再见 Shanghai

Instead of the usual "i'm so sad to leave...time is passing too quickly...etc etc" post, I figured I'll share my thoughts with this instead (it was written for my creative writing class here, but this fits the mood, so I'll share it).  

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Ode to Shanghai (Based off of Laura Steiner's Ode to New York)

To the city that I have had the pleasure to call my home for awhile,

Shanghai is the New York City of the East, it’s where life and death meet at each street corner, it’s the expats having lunch at the upscale Mr. and Mrs. Bund, it’s the younger marketing and PR professionals having brunch in the French Concession, it’s the older generation still striving to maintain their slowly dying language, it’s the 87^th floor of Park Hyatt in Pudong with a breathtaking skyline view, it’s the tourists, commuters, expats, students, it’s everything you don’t expect to see in a Chinese city. 

Shanghai is neighborhood.  It’s getting an egg crepe, with two eggs, scallions, radishes, cilantro, hot sauce, and a Chinese donut wrapped inside a crepe shell, in the morning from the skilled couple on Ding Xi Road, it’s the fruit stand lady on Anhua Road who loves to chat about more than which fruits are in season.  It is the chowfun lady on some street I can’t remember, who has to endure with drunken students on weekend nights.  If you’re lucky, they all just might remember who you are, and make your experience that much more rewarding.

Shanghai is food.  It’s where the soup from the xiaolongbao dripping from your mouth is normal, it’s knowing that Greek, Japanese, French, and American foods are all accessible by delivery, it’s knowing that a street full of food carts will only set you back $5, it’s going to KFC and coming out with an egg tart, it’s the ability to have a family style dinner that costs $2 per person.

Shanghai is an experience.  It’s seeing a baby pee on the streets and no one else around you cares, it’s a walk through Zhongshan Park before 10am and seeing the grandparents dancing and singing, and their grandchildren carelessly running around, it’s spending a Saturday in People’s Square wandering through the marriage market, overhearing a parent question: “Does your son have a house or a car, because that’ll be my deciding factor?” (of course, this is said in Chinese). It’s where Jing’an temple will be in the middle of a sea of modern office buildings.  It’s spending a day at the fake market exhausting any and all bargaining abilities you thought you had or didn’t have.  

Shanghai is having everything you can think of at the tip of your fingertips.  It’s East Nanjing Road where malls meet street vendors trying to sell detachable wheels for your shoes.  It’s being surrounded by people constantly, yet knowing that exploring alone and at peace is still an option. 

Shanghai started off as the city I never wanted to be in, a city I despised.  It eventually became a safe haven from traveling around China, a comfort in hearing the mandarin with a southern accent, understanding more than I ever will in other parts of China.  It’s finding comfort in the little things, knowing that if I can’t read the menu, I can just ask and get what I want.  It’s the first place that told me I couldn’t possibly be American because I look Chinese.

Shanghai is where there is too much too do and too little time.  You’ll want to tell all your friends about it, but they won’t understand.  Your explanation will be useless unless they can experience this city on their own.  It’s like New York City in a way where feelings overpower what you see. The sights and sounds will all be a blur, but the state of mind you have achieved will always be there.

You’ll go home and realize that even with the amount of time you had, you didn’t manage to experience Shanghai to the fullest.  No one ever will.  People will say that you can go back to Shanghai anytime, but the next time you go, it might just be a completely new city, an ever changing city.  Shanghai, like its people, will push ahead ruthlessly; keep up, because it won’t wait for anyone.  

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Below will be a compilation of a few of our many unforgettable adventures from study abroad with these 朋友's (friends), from KTV, to dying on the steps of Huangshan, to lasertag, to climbing the Great Wall, to those nights we actually can't remember...  Everything about this semester will be missed.  <3  

***this may be the last post of Shanghai, but hopefully it won't be the last post of this blog

Weekend Trip: Beijing (北京）

I couldn't possibly leave China without visiting the capital and the Great Wall, so four of us, Marissa, Alexis, Phil, and I, decided to cram a Beijing weekend trip in right before finals as our last hurrah for studying abroad in China. 

Beijing, the capital of China, surrounded by the Hebei Province, is the second largest city behind Shanghai in terms of urban population.  It is the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.  Pollution is suppose to be the worst in Beijing; however, we were fortunate and had better air quality than Shanghai on the days we were there.

Apologizes ahead of time for the lack of information in this post; it will mostly be a picture post.

