Giving Stone-Faced a whole new meaning

What’s that they say? They only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys? Well, The first Emperor of China must have been some big kid. Either that or he must have been one egotistical bastard. Or maybe just super insecure. It’s really hard to  know. 

Of course, the terra cotta warriors were started soon after he ascended to the throne at the age of 13 so my guess is the warriors were more like toys for him.  

Yup, it was the first Emperor decided that he needed an entire terra cotta army - complete with horses and chariots and the like - to guard him in the afterlife. Yea, yea, I’ve seen the pictures, but I had NO clue just how massive this army really is. I mean - it’s like putting maybe three, maybe four football fields together and filling it with an army of life-size terra cotta statues. And that’s just the big pit! There are two other pits - one with the horses and one with the command center. Most are still buried, but there are probably 8000 warriors and more than 700 horses.

In actuality, the army is just part of his burial area. There is an entire necropolis that is supposed to replicate his actual palace. The tomb is still hermetically sealed because they can’t figure out how to open it and protect everything inside. The warriors were once painted, but the paint flaked off after only 4 minutes of exposure to the air! I keep thinking how stunning it must have been to have seen them all painted and new - and to look at the entire city meant for death before it was buried.

It’s called The Eighth Wonder of the World - rightly so I think. It's been there for 2200 years, but a group of farmers found it in 1974 when they were drilling a well. Imagine.

Shui Jing Zhu was quite the guy. He not only had this city built for himself, but he unified China, built many of the roads here and had The Great Wall constructed al by the time he died at age 49.

We actually started the day at Xi’an’s bell tower and then went walking in an area called Muslim Street which I just loved. The street was bustling with all sorts of people selling fruits, weird foods, typical tourist stuff and silver jewelry from Chinese local tribes. Our guide just rushed us along, but I would have liked to have stayed a while longer soaking up the atmosphere.

On this street is an amazing, 400-year-old house fairly giant in size ccalled Gao's Courtyard. We wandered about looking at the house for a bit and then were treated to a hand puppet show. The puppets are made of THIN, painted leather. The puppeteer stood behind a back-lit screen and manipulated all the puppets while a man banged on drums and gongs to help her out. Together, they were telling a story neither Tom nor I got at all. Still, it was fun watching the artistry and the kids loved it. 

We stopped at the only state-run factory that manufactures the warriors and learned how it’s done. We bought one and then were shocked to see SO many at the site. We had no idea (nor did our guide tell us). I guess most of them are not made out of terra cotta and so they break more easily etc. I don’t care. I actually liked the ones better there and they were far cheaper. Oh well. Live and learn.

Getting up to see the warriors is quite an effort. We had to stand in line, then take an open-air bus and then walk from pit to pit, each inside a state-of-the-art building. Complicating things was that the driver absolutely didn’t want anything valuable left in the van. Since we had all of our luggage, we also had to carry our computers, jewelry and the like. Most of the area was child-friendly and, once again, most folks were VERY friendly to our kids, giving the fruit and toys. Hudson is a God here. Maisie is about the same.

Sadly, our kids weren’t too friendly. Today was their rough day. I’ve been waiting for it and it hit today. Maisie was cranky all morning. Hudson was cranky all afternoon. We just couldn’t win. 

For lunch and dinner, we had this food from the region called “pulled noodles” - skinny, fat noodles that are kind of pulled like taffy. They were pretty yummy. Maisie ate some for lunch, too - after her 11 chicken nuggets! Hudson gobbled down a ham and cheese at the airport after wailing because he woke up hungry. 

Oh the airport. The good news is Xi’an has a BRAND new, gorgeous airport. It just opened. The bad news is that they made us check our stroller, a first EVER in all the airports we’ve traveled the past four years. Making things worse, the flight was VERY delayed. Hudson screamed before we got on the plane. Maisie WAILED and WAILED when we woke her up to get off the plane. Tom had to carry her. I carried Hudson. We each had a carseat, a giant bag and backpacks. The kids got to bed - are you ready for this - at 12:30!!! OH MY GOD! The latest they’ve ever stayed up is 10! 12:30!

