At Disney Hong Kong
We are safely home in Charlottesville. Adventure in Asia, check. Though I’m certain everyone is tired of looking at our blog, we’ll be doing one or two final entries with thoughts on China and on traveling as a family. Stay tuned and be in touch!
Chengdu has so much to offer – lovely teahouses, delicious Szechuan food, pandas, and close proximity to mountains and to Tibet. Compared to other Chinese cities of its size (16 million), it has a relatively low carbon footprint. But it is also an inland, landlocked city. Economic development is more of a struggle, and pollution is made worse by its geography. We had to laugh when someone in the States asked if we’d seen the solar eclipse….
Chengdu skyline
Baby bear…
…and Mama Bear
Red Panda
Szechuan cooking class
Qing Cheng Mountain – a sacred Daoist site
Tibetan wishing wall
We spent a few days in Hong Kong on our way to our last stop, Chengdu. It’s a vibrant, exciting city, and we were pleasantly surprised by the strong presence of the mountains, ocean, many parks, and frequent blue skies. A visit to Hong Kong Disney capped the week. But we were also left with the uneasy feeling that we’d seen the future – and it was made largely of steel and concrete.
Much of the city is connected by large underground shopping malls, walkways, and escalators — restaurants, hotels, grocery stores and luxury shops all share space in giant, interconnected buildings. One could live for days without ever having to step foot outside. At times it felt like something from the movie Wall-E, especially as cities on mainland China and elsewhere use this model to deal with increased crowding, warming, and pollution.
Hong Kong skyline from The Peak
From our hotel
A frequent site
Times Square Hong Kong
Excitement on the Disney train…
…for kids of all ages
Tea cup ride
Dinner with Summer’s family and friends, who live across the bay in Shenzhen, China
We just completed two weeks in Shanghai, the hip river-straddling city with China’s most interesting mix of European and Asian influence. We found it much prettier, more walkable, and generally lighter and more fun than Beijing. (One proud Shanghainese friend said: “All Westerners feel that way.”) We also had a good network there, including a former colleague of Bill’s, and our new acquaintance, the designer Han Feng. Through them we were able to access yoga, Chinese hair salons, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, art exhibits, the Asian x-games, and even an organic farm.
On the famous Bund, looking at the newer eastern skyline
Night view from the World Financial Center, the world’s second tallest building
At 7:30 a.m., Chinese practice tai chi and dancing at the local community track
… and hundreds of kids practice performing.
West Lake in Hang Zhou (an hour by train from Shanghai)
Entrance to one of only a handful of organic farms serving Shanghai’s 20 million people
Kyri picks lettuce
Lunch at the farm
Shanghai’s old city
Friends David, Lily, and LJ
Village outside Yangshuo
Guards at Summer Palace
Dancer, Beijing
In Forbidden City
Chairman Wong, cooking coach at Black Sesame Kitchen
Outside Temple of Heaven
After much anticipation, our peeps finally arrived! Their visit was the highlight of our time in China so far, with an action-packed two weeks of sightseeing and eating our way around Beijing, Xian, and Yangshuo.
Tiananmen Square
Everyone had their favorite moments. Some of them didn’t get captured in pictures, like the motorcycle acrobats (most of the boys’ favorite), or Kyri dropping food in her soda (many of the kids’ favorite), but here are some that did:
1. Though none of us became coffee converts, we did enjoy tasting some of the many varieties of Chinese tea at the Beijing Bell Tower
Learning the tea ceremony
Fruit tea was the winner
2. The Great Wall ranked high up there, literally and figuratively:
Climbing the Great Wall at Mutianyu
Family photo op
Guard tower
What goes up must come down
3. We all enjoyed walking around the old neighborhoods, or hutong, of Beijing, which are quickly disappearing to make way for high-rises:
A traditional entryway
Shopping street in hutong
4. We flew to Xian, one of the four great ancient capitals of China and the eastern end of the original Silk Road. We biked on the 14th-century city wall, and saw the famous Terra Cotta Warriors – an army of life-size soldiers created to guard Emporer Qin’s tomb.
Xian city wall
There are an estimated 8,000 soldiers in the Terra Cotta army, many of them still underground
Every soldier is unique
The farmer who discovered the warriors
5. We had some great culinary experiences. Perhaps the funniest and most ironic was resorting to a McDonald’s when rushing to get back to Beijing from the Great Wall.
Our favorite foodie eats McDonald's fries
A dumpling-cooking class at the Black Sesame Kitchen
Adults' night-out at the fabulous Source Restaurant
Noodles being made
6. Finally, some of us went on to the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi, where the hiking, biking, and swimming provided a welcome break from the city:
Swimming in the Yulong River
Biking through the rice paddies
View from Moon Hill
Another great meal of locally-caught fish
The peeps have returned to Charlottesville, and we return to life in Beijing. By the end of next week we’ll be ready to move on to Shanghai, and then we’re in the final stretch of our journey.
We’ve been told that there are only a few days a year when you can clearly see the mountains west of Beijing from the city. We take it as auspicious that in our first week here we’ve gotten two of those days.
So far we’ve found China to be accessible, modern, and orderly but infused with history. People are calm and friendly, and while there are certainly a lot of them in Beijing, it hasn’t been overwhelming.
It helps that we’re in a nice apartment in a prosperous part of town. But mostly it helps that we have Summer. Summer is Bill’s intern, a China native attending Washington University as a dedicated environmental studies major. At the same time she’s organizing Bill, she’s helping organize our family and giving us a more authentic experience than we might otherwise have.
We’ve been shopping in a Chinese market and cooked a traditional meal, eaten in off-the-beaten-path (and delicious!) restaurants, and taken Chinese watercolor painting from a friend of Summer’s. And because of the weather, we’ve been able to fly kites and ride boats and wander around without worrying too much about our lungs. More to come, but here are a few pictures from our first week:
Skyline from our window
Our apartment
Local neighborhood restaurant
Chinese watercolor
Boat in Chaoyang Park
Flying a kite
Temple of Heaven
Speaks for itself