High Speed Train (G-Train)

For our trip, we decided to take the high speed train (HSR-high speed rail) there and fly back, just to experience China's HSR once.  China's HSR is very similar to Taiwan's.  However, a few differences are that Taiwan's has three price classifications; business class, reserved seats, and non-reserved seats; whereas, China's just has first and second class and the setup/bathrooms are a bit different.  For the most part, everything else is the same. The one aspect that I like about Taiwan's better is the luggage space that is located in the front of each train segment, since it makes it easier to have larger suitcases.   

 Summer Palace (颐和园)

Once we arrived in Beijing, we checked into our hostel, Sanlitun International Youth Hostel.  The location was very convenient, located right next to the subway station, expats residency, restaurants, and shops.  The hostel's "concierge" was extremely helpful; they tweaked my itinerary and showed us how to get everywhere and recommended us a few places to go.

Our first stop, Summer Palace.  The Summer Palace mainly consists of Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake.  Since 1998, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.    

Marissa and Alexis

I believe this is Kunming Lake.

Summer Palace 

Olympic Park

Not too sure, why but somehow, Olympic Park and the Great Wall were on equal levels of "I have to see it while in Beijing" for me.  It's probably just the water cube that caused my excitement; the Beijing Olympics will always be a historical moment...at least in the swimming world, considering 25 world records were broken, Michael Phelps made history, and more importantly where Nathan Adrian made his first Olympic appearance, just saying.  

Ex-swimmers at the Water cube (made me miss it a little).

Beijing National Stadium: Bird's Nest

Temple of Heaven (天坛)

The Temple of Heaven is a collection of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of Central Beijing.  Many Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties held annual ceremonies for prayers to Heaven to ask for good harvest.     

Marissa, Phil, me, and Alexis

Temple of Heaven

Bian Yi Fang (Lunch)

You can't say you've been to Beijing without eating Beijing Roast Duck.  There are two famous places that people recommended to us: Bian Yi Fang and Da Dong.  We just happened to be closer to Bian Yi Fang, so we went there, but both locations are easily accessible by subway.

Lunch is served.

So much duck...

Tiananmen Square/Forbidden City 

Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world, with the Tiananmen Gate separating the Square from the Forbidden City.  The Gate was built during the Ming Dynasty and has since been the site of numerous political and student protests, which made the location a revolutionary icon.  

View of the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square.

Pictured above is the secret police.

The Forbidden City is ...actually a city.  It took us many hours to walk from the front gate to the back gate, and sadly everything eventually started to look the same.

    

Wangfujing

Wangfujing is one of Beijing's most famous shopping streets.  However, the main "shopping" we did was for food, since Wangfujing is also considered to be a night market.  The reasons that people stop by this street is for exotic foods such as fried scorpions, centipedes, starfish, and everything else you would never think to eat.  I mean there are normal things, such as fruit, dumplings, fried noodles, but why would you go all the way to Beijing just for normal food, why not be adventurous and try a bug or two? Jk...we didn't try anything exotic.    

Centipedes, spiders, some other insects that I'd rather not know about.

Starfish...yummy? We'll never know...

The Great Wall

The one and only reason (besides the Water Cube, but that's an exception) we wanted to visit Beijing was probably the Great Wall.  Due to the length of the history of the wall, please just check wiki, :) but as for my experience, here goes: 

The most popular section of the Great Wall is Badaling, which is also the most crowded and recently re-constructed section, considering that that section has stair rails; therefore, we DID NOT want to go there.  We wanted to go to the section that people rarely go to, Jinshanling, which is also 3 hours outside of Beijing located in the Hebei province.  This section is probably the most preserved section of the Great Wall, practically stair less after 30 mins into our climb. 

We booked a tour that included transportation there and back, breakfast, and lunch, but we had to pay for our own admission.

Finally get to check visiting the Great Wall off my bucket list. 

Literally "climbing" the wall, since there really were't any stairs.

One of the Great Wonders of the World. Check!

HouHai 

HouHai is one of the three lakes that make up Shichahai.  We finished off our trip here at a small pub like cafe with a spectacular view.  One of Beijing's many nightlife, cafe, and restaurant scenes surround HouHai.

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend trip.  Everything was absolutely perfect, down to the people I was traveling with: the weather was gorgeous, pollution levels were low, we didn't get ripped off, we managed to see everything we wanted to see, transportation wasn't a hassle at all, and the hostel's "concierge" was beyond helpful and patient with all my questions.

Go Team Panda Cats!

Hotelies Doing What We Do Best

For Chloe's 21st Birthday, we decided to head over to Pudong for a classy, girl's night celebration.  Here's what our night consisted of: 

View of the Pearl Tower from the bridge to the IFC mall.

