made them worth about a
5th of what we expected. We were a little mad/amused, and I decided
to try and do something about it, I went back to where the guy had tricked us
and there were about 8 other guys selling the same stuff, they all greeted me
with smiles and some even laughed, it was pretty obvious that they knew what
had happened. I asked them where the guy was and they acted like they had no
idea what I was talking about, or which guy I meant, or like they understood
English at all…all while laughing and (I think) making jokes about me.
There were some
security people next to us since there was a jewelry next to where they were so
I asked them for help and they basically said “just get over it and move on”.
Don’t ask me why I decided that I was going to push a little further and so I
said I’d call the police. After a few threats that were responded to with
laughter one lady, who was kind of with the group, came to me and said “look
there is a pubic phone over there the number is…whatever it was”. I think she
thought I was bluffing, because she was laughing and still talking to the guys
while she told me. I walked towards the phone...dialed the number…After they
answered and asked me what was going on I looked at the lady and asked her the
name of where I was, she told me, and looked back at the guys with a “he’s
actually doing it!” kind of look. I said that I was at whatever place and that
someone had just robbed me and the lady on the phone said that she didn’t speak
English and so she would get an interpreter, while she was doing that the call
was dropped. I thought about it for a second and said…ok I’ll just wait here
for them to come. I looked up and all of a sudden the 8ish guys who were
sitting there laughing had vanished. Completely gone.
It felt pretty
good so I went back inside the McDonalds and finished lunch. When we came back
out we walked by the same place and the guys were sitting there again but got
up and started slowly walking away like it was no big deal…just walking away
for no reason. I did not see the one guy who gave us the Russian bills though.
We walked away and continued our journey.
Our tour bus
took us by the site of the first communist party meeting, which was next to a
beautiful park/garden. Maria had fun at first on her new skate/shoes but she
got a little frustrated and since we all started telling her what to do, she
got upset after a while. We got back on the bus and went under the river
through a tunnel, I took a little nap while we rode around the business
district. Some people from Mexico and Korea started talking to us on the bus,
they were very nice. We went by a walking/shopping district but we decided not
to stop there.
Our tour ended
where it began, we found a nice restaurant where we sat down, had an overpriced
smoothie, and asked to borrow the telephone so we could get in touch with
Richard, our friend. He told us to get a cab and go meet him at work, he would
invite us to dinner that night. We had peanut and strawberry ice cream for
dessert…but that was also the first thing they brought apparently in Shanghai they
prefer to have everything served at the same time so you can choose which order
to eat things in, he also order a weird pineapple/shrimp dessert that happened
to be very delicious. Richard is a teacher who goes to third-world countries
and teaches…kind of general education and creativity to children, so he showed
us some cool videos that he uses. We talked about some of the things we had
noticed in China (oh and by the way in pretty much every neighborhood there
were clothes hanging outside). One of the most interesting things he said was
that people have a very strange love/hate relationship with china so everything
that they find even remotely criticizeable becomes automatically a hot topic
and it’s because of communism. With respect to Google and how they filter their
results in China because the government demands it, he said that he thought it
was a good thing, now peole may have access to 80% of the information and
articles out there, but before Google, or if Google had not agreed to comply
with the demands of the government they would have much more restricted access.
Another example he talked about was that a new law that was about to be put
into place, ads for luxury items were going to be banned in areas where there
is poverty, some people will say it’s censorship and goes against freedom of
speech, but some other people say it’s insensitive for companies to put up such
ads and that it’s a good thing for the government to think about that, much
like in the US you can’t have naked images in publicity.
We talked about
other things, like culture and how much can be justified by that, girls being
raped by their family members in regions of India, girls being sold between
families in native tribes in Colombia?
It was a very
pleasant dinner we were taken to our hotel where the internet sucked we slept
and…
Wednesday
Left for Xi’an
the next day. We ended up in the wrong terminal, but luckily we found out in
time to run to the other one and make it to our flight…and find out it was
slightly delayed.
Xi-an
Wednesday
We landed and
looked for a tour agency as always, we found a good one for pretty cheap. The
people were noticeably nice, a lot of people simply came to us and asked us
what we needed and such, there was a guy who told us he studies English and so
sometimes he just likes to act as tour guide for people to practice his English
for free…although after having seen the movie taken I don’t really know that the guy’s intentions were
all that good.
The first part of
the tour took us to the ruins of Banpo a town that is supposed to have existed
6000 years ago. From there we went to the site of the (drumroll) terracotta
warriors.
We got a guide who
took us through the line, it was a rainy Wednesday morning but still the place
was completely crowded. We waited in line for a while, and then got in a little
car that took us to the site. We entered this huge hangar looking thing and got
to see the first pit of warriors. It is really intense to walk in there and see
rows and rows of warrior statues lines up as if getting ready to go to battle.
