my laziness even astounds me sometimes

(To share the great recap of my family vacation in China, the easiest thing to do is copy and paste the email I sent to family members and coworkers. Lazy, but I've been meaning to get it on here for weeks. I'll be better soon, I promise. For now, at least people can read some of our stories.)

This email is long overdue, and there's no good reason for its tardiness--since my mom and brother left a week ago, I've been sitting on my couch, eating junk food and watching DVDs. I've even slept until 1 p.m. But here it is now, the rundown on my family vacation here in China. I think it'll help me to break things up into sections.

Beijing is a very gray, smoggy, hazy city. The grayness is a little smothering, and I think we weren't too sad to leave. But Beijing is a place you could live for a year and still only see half of what there is to see: it's got thousands of years of history and buildings and culture. For our first day, I booked a private car and tour guide to take us to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. I didn't think we would be doing any of the tourist trap stops, but on the way out there we stopped at a ceramics factory, then a teahouse and silk factory on the way back into town. Those weren't so bad, none of the saleswomen were too pushy and our guide, Lulu, was always ready to go when we were. The Great Wall itself was fun, it doesn't seem as epic once you're up on it because it just keeps going. It was rainy on the way out to the Wall, and it sprinkled right before we came down, but the cloud cover kept things cool, which was nice because the Great Wall is a workout. It's steep and the steps are uneven at best. There were plenty of people there, but not so many that I would call it crowded. I enjoyed hearing all the different languages of the tourists. We took the tobaggan ride down (we had to wait about 20 minutes because of the rain), which was a rush--my mom looked giddy, and we all could have gone faster if there hadn't been some old guy in front of her slowing us up. The first Chinese restaurant we ate at was chosen by our guide, probably one of those things where she gets a percentage for bringing tourists because the menu was limited and expensive. She showed us the Olympic sites on our way back into town and dropped us at our hostel, which was pretty nice.

Second day was the Forbidden City. Actually, the first thing we did was go to the main train station to buy tickets for the new high-speed Beijing-Shanghai Express, which was exhausting. There was a line designated for foreigners, and we went with that one even though we had our request written in Chinese. The lines were long, the people were pushy, and it was hot. But we got our tickets eventually before heading to the Forbidden City. It was hot, and we walked soooo much. There were lots of people, but not as many as I thought there'd be. We went in through Tiananmen, and it was pretty easy to find ticket stands and get in. Once we were in, it all looked the same! Eventually we found a "cafe" inside and got some food, but we were still ready to get out. We took the long way around from the back exit to the entrance (to get to the same subway station we'd come from), and got to see some more everyday-type stuff in that side neighborhood.

Third day was the Olympic Park, with our main destination being the Water Cube--where swimming events were held during the 2008 games, and which has been converted into a water park. It was gray and hot, and there was more line-standing (I do all the line-standing since I speak the most Chinese), but we got in and after some looking, found the entrance to the water park. We decided to try the line for the big slide we could do together on a raft, which was the same staircase as the line for the two most-popular individual slides. This staircase was either three or four stories of impatient people, and the lines weren't clearly marked, so people you thought were cutting were actually trying to get to other slides. It was a hot mess, and very frustrating, so after we did an individual slide a piece (we hadn't been in the line we wanted all along), we went to a less-crowded section and did another slide. We hung out for a few minutes in the big pool watching "Happy Feet" on a big screen before getting changed into our normal clothes and finding lunch. We walked around for a bit and checked out the other sights--the big torch, the Bird's Nest--before heading home again.

