As you may already know, I visited China recently. Overall, it was a great trip and I would love to return to Shanghai to see more of it. We flew into Beijing, did a quick day trip (via plane & train) to Xi'an and ultimately ended our stay in Shanghai.
1. The pollution. Yes, it got to me but it snuck up on me. Beijing just looked hazy to me. It triggered my allergies, which turned into a sinus infection and a wee bit of an upper respiratory infection. I spent one day with a Nyquil hangover and several days with absolutely no sense of smell. (Btw: grateful for a travel Neti pot.) You'd think that would have kept me from eating, right? Not a chance. And speaking of food!
2. Not-so-great food. I've gotta tell ya - the food was not great. It wasn't BAD, but it definitely wasn't great. Not only was the quality subpar, but it was also often overcooked. Things may have been different if we had gone to American-style restaurants but we didn't. Oftentimes, we were traveling through parts of the country (by bus) that did not have Americanized restaurants. This is not necessarily a complaint about our dining choices. It should not surprise you (if you know me) that I would rather not travel 5,000 miles just to eat as if I were at home. Every meal came with a giant bottle of Coke, a giant bottle of water, and two giant bottles of beer. It surprised us how little the Chinese drink in general - but especially water. I can probably attribute some of my headache(s) to dehydration. Drinking water simply isn't the same there as it is here.
3. Water! Hot water is a thing in China. On the flight from the U.S. to Beijing, the flight attendants walked around with trays of small cups of water. "Hot water," they warned us. We made a mental note to figure out why that might be. Turns out, you cannot drink the water in China without boiling it first. This wasn't an issue in the hotel, though: each room was equipped with an electric kettle (and you know how I feel about those) as well as a complimentary bottle for each guest each day we were there. While out and about, though, water was harder to find. Many people carried around their own bottles to refill at public watering stations. But the public watering stations had two kinds of water: hot and REALLY HOT. All of a sudden, the hot water on the plane made sense. If you live in a country where you have to boil your water to drink it, would you ever trust cool or tepid water?
4. Sightseeing. We visited the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the terra cotta warriors, a tea plantation, an Eastern medicine shop (herbs), a silk manufacturer, Shanghai, and a few other random places in between. By the end of the trip, there were 48 of us tourists (all American) traveling together, including a trio from Florida -- two African Americans and a tall blonde. The Chinese tourists (and most of the tourists were Chinese) wanted to have their pictures taken with this trio. A LOT. They might be Instagram famous in China now. And also - no, no one asked me for a photo. Two people mistook me for Chinese. (One woman - not her fault; she walked up to me from behind and started speaking Chinese. The other woman, for whatever reason, didn't seem to believe that I didn't speak or understand her and kept trying to talk to me.) I'd love to go back to Shanghai, but think I'd like to see Taipei before I head back to the mainland.
That's all, folks!
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