Shanghai & Beijing!

As soon as I found out that I was only getting 30 more days in China after my visa fiasco, I knew that I had to make the most of my time left here. My family had been planning on coming over and traveling to Beijing and Shanghai at the end of my six months. Since that wouldn’t be happening anymore, I wanted to still try to get to both Beijing and Shanghai before I left China.

I first went to Shanghai last week. As a reminder, my work week is Wednesday-Sunday, so I spent Monday and Tuesday (my “weekend”) in Shanghai. I was done teaching at the gym on Sunday at 4:00pm, and then I quickly headed back to the apartment to shower, double check my bag to make sure I packed everything, and then took the metro to the airport. My flight on Sunday night was at 9:00pm, and I landed in Shanghai around 11:30pm. As I was walking through the airport and out towards the taxi pickup, I was getting a lot of bad flashbacks to my first day in China when I was stuck in the Shanghai airport for 18 hours without a connecting flight to Guangzhou. Good times.

My hostel’s website had only provided the address in English, which I thought was a little odd and worried me a bit. English is still very rare in China, so it’s important to have any addresses in Chinese because there is no guarantee your driver will speak/read English. I was hoping that maybe since Shanghai is a bigger city, that there would be more English speakers and hopefully it wouldn’t be a problem. My taxi driver didn’t speak English, but he was able to show the address to an airport worker and figure out what the address was. My hostel was on South Shanxi Road, but there is another street called South Shaanxi Road (the same name, but spelled with two a’s instead of one). Luckily, since I was still in China my SIM card worked, so I was able to use my phone to see where we were on a map. I knew generally where my hostel was supposed to be, and when he pulled over to a dark street with seemingly no open businesses/hostels I knew something wasn’t right. I pulled up the hostel’s website and luckily they had an image of the hostel on a map so I was able to point out that we were not in the right place. Thankfully, he was able to understand and drove me to the correct location. By the time I got checked into my hostel and in bed, it was probably around 1:00am, and I was ready for a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, I went straight out to explore. My hostel was just a few blocks away from Nanjing Road, which is a big pedestrian shopping street. So there is no car traffic, which is nice. I popped in some of the stores and even walked through an indoor food market. I then crossed the street and went straight into People’s Park, which is a big park with lots of different amenities. There are a few museums in the park, as well as a “fun fair” with mini rollercoasters and other carnival rides. There is also a famous marriage market in the park every weekend, which I didn’t get to see since I was visiting on a weekday. Apparently every weekend parents go to the park and set up advertisements for their single children to try and set them up with someone. That definitely would have been interesting to see!

I kept walking through the park and came out on the other end. I had read about this place online that has really good smoothie bowls, so I wanted to find it! I love smoothie/acai bowls, and I like trying to find one everywhere I go. This place ended up being way cooler than I thought. I hadn’t realized from what I read online, but this little café was on the 38th floor of a business high-rise. I had to go to the front desk and show my passport to get a receipt that would scan me into the elevator. It was really cool! It gave an awesome view of the city, despite the fact that it was a little gray and gloomy outside. The smoothie bowl I got was also so good. It was a green smoothie bowl, but I ordered it without realizing that it is normally made with cashew milk (cashews are one of my biggest allergens) because it didn’t say any of the ingredients on the menu.  The man who took my order didn’t speak much English, and I had tried to double check to make sure there were no nuts, but he just didn’t understand me. I had already ordered, and then was re-reading the article about this place and saw that the author suggested trying the green smoothie bowl and then listed the ingredients, including cashew milk. I was able to find an employee who spoke English, and asked if it could be made with regular milk instead of cashew milk, and it was no problem. Phew! It would have been a real downer to have had a severe allergic reaction – but crisis averted.

After my smoothie bowl, I took the metro back towards the river to walk along the Bund, which is the waterfront along the river that gives an awesome view of the skyline. It was so pretty, and I love the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower, which is the tall pointy building with the three round segments. I walked along the Bund for a while on my way to my next stop – Yu Garden. I had to walk through another park on my way there, and this park was adorable because there were tons of stray cats roaming around. They were so cute and very friendly. You could tell they were used to the visitors.

