Flat Stanley Climbs the Wall

Have any of you ever heard of Flat Stanley? Me neither. Until a little while ago. Mr. Lovely's very lovely niece is doing a project in school where you have to draw a person (aka Stanley), color him in and then send him to your relatives and friends. Then they take him somewhere, Disneyland or the Golden Gate Bridge, and take a photo of him living it up in said place.

We took Stanley to the Great Wall. He complained about the cold and the 4 mile hike the entire time, but he was still smiling in all the photos! Of course we had to go with him. I mean, I didn't really want to go, but since Stanley was insisting, I finally gave in. We went to a town called Jinshanling and hiked 6 km (roughly 4 miles) to the town of Simatai along the wall. It was about 15 degrees and windy, although it was sunny so it wasn't too bad. This is a great way to see a lot of the wall, instead of just getting dropped at one town and going to the wall, taking photos and leaving. You really get a nice feel for the wall. It was great, no pun intended!!!


So, did you know the wall is actually 8800 km (about 5000 miles) long? That's pretty long. So we only covered a fraction of a percentage of it! Several walls have been built since the 5th century BC that are referred to collectively as the Great Wall, which has been rebuilt and maintained from the 5th century BC through the 16th century. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains; the majority of the existing wall was built during the Ming Dynasty.

Okay so that concludes my history portion. The dynasties of China are confusing enough!

PS Just for fun I googled "flat stanley" and there is a website!! haha. You can read more about it HERE. I am SOOOO out of the loop!

Notes On China

I am going to have to do a few China recaps, since I couldn't get onto blogger, I didnt really post too much. However, today I am short of time, so I will leave you with a few random facts about China.

- % of population under the poverty line (US$1/day) in 1979: 64%

-% of population under the poverty line in 2007: 10%

-Average annual income in Shanghai 2007: US$3090

- Average annual income in urban areas 2007: $1819

- Average annual income in rural areas 2007: $545

And my favorite:

Number of fingers lost in factory accidents in the Pearl River Delta in 2004: 40,000

Kung Fu Fighting

Have you ever taken the subway in a big city? Have you done it during rush hour? With your next 6 months worth of clothing on your back? We usually try to avoid the subways during rush hour times and sometimes if we do have our luggage, we will walk or even spring for a cab rather than bashing people with our items.

However, when you live in a country with approximately 1.5 billion people, you get bumped around no matter what. The subways are always full; people are rushing on and off and up and down the stairs. It is quite a sight. But the best was today, when we HAD to ride during rush hour. We were smashed into the car (luckily without bags!) with about oh, maybe 1.4 billion other people. You can't move or hold on to anything; you just hope that if the train stops the other 1.39 billion people will hold you up.

This has happened to me before. In San Francisco coming home on the MUNI after a Giants game is a pretty tight squeeze. I have ridden a non-air conditioned packed full (smelly) subway in Paris. In Japan, they have an attendant with a cattle prod who keeps pushing more and more (and more!) people into the train. However, I think China tops them all. Not only were we smashed in so tightly, but if someone in the middle wants to get out they just squirm their way to the edge. Even better was something else I saw today; it was basically a mosh pit of subway riders. When the train stopped, people were trying to run off the train; others were trying to run on…It was like they were fighting. Everyone was shifting and leaning and pushing and jumping and swaying and GWWWWARRRR! I felt like body slamming someone. Everyone else seemed to be having fun doing it.

As funny as this is when you are only doing it once in a while, the sheer excess of people in China has also caused us a little problem. February 3rd is Chinese New Year. That and the (basically) two week period before that are called the Spring Festival. This means: starting Wednesday the 19th and going until February 3rd, people are on vacation. Kids are out of school; people in the cities go home to visit their families; EVERYONE travels somewhere. What does this mean for us? This means we cannot get a train, bus, boat OR car out of Beijing. It's like a bad movie.

Our plan was to go from Beijing south, eventually ending up in Macau, where we would celebrate the New Year and then go to Vietnam. CHANGE IN PLANS!!! We can't get out. Even if we do get out somehow, we won't be able to go anywhere from there. So we have decided to, unfortunately, leave China early. Bangkok (and about a 70 degree raise in temperature) here we come!!! Instead of heading south from China to Vietnam, we will head north from Thailand to Vietnam. Crisis (and cold weather) averted. Phew.

Have you ever been stuck somewhere? Was it because of weather…or…? Did it ruin your trip? Are you a calm traveler or do you freak out in situations like this?

Summer Palace in Winter

Near Beijing, there is a palace that the royals used to use in the summertime. it is called the Summer Palace.  It gets really hot in the summertime in the city, so they enlarged Kunming lake and built a palace on the hill next to it, where they went to swim and relax. Today we went to see this marvelous place. However, as you may be aware, it is not summertime (in fact, it's downright freezing here!) You may think this may make it worse, but it actually is a sight to be seen. The entire lake is frozen over, along with all of the little channels that run through the property. People ice skate and sled on the ice.

The architecture is gorgeous. The roofs are all hip and gable and have jade statues of dragons and different sorts of other animals on the peaks. There are arched stone bridges across the channels. The interiors of the buildings are all carved woodwork, meticulously painted. The palace sits on a hill where you can see for miles and has a great view of the frozen lake with all the little skaters on it.

However, even though all of this was great, my favorite (or maybe the thing that amused me the most) was the names of things. Here are a few examples. See if you can guess what kind of structure these are.

The Realm of Multitudinous Fragrance: If your answer was "a stone and brick archway", you are right! Apparently it was thought that it resembled the holy land of the Buddha, hence the name.

Hall of Dispelling Clouds: Yup, it's a hall. It was built to celebrate the Empress' birthday.

Garden of Harmonious Interests: Yup, it's a garden. I guess you can't go there with anyone you don't agree with? P.S. Mr. Lovely and I did not go there.

Okay the last two weren't that difficult. But isn't that fun? Don't you want to visit those places? Doesn't it seem like nothing but good could come to you here? Have you read Anne of Green Gables? Don't those names sound like something she would make up? There are also names such as The Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, The Hill of Longevity, The Temple of the Sea of Wisdom and many more.

I guess what I am trying to say is, even if you come to Beijing in the winter time, don't let the name fool you; the Summer Palace is just as fun in the wintertime!!

What is your favorite place to go in the summer/winter? What is your favorite fun(ny) name of a place near you? (P.S. Near my parents' house are the towns of Cool, CA and Maybe, CA.)