The China Experience in Beijing: Day 5

Our adventure today, Thursday, May 15, 2008 took us to the Summer Place, Shopping, the Panda Zoo and the Temple of Heaven.

Ces and I contracted a taxi driver to be our guide for the whole day for only Y400 ($48).  Should you happen to come by Beijing, I highly recommend you hire the services of this person and save a tremendous sum of money.  His name is Li with mobile telephone number 1-362-106-9212.  He's inexpensive and helps you with bargaining at the stores!  He defers to your wishes and was even shy, almost too embarassed to eat lunch with us.

A visit to the Summer Palace should be a whole day.  You can take a leisurely walk, stop once in a while to see the different palaces and royal quarters, have a picnic and just really make a day of it.  There is so much to see and enjoy, especially if you get an audio set.  The audio set turns on automatically at certain points. It must be triggered by magnetic signals as you cross a certain area.  So, there is no need to hurry up to the next attraction.

At the Summer Palace, you can enjoy the lake by just taking its marvelous view or by riding a boat or paddling a boat.  There are archways to behold and a plethora of structures full of history.  The Internet can easily provide details of these attractions, if you so wish.

You could easily spend a half day at the Temple of Heaven.  After all, it has more than 300 hectares to explore.  If you are into the architecture and the history that goes with it, then two hours would do.  However, if you enjoy nature, the gardens would be refreshing!  I just love those flowers of many kinds that abound in the gardens!

Li took us to two shopping areas.  The first one was a Divisoria type: extremely ridiculous low prices and elbow to elbow room only.  The quality of products sold, however, were of lower quality.  The clothes sizes were very small.  Apparently, the stores catered to the locals who are almost all thin!  There weren't any large sizes of any kind!  We left that area at a blink of an eye.

The next place Li took us to was the Pearl Market, a place similar to the Silk Market we went to for the last two days.  The Pearl Market was far better than the Silk Market.  It was clean.  The stalls were spaced with breathing room.  The prices were lower than those at the Silk.  However, as it is in other business, you really have to haggle over prices.  Negotiate to an amount that you want to comfortably pay.

We got the designer jeans and other clothes products of Victoria Beckham, True Religion and Ed Hardy.

China, it appears, is a shopper's paradise.  In the two hours we were in this market, I nust have seen and heard people of at least ten different languages, in addition to the locals, foreigners come for the bargain.

Ces wants to go back to the stores tomorrow!  Yikes!

 

 

Tags: Summer Palace, Taxi in Beijing, Good Service

China Earthquake

On a pensive side, the earthquake aftermath in Sichuan province has revealed magical moments of a pregnant woman pulled out after 50 hours in a rubble and a three-year old girl rescued after being shielded by dead parents.  Sadly, confirmed dead is 14,866.  Hospitalized 65,746; confirmed buried under rubbles, 25,788; missing, 30,000; and mobilized for rescue efforts, 80,000.

There has been a tremendous display of generosity.  School children from Beijing, for example, raised more than a Y1,000,000 to help the quake victims! The response of the authorities in all levels was swift and tremendous, unlike our government's response to the Katrina disaster  in the US.

Premier Wen Jibao's words of encouragement, who visited the devastated area within hours of the disaster on Monday, reassure victims that no effort is being sared to deal with the disaster.  Stories of people's calm, courage and ingenuity when confronted with disaster emege in hard-hit Belchuan City.  The PLA dispatches hundreds more troops in addition to those already there to quake-hit areas and devotes all available facilities to relief mission.  Individuals, companies and organizations have been digging deep into their walles to help the victims.

Very sadly, the soldiers who had great difficulty getting there, begin the daunting task at the epicenter, the Yingxiu township of Wenchuan.  The town is completely flattened wih only 2,300 of the town's 10,000 population were confirmed alive!

We continue to pray for the victims and survivors of this disaster.

The China Experience in Beijing: Day 4

We had a very early start today, Wednesday, May 14 for the guide to the Badaling Wall and Ming Tomb tour was to pick us up from the hotel lobby at precisely seven in the morning.  We rushed through a continental breakfast at the Regency Club instead of at the usual Made in China Restaurant because the latter did not open until seven in the morning.

When we told the Club that we were going on a whole day tour to Badaling, the staff to our surprise packed us a bag of sandwiches, fruits, soda and water.  We were ready!

Ces and I were the first in the tour bus.  It went on to pick up an English couple Shawn and Stacy from New Castle, UK, then an Australian family of six from Melbourne and finally an English mother and daughter and an elderly gentleman from London.  This is the bad thing about tour groups.  You are stuck waiting for the pick up and the slackers.

