Shanghai rocks my world.

Loved Shanghai. LOVED. I couldn't help myself from listing the ways I prefer it to Beijing (I wrote the list while I was there):

1. Less pollution, wow! What a difference.

2. Where is the traffic?! Amazed at the lack of traffic here. In Beijing, at any given time of the day, anywhere in the city, you are stuck sitting in terrible traffic.

3. Better food! Sure Beijing has good Chinese food, but I'm talking Western food.... Shanghai has much more options. I've eaten the better this week than I have in the entire 7 months I've been in China.

4. The subway is more efficient and way less crowded. You can actually take the subway at rush hour here without wanting to cry. It also goes all over the place! There are a lot of places in BJ you just can't get to from the subway, or you have a long walk from the nearest station.

5. Shanghai has real bagels! WHAT?!

6. Shanghai is cleaner than BJ.

7. Really pretty architecture, much is European influenced, in some parts of the city you can imagine you are in Paris and in others NYC.




8. Every taxi driver we came across was so nice! And in some subway stations they actually STOOD IN LINE! My friend said it was due to all the World Expo behavioral training the city's residents were recently exposed to.

OK OK I'm ragging on Beijing a little. Beijing is awesome, too. In fact, if you are a tourist, you'd probably be better of coming to Beijing if you can only see one... Beijing does have all the history! But if you were going to choose to live in one of these two cities, in my opinion, the quality of life in Shanghai is better. Just sayin'.


We had a fantastic time! Now we are back in Beijing, which is super cold right now, by the way! Today it was 15 degrees. You shouldn't have to wear 3 shirts, a sweater and a coat just to go outside... and talk about a pain in the butt - gloves and scarves and hats, and then bending down to put on boots.... such a pain! But the sky has been blue so I shouldn't really complain :) I just wish it would snow! I hate being so cold with no reward (i.e.: snow). I don't know what I am going to wear when we go to the Ice Festival in Ha'erbin this January.

Well, that's all I got. I have an apple pie baking in the oven... I highly underestimated the difficulty of making a pie crust. Betty Crocker would cry if she saw what is in my oven right now. LOL. Hopefully it tastes good.

Steph

P.S. Can you believe I only have 5 months left here?! And still don't know where we are going to end up!

P.S.x2. Check out what is waiting for me in the U.S! My new car! I debated getting such a small car but I decided it is the perfect time in my life to go for it.


I'm already picturing cruising down Pacific Coast Highway with the top down. :)

桂林山水甲天下！ Guilin and Yangshuo, Guangxi Province

How beautiful. Like something out of a movie. Definitely my favorite place in China, not a single thing disappointed me or made me think it looked better in the brochure. Before going to Guilin, we had been in Guizhou Province, one of China's poorest provinces. We didn't see a single other Westerner the entire time we were in Guizhou. When we arrived in Guilin, it was Westerners galore... but, for good reason... it was really amazing, no wonder people flock there in droves. If you are coming to China and limited on time, the Guilin area is definitely something not to be missed.

Cruising down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo. Highly recommend - from the river is the best way to see the mountains.





Look familiar?


The view of the village we stayed in from Moon Hill


The view from our room... how amazing is that?


The night we arrived, we went in a boat alongside this cormorant fisher so we can watch him work! What they do is take a string and tie it around the cormorant's neck... that way when the bird catches fish, he can't swallow the fish... the farmer keeps the bigger fish for himself, and feeds the bird the smaller ones.


Some fishies he caught.


Yes I actually held the bird, even though birds in general scare me... hah. And yes. I was creeped out. But I did it! haha!


The next day our amazing guide took us to the village she grew up in. It was about an hour and a half boat ride away from Yangshuo. It was so amazing to be out on a part of the river where we were basically the only ones out there!




Harvesting the rice. My favorite photo.





Some village children peeking around the corner to check us out. They stayed there all day! too cute.


Our guide took us to her own parents' home... they made homemade springrolls, dumplings, and yes, snails, for us.


This is our guide's father, who was trying to teach me how to play the erhu.

This is right near where Edward Norton and Naomi Watts filmed The Painted Veil



Basically, it was really freaking awesome and I recommend it to everyone!

I also highly recommend the hotel we stayed in: The Yangshuo Village Inn, and our guide, Jessie Lu. If you want any of their contact information, let me know!

Steph

Beautiful Yunnan

Yunnan Province is gorgeous and has officially skyrocketed to the position of my favorite province in China.

Honestly, if I were coming to China for 2 weeks, the one chance I had to come to China... I would fly into Beijing, spend a few days around Beijing to see the most important sights, like Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall... then fly to Lijiang, spend time in Lijiang (or Dali), then onto Guizhou's small minority villages - one is Xijiang, and finally onto Guangxi province to see Guilin/Yangshuo area. This is truly the China people envision when they think of China. (Have you see The Painted Veil? This is what I am talking about for the second/third part of the trip.)

Anyway, we are now in Guizhou Province - I think which is officially known as China's poorest province. The city we are in is surrounded by karst limestone hills, which makes for very beautiful and unique topography. Unfortunately, our guidebook warned us about the locals' love of dog meat. Consider me officially a vegetarian while I am here. Thank God for Pizza Hut!