Yu Garden itself is surrounded by a giant marketplace with tons of shops, street food, and classic Chinese architecture. This was one of my favorite parts of Shanghai. It was crowded, so the streets were bustling and there was so much activity. People were bargaining for things everywhere you looked, and the whole place smelled amazing because of all the food. I got a giant Chinese fried cake with chives, and it was SO GOOD. First off, it was HUGE, like way bigger than my head. It was basically just crispy, fried dough, but it was hollow and there were chives inside. It was very good. I walked around the marketplace some more before making my way into the actual Yu Garden. There were several small temples inside and lots of beautiful greenery. It was very serene after being in the crowded madness of the marketplace.

After leaving the garden, I walked along the streets and explored some more (i.e. got a little lost). The clouds had cleared up a little bit, so I decided to make my way back to the Bund in hopes of getting a picture in front of the skyline. One of the downsides of traveling alone is that it’s hard to get pictures with yourself in them because you have to ask someone else to take it. And you just can’t trust strangers to take a good picture. I had to ask three different people to take my picture just to get a semi-decent one. It just cracks me up because we’re obviously in front of a major landmark/photo spot in Shanghai and the first girl I asked took my picture but cut out the entire skyline??? “Can you take a picture of me in front of the skyline? But DON’T get the skyline in it, okay?” You can best believe that if someone asks me to take their picture in front of a landmark, I’m taking 25 photos from different angles, some vertical, some horizontal, the whole nine yards. You’re welcome strangers.

It was at this point that it started to get really cold and was raining, so I stopped in a coffee shop to warm up with some hot chocolate. I had plans to go to a Christkindlmarkt later in the evening, so I took the metro to a nearby station and just walked around a little bit. I walked through a park and saw some couples dancing to a live musician, which was super cute. I also stopped in a bookstore for a while, which is one my favorite things to do. I then made my way to the Christkindlmarkt, where I hung out for just a little bit. Right as I got there was when it started to rain harder than it had all day, so even though it was covered, I didn’t hang around too long. I did get some loaded french fries though. They came with caramelized onions, mushrooms, and sour cream. So good, but SO BIG. The menu had said it was enough to share, which I had scoffed at a little bit when I ordered like, “please, I can definitely finish this by myself.” Update: I definitely could not.

After leaving the Christkindlmarkt, I wasn’t sure what to do because by this point, it was VERY cold and VERY rainy. I was obviously going to need to do something inside, and I wasn’t ready to just go back to my hostel and hang out yet. I ended up finding an international movie theater so I thought I would check it out. The only movie they were showing in English that night was Aquaman, which had started 10 minutes ago. I figured “why not?”, bought a ticket, and ran in 10 minutes late. Superhero movies are totally not my thing, and I really had no desire to see this movie, but it was something to do! Plus, it was a 3D movie for like five dollars! I honestly had no idea what was going on, and I slept through quite a bit of the movie, but I had a nice nap so that’s good.

The next day, I was heading to Shanghai Disneyland! This was a super exciting Disney visit for me because I got to cross something really cool off of my hypothetical bucket list. I’ve now been to every Disney location in the world, which is super cool, especially at only 22 years old. This park was super fun, and is home to (I think) my new favorite Disney ride of all time – TRON. This was the first ride I went on, and it is AWESOME. My favorite thing about this ride is the cars. You don’t sit in a car like a normal rollercoaster. It’s like you are riding a “lightcycle” from the TRON movies, so you sit on it like a motorcycle, and then lean forward to hold the handles, and the employees press a cover over your back to hold you in. So there is no seatbelt or any kind of restraint across your lap or over your shoulders or anything. Just a plate pressed against your back and a bar behind your knees. It is so cool, because you really feel like you’re leaning down against the handlebars of a motorcycle and riding at top speed. The ride also has a sudden start up where it counts down from 3 and then you burst off at 60 mph. The ride starts outside and then continues inside in the dark with lots of neon lights and animations. Think Rockin’ Rollercoaster plus Space Mountain. This was by far the best ride in the park. I rode it 4 times and honestly could have kept going.

