Sites around town in China

Well after several days of trying to upload all these pictures in this big post, I finally got them entered. For several days, every time I tried, I was getting "server errors". I think part of the problem was that my pictures were all over 6MB, so I reduced the size by two thirds. These are just some of the sites around town. Kyle is doing an excellent job educating you on the history of China and the historical sites. What we saw was only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to see. For example, in Tianjin, there are areas where the architecture is influenced by the country that settled there (France, England, Japan, Germany, Italy). Tientsin, the old Tianjin, was also the the city that the Last Emperor Pu Yi spent some time in after he was forced out of the Forbidden City.

It seems that all the flights from the United States arrive in Beijing about 9:15PM. We left Minneapolis at 6:00AM on a Saturday and got to Beijing at 9:30PM Sunday (yes the next day) about 15 minutes late because of snow in Tokyo. We found out the next day that Tokyo had several airport delays and cancellations due to an unusual snow storm. Thank goodness that we were not caught in that. My uncle Warren travels to Beijing several times a year and told me that we probably would not get to the hotel until midnight or 1:00AM. We had paid for a driver to meet us and take us to the Hotel and even though we were late arriving at the airport, we got to the Jinglun Hotel in the center of town at 10:30PM. We were truly thankful for that because we have been traveling for a very long time. With layovers at Detroit and Tokyo, the flight time was about 25 hours, plus we crossed the international date line. We flew over northern Canada for hours and not once did I see any civilization - no roads nor towns (we were on the right side of the plane looking North). Obviously everyone lives south. The hotel was a welcomed site. We immediately went to Kyle and Tiffany's room (two doors from us) to let them know we arrived. The guy that met us at the airport spoke good English and was a university sophomore studying marketing. I took this picture on one of our many walks to the Silk Market, McDonald's and to the subway station, all within three blocks.

This is the train station in Beijing. If you did not know that was a train station, you probably would have passed it by. It does not look like one to me. It did not say Train Station in English and I don't read Chinese. Glad Kyle was there.

This is inside the station where you buy tickets. We thought it would take us over an hour to get them (usually busy and New Years travel). But we walked right up to the window marked Foreigner's Window and got our tickets withing 5 minutes. Judy and Tiffany were surprised at how fast we were.

This is a picture of all the Taxis waiting to pick up passengers getting off the train. When we returned to Beijing on the train, we waited in the masses of people (there are no lines) for a taxi. It took us 20-25 minutes to find two taxis - lots of people and lots of suitcases plus a double stroller.

There were plenty of McDonald's hamburger joints. And you know what? They taste the same as here. Amazing. This is the one across the street from the train station. The one we frequented was by the hotel.

KFC is also very popular. This is across the street from Ancient Culture Street in Tianjin. Mmmm Mmmm Good.

This was my favorite eatery. The Pizza Hut. This was located on the main floor of the Hotel. It does not look an American Pizza Hut. This one was was classy, with art on walls, comfortable booths and real desserts. And it is cheaper than here. This was a huge place, a half block long.

This is the 鼎泰丰 Din Tai Fung restaurant, listed by the New Yorker as one of the top ten restaurants in the world. We had dinner there with Chris and Emily Hardy, good friends of Kyle and Tiffany (chrisandemilyhardy.blogspot.com).

This is what we ordered - Chinese food, 小龙饱 Xiao Long Bao. (Thanks Emily and Chris for the Chinese). This has a fatty pork wrapped in a dough and then steamed. You have to be careful because there is a broth inside that will burn you if you just plop it in your mouth. Bite a small hole in the dough and pour out the broth, then gobble it down.

The day we arrived, and before we got to the hotel, Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Dede found a Chinese "hole in the wall" restaurant to have dinner. They liked it and we ate there a couple more times.

This is the fruit stand where we got bananas and mandarin oranges. Before New years, we got water at the next shop down. It is now after New Years and he closed the shop for over a week.

If you need any home repairs and need to do any home projects, you can always go to one of my favorite stores - The Home Depot.

These are some of the really old road side stores.

There is a lot of remodeling going on because of the Olympics and therefore a lot of demolition of older neighborhoods.

Sometimes you may be hungry for roasted sweet potatoes and corn, but I wouldn't get them.

From the day before New Years (well probably several days) until six days after New Years, people were blowing off fireworks non stop. Most of them were long ropes of them between 500 and 5000 fireworks to a rope. You light them, watch them and walk away from them. Just leave the mess because the grounds keeper will clean it up after you the next morning. He collects this much every morning. You would think that after a while, he would get ticked off and start yelling at people to stop. But everyone does it and they don't mind. It is their job.

On one of the streets there were bags and bags of fireworks debris after one morning. Then the garbage man comes and picks it up.

More piles of red fireworks paper, right outside our window in Kyle's apartment.

I bought two big cans of aerial fireworks and blasted them off (49 in each). Just leave the remains where you enjoyed them for the garbage man.

