China Trip Updates

Since I've been back from China, my mom and I haven't really done much. Bits of shopping and eating in Tai Po. I did, however, pick up my new glasses yesterday and got a haircut today. (No, it does not look FOB. It's just a trim.) That's pretty much it.



October 26
China Trip Day 3: Wuxi

The tour took us to Hanshan Temple (Buddhist). It was super crowded with tourists on tours. We stopped by a silk factory and learned how they make and use silk. They demonstrated making silk quilts and tried to persuade us to buy one. They also had a fashion show of silk clothes that were ill-fitting on not pretty girls who looked angry all the time. Finally, we visited a preserved fortress, pagoda and garden in Suzhou. Then, we went to Wuxi to tour a 19th century house of a Chinese judge. What we saw was only a fifth of the original house. The rest was ruined by war. I liked this tour. It had a lot of history involved and an insight to the empowering rules of living back in the days of imperial China. Women, housing construction, clothes; all of it was controlled by rules of formality and lifestyle handed down for generations and instilled by emperors. After, we went to a place where master teapot makers sell their teapots. I hadn't realized how much art and skill goes into crafting teapots. These aren't the usual teapots you see in Chinese restaurants. These teapots are made out of stone and each one is handcrafted down to the last detail. Teapot making is still a fine art in Wuxi and the art is dying. It's a skill you learn, just as blacksmiths apprenticed. The government offers that anyone who is willing to apprentice as a teapot maker, gets room and board paid for by the government for 5 years in Wuxi. The only problem is that it takes years to become a great master, and you don't really get good money out of it. There are teapots, however, that can sell for over RMB$1,000,000 (crafted by a master who died over 10 years ago). That is, if you can find it.

Today was very educational. I like that type of stuff. But I definitely didn't get enough sleep and I had a headache all day. I didn't bother taking pictures of the silk factory, or the judge's house. Also, there was no photography allowed at the teapot place. Don't be disappointed at the number of pictures I took today. There wasn't much to photograph anyway.

The hotel tonight is the Sainty Lakeside Resort in Wuxi, right by Lake Taihu. It's pretty nice here. Not as nice as the Tongli Lake Resort, but definitely better than the hotel in Hangzhou. There's nothing in the area, so there's no walking about. There's also no LAN line provided, so I can't go on the internet. There's an internet outlet in the wall, but they don't provide the LAN cable like the other hotels. It's RMB$30/day for the rental of the cable. Oh well. I'll be watching the stuff I downloaded to kill time. Tomorrow's a late day, compared to the past couple of days, so lots of time to sleep in.



October 27
China Trip Day 4: Shanghai

We went to Lake Taihu and a pearl factory in Wuxi. After lunch we were going to roadtrip to Shanghai, but first we needed gas. There's a gas shortage and we had to wait an hour in a long line to get some gas. Because our coach is a big vehicle, it takes diesel like transport trucks. When we got to Shanghai, we went to take a quick tour about the father of modern China (the republic china), which somehow turned into a feng shui thing. The lady, the feng shui master, told me that I had good fortune and that I was going to marry rich. I don't believe it but it's always good to keep my eyes open. We went to the Xintiandi district to walk around. It has lots of restaurants and little shops. It looks like the old part of Montreal, if you've ever been there. Shanghai is a very modern city, with a European influence. The buildings are elegant with lots of mouldings and ornamentations. Our hotel room tonight, at Sisu Hotel, is very small and a bit dingy for a 4-star hotel. Again, there's no internet cable line, which sucks. Tomorrow, we do a little sightseeing before we fly back to Hong Kong.



October 28
China Trip Day 5: Hong Kong

We went to the Oriental Pearl Tower for some sightseeing. At 468 metres, it is the (currently) third tallest free standing structure in the world and the tallest in Asia. The lower observation deck is 263 metres above the ground. It was super foggy, but the skyline is still gorgeous. We were quickly herded to some park/garden place to have an orientation about some Chinese pharmaceuticals that can be "used for anything." (The reason why these tours are so cheap is because these tours take us to a lot of companies to sell their products, i.e. tea, teapots, pharmaceuticals, pearls, etc.) We were dropped off at a shopping/restaurant area for 3 hours of leisure. Then, we went to The Bund, the area in Puxi, Shanghai that houses many classical buildings across the Huangpu River from the Oriental Pearl Tower. It's a famous tourist spot, and if you've been to Shanghai, you would've definitely been there. After that, we went to the train station to take the Maglev (magnetic levitation) train to the Pudong International Airport. Its max speed is 431 km/h but it peaked at 301 km/h for us. The ride took about 7 minutes. It's super fast and smooth.

Our flights with Dragonair have been really smooth. The flight meal this time was beef pasta tofu/mushroom salad, bun with butter, and a Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream. It was such a good meal, and the ice cream was to die for. We landed at 11:45 pm and caught the bus to Tai Po, which took a good 1.5 hours to get to. We took the taxi back to the village. I plopped into bed as soon as I got back, refusing to take a shower. I was super tired. The end of the China trip.