It was nice going to the park on a cold, kind of rainy Tuesday in December because there were NO lines. It was so empty, and I walked right onto nearly every ride. This also meant that I had so much time, so I did a lot of the rides that I typically skip because I don’t want to “waste” the time on them. I rode the Winnie the Pooh ride and Peter Pan, which are ones that I haven’t been on since I was little, which made me feel very nostalgic. Another awesome ride was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The one in Shanghai is different than in any other park. It has a different storyline, and the title includes the tagline “Battle for the Sunken Treasure”. So rather than just riding a boat through a bunch of scenes with animatronic characters, there is an actual storyline (which I could only follow vaguely since it was in Chinese) about fighting over sunken treasure (hence the title). There were a few parts where your boat is in a giant room surrounded by a huge screen, and the animations/effects are incredible and they make you feel as if you are really there. It was so cool. I rode this one twice! In my opinion, it is way better than the Pirates ride at any other park. I found a pretty good video of the ride that I’ll link below if you want to get a better understanding of what the ride is like. I did my best to explain it, but a video is much clearer.

Another ride that I did twice was Soaring Over the Horizon, which is just like Soarin’ in the U.S. parks where you are “hang-gliding” over some of the most beautiful places in the world. There were different locations here (at least I think), and I loved it. We soared over Sydney,  Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, and the Great Wall of China to name a few. As always, this ride was awesome. And of course, as with any trip to Disney I got some yummy snacks. I had popcorn, a Mickey pretzel (which my mom and I were laughing about because Mickey looks a little funny (see below) – someone get Mickey a Benadryl or something because he is swollen!), a churro, and a veggie burger with fries.

I left the park and took the metro to the northern part of the city to see a show by the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe. The show was so amazing, and I’m really glad that I went. The venue was called Shanghai Circus World, and it really was like we were at the circus. The show was in a giant tent, and the stage was circular. The performers were incredible. It was a combination of traditional circus acts with technology and multimedia. There were contortionists, aerial silks, bicyclists, and of course, motorcyclists in a giant sphere. The things these performers were doing were so incredibly difficult and terrifying to watch that I was sitting in the audience with either my mouth gaping open in awe or my hands over my eyes in fear. One of my favorite acts was the Act I finale. I don’t know how else to describe the contraption that they were on other than by saying it looked like a giant fidget spinner, so there were three hoops that were rotating around one axis in the middle like a ferris wheel. They started off inside the hoops, and the faster that they spun the more air they gained. So at the top they would start to float up a little bit from the momentum. Then they started doing flips inside these hoops while the entire contraption was rotating. THEN, they started climbing onto the top of the hoops and were walking on top of them while going around. AND THEN they started doing crazy things while they were on top of the hoops like juggling and JUMP ROPING. I mean, seriously?! It was amazing, yet so terrifying to watch. It was so mesmerizing, but I will say that I was very glad when they were done because I could finally breathe again. The entire show was incredible – I loved it!

After the show, I headed back to my hostel and went to bed early to get up for my flight the next day. I took the maglev (magnetic levitation) train to the airport, which was cool because my students had done a weeklong study on an article about the Shanghai maglev train during student teaching. The train goes up to 268 mph and takes only 8 minutes to get to the airport. After landing in Guangzhou, I headed straight to the gym for my last staff meeting!

My last week at the gym was a busy one, and it flew by! My last day at the gym was the same day as our end of the session showcase, which was a fiasco and a half to say the least. It made for an exciting, but very long (and admittedly, very stressful) day. The next morning, Clint, Li Yen, and I all headed to the airport together. I was on my way to Beijing, and Clint and Li Yen were headed back to the U.S. to spend the holidays in Missouri with Clint’s family. We said our final goodbyes (sad face) at the airport and parted ways.

