Day 7 trip to Jinan, Shandong



                  After we arrived, we found the most cheap hotel and just ate whatever the local people offered. We were extremely tired, but we saw some very nice views as we drove along the waters edge  from Shenyang. I slept on the ride, but we took a long rest and shower then when we were dressed and ready, we went to go find a nice attraction. We asked the front desk, but they had no clue. We asked some locals, but we couldn't understand them. But we finally found a tourist building and they told us to go to Daming Lake. We agreed, then waited for a long time for a ride. When we sat down, Kyle and I felt like our legs turned to jello just waiting. I guess that is a side effect of tiredness...

Jinan, Shandong

                       As we rode to the lake, the driver gave us some brochures and we did some research on the place where we were going. The Daman Lake is also known as the Lake of Great Light, and is a completely nature made lake. The lake itself covers a grand distance of about 113 acres. There are many flourishing plants like brightly coloured flowers, beautiful trees, and neat coloured plants. The lake is also known for jumping fish near yachts, and visitors have said that in spring it has a very beautiful fragrance. The centrepiece of the whole thing is a great man made fountain, that has 103 injectors and water that shoots 100 meters high! The lake is 3 meters in depth, and fish is commonly seen there. When we got there, we really had nothing to do because we read everything in the ride. So we just got a tour boat and relaxed for one of the first times this trip. We saw it all- from jumping fish to exotic plants and flowers. The ride was long and we were going slow, so it was heaven. At one point, since the boat was not the highest boat around, a fish jumped and landed right in between Kyle and I. We just through it back in the water and laughed. After the best boat ride ever, we called the same driver and asked him to drive us back. When we got back, we went to one more tourist site called Lingyan Temple. 

Daman Lake

                          We had a quick something to eat, then went out to go to the temple. We took a different driver to this attraction, then waited on the ride that seemed like forever. But, finally we got there and walked around until we came to a sign that said all its history. The temple one of the most famous Buddhist temples in the Tang and Song Dynasties. The temple was founded in the Yongxing reign of pre-Qin period. At that time there were over 40 halls and pavilions and storied buildings, over 500 monastic rooms, and more than 500 dignitaries. We walked around a bit and were fascinated. We asked many questions, and we could not even keep count of how many questions we asked. We had to leave because it was getting late and we have not eaten dinner yet. So we set back to the hotel and ate a beautiful meal, then went to our room. We prepared for our long flight home, and were sad that we were leaving. We left reluctantly, but for the whole flight our hearts were still in all the historic sites we visited. We had a awesome time, and I hope we come back. 

Day 6 trip to Shenyang, Liaoning


       
                       When we arrived in Shenyang, we were hungry so we ate a quick meal of fried chicken. After we were satisfied, we scouted for a very nice hotel and took a power nap. When we were up, well, when I was up (Seriously, Kyle is like an energy buzzer, does he sleep?), we changed into some new clothes and asked the doorman if there was any tourist attractions that would interest us and he babbled off a few names we could not quite understand. I caught some names though, they were Wulihe Park and Mukden Palace. We chose the Mukden palace and the hotel people drove us there. But before we went, we came prepared, with sweaters and hats. Last time there was an unbearable amount of AC and we almost froze. So we packed a little extra. Also we took some food with us not knowing how long we will be there.

Shenyang, Liaoning

                       When we got there, we were quickly hushed in to the palace and set out to view the structures. It is also known as the Shenyang Imperial Palace. We asked a lady why this palace was built and stuff. Apparently, it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004 for its relationship to the Forbidden City in Beijing. Completed in 1636 by Abahai, the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the construction actually began under the Ming- conquering Manchu ruler Nurhaci. Covering 60,000 square miles, the layout and structure of the palace is based on the Forbidden City in Beiijing. However, its architecture is quite distinct. It incorporates many interesting Manchu and Tibetan characteristics, intricate carvings and glazed roof tiles. Some rooms, like the throne room, are actually in better shape than the rooms in the Forbidden City. That was all we got. Kyle and I looked a little bit more, looking at the different designs and taking mental images on how beautiful it was. What a sight!

Mukden Palace

     

                            Soon after we finished gaping open mouthed at the palace, we were sitting in our hotel reading some magazines trying to find out where to go next. Finally, after about 10 minutes Kyle shouted, "Jackpot!"

