Touring with the Family

Before I left, my parents floated the idea of them visiting me. Typically I fly home in the spring for Easter or another similar celebration, although obviously this semester would make it way too difficult and expensive. Seeing as how the family hadn’t taken a family vacation a la Griswold style since 2003, we decided that my parents and sister would fly to meet me in Beijing just after my semester ended, and tour around China. The tour location was nearly point-for-point the same location as the tour I had just finished, but a few new points are worth mentioning.

Hong Kong
Some of you may be aware that I had visa trouble: my student visa expired before the family trip was to end, and I could not receive an extension. The closest “foreign soil” was Hong Kong, where as a U.S. citizen I could enter without a special visa. With the help of our travel agents, I was soon on a flight to Shenzhen, the city closest to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, of course, used to be run by the British until ten years ago, when England formally handed control of the city back to the Chinese in 1997. During the Opium War in the mid 1830s, the British (after destroying the Chinese Navy) occupied the territories, and received control of the region as part of the Treaty of Nanking. Today, Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region that is largely self governed, save for defense and foreign policy issues. Notably, the years of British rule means that Hong Kong’s economy is almost thoroughly capitalist–so much so that it is often ranked the freest market economy in the world. Politically, the Chinese now rule, but make special efforts to placate the billions of dollars worth of businesses already in Hong Kong. The Communist system rears its head, though, when you consider the selection for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive is by a limited system of an election committee, a majority of which are influenced heavily by Beijing.

Landing in Shenzhen, I took a bus across the city, across the border, and into Hong Kong. Amusingly, the border officials asked for a second form of identification when I showed them my U.S. passport. It was a good thing I still had my driver’s license; I don’t think my Peking University ID would have cut it. From there, a bus dropped me off in the center of the city. What a busy place!

It rained in the city all three days I was there, so I did not get to see many of the sights. I did have an extended walking tour of downtown Hong Kong, and was impressed most of all by the system of covered walkways. It was possible for me to walk at least 3/4 a mile across the central city, all without leaving the protection of a roof (handy when it rained!).

At night, I also found time to visit the “Avenue of the Stars,” featuring statues and handprints of Hong Kong cinema’s most famous actors. Jackie Chan’s hand prints, and the Bruce Lee statute, were obviously the most popular attractions.

Hong Kong also has the world’s longest escalator. Although I initially thought this was a single structure, it is a series of escalators, designed to take people from the center of downtown Hong Kong up for 15 minutes of travel to the mid-town and upper-town neighborhoods. Starting just a few blocks from Hong Kong’s distinctive skyscraper skyline, the escalator path takes one through a diverse set of neighborhoods, bars, restaurants, and shops. I took the escalator at night, and was impressed by the vibrant–and price-rich–nightlife.

As a city, Hong Kong was by far the most expensive I visited. Although the conversion rate from the U.S. to the HK dollar was still roughly 8 to 1, the high numeric prices of Hong Kong made it almost as expensive as the United States (a good meal one night cost me well over 100 HK dollars, but still only about 15 US dollars). It was a good meal, though.

Although I flew to Shenzhen, on the encouragement of my train obsessed friend, Steve Wasiura, I booked myself a sleeper hard cabin (the cheapest–and de facto most uncomfortable) for a twenty-four hour trip back. The trip was much improved from the train ride to Lhasa. With the train near sea level the entire time, motion sickness and altitude sickness was only a distant memory. With a set of good books, I had ample time to read. I also ran into a nice, newly graduated college student from Edinburgh, Scotland, and we had a good chat about contemporary politics, China, and James Bond (from a Scot, the perspective was pretty neat). Before I knew it, the train pulled back into Beijing, with my family arriving in town just two days after.

Underground City
Back in Beijing, an interesting visit in Beijing two days before they arrived was to the Underground City. When tensions during the Cold War were at their peak, and Mao wasn’t busy destroying the country, Chairman Mao decided that the belligerent Soviets posed a real danger to China. At that point, the U.S.S.R. pointed virtually all of its nuclear arsenal at the Red, White, and Blue, but Mao couldn’t rule out a few nuke “accidentally” landing in Beijing should a war break out. Thus, he hit upon one of his most brilliant ideas: let’s build an underground city!

Starting in 1969, Mao and 70,000 Chinese workers constructed a roughly 85 square kilometer series of tunnels below the streets of Beijing, complete with ventilation shafts, sealed doors in the event of a chemical weapons attack, movie theaters, indoctrination centers, and all manners of personal rooms and weapons caches. The Underground City was completed in 1979 . . . just when the Soviets decided to invade a little known middle eastern country called Afghanistan.

The tour cost ten kuai, no photographs allowed, and took about a half hour. I walked through concrete tunnel after concrete tunnel, maybe fifty feet below ground level. Clearly marked at certain intervals were corridors leading to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and other city landmarks. Along the walls were what I presumed to be vintage photographs of a) Chairman Mao, b) Chinese military might, and c) “instructional” photographs of U.S. and Soviet military vehicles. Every few meters, a gas mask would hang from the wall. It was neat, but exceptionally creepy to walk through at Mao’s vision for a post-nuclear-holocaust China.

Panda Photoshoot
For a decent cost (in U.S. dollar amounts, too!), one could not only see, but hold a panda at the Panda Research Center in Chengdu. Prices varied from cheap, for the red pandas, middle of the road, to pet an adult panda, and expensive, to hold a near-infant giant panda. I had passed up the opportunity to do so during my first visit, but with my parents’ and sister’s enthusiasm, the Wagner family ponied up a bit of Yuan and sat down with some pandas. Once again, I will let the photos speak for themselves.



Guilin “Native Village”
During our tour of the Guilin area, our guide mentioned that, if we wanted to, we could view a genuine native village. This “native village,” he explained, was a village in the traditional style of the native population, one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities. Comparable to a Native American replica village, I thought.

I was half right–it looked more like Disney World’s “It’s a Small World” Ride than a “real” native village. We took a small boat tour around what was pretty clearly a pre-planned and constructed set of lakes, rather than a natural occurrence, and I had to laugh when we passed by buffalo skulls posed like something you’d see in a Western. The rest of the “tour” took us past a group of natives, dressed in what I can only presume to be traditional garb, demonstrations of old painting and sewing methods with the requisite gift shop area after the demonstrations, and other equally cheesy looking methods. More like a summer camp than a “native village,” but fun nontheless.

The Pearl Tower at Night
Another neat opportunity on the family tour was a return to the famous Pearl TV tower in Shanghai. Although we had gone into the tower already, I now found myself in the 300 meter elevator at nighttime, with an exceptionally clear view. This was pretty neat. The viewing deck was still crammed with tourists, perhaps even more because it was at night, and the views of Shanghai were spectacular. Pictured is another shot of the Mission: Impossible III towers, this time at night, as the film crews would have seen them.