Entries Tagged 'Vacation' ↓

Okay obviously this post is a bit late for Thanksgiving, but I had a good time with my family and ate a lot of food last weekend.  Lately I haven’t been blogging much just because a lot of random things are happening.  I am swamped with real life so to speak.  While I have had time to sit down and write I did not have much to say so I didn’t write much.  So anyway, it’s December again, and it’s almost Christmas and the news is full of gloom of doom. I think to get away from all the depressing news I need to write down all the things I am thankful for.

First, I am very thankful for my family and friends.  I am just happy to be loved.   This year I am also grateful that I got to see my elderly grandparents in China.  They are a hilarious couple and I may write a story or two about them later.  If you want to read a little bit about them my hubby wrote a little here.

Second, I am very thankful that my entire family still have jobs amidst the massive layoffs in November. My hubby is in the video game industry and apparently this industry is also pretty recession proof.  In fact, his company is still hiring people for new projects.  As long as we have a steady stream of income we should be able to ride out this recession without too much of a problem.

Third, I think a lot of people are thankful for this one - prices are going down on gas and food!  Actually the price of gasoline is $1.75 a gallon now on my street and that means my hubby and I would save around $100 a month on gas.  I have not seen those prices for gas for about 5 years.  I noticed that milk and bread also got a little bit cheaper and it is expected that food prices would come down a bit more.  This is definitely good news for people who need a little financial relief though some economists are worried about deflation, but that’s another story entirely.

Next,  I am happy that my sister in law is getting married.  I don’t talk to her all that much because she lives about 500 miles away, but she’s getting married in two weeks and that’s pretty exciting.  The hubby will be a groomsman and look all sharp.  She picked a very expensive tux rental and that annoyed me and my mother in law a little bit, but that’s just because we want to save money.  My father in law and hubby should look pretty good though.

Also,  I am thankful that my hubby and I got to go on vacation and  various weekend trips in the past year.  Okay, this is actually a story about my grandparents.  When we were  in my grandparents’ condo, my grandmother kept on telling me that I am so lucky that my husband is willing to travel with me.  Then she went on and complained that my grandfather was so cheap that he never took her traveling in their 54 years of marriage and now they are too old to go places.   My parents always say that I am frugal like my grandfather, but I am not that cheap!  I think there really needs to be a balance between hoarding your money and wasting your money and there is no point in hoarding your money senselessly because in the end you really can’t take it with you.

Finally, all of these things are gifts from God so all the thanks goes to Him.  I know that I have a lot more than most people in this world and I don’t take it lightly.  Everyday is truly a gift.

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Today my hubby finished sorting all the pictures from our trip. He really took a lot of pictures! Since a picture is worth a thousand words, this shall be a photoblog of the ancient and modern that we saw on our trip. Most of these pics were taken by my hubby, but I have permission to use them on my blog.  If you want to use any of these photos please ask me to ask my husband for permission.  Enjoy!

The Ancient:

The Great Wall - Beijing

Tiananmen - Beijing

Temple of Heaven - Beijing (This is probably my favorite structure in Beijing. It is around 600 years old and built without a single nail).

Terra Cotta Army- Xian (They were a lot bigger in size and numbers than I thought. These are around 2000 years old)

Five Pavillion Bridge - Yangzhou (This is the symbol of my hometown Yangzhou. Built in the 1700s by salt merchants on the Slim West Lake)

The Modern:

Bird’s Nest & Water Cube - Beijing (We didn’t get to stop and go into these, but they were quite impressive and looked even better at night)

CCTV tower - Beijing (A really weird looking building)

Runyang Bridge on the Yangtze River - (This bridge connects Yangzhou & Zhengjiang and its southern section is the 4th longest suspension bridge in the world)

Pudong Skyline - Shanghai (These new buildings east of the Huangpu river sprung up in the last 15 years.)

Speed counter of the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation Train (It’s going about 260 miles per hour for you non-metric folks).

There is not much to say besides that you have to see it to believe it all.

To be continued…

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Despite censorship and propaganda, Chinese people are very aware of what is going on in their country and around the world.  Every person I met knew of the financial crisis in America, and even the masseuses knew of Obama and McCain. I’m fairly sure most people here in America have no idea who the Chinese president is. (Funnily enough the Chinese president’s last name is “Hu”).   Here are some of the tidbits I heard about how the financial crisis and other factors are affecting China’s economy and the lives of everyday folks.

