Day 5 – Bullet Train to Beijing and a Night at the Opera

Bullet Train to Beijing

Today was our day to travel to Beijing and we booked a 10 am train from Hangqiao Station. Because this is a holiday week, the train is sold out and we weren’t too sure how much time we had to allow to pass through security so we left by taxi at 7:30 am. We were seated inside the terminal by 8:15 am so maybe we overdid it a bit. There are no options if we missed that train so it was better to be safe. We had to pass through security twice to catch our train. The first time they made us take out all our spray bottles (5 in total) and the second time they confiscated a small pair of scissors I was carrying. No real rhyme or reason about the hair spray.

Traveling in Comfort

The train was really amazing. We had bought first class tickets to get a little more room for our luggage and we were very comfortable. The tickets weren’t much more than second class so no big deal. Travel in China is, for the most part, a fraction of the cost for the same trip in the US. Our train speed was just a little over 220 mph but you really don’t even feel the motion.  It was a 4 hour and 28 minute trip with two stops along the way. The train today had about 20 coaches with a dining car (Coach 9) and we were in Coach 2 near the end of the train. I took a walk to see what the dining car was like but it was only take out. No tables to sit and eat. Apparently you could order by text or app as I saw some people get their meals delivered. By the way, bullet trains run exactly on time here. The photo is the last car, business class and we were in the one right in front of it.

Demonstration of Make-up Application

As far as the view, there was nothing spectacular. We passed through several smoggy cities and even the country had a continual haze so it wasn’t too appealing. The countryside was mostly flat and in the countryside many of the fields had been plowed under but there were still a few crops like late corn and maybe sugar cane.

We arrived in Beijing exactly on time, passed through security again on the way out and took a cab to our hotel with no problems. We were fortunate that our hotel is just on the outside of the 2nd Ring Road. Everything inside from here is shut down for the celebration tomorrow. Also lucky that the Peking Opera that we went to is also outside the 2nd ring. There were already starting to shut down the city and they picked us up two hours early to make sure we made it.

Fight for the Mountain Herb

The opera was good but you would not recognize it as a Western opera because it was mostly acrobatics and martial arts. There were two separate acts. The first was called “Blocking the Horse” and the second “The Great Immortal Herb Robbery.” There was singing in the first which you might call shrill but really sounded a bit like if Minnie Mouse sang opera. The story line was a woman from the Song Dynasty who dressed like a man who traveled to the north to spy and ran into a fellow countryman. The second was about a woman whose husband was sick and she had to go to get the “immortal flower” in the mountains to cure him. Along the way she has to fight goat boys and deer boys but I’m happy to say she won and got the herb. The fighting scenes were amazing, consisting of sticks which were alternately thrown and kicked by the girl. I have no idea how they were able to do it with such precision.

Day 4 - Water Town and Shanghai at Night

Shanghai Noodle Breakfast

Here are some more impressions that we have formed of China. A Chinese breakfast is vastly different from ours. I asked our tour guide yesterday and he said he usually eats noodles and congee. This is typical of Shanghai but he said it varies from region to region and city to city. I tried out the noodles for breakfast today. They are served in a broth with mushrooms, cabbage and spinach. Not bad. It was kind of like eating thin spaghetti with chopsticks.

We were under the impression there was only one state run TV station but in fact there are about 50 with a variety of programs and even a couple of BBC-like stations in English giving the world news. Regarding content, we really couldn’t tell much. There were definitely a few patriotic stations but there were also some game shows and a lot of what looked like dramas.

Zhujiajiao Water Town

Crossing the street is an adventure. Even if you have the green walk arrow, you aren’t safe. Bikes and noiseless electric scooter mostly ignore the lights but they won’t hit you unless you make some sudden move. The scary part is that cars making a right turn don’t stop and seem to think they have the right of way.