This was, fortunately, a very nice and jolly small group of eager tourists from the north, middle and south of the globe!

Our tour took us to one of the 13 Ming Tombs that of Emperor Zhu Di, to the government-operated jade factory where also had a ten-course lunch of Chinese food, to the Badaling Wall and finally to the Silk Factory.  With all the waiting, it was 7:30 p.m. by the time we got back to the hotel.  Thank God, the guide put us in a taxi, since the other hotels was on the other side of Tmbuktu

I am acually blogging with my eyes half closed from being so tired.

The tomb Emperor Zhu Di, who moved the capital from Nanking to Peking (Beijing) and who created the Forbidden City, was laid out like the palaces of the Forbidden City.  It started with an entrance gate, a courtyard, a receiving hall, another courtyard and finally the tomb with centuries old trees at the back and around the side.  The receiving hall housed the artifacts of the emperor ranging from his golden eating utensils to the fine silk clothing he wore.  The guide Tony was emphatic about the doorway that separated the people world and the nether world.  On our way back he asked us to chant something and scrape off our clothes and body so no ghosts would leave the nether world and enter the people worldthrough anyone of us.  It was so funny how we chanted out loudly at his request with so many different accentsblurting out.  The local tourists surrounding us had a good laugh!

The jade factory was a startling visit.  The products from small earings to the huge ship and other works were so beautiful, but very expensive.  One really has to be into jade to be able to apprecitate the prizes of those jade products.  I wound up buying Ces a small bracelet of various kinds and shades of jade for a "measly" price of $50.  There was nothing cheap in this place!

The lunch at the jace factory surprised all of us.  The tour cost each one of us $20.  Yet, we had a ten-course lunch of pork, fish, beef, chicken, vegetables, soup, rice  and fruits.  The food was also surprisingly delicious!

The Badaling Wall was really just like the Mutianyu Wall except that there were many, many, many more people at Badaling.  There was jostling around narrow passages. Ces and I could not possibly climb that almost 90 degree trek to the top of the mountain to be at the Badaling Great Wall.  We rode for some $8 a go-kart shaped mechanical sled to get to the top.  Once there, we stil had to take huge steps to get on the top of the wall.  Expectedly, our tongues must have been dogeying in and out of our mouths as we did our best to enjoy the sight.

For the first time, I saw debris!  The number of visitors...hordes of visitors...somehow littered the wall with a few empty plastic bottles here and there and a few cigarette butts and tiny pieces of paper.  Still, compared to our stateside area, Badaling was still clean!

Two impressions:  There are no grafitti anywhere in this city.  Flowers abound just about every place where there is visible soil.

The silk factory caught my fancy.  It was fascinating watching those girls demonstrate the process of producing silk and showing us the various silk products.  I particularly loved the bed cover with the royal design of the emperor.  The salesgirl offered me a terrific price of $500 for it with a throw in of four silk pillow cases.  I must go back there after I will have paid my hotel bills and hope that I will have enough to pamper myself with a silk cover!

I don't know how this is written because I am working only with one eye now.  The other is already asleep!  Well, goodnight...I'll see you tomorrow!

Tags: Badaling, Great Wall of China, Shopping in China

The China Experience in Beijing: Day 3

On our third day, Tuesday, May 13 in Beijing, Ces and I woke up to a pleasant surprise.  The Hyatt Management apologized for having placed us in a standard, non-Regency Club room and transferred us to the Regency Club accommodation.  We just did not get a Regency room, the manager upgraded us to a five-room suite!  It pays to be a Regency Club member and a Hyatt Vacations Club owner.  Woo hoo!

Commercial:  Consider becoming a Regency Club member when you check into a Hyatt property and a Hyatt Vacations Club owner if  you travel a lot!  It's well worth it.  Give Hyatt a call.

We started the day with our usual sumptuous omplimentary breakfast of fried rice, pancit, eggs, bacon, dimsum, pastries, juices, etc...etc...etc.  Today, our guide Tom Zhang joined us for breakfast.  He's the same guy who guided us at the Forbidden City yesterday.  We contracted him to guide us to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, some 100 kilometers north of Beijing.

With spoiled thoughts, I watched Tom walk towards a parked limo in front of the hotel.  Wow, I quietly screamed...only to be frustrated when he moved past the limo and into a dilapidated, cubicle of a mini-mini-mini van!  Yikes!  Surprisingly, that sucker moved pretty well, although not necessarily comfortably!