The sight is hard to describe, so many things went through my head it’s such an
overwhelming sensation to see something so grand in front of you. There were
about 12 rows, about 5 feet wide completely filled with lines of warriors and
horses in different stances. Each warrior’s face was modeled after an actual
warrior or the army at the time; there are 4 kinds; generals, soldiers, archers
and advisors. All of the statues were hand painted to great detail but they are
so old that when exposed to sunlight the colors fade within 20 minutes. Some
are kept in the dark for those reasons and are not available for the general
public, also some are still buried. In some areas the ceiling collapsed, and so
a lot of them were broken but they are being restored, which must be a pretty
cool job.
The idea behind
them is that in Chinese tradition terracotta (cooked dirt) warrior statues are
very common, lots of people have them in their houses or offices as protection
from evil spirits and energies, the emperor at the time built them with that
kind of idea in mind, to protect him and the country. We visited 3 of the 4
pits that are there; the first one is the one most people probably see in
pictures and documentaries. In the second one the statues are organized as if
in a meeting room, it’s really dark in that one; the last one is as almost as
big as the first one, and most of the warriors in this one are covered or still
unburied, but they have 4 on display in crystal cases that one can get really
close to. They also had a few displays that contained the weapons they were
buried with, supposedly, and I didn’t hear about this until I came back to the
us, the technology used to make the weapons made them not only really sharp but
also incredibly long lasting, it is also a lost art in the sense that we have
not been able to replicate the results.
They were found by
a farmer in the 70’s while digging for water, now he’s really rich and happy
supposedly…also he happened to be there that day signing copies of his book.
Walking into the little souvenir store was really strange, there we were, 4
occidental looking people walking into the shop in a sea of locals, the farmer
who discovered the warriors treated us very nicely, shook our hands and offered
us to buy and sign his book for us, but whenever anyone else approached him and
try to shake his hand he seemed a little annoyed. Right after that we walked
into a section where they sold replicas of the statues, they varied in size
from 2 inches to 7 feet. The person in charge, again saw us and approached us
in order to offer us the statues, the life-size replicas, he said, were made
using the same techniques used for the originals, dried (cooked) in the sun and
not in an oven, which makes them more durable and they are made and certified
by the archaeologists that study and restore the real ones. The price was
17,000 yuan (2700 USD) and after a while he even offered us a 50% discount and
free shipping to Cartagena, a maritime port in Colombia it would only take 3
months.
We went ahead and
bought our uncertified oven cooked 2 inch replicas, and went our way. The next
destination they took us to was a silk factory, we got to see how they get the
silk thread from the cocoon and then all the different products which ranged
from shirts to bed covers. The stud was pretty cool and lookd like really good
quality, the prices were not ridiculous, and I actually found a really nice
shirt that I thought was not too expensive and treated myself to it. I’m still pretty
happy with it.
Next up was “the
hot springs” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guifei).
We were not really sure where we were going or what the plan was but it was
part of our tour so we assumed it would be awesome. It was, we entered this
palace with really beautiful, typically Chinese gardens and houses. Again the
attention to detail in decoration and architecture impressed us; the dragon
statues on the ceilings gave it a really cool touch.
This used to be a
palace built for the daughter of someone really important we got to see the
bathing rooms for the princess which were basically huge and very luxurious
(for the time) pools.
This also happened
to be the place of the “Xi’an event” which had to do with the civil war in
china and the communist party, also the fact that Taiwan is not really part of
China anymore. They have little crystal cases protecting bullet holes in
windows and walls with lettering that says “Xi’an event bullet hole”. The place
was actually quite impressive (like most of the things we saw really) but it
must have been really incredible to live there, a beautiful palace in the
middle of the nowhere and where all you can see is mountains and forest around
you. The lake in the middle of the palace reminded me of the song Lady of
the Snow by Symphony X, and the imagery
that Walter and I discussed a few times. We saw a poster for a show called song
of eternal sorrow, it is a light/music/dancing show that they play there
every night, it’s really beautiful and amazing…supposedly we didn’t get to see
it because it was a rainy-ish day and so they were not having it, I was really
excited about it but oh well, I’m hanging out in China so I don’t get to
complain.
We got to the hotel,
which I had booked online and paid for 2 nights before…for the night before…go
me. They saw that we were pretty upset and lost and said that they really
wanted our business so they gave us like a 50% discount on the night that we
actually stayed there, it was really nice of them. The hotel was pretty nice
although it also had semi-crappy internet (not as bad as in Shanghai), it also
had an interesting assortment of goods available for us in the bathroom, men’s
and women’s underwear, a vibrator-condom and, this one was actually really
cool, a disc about 1.5 cm. tall and 2 cm. of radius with a label that read magic
towel. It was 10 yuan I think so my dad and I decided it was worth satisfying
our curiosity. We opened it…and it stayed that way, the instructions said put
in water, we did and it slowly started expanding until it became a 40 by 40 cm.
hand towel, it was pretty cool. Maria and I read some Goosebumps (the night
of the living doll 3) and went to bed.
We would be flying
to Beijing to see great wall the next morning.
