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Posted by: veggiedude on

6:58 AM  

Let me sum up my trip...

First of all, I was surprised at how developed Beijing and Shanghai were. The two smaller towns near Shanghai were also very developed - it seemed I could see over a thousand skyscappers going up in what seemed to be areas of wilderness not far from the farmers tilling the land. I had the feeling that I could have been in any city in the UK, because of the crowds of people, the skyscappers, the polution, and the ancient buildings. Here in the US, New York is the closest thing to it.

In each hotel I stayed at, I had access to broadband, for a small fee. The downside was I could not access blogger.com to update my site each day. I suspect there was some blocking going on by the government, but I'm not entirely sure. Other sites seemed to work well. In the first few days I could access the BBC news site, but later, it seemed to be blocked as well. In Shanghai, the small hotel I was at had wireless access to the internet via 802.11b, made available free to all.

In two separate incidences during my ten day stay, I witnessed the police harassing people on the street. In the first incident, two cops were escorting a man from the airport. One cop had the man's arm twisted behind his back as they questioned him. The other incident was in Shanghai. A police car abruptly pulled over and a cop ran out to question a man. The cop seemed to be confiscating the mans business cards, or so it seemed to me. This incident of the two looked suspicious to me.

The shopping was great fun, however, the street vendors was less so. As a tourist, you are a target, and they are relentless at trying out their new found capitalism at you. Movies that had just come out in the US that very weekend I had left the country, were easily available on the streets of Shanghai as bootleg DVD's. Normally, I don't care for bootlegs (and nor do I condone it), but I bought the complete season 7 of Sex and the City for about $2 US. I've never seen the show, so I use this as an introduction to it.

Life with a tour group in China is hard on the vegetarian. We never ate at a vegetarian restaurant (and we did pass by a few) and so I was not 'at home' in this department. The highlight was at a freeway stop in the middle of nowhere and we spotted a vendor selling "vegetarian chicken". This was a welcome surprise.

I never spotted any ducks in all the places we went to, covered by lakes and rivers and parks, no ducks were ever seen (but they always showed up on the dinner table).

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