The Crazy that is Called CHINA

Let me first start out by saying, this is the first trip I have ever taken out of the country, so I was immediately put in ultimate culture shock. And boy is China a heck of a different country to first experience. Although, the first words out of my mouth when asked about China is that it is absolutely crazy, it really was a great trip that I am very glad I was able to experience it. I only say that China was crazy because you are put WAY outside of the comforts of home, and basically everything that is somewhat familiar to you is nowhere to be found. Although I have always been grateful to live in the United States, my gratitude and love for my country increased 100 fold after this visit. My favorite phrase during my visit was, "Thank God for America".

Now, so all of you can get a little taste of our trip and maybe a better understanding of my introduction, I have posted A LOT of pictures and will explain things as I go along. So beware, this is going to be a long post.

This first picture is of The Great Wall. We rode an overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing to be able to see The Great Wall, The Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, and many other places. The Great Wall was absolutely amazing.

We took a ski lift up to a part of the wall. From there, you can walk on the wall as far as you like.

Notice in this picture, the steps are extremely slanted. You feel completely off when walking along these parts. The entire wall isn't like this, but a lot is.

There are a lot of places where you literally have to climb because the steps are so steep. This isn't really a place you would want to take your kids or elderly relatives.

So steep. Have to hold on to the railing.

All of us with our tour guide, Emmy.

To get down from The Great Wall, you can choose the option of taking a toboggan. You MUST take these. They are so fun! You can make them go as fast or slow as you want. The best is to let it go as fast as possible the whole time.

All of us kept having to slow down because the guy in front of Chase was going so slow and ruining our fun.

At the end.

This is our room on the night train. All the beds in China are hard as a rock.

Temple of Heaven

Chase and I riding on one of those carriage bikes. This is right before the man driving us dropped us off at the completely wrong place on purpose (but he told us it was the right place and we didn't know any better). We were lost from the Laytons for an hour with no money, no cell phone, and no clue how to speak the language. It was the longest hour of my life, and I was so close to losing it. Finally, after 2 trips to a tour guide booth and 2 attempts at understanding broken English, we finally came across a girl who spoke better English who showed us the way to the Forbidden City where we were supposed to meet up with the Laytons.

Here is that stupid man who totally took advantage of us. I so badly want to kick him in the face!

Forbidden City

Our authentic Chinese meal after visiting The Great Wall. What you see here was actually very good. Our tour guide ordered everything for us, and she did a very good job at choosing dishes that Americans will eat. Now, as far as everything else the Chinese eat, it is straight NASTY. They do not eat the kind of Chinese food we eat here in America. It is completely different, and it looks and smells HORRID. And that smell is everywhere. There is no escaping it. And they eat all that weird, nasty stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even at our hotel in Beijing, the continental breakfast had all that nasty food and the look of it makes you want to vomit.

The Birds Nest from the Olympics in Beijing

The Chinese Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai

Seth playing in his school band during the parade at the Expo.

Ok, so, being a female, I do not do well with the Chinese way of toilets. They are squatters. I am not. This is the bathroom on the night train to Beijing. Be glad I am showing you this cool looking bathroom, and not the straight nasty bathrooms that are everywhere else in that country. Every time I entered a bathroom, the smell was absolutely overwhelming. It is purely awful. SOO much worse than the worst gas station bathroom you have ever been to. They also do not have any toilet paper so if you want to use some, you carry your own. And it is very rare if the bathroom has soap. So germ freak as I am did not cope with this very well.

Right outside of the Layton's townhouse in Shanghai. I don't know why we forgot to take a picture of the front of it.

The living/dining room. This place literally is the haven away from the storm. I think one of the things that really surprised me about China was how poor most of the country is. This townhouse is the complete opposite of how normal Chinese people live. It is more westernized and is more comfortable to those living in China from other countries. It is also very expensive to live here, which is why if you are Chinese and live here, you are pretty wealthy.

The townhouse is 4 stories: basement with pool table, laundry, and storage, 2nd floor is living room/dining room, kitchen, and bathroom, 3rd floor is 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, 4th floor is another bedroom and office. We stayed in the bedroom on the 4th floor. From the basement, there are 60-70 stairs up to the bedroom (I counted, but now can't remember). Chase always joked about having to climb the Great Wall just to get to our room.

Kitchen. Very rare to have an oven in China.

Here is one of the places we went shopping. Shopping in China is awesome (except grocery shopping. I'll get to that.) Mainly, it is awesome because you bargain for everything. It is just a big game. We were told to offer 1/4 of what they initially ask for, and then don't raise from that price very much. Although, they would put up these big charades about how crazy we were for wanting to pay those low prices, not once did we not have them yell after us as we started walking away and give in. It's great because you are in total control (if you are confident and do it right). Always be prepared to walk away. It works like a charm:) This place was packed with a million little shops down every street. You just get turned around and lost in all the shopping.

The World Financial Center. We went all the way up to the very top- the 100th floor. It scared the living tar out of me. A lot of the floor is glass so you can see through the bottom onto the street. I just hugged the wall for a couple minutes and then had to go back down. And it didn't make it any better that you could feel the building slightly swaying back and forth.

Looking out from the top. And this is even zoomed in as far as the camera would go so that shows you how high we were.

