Our China Adventure

So most of you know that we took at 2 week vacation to China. It was really good to get away for a solid block of time but also really good to get back. China was definitely different than what we expected.

I really enjoyed the Great Wall; the soldiers back in the day must have had thighs of steel because seriously, I have never done so many stairs in my life. The area of the great wall that we went to was almost completely stairs between each of the guard towers. There are 120 meters between each tower and we went up like 8-10 of them. My legs hurt for 3 days after. Like gasping going down the two stairs on our tour bus kind of sore. We were with 6 other people on the other tour and the like 70 year old grandma was doing better than me. Granted she only walked to one guard tower but man I was hurting. Hopefully we have a picture of the stairs we can post, so you can see that it was kind of crazy steep.

The next site that I really enjoyed was the Terracotta Warriors. Some historical sites are impressive because of their sheer size. The warriors definitely qualify as such. Literally thousands of soldiers made out of clay, each with different faces. Amazing.

My next pick (not necessarily in order) would be Longman Grottoes. This one I would say is a lot less well know, but darn impressive in its’ own right. So basically picture a mountain side that has thousands of Buddha’s carved out of it, actually it has over 100,000 Buddha’s carved into the mountainside. There are some that are as small as your thumb that are carved so close together they are like Buddha wall paper and the tallest ones are like three stories high. Old religious sites always impress me. I mean for centuries people were devout enough to work on this mountainside. I know that people spent decades working on the Salt Lake temple but really old sites I can’t help but think that they had even rougher tools and the work was harder. Buddha statues and temples seem to be everywhere in China.

I also really liked the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City. Both were used in ancient times by the Emperor and his family. These were enormous compounds with carving, beams and artwork that I would expect in ancient Chinese architecture. The summer palace has a pavilion kind of walk along the lakeside and literally each beam has a different portrait, still life or motif on it. It’s wild because the walk has to be as long as a football field. I mean the people put a lot of time into these things.

I guess the above four sites are what I would have expected from China. What I didn’t expect was the pollution. Sure I knew it would be in the cities, but it was also horrible out in the middle of no where amongst the rice patties you couldn’t see mountains that were like a 100 yards away. The main problem is they burn coal in their power plants, which dumps a bunch of crud and smut into the air. The country overall was much dirtier than I expected. Like our first 2 hotel rooms had obviously never seen or heard of a western style vacuum and the carpet was all stained, but it was more than the hotel rooms. It’s completely socially acceptable to spit in the street. I got in the way of one man, ewww on my arm. It is also ok to openly pick your nose. Oh, I almost forgot. <3 Squatty Potties, as I called them when I was in Italy. Oh man I have smelt latrines that smell better. The kick of the whole thing, is that they actually rate their bathrooms at tourist sites. So there’s this one that is **** (that’s right 4 stars). I was pretty excited at first, but then I realized that 4 stars meant that it wasn't as nice as an off brand gas station in the States where the key has something enormous attached to it so you won't steal it.

I think the most surprising thing in terms of local culture is how the Chinese LOVE crowds. I mean they LOVE, LOVE crowds. They prefer crowds. Old grandmas that seriously came to my shoulders (mind you, I am only 5’4” and that’s rounding up) had no qualms about body checking, or shoving me to get closer into the crowds. I don’t consider myself Claustrophobic. I didn’t have any problems getting my 3 MRIs but seriously the Chinese were pushing my limits (quite literally) on crowds.

~Amy