I was so ready to say goodbye to our guide Jessica. Yes, while she knew her stuff, her English only went one way: she could lecture us, but could not have a conversation. She was bossy, too. I wanted cold water for dinner and she refused to order it for me saying it’s bad for digestion. Hello? Are you kidding me? She tried to help with the kids, but kept getting in the way and telling me how to parent. So far, our three guides haven’t impressed me.

My Little Dumplings!

Maisie cracks me up. Every day, she wakes up and says, “What’s today, Mommy?” I guess for her, it’s like that movie, “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.” When I said we were getting a new guide, she said, “Good. Richard is terrible.” She’s also quite a mimic.

As was typical with our bad guide in Beijing, he had the timing all wrong. He made us leave the hotel at 7:30, so we could then wait two hours and fifteen minutes at the most boring airport in the world. Thank God the guide here in Xi’an is fabulous. Jessica - or something like that. She has a very rehearsed script, but it’s quite detailed and full of interesting tidbits about China’s third largest city. However, if we ask her a question not in the script, it totally throws her. The best news is that she has a four-year-old girl and so she gets the whole kid thing. Our driver also seems to love kids. When Hudson was WAILING in the car on the way from the airport because he needed a nap, they were both really understanding. What a relief! They think Hudson is beautiful. Everybody just wants to be near him. I feel like I’m soon going to start hearing The Carpenters, “Close to You” playing when we walk down the street.

She is also pretty funny about trying to teach us Chinese. I’m terrible with easy languages. Mandarin?! 

After we checked into our hotel, we took an electric car tour - an electric, open bus of sorts - around the top of the city wall, the most well-preserved of all the city walls in all of China. As in all Chinese cities, the inside portion is the old town and outside is the newer area of the city. Xi’an is the oldest city in all of China. If our kids were bigger, we could have rented bikes and ridden on the wall. Bummer. As my friend Denise says, there’s only two kinds of travel: First Class and With Kids. Ha!

The tour was fascinating. Inside the city were some buildings in pretty bad disrepair. People had laundry hanging from their windows and the city just looked rundown. Outside the wall were these big, impressive new buildings. It’s not like Xi’an has any kind of fabulous skyline, but there are still some nice structures here. 

Xi’an is known for dumplings so we did what all good visitors here do: we visited a dumpling house. The tour operator arranged a special class where we actually got to learn to make dumplings before we ate them. We’re not just talking half-moon shaped dumplings. Oh no - that would be too easy. No, these dumplings were shaped like fish, pigs, peacocks, monkey faces and the like. I was actually pretty good at making the shapes, but sucked at rolling the dough into discs. Tom was just the opposite. Together, we could actually have people over for dumplings some night - except we don’t know how to cook them once they’re made! Ha!

Maisie had fun just playing with the dough and flour. Hudson wasn’t interested at first, then he wanted to wear the chef hat and play in the flour, too. Great - as long as their happy, we’re happy.

My daddy used to call me “Dumpling” because he said I was good on the inside. I told Maisie that and now she wants me to call her “Dumpling.” Truth is, she and Hudson have both been incredibly good on this trip. They are doing some hard traveling and while they both lose it on occasion, they’re fairly intrepid. I couldn’t be prouder of them both. So many people said we were crazy to do this. From a luggage standpoint, they’re right. Still - the way I look at it is we can either hang out in their narrow, somewhat boring world or they can come exploring the planet with us. As hard as this can be at times, it’s so wroth it. Tom agrees depending on what time of day you ask him. There are nights - like tonight - when we’re stuck in the room, but that’s rare and not so bad.

When we go back, I’m going to do a slide show for Maisie’s class about Singapore and China. Maybe I can get some dough and have the kids made dumplings? Then serve ones we buy from a restaurant? It’s worth pondering.