This is one of the bigger fireworks. It is a spent 3 inch mortar - the kind that shakes the ground and sets off car alarms (even my smaller ones set off several car alarms). Dede is helping me display this.

Kyle has an electric rickshaw and gave me a ride one evening to RT Mart (the supermarket). I was taking pictures and movies throughout the store and them a couple days later Kyle mentioned that you are not supposed to take pictures in there. It looks like any large American supermarket, with isles of food, with all the shelves filled. When we checked out, the food cost about $20 and would last several days. They put only one or two things in each plastic bag and we ended up with 15-20 bags. Then we had to figure out how to get it home.

This is one of the many Pedicabs. Looks warm, doesn't it?

Where ever we went, Ellie and Dede were the center of attention. People would surround them, take pictures of them and have their pictures taken with them. The kids took it in stride - all in a day's work.

This is the bullet train we took to Tianjin and back. This looks like it was at the Beijing station.

The busy street from our Hotel window. There were traffic jams. You can turn right on red but you don't have to slow down - just turn and the cars will go around you, and you just drive through the people crossing the street with the green walk light. Kind of like Minnesota, except it is against the law - you gotta stop first. Also if there is a double yellow line in the middle of the road and you want to drive on the left side of it, just cross the double line and go for it. Sometimes you are driving in a lane on a multi-lane road and suddenly there is a bridge abutment in the middle your lane - quickly change lanes and let the other guy honk at you.

After a scrumptious lunch at KFC, Tiffany suggested that we go down the street and get a chocolate shake (there was a hole in the wall shop that makes them). He was closed for New Years. So we had to do without. That was a great disappointment.

This is the garbage truck in the apartment complex where Kyle lives. His job is to pick up the garbage from the garbage cans (for everyone in the building) and then dump it on the sidewalk for the bigger garbage truck to pick it up and dispose of it.

It was Valentines day and we noticed this in the subway station. It was a Valentine's Note wall, filled with post-it notes to special people.Then we ran into the Valentine queen herself. While Judy, Kyle, Ellie and myself were off to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City, Tiffany was out shopping for a new outfit for a special night out on the town. We watched the kids while they debated whether or not to have skewers of sea horses or scorpions.

Construction of a skyscraper going up by the hotel. Imagine working on the 90th floor and then they decide to attach some scaffolding - that does not reach the ground! It just goes out from the building and up. They must use sky hooks.

This is the Radio/TV tower in Tianjin, and it is one the top five tallest towers in the world. It was so tall that I could not fit it all in my camera lens.

A common plumbing method in China. Just attach a flexable hose to a sink, scrunch it up a bit, tie a string around it to make a P-Trap and stick it in a hole in the floor.

This is the Bird's Nest in Beijing. You will see a lot of this during the Olympics because the opening ceremonies will occur here.

Chinese shopping experience

Kyle is keeping you all posted as to the sites we saw while visiting China. Besides seeing all the sites and visiting Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Dede, the best part of our visit was the shopping. It was great. Both Kyle and Tiff are excellent barterers. Tiffany explained that we are really not taking advantage of any one of the vendors or ripping them off. They expect you to barter but they want the highest price possible. They will never sell you anything at a loss. They will always make money on everything they sell or they will not sell it. If they make a sale and they are still smiling, you could have gotten it cheaper. If they are mad at you after the sale, you made a good deal and they did not make as much as they could. Tiffany made two vendors mad at her in one day. Here is Tiffany after about a half hour deal to buy a Kate Spade (New York) bag at the Silk Market. When she got back to the hotel, she found that two of the zippers did not work. She immediately went back and exchanged it for another. The sale's lady was very nice and all the other people around were going goo-goo over Dede and several had to hold him. Now you see that every one is smiling so could Tiffany have gotten the bag for even less?
Here are a couple more shots from the Silk Street Market which was about three blocks from the Hotel, and across the street from McDonald's.












On the way to The Great Wall at Mutianyo, you had to walk the Vendor gauntlet. They expect you to buy a year's worth of "everything" on the way up to the Wall and carry it around with you. Not logical. They had everything from art work, T-shirts, post cards, toys, hats, etc.



The lady in the black coat in the middle tried to sell us all kinds of stuff and we told her that we would not get anything on the way up to the Wall but on the return. She said, "I will remember you." On our way down about 2.5 hours later, she was about the only one left open at the "vendor gauntlet". Everyone else had gone home for the Chinese New Years Holiday. We visited the wall the day before New Years Eve. Kyle and Tiffany had purchased tickets to take the Alpine Slide down from the wall while Judy and I took the kids with us down the cable car. But when they got there, all the operators had gone home early and they had to walk down. . It took an hour of arguing with the ticket sellers and a couple cell phone calls from our driver to get their money back but they got it.


This is at Tianjin's Ancient Culture Street market. If they sell it, you can find it here. We really loaded up on our gifts here and made excellent deals. My most expensive purchase was a large piece of artwork. From a distance, it looks like a painted piece but when you get close you find out that it is all thread. Somebody spent a lot of time sewing it. Now if I can find a piece of glass that big.

