travel

A tale of two sides

/ slightlyreworded / 11 Comments

Shanghai is a city best seen from above. I recently took in a view from a rooftop bar called Flair, on the 58th floor of the Ritz-Carlton.

The bar was full, but I was able to wedge into a spot overlooking the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower. An array of neon lights from the skyscrapers in Shanghai’s Pudong district – an area that was mainly farmland until it was developed in the 1990s –  gave the clouds moving slowly overhead a yellowish tint.

View from the top of the Ritz-Carlton.

Shaped liked a rocket waiting to blast off into space, the Pearl Tower reminded me of one of the tacky electronic toys that vendors outside the Forbidden City in Beijing use to get your attention as you enter the palace. To the southeast, another behemoth of a building, the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center – jutted into the sky. Not to be upstaged by the bizarre Pearl Tower, the top of the World Financial Center resembles a bottle opener, with a gap large enough for a modern day King Kong to perch. Continue reading →

This language is bleatable

/ slightlyreworded / 14 Comments

Arriving in China for the first time without having ever studied the language is a bit like being shot out of the womb. You can’t speak or read signs, so you’re forced to point and use body language to interact with this strange, new world.

The first time I hailed a taxi in Beijing, I must have reeked of that fresh off the boat smell because the driver immediately began peppering me with questions. He didn’t speak English, and I only understood three Chinese expressions, ni hao (你好, hello) xie xie (谢谢, thank you) and dui (对, correct).

When we came to a red light, he drew the letters U-S-A on the steering wheel and raised his hand, extending his fingers horizontally so his palm was flat like a duck bill. He moved his hand toward me, making a “whiiissshhh” sound as it cut through the air. Continue reading →

Vanishing into thick air

/ slightlyreworded / 15 Comments

My biggest complaint about Beijing is the pollution. Nothing saps the energy out of me first thing in the morning quite like looking out the window and not being able to see a building that I could probably hit with a baseball. It’s depressing and bad for my health.

But I put up with it because I live near the heart of a booming metropolis. Public transportation is great. The food is cheap. And, when I need a respite from the congested streets and noisy shopping markets, there are plenty of art museums and well-maintained parks to get lost in.

I recently traveled to Tai’an, in the eastern province of Shandong, to climb one of China’s holiest Buddhist mountains with a friend from college. We left in the morning, on a high-speed train from Beijing’s South Railway Station. A light haze hung over the city. Continue reading →

Tall, dark and shiny Hong Kong

/ slightlyreworded / 3 Comments

I used to have dreams in which I would walk to the edge of a cliff and peer down into a seemingly bottomless canyon. Suddenly, a gust of wind would knock me off my feet, and I’d tumble over the side.

Most of the time, I’d catch a branch on the way down and pull myself back up to safety. But sometimes I’d continue falling toward imminent death. In those dreams, the feeling was real, because I was actually falling out of my bed. I’d wake up on the floor with that weak-in-the-knees sensation you get from fear.

I experienced that same feeling while observing Hong Kong’s skyline from the Peak Tower. Located near the top of Victoria Peak, a 552 meter hill overlooking the city, the tower sits 396 meters above sea level. I went at night, on an evening when the sky was clear. I was lucky, because sometimes the pollution from factories on mainland China is so heavy that it casts a haze over the island, considerably reducing visibility of the skyline. Continue reading →

In China, a 75-year-old war wound is still bleeding

/ slightlyreworded / 3 Comments

When I was a boy, I liked to argue with adults about history. I’d ask questions that are impossible to answer, like whether the United States would have become a superpower if the South had won the Civil War, or whether we’d all be speaking a different language if the Allied forces hadn’t defeated Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

I formed my own opinions too, mostly based on facts I learned at school. One of the more heated debates I had was with my grandfather, a Korean War veteran. I told him I thought the U.S. was wrong to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II.

He said the bombing was necessary to end the war, and that I didn’t understand how brutal the Japanese soldiers were. But what about all the innocent people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima killed by the bombs, I asked. What did they do to deserve to die?

It was the only way to end the war, he repeated. Continue reading →

There’s no space like home

/ slightlyreworded / 5 Comments

One of the things I miss most about living in a small town is the space: the ability to stretch out my arms without hitting another person or walk for miles without seeing anyone.

It’s a luxury you lose in a city like Beijing, where even the widest streets sometimes feel every bit as cramped as the smallest alleys. The crowds are difficult to avoid, whether you’re riding the subway in the middle of the day or going to the bank on a Saturday. The feeling of constantly cramming into lines and bumping elbows with strangers can become overwhelming.

When I need a break from the crowds, I often head into one of Beijing’s 300 parks. For a city hell-bent on growth and economic development, Beijing has a surprising amount of space committed to leisure and recreation.

The largest is Chaoyang Park. At 713 acres, it is is comparable in size to New York’s Central Park. It’s home to a very unsafe-looking roller coaster (the only thing holding the safety harness down was a seat belt that looked like it had been pulled from a junked car), volleyball courts that were used during the 2008 Olympic games and restrooms that resemble a giant ladybug.

It’s easy to get lost, as I managed to do last summer when I rented a tandem bike with my girlfriend and made the fatal error of letting her lead the way. When we came to the conclusion that neither of us had any idea where we were going, I picked a direction and peddled like a madman to get us back to the rental office before it closed. Despite giving it my all we arrived a few minutes late and had to forfeit the deposit for the bike. Continue reading →

The land of the emperor of beers

/ slightlyreworded / 3 Comments

Growing up in a part of the world largely isolated from Asian culture, two of the things I associated most with China were fortune cookies and Tsingtao beer.

