Study Abroad Blog | Blogging From Abroad | When a Hongkonger(me) travels to mainland China...

1 Dec

Ni How! [Hello in Mandarin-the language they speak in mainland China, which is different from Cantonese(the language they speak in Hong Kong)]

Since being in Hong Kong, I have been very fortunate to be able to travel a few places in Asia. Towards the beginning of my arrival in Hong Kong I got to go to mainland China. It’s funny because Shenzen (an area in mainland China) is just about a 30 minute bus ride away from my university. However, I need a visa to actually enter mainland China. The visa takes a few weeks to get and costs around $100US. This is also for a one time entry to mainland China. It’s actually very weird because I could just take the bus and hang out in China for a few days, but unfortunately I would be paying a lot to do this.

Now getting back on track, I went to mainland China for a week with some of my friends that I have met in Hong Kong. We went to Shanghai and Beijing. It was definitely an experience. Mainland China is very different from Hong Kong. The people are still very nice, but it seemed that they had less manners. My time there was unforgettable though. We only had a few days in each part of China, so we had to pack in as much as possible in those few precious days. However, when you hear that there are millions of people in China and it is always crowded, well that is not a lie. We arrived in Shanghai wanting to go to the museums, climb the Pearl (one of the largest towers in the world), and visit a few other key tourist areas in Shanghai. Unfortunately, this was a public holiday when we arrived. Therefore, not only were we traveling, but everyone else in China decided to travel as well. The streets were packed with people. You had to wait in line just to walk on the sidewalks.

Our day of seeing the sites turned into walking around Shanghai finding something that didn’t have a 3 hour line. It turned out to be a lot of fun, but it taught me to never travel when everyone else in China is traveling. Shanghai was definitely very different from Beijing. Shanghai is where I got to try some crazy street food, finally climbed the Pearl, and just walked around experiencing the busy life of a local. However, Beijing was where I truly enjoyed myself.

Beijing is where I got to walk through the Forbidden City, try Scorpion and silk worm (yikes!), see the Olympic Stadium, and hike the Great Wall of China! These were some of my best memories. I must admit that eating the unusual foods was perhaps one of my favorite moments. Scorpion tasted just like a crunchy piece of chicken, but silk warm can’t even be described. However, let me just say that it was by far the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life!

The Great Wall of China may have been by far my favorite memory in China. My friends and I didn’t just go to the touristy part of the wall where there are actual stairs and you walk out, take a few pictures, and then turn around saying you have “climbed the Great Wall”. No, we actually “climbed” the Great Wall of China. It was a four hour hike on parts of the wall that didn’t even have stairs. We were basically walking up a wall and hoping not to fall back.

Another memory that is really quite amusing is feeling like a movie star while in China. This is probably the closest I will ever get to feeling famous. Since it was a public holiday when we were traveling, many of those traveling around China are from parts that rarely see “white people”. Therefore, my friends and I would be walking and random people would come up to us and ask to get a picture with us. There would be points where we couldn’t even walk because so many people just kept asking to get pictures with us. It seemed that after one person came up then other people would see this commotion and figure they could get a picture as well. It was very funny at times and then quite frustrating at others. Mainly because we only a limited amount of time and when we wanted to actually see things then people would just be snapping pictures and stopping us. Wow, it was probably one of the most unique events I’ve ever encountered. I can see now why famous people go a little crazy. They can never have a real life when people are stopping them every five seconds. We had fun with it though and just soaked it all in as much as we could.

China was a trip that will stick in my mind forever.Unfortunately, there is so much that I could talk about and so many pictures to show. China is truly an amazing and unique place. It has so much history and life to offer. Here are just a few of the hundreds of pictures I took during my trip to China.