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!!
Zai Jian!
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great post!
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