The dumpling dinner wasn’t all that great. The dumpling dough was kind of nasty, especially after eating dumplings at the place we so love in Singapore. Heck, even American dumplings are better in texture. BUT - what was cool is that the duck shaped dumplings had duck inside, the fish ones had fish and the like. 

Our kids were like Jack Sprat and his wife. He ate no fat and she ate no lean so together they licked the platter clean. Maisie liked eating the dough. Hudson liked eating the stuffing, the cured beef and the raw cucumbers. Success!

Thank God our hotel here is FAR nicer than the Days Inn in Beijing. That place gave me the willies. When I FINALLY got Internet services this morning - that only lasted for just a tiny while, I sent a nasty email to the tour operator who booked our trip. He called all the future guides and hotels so that’s good news. No wonder our guide is bending over backwords making sure everything runs smoothly.

Meanwhile, I’m a little homesick, especially because my brother’s girlfriend is pretty sick. She has to have a gallbladder surgery which may postpone their trip to see us the week after we get back. Also this week, my brother’s business partner had a large mass removed on Wednesday which is cancer. He needs me home and I need to be home for him. It’s not like I’m going to Texas to be with him, but at least in New York, I’m only a phone call away.

I suppose the best news is that my fever finally broke. After last night’s 103, I was pretty worn out battling chills. Tonight, I just have the worst cold of my life which I’ll take any day over fever.

The Great Wall! Check!

Visiting The Great Wall has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. I mean - it’s The Great Wall after all! 

Of course, our trip wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned. That’s the trouble with things on your bucket list. You always romanticize them and they’re never quite what you’d dreamed.

I wanted to climb the Wild Wall - the part of The Wall that isn’t so touristy - picnic and watch the sun come up over the mountains. Instead, we walked up the incredibly steep, stone path lined with people hawking stuff and took a cable car.

The hike up the path is a little bit strenuous. Add chasing/carrying two toddlers and a bad case of bronchitis to the mix and it became a heck of a lot more challenging. Of course, Hudson - the most independent person on the planet - insisted on walking the whole thing himself and he didn’t even want to hold our hand. If the path got too steep, he’d get down and crawl and then get up again to walk. He was determined!

Whether our visit was according to plan or not, it was still breath-taking. The one true shame is that as is somewhat typical of Beijing, the air was really hazy with pollution so we couldn’t really see the mountains which would have made it all the more beautiful. Of course, yesterday was perfectly clear. Such is life. 

And yes, I read all the facts and figures about it, but visiting it made me really realize just how massive it is. If you picked up the wall and put it in the US, it would stretch from the East Coast to the West Coast. It’s truly an engineering feat of astonishing proportions. They also call it The Great Tomb because so many Chinese died building it to keep out the nomadic tribes raiding from the North. Personally, I think it was just a crazy dream of the Emperor to build a wall like this. The mountains are hard enough to cross.

Getting to The Great Wall isn’t all that easy. We took our van from Beijing which takes about 1.5 hours up some pretty, winding roads. On the way, we stopped and had lunch at this GIANT dining hall where all the tourist busses stop. The neat thing is that the space was divided up into all these smaller “rooms” by using greenery. In the center was a big fountain which gave the huge room a more intimate feel. The food wasn’t very good though. Who knows? Maybe I’ll lose some of my Singapore weight if this keeps up. I can only dream.

We also stopped at a jade factory where we got to see them making things out of jade and got a lesson in jade quality. Tom hates these shopping trips set up by the tour companies. Of course, these shopping excursions help keep the cost of the tour down because the shops pay the tour companies a fee when you go there. Everything in the factories is more expensive than if you bought it on the street. Then again, there is no such thing as buying it on the street because we have no down time to shop. It is what it is and while it may be more expensive than on the street, it’s cheaper than the States - and it’s from our trip to China, right?

I take that back. We could have bought lots of trinkets at The Great Wall. All sorts of crap, cheaper than the same crap we saw in Shanghai. The walk up to The Great Wall is LINED with stall after stall of things like fans, dolls, dresses, hats, shirts, tapestries - I mean - everything. The one thing I wished I bought was a t-shirt for Hudson that said, “I Climbed The Great Wall” because he literally did!