Well, that's what I deserve for being KURIPOT (stingy).  I did not want to pay the $200 dollars for the both of us.  So, I accepted Tom's offer of $100 to take us to Mutianyu and be our all-day guide.

We saw some of the country side of China on our way to Mutianyu which was in the mountains.  Beautiful green vegetations and, again, flowers bloomed everywhere!  What a lovely, lovely sight to behold.

Paying for entrance, we opted not to pay for the cable car so we could save some money.  However, when we started the trek up to the Wall....egads, my tongue wagged in and out of my mouth like that of a dog's after several steps up the steep (was it 90 degrees?) climb to the Wall.

No!  No!  Forget saving money!  Ces quickly moved to a ticket booth a little further up.  (These guys must know that people would change their minds after a few steps and placed another cable car ticket booth ahead after the first one!)

Whew, vertigo or not, I welcomed the cable car ride.  So did Ces.  It was our first cable car (other than San Francisco) ever!

Even then, when we got out of the cable car, we still had a lot of climbing to do!  Man, oh, man!  I should have prepared for this trek and exercised and be fit for the climb up to and about the Wall!

Poor Tom must have thought of charging us more had he realized he had to help us pull ourselves up to those steps!  Ha ha ha ha. Advise: Be fit when you visit the Great Wall.

Unlike the famous and popular Badaling section of the Great Wall nearest Beijing, Mutianyu had only few tourists.  There was a lot of elbow room.  There was no one to block your view or your souvenir photo shots.

I allowed my imagination to go wild.  I saw the barbaric Mongolian hordes attacking and hacking themselves through the Wall only to be frustrated by the Imperial soldiers riding in horses and chariots and defending ably well in vantage points all through the more than 6,000 kilometer long Wall.  At night, the soldiers signaled with the use of fire; during the day, smoke.  A tower could spot the focus of the attack and reinforcement is delivered.

It was refreshing to reminisce through history and create my own virtual world of centuries old.

On our way down, we encountered a Mr. Miyagi type of a man in a Ming Warrior attire.  He was a posed for pictures for a 20 RMB fee (about $3).  I engaged him for a 10 RMB fee to karate joust with me.  He though it was funny and agreed.  So, the Mr. Miyagi vs. Mr. Miyagi battle started to the amusement of the locals and tourists.  I should have charged them a fee myself for watching our fight.

Naturally, the place was filled with souvenir stalls.  One dollah...one dollah...for this and for that.  The negotiating game begins again.  It's ridiculously funny to hear them offer a price for something and wind up selling it for whatever price you can or choose to afford.

Ces got herself two parasols, a mahjong set and a number of small things for "pasalubong."  I got two t-shirts with "I have climbed the great wall" markings in the front and with emblazoned dragons at the back, Beijing and Great Wall baseball caps, and a shock absorbing walking cane that really helped me with the climb.

We had a very nice lunch with Tom and the driver Lee at a wayside, farmland restaurant where we had to catch the fish we wanted to eat with a net from a cemented rectangular container.  The two that we picked wound up as a really crispy sweet and sour fish and the other, sashimi cutlets.

We wound up the trip with another shopping spree at the Silk Market where we went to yesterday.  Ces picked up more True Religion jeans and some fancy jewelries.  The Silk Market is famous for imitation products.

It was cute being dropped off and coming out of a dilapidated mini-van amidst limos and other classy cars at the hotel entrance.  You betcha, I tipped the valets and doormen, too, just like the classy car passengers.

Of course, I only dropped off a dullah to their probably tens or twenties...ha ha ha ha ha ha...

If we can get up after dinner and nap, we'll listen again to the Filipino singers at the lounge.

Oh, by the way, many of you asked about the earthquake.  We never felt it here in Beijing.  We're so sorry for the victims and have been saying a prayer for them.

Well, we're going on a tourist coach tomorrow for $20 each for a whole day trip to the Badaling section of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. 

See you tomorrow night!

The Peking Duck Experience

Ces and I showed up at the Made in China restaurant for our 8:45 p.m. on Monday, May 12, Peking Duck experience.  Not being into ducks, this was going to be our first experience.  What better place to savor a Peking Duck for the first time but in Peking (now Beijing), China!

We were both anxious, not really knowing if we'd like the taste.  What a pleasant surprise.  It was really, truly delicious.  The skin which we were told to dip light with white sugar tasted better than the crispy lechon (roast pig) skin that is a Filipino delicacy to die for.  In fact, we liked the duck much better!