There were a couple of guys that made these dragons, scorpions and birds, among other things, out of green reeds. pretty amazing. They just braid them together.

The market was all decorated for New Years.












There were a lot of balloons for sale and we did get one for Ellie. That is another story.

















This is the box of 49 ariel fireworks that I bought to scare away the evil spirits. I bout two boxes of them.




Ellie was looking as some of our stash for the day.





This is my favorite fireworks place. We made several stops there.



This is at the Pearl Market where we spent over an hour bartering on pearl necklaces. There were bags and bags of them, all colors and quality.
This is a small bag of pearls. If you look close, you will notice that it costs 14,000 Yuan or $2000.


Both Judy and I got new "very expensive" watches. Judy's is a Rolex and mine is an Omega. Both have interesting stories. Tiffany and I were shopping at the Silk Market and on our way out, we ran into a street vendor who was trying to sell me everything from Olympic stocking hats, gloves, socks, Olympic key chains. When the Rolex came out, Tiffany bartered the price down to what she wanted to pay. There was another vendor standing two feet away and when the sale was over the second guy pulls out the same watch and says, "You want to buy a watch?" We started laughing because it was the same identical watch. Tiff just says," I just bought that watch. Why should I buy another one?" "I will give you a better price" So Tiffany thought that she could use a spare since the one she got several weeks earlier only lasted three days. She got the second one for half of what she just paid the first vendor. She gave it to Judy.
Kyle helped me barter the price down for mind. I had my price. and the bartering started ten times higher than the ending price. They would throw out a price and it was too high. We walk away and they holler out another price. This goes on several times. They say, "I really want to sell you this watch." And I say back, "I really want to buy this watch." I keep telling them my price and finally they matched it. She is still smiling so was I ripped off?

Some of the shops are so filled with merchandise that there is not much room for the seller. All you see is a head in the middle of handbags.

Chinese New Years Fireworks

The Chinese always shoot off fireworks to scare away the evil from the family. They are totally legal so what do any good Minnesotans do? They buy them. We liked them so much that we went back for more. We blew up a thousand fireworks at a time on the sidewalk outside Kyles's apartment (this was the second batch). This is all for the benefit for Andrew and Brandon, our family pyrotechnics. We decided to get some aerial fireworks like our 4th of July (they come 49 to the box). The second video is some of the shots of the high boomers that shot way up in the sky and exploded into many colors. Remember, the Chinese invented fireworks. Now if you multiply that by 12.5 million people in Tianjin or 1.4 billion in the whole country, it was a very noisy time of year. Nobody minds. The two biggest days was Nov 7 (New Years) and Nov 11 (the 5th day of New Years). It was non stop everyday of the week, and some of them were right outside our window. We just had the small ones. Some people bought the 4 inch mortars. All the cars sold here have alarm systems installed and all of the cars' alarm systems were going off as the fireworks went off. I wonder how many car batteries were drained. This was great fun. Andrew and Brandon, enjoy the videos because you will probably never get to do this.

The Great Wall of China

We made it to China. We left our house at 3:25AM on Feb 2. Our flight to China left Minneapolis at 6:00Am and we were supposed to be at the airport at least 2 hours before for international flights. We arrived at the NWA ticket counters at 3:50Am and they were all closed. Two other families were waiting also. So much for the 24 hour airport. A cleanup person said that someone might show up for work at 4:30. The line started to move then. Our gate was on the NWA end of the terminal. The security gates were also closed except to two on the other end of the building (We were told that they would open up at 5:30). So we hiked down and waited and waited to get through. We got through security just before 5:30 and walked all the way back to F40. When we got there everyone had already boarded the plane. We were the last ones, except the standby people. We left on time for Detroit, then Tokyo to Beijing. It was snowing in Tokyo and we left the gate 15 minutes late. We later found out that Tokyo had several delays and cancelations because of the snow. We got to Beijing about 9:30PM on Feb 3 (we gained a day plus Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Minneapolis). Jack, our driver was waiting for us and we got to the hotel at 10:30PM. We knocked on Kyle and Tiffany's room (two down from ours) to let them know we made it. Monday was a rest day for us. Kyle and I went to Tianamen Square and we all did some shopping. Tuesday was the best. We hired a driver to take us to the Great Wall and spent several hours there (check out Kyle's blog). After purchasing the tickets, we had to make our way through the gauntlet for vendors , trying to sell us everything under the moon. If we had a hat on, they would try to sell us another hat. Everyone had T-shirts. We ignored them and made our way to the wall.This is our first up close look at the wall.

We met some other Americans and invited them to walk on the wall. Actually they were Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Didi.
Yep, that's us.

From here the wall looks like it goes on for ever. To the upper right of this picture the wall is in the un-restored condition of ancient ruins. The part of the wall we were on was restored in 1989.
We came across one of the guards at one of the watch towers, who was sleeping. Gosh, Didi missed the whole trip.







This is all of us at the end of our journey.