The next morning we got up and booked it to the train station to catch our fast train to Shanghai, which was nice because we got a chance to nap for a little bit. Keenan and I tried the boxed meal, which we didn't realize was the breakfast and which wasn't very good or filling. It mostly consisted of dumplings, Keenan tried to play with them like Po in "Kung Fu Panda" but his chopstick skills weren't quite up there yet. We switched seats and took turns sitting by the window, and the lunch meal was much better. It was raining when we got to Shanghai, and we found the line for official taxis (they started at 13 yuan!) and caught one to take us to the Holiday Inn. All the directions online were from the airports, so I had no clue how far we were from the hotel. Because of the rain and the lunch traffic, it took almost an hour to get to the Holiday Inn, but it was worth it when we got there and had nice beds to stretch out on. I badgered my mom into calling Papa John's, and she had a tricky time, but we got pizza delivered to our hotel room (Julianne, it made me so happy, I ate half of it by myself!)...and we ordered it again the next day. We took naps, then found a local grocery store to buy sodas and snacks, and my mom and I spent an hour doing one load of laundry for $10 at the hotel; while we were in the laundry room about a dozen Italians who looked about my age came in and started sorting their clothes, it was hilarious to watch them come in one or two at a time and dump more clothes on the pile.

Our first full day in Shanghai was all about the downtown river area. We started on the Pudong (east) side at the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, which Keenan wanted to see because they have the longest underwater tunnel in the world. That was the coolest part of the whole thing, and they saved it for the end. I've done the Chinese zoo experience, and this wasn't much different except that we were inside. We also rode a sightseeing bus (it went up the street, turned around and came right back, and it was all in Chinese), checked out the Apple Store, walked around a fancy mall, and had lunch. My goal for the day was to be on the Bund for nightfall, because I knew that they lit up the skyline. After lunch we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which runs under the Huangpu River and was just like the trippy boat ride in the original "Willy Wonka" movie--Keenan has video if you really want to see it. The Bund is one of the big draws of Shanghai; it's a riverside district with lots of buildings from the turn of the century, when Shanghai was the center of foreign activity in China. It's on the west side of the river, and we were already tired from walking but there was a lot to see. The weather was beautiful that whole day, as in we could actually see the sky, and I think we got to experience Shanghai at its best. That made me happy, because that is where I want to live after I finish this contract in Changsha. Anyway, we found a restaurant for dinner and parked it until dusk, when we went out to see the lights. There were suddenly people all along the river, and there were boats covered in lights doing night cruises. It was pretty awesome and crowded, especially trying to walk back to the subway station.

The second full day in Shanghai was about switching to our next hotel (which I booked on hostels.com, so I was surprised when we got there and it was a Chinese-run hotel, not our best stay), eating at the hotel restaurant twice, and visiting the China Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo Site. During the Expo last year, hundreds of countries had "pavilions" set up--essentially exhibits to show off the country. China has kept theirs, and the tickets are pretty cheap for how cool it is. You start by taking an elevator up 20 stories, then go through a bunch of differenty, inexplicably named sections that are really only visually interesting (which I guess makes sense, instead of bothering with the possible language barriers of foreign visitors). It was crowded, but you can go through the building at your own pace. The gift shop was pure insanity, but my mom trooped through and got a magnet. We went back to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and decided to try the foot massage advertised within our hotel. It was on the second floor, which the elevator didn't stop on, so we took the stairs which were sketchy to start with. At the tiny second floor landing there was one open door with Chinese writing next to it, and since Keenan arrived first he poked his head in. He turned around, told us there was just a woman sitting in the room, and we tried to leave, but out comes this Chinese woman looking like a cheap prostitute, I kid you not. Her hair was kinda rumpled, she had on too much makeup, and a slip dress that didn't hide her bra straps. We tried to ask about foot massages, and she offered to come to our room--we walked away, even though she kept trying to sell her services, whatever they were. Super-sketch. We watched bad Chinese TV and decided to sleep in before our overnight train the next day to Chengdu.

