The Rest of Beijing

We woke up 2 hours late again. But not matter, we sprang up to start our day! We started by visiting the Military Museum, which was pretty sweet. We got to get on life-sized tanks and hug big statues of Mr. Mao and other despots. 

Afterward, we went to the bus to take us to the Great Wall. I had a short conversation (in chinese) with the bus driver about how much she loves tall people and why I should play basketball in China. I'm thinking about dropping out of school to join the Chinese NBA. I could be America's response to Yao Ming. I am from Houston after all. 

Anyway, we got to the wall without a problem. We came, we saw, and we left. There were so many people on the wall it was hard to get around. We got to see about one kilometer of it, and it is 5000 km long. I can't imagine how they built all of that. But, after you've seen one km of it, you've seen all 5000, so we were contented pretty quickly and we left to do the next thing.

We went to see Financial Street, which is supposed to be the largest financial market in all of mainland china, but the buildings were not that impressive. Hong Kong and Shanghai appear to be much more developed. 

Then, we left to see the National Acrobatic Troupe perform at the Tian Di Theater. It was quite a spectacle, and some good inspiration for tricking. We left the theater and went to see the new CCTV tower, which has a very interesting design. The building has two legs that come out of the ground at a slant, which are connected by a jagged crosspiece, leaving a giant hole in the middle. It was still under construction , but it still looked vicious. 

Now we will sleep and get some rest. Pictures are on the way...

Taking the Duck out of the Nest, drowning it in the Cube, and eating it near the Square and the City

Today we saw the City, the Square...and not the Wall :(

We began our day by waking up at 10:00, 2 hours later than planned (because we spent all night looking for some food and came home empty handed because everything was closed), and missed out on the hotel breakfast. But we had no time to squander on eating, so we left straight for Tiananmen Square. We jumped on the subway, and after 5 interchanges and 2 miles of underground walking, we made it to the square. It is quite an impressive area of empty space. 

After quickly taking in the Square, we ran to the City. However, we had to pass through 8 gates before we got into the true Forbidden City. These canny Chinese built the 500 year old city on top of 15 layers of monolithic stones, so that no tunnels could possibly be built to invade it. There are 9,999.5 rooms in the entire city, because the emperor who built it liked the number nine, but the Chinese believed that heaven had 10,000 rooms and no city on earth should surpass it. Why not build 9,999.9 rooms then?  

We ravaged the City, and made haste to find some fine peking roast duck before heading to the wall. We walked about a mile to find the Quan Jude Restaurant, but unfortunately it was closed. We took the subway and made 3 interchanges and walked another mile to find a second Quan Jude Restaurant (this is the best peking duck in the city), but surprisingly enough, IT WAS ALSO CLOSED! They had just gone on rest the minute we arrived. 

So, we made do with some simple beef stir-fry and set off through 3 more subway lines and a score or two kilometers of travel a-pie to the bus stop that would take us to the Great Wall. When we finally found the bus, they had stopped running for the day, and we were not ready to pay 400RMB for a taxi, so our plans for the Wall were stymied. However, we shall have vengeance tomorrow! We are going to wake up at 8:00 and sprint to the Wall and sprint back to do the rest of our itinerary. 

With our spirits crushed, we limped toward the Olympic Green (they should have an Outward Bound--Beijing), and four railway transfers later we landed. We arrived just in time to see the Bird's Nest and the Cube illuminating. It is astonishing how much better the Olympic Green looks than the rest of the city. 

But we still wanted our peking roasted duck! So we set forth determinedly to get it! This time the restaurant was open, and we got a number, but the wait was over an hour. In the meanwhile, we scrambled around the Square and the People's Hall in an attempt to find the National Center for the Performing Arts before we had to be back to eat our peking duck. We found it, and it was quite amazing. The way it was illuminated was pretty cool. 