First of all, the stock market in China plunged more than 70% from its highs.  The central government called this a correction, but the people I talked are pretty aware that it’s more than that. However, the percentage of people in China with skin in the stock market is very small.  Most people put their money in the four large government capitalized banks and collect interest and many people still have traditional pensions for their retirements. However, orders for Chinese goods are down significantly for next year and many factories are closing down due to lack of sales since the United States is China’s largest trading partner.  Everything from shoes and plastic forks are seeing decreases in orders.  Unemployment is fairly high since China has way too many people.

Another event that affected China’s economy is the Olympics.  In order to ensure that the event was a success with the least amount of restrictions China created new Visa rules to curtail the entry of foreigners.  As a result, the amount of tourists dropped by quite a bit.  Most of these Visa restrictions have been lifted, but the outlook for tourism is still lower than previous years because many foreigners are not travelling in the current economic climate.

The people I spoke to were also quite curious about home and car purchase in America.  Cars carry a tariff as high as 25% to 100% in China, but people still buy them.  Condos in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai are extremely expensive, and yet people still manage to pay in cash or put at least 30% down. The tour guide in Shanghai told us that most people also get very short term mortgages where they pay a home off in 5 years.  She thought that a 0% down loan is absolutely ridiculous and said that the bankers in America must be idiots. Home prices in China hasn’t really fallen because people save up so much cash to buy something, but home sales have slowed significantly after a rapid run in prices.

Most people I spoke to believe that the Chinese government is doing the best it can under the current economic climate.  Everyone agreed that their lives have vastly improved in the last two decades of reform, and even though some people said that they were dubious about China’s large purchase of American government debt, they seem to agree with the fairly conservative economic policies of the central government.  China is also focusing on education and scientific research much more than before to cultivate its own engineering and scientific talent.  Another emerging trend is that more and more Chinese students of my generation who go abroad are returning to China after they graduate.  This is a big difference from my parents’ generation, who went abroad and never returned.

For the most part,it seemed like business as usual in China. In my hometown, the restaurants we went to were packed to the brim and my grandfather said, “I bet you can’t see a financial crisis here.”  There weren’t as many tourists, but I guess that’s better for pictures.  In Shanghai it was hard to hail a cab, and car license plates are auctioned off each month for more than $5000 each.  In Beijing, the construction cranes were still working overtime to erect modern and bizarre skyscrapers.  China is definitely still growing amidst this global financial turmoil, and there is definitely a sense of pride and optimism in the misty polluted air.

To be continued…

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Today I just came back from China after a two week vacation to Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, and Yangzhou.  This was the first time the hubby and I traveled to another country together and it was quite an experience.  It was also the hubby’s first trip to mainland China so he had a few reservations.  For example, he asked me if the hotels were “okay” and if they had hot water. Since I’ve been back to China quite a few times in recent years I assured him that they were quite fine.  He was also afraid that he couldn’t breathe correctly because I told him that the last time I went to Beijing the rain made my sweater dirty.  Surprisingly, this time Beijing was quite clean and the sky was clear and blue.  I think whatever mandates they implemented for the Olympics really worked.  Nevertheless, the hubby thought that the cities all smelled a bit weird.  In his words, “I know the city smells because when I fart I can’t smell it.”

Anyway, here are some of the funnier “Americans in China” moments:

1) We met a lady named Irma from Los Angeles  at the airport who was travelling with her nephew.  She happened to be on the same tour as us.   On the first day of the tour the bus took us close to the Olympic Village in Beijing and as we passed by the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube a Chinese bus slowed down right next to our bus so we were face to face to its passengers.  Irma was so excited that she started to wave frantically at the local Beijing folks in the other bus and took out her camera to take pictures of them.  The people in the other bus were quite amused and also took out their cellphones and cameras to take pictures of her.  The hubby and I were cracking up at this scene because Irma was so excited and yelled “HELLO!!”  After the Chinese people took out their cameras she said, “they must think I’m some crazy American lady!”

2) Our tour took us to the home of a local artist in a “hutong”, which is a word describing the older courtyard style dwellings in Beijing.  One of the ladies asked the artist, “how do you do your laundry?”  The artist answered, “I have a washing machine” in Chinese.  Since I understood Chinese I laughed out loud before the translator translated what the artist said.  Another lady asked, “how come your dogs don’t bark?”  The artist, translator, and tour guide all cracked up at that question and answered, “I don’t really know”.

3)  Many public Chinese restrooms still have “squat holes” where you do your business by pulling down your pants and squating over a deep hole.  Some of these restrooms don’t have doors so you can see people squatting down.  One of the ladies went into one of the restrooms and saw an old lady squatting there and she ran out of there in horror.  Then she told everyone what she saw.  I thought it was pretty funny since those kind of restrooms were pretty standard when I went to elementary school.  They are actually slightly more hygenic since your skin doesn’t touch anything.