I was most worried about this particular section of the trip as planner, because I knew there wouldn't be near as many English-speakers available to us out west. I had booked our train tickets online, and I ordered second-class seats, since sleepers were really expensive. When we got onto the train though, we were directed to two different sleeper cars, in which the bottom bunks had been converted to seat three people each. Soft sleeper cars are originally configured for four people sleeping, but they had sold some of these sleepers for six people sitting. On top of that, as I said before, we were separated. (My frustrated feedback to the train booking agency was met with the reply that they only just found out that this train is being oversold to meet the summer demand.) My mom and I were in a car with two girls about my age and a couple in their 50s, and Keenan was in a car with all girls. It was a 17-hour trip, and someday we'll be able to laugh about the whole misfortune of it, but I'm not at that point yet. The best method for sleeping was to have two people share two of the bunks (four total), then the remaining two sleep on a bunk alone. After some luggage-shuffling, I hopped up on the top bunk and my mom crouched in a corner on the bottom with the older woman. One of our train stops was at 3 a.m., and one of the younger girls from our car got off the train, after making a loud exit with her boyfriend. We went through lots of mountains and tunnels, which was no fun for ear pressure, but we each slept a few hours. I have a photo I took of Keenan right before we arrived in Chengdu, and we all agree that we've never seen him look so tired/bad--I have promised him that I won't make it public. Once in Chengdu, we made it through the rush getting off the train and found the line for taxis, which was outdoors and again it was raining AND lightning-ing. Thankfully, after Amy and I went in April I snagged the city map from her, so I was able to show the cabbie exactly where we wanted to go, which was a bus depot. We caught the next bus to Ya'an, which is the closest town to Bifengxia, where the pandas are kept. In Ya'an, we caught another cab to our hotel, which the cabbie had trouble finding (the town is so small that even after getting lost, our cab fare was only 12 yuan), but was on a hilltop not far from the city center. The hotel lobby was huge and beautiful, but the power was out, so it took a little extra time to check in...when the power would flicker on they would rush to make our passport copies. The elevators weren't working, so the manager who met us (and spoke good English) carried my big pack upstairs to our room...which was not clean yet, so he rushed the cleaning ladies in to fix that. It was after normal lunchtime, but we were hungry, so the manager called us a cab to go into town since the hotel restaurant couldn't serve us without power. He was gone when the cab arrived, so in broken Chinese I told the man that we wanted to eat food. He took us to a nice-ish restaurant, where the hostess had unbuttoned the top back of her dress and was wearing untied sneakers. I ordered, as I had been doing the whole trip, but since Amy and I only ate noodles when we were there I forgot to ask for "no spicy"; the province we were in, Sichuan, is known for the spiciest food in all China. There were a couple dishes my mom and Keenan could eat, and I toughed it out for the other meat-type thing we got (there were no English words, only photos). The power was back on when we got back to the hotel, so we napped then had dinner at the hotel restaurant. We only ended up with two dishes there, because they were out of everything else we asked for.

