5am in Shanghai is probably the ideal time to go anywhere at all, since the roads are empty. It was the quietest I had seen China be in the whole of my two weeks there. For me, after the taxi accident in Beijing and the constant gridlock since arriving in Shanghai, it was a welcome opportunity to relax.

For my driver, however, it was an opportunity to reenact the Indy 500 as he flew down the highway to Pudong Airport at 160 kph.

There are no seat belts in the back seats of any cab in China.

At any rate, I was delivered safely at the terminal, got my boarding pass, checked my suitcase and settled in to wait for my 8:30am flight to Beijing, with boarding scheduled to begin at 8am.

At 8am, the flight crew posted a notice in Chinese and in English that the flight was delayed due to “aircraft rotation”. There were a lot of Chinese people yelling at the crew, while all the foreigners on the flight, including me, sat back and watched in a state of confusion, occasionally asking each other if anyone knew what was going on, if there were any updates and so on. An Egyptian woman next to me seemed unconcerned. In excellent English, she told me that she’s lived in China for four years, takes this same flight on a regular basis, and that it’s always, ALWAYS delayed – but that she’s never seen the Chinese passengers get so upset before, so there must be something the flight crew was not telling us. From someone else we heard that the flight crew was now saying that the captain hadn’t yet shown up. Who knows what the truth was…

We finally boarded at 9:30am, but then we we never went anywhere. The flight attendants began serving us water and breakfast while we were still on the ground. The Chinese passengers started screaming bloody murder again, and no explanations were given in English. I asked a German man across the aisle if he knew what was going on. He didn’t know, but a Chinese man in front of him who spoke English filled us in – the crew was now saying that the plane would not leave until 11am since that’s when air traffic control was able to fit us in. People were getting upset because many of them were going to miss their connecting flights.

We finally got underway, and something about the feel of the aircraft gave me the distinct impression that the pilot had his foot on the gas the whole way – a suspicion that was confirmed when our flight, which was scheduled to take two and a half hours, arrived in Beijing in just under two hours instead.

Luckily, I had given myself a very generous layover window and had plenty of time to retrieve my bag and check in for my flight to Seattle. I spent the last of my Chinese Yuan on a chicken foccaccia sandwich and a bottle of orange juice at Starbucks (American food!), picked up “The Life of Pi” at a bookstore in the terminal, and reveled in the peaceful Americanness of my purchases.

The flight to Seattle left an hour late as well, but had none of the blistering outrage of the Shanghai-Beijing flight. I turned down all of the food offered to me, much to the flight attendants’ dismay (if the smell of Chinese food made me sick, then Chinese airline food was sure to be even worse), but otherwise the rest of the trip home was completely without incident.

The kitties were relieved to see me and haven’t let me out of their sight. The tomato plant tripled in size during my absence, though the little broccoli sproutling died. I’ve already put all of my clothes through the laundry. My bed felt amazing. Jetlag woke me up at 4:30am, and now that it’s almost 9am I’m about ready for a nap, an event for which the balcony sounds just about perfect. It feels good to be home, where such things as peace and quiet actually exist.

This errand requires a bit of explanation. Yes it would have been cheaper to just buy a second bag, some cheap Louis Vuitton knock off at one of the markets, but I had a rather special problem: the first leg of my trip back to Denver was actually a domestic flight from Shanghai back to Beijing, booked separately from my round trip fare, and thus my luggage was subject to a 20 kg weight limit. Especially after our visit with the Qataris the day before, I knew my bag would be overweight unless I shipped some things home.

But isn’t that weight limit per bag? I have no idea. The airline’s English pages were not helpful. All I knew for certain was that 20 kg number, and after the fiasco that was my flight to Beijing, the last thing I needed was more airport drama.

I found the address of a nearby outlet online and asked the front desk to write it for me in Chinese so I could show it to a taxi driver, hailed a cab and set off. I spotted it easily, paid my driver, hopped out and he sped away. But as I walked up, I quickly realized that the place was closed. Not closed as in “not open right now”, but CLOSED. Completely gutted with a note taped to the door – thankfully in both Chinese and English – with the addresses for alternative outlets.

Now, the thing about taking a cab in China is that the English name and address of any given location is almost completely useless. The first thing you do when you check into a hotel is get the hotel’s business card so you can show it to a driver. This way you can at least always get back to your hotel. But now I didn’t want to go back to the hotel and I was stuck somewhere in Shanghai with no idea how to tell a taxi where I needed to go. I flagged down a random guy on the street and somehow managed to communicate with hand signals that I needed him to please copy the address from the note into a small notebook I’d been carrying with me for note-taking during company visits. Armed with a fresh address, I hailed a fresh cab and was on my way once more.