By the time I landed in Beijing and got to my hostel, it was about 5:00pm, so I headed right out to do some nearby exploring and to get some dinner. I had found this place on TripAdvisor that had awesome reviews and was near a big pedestrian shopping street, so I decided to check it out. It is a Buddhist restaurant that is entirely vegetarian, similar to the restaurant I went to with Li Yen in Malaysia. Everything I got was so good, and it doesn’t help that their menu is massive. I ordered way too much food for one person, but it was so good not to eat all of it. I got a yellow vegetable curry, a plate of tofu and steamed vegetables, some mushrooms, and some kind of pita with beans in it.

Then I just explored the rest of this pedestrian shopping area, which was called Wangfujing. I wandered through some of the more modern malls, as well as some of the traditional outdoor vendors along the side streets. After walking around for a while and letting my stomach settle, I found a yogurt place that I decided to try for dessert. Their entire menu was basically just these giant servings of greek yogurt with different toppings. I got mango, blueberries, and kiwi on mine, and it was delicious! I then hurried back to my hotel and went straight to bed because I was in for an early start the next morning.

I woke up the next day bright and early and quickly got ready before heading outside shortly before 6:00am. I was waiting to be picked up by the tour group that I was joining to go see the Great Wall of China! I got picked up around 6:15am, and we made our rounds throughout the city picking up the rest of the group before hitting the road and heading towards the Wall. I visited the Mutianyu section of the Wall, which is one of the best restored parts of the Wall. It took us about an hour to get there, and then we had to walk a little ways uphill through the town of Mutianyu to get to the entrance. I chose to take the chairlift up to the wall, which took me to the far end of this section of the wall. From there, I walked most of the way across, stopped at cable car station, and turned around to head back to the chair lift.

I got super lucky in terms of weather, because it was a BEAUTIFUL day to visit the Great Wall of China. I had been pretty nervous about the weather in Beijing seeing as how typical December weather is in the 20s, but I got really lucky and visited during a week where the weather was in the 40s. Once I got up to the Wall and was walking, I was plenty warm. It was a sunny day – just perfect! Never in my life did I think I would actually get to see the Great Wall of China, so this was such a surreal day. It’s incredible to think about how long this structure has been standing and all of the people that have walked along it. I spent a lot of time just hanging out on the wall, looking around, and feeling very grateful to be there.

One of the cool things about the Mutianyu section of the Wall is that they have a toboggan that you can ride down back to the base of the Wall. Either that or you can take a cable car or chair lift. Surprisingly only like 4 other people from my group were doing the toboggan. I was talking to another American in my group who wasn’t taking the toboggan, and he had asked “so you’re taking the slide down?” And I was like, “Heck yeah!! Why take a boring old cable car when I could literally ride a SLIDE down instead???” He said I was making him regret his decision a little bit. I mean… I would too. I think most people decided against it because it was cold, but it honestly wasn’t that bad! It took less than 5 minutes to slide down and my hands were only a little cold. It was so fun though! I even bought the little picture they take of you. I don’t love the picture, but I knew my parents would, and it has an awesome view of the Wall in the background!

My group met up in a local restaurant for lunch before heading back to Beijing. I got sat at a table with a large family who were Chinese, but were visiting from the U.S. They were very friendly and helped me out when I was struggling with my chopsticks (I’ve gotten much better, but there are some foods that I truly believe are not meant to be eaten with chopsticks – like thinly sliced vegetables in a slippery sauce… it just doesn’t work, okay?). The lunch was AMAZING. It was a big family style meal, so we were at a round table with a giant lazy Susan in the middle. We just kept circling around and serving up more and more. I am really going to miss the food here.

