Beijing for Chinese New Year!

See more pics here Beijing_TempleHeaven

Hello from Beijing! we spent a few days with the school and their staff (I'm putting together a post about our first real Chinese meal right now) and we signed the paperwork, toured both the schools Jenn and I will be teaching at, and even managed to pick up our luggage that finally arrived from Shanghai three days late! Everything came together so well we decided to continue with our plans and head up to Beijing and watch the Chinese New Year come in in grand style!

Take a look at the pics of where we will be teaching...

Took a taxi to a neighboring town called Yangzhou that was 45 minutes away, then caught the overnight train to Beijing. It was a 10 hour ride and we both had hard-sleepers, which are bunks in a room of six and I believe Jenn is blogging that part of our first train trip here because it was memorable indeed.

Take a look at some pics from our new home city, DanYang...

We are in Beijing now and they charge an exorbitant amount to get online (No Thanks, Marriott!), so these posts will be short on verbiage but the pictures have a lot of detail in the captions so we hope you enjoy the pics and information!

Take a look at the pics of the Temple of Heaven here in Beijing...

Yesterday we went to the Temple of Heaven and today we are hitting Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City, then heading out to the Beijing Opera this evening!

Take a look at more street life pics here...

Back soon with some amazing pictures and notes from another day in Beijing!

Lost in translation...

From Shanghai_Jade Buddha Temple

They say that it couldn't be done, or maybe that was shouldn't be done. Traveling during the busiest holiday in China, the Chinese New Year, is not for the weak. It was time to leave our comfortable little home at the New Asia Hotel and head for our new home in Dan Yang. With our train tickets in hand, five huge suitcases, one backpack and one computer bag we packed ourselves into two taxis and headed off to the Shanghai Railway Station. We knew that we had to check our luggage as cargo onto the train and luckily the taxi drivers pulled right up to the loading dock where our adventure begins. Without a word, or at least one that I could understand, several men began lugging our heavy, I mean heavy, suitcases up onto the platform. Sean and I were still trying to pay our respective cabbies for the ride when I noticed that all of our suitcases were now being whisked away. Quickly, I pulled the one suitcase that had our most valuable items in it from the bunch. We walked up the stairs to where the cargo gets wrapped and shipped. Everything that we own is in these suitcases so you can understand how I am watching our possessions like a hawk as Sean tries to understand the process. A very nice gentleman takes us under his wing like a big brother and walks Sean through the process.

Remember these people do not speak a word of English so you can imagine the hand gestures and body language that was being displayed. I watched as they wrapped our suitcases in large white bags and then placed straps on them with a machine. Now I am in charge of watching four white bags with no description on them in a sea of other white bags. Sean is off to a counter with this man to pay some fee (90 yuan) and he takes our train tickets. Sean then returns to me without the man and without the tickets. This is when we started to get nervous. But there was no reason, the man came back and carried our bags to the scale..112 Kg! OK we are getting closer. The gentleman now points us to a window to which we go over and stand. We have no idea why we are standing here but eventually, our friend saves us again and brings back our tickets and tells us that we need to pay another 65 yuan. He hands us a receipt and our tickets and shows us the way to the waiting room where we will board the train. I tried using all of the mandarin I could muster to ask when our luggage would arrive but our new friend just could not understand. We just needed to trust that these guys knew what they were doing so we left our luggage to board the train. HUGE leap of faith.

This being our 5th train ride, it was unremarkable except for the fact that every nook and cranny was filled on this 18 car train. As we arrived in Dan Yang, we both looked to see if we could see any luggage (cargo) being taken from the train but since the train is so long, it was impossible. As we walked through the station we showed a woman our receipt for our luggage and she pointed for us to walk around the corner. With hopes up high, we entered the cold dingy room where two women sat and we handed them our receipt. The first woman looked at it and started speaking Chinese. Not a good start. It was obvious that our luggage did not arrive on the same train as us. Now we needed to figure out when it would be arriving. The other woman made a few phone calls and says while holding up 3 fingers "3 days". As our faces went blank we looked at each other and then back at her to confirm what she was saying. She made another call and then pointed to the word "Tuesday" in my handy Mandarin book. OK, Tuesday I can live with but 3 days??? When I said that we only took the one suitcase that contained our most valuable possessions, I forgot to mention that a change of clothing did not meet that requirement. We only carried on our computers, jewelry, toiletries, medication and other items that we could not replace. Neither of us packed another change of clothes. And to make matters worse, we are to meet our new employers in the morning. We walked away from the railway station in disbelief and joked about the possibilities and ramifications of the fact that we might not ever see our luggage again.

