Lost things in China

There is a Patron Saint of Lost Things, St. Anthony, as Judy can attest to. Let me tell you of a couple of lost things that didn't stay lost for very long in cities of millions and millions. You can see me wearing a blue Columbia Yazoo hat is most pictures I am in. While shopping in the Silk Market in Beijing, we had piled all our coats on top of the double stroller because of all the heat generated while shopping. When we were approaching the fourth floor on the escalator, we had a mishap. All the coats slipped off but we managed to catch them before they got ground up in the escalator. I noticed a short time later that I was missing my hat (you need a hat in China in the winter time). I looked through all the coats and in the stroller but it was gone. Tiffany and I backtracked a bit on that floor but no one had seen it. I said it is no use and we continued on with shopping. I would need to buy a new hat. Tiffany and I decided to go to the basement to finish shopping. As we were approaching the basement on the down escalator, I spotted something blue on the floor on the other side of the glass hand railing of the escalator. It only took me a second to realize it was my hat. It had fallen in the small space between the up and down escalators from the fourth floor to the basement, landing on the floor between the glass hand railing of the escalator and a building wall. As we were exiting the escalator, I reached over the hand railing and snatched up my hat. I was thankful for that because it was kind of cold outside.

The other episode I had was in Tianjin and I lost one of the nose pads on my glasses. One of them fell off my glasses (part of the plastic where the screw goes through broke so it would fall off). It fell off three times while in China. I actually found it all three times, too. Had I not found it, I would have been walking around looking out of crooked glasses, that would be digging into my nose. But one time I thought it was almost a goner. We were all crowded into a small Honda Civic taxi cab (us four adults plus two children and the driver). I guess you really don't worry about seat belts in China because we were crammed in there so tight, we could not move. Well the nose pad fell off again inside the cab and it was night and therefore dark. When we got back to Kyle's apartment, I carefully looked on my coat, inside shirt and coat pockets and inside the cab. I thought it was gone for good. Even the driver got out and looked in the back seat with a flashlight. Then I spied something shiny on the pavement about 1.5 feet underneath the cab. So I kept my eye on it, hoping it was what I was looking for. So as the cab drove off and did not run over it, I bent down picked up a small clear plastic thing that turned out to be the missing nose pad to my glasses. Amazing. When I got home I went to the store and got new ones. Maybe there really is such a thing as a St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Things (well I didn't say the little jingle that goes along with it). I do not have any pictures to prove any of this so you will just need to take my work for it. The End.

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.