FINALLY, we returned to have a nice warm peking roasted duck. It was undoubtedly the best meal of the trip so far. We savored the nice duck and scurried back home to get some rest. Tomorrow we will dominate the rest of the city, and of course...the Wall. I will post pictures of what we have seen when I can.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year! Yesterday was the Chinese New Year, and it was amazing. This is the year of the ox. If anyone is having a baby this year, you can expect your little one to be tough and able to handle pressure. If you don't want a crybaby, this is the year for you to have some children.

Unfortunately, they will be stubborn, narrow-minded, and have no public relations skills. 

On Saturday, we went to see the usual tourist places.... the bund, the pearl tower, the people's square. Then, after we watched the sunset over the magnificent skyline, we had a drink atop the Jin Mao tower and got to see the skyline from a bird's eye view. It used to be the tallest building in Shanghai, but it has now been surpassed by the SWFC, which will probably be trumped next year by some other. The city is actually sinking because they're building so many skyscrapers. 

For New Year's Eve, we managed to reserve a table through connections in Hong Kong at club M1NT to watch the fireworks. The club is on the top storey of a building that has a panoramic view of the entire city, and a perfect view of the river and the pudong district. The scene was like nothing you've ever seen in the U.S. The ENTIRE city was lit up with fireworks for the whole of an hour. Fireworks are legal in Shanghai for the new year, so every kid in town was shooting them off at midnight. It was actually much better than any orchestrated one I've ever seen.  

For the first day of the new year, we slept all day because EVERYTHING  was closed. at 8:00 PM, we woke up and went for a hot pot meal, and got kicked out at 10:00 when they closed and our bellies were awfully distended. Of course, we had to have our share of the firework fun as well, so we stocked up on an arsenal of fireworks for $10 and blew them off in our hotel room, which caused a formidably sized fire, but most of the room was still intact after the sprinklers finally managed to put it out. We're still disputing the damage liabilities with the hotel, but they shouldn't be more than a few thousand dollars. 

....Just kidding! We just caused some mayhem for the amusement of a couple old chinese men in the street outside of our hotel. 

All in all, Chinese New Year was a great experience, and a great chance to really practice mandarin, because so few people speak even basic english. Now I am in Beijing, and even fewer people speak english here. Tomorrow we are going to see the Wall, the City, and the Square...

 

Shanghai

I'm in Shanghai now! I just landed with a friend from Germany, and we are going to spend the Chinese New Year here and then head up to Beijing for a few days. 

The second I stepped off the plane I could smell the smog in the air. The smell of China. In some remote way, it smells kind of like bread in a bakery. I hope this time I don't start coughing up black and green stuff again. 

Regardless, I think we will have a great time. 

Update

So today I received a response to an application I submitted for a paid internship as a portfolio management trainee at Privilege Finance Limited, and they want me to come in for an interview. If all goes well, I will have the opportunity to put all of the things I am learning in the classroom directly into practice -- and get paid to do it :) Also, everything has transpired fluidly with my faculty, they are letting me take all of the courses I want, and I have quite a strapping schedule. I start at 9:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and at 8:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

As a side note, I got soda spilt all over my keyboard yesterday and my laptop went haywire. Fortunately, I have resuscitated its vital parts, by the keys are hard to press down and they don't rebound quite as sprightly as they used to. So please excuse any typos I may have made!

Interview

Today I went in for an interview to work as warehouse crew in a furniture store above a Ferrari dealership. It seemed like they wanted to have me, they just need to check with the visa department to get the go ahead. I've also started a class in game theory that I find very interesting. Its a second year course but I think the second year courses are much more interesting than my intro courses. 

New Blog

Hello everyone! This is Kyle here. I've just added you to the mailing list for my new blog, which you can find at kylecaidloos.blogspot.com. I just created this blog to keep anyone who is interested updated on what's going on in Hong Kong. I don't know if I will be posting with any kind of regularity, but I will try to make my posts frequent and inform everyone when a new post come out. Feel free to make comments on any posts or share your thoughts, I would love to hear them!

Cheers,

Kyle

I have a job now!

Today I did an interview to become an English tutor, and it went well and I got the job. It pays pretty well too and it is very close to where I live. I will start in two weeks, after I have returned from Beijing over the Chinese New Year.