Shanghai

I returned to Beijing from Shanghai this Tuesday. Ever since I have been catching up with life here in Beijing. I feel that now finally I'm back on track with the rest of the class. Even though the hotel here in Beijing isn't home, it was nice to return to familiar places after our 5 day stay in a youth hostel in Shanghai.
Wednesday, June 13th at 8:35pm our train (T104) left the Beijing main train station. It was a 12 hour ride till we arrived in Shanghai the next morning. The ride was quite comfortable as we had beds to sleep on, which I might add were almost more comfortable than the hotel beds. If only the flight back to Canada was that comfortable the 14 hours plane ride would pass quickly.
The first day in Shanghai it rained most of the time. We found our youth hostel dropped off our bags and despite the rain to the subway to the downtown area and walked around a bit.
That evening we went for supper in the French Concession area of Shanghai and had Hong Kong style food...very strange, I know: Hong Kong style food in Shanghai and out of all places in the French Concession area...but it was quite good. The rest of the evening was not too eventful we took a stroll around the French Concession and then returned to the hostel.
The next day Olivia and I took the subway to the Pudong area of Shanghai, that is the business district with all the tall skyscrapers. It was amazing to walk out of the subway station and see the buildings growing to be taller and taller. We eventually ended up at the river front (the Huangpu River 黄埔江). We were hungry so we chose a random restaurant at the river front called BundView. We were very pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. The set lunch only cost 88元 ($15) and it included: a Salad, soup, bread, main meal and dessert. It was really fancy and good tasting food. Later that day we met up with the rest of the group and we all decided to go to the BundView together. It was quite the feast and we got treated like VIPs. We all had big meals for supper and bought several bottles of wine to go with the meal. After what seemed like eating all day we ended up at a club/bar called Windows Too which was quite strange as there were many westerners there and I was very used to seeing a lot of Chinese people.
The next day was also really fun. Olivia, Isabell and I went to visit a Buddhist temple. It was very neat to see all the people there practicing their faith. We also got to see a Buddhist service, the monks were singing and chanting. After this we all met up and decided to visit the tallest building in China (at the moment the Jin Mao Building) which also has the Cloud 9 bar of the Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel. The view from the top was amazing. A few of us decided to go to Cloud 9 for a few drinks to enjoy the view at this exclusive location. From the top we could look down on both the skyline of the Pudong district as well as the well known Bund district. As they do every night there were fireworks launched from a boat on the river and the moment at Cloud 9 seemed to be something out of a James Bond movie (drinking a Martini and all).
Later that night we went to a club called Bon Bon, in the French Concession area. There happened to be a well known DJ from abroad hosting an event so the music was quite good. The next day was a very relaxed one as we had spent so much energy the night before. We ended up back at our favourite restaurant the BundView and sat there to order lunch. Lunch turned into afternoon which turned into night and we were still sitting on the comfortable cushioned chairs ordering a bottle of Champagne (Moët & Chandon wich would usually cost $264) but we got it for 680元.
Shanghai was a nice contrast to Beijing. Now it's back to my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but the adventure in Shanghai sure was a memorable one. Above, a picture of the Shanghai skyline and many more pictures of the other adventures on Flickr (Shanghai Museum, little side streets, boat rides, losing and finding Chuck Norris -aka. the Gnome-, etc...)
Shanghai was a wonderful destination. I'm glad I have lots of pictures to remember it by.
Now it is Friday and another weekend begins (it is Charles' birthday this weekend so no doubt there will be a party). Only 32 days left in China, although classes finish on July 13th, then there is a final exam and a week long end-of-the-program trip.
More later when I go visit more places.

Trip to Shanghai

The first big trip during my stay here in China is about to commence. This evening at 8:20pm a group of us (Lorelei, Olivia, Alex, Jake, James and Isabelle) are hopping on a train headed for Shanghai. The trip should take approximately 12 hours, so our overnight stay in the train will save us the cost of another night at the hostel in Shanghai. I'm not quite sure yet exactly what kind of attractions await us in Shanghai, but I do know there is a beautiful garden and of course the city itself is a marvel to see. There are also little cities with beautiful scenery close to Shanghai to which we can also travel.
The last few days - since my last post - have been quite ordinary. Classes are going well as usual, and leisure time with friends (aka. strolling the streets in the evening) keeps the schedule busy. A few days ago I discovered a new part of the ever grand city of Beijing; an area that houses the Bell and Drum Towers. This place was more relaxed than most of the hustling and bustling downtown roads. There were lots of little side streets known as Hutong(s)胡同. There was also a park in this area and the picture for this post is of a flower from there.

