Knit You Some: April 2008

Now I admit that I am one of those known to exaggerate and stretch the truth a teeny weeny bit just to make the story a little better. BUT believe me when I tell you...no exaggeration involved that knitting was EVERYWHERE in China!

It was extremely popular in the smaller villages, where the women spent their days relaxing in the shade of their booths full of fake designer purses, Buddha souvenirs and weird children's toys waiting on the unsuspecting tourist to walk by so they could pounce on you screaming the contents of their booth and how they would give you a good price. You have to pass by them again and again and repeat..."No thank you. No I don't want postcards but thank you. Zai Jian. NO THANK YOU. Quit following me! I said no. RUN!" after you passed they would sit down and continue knitting like crazy. I spoke to a few of them about their knitting, most of whom were doing sweaters for children or hats for themselves, and all of whom were using double pointed needles. I told them about how I preferred to use circulars and they looked at me like I was crazy. I guess those aren't popular over there. Here's some proof below. I was embarrassed to ask these ladies if I could take their picture so I got Tweedy to sneak around and do it while they weren't looking. Hehe!

I also managed to do some knitting of my own while over there and finished my big huge cowl. Pattern courtesy of Knit Lit. I used the same hip hop berrocco yarn as Kate did, but in Justus and I am really happy with how it came out! Too bad it's 80 degrees now. I did most of the knitting on our 15 hour plane ride over, but also fit it in during our 12 hour sleeper train and during the trip home. My question is why the heckoo do people keep taking pictures of me knitting? It happened 3 times over there! Is it because I'm a young adult knitter and they think knitting is only for grandmas? Or maybe I make a funny face while knitting? It's surely not because it's complicated because this cowl was so easy...knit one row and pearl one row! Great for a plane ride.

Jayber wanted to model it too.

I also accidentally walked by a Local Yarn Store while cruising through the streets of Beijing and was so excited that I bought some. I'm not sure now why I picked out this color and style. I think I was too rushed by Tweedy and our two other travel buddies...both boys too. The store owner didn't speak English either so that complicated things when I wanted to chat about the world of knitting. But the yarn is really soft!

Anyway...I thought it was pretty cool that they are obsessed with knitting in China just like we are here! (or maybe it's just me) The difference is that they knit for necessity. They have to do it or winter clothes will be scarce. All of the women know how and learn it from a young age. Maybe I'm just old school but I thought that was awesome and maybe we should take the hint too.....That clothes made by your own hands are special and always made with love.

Ni hao! We made it! All the way over to the Orient and back safely! It was a great trip but I'm so glad to be home...in my own bed, eating my own American food and using my own shower!! Things are so different over there, it's crazy. We started out in Hong Kong, flew to over to Yangshou, then to Beijing, over to Xi'an, through Shanghai and then back to Hong Kong. We spent about 3 days in each place. Total trip time = 3 weeks.

Best thing we did? Definitely the 10 K hike along the Great Wall of China. There are a lot of different places to get to it since it's 30,000 KM long. Some areas are a little touristy, but we found an entrance to it about an hour outside of Beijing that was perfect. The view from the top was amazing and it was definitely the coolest thing I've ever done. It took about 4 hours to do the total hike which was down stairs, up stairs, over some of the renovated parts and through the forgotten areas.

Other cool things we did....Riding bikes all through the country was amazing! We were in a small village called Yangshou for a couple of days and would rent bikes during the day, explore the countryside, visit the local markets and try out some local food! The rice fields are amazing as well as the karsts mountains, which surround this area. I got pretty tired from riding a bike for 2 days straight and on day 3 I told Tweedy that I could ride no more, then I requested a scooter!! So he came back with a tandem for us instead that he pedaled all day and I just cruised on the back. It was one of my favorite days.

Another fun thing to do over there is to shop till you drop in the black markets...which are everywhere! The best ones are in Beijing and you can get some pretty cheap stuff from them. We went to one of the big ones, The Pearl Market, which is 10 floors of fake designer purses, jackets and clothes, Chinese souvenirs and....REAL PEARLS! Tweedy came out with two good looking fake North Face jackets, our friend John bought some "Tom Cruise" Ray Ban sunglasses, and I came out with many Buddha souvenirs, a long pearl necklace, short pearl necklace for my mom and some pearl earrings. My mom had prepared me with all of the tricks to be sure that the pearls were real, which I tried on everything and then spent a couple of minutes haggling the price down with the dealer. If you're persistent, you can usually get them down 60% from what their starting price was. That's the fun part! Just to give you an idea of how cheap it can get...Tweedy got his North Face down to $14 US dollars and she'd started at $70. Pretty good!

Worst thing about China: Definitely the "squatters"....the toilets. Squatters + no toilet paper anywhere = not fun. Enough said.

One of Tweedy's favorite things was the Farmer's Market. It was this huge area where the locals would come to bring their home grown, picked, or raised goods to sell. They had everything from huge veggies, nuts, noodles, frogs and all kinds of meat to...DOG MEAT! I couldn't look at that part. I'm sure you all know about how they eat dogs over there...very sad. I will spare you the picture of the dead dogs for sale hanging from stations in the market.

We also visited a lot of educational and historical places such as Tienneman Square in Beijing where Chairman Mao's body is on display, The Forbidden City - Home of the Ming Dynasty, The Temple of Heaven, Hiked Mt. Hua Shan and visited the World's Largest Bronzed Seated Buddha.

About the food...it wasn't so bad. The menus were of course all in Chinese so we had to just guess what we were ordering, although they all came with pictures of the dish. Sometimes you would get something that was really really good (like peking duck or chicken curry) but sometimes you would get something that was really really bad...goose trachea or intestines. Stir fried dog was on every single menu as well as snake and sharks fin? We saw someone order the snake once which was brought out alive so the customer could hold it, then it was killed in front of their eyes and drained so you could drink it's blood (gross) then they would take it to the back to cook it. Nobody in our group wanted to get that. Sick. The places where we stayed weren't so bad but they weren't nice either. They were all hostels and about $15 a night at the most. I liked how all the hostels had a community room where all of the guests could hang out, drink Tsingtao (their huge beers) and discuss their travels. Most of the people we met were traveling alone and for months at a time! I could not be away that long. But that's just me. All in all....it was a great trip. I probably wouldn't do it again but it was a lot of fun! More to come later about the knitting over there. I'll leave you with the Hong Kong skyline....gorgeous!!