Here are a few pictures from our time in Yunnan. I am disappointed that I was sick during the time we were in Kunming - I really, really wanted to see the red fields (东川红土地), but unfortunately, that wasn't meant to be. I am, however, feeling much better, thank you for your well-wishes, they worked! :)

These photos were all taken in the ancient city of Lijiang... yes Lijiang can be touristy but it's beautiful, has a special ambiance and is definitely worth a visit. It reminded me of Pingyao in Shanxi.







The countryside

This is the first bend of the Yangtze River


Naxi Villages




Tiger Leaping Gorge... yeah so the actual park was closed, so in typical China fashion, some guys trying to make money offered to take us to the other side...

We went, and came across this. Pretty sure this side was more dangerous than the closed side.... seeing as how half the road was gone and all....

Workmen working towards trying to prevent any (more) crazy landslides

The gorge

That's it for Yunnan. There was so much more amazingness to see, but like I said, I got sick and we had to rearrange our travel plans.

Feeling much better here in Guizhou! Though the weather report said a high of 80 and a low of 65.... I am currently freezing seeing as how I am working with a high of 40 degrees and we didn't pack anything warmer than a fleece!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway here!

Steph

Hello from Ningxia!

Hi everyone! Right now we are in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, exploring this area before we set off to explore certain stops along the Old Silk Road.



These are the Xia Tombs about an hour outside of Yinchuan City.




A cool scarecrow my husband insisted I post


The husband stumbled upon a traditional "miaohui" in one of the rural farming villages ... in the past they were used as markets where people came to trade goods, but now they are primarily used as social gatherings (according to our driver). This "fair" only occurs once each year so everyone was lucky to stumble upon it. At this fair they had different types of performances. This lady in the picture below was really happy and, in English, I think the word DIVA describes her! She demanded her photo be taken!


We are having a complete blast and are looking forward to our next destination!

Steph

Inner Mongolia: Mongolia it is not!

A couple weeks ago we traveled to Inner Mongolia. Quick geography lesson - Inner Mongolia is a province of China, but Mongolia is its own country. My other posts about Mongolia and the Nadaam Festival were about the country of Mongolia - but just a couple weeks ago, we returned from a trip to Inner Mongolia, a Chinese province.

I think the biggest reason we went was so that we could 1. check Inner Mongolia off our "Chinese provinces I've been to" list (which will be totally checked off by the time we leave China), and 2. so that we could compare the province to the country of Mongolia.

In my opinion, Inner Mongolia is pretty much just another Chinese province. A couple differences: the roads in Mongolia were really rough, infrastructure was undeveloped, whereas in Inner Mongolia, the roads and infrastructure are typical of a developing & advancing China - awesome. Also, the nomadic culture is still very much alive in the country of Mongolia, whereas in Inner Mongolia, everything about the nomadic culture is more a remnant of the past, but is kept alive through tourism and giving us tourists what we want. People who stayed in yurts in Inner Mongolia stayed in a cement-bottomed yurt while the "nomadic family" lived in their concrete house that was behind the yurt. With that said - we didn't go to the best area of the province to see traditional nomadic culture, and the tourist-centric grassland & "nomad experience" was very unauthentic. However, the grasslands around Hailai'er and Xilinhot are supposed to be better.

The really dry "grasslands"... more like a desert, this year!


Majorly touristy yurts...


Something great that came out of the experience... we met a family, chatted with them all day, and they invited us to their home in Anhui Province! We are going to visit in September, when the husband's parents visit. We plan to see Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) in Anhui Province, and now we have some friends to show us around. (How lucky are we that this sort of thing seems to happen to us everywhere we go?! What can I say - Chinese people are usually really impressed when two white Americans can speak their language!)

The Zhang family, and my husband


In my opinion - if you want a true Mongolian experience, I'd head to the country of Mongolia where the nomad lifestyle is still very much alive and authentic.

The most interesting thing, I think, about the provincial capital of Hohhot is the unique architecture remnant of the Middle East. Hohhot does have a large Muslim population & one of the main attractions is a mosque. Unfortunately I had a dress on and was unable to enter.... the man also shooed us away and told us not to take pictures.



The Mosque



A Buddhist ceremony-thing we stumbled on in the streets



The White Tower


We took a cab out to the white tower... its actually out a-ways from the city.... on the way my husband assured me it would be easy to find cabs out there, because it is a major tourist spot. Unfortunately, we arrived & realized we were the only people there visiting the tower! We wanted to stay but knew it would be impossible to find a cab way out where we were... and our cab driver was getting off work. SO, he gave us TEN minutes to visit the tower, and if we weren't back then, he'd leave us. So, we hauled butt, took a few pics, and left.


These next pictures were taken of or around the 5 Pagoda Temple in Hohhot.







Unrecycling! HAHA!


Well thats about it for Inner Mongolia. I have to say, one thing that was really obvious was the staring. Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, is definitely the place we have been stared at the most during our travels. Adults and children alike would stare at us, often times open-mouthed, or to the dismay of other bike riders as they actually stopped looking where they were riding so they could turn their entire bodies to stare at us as they rode past! Besides on the flight over, we didn't see any other Westerners the entire time we were in Inner Mongolia!

In just a few days we are off on another trip, this time a 15 night trip out to a place that is famous for being the farthest point away from the ocean in the entire world. We are going through several areas and small towns, so internet will probably be sporadic, but I'll post if I can!

Steph