"What did you find?" I asked. He didn't answer so I leaned over to see what he was up too. I saw him looking at a weird Chinese Rapper Star paragraph. It was the most hilarious picture I have ever seen... Wow it was funny! But nevertheless, I gave Kyle a stare and said barley holding in my laughter,

"Jeez Kyle, seriously man, just FOCUS!" Kyle obeyed but still had a huge grin on his face. Accidentally I looked at his magazine and saw a nice looking park called Beiling Park. We had nothing, so we decided to go there. Beiling Park was a nice and enormous looking park and I recommended we just find a bench and enjoy the scenery, maybe do some reading. We saw many birds, pine trees, and on the sidewalk were we were sitting we saw some men in red suits performing some sort of calm martial arts. We watched them fascinated, then got bored and headed back on the few minute walk back to the hotel. We immediately collapsed as soon we got in the room and went to sleep. All that traveling, site seeing, and walking it tough, you know? We fell asleep on the floor and woke up with sore muscles. We packed our stuff then stumbled to the elevator and then to the lobby. We told them we were here for only 2 more days, and he recommended we go to Jinan, in Shandong.

Beijing Park

Day 5 trip to China: Harbin, Heilongjiang



                       When we left to Harbin in the middle of the night, we arrived early. It was 4 in the morning! We immediately found somewhere to sleep and woke up hours and hours later. When we woke up, we did not remember why we came here until Kyle had this crazy idea that a psycho dude made us go here. I know, right? Well anyway since we were in China for neat things to look at, we searched some cool places to go to. We found the Harbin Confucian Temple and some pictures that were taken made the place look amazing! Also we knew that Confucius was a famous Chinese philosopher. So we checked out where it was and went to go find it.

Harbin, Heilongjiang

                    When we went to the temple, it turned out that everything to get in was free. The Chinese started building it and 1926 and they completed it in 1929. The Harbin Confucian Temple is a temple set up to worship the great Chinese statesman, thinker, and educator, as well as the founder of Confucianism. Confucius, who was born in Shandong province 2,500 years ago and taught over 3,000 students in his lifetime, among them 72 were outstanding. He was the greatest teacher in China's history and has worldwide influence. The temple is a perfect combination of ancient Chinese garden and architecture. It has 3 beautiful courtyards with a lot of old trees and rare flowers. Its built with a very strong Qing Dynasty architectural style. The main buildings are all located on the axis and the other buildings on the side. They are also symmectrical. The main buildings tiles are glazed yellow which were exclusively used by the royal buildings. As Confucius was worshiped by all the emperors, the Confucian Temple was given the privilege for using this coulor. Building on the sides use green tiles. Small as it is, the temple looks as spectacular as the Forbidden City in Beijing, and is actually nicknamed "Forbidden City of Harbin". 

Harbin Confucian Temple

                        After our historic visit to the temple, we were extremely tired so we decided to chill and explore around the local part where we were staying. We came across fashion stories, souvenir shops, and much much more. At the souvenir shop Kyle got Jades, which is a symbol of any kind with coulored strings hanging from underneath it. They symbolize many special words like beauty and power. We also got some antiques like one of those cool ancient looking hand fans. We payed for all this then looked at some new clothing and compared it to Canadian clothing. They had silk- we had cotton, and an unbelievable amount of this clothing was red! We had a old and musty day, so we decided to head back to the hotel and go to sleep. When we woke up, we had no idea on where to go so we asked the front desk and they recommended Shenyang in Liaoning. We set out by train and waited to arrive at our newest city. 

Jades

Day 4 trip to China: Xilin Gol


                   As we got off the train, we discovered that Xilin Gol was 10 degrees colder than the other places we visited. We went to a moderate hotel and quickly set out to eat something. We went to a nice looking restaurant called Xiangmange Restaurant. We asked the chef for a traditional meal, and he named the following dishes: Roast Lamb, Finger Mutton, Shaomai. We chose the Roast Lamb. It was a traditional meal and he only prepared it when a dinner party was held. He gave it to us because we were, well, clueless tourists. He said it was it was golden red and tastes quite good. Since we were coming here once, the chef allowed us to watch him cook. He said he tenderized it for a day or two and finely and thinly sliced it up. We enjoyed this meal very much and walked back to our hotel.

Roast Lamb

When we got back to the hotel, we went to are room and turned on our little TV.  I pressed the button to see what shows are on and there was this interesting show on the Xilingol Grasslands. After watching the for ten minutes or so, I told Kyle we have to go there. We ran out of the room and hitched a taxi ride to the Xilingol Grasslands. When we got there, there was an astonishing sight of the open field of, well, grass. We saw cows and oxen grazing on the enormous field. There was clear blue streams running cutting through the plains. We met an elderly man sitting by the fence. Kyle and I asked the man with the odd and long go chi if there was anything interesting about the plains. He said in a monotonous Chinese accent, " Shuí wo? I mean, who me? Sorry, nobody talked to me very long time. So about grasslands, it was the first grassland biosphere preserve in 1987 to protect the ecosystem." said the man. And he said no more... We explored some more and checked out the oxen and cows. Apparently a lot of them are wild! After that we called the same taxi who drove us here and went to the hotel.

