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.