Thankfully, the guys at UPS spoke English. There was a flurry of paperwork for Customs, a brief panic when it was revealed that they couldn’t take a Mastercard or Visa which was quickly resolved by the revelation of an entire row of ATMs just across the lobby, some minor confusion when for some reason they couldn’t ship my tea, and far too much cash later my overweight baggage problem was solved. A somewhat bizarre assortment of souvenirs should be arriving at my door by the end of the week.

Later that afternoon, Chen Ji led the group to the Old Shanghai City Market for more shopping. Just as we arrived, some of the girls spotted Jason Biggs crossing the square and about freaked out. (Really? You’re going to lose your shit over the guy from American Pie? I know I’m all jaded about celebrity from Disney, but still… the guy was famous eleven years ago for about two minutes. It’s worth a raised eyebrow at best.)

It had been raining all day and I was less than enthusiastic about shopping since I’d just unloaded all my excess bag weight that morning, so I just tagged along with Brian and Simon, who were on a mission. Brian wanted chopstick sets to give as gifts. Simon was determined to find a remote controlled Apache helicopter and some tea. We wound up in a tea shop tasting samples and I fell in love with a ginseng oolong. I picked that up, along with a “travel buddy” tea bottle that would have cost me $30 at a Whole Foods type store here in Colorado. The tea and bottle were both light enough that it wasn’t going to hurt my luggage weight at all.

Simon found his helicopter, and Brian challenged me to a game of mini billiards (precariously balanced on a wire rack nearby) while he tested it to make sure it worked. A couple of foreigners doing anything remotely interesting in China tends to draw a crowd, so after a few minutes we had spectators, but the game was quickly dropped when Simon was ready to go.

It was our last night in Shanghai and the end of our program. We had a group farewell dinner, yet another affair in which far too much of the same Chinese food glided past on a giant lazy susan. I picked at it as I had been with all Chinese food since I’d been sick. Now associated with illness, the smell is nauseating. I don’t think I’ll be getting over that for quite awhile.

The rest of the group went out to celebrate our last night in Shanghai, but I went to bed early. I had to be up at 4am to begin the long journey home.

If you’re going to the World Expo in Shanghai, be prepared to stand in line. The line for the China Pavilion is 5-6 hours long. Our host at the Consulate yesterday, Keenton Chiang, told us we shouldn’t bother to try getting in since it was impossible to do without a reservation, which we did not have. The line for Saudi Arabia was 9 hours long. These are lines that make a 45 minute wait for the Jungle Cruise at DisneyWorld seem like a piece of cake. Upon arriving and viewing the chaos just to get in the gate, I turned to Kelly and asked her, “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?” (She’s from Florida and is a fellow WDW alum. It’s an inside joke amongst all the cast members.)

That said, aside from the queues to get inside, we didn’t stand in a single line.

A couple days ago, one of our Qatari boys (we have two in our group) said, “Let me make a few phone calls and see if we can get VIP access to Qatar.” So he did, and sure enough when we arrived today, when we showed up at the Qatar Pavilion, we were treated like rock stars.

This is Ibrahim, pointing to a building in the mural. It’s his uncle’s hotel. That he owns. (It’s the blue building peeking out from behind the white pyramid-like at the far right.)

The pavilion manager came out to meet us, ushered us in past the line waiting to get in and into the VIP suite where we were served Qatari coffee (or tea, maybe, I just know I really didn’t like it) on soft sofas in a room overlooking the pavilion floor. Then he personally led us through the exhibit. When it came to the craft demonstrations, he let us inside the roped-off areas. The ladies were treated to henna tattooes, also behind the ropes.

A Qatari photographer followed us the entire way. We were told that the photos would be posted on the pavilion’s website and possibly published in the newspaper in Qatar. (I don’t see the photos posted as of this moment.) They took down all of our names and some info about our group, then lined us up for a group photo before sending us off with Qatari swag bags filled with mugs, t-shirts, umbrellas and random things.

The Qatari boys’ contact also told us that he could get us VIP access to 10-15 other pavilions, so what would we like to see? We ended up getting into several pavilions on account of the Qatari connection:

United Arab Emirates – skipped to the front of the line

Oman – skipped to the front, VIP lounge with Omani coffee and awesome date rolls, and another swag bag

China – were “accidentally” let into the reservations-only line (eat your heart out, Mr. Chiang!)

