So we have three cities to cover in this post: Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Xi'an. The past two plus weeks have been great and we have gotten a good taste of three very different areas of China. We are off to Beijing tomorrow, then Seoul, and then home.
Hong Kong is one of the more westernized cities we have visited since beginning our trip, but it is an incredible place and it was refreshing to be in a more developed area. Thank you to everyone who gave us tips for HK, especially the Rosensteins for the novel they made for us about the city. We were very grateful for the advice and it was incredibly helpful.
The Dim Sum in Hong Kong was a dream come true. We ate at a few different restaurants from grand ballroom-type halls with crystal chandeliers to hole-in-the-wall places that seat you wherever there is an open spot regardless if someone is already at the table. My favorite restaurant there was a place called Tim Ho Wan which is the cheapest 5-star Michelin-rated restaurant in the world where we got an absurd amount of food costing much less than my average Sunday at Mandarin Kitchen.
Beyond Dim Sum, Hong Kong has a ton of other attractions, too. It's a bustling, thriving, cosmopolitan city with tons of skyscrapers and high-end malls mixed with markets, huge neon signs in Chinese, but towering over everything is a massive mountain overlooking everything at the bottom of which is a huge botanical garden area with an animal menagerie. We took the Peak Tram up the mountain (an experience in itself) to see the beautiful view. Later, we walked over to the Soho area to take the ridiculously long escalator chain to the higher levels of Hong Kong. We were on an escalator for literally 20 minutes. It was quite a thrilling experience.
The next day, we took the ferry over to Kowloon across from Hong Kong Island, which, despite the plethora of American clothing and jewelry stores lining Nathan Road, felt less western than the Hong Kong side. We hit up a night market over there and ate in a little restaurant in the area ordering off pictures from the menu.
We headed over to Lantau Island, which is home to the airport, Asian Disneyland and the biggest sitting Buddha in the world. Considering we had already seen the airport and plenty of Disney stuff in our lifetime, we went to the Sitting Buddha. The Buddha was perched at the top of a mountain and we needed to schlep up a whole lot of stairs. There was a funicular up to the top, but it was a little overpriced, so we skipped it. The Buddha was absolutely amazing and when you look up at it, surrounded by white fluffy clouds, it looks like it is sitting in the sky.
Our last day, we took a ferry boat to Macau, which is the Vegas of the East. It takes in about double the gambling income of Vegas, but it is not quite the strip. Nonetheless, we all had a good time. Macau was originally a Portuguese colony and on top of having some pretty cool European-style back streets and a ruin of the just the front wall of an old church, it also has Macanese food- a fusion between Cantonese and Portuguese food. It was pretty tasty and as I was lucky to come out 1030 dollars ahead (Hong Kong Dollars) thanks to craps, I was able to order myself a full-course meal starting with crab-cake stuffed crab and ending with ox-tail braised in port wine. Michael and Feesh’s luck wasn’t quite as high, but nobody left with too much of a loss.
We landed in Shanghai the next night and although it was a large, sprawling city, it was way different from Hong Kong and there were a lot less English-speakers. On our first full day, we headed to the Bund which is a nice walkway following the main river through the city and seeing the town. We also spent a good amount getting lost in Shanghai as it was not the easiest place to navigate, however we were lucky enough to find the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It was a pretty sweet museum and we learned all about animals, robots, the internet, satellites, and space navigation not to mention got to compete against a robot in an archery contest and see an entire exhibit on spiders (Michael's favorite).
The next day we got together with Benjie's friends from college Kevin and Jane. Kevin is doing Ph.D. research for the University of Michigan and General Motors here in Shanghai and Jane, his girlfriend is visiting for the month. They took us all around town. First we went to the Shanghai Museum, which was filled with different cultural items from around China from ancient pieces of Jade to antique furniture to opera masks and more. We then headed over to old town where there was a cool market area filled with little shops and restaurants. We stopped at an ex-pat style bar for one of the better (and only) microbrews in Shanghai followed by a late-night dinner at a tapas-style Chinese restaurant. Although, Kevin and Jane had to leave, the wolf pack topped off the night by immersing ourselves deeper into Chinese culture. Specifically, we headed into a karaoke bar and were given our own personal room. We were having a great time especially after a few beers, a tray of strange meats, and some caramel popcorn; however during our rousing rendition of Roxanne by The Police, we were rudely interrupted by the karaoke staff, to lower our volume. I’d say all in all, it was a very successful day.
As far as eating in Shanghai, we did pretty well. I was able to try a bowl of shark fin soup, which tasted somewhat like jelly fish but was more tender served in a gravy-style soup. It was overpriced, but tasty. Shanghai is also home to Xiao Long Bao that are little dumplings with meat and soup/meat juice that explodes in your mouth. They happen to be delicious. One other noteworthy meal was when we got hot pots. We each start with our own soup base (I had the seafood and clams, Lip had the spicy Sichuan and Feesh had the mushroom) and then we cooked an assortment of meats and such in the base. It was all great from the lamb to the beef to the vast assortment of sauces for dipping.
The last main attraction we saw in Shanghai was also probably the coolest. We went to the Shanghai Circus World to see a Chinese Acrobatic show. Although we had seen a few of the acts from Cirque de Soleil shows, they continued to blow our minds with various feats of acrobatics. From huge jumps, flips, and contortionist all the way to motorcycles defying gravity in a huge metal sphere; it was an amazing show.
Xi'an is a truly interesting place with some truly amazing things to see. For those who don't know, Xi'an is home to the terra-cotta warriors so often talked about on the Discovery, Travel and History channel. The warriors were found by accident by a local farmer trying to dig a well in 1974, little did he know he was uncovering one of the biggest archaelogical finds ever. They have excavated about 60 pits of the estimated 600 possible pits around the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuan who was the first unifier of China around 200 b.c.e. He's kind of a big deal. He started building his underground mausoleum when he was 14 years old and it only took 38 years and 700,000 lives to build it, but who's counting. Protecting his tomb are the massive pits filled with terra-cotta warriors. In the main pit, there are an estimated 6,000 warriors of different ranks. The truly amazing thing is that each soldier is unique with distinct body shapes, facial expressions, hairstyles and armor. They believe each warrior was based off of a real warrior that was in the emperor's army.
The other site we stopped at was the Huaqing Hot Springs. The park was literally a real life incarnation of all those jade statues and paintings in Chinese restaurants depicting small mountain villages. There were a handful of big Chinese style buildings with various bathing pools inside interspersed around a few beautiful small ponds, wood bridges, and winding stone paths around and climbing up the mountain. It was exactly how I had pictured China before coming here and I am happy to have finally seen it in real life.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Unfortunately, China does not allow Blogger in addition to Facebook, so we cannot get any pictures uploaded. We will try to get some up when we get to Seoul. All apologies.
Until next time,
The Wolf Pack
Foot-Note: As aforementioned, blogger is blocked by the great firewall of China, however, because this is being published by one of the wives stateside from the good ol' U.S. of A-I have decided to include the top 5 photos from the great Asian endevours of the Wolf Pack.
PS-the Wolf Pack returns stateside in 14 days (I mean...who's counting anways?)
Enjoy,
Mariya
5: Top Chefs!
4: Fabuuuulous
3: New Best Friend
Runner up
2: Young Grasshoppa
....and the winner is....
...Drum Roll please...
1: HOOKERS!
No comments:
Post a Comment