Great Fire Wall of China
- meesh
- Dec 2, 2019
- 15 min read
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and spent some much needed time off enjoying your family's company and stuffed yourselves with delicious food and amazing shopping deals.
So I'm going to start out this overdue post with some good news! As I mentioned in a few of my last posts, I have been studying for the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam. My test day was November 20 and I am very happy to say that I PASSED! Woohoo!!!
It's been a while since my last post and I'll blame it on China's heavily restricted internet access. Alex and I spent three weeks traveling all around China, visiting some historically rich landmarks and most importantly my family. I only get to see my family about every two or three years; for some of my family members, six to eight years will pass before I see them again. So, it's extremely special when I get to spend time with them. Since we had a jam packed three weeks on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I'll divide our trip into three blog posts so I don't take up too much of your time. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy! :)
For starters, we left Seattle on October 16th, right after I got to see my Lady Matadors play at SeattleU's tournament at Tacoma Country Club. Fun to see my team and most fun of all, my rocking coach, Gina! Now that I've graduated, I get to see the behind the scenes of what coaches do at tournaments. Fun times man!
We flew out of SeaTac at 6:30AM, shout out to the lovely Wendy Hull for taking us to the airport at 4 in the morning, you are an angel! From Seattle it was about a two hour flight to San Francisco where we would then fly about 11 hours to Beijing. Now, I know that sounds like a really long flight, which it is, and I know some of you may be wondering what one would do crammed in a plane for 11 hours. Well for starters, you can take a nap for two hours... and still have 9 hours to go. So you spend the rest of the time watching movies from the large selection United provides. Thanks United! I watched the Avengers End Game movie, was a little behind on watching the other movies that led up to it, but bawled my eyes out nonetheless. Alex of course looked over and chuckled. They also provide you with an abundance of food while on the flight. Two meals and a couple light snacks, accompanied with beer and wine. Woohoo for international flights! My dad hooked us up with a little airplane food hack by signing us up for Gluten Free meals. You get your meal before everyone else, and for the most part the food is better than the regular meals they provide. Thanks dad! We finally touched down in Beijing and got off the plane.
As with any international country, you have to pass through customs upon arrival. In China they take your two thumb prints and a picture of your face as you pass through. My cousin Henry picked us up and dropped us off at my aunt's house. Now, there aren't really houses in China like there are in the U.S. There's mostly just apartment/condo buildings to accommodate China's population of 1,435,768,226 people (credit to https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/) there's not enough room for everyone to have a house haha. My aunt, we call her Meiyi (may-yee) and her husband, we call him Fangshushu (Uncle Fang, his last name) have lived in Beijing for maybe about ten years now and each time we go back we either stay with them or with my uncle David on my dad's side. Meiyi is my mom's little sister. She is so selfless, she always thinks about us and sends clothes or other gifts she thinks my sisters and I will like with my mom every time she sees her. She also really knows how to have fun. Let me tell you, she will dress up in a cute outfit and take pictures EVERYWHERE (not exaggerating here, folks) and her laugh is so hearty, I love hearing it. She's a little thing, but you can't mess with Meiyi. It's awesome.
We took a quick power nap to kind of recover from the long flight. We left at 6:30 AM on Tuesday, October 16th and got to China at 2:30PM on Thursday, October 18th. That's a 15 hour difference, my friends. After a quick dinner at home, we went out to see the Bird's Nest (the big stadium that the 2008 Beijing Olympics were held in) and what I call the Ice Cube (the big swimming pool complex next to the Bird's Nest). Fun Fact, my dad and I got to watch the Argentina v. Brazil soccer match during the Olympics and Argentina won! Good times.
The next day Alex and I got up at three or four AM (thanks jet lag!) we had my Waipo's
famous noodles for breakfast. (Waipo is Chinese for your mother's mother) Then Fangshushu suggested that we go to some museums for the day. He took us to the museum of Science and Technology, which in hindsight, was really meant more for kids than two adults in their 20's haha but it was cool nonetheless. In China, you can pay for things with your phone, via AliPay or the WeChat app. WeChat is probably the equivalent of Facebook here in the states. It took a while, with slow internet and what not, but I was finally able to buy us tickets with the money I had racked up through getting red envelopes on WeChat. Red Envelopes are literally little red envelopes. Haha. They contain money and people send them with well wishes in hopes that the person(s) receiving them will have good luck and good fortune in whatever it is that they do. You can get them for your birthday, wedding, mostly for New Year, when there's a new baby, and you can even get one if you haven't seen a relative or friend in a while. Any occasion really. And the amount of money you give/receive can sometimes vary in amount depending on the well wishes people intend to give. For example, my Waipo gave me a red envelope later in my trip, of $600 to represent a safe trip home basically. Anyways, on the way to the next museum we had planned, Alex and I saw a sign that said "mall" and got distracted.