We thought we'd have rice with the duck.  But no, our waitress Cathy showed us how to spread the paper-thin pancake and put in the meat that you flavor with plum sauce, garlic sauce, thin slices of cucumber and leeks and roll them up.  Voila!  You start helping yourself with it using the chopsticks.  We actually, loved them!  We loved them so much, we finished all the duck!  Whoa, poor Peking Duck!  It's now dancing in our stomach!

We started the dinner with a spicy hot and sour soup and waited a while for the chef to carve the duck in front of us.  In simple strokes, his razor sharp knife produced thin slices of duck meat.

Ces wound up her dinner with a well-presented serving of fresh seasonal fruits and a passion fruit sorbet and coffee.  I finished mine with stir-fried vegetable enriched with thin slices of garlic and dried shrimps.  I loved this one, too!

Passing by the lobby on our way up to our room, a trio of singers caught our attention.  We decided to sit down for another round of coffee and dessert.  At the break, the trio came around and introduced themselves.  They were Filipino singers, Conservatory of Music graduates of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.  Armando and Maricel Aguilar are married to each other.  Janet (Family name?) was the third member.  They had a pianist and a guitarist with them.  They are booked to sing nightly for six months at this Hyatt property.  They have a long-term contract to sing at Hyatt facilities in Southeast Asia.  They just finished their stint in Indonesia.

This was a night to remember.  What a Peking Duck experience!

China Experience in Beijing: Day 2

Day 2 today is Monday, May 12, 2008.  We had a good 10-hour restful sleep last night.  We woke up eager to explore the Forbidden City.

We started the day with a delicious complimentary breakfast buffet at the Made in China Restaurant as part of our Regency Club accommodations at the Grand Hyatt.  An array of breads, pastries, hot and cold meats, fried rice...etc...etc... made our mouths water with anticipation.  The waiters served drinks and brought additional food of our choice to our tables!

The Hyatt staff knows how to spoil its guests!

The concierge suggested for us to take the 15-minute walk to the Forbidden City.  It was a good advice.  It allowed us to enjoy the scenery of flowers along sidewalks and different kinds of architecture along the way.

The Internet, of course, will tell you that the Forbidden City is made up of two courts:  Outer and Inner.  There are three courts in each of the Outer and Inner Courts.

Instead of joining a tour group or picking up audio guides of 60 rmb each, we opted to hire a personal guide for only 100 rmb which is actually less than $20 for the whole day.  As the tour progressed, we learned that our guide Tom Zhang is a professional guide of a tour company.  Today and tomorrow are his days off.  He sidelines on his days off as a private guide, approaching people and offering himself as a guide.  He speaks impeccable English, having a degree in Foregin Languages with majors in English and Russian.  He and his wife have one daughter and could not have another child by governmental decree.

Tom, in addition to the expected narration of Forbidden City information, shared anecdotes.  He said that the Emperor's three thousand concubines had to be thin because after their names were picked from lottery, they needed to pass through a narrow door opening.  If they could not get through it, they were dismissed from the much-sought favors of the Emperor.  He described in detail how the Emperor's successor was selected.  We had a good exchange here because I am aware of the process.  What I forgot was that the name placed and hidden in a box was written in two dialects: Mandarin and Manchurian.

He spoke of the pomegranate as the wedding fruit of the Emperor because the seeds of the fruit symbolize having many children.  In jest, he said that nowadays nobody eats pomegranate because a couple is only allowed to have one child!  He pointed out that the doors of the palaces and gates have nine rows of nine door knobs each because the number nine symbolizes good luck; that nine times nine is eighty one; eighty-one is eight and one which are nine, still a lucky number.

Ces and I were glad we opted to have a personal guide and felt lucky to have bumped into Tom Zhang.  Tom took us to a restaurant that specialized in serving hot pots.  What an amazing tiny restaurant!  The hot pot was extra-ordinary.

After lunch, Tom volunteered to continue guiding us through our shopping expedition at no extra cost.  We took a cab to the Silk Stores and picked up the new True Religion jeans that friends ordered and gold jewelries for other friends.

The Silk Stores are actually made up of small, privately operated stalls of jewelries, watches, elecronics, clothes, etc. in a four-storey building.  The fun part was in the bargaining.  If I understood it right, the stores sold imitation products.  So, when the sales person starts off with a price, a prospective buyer should really negotiate for a much lower price.