Obviously the Great Wall of China was the highlight of my trip (duh), and to be honest, most of the rest of my time in Beijing was a flop. On the way back from the Wall, the bus was stopping at several drop off locations. I was planning to get off at the first stop, which was the 2008 Olympic Stadium. I ended up falling asleep on the bus and woke up at the last drop off stop instead 🙂 Luckily, it wasn’t that far, so I thought I could still get to the Olympic Stadium on my own. The Beijing outdoor Olympic stadium is called the Bird’s Nest, so that’s what I put in my GPS. Turns out, it ended up taking me to a local cafe called the Bird’s Nest… not the Olympic stadium… So from there I just kept wandering around and exploring since my GPS had led me to a pretty residential area. My phone was nearly dead so I found a nearby Starbucks to re-charge for a bit and figure out my plan.

I had a very strange encounter at this Starbucks. There was a woman sitting at the counter where you pick up your drink, but she had a bird with her (???). She was just letting it roam around on the countertop, and it was chewing at the straws. It was very weird… and I’m terrified of birds so I was really not okay with this. Luckily I was able to grab my hot chocolate and quickly find a seat FAR away from the bird lady. I ended up sitting at the same table as another girl who was by herself because I desperately needed the outlet that was nearby. She ended up asking very sweetly if I could pick up her drink for her. She explained that she is very scared of birds and could not get herself to go pick up her drink because the bird was right there. I was like, “GIRL ME TOO”, but I couldn’t let her down. So I did it. I faced my fear and got this girl’s drink for her. I was very proud of myself.

When I had been sitting in Starbucks, I was looking to see if there were any shows that I could go see. I had looked beforehand and couldn’t find anything, but I figured I’d look again. I ended up finding an orchestral show that was playing music from the Lord of the Rings. I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen the movies, but I do love a good movie score, so I figured it would be fun. I took the metro to the theater to see if I could get a ticket for that night. I ended up getting a ticket for the show the next night, when the tickets were cheaper. My last hope for evening plans was to try to see a show at the Beijing Opera, which is a traditional Chinese performance. I took a taxi all the way there, tried to buy a ticket, and found out there was no performance that night. So it appeared as if I wasn’t going to have plans that night. I got some dinner and went back to my hostel.

The next day, I started off by going to see the Forbidden City, which was about a 15 minute walk from my hostel. The architecture was insane, and it was crazy to see how many people were there, especially since it was a weekday in the middle of their off-season. Supposedly, the Forbidden City attracts over 80,000 visitors every day. I got an audio guide, which was very smart because otherwise I would have had no idea what I was looking at. I did enjoy looking at all of the architecture, but I’ll admit that once you’ve seen so many Asian buildings/temples, they all sort of start to blend together. I went through the Forbidden City more quickly than most tour groups would, but I saw everything I wanted and learned some fun facts from the audio guide.

After the Forbidden City, I decided to take a second try at the Olympic Stadium. This time, I found the right location and had to walk quite a bit and take the metro. I ended up taking the metro two stations too far, and had to back track nearly a mile to actually get to the Olympic Stadium. I also hadn’t eaten anything yet this day, so I was feeling a little on edge. Once I finally got to the Olympic Stadium, I had a very hard time trying to communicate with the girl working the ticket booth. I was trying to ask if it was a self-guided tour or a group tour, but she

just didn’t understand me. It’s obviously not her fault – I’m the foreigner, but nonetheless, it was very frustrating. After getting my ticket, I had to sit down and have myself a little moment (and by that I mean a little cry and a rant to my mom). I’m very much ready to come home and be somewhere where I speak the local language. Honestly, the language barrier has been challenging but it hadn’t really frustrated me like that before. I think I was just having a day. Living in a foreign country is HARD, okay?

The Bird’s Nest was cool, but to be honest, I really expected it to be bigger! Also, I was a little confused because there were a ton of people setting up snow? There were signs advertising the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, so I assume it has something to do with that… but it seems a little early to me… 3 years early, to be exact… As usual in China, I had no idea what was going on. I also went to the Water Cube, which is where they hosted all of the swimming and diving competitions. They were setting up something in here too so again, I had no idea what was going on! This place was really cool though because aside from the swimming/diving arena, there was an indoor waterpark! If I had known that I would have brought my swimsuit and hung out there all day!