Now, I'm getting to the part about the shopping- the good and the bad. First, we are starting with the bad- grocery shopping. The things in grocery stores are completely different than what are in ours. If we had to live in China, I would be completely stressed out as how to feed my family. You can find some stores that do sell some Americanized products. But you have to be willing to pay big bucks for those items. For example, a box of Chex cereal is 10 American dollars, a bag of chocolate chips is 7 American dollars, etc. It is outrageous.

Here is a grocery store with all Chinese stuff. There was not a single thing in here that I would buy for my family. Also, one of the worst things about the grocery store is the smell. It smelled of decay if you ask me. Just looking at this picture makes me sick to my stomach because I remember the awful smell.

Notice how none of the meat is wrapped. And would it surprise you if I told you that none of the workers cutting the meat wore gloves?

And how about the customers buying the meat? Nope, no gloves either. Everyone just starts digging in, touching everything, and picking out what they want. All the while coughing and sneezing all over everything. SO, SO, SO disgusting. And when they get what they want, heaven forbid they use sanitizing wipes to clean their hands, but no, they have to go around touching everything else in the store too. That was something I really had a hard time with is how dirty and unsanitary everything is in China. It's just how they live.

Ew. I don't even touch meat when I'm preparing it at home.

The smell of whatever all this stuff is was completely, overwhelmingly rank.

None of the food ever looks normal there.

This is the kind of stuff that's all over the place. And for some reason, they love it.

I can't look at these pictures without being sick to my stomach. I really wish I could adequately explain the smell.

I wish I had taken a picture of the tank of fish in the store where you get a net and fish out the fish you want to take home to cook. They just sit there with the net, scoop up a fish, pick it up, look it over, throw it back, scoop up another one, decide if that one looks good, and so on. And still no sanitizing wipes!!!

There are diapers for sale at the stores. Do many people buy them? No. Therefore, they need a dummy to show what these are used for. Even when I asked our tour guide at the Great Wall why the babies don't wear diapers, she did not know what the word diaper was. But she did tell me that they don't like to use them because they think it is bad for the skin and that the skin should be able to breathe.

So this is what the babies wear instead. Everywhere you go, you see babies butts. The entire crotch of the pants that kids wear is cut out. So the entire front of the child is exposed as well. I still don't understand how the mom's holding the babies aren't covered in pee and feces constantly. Somehow, I guess it works for them. But the reason they wear these pants is so that the child can squat down wherever they are and use the bathroom. Kids on the side of the road just start peeing (and grown men but that's a different story). We saw one mother holding her small child (I am guessing about 6 months old) in the grocery store over a trash can trying to get him to pee in it.

That is another thing about China that is difficult to get used to- the horrible smell. If you aren't smelling the nasty food, it reeks of sewage. The entire country (or at least Shanghai and Beijing because that is all we got to see) smells like sewage. And I'm sure people going to the bathroom everywhere doesn't help it. Another thing is everyone, and I mean everyone, smokes in China. And you are allowed to smoke anywhere you want. There is no getting away from it. I really think that just from 2nd hand smoke and all the pollution I breathed in from my week stay, I lost about 5 years of my life.

Now on to the good part of shopping- the bargain shopping. I already explained somewhat how to get a good deal. Here, I am going to show the coolest place- the Fabric Mart. This place is heaven. There are 4 floors of hundreds of booths just crammed in next to each other. Some of them specialize in different things, such as suits, dress shirts, coats, etc. They all display some of the things they make so you get an idea what they specialize in. The best part is, these people can make anything you want. You can bring in a picture and say "I want this", and they can make it. First, you tell them what you want and pick out your fabric. Then they measure you and you start talking price. We got some great deals.

Some of the shops specialize in ties, pashmenas, cuff links, etc. We got Chase several 100% silk ties (paid $1 for each) and several 100% cashmere pashmenas (I won't tell my dirt cheap price because some I am giving as Christmas presents).

Here is Chase's suit we had made. It's all wrinkled from being shipped to us. It is wool and super nice. Bargained and got it for $70.

Here is my beautiful houndstooth cashmere coat that I had made just for me. I can't even describe how nice and high quality this coat is. I am so excited about this purchase. I paid $60. And I even got a crimson cashmere pashmena to match:)

Trying to show how nice the cashmere is.

This is my "Coach" purse that I bought in the underground market. Let me say, we followed a few people back to their random hideouts where they sell bags and things, and you go back through some pretty scary alleys and such before you are lead into this random room with the goods. In one of the rooms, we ran into this man from Mexico who was in his 40's or 50's. Really nice. But he was hiding in the back while his wife looked. He told us he was so scared to be there because he knew the police were going to come any second. This purse we bargained down from 1250 RMB to 200 RMB, which is $30. I was so proud. I got a black one for my sister Kim, too. They have this exact same purse at Dillards for $500, and I still can't tell how mine is fake.

Another thing that is everywhere are real freshwater pearls. You can get them for next to nothing. I got several pearl jewelry Christmas gifts so I won't share my prices, but let's just say you will laugh.

Well, now that you've been reading this post for the past hour. That is basically a quick sum-up of our trip. I could go on and on about the weird stuff we saw, how crowded everything is, how there is no personal space and everyone is all over you, how insanely packed the streets are with cars, scooters, and bikes (don't get me started on those), and all the cool things we experienced. So glad we had this once in a lifetime opportunity!