Our tour today started at noon so we slept in and rested. Our guide, Zu Zu (pronounced Choo Choo), picked us up and there were only four in our group so we toured in a mini-van. We drove about an hour west from Shanghai to the ancient water town of Zhujiajiao. There are a couple of other water towns around Shanghai and at one time they were all similar to Venice as everything was transported by boats within the town. Today the boats mostly transport tourists. We strolled through the streets and an almost endless array of markets, many of which we have no equivalent. One shop specialized in letting you put your feet in a fish tank and letting the fish eat off the dead skin. Others sold candies, food and who knows what. Jeanne tried a sugar cane drink and I had a little of the Chinese barbeque and some sticky rice.

Shanghai at Night

When the tour was over, we drove back to Shanghai for an obligatory stop at the Silk Market. Same one as yesterday so a bit boring but they did let us stretch some silk from a double cocoon to help form bedding material. After that we were taken to dinner in a restaurant. It was supposed to be dim sum on the boat according to the tour description but I think this actually worked better as the ship was too crowded for any dining to happen. The meal was really very good and more like “American” Chinese. There were lots of dishes – duck, sliced beef, meatballs, General Tsao chicken, bok choy, soup, etc.  I’m sure we ate less than half of what was served.

The Bund

After the meal we were herded onto the boat for our evening tour of the Haungpu River.  I use the word “herded” because that is how the Chinese roll. There is no sense of a line, just everyone for themselves in a mad dash. The ride up and down the river was absolutely fantastic and well worth the aggravation of the crowd. Buildings on both sides of the river are lit up in an amazing light show and each building tries to outdo the next. There was a laser lightshow going on overhead with a flotilla of lighted boats cruising with us. I’m not even sure the pictures we took did justice to the sight.

70th Anniversary

The last photo is one of the Oriental Pearl Tower. I like this shot because you can see below a sign for the 70th anniversary of China as a republic.

Day 3 - Touring Shanghai

Ming Vase

With a population of 24 million, Shanghai is the largest city in the world and we set out to tour it all in one day. Of course that isn’t possible but the tour we arranged for today promised the “must-see sights” so we settled for that. There were six people in our group which is a nice size and we started with a one hour stop at the Shanghai Museum. That was enough time to see a good bit of the museum and we particularly enjoyed the jade and vase collections with some pieces quite old. The piece at the right is from the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). It is hard to talk about Chinese history without talking in terms of dynasties which traditionally started in 2070 BCE with the Xia dynasty and continued for the next four thousand years.

Reclining Buddha

We then stopped at the Jade Buddha Temple which was built during the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China (1644 to 1911), which makes it relatively recent. No photos were allowed of the actual Jade Buddha which was stunning, but I have one of a reclining Buddha which I think is ceramic. Our guide explained that only 20% of the people in China are religious with four major ones being Buddhism, Christianity, Muslim and Taoism, in that order. We visited a Tao temple later in the day.

Pudong Area and the Haungpu River

We then went to the Bund which is the old waterfront area with many buildings from the colonial period of the early 1900s when Britain and France controlled major portions of Shanghai and the building along the Bund reflect that period. Immediately across the Huangpu River is the new Pudong section which represents the recent growth of China during the last twenty or so years. The tall building you can see is the second tallest in the world. The one with the round balls is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the lower ball is a roller coaster.

We also made a couple of mandatory touristy stops during the day which are kind of par for the course with Chinese tours. We visited a pearl and jade center, a tea tasting and a silk center. Each one teaches you something but their main goal is to sell you their products. It’s about fifty percent educational and fifty percent marketing pitch.

Xiao Long Bao

We got back to the hotel around five, rested up and took the subway to have dinner at a soup dumpling place that was raved about on the internet. The restaurant was Linlongfang and it is a tiny, family-run, hole in the wall kind of place. Jeanne had the traditional xiao long bao pork dumplings and I tried the crab version. They make the dumplings to order and the pork ones were excellent while the crab ones were good but not as good as the pork. The pork ones were 18 CYN or about 2.50 USD for an order of 12.

Garden Near the Bund

We have decided that Shanghai is pretty much like New York City, but maybe a little better because much of it is newer and better maintained. There are flowers everywhere and displays for their impending 70th anniversary as a republic. Shanghai also has some shabby places but you never feel unsafe. It's also a mix of ancient and modern. There are some strange sights like street sweepers everywhere with what look like 1000 year old straw brooms then nearby are groups of people staring at their cell phones.

