Pacific Odyssey - Leg 5

It has been a beautifully mild and sunny day today; everyone enjoyed the warmer temperatures.  Today we celebrated Ilias 22nd birthday.  He chose crepes with fruit for breakfast and calzones for supper, all very good. Shanghai is so big one can drive for 35 minutes without ever seeing the end of it.  Today we took a taxi to the silk market and had a wonderful time perusing all the various stalls, three floors of them.  Every type of cloth is sold and there are tailors ready to take your measurements and sew up a garment for you.  There were beautiful Chinese dresses in several different styles; we were all tempted to have one made for us.  There was so much beautiful silk . . . it just went on and on.  It took awhile to figure out how best to find what one wanted.  We all ended up with something we are very happy with.  I ordered three pairs of corduroy pants for Simon, giving them the one very worn pair of Osh Kosh he always wears as a pattern. We´ll see what happens.  It cost   me about $13 per pair.  Elske ordered 2 silk blouses.  We also all bought silk/cashmere scarves.  Outside the market there are people selling jewelry and other trinkets.  They were dressed in colorful jackets with fur on the inside and similar patterned and colorful hats with fur flaps hanging down over their ears and backs of their heads. Their language sounded different than Chinese and their appearance is slightly different.  We asked one of them where he was from and he acted out the Dalai Lama and so we guessed ´Tibet´ and he smiled.  The narrow streets around the market were my favorite part of the day; they are teeming with life and busy-ness.  Stalls and tiny shops selling absolutely everything, very inexpensively, is found there and people seem happy enough to put up with us looking and questioning.  I find it fascinating, it is so human in all its disorder and clutter. I saw a woman stirring a huge pot of rice into a larger pot, out on the corner of the street beside a small cooking/washing area, as if it was the most normal thing, which I think it is for them.  I could go on and on about all the interesting things we see, but tonight we received an email from Gillian in Beijing.  I had asked her if she was willing to send impressions of their time in Beijing via computer for me to add to the log. So, here she is, it sounds like things are going well.

    After some confusion as to which Shanghai Railway station we were to be at last night (lacking as we do the critical skill of reading Chinese) and following entertaining metro and taxi rides, Sarah B, Sarah L, Susan, Greg, and I arrived at our train with about 5 min to spare.  Sarah, Sarah, Susan, and I were sharing a 6-bed cabin with Antony and Jose, who were already quite comfortable on the lower bunks when we arrived.  We chose to travel by "hard sleeper" which means that the train cars have a long, narrow corridor down one side with small "cabins" (with no doors) off of it.  Each cabin has 6 bunks - 3 on each side.  I ended up on a top bunk that was just above the top of my head when standing on the floor (about 6 ft up!).  The bottom bunks are the only ones with enough headroom to sit up on, meaning that headspace in the middle and top bunks is practically non-existent.  In fact, if I removed my head, the height probably would have been perfect.  Climbing up to a top bunk is also a tricky prospect that is best done with lots of caution.  Fortunately, we are sailors and have a lot of experience in navigating sticky situations while moving in all possible directions.  At the end of each train car is a hot water tap for instant noodles (with the warning "Be careful to scald" in unfortunate Chinglish written above the tap) as well as two toilets of the squatting variety.  Jose learned the hard way that one should always wear shoes when using the head on a train. Toilets in China are all BYO TP, trains included . . . which means we are all carrying around packages of Kleenex in our pockets.  After breakfast of "jidan chaomien" - egg fried noodles - which I got from one of the carts roaming up and down the aisle, we packed our bags for our arrival of 9:40am.  Saying goodbye to Antony and Jose, the four girls headed out to the hostel we had booked; it was just minutes away from the Forbidden City.  Our walk to the hostel took us down a shopping street I remembered from last time I was here a year and a half ago; it is fun to see things and remember where I am.  Our hostel is situated in one of Beijing´s ´hutong´, neighborhoods of narrow stone alleyways and low stone/wood houses (which are typically little more than one room with a dirt floor).  Sarah B and I both agree that it is one of the nicest hostels we have ever stayed at, and its location makes it even more quaint.  After checking in, we walked over to the Forbidden City, where the emperors used to live in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1300´s-early 1900´s).  It is called "forbidden" because no one except people the emperor allowed to enter, could.  The Forbidden City is one of the largest palace complexes in the world and it is stunningly gorgeous.  The buildings are vivid red with golden roofs and intricately carved woodwork painted with gold and brilliant shades of blue and green. It is a series of sections inside of each other getting progressively smaller, until you end up in the Imperial Garden where the Emperor and Empress lived in a palace. From the Forbidden City, we walked down to Tiananmen Square, the largest square in the world.  It was crazy to think of the history of that square and to realize we were standing in it.  People were flying kites and others were trying to sell us random souvenirs we didn´t want or need.  Many were looking around and taking pictures like we were.  A square like that is such an anomaly in China where everything is packed in on top of everything else.  It was like a breath of air in the middle of the city, but not because it of the history. We ran into Chase, Raven, Chris, and Sean on our way back to the hostel and their group did much the same thing as us today, they are having lots of fun.  On our way back to the hostel, we stopped at the night market for dinner.  The night market is where food vendors line up along the street with food and cook it in front of you.  We saw everything from sea urchins, squid, and starfish on skewers, candied fruit, dumplings and steamed buns, noodles . . . we opted mostly for the tamer items for dinner.  Our evening entertainment tonight brought us to the Peking Opera, known more for its martial arts, acrobatics, and colorful costumes than its acting or singing...  It was very entertaining and lots of fun.  There were two short story lines playing tonight; one about a "white snake" guard assigned to protect an important general and the other about a sneaky soldier who steals silver for the poor from a corrupt official. It was lots of fun.  Now we are all back at the hostel, taking turns through the shower, our first since Okinawa, and I think it is my turn...! What a wonderful log; I look forward to visiting Beijing and seeing it all myself.  I would like to wish my friend Louise MacDonald a wonderful birthday on February 22.  Happy Birthday Louise.  Also I am sending a very belated birthday wish to another good friend, Anslie, whose birthday was back in January.  Happy belated Birthday Ainslie.  This is it for tonight.Good night, Bonice.