More October Holiday!

Monday morning a big group of us went to Qing Huang Dao, a city near the ocean. It was my first experience on a train in China. It was pretty nice. There are 4 or 6 seats facing a table so we could play cards and eat lunch easily. What I really liked about train travel is how smooth the ride is especially compared to the buses in Ecuador. I could actually sleep and not have my head bouncing against the side of the seat. When we finally got there after 4 hours, we started the search for a hostel. We were a group of nine: two Chinese and seven Americans. There’s a rule in China that foreigners can only stay at certain “approved” hostels. Why? This is China, you don’t ask questions. It made our search for a decent cheap hostel a bit more difficult. For example, Mike and KK would walk into a hotel and ask the price, see a room, bargain the price down. Then the rest of the group would come and the price was no good and we couldn’t stay there. Too many foreigners. After about two hours(!!!!), we finally found an ok place with an ok price. After that we went on a “hike” up a “mountain” to see the “sunset”. In reality, it was walking on a concrete path up a hill to see the sun slip behind clouds/smog.

Supper was exciting. Because we were on the coast, we of course had seafood. Instead of ordering from a menu, we picked out live clams, scallops, crabs and fish from buckets and took it to the restaurant to have it cooked. After supper we walked through a night market where vendors were selling jewelry and animals made out of sea shells. On the walk back to the hostel, we passed a vendor selling cotton candy on the street. It was too tempting. Mmmm… Giant cotton candy!

The next morning the plan was to go watch the sunrise together at 5:50am, sharp. Well, about 5:55am Catherine and I were still the only ones in the lobby waiting. A few minutes later Becky, Zach and Josh wandered down. Mike and his friends who planned the event failed to wake up for it. As we were walking down to the beach, I realized that sunrises in China weren’t going to be any more exciting than sunsets in China. And sure enough, it wasn’t. When we got to the beach, there really wasn’t much of anything to see. Just a ton of people already there. (Why???? When you could be in your bed sleeping???) We took a few pictures to prove that we really did get up. Zach and Becky went back to the hostel for more sleep and Josh, Catherine and I decided to wander around and see more of the beach. It was definitely the least beach-y beach city I’ve ever been in it. First of all, there weren’t any waves. The Yellow Sea, I guess, is too small or too protected, so no waves. Another thing, no one wears beach clothes. In China, no one wants to be tan. They all want to be as white as possible. So laying out in the sun just isn't their idea of a good time. Instead most people were wearing long sleeves and pants. Only the kids were actually playing in the water. And yes, it was warm enough during the day to be in the water. The only thing beach-y about the place was the seafood and the fishermen.

After everyone else finally got (ok, so we went back to bed for a while too) and we all had some breakfast, we went to the Great Wall! The problem with traveling with a group of nine people is only four people fit in a taxi. That is unless you find a less than honest driver who is willing to squeeze five in, which we did. Trust me, there are more comfortable ways to travel than having five people (four in back) plus a driver in a compact car. To see the start of the Great Wall, we took a speed boat and were able to take picture from the water (as opposed to paying 70RMB to go in the museum). It’s suppose to look like a dragon’s head but that takes a pretty big stretch of the imagination. Then we went to a part of the Wall where we could hike on it. To get there we had to travel through some very rural areas. One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing how the people live especially outside the big cities. All of the houses had flat roofs and people were drying corn on them. When we got to the Wall, it was pretty clear that apples are in season as every vendor was trying to sell some to us. The section of the Wall we were at was really cool: most of it was restored but part wasn’t so we got to see what is left of the original wall. To get on the Wall, we had to walk through an aviary (why? See same questions above). This is kind of pathetic but it was one of my favorite parts of the trip. There was a macaw who was trained to talk but instead of saying “Hello!”, he said “Ni hao!” (which is Chinese for hello of course). I don’t know why I found it so funny but I still laugh every time I watch the video of it. I’d send it out but it’s too big. So anyways, back to the Wall and how cool it was. Another great part was that there were very few tourists there. So the only thing in my Great Wall pictures is the Great Wall and not the Great Wall covered with thousands of people. Hmmm... There’s not much to say about it. The best way to describe it is with the pictures. I’ll post a bunch of them. BTW, when I say “climb” the Great Wall, I really mean climb. Most of it is steps. The area where we started was in a valley and the Wall went up the mountains from there.

The train ride back to Beijing was uneventful with the exception that we didn’t have seats for the four hour ride. So we sat in random open ones or on the (not so clean) floor in between cars. For four hours it wasn’t too bad but I can’t imagine taking an overnight train like that (people do!). Back at my apartment, Polly and I were happy to find that our water was turned back on. We were unhappy to find that it was blood red with dirt and clay in it, especially since I hadn’t showered since Sunday morning (that was Tuesday night, yuck!) and desperately needed to do laundry. We ran the water for at least 30 minutes before it was clean again and I did an empty load of laundry. We wanted to make spaghetti but the water had a funny smell so we decided ramen (made with drinking water, of course) would be a better supper.