Xilingol Grasslands

Once we got back we just tried to get a good night sleep... But after about like, a minute, a randome guy had to come to our room to advertise water bottles. All we did was get out of our bed and kick him out! He ran to another room but the he came back and to us to go to Harbin, Heilongjiang. We said NO, then kicked him out again and shut the door close. Once we closed the door, I said, "I think we should go to that place the man said we should go to." After a while of an awkward silence, Kyle said, "You know what, maybe we should go there. As a matter of fact lets go there right now!" We ran down the stairs and checked out of our room and got ourselves a train ride to Harbin.

                           

Day 3 trip to Guyuan, Ningxia:

               Once we got to Guyuan, Ningxia it was unusually cool compared to the rest of the places we went to but, the person who drove us here told us in the morning it will be hot and dry. After our talk with the person who drove of in, we decided to get ourselves a hotel. We asked this random guy to tell us if he knows hotel near the area and he said to go to the Yijia Fashion Business Hotel, we thanked him and went to our hotel. While we were waking we saw the houses on the street. They were very odd and they were small and had a wide variety of colour. Some houses were in between gaps of the larger houses beside it. Once we got  there we got a room, put on the TV, and started watching a show.  

               Kyle picked up the remote and dropped it by accident. It went on are random channel in English about the Luipan Mountains. We tried to change the channel but it wouldn't work, we decided to watch the show. The show said that Luipan mountains is a group of small green mountains. Its about 200 kilometers long that is surrounded by dry land. It is known for its forest and for its wildlife. It  has lots of species of animals and plants, and any city nearby would have a long lasting supply of water. It was very big, I couldn't believe how long it was, but it might of been small because I have never seen a big mountain. But Kyle said it wasn't  that big, knows more about mountains. Finally the maintenance man came said that the batteries fell out when we dropped it. He put some new batteries in and we changed it to a different channel.
     

              We thanked the man and when he was leaving he dropped a little brochure. We picked it up and ran to give it back to him. We went outside our room but we couldn't see him. Since he was gone we decided to read the brochure any way. On the front there was a big label saying go to Xilin Gol. I guess that's the place that he was going to for his trip. Me and Kyle discussed this for a little bit then decided to go to Xilin Gol.

Day 2 trip to China:  Shaanxi, Xi'an

         
                    We just came from Beijing, and now arrived in Shaanxi. The moment we arrived we could tell that this province was old, ancient, mountainous, and was very hot, and the suns heat beating against us immediately forced us to start hydrating. We quickly found ourselves in a cheap hotel and drinking gallons of water. Kyle and I found a stand with brochures and picked up one of them. The subheading said "Visit Terracotta Army." We opened the brochure and checked out where it was located. It turned  out it was miles away.

                                                                      Xi'an mountain range


                  We took a train ride to Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleul Site Museum. When we got there it didn't look like much but when we went in... 'WOW' spectacular. There were tons of stone statues that were horses and people, it kind of looked like an army. We looked around and found a big sign telling the history of the Terracotta Army. It said that there was a emperor called Qin Shi Huang who was the first Emperor of China and established the Qin Dynasty. He was born in 259 BC and died in 210 BC. His reign of being the emperor lasted from 221 BC to 210 BC. The story was that there once was an emperor named Qin and he got ill. He loved his army very much and told 720,000 workers to build his army in stone, it took 37 years to build the sculptures. The statues were kneeling archers, foot soldiers, and horses, if the emperor thought you were doing a sloppy job building a statue you would be executed. Then we went back to the cheap hotel and ate lunch.

                                                          Rows and rows of Terracotta Army


                    We decided to go to the Temple of the Eight Immortals. We went there by another train. When we got there we looked inside and asked the reception to give us a tour guide. We gave her $50 and she gave us a tour guide and took us around the place. The first place she stopped was a sign that had a history of The Temples of Eight Immortals. The writing was in Chinese so the guide translated it in a "very good" English to us. The Eight Immortals were called Han Zhongli, Zhang Guolao, Han Xiangzi, Tieguai Li, Cao Guojiu, Lv Dongbin, Lan Caihe, and He Xiangu. Its the biggest Taoist temple in Xi'an and is a famous Taoist architecture in northwest China. The temple is also called Ba Xian An Palace because of the Eight emperors allied forces and decided to invade Beijing in 1900. The temple was built in the Song Dynasty from 960 to 1279. After she took us outside and asked for a tip, we said sure we'll give you ten dollars. She  was was extremely happy and gifted us with a little red and yellow dragon statue. We thanked her for her appreciation and called a cab to come and get us and bring us to our hotel.