Saudi Arabia – skipped to the front, more paparazzi photos, and received apologies because if we’d come earlier in the day they would have let us into their VIP suite as well but were too busy by the time we arrived

We also visited Afghanistan, Bahrain and North Korea, none of which had lines. The North Korean pavilion was so incredibly lame it was actually kinda funny, especially with the slogan “Paradise for People” branded across the top of one wall.

All told, by Kelsey’s reckoning, it took us just 6 hours to see what people without VIP connections would have seen with 21 hours of waiting, and got into both of the “holy grail” pavilions. I have some new-found love for Qatar and our Qatari boys.

This is Kelsey.

Once the sun set, the group split up. Some wanted to explore the industry pavilions on the other side of the river while the rest of us were tired from being on our feet in the sun all day and wanted to just go home. I was part of the latter group that headed to the subway. The subway was only remarkable for one reason: the fistfight that broke out right in front of us. We don’t know what started it, but it got really interesting when one of the guys involved clocked a security guard right in the face. He ran off at the next stop, but jumped back on when he realized his girlfriend was still on the train. She was busy distracting the security guard so he could get away, but he came back for her. More fighting, and some super-official looking security with hand radios dragged the entire lot off the train at the next stop after that.

Alrighty…  I just noticed that it is midnight here, so I’m off to bed. I’ll try to get the photos up tomorrow to go with the stories.

We arrived in Shanghai on the 25th, but I went to bed almost as soon as we checked in. The rest of the group went off to explore The Bund, which is walking distance from the hotel. I was disappointed I couldn’t join them, but I was too sick to tough it out.

The next day, however, the group wanted to go bar hopping. This did not appeal to me in the slightest, partly because I wasn’t yet feeling 100% and partly because it’s just not my thing anyway. So after our visits to the US. Consulate and a really freakin’ awesome tour of Baosteel, I decided to explore The Bund on my own. It was the perfect way to do it, actually, since I could move at my own pace, stop for photos without feeling hurried, and just take it all in.

First there was a large pedestrian mall with piles of high end shopping and enough neon to rival Las Vegas, then a row of older buildings which were mostly also high end shops. Finally, Nanjing Road ended at the river, and on the other side was a breathtaking view of the Shanghai skyline, all lit up, with river boats floating here and there. Simply gorgeous. If it weren’t so crowded, I could have stayed awhile just to watch the boats come and go, watch the colors change on the Pearl Tower. However, I’d had to push my way up to the rail, and then had to crouch to find a spot of rail I could use to steady my camera for a decent night photo.

Walking back, I stopped for take out at one of the two Pizza Huts I’d found along the way. It’s not even close to American quality, but it would do.

Fair warning: I may or may not get photos into the rest of my posts before I leave China since the internet at the hotel is painfully slow and seems to break every time I try to upload a picture.

On our last day in Nanjing, we had more company visits. One of them in particular stood out. Amity Bible Printing Company is a non-profit dedicated to printing Bibles, mostly for Chinese Christians. Historically, China has been rather apathetic to religion, claiming a mostly agnostic Buddhism if they claim anything at all. Organized religion has begun to catch on with the younger generations, however, and 90% of Amity’s Bibles are printed in Chinese. They also do all of China’s minority languages, some Spanish, and even Braille. All of their paper is donated. And unlike the other factories we’ve visited which had strict no-photo policies, Amity let us freely take pictures throughout the entire tour.

In the evening, Chen Ji left us on our own for dinner as he went to visit his father, who lives in Nanjing. our bus driver, Mr. Gu, suggested a restaurant he knew which is on a boat on the Yangtze River. We all jumped at the chance to go, of course. It was a lovely setting, watching barges loaded with coal gliding down the river while the servers loaded our tables with dish after dish of whatever Mr. Gu ordered for us.

I hadn’t felt quite right since lunch, but this was where I really started to realize something was wrong. The boat was permanently docked and didn’t rock all that much, but it was enough to make me feel badly. At one point I was about to run outside to just sit on the dock where it was cooler and steadier. Back at the hotel, one of the guys requested copies of my night market photos. I think I barely made it through converting and copying them. I had to go to bed.

I woke up the next day feeling sick and beaten up, and I’ve already covered that.