Alex was in desperate need of some coffee and so I set out to find some for him. We came across a GongCha, a bubble tea store and they said they had a black coffee, so I said great! Turns out it was a "warm, milky, three week old tasting" cup of sludge, poor Alex. We found a Starbucks 5 minutes later. Fangshushu picked us up for a delicious lunch of beef noodles and mutton skewers. Afterward, we went to Fangshushu's office where he and four or five of his coworkers spend two hours a day playing ping pong. He said that they need to take this break
to keep active and help them stay awake at work. Alex thought he was a really advanced player, but after facing Fangshushu and one of his colleague, he realized that he was only good for an American. Hard to argue when ping pong is the national sport of China! He learned a thing or two, so look out fellow Americans!
The next day, the sky cleared of smog luckily, so Meiyi decided that it was the perfect day to see the Great Wall. The Great Wall holds this name for a reason, it's about 13,171 miles long... longer than the distance of the U.S. going coast to coast! (Only 2,700 miles across, according to google) Meiyi is an experienced Great Wall visitor as she knew how to skip the long lines to the shuttle buses and found a guy who worked at a restaurant near the wall to take us to park closer. They let you park closer as long as you go eat at their restaurant after, as you have to make a $200 deposit. Seeing as the wall is so incredibly long, there are different sections that you can visit. We climbed the Badaling portion where there is a north and a south route; we took the south route. This climb is no joke either. With extremely steep slopes going practically straight up, we walked approximately 8 miles to the end of the route and back. There was a section of the wall we hiked and the steps were literally equal to three steps high and thank goodness there was a railing, otherwise you might fall. Quite scary, if you ask me. Okay and there were elderly people climbing the wall too! Crazy. We went on a really beautiful day so I was really thankful that Alex could experience the true fascination of the wall. Meiyi had the fun idea of wearing fencing outfits for pictures. Needless to say I thought it was a great idea.
The lunch was located in what looked like an old deserted town. However, once we stepped into the restaurant, it was so packed that service was hard to come by. The food was of course delicious. Hard to go wrong with any authentic Chinese food in my opinion. There are a lot of stray cats and dogs in China. I'll share a couple pictures as we go along. They're just so cute! A group of brother and sister kittens are pictured below at the Great Wall. :)
That night I got to see my cousin Josie (or Lailai), Meiyi's daughter and her husband Ryan.
The next morning Waipo and Waigong (Waigong is your mother's father) took us down to the little courtyard in Meiyi's apartment complex. There are play ground areas where kids can play, workout, and an area for older ladies who join dance groups to practice their dances together. These dance groups also include props such as fans, balls and rackets, and swords. It provides women with a great physical activity and opportunity o socialize. Older people come out to watch their grand children play and even to get together with other people their age to play chess and cards. My grandparents have made several friends in this courtyard and my Waipo loved sharing each of their backgrounds with me. Waipo also pointed out every fruit tree in the courtyard, explaining how Waigong had picked some and how she was a very skilled tree climber. She's afraid of dogs and so she has had plenty of experience climbing trees in her attempts to escape the scary beasts haha. That day we also taught Alex how to play mahjong. I like to think of it as the Chinese equivalent of poker. It can be a very high intensity game as bets can be placed and people can lose/win a lot of money. He won on his very first try (with some assistance from yours truly... I've also improved since the last time I played! Maybe I actually tried some strategy this time around).