Not letting that get us down, we went out in our new town for a nice dinner and watched a movie before going to bed. We met with our new employer Tuesday morning (yes, wearing the same clothes) and signed our contract. We had a nice lunch with several teachers and spent the day taking care of all of the formalities of working in China. Our first is to get a "Expert in Teaching English" certificate and then our residence license at the local police station. We saw our new apartment and we were both so pleasantly surprised. It is much nicer that we had imagined and after seeing the school for the second time we knew that we were making the right decision.

Unfortunately, we were so tied up with our employers that we couldn't make it to the train station before they closed so we will have to go there on Wednesday (yes, wearing the same clothes) and pray that our luggage is there. It will be interesting if for some reason they are not... Sean and I don't fit into any of the clothes here.... will keep you posted!

Leave the pizza, take the cannoli...

Jenn and I have decided to try to head up to Beijing to see the capital and watch them bring in their Chinese New Year on the 25th. However, traveling during this time in China is about the worst time all year. Why? Keep in mind that there are millions and millions of Chinese migrant workers who are jamming train stations to buy tickets home for the Lunar New Year break (Chinese New Year), and millions of others are relying on ticket scalpers to get away for the year's most important holiday. Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is the biggest of two Golden Week holidays, and these give migrant workers their only chance of the year of returning to their home provinces with gifts for the family - this is the biggest movement of humanity in the world. Last year, this mass movement was disrupted, if not ruined, by the worst winter weather in the south in decades.

Believe it or not we have found it strangely relaxing to simply wade into the massive seas of people waiting for the train and instead of fighting, just shuffle along with our luggage like everybody else - no yelling, no shoving, no screaming, no losing of tempers, no hurt feelings...just waves of people, as far as the eye can see, trying to get somewhere just like everybody else. Competitiveness and jockeying for position and a win/lose attitude have no place here and the Chinese will be embarrassed for you because you don't know how to behave yourself.

So we are ready for the crowds, we have our hopes on seeing and exploring Beijing, and after grabbing a taxi for a quick morning trip to the Shanghai train station - we were not totally surprised to find all of the ticket counters closed shut. Apparently, the rail system is so maxxed out that they are not selling anymore tickets - for how long, nobody knows. We didn't give up though, close to the station was another building that had about a dozen ATM machines but instead of money they let us purchase train tickets electronically - and they had English as a language! We stumbled through the menus, navigated the money exchange, and got the three we need now and gave each other a high fives like kids!

A bit giddy from getting closer to our Beijing trip, we played some more frogger and made it across a huge intersection and headed over to one of the most popular restaurants here in Shanghai - Pizza Hut! From the start, we've considered going to these western places - KFC, McDonalds, Burger King - cheating...we want to make ourselves learn about the food, however strange and somewhat intimidating in it's visceral rawness and some of it is simply too gross to consider smelling much less eating, but we want to eat like the Chinese (and hey, they LOVE these places...) So, we slumped in, had a seat, and as we looked over the nine page menu(!) we snickered as we listened to the theme from the Godfather play overhead. "Leave the pizza, take the cannoli," I mumbled, and Jenn says 'Don't make me go to the mattress on this one, we're staying!"

And it was good - really good. We had a stuffed crust Supreme and I had a pot of fruit tea, which is like Sangria except it's with tea and they put it on a little stand with a tea candle underneath to keep it warm. Yum! After the pizza, we buttoned up (it was a balmy 43 yesterday) and walked for over an hour and a half to another temple we read about called the Jade Buddha Temple.