4) We also visited a Chinese elementary school.  In Chinese elementary schools you have to do these eye exercises everyday and supposedly they keep your eyes healthy.  So when we visited the school the kids were in the middle of these exercises.  The Americans were quite bewildered and wondered why the kids were rubbing their faces and brows.  I said that they were eye exercises and did a few of them.  The tour guide thought it was pretty funny.

Now, the Chinese also have their quirks that the Americans found funny or crazy.

1)  One guy visited the Beijing Zoo on his own to see the giant pandas.  He said that the Chinese people didn’t care about the pandas, but instead they were crowded around the common squirrels.  He found it funny because we have squirrels running everywhere here in America.

2)  The public parks are filled with people singing songs, playing games, dancing, and practicing Taiji.  My husband asked me, “how come Americans don’t use parks like this?” The tour guide explained that people in China retire much earlier than Americans.  Women generally retire at age 55 and men retire at age 60 so a lot of people have nothing to do but to enjoy themselves.    Chinese people are also very social so they like to get together to play in public places.

3) Chinese people don’t really adhere to traffic laws or stand in line.  The traffic in Beijing was  quite orderly, but once you get to Shanghai, then you’ll see people creating lanes out of nowhere and busses coming dangerously close to crushing other cars.

4)  Some Chinese people have never seen white people before, and some of the people in our group became tourist attractions themselves.  Several people received requests from random Chinese tourists for pictures because they had blue eyes or red hair.  They got quite a kick out of this.

Okay, now onto the most bizarre being we encountered on the trip.

Our group took an overnight train from Beijing to Xian.  Each couple had their own room on the train and the tour guide told us not to open the doors for anyone at night because sometimes there can be thieves on the train.  So everyone went on the train warily that night.  Around 1 am, I got up to use the bathroom while the hubby stood guard by the door.  When I came out of the bathroom a creepy white guy was standing in the hallway blocking my path.  He had very pale skin, beady green eyes and reddish hair.  He stared at me for a couple seconds and I said, “excuse me”, and he let me pass back to my room.  My hubby looked out some more because he thought that guy was quite creepy.  He didn’t want to go to the bathroom while leaving me alone in the room so he waited for the guy to leave.  After ten or fifteen minutes the weird man still didn’t leave so the hubby locked our door and started to press the “Attendant” button.   Suddenly, we started to hear loud pounding on our door and the cabins next to ours.  The man also tried to open several people’s doors.  According to the hubby that man stared him down while I was in the bathroom, and he reeked of alcohol.  The pounding went on for about 10 minutes and we heard some doors opening and random people speaking.  We simply hid in our room and slept until morning.

The next morning, the ladies next to our room started to talk about a “psycho killer” that came knocking in the night.  Apparently, one of the ladies really needed to go to the bathroom so she opened the door and the man stared her down and then stuck his tongue out at her.  The man also peed all over the floor of the bathroom in our traincar.  Another couple apparently didn’t lock the door so he actually got into their room.  The man in that cabin pushed the guy out.  One of the ladies speculated that the man is  a French boozehound, and my hubby and I started  laughing because one of the songs on Rock Band 2 is Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads and that song has French sprinkled throughout.  The hubby also expressed that it was ironic that all of these foreigners were expecting some Chinese thieves, but instead the psycho was not Chinese at all.

Later when we got off the train the hubby really wanted to find the crazy guy and snap a photo of him, but we didn’t see him.  However, a lady in our group spotted him in a group waving a French flag.  This experience certainly brings new meaning to the lyrics “Psycho Killer Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

To be continued!

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I am leaving San Mateo for China first thing in the morning tomorrow.  Sorry for the lack of updates but these couple weeks have been insanely busy for me.  We actually still haven’t completely closed on the house because of a bunch of mix ups and confusion.  Hopefully it will be done tomorrow, but I won’t be here to see it.  That sounds pretty precarious and believe me, I have been pulling out my hair for about two days.  I have also been trying to tie up loose ends at work and it has been two extremely chaotic weeks.

I am so glad that I will be leaving on a jetplane tomorrow because I just need to get away from this crazy country for a while and escape to another crazy country.   We will be watching the presidential election through the filter of CCTV.  The hubby already voted early on Saturday, so he is all set.

I will be back early morning of November 14th, but there will be an excellent guest post by The Wandering Tax Pro in a couple days.   Stay tuned!

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