Ces and I are good in this.  I always offer to buy the produc at 10% of the offered price and go no higher than 25%.  If refused, I walk out, the person grabs me back and we play the game some more.  If the person lets me go, then I know my bid was really too low.  I would proceed to go no more than 30%.

Ergo, I paid $25 for a Rolex watch priced at $500 at first offer.  That is what? 5%?  Now, I can give my son a Rolex watch!

One thing, I learned today at the Silk Stores was that there are three quality levels of these imitation watches.  Before, i bought the watch, the owner showed me how.  He brought out a device that measured quality of materials.  He put it on my diamond ring and it showed the highest level of quality.  He put it on a cubic zirconia ring andit showed the lowest level.  He, then, put it on three different Rolex imitation watches of the same model.  The gadget identified the quality level of the watches.  Not trusting him, I picked watches myself and put the gadget on them and did it on my own Bulgari watch.  Sure enough, the gadget worked differently with the different watches.

Did I hear you ask a question?  Ahhhh, yes, my Bulgari is real.

So, Steve, I will have to write about the Peking Duck later tonight or tomorrow because we still have to eat dinner.

Tomorrow, we're off to the Great Wall with Tom guiding us.

The China Experience in Beijing: Day 1

The China Experience in Beijing begins.  The flight from Los Angeles was exceptionally tiring because we attended the KofC monthly meeting in San Bernardino, CA late into the night and had to drive to the Hyatt Hotel in Anaheim to be with our twin grand daughters Bea and Zoe along with their mother Rhanee and our other daughter Risha.  The twins celebrated their 9th birthday on May 10.

Ces and I restlessly slept through the flight with a stopover in Narita Airport in Japan.  We arrived at 10 p.m. on May 10.  Yang Wang, a Grand Hyatt Beijing representative met us at the airport and efficiently whisked us through immigration and customs ahead of everyone else and sent us off on a Hyatt limo to the hotel.

The staff is pretty efficient at this Hyatt property.  Our accommodation is in the Regency Club which opens up the lounge for us to enjoy breakfast and dinner amenities.  Woo hoo!  Diamond membership in the Hyatt definitely has its perks!

We had a late dinner of what else but seafood noodle soup and some dumplings at the hotel's 24-hour Grand Cafe.  Delicious!

Tired we may have been, we still woke up at six and enjoyed breakfast at seven at the Regency Club lounge.

Two things impressed us today.  First,  Beijing is extremely clean.  We spent a lot of time walking around and did not see even a small piece of paper or cigarette butt anywhere on the streets.  Plus, there are flowering plants all over the sides of streets and the freeeways within the city.  Second, the Catholic Church we heard holy mass at was filled to the rafters with people, mostly very young people!

We walked for 30 minutes from the hotel to the church.  That's when we noticed how clean the sidewalks were.  There were uniformed workers, much like the Metro Aides of Metro-Manila in the Philippines, with brooms and pans.  They kept the streets clean.

We asked the young ushers about the presence of many young people in church.  We found out that they have religious formation classes that run in three-month cycles.  Apparently these classes are always full with young people graduating and getting baptized as Catholics.  Thus, the presence of many young people in church.  There were many, many more of them than there were old ones.  The choir was outstanding with the congregation heartily singing along in Marian concert.  It was also impressive to see that no one was in shorts and almost everyone at communion had their hands clasped in prayer over their chests as they walked to and from communion!  Even if it was elbow room only situation, everyone managed to kneel when they were supposed to!

We took a cab to the Pan Ja Yah flea market.  Despite the intermittent shower, the market was full.  Of course, it is a covered market place.  It had an array of both authentic and fake products: home crafts, antiques, paintings and the like.  I bought a chess set of Chinese design for a bargained price of $30 from the quoted $200 and a cane for $5 from a quoted $80!  Ces got herself and our daughters Aari and Mahal signature seals of their names in Chinese.

We were extremely tired by two in the afternoon and decided to take a cab back to the hotel where we had a snack of seafood noodle soup and various dumplings at the Made in China Restaurant at the hotel.

National Public Radio in the USA claims that the best Chinese food in Beijing is at the Made in China restaurant, particularly the Peking Duck.

One has to make reservations to have dinner at this restaurant.  So we made one for tomorrow, Monday, May 12 at 8:45 p.m. and pre-ordered our Peking Duck.  Apparently, one has to do this if one wants to have the duck!

We've never had a taste for duck.  (Is it because of balut?) So, we'll find out what this duck is all about tomorrow!

Tags: Church in China