Walking on top of The Wall isn’t all that easy either. There are lots of tiny steps, then giant, deep steps, then tiny steps. Very little of it is just clear walking. We bribed the kids with jelly beans to take family pictures. The third guy finally got a good one of us all! Whew.

We wandered for about an hour and then my fever-riddled body just couldn’t do it any more. Plus, you see a part of the restored Great Wall, you’ve seen it all in many ways. 

On the way home, we stopped at yet another factory, this one making cloissonne. I learned a lot here actually. The stuff starts at copper and is molded by hammering. Then women hand glue on copper filaments. The designs are filled with natural pigments taken from the mountains. Since the colors shrink, the area has to be filled again and again. Then it’s all polished. All told, it can take 19 days for a small pot!

Our last stop was Olympic Park and the Bird’s Nest. We went inside, but there wasn’t much to see. I hear that many of the venues in China are falling into disrepair because they don’t have the money to keep them up which is tragic, but the Bird’s Nest looked pretty good. We grabbed the kids McDonald’s which made them SO happy. Hudson ate NINE nuggets. He usually eats four!

My fever was back up around 103 by the time we got back to the room. So much for the Singapore antibiotics working. I got a three day supply and today is Day 3. Ho hum. I put on all our sweaters and coats and packed us up and went straight to bed. It seems so unfair to be this sick on our trip-of-a-lifetime to China. I’m not the kind of gal who gets homesick much, but being here when I’m this sick makes me long for the ease of American life. I just want to lay in my comfortable bed and watch something brainless like “Grey’s Anatomy” or “30 Rock” and have some chicken soup. Greasy noodles aren't really what the doctored ordered.

When I was a little girl, whining about sick not being fairy childhood doctor, Dr. Wyvell, once told me, 'Nothing in life is far. The closest thing is a four way stop." So there you have it. 

The Forbidden City

When I was a little girl, my daddy used to read the atlas for fun. He’d literally spend hours going page by page. Sometimes, I used to climb up in his lap and he’d tell me about China and The Forbidden City. So it’s always held kind of mystical spot in my heart.

Seeing it in person, did not disappoint.

Our crappy Days Inn is just around the corner from everything. I’ve decided, by the way, that China is not a place for budget travel. Budget equals foul. Only we're supposed to be the mid-level hotel which is why the idea of cheap hotel here scares the hell out of me.

Anyway, we drove around the corner this morning to Tianamen Square, the largest public square in the world. It is mind-boggingly massive. It was still decorated from last week’s National Day celebration which was fun to see. It’s here that I discovered that not only is Richard a bad guide, but he’s a terrible photographer! He cut off our heads in every single picture he took and never gave us warning that he was going to take the photo. Wah.

Across the street from the square is the South Gate to The Forbidden City. It goes on and on and on. I am simply in awe of how big this place is. The buildings from the Ming Dynasty are 600 years old and have mostly been restored and are quite simply magnificent.

There’s a building for everything - a building for the Emperor’s wedding night, a building for special ceremonies, a building for this and a building for that. And we’re talking MASSIVE structures. Like Parthenon in size - each one!

Bad news? The Forbidden City isn’t as handicap friendly as they advertise. We carried the stroller up lots of flights of stairs today! It was a necessary evil. Hudson took a LONG nap while we walked and he never would have been able to walk for hours like we did.

At one point though, he and Maisie chased each other like mad through the court yard of the Temple of Heaven amusing everybody who watched. They burnt off a lot of energy here. The Temple of Heaven, also built at the same time as The Forbidden City is blue in color, denoting Heaven. It’s where the Emperor came to worship.

Once again, my kids were as big of an attraction as the site. Everybody wanted to take pictures of them. Some wanted to hold them. Some wanted to kiss them. Hudson either loved it or hated it, depending if it was pre or post nap.  