My Waigong just turned 84 this year. I think it's safe to say he's doing well :)
In the afternoon I met up with one of my dad's best friend's daughter (Lucy) and a classmate from CSUN (ShiYu). ShiYu and I were in the same Gateway group for our Business Honor's class at CSUN and she found out that I was in Beijing thanks to WeChat (pretty much Chinese Facebook) and she just started a job in Beijing so it was really cool that we got to meet up! Alex and I took the crowded subway down to WangFuJing an outdoor mall that stretches across a couple streets. Malls in China are very large, most are composed of buildings with several stories and many, many escalators. They treated us to a round of Starbucks as we wandered around. We had dinner some Beijing potstickers and other Beijing dishes. They then brought us to a very "Instagram-able" place in the basement of one building called PingGuoJu. Apparently a bunch of Chinese celebrities had visited and so everyone just has to go too! PingGuoJu was very captivating. There was an ice cream stand where they had peculiar flavors including savory meat flavor (which ShiYu ordered!!) and Chinese liquor flavor. I took the safe route and ordered matcha green tea. They also had displays of what the streets looked like back in the day. The next move of the night was an escape room. If you've ever done an escape room, you may understand how hard it was for Alex and I to really help... especially Alex haha seeing that the clues were written in Chinese. I myself am not proficient in reading or writing Chinese, but I could understand when they explained it to me. I admit my translating skills were not at their best in that moment, but we were under a time limit, people! Good news is, we escaped! We then took an Uber to another part of town to walk through an alley with some freshly baked Chestnuts (a Beijing favorite of mine) to a Halloween themed bar called The V. We ended our night with spooky drinks.
The following day, we joined Josie and Ryan at a scrumptious Hot Pot lunch. Hot Pot is like Korean BBQ, except instead of cooking the raw meats and veggies yourself on a grill, you do so in a pot of steaming water/broth. In Beijing you just have plain boiling water and flavor it with the meat, whereas the further south and west you go, you will eat Hot Pot with a spicy broth. You typically cook vegetables after you've flavored the broth with the meat. A build-it-yourself sauce accompanies your meal, a mixture of peanut sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, ginger, green onions, peppers, all depending on your liking. We continued our day at HouHaiHuTong, which is a preserved area of ancient Beijing buildings. In this area are five lakes, a bunch of shops, expensive housing nowadays, a bell tower and a drum tower. See, back in olden times, the emperor and his wealthy compatriots lived within the Forbidden City and its near surroundings. Whereas peasants and other common people lived further away from the Forbidden city. Back in those days, only the emperor was in possession of clocks and therefore time. The emperor then notified his subjects of what time it was through the bell tower during the day and the drum tower through the night. Ryan is an exceptional photographer. He and Josie took a day off from work, out of their busy schedule to spend the day with us and take pictures for us. He and Josie often travel the world and take gorgeous photos (Josie is quite the model, I must say!). Check out @josiewenl and @ryan.r.run on Instagram to see what I'm talking about. Here are some of the beautiful pictures they took for us:
That night we met up again with Henry and enjoyed a Beijing Roasted Duck meal. An absolute treat while in Beijing. They cut the duck right in front of you! There are several ways to eat the different parts of the duck. The crispy skin is sliced off an you dip it in sugar for a nice, sweet crisp. The rest of the meat is typically enjoyed in a mantou bun (imagine a mini tortilla but made of bao wrapping), hoisin sauce, and green onion. SO DELICIOUS! We were supposed to eat with Henry's dad, my Uncle David (David is my dad's youngest brother), as well but his flight got in later than planned. We met him at his home. Whenever we go to Beijing we either stay at Meiyi's home or David's. We've been staying at David's home since I was about five years old.
Day 6 in Beijing started off with some spicy noodles. Not naming names, but someone couldn't handle the heat...! Alex and I took the subway (which by now was becoming my favorite form of transportation as it was cheap and convenient) to TianTan or the Temple of Heaven park. This is where the emperor would perform his sacrificial ceremonies to the gods above with animal sacrifices. The park is huge and has many temples within the vicinity. Within the park there are also gardens, kitchens, an echo wall, several gardens, of course an altar and much, much more. I will include the map below (last picture). After seeing all that the park had to offer, and being rather tired from all the walking we had done, I requested that we go get some real lunch. I had bought Alex a beer and a can of Lays for us to share to snack on earlier. Now, for some reason, I always end up at KFC in China. And I have to say, Chinese KFCs are far superior to that of American KFCs, simply because they have ice cream. I bought myself a three piece and a soft serve cone and enjoyed it on the subway ride back to Meiyi's house.
Pretty much the minute we saw Fangshushu, he wouldn't stop raving about how Chinese pizza was better than American pizza... and even Italian pizza. So he took us all to Pizza Hut for dinner. We had a lot more than pizza though. There was spaghetti, steak, salad, wings, calamari, and fries. The size of the pizzas were more personal pizza status, but with all the food we ordered, that didn't matter.