Today has been better, but still not fun. I ate breakfast, and even picked up a chocolate chip muffin when we found a Starbucks at the Ritz Carlton (we were there for a briefing at the U.S. Consulate) which was such a nice, welcome, American taste that I about cried, but nausea completely nixed lunch. I might have eaten something if some more American sick comfort foods were available, like chicken noodle soup. One of my favorite things to do when I’m sick but hungry is to just order a pizza. I am beyond tired of Chinese food. I can’t stand the sight or smell of it today. It seems as though everything I want that would make me feel better is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Most of the group went to get custom suits made. I would have done that as well, but I don’t have any more room in my luggage, my job’s dress code is blue jeans, and by the time any interviews roll around I don’t plan to be the same size I am now anyway, so I took a nap instead. They want to go bar hopping tonight, so I’m going to go for a stroll on The Bund on my own – and therefore at my own pace instead of whatever insane powerwalking speed the group moves at – and then maybe get a massage. I want to see what I can of Shanghai even if I’m a little sick since our time here is so short. If I find a Pizza Hut along the way, there may be some tears involved.

Nanjing. I’ve only been here for a day, but it’s already been a fairly wild experience, full of culture, natural beauty and general craziness.

We began the day at Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum, which is situated at the top of a beautiful mountain park. It was raining the whole time. There were shops selling umbrellas as we walked up to the mausoleum, and Chen Ji talked them down to 10 quai each for all of us – roughly $1.50. Despite the rain, the whole thing was lovely, possibly even prettier because of it, with Nanjing disappearing into the mist and colorful umbrellas dotting the stairs below.

Next was the Japanese Massacre Memorial, which memorializes the “Rape of Nanjing” in which the Japanese killed 300,000 Chinese. It is a somber and haunting place. The location was chosen because it was the site where some 10,000 murdered Chinese were buried in a hasty mass grave. The site is partially excavated, with skeletons visible and recovered artifacts such as ladies’ hair pins on display in the adjacent museum.

After the memorial, our bus dropped us off at the Confucius Temple markets, where 10,000+ there are shops to explore. I found some gifts for friends and family here. I was particularly proud of myself for getting one vendor from 130 quai down to 45 quai for an item that was actually pretty important for me to acquire since it was on my list before I even left Denver.

One of the best experiences in the market was the discovery of a tiny tea shop filled with high quality local tea. Our entire group squeezed inside and the proprietors sat us down and started pouring samples of the best teas I’ve ever had. Prices here were not negotiable, but we all spent money here anyway.

After the markets, the bus dropped us off at our hotel and we were left to our own devices for the rest of the evening. Jillyn and I decided to explore a Xuawen Lake Park, which is just a block or two from the hotel.

This is possibly one of my favorite places that I’ve visited in China so far. It’s not particularly special or meaningful in a historical context, but after all of the jostling and noisiness of Beijing and the constant come-ons from market vendors, finding this quiet, peaceful place was amazing. We took our time – another thing that doesn’t happen often on this trip – wandering past beds of tall red poppies and roses, brides on a Sunday photo shoot, couples cuddling on lakeside benches. A set of rough stone stairs spiraled up a ten-foot hill. A father coached his son who ran through the grass trying to launch a kite with the widest smile you ever saw. We watched the sun as it began to set over the Nanjing skyline.

We wandered out of the park to find dinner. This is more difficult than in Beijing since many fewer people speak English. Menus are less likely to have English translations, and sometimes have no photos to which we can point. The site of Jillyn and I walking down a Nanjing street caused an entire road work crew to stop, stare and comment to their buddies about us.

On the way back to the hotel, I tripped in the street and fell hard. My palms were scraped and bleeding. My arm has some long scratches, and my knee is a mess of red carpet burn where it encountered friction with my blue jeans. I came back, cleaned myself up, and decided to start taking my “just-in-case” Cipro course to help keep my cuts from getting infected. Who knows what foreign nastiness lurks in the dusty streets of Nanjing?

You would think this would mean I’m in for the night, right? You would be wrong. This is China, and we’re here to see everything. Nanjing is home to one of the world’s tallest buildings, and the whole group decided to go see if there was an observation deck or a bar inside where we could have a few drinks and watch the city lights below. The plan was thwarted, however, when it turned out that the towers were closed. We ended up having a good English conversation with one of the managers of the hotel in the building (it doesn’t open to the public until the 26th or 28th, I don’t remember which). They were all very sweet about a bunch of giggly, clueless foreign girls suddenly showing up on their doorstep, though they were very firm on not letting us in. The manager recommended a bar where the staff liked to go, flagged down some taxis for us and instructed the cabbies where they should take us.

The bar ended up being Paulaner Breuhaus – a German brewpub with a sort of Pleasure Island Disney-esque cover band and dancing patrons. Most of the songs were Western, including Volare and Tom Jones’ Kiss. Tanya and Kelly danced and attracted the attention of some drunk Chinese guys who decided to invite our group to join their table. We turned them down, and headed back to the hotel not long after that.

