The Most Populated Nation on Earth!

I knew that China was going to be an epic experience at my very fist glimpse of the country. My first encounter with the most populated nation on earth was at sunrise as I was sitting eating breakfast on the sixth deck. As soon as the MV Explorer entered Victoria Harbor my eyes were fixed on the scenic sky-scrapper covered landscape of Hong Kong. I’ve never seen so many tall buildings all together; they were literally the only thing I could see on either side of the river. It was absolutely stunning—cooler than any city I’ve ever seen. If you all remember the scene from The Dark Knight where Batman jumps into the building to kidnap the Chinese guy—that’s Hong Kong’s tallest building. Though a single photo won’t do Hong Kong’s dramatic skyline justice, it’s worth a look to get some idea of how amazing the city is.

I don’t mean to keep harping on the enormity of the city of Hong Kong, but I am still amazed by its sheer size. It’s like they are farming people in these giant residential communities. There would be a complex of literally ten forty story buildings together and not far away there’d be a whole other complex. I struggled to find any buildings that were less than ten stories high. Even with the great number of buildings, another startling fact was how many people they fit into each building. My tour guide said that oftentimes four people would live in 250 sq. ft.

Sadly I had only one day in this amazing city because there’s so much else I needed to see in China in only one week. Though I had to spend part of my only day in Hong Kong at a chemical waste treatment plant for a class, I made the most of the rest of my time there. I wandered the very Western, very wealthy city window shopping classy stores, trying interesting Chinese food, and revisiting some familiar foods such as Haagen Dazs. Once it got dark I watched the daily light show that is the synchronization of many of the colorful lights of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers. The music was corny, but regardless it was cool to see. The rest of my evening in Hong Kong was spent doing as the locals do—watching horseracing at Happy Valley Racecourse in the center of the city of Hong Kong. Though I have no idea how to fill out one of the forms to gamble, I had a great time drinking beer with friends, observing the excitement of those nicely dressed residents of Hong Kong who knew what was going on and seemingly had a lot of money riding on these races.

After one day in Hong Kong, I flew up to Beijing with twenty-seven fellow Semester at Sea students. We spent four days in the city staying in the international student dorms at Tsinghua University, which I was told is the MIT of China. Interestingly, Tsinghua University was built by the United States in 1911 as a sort of sign of good will. Today the huge campus is home to thirty thousand of China’s elite students, who we were told by the international kids never really get a chance to unwind and go party. We got to know a few of the Chinese students, but I must admit that we hung out mostly with the international kids because they showed us how to find Beijing’s nightlife. One night we even made it to a club named Vick’s where the Ying Yang Twins were putting on a show. Being rowdy American university students, a bunch of us even made our way to the Ying Yang Twin’s private lounge. Not only were we in China, but we were hanging out with celebrities. It was pretty cool.

Soon I’ll get to all of the amazing sites I saw in China—places that were absolutely incredible to visit—but first I want to write a little more on seemingly insignificant experiences that I think really made my time in China as epic as it was. One such incident happened when we were out at a bar with the international students. I went to get a beer with a Swiss student, Laurent, and there was nowhere to sit so we decided to sit down at the end of a table that some Chinese people were sitting at. We quietly watched them, observing the way they had turned the innocent game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” into a drinking game. Within minutes they had the two of us participating in the ridiculous sport. I don’t speak more than three words of Mandarin and Laurent has a quite limited Mandarin vocabulary as well, but we managed with gesture communication and that was perhaps the funniest and most fun thirty minutes I had in China. I can’t really describe why, but it was incredible. I’m glad to have a few pictures with the Chinese people to remember the moment, and of course, I threw up the classic Asian peace signs in all of the pics.

Actually, I threw up peace signs in most of the pictures I took in China because pretty much all the Asians do that—it’s not really a stereotype. I ended up taking a lot of pictures with these peace sign-throwing Asians for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear to me. Asian tourists like taking pictures with white people, but for some reason they would single me out of our group of twenty-eight. At first I thought it was just a coincidence that they were coming up to me, but soon both my friends and I realized that they would literally look through the group and come up to me specifically a majority of the time. I still don’t know whether it was because I look particularly American, because I was wearing goofy beanies, or because I smile a lot and maybe look more friendly than others, but there’s something about me that they liked even more than the blonde hair of several of the girls in my group.

Okay, now for the epic sites of the historic city of Beijing. On our arrival to the Beijing airport we stepped out of the terminal into five inches of fresh snow, which was quite a change after hot, humid Hong Kong. We thought this might put a damper on our days of sightseeing outside venues, but I think it may have enhanced it. Our first stop was at the Beijing Zoo, which was amazing not because of the animals that I’ve seen so many times before, but because of the beautiful layout of the zoo that was even more picturesque in snow. It was exactly the type of place you’d go to take Senior Page pictures, so we snapped a few of ourselves untidily dressed for warmth.