Our final day in Beijing was spent exploring the Forbidden City. What's convenient about China is that you can preorder admission tickets and just use your passport or government issued ID to get in. No need to print anything at home. Ryan and Josie kindly ordered out tickets ahead of time. Alex and I took yet another trip to Starbucks before making our way over to TianAnMen Square. TianAnMen Square is the Southern gate and entrance into the Forbidden City. On the front is a picture of Chairman Mao and his body is actually kept in a building on the other side of the square. The people of China love him. They literally go on and on about how they owe everything they have and how well their life condition is to him.
The Forbidden City, now not so forbidden, is also huge! Now, Alex and I had already logged an average of five miles of walking each day so far, but we would have logged 11 miles for this day, seven or eight in just the Forbidden City alone (We ended up walking to dinner, just for kicks). Inside the "city" are many, many palaces as well as temples and gardens. Everything you'd expect a city built just for the emperor to have. The doors to the gates all have these gold knobs, which you can rub for good luck. Of course we rubbed them!
We got some automated guides to help us learn tidbits of information as we reached certain points of the city. If you see at the corners of each roof, there are these little "beasts" that help protect the building. The more beasts there are on that roof, the more important that building is. The emperor had several palaces dedicated to himself where he slept, where he dealt with official governmental business, and where he even threw fanciful feasts for his wealthier subjects. It was an honor to join the emperor in times of celebration or in times of sacrifice. The other palaces were dedicated to the emperors family: wives, children, and even concubines. There was even a hall full of beautifully crafted clocks from around the globe. Before we saw them, the courtyard leading to the hall had the famous nine dragons carved painting. The dragon in the middle is their leader. They were all golden and encrusted in jewels. In the middle of most staircases were stone carvings, the longest one pictured in a selfie below. When you first walk in, there is a large courtyard with a series of bridges crossing a man made stream. Our automated tour guide told us that outside each building there are also two great pots that used to be filled with water. In case of a fire occurring, they would use these pots to put the fires out. There's no time to call the fire department, the emperor's palace is burning! Also, I'm not sure if there was a fire department back then. As you get further and further into the city, it becomes more of a maze and there are entry ways (most of which, Alex was too tall for) leading to many alleys that bring you to different parts of the city. They didn't open all of the doors to all of the different palaces as they were doing some repairs to the ancient city. Kind of randomly, in the there is a "tree of love" so naturally, I requested we take a picture. The city is also encircled in a river moat. Alex and I were wondering what would happen if someone fell in. Where would you have to swim to in order to get out/rescued? It was a long ways folks...
We took a pretty epic jumping kungfu styled picture. You must swipe to see below!
The city was closing, we had already taken in all the sights it had to offer, and we still had about an hour to kill before we met up with my cousins for dinner. So we decided just to walk to dinner instead of calling a taxi. Usually when I come to China, I am accompanied with at least one family member at all times and so if I'm not familiar with a certain area or can't read any of the signs (who am I kidding, the only sign i can successfully read all the way are the entrance and exit signs without guessing what the other characters mean) I can rely on them to let me know where we are. However, this trip, I was the one who needed to be relied on because Alex can't even understand what people are saying. Poor guy haha. No he was in good hands guys! Anyways, thank goodness for T-mobile and their allowance of 2G data in foreign countries because I was able to use WeChat with the location of the restaurant my cousin dropped me and navigate the two of us through the alley ways of Beijing, west of the Forbidden City. That's right people, we walked through dark, narrow, unfamiliar to me Beijing Google Maps style! With a good estimate, I asked a security guard if we had reached our destination and he confirmed that we were and that our restaurant was just inside this random, plain and empty building. Sounds sketchy right? Anyways, we go down the escalator and I find that the restaurant's name is DuanWu which means Duan House. How cool! We were having dinner with Henry, my Uncle David, and my cousin Gerui, who I haven't seen in probably six years (Gerui is my dad's sister's son, my oldest cousin). And Henry and Gerui were bringing their girlfriends and i brought Alex so this was a big deal haha. The restaurant had Japanese cuisine and all of it was literally so tasty. Gerui had just gone to Japan so he returned with some gifts and sake for us all to share. These two are like my big brothers so my heart was just very full and happy to be able to spend time together and enjoy a meal with them. We talked about how they had learned English and how it was way too formal to how Americans typically speak English. Check down below for a tutorial on English 101, "How to Greet Someone in English."
Great way to start off our China 2019 trip! Stay tuned for more stories of our time abroad. May these stories provide you with some joy, laughter, some new knowledge, or perhaps just a way to procrastinate on your studies before finals. Thanks for reading!
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