We started the night off at Morton's Steakhouse in the IFC mall.  Happy hour at Morton's Steakhouse consists of buying one drink from their selected list and getting unlimited filet mignon sliders with the drink (5-7pm weekdays if anyone is curious).  

Chloe and I have been talking about going to a hotel rooftop bar since the beginning of the year, so we finally decided to check that off our to-do list, by heading over to the Ritz-Carlton Pudong's Flair.  Before going, we did our research, and somehow there were comments that said that Flair did not meet people's expectations of service quality that the Ritz is known to have, so we decided to lower our expectations and just go for the amazing view.  However, when we got there, everything was perfect.  The view was probably the best I've seen thus far, the service matched that of the Ritz, and it wasn't too crowded when we went so we had the option to sit anywhere we wanted (they also provided blankets and jackets to those who might get cold while sitting outside).

We tried to be artsy with the drinks...

Cheers to your 21st Birthday, Chloe! 

Weekend Trip: Yangzhou (扬州）

NYU sponsors three overnight trips to cities nearby Shanghai: Yangzhou, Hangzhou, and Suzhou.  Our group chose to go to Yangzhou as our weekend trip.  Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in the central Jiangsu Province.  It sits on the northern bank of the Yangtze River.  

The drive from Shanghai to Yangzhou is about three to four hours; therefore, we departed bright and early at 8am (well, it wasn't that early...).  This trip includes transportation, accommodations, tour guides, and meals.

Each meal was very similar, all consisting of traditional Yangzhou cuisine.  Once you sit down, the first dishes served are all cold dishes, followed by the main "warm" dishes (not too sure what you would call these...hot dishes?) Yangzhou cuisine is known to have an appealing color, aroma, taste, and appearance, and no oily sauces are usually added.  Some traditional Yangzhou dishes include Yangzhou fried rice, 狮子头 (Lion's head-meatballs), 扬州干丝 (dried bean curd in soup).  Each of these three dishes were included in every meal we had in Yangzhou. 

Our first stop: He Garden, which is located on Xuningmen Street.  The whole garden is divided into two parts: the east and the west section.  The east garden contains four walls, which houses the main building of the garden.  The west garden there is a pool in the center of the building walls.  

Next Stop: Slender West Lake, which is considered to be a national park of China.  It is located in the Hanjiang District of Yangzhou.  The lake consists of a few attractions: Lotus Flower Pagoda, Small Gold Mountain, and the Fishing Platform (which was a favorite of the Qing Emperor, Qianlong).  

Slender West Lake

Slender West Lake

Tiana taking Colin's "senior portrait"

The 1201 crew 

All the 朋友's...and ducky!! 

After dinner, we were treated to a traditional Yangzhou show, the kind that is performed as the audiences are enjoying tea and sunflower seeds.  The show consisted of dancing, singing, and a few musical instruments.  A photo-op was allowed with the performers after the show.

Our hotel breakfast :D

First stop of the next day: Ge Garden.  Many gardens constructed during the Han Dynasty did not last through the years, except for the Ge Garden and a few other Yangzhou gardens.  The garden uses bamboo and rocks as its principal elements.  The rocks are formed from different kinds of rocks to represent a different season, hence the name "four-season-rockery."

Our last stop of the trip: Daming Temple, which is located in the city's northwest.  The original temple was built in the Song Dynasty.  The temple is nine stories high.  Unfortunately, much of the garden where the temple was located was all under construction.   

Overall, this trip consisted of way too many gardens.  Granted that this is what is famous in Yangzhou, what we heard from the Suzhou and Hangzhou trips made Yangzhou seem very unexciting.  It was also a little less adventurous compared to our Spring Break (that could have been why).  However,  it was nice to have a trip where we didn't have to worry about finding transportation, paying admission fees, or planning what to do ourselves.

Chinese Table

Last night, our 中文老师 (Chinese teacher), the amazing Mark, along with his wife, took us out to dinner.  The class consisted of Elementary and Intermediate Chinese for Advanced Beginners, which are both classes for Chinese speakers who cannot really read and write Chinese.  The dinner was dubbed "Chinese table," based off of Princeton University's idea of weekly dinners with the Chinese teachers to practice speaking Chinese outside and without the pressures of a classroom setting. Since this isn't the traditional college setting, we had this as a special one time thing.  It was a good experience, because we were able to just have a conversation on topics outside of what is in our textbooks, aka we just asked him about him and his wife, which is fine since it uses relevant vocab, such as 高富帅-tall and handsome，一见钟情-love at first sight，and 白头到老, love until old age, right? ;)  

Weekend Trip: Busan, South Korea

Due to my visa limitations, I was "forced" to get out of China so that I would be able to renew my 90 day visa restriction.  Hard life...being forced travel (just kidding, that was sarcasm).  Since one of my friends lives in Busan, South Korea, I decided to head there for the weekend instead of going to Taiwan again.