Day 2 - Arrival in Shanghai (Continuation of Day 1)

DoubleTree Jing'an

We arrived slightly ahead of schedule at 12:40 pm and because we were able to sleep just a little and had some extra room, the flight wasn’t terrible and we weren’t super tired. It was a long flight but not unbearable. Clearing customs in Shanghai took a while. Digital fingerprinting, facial recognition, passport control and scanning of baggage as you left took an hour or more. Not sure what they were looking for in the scanning. We got some yuan (CYN) from an ATM (not easy to find) and took a taxi to our hotel. The ride took about an hour in traffic and cost 280 CYN, which is the equivalent of about 40 USD. Well worth it. You can take public transportation but who wants to drag your luggage around.

We are staying at the DoubleTree Jing’an which is a newish hotel in the chain but of course they are still remodeling so the Executive lounge is still closed. Bummer. In theory that is a perk we are supposed to get with our credit card. They did upgrade our room and it is large, very quiet, comfortable and it has a nice view over the city so we have no complaints.

Hot Pot and Tsing Tao

We immediately took a 3 hour nap to catch up on our sleep and then went out to find some place to eat. We walked around the neighborhood and found a small “hot pot” restaurant. Think of fondue in our terms. No one spoke English so we used phone apps to communicate and it worked pretty well. It was actually pretty funny because we had five people helping us at one point and everyone was laughing. Probably at us, but in a good way. The head lady cooked most of our meal.  We had very thinly sliced beef cooked in a clear broth at the table with Satay (peanut) sauce and wrapped the cooked beef in lettuce leaves. It was delicious. We walked back to the hotel and picked up supplies (water and snacks) for our tour tomorrow. All in all a pretty good first day.

Day 1 – Newark to Shanghai (aka "The Longest Day)

After an early 6:30 am start we arrived in Newark at around 8:20 am, parked our car and headed to the airport for our 10:50 am flight to Shanghai. This trip is pretty routine for us as we fly quite a bit from Newark. The flight was going to be a long one. It is more than 7630 miles via the polar route and it takes 14 hours. This is roughly twice what it takes us to fly to Europe to put it in perspective. Take-off was on-time and the plane was only about two-thirds full and mostly Chinese.

Our Spacious Flight ("before picture")

At this point I want to give some props to credit cards. If you use them correctly, you can get some pretty amazing travel perks. One good one is that they upgraded us from Economy Class to Economy Premium Class for our flight. That moved us from more cramped seats way in the back of the plane to just three rows behind first class and a bit more spacious seats. Even better was I that was able to place us in a 3-seat group with an empty seat between us. 

I think that we got that upgrade because I have a United credit card but I’m really not sure. That same card also gave us two passes to the United lounge so we passed the time until we boarded in comfort. I’ll also confess that I used credit card points to book all our hotels stays (11 nights) and eight tours for free. It takes a bit of pre-planning but I think it’s worth it. Definitely makes the trip more affordable.

I have time on the flight so I’ll talk some more about the planning. As I said earlier, the National Day holiday has made it a little more difficult than I expected. In hindsight, I would have waited another week to go but it is what it is. I’ve already had two tours cancelled on October 2 and I just booked a food tasting tour in their place. Hopefully that will be okay. Otherwise we’ll just wander around Beijing on our own. Not a big deal. I also booked our last activity yesterday. I bought two advance tickets to Shanghai Disneyland for my birthday.

So was this the longest day? It was 36-hours long and we had about 24 hours of sunlight, but technically we crossed the International Date Line so I don't know. That might actually be our return flight.

Our China Trip

Our China Trip

The picture at the right is intended to give you a general picture of our trip. China is roughly the size of the US and an equivalent of our trip in US terms is something like Jacksonville to Philadelphia to Nashville and back. Those cities are roughly at the same latitude as the ones we are visiting in China.