The following day we visited the Summer Palace, which was the second home to the emperor and his family. Here we saw a half kilometer long extravagantly decorated hallway and a huge boat that was made entirely of marble (well, the boat didn’t move, but it floated). That day we also saw the Temple of Heaven, which is a very pretty set of gardens and temple-like buildings scattered around a large property. The best part of this trip was seeing about fifty people dancing in no particular formation in one of the gardens. We couldn’t figure out what was happening—it seemed like they all were on drugs dancing by themselves so focused on their own little world. We took videos of them and observed for a while, but we never concluded what was happening.

On the third day we made the trip to the center of Beijing to Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square was pretty much an extremely large open square, which as we were told, “is meant for public celebrations and gatherings.” That was the extent of our tour of the Square—there was absolutely no mention of the massacre that took place there to give Tiananmen Square its fame. I’m sure the absence of attention on the uprising which occurred in 1989 was not because our guide forgot to mention it. This was one of a few times where we felt the presence of communism in China. We then traveled just beyond the Square to Forbidden City, the complex that was home to several dynasties of Chinese emperors and their families. This extremely well preserved set of hundreds of buildings is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Though we rushed through the complex because of the frigid weather, it was a really interesting visit.

We saved the best for last in Beijing—on the morning before we flew out to Shanghai we went to see the Olympic venues, the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, and then we climbed a segment of the Great Wall. The Wall was colder than anywhere we had been previously been, but the hike up the mountainous terrain warmed us up pretty quickly. The steepness of some parts of the wall in combination with the snow and ice made certain sections of the hike quite intimidating, but we managed to reach the top. After a number of photo opportunities we were ready to head back to the warmth of the bus, but we had that same feeling we’ve had so many times on this around-the-world trip: “I can’t believe we’re on the Great Wall of China right now.”

On Semester at Sea we have a number of commonplace phrases and inside jokes that apply because of the type of wild adventures which naturally occur when traveling in the crazy countries we visit. I think they help explain our philosophies here on the MV Explorer so I’ll share two of them with you. One of our phrases is “TIA,” which stands for “This is Asia” or in the past, “This is Africa.” We use this saying whenever things seem quite unlike what we expect as normal in the U.S.—little things like restaurants that don’t have salt, don’t offer napkins, don’t think that any heating is necessary when it’s negative ten degrees Celsius outside, or whose toilets are more or less nonexistent so you just have to pee in a hole. These things shouldn’t faze us anymore, but if anyone decides to complain we throw a “TIA” at him or her. Another “stop complaining” gesture we use when we hear an unfounded complaint is a signal where we put our arms over our head to form a circle. This gesture stands for “we’re going around the world,” which essentially means “suck it up, what we’re doing is so amazing, you have nothing to complain about.”

Shanghai, another insanely cool megacity, was the last stop on our week long tour of China. We were supposed to only have one day in Shanghai, but due to inclement weather our ship stayed in port for an extra day so that was really exciting. Of course there were ship rumors that we were staying an extra day because President Obama, who was in Shanghai at the same time as us, was going to come talk to us. So many silly ship rumors… of course he didn’t, but we were extremely happy to have the day nonetheless. I meandered all over the city with three friends; we spent time in ritzy shopping areas and then strolled down more local boulevards just taking in China. I really don’t have a single good reason, but it was one of the best days of my entire voyage. The three that I was traveling with, Luke, Amanda, and Ikar, are really fun people to be around and we just went with it, drifting into and out of activities as we pleased. For some reason unknown to me, it was the perfect day.

China was the first country we’ve visited where it was difficult to find people who speak English. This made little tasks such as getting a cab to the correct destination or ordering safe food quite difficult. I witnessed a few friends trying the strategy of repeating themselves multiple times, louder each time to communicate, but we had to get a bit more creative than that when trying to carryout these seemingly simple tasks. After hailing a cab we would draw pictures or point to the nearest large hotel, which was the one place we knew we could find someone who spoke both English and Mandarin. At local restaurants we would have to point at pictures on the menu or sometimes go around to other people’s tables and point at their food. We narrowly escaped eating dog once after we ordered by pointing to a dish. An English-speaking man at a nearby table informed us of what exactly we had just asked for, and then he got a good laugh when he saw our facial expressions.

There are so many more interesting bits that I want to share with you all from China, but I’m four hours away from Japan now and I need to get a bit of shuteye before tackling another country. I guess when I get back home you’ll all just have to chat with me about my adventures to get the rest of the stories! (…Hm, ask about how everyone was shocked that we knew how to use chopsticks, or how we had our temperature taken everywhere we went, or how there was more or less a riot at one of the clubs I was at. They’re all good stories for the future!)

I’ll see most of you in less than a month now! I miss you!

svc