I then went to the Summer Palace, which was BEAUTIFUL. I mostly just walked around and admired the architecture and the scenery. I was there shortly before the sunset, so the sun was shining right on the lake and giving the most beautiful effect. It was stunning! I also saw a man who was doing water calligraphy on one of the sidewalks. It was gorgeous, but I wish I knew what he was writing!

My last event in Beijing was the Lord of the Rings concert. I made my way back towards the theater, grabbed some pizza nearby for dinner, and then headed inside. The description I had read online didn’t do the best job explaining what the show was, but it was even cooler than I expected. The online description said it would be an orchestra performing music from the movie while scenes from the movie played on a screen above. Turns out that the show was the ENTIRE movie, except meanwhile the music was being played live by the orchestra on stage. It was really cool! Plus I got to see the Lord of the Rings for the first time, which I really liked! It was hard to believe that the music was being played live because when you’re watching the movie, you get tunnel vision and forget that the orchestra below is playing live. They also had a choir and soloists who sang live as well. They were incredible! I really enjoyed the show, and it was so different from any other show I’ve seen.

While I enjoyed the show, I did NOT enjoy getting home from the show. I had expected the movie to be decently long, but when intermission started at 8:45pm (for a 7:00pm show), I was wondering exactly how much of the movie was left… I quickly googled it to find out that the first Lord of the Rings movie is 3 hours and 48 minutes… OH! That would mean that the show wouldn’t be over until nearly 11:00pm. This would have been fine, until I started thinking shortly into the second act about what time the metro closes… I figured it probably closes at 11:00pm, in which case I would just take a taxi back to my hostel – no big deal! I was able to quickly google the Beijing metro hours at the end of the show to confirm that the metro closes at 11:00pm, and I booked it out of the theater to try and snag myself a taxi before the rush of people beat me to it. Turns out that it didn’t matter because there were NO taxis anywhere nearby. I decided to keep walking in the direction the cars were coming from in hopes of catching a taxi before it made it in front of the theater. There were nearly none to be found, and those that did pass wouldn’t pull over. Some of them were occupied, but some were definitely not and had just straight up ignored me. Some of the drivers that I tried to hail even made eye contact with me and waved back… that’s very friendly and all, but NOT really what I’m doing right now. I NEED A RIDE. Oh, and how could I forget the best part of the story… My phone was at 10%, and it was the only place that I had the address of my hostel! So if my phone died I had no way of telling a driver where to go because they wouldn’t understand the English name of the hostel! Fantastic! I tried hailing a taxi for literally 30 minutes with no luck, and at this point I had walked very far away from the theater. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was at least a 30 minute drive from my hostel, and I was running low on battery.

My mother had the genius idea of trying to contact my hostel to see if they could order a taxi for me. To make a long story slightly shorter, a girl from my hostel was able to call me a Didi (uber) to pick me up, and even she admitted that it was very hard to find an actual taxi so a Didi was better. It had taken over an HOUR to get a ride, and at one point, I had literally been on the phone with the girl from my hostel in TEARS on the side of the road explaining my situation as quickly as possible because my phone was at 7%. It was a rough night, and I was SO READY to get back to my hostel, go to bed, and get out of Beijing in the morning.

So besides the Great Wall of China and the show, my time in Beijing was not the best (lol). I enjoyed Shanghai much more, which I had expected honestly. Beijing is a much older city, and I’m more attracted to newer, more modern cities like Shanghai. Nonetheless, getting to see the Great Wall of China in person made up for all of it. I will say, though, that I’m glad to be back in Guangzhou if only for a day. I have spent yesterday and today packing and tying up all of my loose ends here before leaving for good tonight. I’m headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a few days and then flying through Guangzhou and L.A. to meet my family in Tucson for a late Christmas celebration. I’M SO EXCITED.