Jade Buddah Temple

Click for more pics of the temple Shanghai_Jade Buddha Temple

In 1882, an old temple was built to keep two jade Buddha statues which had been brought from Burma by a monk named Huigen. The temple was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty but the jade Buddha statues were saved and a new temple was built on the present site in 1928. It was named the Jade Buddha Temple. Jenn and I are feeling so comfortable in these temples now that we enjoy visiting the Four Kings, the 18 Buddhas who have attained enlightenment, and all of the other alters the temple has for paying respects. This one had beautiful Jade Buddhas and some of the most beautiful gift shops I've seen yet in the country. We aren't buying anything yet because we know we will be here for a year but we will definitely be coming back to Jade Temple. After walking around, I showed Jenn how to say a Buddhist prayer and for the first time we both purchased incense and said our own prayers and payed our respects, then left the incense to burn in the traditional burner. We both have much to be thankful for...

Take a look at this serene and peaceful temple that is still active today...

Eating is consuming us...

From Shanghai_oldtown

Hey! butter me up - I'm on a roll! It's Jenn here again. Dining out has become quite a predicament. It is rare to see only two people dining together here in China, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Sean and I have found ourselves many times at a huge table built for a family of twelve. And then they come with the menu, only one menu from which they expect Sean to order for the both of us… yeah right, as if I would let him order what I am going to eat. After finally getting my point across that I need a menu as well, the waiter hovers over the table waiting to take your order. They don't leave to get drinks, they just stand there politely, waiting. Now, as Sean has mentioned, the menus are mostly in Chinese with some poorly taken pictures from decades ago. If you have ever tried to order from just a picture, then you can see what I am faced with - is that chicken, pork, fish or something that I would never consider eating? And now the pressure is really on because they, there are always two or three, are waiting for my order and I have a ten page menu to look through. I really need to learn how to say, “Give me a minute to look through the menu” in Mandarin.

I wrote down a few dishes from one of the restaurants that we recently ate at one of the largest malls in China here in Shanghai, the WestGate. If you have a squeamish stomach you should skip down a few lines. I could have dined on Double Boiled Fish Head with Chinese Herb, or Deep Fried Crispy Pigeon, or how about the Deep Fried Pigs Stomach with Spicy Salt? And for dessert they offered Sweetened Snow Fungus & Dried Longan in syrup, Soufflé Egg White Ball with Mashed Red Bean & Banana (Sean actually ordered this and said it was unbelievable!!), or Glutinous Ball in Sweetened Wine. Yummy! I opted for the Dandan Mian which is thin wheat noodles served with pork, scallions and red hot chili oil. I cheated and looked the dish up in my mandarin book. Now you can see why I think that I might starve here. Just kidding, Mom, I am eating fine! (She worries about me)

Thank goodness that Sean and I took the liberty before leaving Tampa to visit all of our favorite restaurants and “tanked up” so we can spare to lose a few pounds - one of us more than the other. And speaking of “tanking up”- I coined this phrase one day at a restaurant where we had a normal food buffet and Sean remarked at how much I was eating. I told him that I was taking advantage of the food for fear that it would be awhile before I would eat so plentiful, hence, tanking up.

Eating has consumed us. It is all we think about, it seems. This is for other reasons as well. If it is not about the fact that we will not be able to find a place that we can order something off the menu then it is about the strict hours that they serve the food. Most restaurants only serve during very specific hours. I would like to say this should become less of a problem when we finally get into our apartment but I don’t see that changing anything. I have seen the grocery store and I have no idea what is in those cans or bags nor would I know what to do with it. I could barely cook back home! I am not giving up though. I have eaten some things that I never thought I would eat and they really were not that bad. And I didn’t get sick from them which is extremely important. All that said, we have found a few safe places where we know we can go but to us that is cheating us out of the Shanghai experience that we did come here for.

Other minor issues - what is up with all the little bowls and ladles - what do you use to eat what with and how? Sean and I have found that the phrase “When in Rome” works well here. We find ourselves looking at the people around us and seeing how they are eating and with what they are eating with and do likewise. Sean has gotten much better with his chopsticks and can even eat rice with them even though it is totally appropriate to put the bowl right up to your mouth and use the shovel method. For me, I have been a chopstick pro for years! One phrase that I have already learned is “Qing Maidan” pronounced Ching Madan which means “Check Please” … until next time, Love to all and Mom I really am eating fine!