Maisie favorite part of the day, hands down, was dressing up in Chinese princess clothes. The two of us made this ridiculous DVD of us flying over all the sites. It was so stupid, but she LOVED it. 

We had a fabulous Chinese meal between the two areas and after we finished The Temple of Heaven, we tried to fly a kite, a big national past time  in the area. Our guide obviously had no idea how to fly a kite. I don’t think he’d ever done it before! He kept saying there wasn’t enough wind, but I saw all these kites in the air. We tracked down these elderly men who were a bit like professional kiters, holding these very fancy spools of thread. Poor Maisie never did get her kite in the air. If I’d been able to speak Chinese, I would have convinced the old men to help us more. Richard the Loser didn’t seek their help. What is it with men? They never want help! They were actually laughing at him because he didn’t even know the kite needed a cross bow.

Afterwards, we went to a Teahouse. What fun! They demonstrated the Chinese tea ceremony and gave us a big ol’ lesson on Chinese tea, giving us five different kinds to try. Of course, we bought three of them! Maisie was very excited tasting the different teas, thinking she was such a big girl. Tom’s mother would have loved this place.

Tonight, we saw The Legends of Kung Fu Show, a very famous tourist attraction. I was a little worried the kids would be scared or they’d start whacking each other, but they loved it and why not? It’s got some incredible sets and the Kung Fu is out of this world. Those guys can really move! 

Dinner was KFC for the kids and cup of noodles for us in our room after the kids went to sleep. It’s 9 now and I’m bed bound, too. Being sick and doing so much walking doesn’t really mix well. Sadly, we just realized our cups of noodles had MSG in them. Wah. That doesn’t bode well for sleep. 

You Garden? Yu Garden!

When I was growing up, the idea of China was really magical for me. I envisioned Asian princesses robed in red, sitting in their pagodas, overlooking rice paddies. Of course, I know that’s not what China is now, but in my heart, I guess I still kind of wanted it to be that way.

In truth, Shanghai is a city of opposites. Some of it is very modern. Some of it almost European, built by the French and British. And yes, there are the parts of which I dreamed as a kid. All of it is draped in a smoggy haze, though the temperature in October is absolutely perfect, a welcome respite from Singapore’s oppressive (and depressing) weather. It’s the biggest city I’ve ever seen - seemingly going on forever. The population is 23 million compared to New York’s 8 million. When I was in China in 1997, I didn’t see one sign in English. Now almost all signs have both Chinese characters and English words.

We started the morning at Yu Garden and the surrounding bazaar. This is the kind of thing I came to China to see. It was truly amazing in every sense of the word. This area is 400 years old and best I can make out from our guide Cloud’s broken English (I need to research more), this garden was part of a very rich man’s estate. The master of the garden didn’t want people to know what was there so he built a massive wall around it. Outside, is an incredible tribute to Chinese Yangtze Delta architecture, beautiful in every sense of the word. I so wish I could have been there before Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks found it. Sigh. Oh to have been Marco Polo!

When you walk into the Yu Garden, however, it really does feel like you’re stepping back in time. I’ve been in a lot of the famous gardens of the world. This one could be my all time favorite. It is a labrinyth covering 10 hectares. You cross a bridge or turn a corner and discover an entirely new space, more magical than the one before and it all looks like it just happened, nothing appears to have been done by man. Cloud was fantastic giving us all sorts of inside scoop. 

Now here is the sad thing- not tragic, but pretty awful: my camera was on the wrong setting for most of the garden. Almost all of the pictures came out really weird. I’m pretty blue about it. Sigh. Once I figured it out, only a little retail therapy helped. Things really are cheaper here - with a little negotiation, of course! Amazingly, most of the stuff here was pretty nice, not the crap you see at other China towns. Yes, there was stuff for tourists to buy, but nice stuff. I wish I’d spent a little more time there now that all is said and done. I would have skipped our last stop and spent more time here.