Busan is located at the southern tip of the South Korean peninsula.  It is the second largest city in South Korea behind Seoul and the largest seaport in the country.  The city is best known for its beaches and nature reserves.

Attractions:  

The Gwangalli Beach overlooks the Gwangan Bridge.  The main attraction in this area is the beach and the nightlife scene along the beach.

Another beach we visited was Haeundae Beach, which is actually connected to Gwangalli, but it is about an hour walk to get from one end to the other. 

Another main attraction in Busan is the Busan Tower which is located inside Youngdusan Park. The park and tower are located in the district of Jung-gu.  Same procedure as any other tower: you pay to take the elevator up, take pictures of the view, and then leave.

The view from the Busan Tower.  This is definitely a better view than the view from the Seoul Tower. 

The other main activity of Busan, as well as Seoul: shopping!  Nampodong is the main shopping and entertainment district in Busan.  

Food: 

***aka the most important part***

Obviously: Korean BBQ.  

Fried chicken and beer: the best.

Cheese Kimbap (sushi)

Seafood pancake from Haeundae Street Market.

Koreans love their coffee and waffles. Afternoon snack from Caffe Bene.

Soondubu Jigae (soft tofu soup).  Best part of this meal, ddukboki (not sure if this is how it is spelled), the spicy rice cakes, was a side dish and all side dishes were self-serve.

Observations: 

-Koreans love their backpacks

-pretty much everyone has a phone the size of an ipad mini
-almost everyone holds their phone and wallets in their hands even though they're carrying a bag
-they love their "letterman jackets"
-they love to wear matching clothes and the guys love their hipster glasses

Conclusion: 

Busan > Seoul 

Thank you Joanne for taking me around! :D

Spring Break Edition: Xi'an

Xi'an is one of those places where you have to visit when you're in China, so we made an effort to include it in our spring break plans, even if we were only able to stay there for a day.  Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi Province.  It was originally called Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty.  It is known as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.

Problem #1:

Phil, Sondre, and I parted ways with the rest of the group, as we headed towards Xi'an and the rest of them headed back to Shanghai.  Our first problem of the trip occurred when we found out our flight to Chongqing would be delayed two hours (our layover was two hours too...).  We ended up missing our second flight from Chongqing to Xi'an; therefore, had to spend the night at the airport, and find another ticket to Xi'an in the morning, which thankfully worked out, and we arrived in Xi'an around 8am.  

   

Finally leaving Chongqing and heading towards Xi'an bright and early.

Famous Xi'an hand pulled noodles from Horse and Tiger Noodles. *Just an indication of how popular this place was: there was a wait at 9am.* 

The main attraction of Xi'an: Terracotta Warriors, which is a collection of sculptures depicting the armies of the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.  The purpose of the Terracotta Warriors is to protect the Emperor in his afterlife.  There are four main pits: pit one contains 11 corridors, pit two contains cavalry and infantry units and war chariots, which represents the military guard, pit three is the command post, and pit four is still left unfinished. The attraction is about an hour from the train station.

Xi'an City Wall was initially built during the Tang Dynasty, but enlarged during the Ming Dynasty.  The city wall includes four gates, Changle in the east, Anding in the west, Yongning in the south, and Anyuan in the north.  The south gate is considered to be the most beautifully decorated, usually the gate that holds any major ceremonies, but unfortunately we were unable to make it there due to time.

If interested, anyone can bike along the city wall, which takes about 2-3 hours.

Muslim Quarter: This is the main area of the Muslim Community in Xi'an.  It is located north of the West Street in the city center and covers several blocks.  By the time we arrived at the "start" of the Muslim Quarter, we only had about 40 mins left before our train leaves.  However, the Muslim Quarter is also about a 40 min walk away from the train station...and here is where problem #2 appeared.

Problem #2:

We assumed that it would be easy to catch a taxi from the Muslim Quarter back to the train station.  We were very wrong.  Taxis that are in service or empty were hard to come by at the time we needed it.  Therefore, we were frantically trying to find a ride back to the station, until a sketchy van pulled up and offered us a ride.  Desperate, we took the offer, but he wasn't able to drop us off at the station, only nearby.  So, after he dropped us off, we ran for our lives to catch the train...pretty much running through Xi'an and making our train with only a few seconds to spare.  Success! 

Cheers to making the train back to Shanghai and cheers to the end of the most adventurous spring break of my college career thus far!

Also, special thanks to Tiana for planning all the other parts of our spring break trip!