I’m back from my 14 day trip in China, and what a tiring two weeks it was! Now that I’ve experienced what a tour is like, I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. Waking up at the crack of dawn was too hard to do, especially on vacation time. Each day, the tour moved us to new 5 star hotels, which were pretty elegant in itself, but their breakfasts beg to differ. I’m all for chow mein and beef and broccoli, but eating those at 6am wasn’t exactly appetizing. Stepping out into 80-100 degree weather with 90% humidity each day also left me feeling tired and clammy, even in the early morning.
That’s not to say that the trip was not fun though. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting each of the historic tourist attractions we went to. Our first day was spent climbing the Great Wall, which was an unforgettable experience. I made it to the fourth tower before having to carefully climb back down, due to time constraints (I didn’t want to be left behind, seeing my tour bus off without me). Those steps were huge though, with some reaching as high as my knee. It was almost like climbing a mountain. Most tourists stopped at the first tower, tired, sweaty, and panting. I wish I could have gone higher up though. I also visited a number of temples and palaces that started to look the same after a while, with the Chinese, gold plated rooftops and architecture. We went to the Forbidden City (palace of the Ming dynasty), circle tower (which was a marvel of architecture, circular building built entirely without nails), Tenemen Square, and MANY souvenir locations including pearl factories, silk factories, tea factories, etc.
As our tour bus drove around each of these famous landmarks and cities, I was somewhat surprised to see most of China to retain its village like appearance. I had already half-expected China to be less developed than the US, but still seeing it first hand led a helping hand in seeing the world for what it really is. Even major cities like Beijing had men and women riding bikes, workers carrying bamboo sticks loaded with buckets, street cleaners with ragged straw brooms ready to fall apart. Chinese definitely care a lot more for its environment more than the US though. The cities themselves were beautiful in its own elementary way, with a plethora of trees sprouting throughout the city, streets with not even one scrap of trash, and ALL (and I mean ALL!) restrooms with automatic faucets, hand dryers, and manly stalls.
(more to come)
(pictures to come in time)