Temple of the Eight Immortals

           
                    When we got to our hotel we picked up the same brochure we picked up earlier and looked for another place to go. After the first page of the brochure we saw a big building of a mosque. It said, " Visit the Great Mosque of  Xi'an!" We went there by a taxi, and we were amazed how large and detailed it looked! It is the oldest, largest, and most preserved Islamic mosques in China. According to historical records, engraved on a stone tablet inside, it was built in 742 in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). The Great Mosque of Xi'an has a area of over 12000 square meters, and is divided into four courtyards. 250 meters long, and 47 meters wide, it has a very good layout. The first courtyard contains a wooden arch, 9 meters high, covered with glazed tiles that dates back to the 17th century. In the centre of the second courtyard, a stone arch stand with two steles on both sides. The stele is a script of a famous calligrapher named Mi Fu of the Song Dynasty, the other stele is from Dong Qichang, a calligrapher of the Ming Dynasty. At the entrance to the third courtyard is a hall that has many steles from accent times. When we looked around the third courtyard we saw the Xingxin Tower, a place where Muslims come to attend prayer services. in the fourth courtyard there is a Phoenix and a Prayer Hall with walls filled with coloured designs. The Prayer Hall was giant; it could easily hold 1,000 people at a time! People could come to pray 5 times a day; dawn, noon, afternoon, dusk, and night. After that we went back to our hotel and took a nap.  

Great Mosque of Xi'an

When we woke up, I told Kyle that we should check out a market. He said okay and said we should go to the Muslim Food and Souvenir Market. I said okay and we went to the Muslim Food and Souvenir Market. There was a wide variety of foods and colours. There was lots of pasta, meats such as lobster and frog legs, dried apricots, kiwi, cranberries, and peaches. They were also selling some clothes and pottery. They were sold under small shacks on the street and were not guarded whatsoever. I tried to steal an apricot, but a man came was yelling in Manderin and smacked me with a wooden spatula. And right there and then I decided never to go to a Chinese market. After I cleaned of my face, I decided to go to Guyuan, Ningxia. We went to a subway station and got on a ride to Guyuan, Ningxia.

Day 1 trip to China: Beijing

 

        Finally, after a tiring 16 hour flight, we're here, in the famous Beijing, capital of China. It was very hot, humid, and rather dry here since we arrived in the summer. The first thing we did was go to a restaurant to satisfy are hungry stomach's. The menu was very diffrent and unique, and we had trouble choosing our meals. They served the Beijing Roast Duck which was a thin, crisp, and smokey flavoured meat, served with a Chinese salad. Shanxi noodles, which is noodles with cilantro, with a side dish of thin sliced chicken. Last of all there was the frog legs. Kyle and I decided to try it, and I immediately fell in love with the creatures delicious legs, despite where they came from. It was quite the experience! We complimented the chef, and told him we were tourists from Canada. He told us the next place we should go is the Ming tombs.

                                                                           

                                                                           

                                                                          Fried Frog legs

         After our long taxi ride, we went to a tourist attraction, Ming tombs. The Ming Tombs was built in 1409 by Zhu Di the fist emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Its at the base of Tianshou Mountains where the mausoleums of thirteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty lay. There was meant to be a tomb for each Emperor and king of the Ming Dynasty. We walked around one of tombs and it was fairly large, and shaped like a small round mountain. While we were exploring we ran into fellow Canadians Arnav and Aidan. We walked around together for a bit, but soon enough we all got bored and ditched eachother to find ourselves a hotel to stay in for the night, if that makes any sense.

                                                                           

                                                                                   
                                                                              Ming Tombs



We ran to the road in front of the Tombs and hitched a ride with a taxi. We told him to bring us to the highest quality five star hotel. He brought us to the Hotel Eclat Beijing, and WOW, what a luxury hotel it was! Even though the cost was $371 a person, it was all worth it. There was a pool, TV, two beds, and a awesome styled bathroom. After Kyle and I took a quick shower we realized how dirty are clothes were, and we wanted to be adventurous so we decided to go and get some new Chinese styled clothes. We went down stairs where the lobby got us a taxi ride, we told him to bring us to the  nearest clothing store, Stanlitun.

                                      

                                                       
                                                             

                                                                   Hotel Eclat Beijing
                                                             

          In Beijing they wore much different clothes than in Canada. They wore a lot of red, white, and black clothes. Some women and men were wearing Tang suits. Tang suits were traditional costumes worn by men. It is a short tunic with high and round collars and lapels, which are fastened down the front. Compared with the ancient styled tang suit, the sleeves have become longer and wider, patched pockets were added, and the number of frog buttons have been increased. By the 1940s, the tang suit was used in all classes. While we were walking we met a guy named Shang Wu. We asked him what he was wearing and were it came from he said, "This is a Shanghai Tang's design concept and is inspired by Chinese culture and has bright colours." So then we got on the subway and rode back. The subway station opened September 28, 2009. The station on average has 135,000  customers per day. Its under ground with one platform and two side tracks so people can walk on. When we got back to the hotel,  we slept, woke up, and got on the train for our ride to Shaanxi on first class. 







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