We start the trip with a flight from Newark, NJ, to Shanghai on United on September 26. United was kind enough to upgrade us to Economy Plus so that will give us some extra space. The flight is 14 hours long, goes east to west, and covers a distance of 7,364 miles (slightly less 1/3 of the distance around the earth). It really sounds far when you say it like that, doesn't it?

High-Speed Train (Shanghai to Beijing)

We are spending three nights in Shanghai and then taking a bullet train to Beijing. The bullet train travels almost 220 mph and makes the 750 mile trip to Beijing in 4.5 hours. We spend four nights in Beijing before taking another bullet train to Xi'an. We spend two nights in Xi'an before flying back to Shanghai for two more nights and then we return home on October 8. So, to summarize:

Sept 27 to 30 - Shanghai
Oct 1 to 4 - Beijing
Oct 5 to 6 - Xi'an
Oct 7 to 8 - Shanghai

At this point I need to admit that I made a mistake in choosing the timing of the trip. Yes, the fall is a great time to travel but I didn't realize that October 1 is National Day in China, which is a major holiday week when everyone travels. October 1, in case you don't know, is the day when Mao declared China to be a republic in 1949 and Beijing is pretty much closed down for the week leading up to the celebration. It is like us trying to sightsee in Washington DC on the 4th of July. In addition to everything being super crowded and certain sites shut down, here are a few of the complications we have encountered:

1. After booking the first two legs of the train tour, there were no tickets available on the third leg of the trip. Following the advice of the booking agency, we were able to book a flight on China Eastern Airlines from Xi'an to Shanghai. It does cost about $100 more for the two of us, but it cuts the time down from seven hours to two hours so it isn't all bad.

2. The tours we had originally booked for Beijing are still in a bit of turmoil, even with 2 days before we leave. The issue is the October 1 celebration, the clean-up after and its impact on the Forbidden City area. Our two-day Beijing tour is now split between October 1 (Great Wall outside of Beijing) and October 3 (Forbidden City). We had a third day booked for October 2 we were just informed that now it is cancelled. Might have to just roll our own tour via metro for October 2. Stay tuned.

Preparation for a Trip to China

We are traveling to China in 4 days and I thought I should talk a little about how the preparation for the trip compares to other trips we have taken:

Example of a Chinese Visa

1. Travel Visa. The first major difference compared to traveling to Europe is that you need a Visa to visit China and it isn't that easy to get. The easiest way to get Visas would be to pay one of the agencies that do it for you but I read nothing but bad things about them - basically how they rip you off - so I decided just to do it myself. It requires getting photos that have slightly different requirements from passport photos, filling out forms and hand-carrying the forms and your passports for minimum of two trips to the Chinese consulate in New York. The New York consulate also covers Pennsylvania and it isn't that difficult to get to New York from Philly by train so that's what I did. I actually ended up making a third trip as I had handwritten the first set of forms because I didn't realize that they were editable pdfs. You also have to be a bit precise on how you fill out the forms but there are websites that guide you in the process. The cost for a Tourist Visa to China is $140 but it is good for 10-years. We probably aren't going back so the time length is kind of irrelevant for us. If you are not familiar with a Visa, it is just a piece of paper glued into your passport on a blank page similar to what you see in the photo.

2. Immunizations. Technically nothing is required, especially as we are sticking to the big cities and don't plan on drinking anything but bottled water. However the CDC does recommend Hepatitis A and Typhoid for all travelers going to China so we got those. No sense rolling the dice. Hep A is a series of two shots and Typhoid is a set of pills.

3. Communication. China does block a lot of Internet sites so many of the applications that we use daily won't work there. There is no access to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. That means that I cannot get my gmail, post on Facebook or even blog as this is done through a Google product. That said, many travelers to China recommend using a VPN and ExpressVPN is the one that the Chinese government seems to allow so I'm going to try that. If that doesn't work, don't expect to hear from us during the 13 days we are in China. So why does China do this? There are two main reasons. One is to control information flow. The second reason is to allow Chinese companies to develop their own equivalent products to Google, Facebook. WeChat (微信), for example, is one of their main social media products these days. You can use that to IM and pay for things, but doesn't really work for us.