Traveling China - by Peggy

In planning all our travels, Tom and I knew that some trips would be "hard" ones, and some would be "easy" ones, like to places we’ve been before and know we like. Before we even left, we knew China would be a "hard" trip. The language is indecipherable, the ambiance of the locations unknown and the food challenging. We were right – the China experience was "hard", but still had highlight moments. We had some good travel experiences and some pretty bad ones. But "truth in travel" is our motto for our web site, so here’s a rundown of some of our best and worst.

First, one caveat. Tom is much more tolerant than I am about the uncertainties of travel, particularly when it comes to food. I have a lower tolerance for dirt, like when it’s in my hotel room. I want to know what it is I’m eating, before I put it in my mouth.

Overall, our reaction to places in China was split by what we were doing. The first week we participated in the Great Wall Marathon package, which actually turned out pretty well. We spent lots of time at a nice (4-star out of five) hotel in Beijing and two nights in a very basic hotel in a small town near the race site. The next two weeks, we were on our own in various cities and areas, with local English-speaking guides and non-English speaking drivers. Without such guides, we would have done lots worse. With them, at least I knew what food was going in, even if it wasn’t very good at times. And they could complain on our behalf to Chinese hotel people. At one hotel we went through four rooms before we found one we would stay in. One reject featured black soot and water spewing from the faucets in the bathroom. So, we had the good and the bad. Given our experiences, here are some reasons not to go to China:

Too many people. Chinese people mainly live in overpopulated cities, often in run-down buildings and drab surroundings. In the countryside they live in dilapidated buildings and congregate in towns lined with sad stores. I did not find one place in China that was "charming", and that’s disappointing to have to say.

Too much pollution. All the cities were enveloped in smog and you felt like every breath you took in was dirty air. (I actually had black mucus in the tissue when I would blow my nose at the end of a day out sightseeing in some cities.) Most of the Chinese people had a continuous little cough from the air conditions where they live. Even in the scenic Three Gorges area, the Yangtze River which flows through the gorges features a continuous array of floating litter and garbage – Styrofoam food containers, plastic food bowls, paper products, shoes, plastic water bottles, etc. The garbage really marred the overall river experience (a three-day trip). Here's a photo of a river city taken from a bluff and the reason you can't see much is air pollution. 

You can’t drink the water. Even in five-star hotels, you are instructed to drink bottled water. You are told not to drink the tap water anywhere, which means bottled water for every drink and for brushing your teeth. Only the best hotels provide bottled water; basically you have to buy about two bottles per day. Some basic hotels provide a little pot to boil the tap water, but the looks of some of them left bottled water the only viable option. And, this isn’t just for tourists; all the local people we asked either drank bottled water or had filter systems in their homes.

Mealtime is stressful. The Chinese people are frugal with food, meaning that they use every part of every animal, fish and fowl that goes into a meal. Most of them I didn’t want to know about, much less eat. So each meal was a "adventure in eating", but in a negative way, not in a "gee, this sounds like an interesting dish" way. Tom actually had a bite of "chicken paws"; we thought the waitress said "chicken parts"! Here are some actual menu items (given the real thing, we didn’t have to make these up): braised duck lips, braised duck’s blood with vinegar, marinated goose foot, boiled goose intestine, fried duck’s paw with pickled pepper, marinated beef stomach, braised fish head, braised ox penis, stewed bull "private", boiled pig’s ear with chile oil, braised snake with garlic, diced rabbit with orange peel, fried duck’s tongue with pepper, Johnny Walker Black Label (OK, that one makes sense!).

Women have to pee in a hole in the floor. I know men think this is no big deal, but trust me for a woman it takes getting used to (if one ever does). While hotel rooms have "western style" toilets, most tourist attractions, restaurants and public buildings have a stall with a half-door, a tiled area with a small trough on the floor that you squat over and pee into. As the guidebook noted: "The facilities are distinctly unsanitary". I put it: they are filthy and gross. Note to women travelers – don’t go anywhere without your own stash of toilet paper/tissues and do some quad exercises before you go!

Now, the flip side – some reasons to travel to China:

It’s interesting. We expected China to be exotic and it certainly was. When you can’t read the signs, or just walk up and talk with someone, you get to use skills that lay dormant at home. Like charades and pantomime. It is inherently interesting to see things you don’t usually see and just the difference in how the Chinese people live is enough to experience.

You feel like a movie star. Many Chinese people have a fascination with Westerners. Because we were traveling alone and had Chinese guides, we went places that the tour groups never go. We stood out everywhere (even on the Yangtze River cruise we were the only Americans; the other 45 passengers were Taiwanese, Japanese and German). On several occasions, Chinese parents asked for us to let them take a picture of us with their children. In one crowded downtown plaza by the time we and the five or so children were all arranged in a group, several other people with cameras came up to take pictures of our group too, so we felt like we had paparazzi all around. We can only imagine what will happen to these photos in the family albums for years to come! I was also interviewed by a Chinese journalist during the Great Wall Marathon, although given the gap in our language skills, I cringe to think of how I might have been quoted.

You have to admire the work ethic of the Chinese people. They work very hard at any job they have and some jobs involve excruciatingly manual labor. We saw men tearing down multiple-story brick buildings by using sledge hammers, pick axes and wheelbarrows. Farm families hand-cultivate crops in terraced rows on steep hillsides and put their hand-picked results in baskets on their backs to carry to small market areas. Our overall impression was that the Chinese workers are extremely diligent and accustomed to hard work.

OK, some of the food was very good. If you can get in the right place, get some understanding of what the stuff is and drink wine, you can have a good meal. One benefit of being in some of the small rural towns was that they were surrounded by all these little farms growing great vegetables. In the "black soot in the faucets" hotel, we had some locally-grown mushrooms in a delicate sauce that made the whole meal. Even with some good food, though, I am currently SICK of white rice and watermelon (which is served as dessert at almost every meal). Here are the two guys that cooked us our best lunch in three weeks!

The Chinese people are very, very nice. With the local guides and such, we had an opportunity to talk with "real people" and get some flavor of the country and their lives. Some Chinese people would come up on the street to talk with us just to practice whatever level of English they know. School children, who learn some English, would step into our path to wave and say "Hello". We were peppered with questions about life in America. Unfortunately, many American movies are shown in China, giving the L.A./movie version of American life.

We had to assure one young guide that it really isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies to "pick up girls and get them to go to bed". But others were interested in topics ranging from what our house is like to whether Michael Jordan will resume playing pro basketball. Many we met are interested in what’s going on in the world and proud of their country’s efforts to be a part of modern life, like the Beijing efforts to be awarded the 2008 Olympic games and the glittering commerce/shopping aura of Shanghai.

There’s a well-tended museum in the city of Chongqing dedicated to the efforts of U.S. and Chinese soldiers together fighting against Japan in World War II. One older Chinese man we talked to fondly remembered seeing many American soldiers helping the locals when Chongqing was the Chinese capital after the Japanese took Beijing. A few tentative comments about the current U.S.-Chinese government tensions put them at the government, not people level.

And, on my birthday in Chongqing, our guide brought a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a full-sized birthday cake. Since we couldn’t begin to eat all the cake, we shared it with some Chinese families in the hotel rooms near ours. Soon there was a knock on the door and a Chinese boy, frosting on face, sang "Happy Birthday" to me in perfect English. Two other youngsters presented me with little gifts – pieces of the hotel stationery folded into a little bowl and a paper airplane!

Now that’s a great travel moment – and the one I hope I remember first when I look back on our China experience in the years ahead.