I quickly found out after eating a couple meals in Beijing that fortune cookies are not a Chinese tradition. But Tsingtao beer is to China what Budweiser is to America: the emperor of beers.

Tsingtao is brewed in Qingdao, a city on China’s east coast, which hosts an international beer festival every year. Since I rarely meet a cold drink I don’t like, I decided to go there last August to mingle with the country’s top beer connoisseurs.

I took a high-speed train from Beijing to Qingdao, a service that was only opened last summer. If you haven’t taken a trip yet on a high-speed train, you should. The ride is comfortable; it’s less bumpy than a jet and more spacious. I’m about 6 feet tall, and I have trouble getting comfortable on long flights between China and the US. But on the four-hour train ride, I could stretch out without digging my knees into the back of the person sitting in front of me.

One of the first places I visited in Qingdao was a boardwalk along the shore of the Yellow Sea, on the east coast of China. The sky was overcast, and the beach was dotted with couples posing for pre-wedding pictures — a popular practice among middle- and upper-class Chinese. A light breeze ruffled the brides’ white wedding gowns as the photographers and their assistants scrambled to finish before sunset. The air in Qingdao was clean and fresh and provided a much needed break from the stagnant, gray air I’ve become accustomed to breathing in Beijing.

Boardwalk along the shore of the Yellow Sea. Buildings in downtown Qingdao can be seen in the distance.

Couples and photographers maneuver for the perfect position on one of Qingdao's beaches.

That evening I went to the trip’s main event — the international beer festival. It was held in a huge lot that reminded me of some of the fairgrounds in the United States. A steady rain was falling, and the ground was muddy. Large tents had been set up for the “designated drinkers,” and people crowded inside to stay dry. Many of the tents had stages that featured singers and dancers, turning the beer festival into a sort of variety show. Every so often, a half-loaded man would spring from the audience and join in, drawing cheers from the crowd. Continue reading →

Fortress opens window to ancient China

/ slightlyreworded / 13 Comments

I imagine it got lonely up here at night in the darkness, 12 meters off the ground. It was probably quiet too with the entire city sleeping, and with no cell phones, no radio, no TV. Just a bow and arrow and maybe some food and water to tide you over till the morning.

The sunrise must have been brilliant, with a view extending several kilometers into the countryside. Even the most indecisive minds likely had ample time to make judgments about the intentions of men approaching the gate. Business or battle. Friend or foe.

The towers where the first protectors of Xi’an patrolled in the 14th century are today home to merchants peddling cheap souvenirs and renting bikes to tourists. There is no view of the horizon anymore, thanks to scores of high-rise apartment buildings and air pollution from factories. The silence is gone too, as cars and buses lined bumper-to-bumper rumble through the wall’s gates all hours of the day, entering the heart of a growing city with a population of already 8 million.

A street in the city center that leads to one of the wall's gates.

The wall is now a tourist attraction, one of many sites that draw visitors from around the world to Xi’an, in northwest China’s Shaanxi province. The wall, shaped like a rectangle, surrounds the city center. It was built in 1370, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and is one of the best preserved ancient walls in China. Continue reading →

Where there’s a Wall, there’s a way

/ slightlyreworded / 209 Comments

One of the first places I visited after moving to Beijing was the Great Wall at Mutianyu. It sits above a charming village that has benefited greatly from tourism. Group buses from Beijing, only 70 km away, whiz past farmers carrying wood and crops on narrow roads all day long.

The road that leads to the Wall has been taken over on both sides by vendors hawking T-shirts (I climbed the Great Wall!), Chairman Mao hats, poster prints of the Wall and dozens of other souvenirs. There’s even a Subway restaurant, but sadly no McDonald’s or Starbucks. I thought about turning around but kept going.

To get on the Wall you can either walk a steep trail or ride a ski lift. I chose the ski lift and as I waited in line, I walked past pictures of foreign dignitaries who had visited Mutianyu. One of the pictures was of a sweaty Bill Clinton boarding the lift (“Must have been sitting behind some young co-eds,” an American in front of me quipped).

It was a clear day, and the views of the mountains were spectacular. But the Wall, still intact in most places, had a sanitized feel. Many of the towers and bricks at Mutianyu have been restored. I wanted to experience the Great Wall in its natural, crumbling state.

View from a tower window.

Sunset at Mutianyu.

Several months later, I went with three friends to an unrestored section called Huanghua (Yellow Flower). We hired a cab driver named Mr. Li to take us there. Our only request was that he get us to the Wall before dawn so we could take pictures of it at sunrise. Continue reading →

Where emperors galloped

/ slightlyreworded / 19 Comments

I went to Chengde on a whim, and it turned out to be the best city I had never heard of. My mother and brother were visiting Beijing from Kentucky, and I wanted to take them somewhere outside the Chinese capital so they could experience a different part of the country.

I picked Chengde because it was close and had a lot of history. During the Qing (1644-1911), China’s last dynasty, it served as a getaway for the royal family. Situated 250 kilometers northeast of Beijing, Chengde with its rolling mountains and thick forests provided a cool and scenic escape from the capital’s blistering hot summers and flat landscape.

Pule Temple, with downtown Chengde in the distance.

This pagoda, located inside the imperial summer resort, houses a statue of the Buddha.

We went in the fall, when the leaves had turned brilliant shades of red, yellow and orange. Chengde’s main historical site is Bishu Shanzhuang, an imperial summer resort that began construction in 1703. Admission was pricey – 120 RMB ($19) – twice what it costs to tour the Forbidden City in Beijing. But the resort’s impressive mountain lookouts justified the expense. Continue reading →