Author: ascott

[ Daniela ] This morning after a later wake up (8:15am!!!), we headed down to breakfast at 8:45am where our second last breakfast of the trip would take place. After breakfast we waited in the lobby for a while before going down to the subway. At the subway we took one train with 6 stops straight to the Lama Temple, although it wasn’t actually straight there, as we ‘lost’ a student at the very first stop! Poor Ruby! (Don’t worry we found her). The doors closed on the train before she could get in! The emergency management plan worked perfectly as Ruby stayed put and our Chinese guide, Charles, returned to get her.

The Lama Temple was an amazing experience, especially the beautiful smells of rotting persimmons and strong incense. Apart from this, the gigantic Buddhas caught our eyes, especially the last one where we had to look up and break our necks to catch a glimpse of the head. Once we were done observing these, we were all excited to finally eat some lunch as most of us were hungry. We went to a Chinese fast food place where we chose between pork, beef and chicken with rice. I chose beef and it was a bad idea… I don’t know how everyone else felt about the food, but to me I would prefer to eat the air with my chopsticks! Then we took the many trains back to the hotel where we had a 20 minute break to prepare for all the money we would be losing, shopping at the Pearl Market. In this 20 minutes I realised that I had my suitcase locked and my keys to open it were missing…

Once we arrived, after a 20 minute walk, we got given 2 hours to shop. Whilst the girls were shopping for traditional, nice Chinese things, most boys decided to spend their money on more fake goods (the amount of watches they have now!). There was also the group of girls obsessed and spending most of their money on their dried mango from a Japanese store, Miniso where Mr Scott set the trend. I, on the other hand, decided to save most of my money for this big day. My best buy today was a silk, traditional, red Chinese dress which ended up being 320 RMB from 4000 RMB which is a crazy bargain!!! Angela helped me with the bargaining and I came out of the change room to see her sweating her head off after a solid 25 minutes of convincing, but the thing is, the lady was still in her 700’s! So we decided to do the ‘slow walk’ twice and eventually she screamed at us with the price we wanted. At the 5:00pm meeting time we all shared with each other what we had bought. We then walked back to the hotel and everyone got excited for the dinner ahead (McDonalds).

Jo and I entered our hotel room where we met our friend Barry (the ghost of Chongwenmen hotel). We had an eventful night yesterday. It started when Jo had finally reached the toilet after a very long bus ride, where she heard an EXTREMELY loud screaming of “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” in her ear. I was right outside the bathroom door, banging, telling her to hurry up and I could hear minimal sound. As Jo and I talked about it afterwards, Jo quickly checked the time to see how long we had to get ready and the watch was reset to 8:10pm (it’s not a cheap China watch). It wasn’t even 5:05pm. Jo then said that we had to give this ghost a name and so ‘Barry’ appeared. We then agreed to leave the room and run to Rachel’s room to tell her all about our friend. We were then shouting our heads off only to be silenced, when we heard a ringing phone coming from our room at the end of the corridor (the creepy exit with no light). We suddenly looked at each other with worried emotions and our ghost story was rejected by Mr Scott who had heard our shouting! We were sent back to our room where Jo and I prayed that Barry was gone. We agreed to leave the room at 5:50pm in order to be downstairs at 6pm and you wouldn’t believe what time we heard a very light knocking on our door… and no one was there. As we were leaving the room, Jo took out her deodorant from her toiletries bag and said to Barry “if you are trying to say something, put the deodorant back in the bag”. We were relieved to come back to see the deodorant in the same spot as to where it had been placed before we left. Now, Barry is one of those friends you will never forget about and we will miss Barry when we head back home tomorrow.

Back to reality, when we walked back from the McDonalds we entered the room again. We were greeted by a staff member, who came with tools prepared to break my lock open, including a hammer and who knows what else! After 2 minutes he pops open the lock and guess what I find inside my suitcase… the keys!!!! But don’t worry I have a spare lock. After this Jo and I sat on our beds talking whilst munching on our many packets of dried mango, preparing for the final day tomorrow!