Anyway, it’s not like there wasn’t plenty more to shoot today. From Yu Garden we went to the Xintiandi area, constructed during the French concession from the colonial era. It was like walking from the middle of Asia into the middle of France. The plaza was dotted with coffee shops such as The Coffee Bean. Again, I found myself kind of bummed that the world is getting so small. While the area felt European, the tops of buildings did have the Chinese flair. We visited a small museum which was an example of what the homes - called Shikumen - were like back then. It was a fascinating mix of East meets West.

We headed off for lunch to a place close to The Bund, complete with Lazy Susans. I love Lazy Susans. In fact, my big memory of San Francisco’s Chinatown as a kid is a Lazy Susan at the restaurant. Ha. I figured we’d be going to some cheesy tourist place, but we were actually the only Westerners in the joint. I love that! Tom and I scarfed down the food while the kids dined on rice. It’s  a shame they didn’t try it. Every, single dish was something they would have liked.

After lunch, we drove (and napped) 40 minutes to Zhujiajiao, one of the few remaining water towns in China. I thought it was going to be a real, floating town like Tom and I saw in Thailand on our honeymoon. There, you’d take a boat over to another boat and buy a bag of rambutans. Visiting yet another boat, you might buy meat. The entire market was on boats.

This Chinese water town was simply a canal that went through the one main street of shops. We took a gondola ride to see it. We might have thought we were in Venice except the city wasn’t as pretty, the water was filthy and the driver wore a Chinese hat.

We walked back through the town until we were once again at the Letting Them Bridge. Letting Them as in letting them go. It’s considered good luck to let fish go into the Pearl River so we did our duty, bought some fish and let them go. Man, those Chinese women who sell the fish are aggressive! Wow! One handed Maisie a bag and then demanded to be paid. We gave the bag back and bought them from another, kinder hawker. 

Think we’d be done, huh? No way. Next we went to the silk museum. It was fascinating watching them spin the silk from the cocoons, but we weren’t interested in buying any of the silk which was priced far higher than anywhere else. By the way, I had no idea you could buy silk-filled comforters, but trust me, you can. Apparently, they breathe more being cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter and the stuffing never shifts like feathers.

We rushed back to the trusty, ol’ Holiday Inn, downed a quick dinner and then took a ferry up and down The Bund which is an area of great pride here. On one side of the river, a part of the Yangtze, is the brand, new skyline where unusual works of architectural wonder dot the skyline. Directly across the river is a very European-looking, colonial area, equally stunning, but totally different. For some reason, it reminded me of Stockholm. I love New York, but this may indeed be the most spectacular skyline I’ve ever seen. 

The skyline wasn’t the main attraction. Nope. All the Chinese on the boat were fascinated with our kids, particularly Hudson. Everybody wanted a photo with them. They didn’t just want a photo, they wanted to hold them for the photo. We’ve seen some of this throughout our stay in Asia, but this was the first time we were honestly mobbed. At first, the kids thought it was fun, but it was past their bedtime and I think all the attention was starting to freak them out. Hudson just wanted Mommy. One man thought I wasn’t his mommy, I’m guessing because I’m not blonde. He wanted his turn to hold the baby. Ha! Cloud told us to watch our belongings when this happens. China is simply not the safe place that Singapore is.

The kids were in bed by 8 (an hour late), Tom by 8:30 (two or three hours early). Good thing because tomorrow we have to leave the hotel at 6:30 to catch our bullet train to Beijing!  I’m praying the kids can nap on the train as they are way behind on their sleep. Neither kid got much sleep last night. In fact, Maisie was up all night long coughing and kicking me. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep either. Hudson woke up at 5 ready to conquer the world. Thank God for LeapPads, strollers and naps.

I’m so excited to go to Beijing. I know, I know. It’s polluted and gross (Shanghai’s air isn’t the best either), but I’m still tingly with anticipation. I prefer seeing ancient Chinese architecture so here’s my chance!

So I guess, it’s official: we have a set of travelers on our hands. These kids of ours did non-stop sightseeing today with very little whining. This private tour thing was a GREAT idea on our part! It’s the only way we could have handled a trip like this.