Larsen's Journey: 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.