Note from Mr Scott: clearly, Barry doesn’t use deodorant…

[ Vicki ] After being awoken in the warm hotel rooms which had heating turned higher than ever, we were knocked by the contrasting cold, sharp, chilled air outside. As the sun had risen, we could see the sky which was surprisingly blue and clear, showing how pollution levels differ in China as in Chengdu, we had “peasoup fog” that blurred out the tops of buildings. In Beijing, the sunny sky gave the illusion of warm weather but the cold air froze us to our bones. Thankfully, we very obedient children agreed to the “four layers” suggestion (rule).
Walking on the grounds of Tiananmen Square, there were mixed emotions. There were many people, mostly tour groups, proudly taking group photos. Some patriotic people stood tall and respectfully as they looked up at the picture of Mao Zedong. They were happy as they were proud of the history and monumental changes that this place made on China, while others were less joyous as Tiananmen Square is a place of protest. It was amazing to visit this famous area that we had all seen countless times only in photos and through screens where we could not feel the broad grounds and rare emotions in the environment.
At the Beijing National Capital Museum, we had an amazing opportunity to see the 120,000 sacred cultural relics including Chinese bronze, ceramics, paintings and calligraphy. Some of us were fully intrigued and fascinated at the rare proofs of history, reading the meaningful descriptions while taking mindful notes and being emotionally invested in every detail. However, others simply found it as a time to twiddle their thumbs and frolic in the fields!

[ Ewan ] After our (very short) visit to the museum, our group immediately turned its sights to another major and obvious structure visible straight across from Tiananmen Square: the Forbidden City. With the cold air surrounding us, but our many layers keeping us warm (to an extent), we entered the Forbidden City through the huge archways. The next several hours were spent walking through the many courtyards, taking countless pictures and listening to our tour guide’s explanations of the city’s layout, construction and purpose. We stopped afterwards to briefly have lunch, before climbing a nearby hill to get a higher view of both the Forbidden City and Beijing in general. After a short rest in our hotel rooms, we set out once again. This time, we went to watch a famous Chinese acrobat show. The show wasn’t exactly very long, but it was INCREDIBLE. The extreme talent of all of the performers, men and women, blew us all away. The crowd favourite was, by far, the ‘wheel of death’, referring to a huge, spherical cage with a man driving a motorcycle inside, around in loops. This was already impressive, but then they added a second motorbike, then a third, and then a fourth. Imagine our shock once the fifth showed up! The entire show, and that final act, will surely remain in our memories for a very long time. We ate dinner after the show, and were then given 20 minutes to go shopping at a small shopping street. While some people were up and down the street, going from store to store, trying to find good deals, some of us were more than content spending the whole 20 minutes at the local McDonalds. Truly two types of people. As it was getting late by this point, we elected to ride the subway back to the hotel. Once there, we had about 20 minutes to prepare for bed, and then we slept, in anticipation of our trip to the Great Wall the next day.

Very, very cold in Beijing, but look at the blue sky!!!

Having spent a whirlwind 24 hours in Shanghai, we got a little behind on our blog commitments…it’s difficult when there is little downtime. We should now be up to date as promised!

Today, we spent four-and-a-half hours on the bullet train between Shanghai and Beijing. The bullet train was brilliantly smooth, achieving a top speed of 351 km/h. The only discomfort was the interior cabin temperature of about 25 degrees. Arriving in Beijing at 6.30pm, the outside temperature was zero!! Temperatures in the capital are currently ranging between minus 6 and 8 degrees…brrrrr.

We arrived at our hotel and hastily searched our luggage for gloves, beanies, scarves and extra windcheaters to wear under jackets. A luscious meal was enjoyed a few minutes’ walk from the hotel, and we returned for our night of rest at about 9.45pm.

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We arrived in Shanghai at around 8 after a bumpy night on the train. It was drizzly and cold, but I was surprised to see that the city was bustling with people (though I guess that’s what you get in a city of 24 million people). We then proceeded to march a whopping 100 metres to the hotel, where we chilled out and ate breakfast. The original plan was for us to do an adventure race around Shanghai, but everyone was exhausted after our night on the supposedly A-class carriage. Instead, we did a bit of touring around the old sector (I don’t remember exactly what it was called, but it had the gorgeous old style Chinese architecture), went to a super modern shopping centre for lunch (we had western food!!!), then went back to the hotel to chill for a few hours in the afternoon. Dinner was pretty fun; we went to another super modern shopping centre, then split into groups of 4 or 5, and then got to wander around and choose where and what we got to eat. After dinner we caught the world’s fastest elavator (18 metres per second) to the 118th floor of a skyscraper. The view would have been absolutely stunning had the sky not been resembling pea soup (gross and cloudy). Throughout the day, we got to experience Shanghai’s crazy railway stations; they were so crowded, and ridiculously hot (compared to the brisk winds and chilling rain outside). One thing I thought was really interesting was that in the train stations, they had clear walls around the actual track. That way no one would accidentally fall onto the track in rush hour. Overall the day was pretty ‘chill’ which was a nice change from the regular hustle and bustle.

Hayley

We have arrived in Shanghai and are set to explore this exciting city today. We are just finishing breakfast after a ‘rockin’ rollin’ridin’ night on the train…