The next morning we had to be up early to snag some breakfast, check out but leave our bags, and catch a taxi to Bifengxia to arrive right when the park opened (which is right when they let out the baby pandas and start feeding all of them, and is the most active time of day to see pandas). It was raining, and not lightly, so that already-thrilling ride up the mountain was more deathly terrifying. Amy, do you even remember being able to see a river running through the gorge from the road? Well there was one that day, and the waters were high, brown, and rushing like whitewater. The road was under construction in places, and there were waterfalls everywhere, even over the road. Add to all that, typical Chinese cabby driving like a bat out of Hades, and I wasn't sure we were going to make it to the top. But we did, and we bought our tickets to the park no problem, and some ponchos and an umbrella from a vendor outside the gate. Once inside the panda section, we headed straight for the panda kindergarten, where I presented the translation I had done online saying that my mom and Keenan wanted to play with pandas for 1,000 yuan each while I photographed. They told us, however, that since it was raining they couldn't bring out the pandas, and my heart just dropped. That was all my family wanted to do! We asked if they would do it later if it stopped raining, and they said yes, so we killed some time panda-watching. For anyone who goes to see pandas in a reserve-setting like this, especially in China, the earlier you arrive the better, because when the Chinese people get there they start crowding and yelling and it's much more interesting to see them without so many distractions. When we first started walking around, the baby pandas were all up in the treetops; I think this is a natural defense mechanism against drowning, which does happen to pandas during the rainy season in the wild. They were cute, a fair bit bigger than in April--they're all around a year old now (the babies). Since they weren't doing much, we walked to some of the bigger pandas, and saw one lick another one's private area! It was definitely a little awkward, but not so graphic since you can't really tell which are males and which are females. Then that one walked right up to the wall of the enclosure, stood up straight towards us, and started squeaking--definitely cute. Several chose to stay inside because of the rain, and one that we watched couldn't decide if he wanted to be in or outside. We went back to see the babies, and four were in the play area behind their house, all rough-housing with each other. I have videos, I'll get them online soon. I didn't take as many photos since I'd already been, I wanted my mom and Keenan to take more for themselves. Eventually we went back to the people about playing with the pandas, since the rain had finally let up, and they said that for 1,000 yuan, each person could hold one of the babies for 10 seconds. (I really should have gotten a guide, because they change what they'll do for each price every time we go, and a Chinese person could help enforce the original price-service deal.) My mom and Keenan decided that for so much money and such little time, only Keenan would do it this time; my mom plans on coming back and finally getting her chance. We waited about 10 minutes before they took us into the baby panda house and started putting Keenan in the protective gear. My mom took still photos with Keenan's iPhone while I took video--the video is too long for Flickr, but I'll try to cut it down and get it online eventually. He sat in a chair right in front of the doors, but they pulled down the blinds so we wouldn't attract too much attention. They lured one of the babies into the building with food so a keeper could grab it and carry it over to Keenan; he plopped it down in Keenan's lap, another keeper handed it an apple to eat, and the time began. I looked back at the footage, and he actually got a full minute to hold the panda, which was nice. After the panda encounter, we were ready to head back into town, and I managed to haggle us into a minibus to Ya'an for the same cost as the taxi we had taken up there. We went to the hotel to eat at the restaurant for lunch and pick up our bags, then when the cab arrived to take us to the bus station I just showed him the word for "bus station" in my dictionary, because I never thought there would be more than one bus station in a town so tiny. The one he dropped us at was NOT the one we'd come in through, but I asked him if we could get to Chengdu from there and he nodded, so we got out and I got us tickets. If we had been at the original one I'd planned on, we could have taken a cheap city bus to our next stop once in Chengdu, but since we ended up at a different station we had to take another taxi instead. He dropped us right where I wanted at least, and we looked around the Tibetan shopping district before eating dinner at the Tibetan restaurant Amy and I had visited. After dinner we went across the street to Jinli, which is a tourist area where a Starbucks is located and I picked up Julianne's mug. I didn't want us to get to the airport too early, so we sat and relaxed at Starbucks for a bit. When we finally flagged down a cab from Jinli, my mom had to chase him down the street and literally push a granny off the door so we could secure it. This driver was good-natured and funny, especially about the driver we saw going the absolute wrong way on an exit ramp from the freeway. We got to the airport, got our boarding passes, and headed for the gate that would eventually be ours, where we sat playing Gin Rummy. There were lots of delays, and bad ones, but our flight was on time right up until we started boarding...30 minutes late. The original flight time was leaving Chengdu at 10:55 p.m. and arriving in Changsha at 12:40, but after sitting in our seats on the plane out in the middle of nowhere on the tarmac we finally took off sometime after 1 a.m. Suffice to say, none of us were happy, Keenan the least so because he was starting to get sick and he was cramped up into a tiny seat behind an annoying Chinese woman who kept leaning back on him. We were the last flight into Changsha, and I didn't see any official taxis waiting (they remodeled the airport since April, so I was thrown off anyway), so I showed our address to one of the random guys waiting to harangue arriving passengers. He said okay, and as we were walking to his car he tried to charge us 200 yuan, but I talked him down and we agreed on 120--expensive, but it's almost 3 a.m. at this point, and we're still a half hour outside of town. There are two other guys when we get to his car, but I had told my mom and Keenan to keep the backpacks with them, not to put them in the trunk (I've read about the scams where they leave with your luggage, have friends take it out while you're still in the car, etc.). These three guys were apparently not okay with this, and started raising their voices trying to get us to put the bags in the trunk. My mom thinks they wanted their friend to catch the ride with us, but I wasn't focused on anyone except the guy who had brought us out. I was yelling at them in a mixture of Chinese and angry dumbed-down English, and finally we started walking away, which is when they relented. My mom was VERY uncomfortable with the whole thing, but I wasn't so freaked out once we were in the car and on the way (with a totally different guy driving than the one who snagged us in the first place). She kept asking if I recognized the landmarks, but we took either a new or newly-opened highway into town. The driver was more mellow than the first guy, and actually told me my Chinese was good, but I didn't understand him until after he said it, and I was still frustrated. We made it home around 3:30 a.m., to an apartment that was hot and smelly.