The most recent exciting event was last night. Josh, a student in the program received a gift from his parents back home. Through another student's parents who came to visit us here in China they sent along a huge piece (5lbs. or more) of smoked meat from Schwarz (a famous smoked mead joint in Montreal). We all gathered like hungry animals and enjoyed the feast with mustard and bread. It was really funny. In this sense we are adopting the Chinese culture, because here too many people gather around on the street, chat and eat food. So here we were all sharing this communal meal. There will be pictures of this event later on as I did not use the camera (my stomach overpowered my will to get the camera :P ) But I will get the pictures from others who took them.

I'm packing the last few things (Gnome (aka. Chuck Norris), camera and charger included), then we will make our way to the train station. I will take lots of pictures so stay tuned for Monday when I return. Hope everyone is doing well back home.

Also an advanced Happy Father's day to all dads out there since I will be gone till Monday.

Cuandixia 爨低下

It has been a while since I wrote a blog, but my adventure of this weekend is definitely reason to write a blog. Let's see, where to begin....
Originally this weekend Olivia, Jan and I were supposed to go on a trip to NE China to the city Harpin in a province of China that borders with Russia. We paid for our train tickets at the student travel agency only to get a call back on Friday afternoon letting us know that there is no room left on the train. We still wanted to go somewhere for the weekend so we looked in one of the Chinese tour guides someone brought to China and decided to visit the little village of Cuandixia. This village has only 100 people living in it and apparently dates back all the way to the Qing and Ming dynasties. So the deal is, you take the metro (line 1) all the way to the end then a 3 hour bus ride and then from the destination city a taxi to this little village. We decided we would be up for that.
Saturday morning at 8:30 we went with our classmates on the organized trip to the Temple of Heaven (pictures on Flickr) and after visiting the temple we went to the closest metro stop to begin our journey.
After about a 45 minute subway ride we get out at the Pinguoyuan station and quickly realize we are the only westerners within sight. Before even getting out of the metro station there is already a throng of zealous taxi drivers offering us rides to our destination. After much effort to shake off most of them we reached a deal to go with a friendly gentlemen for 120 yuan. So instead of taking the bus we figured a taxi ride all the way to the village will make things easier and it also cuts our travel time from 3 to 2 hours. This is all the more amazing when you realize that all of this is taking place in Chinese. The taxi driver only spoke Chinese, but we conversed a little and he said once we arrive at Cuandixia he would help us find a place to stay for the night.
We were warmly received by a Chinese family and after getting settled in we wasted no time an went for a long walk. We climbed a few mountains and explored the surrounding beautiful scenery.
After our 3 hour long walk we returned to our host family and had supper. This began our saga. We had a few beers for supper and then we proceeded to venture from place to place in the village to have a beer here and one there. One place we went to we thought was another bar or place that served drinks...it ended up being this family's balcony, but they received us warmly and sat and talked with them for over an hour. (again this is all in Chinese, although we do not always understand everything :P )
As most of the people at this 'party' started going to bed we ventured to the next place with lights and people...there we were invited to join a big table with 15 or so people. They were great. They were in the middle of playing a drinking game (spin the bottle type thing) where if it pointed to you, you had to take a drink. This was really fun and funny, as we had no clue who these people are but we fit right in. After some fun we chatted a little and they told us they are all in a Camry Club (Toyota Camry) and this was their group outing. Then one gentlemen and his wife offered to drive us back to Beijing the next day.
We got up at 8:30am to eat breakfast and meet our new friends to drive back home with them. Before this point we had not realized what the significance of them being is this club is. They have beautiful black silver lined Toyota Camrys all spanking new. Turns out there were seven of them and they all got together and we drove back to Beijing in a convoy of Black luxury cars with the 4-way flashers on and the front car had a siren and a horn to make people get out of the way of the convoy. This included oncoming traffic so we could pass slower vehicles in our lane. This was really cool! Still don't know exactly what these fine people do, but they appear to be quite important.
There is so much more to tell about our trip, but the above is it in a nutshell. The amazing thing about the trip is that it was so unexpected that we would have all of these experiences and so it was well worth the mere 100 yuan ($15) the whole trip ended up costing (because of all the luck we had along the way).