Changsha was about relaxation. Keenan kept getting sicker, so we spent lots of time inside, watching "Project Runway" DVDs. I took them to our favorite restaurants (Sichuan and Northeastern), where they loved the food better than anything else we'd eaten, and to the mall, the big book/DVD store, and to Wal-Mart and Metro. My mom was in full mothering-mode, and I loved it--she cooked and cleaned and did some laundry, it was fantastic and totally spoiled me. Since I'd kept referring to the back bedroom as the "spider room", Keenan refused to sleep there and have the biggest bed to himself, so he shared the queen bed with me and my mom took the back room. I could've spent the whole two weeks hanging out with them here! On Wednesday morning I took them to the airport and got them pointed in the right direction before leaving. Their flight was late getting to Beijing, but they made it there and then to all their flights home the next day. Their sleep schedules still aren't back to normal, and neither is mine--it's currently 1:05 a.m. local time, darn that afternoon nap after only waking up at 10:30 this morning!

General impressions: My mom was fascinated by the culture, but my brother was not the biggest fan. It wasn't so much the pushing and shoving and spitting that bothered him, as the fact that that is okay, even expected, as part of the Chinese way of life. There are too many people for them to be decent to everyone, so they focus their polite energies on people they personally know, which is not the same as in the West. Keenan prefers being polite to everyone, as I do, too, but in choosing to live here I've made concessions to Chinese culture. Both Keenan and my mom have said they would never be able to live here, and as of now Keenan does not want to come back. Since I'm here, my mom would love to come back, she actually didn't want to leave. As I said, Keenan also got sick, partially because of the weather/environment change but also partially because of the changes in food availability. Keenan is almost 6 foot 5 inches, and to power his body he eats lots of food constantly, and not just rice and vegetables. The lack of protein did not treat him well, and I know he's happy to be back eating American food. We didn't really get to smell any of the BAD smells, not even stinky tofu! The food everywhere else was nowhere near as good as the food we eat at our favorite places here in Changsha. The trip made me develop a Coca-Cola dependency I have had to actively work to kick, and we ate McDonald's more times than I would in months on my own. I discovered that knowing about 5 verbs in Chinese can get you very far, and Amy would have laughed to hear my mom be so impressed at my "skills", but I was proud of myself for using what little I could. Traveling with my family is always fun, and the three of us know each other better than anyone else can, so we laughed a lot and fell right back into the rhythm we've always had. I don't know if I could have made it through the whole summer by myself without a visit from them, and it was a very memorable trip!

This email has turned epic-long, but at least it's only this one. If you have questions about any part of the trip, of course you can ask me, and photos are still going up at www.flickr.com/photos/meimei09/ , I'm going to start posting some of my mom's soon since she took twice as many as I did. I would love to hear from all of you about your summers so far, I know exciting things have been happening in North America with some of you! Amy, Julianne, and Jason will hopefully be hearing from me about the new apartments after the 20th, which is the most recent moving date I've been given. No new teachers yet that I know of, but I'm not the best judge considering I haven't left the apartment in days.

Hope to hear from any of you soon!