This morning I woke up early and decided to test out my sore knees by going out for a walk. I knew there was a patisserie just around the corner, and maybe I would find some of the Chinese magazines I wanted for my project. I stumbled across a street vendor selling some dumplings for just 1 quai each and found my magazines. It’s probably my favorite moment in China, this simple solo walk to find breakfast the same way the locals do. Nanjing has meant more to me than Beijing because this is where I actually got a sense of what it is to live a Chinese life in the city. You walk out in the morning, grab a dumpling from the vendor on the corner, maybe pick up a magazine. You head off to work in the most ordinary way.

Company visits today, and I’m told maybe dinner at a floating restaurant on the Yangtze River. Gotta go catch the bus.

We had the afternoon to ourselves. Most of the group went to the Silk Market to go shopping, but a handful of us decided to skip shopping until Shanghai and went to see the Lama Temple instead.

The Lama Temple is situated in a neighborhood of hutongs, which are traditional single-story Chinese homes which all surround a common courtyard. We wandered through their narrow alleys. Buying a hutong for your family is apparently all the rage in Beijing for people with the means to do so, but to me it seems like an uncomfortable way to live.

Next we hit up the Lama Temple, which is described in various guide books as the holiest site and the most beautiful Buddhist temple in Beijing. Once the Tibetan Buddhist Embassy in Beijing, at its height it housed over 500 monks. Today it has roughly twenty, and is home to the world’s tallest sandalwood Buddha. Photos were prohibited inside the buildings, but the outside areas were beautiful as well.

This was definitely a holy site, as well as a beautiful place for tourists to see Buddhism in China. There were lots of people praying and offering incense.

Outside the gates, the hawkers were hard at work, of course. Anywhere you might find a tourist, you’ll always find plenty of people selling everything from cheap knock off watches or postcard books, as well as men in bicycle rickshaws desperate to give tourists a ride. There are also lots of tiny souvenir shops. I liked this one because of the live birds out front.

On our way back to campus, our taxi t-boned a Volkswagen that pulled out in front of us. Luckily it was at low speed, so no one was hurt, though there was the flinch-inducing,  wallet-bruising crunch of going just fast enough to cause regrettable damage. We quickly hopped out and found a different cab back to campus.

Traffic in Beijing is, at best, chaotic and incomprehensible. China has made great strides in improving infrastructure, and a rising middle class has dramatically increased the number of cars on the road. However, there is no order to anything that actually happens on these new roads and in these new cars. In the United States, hearing a horn is usually a sign of alarm (or, sometimes, exuberance). We honk to warn other drivers who get a little too close, to show our impatience, and so on. In Beijing, the horn is used more like an ecolocation system. In traffic, you honk simply to let other drivers know where you are. You use it in combination with aggressive driving habits which would make the best Chicago-trained defensive driver break into a cold sweat. You want to cross the street? You force your way into the intersection. In many ways, driving in Beijing is like a giant game of chicken. Thank god none of us were hurt.

Since it was our last night in Beijing, we all decided to go out to the Hutong neighborhood where we were told there would be bars and music. We found a chic hipster-style tapas restaurant where everything was painted white and a photo shoot was happening upstairs. We were their only customers, and they didn’t seem accustomed to company, but the food was terrific once we finally got it. I was quite impressed with their wine list, too, especially since wine is still new enough in China that its populace has yet to develop a connoisseurship about it. Whoever put this one together went for big, highly respected names, many of them American. I remember seeing Kendall Jackson and La Crema.  I had an excellent glass of a French sauvignon blanc.

After the tapas place, we settled in at a bar. It was called “The Awesomeness Bar”, and we picked it based on the name alone. The signs directed us into a dark, lonely alley which gave us pause, even with ten people in the group. However, at the end we found a delightful, small and low-key joint loaded with sofas and playing Billie Holliday-type jazz. Once again we had the place to ourselves and the staff seemed shocked to find themselves with customers. It was a great last night in Beijing.

Today we boarded a train for Nanjing, a journey which took nearly eight hours. The countryside is clearly poor, with many of the homes and towns visible from the rails looking almost as though they’d been bombed out. The hotel is much, much nicer than the prison-esque dorm rooms, though the beds are still hard as rocks. No ultra-plush pillowtop mattresses here.  Nanjing seems to be a much quieter city. I took a walk around the neighborhood with the rest of the girls in our group and no one tried to sell us anything. In Beijing, the come-ons are a constant.

My knees and ankles have been badly swollen since our hike up the Great Wall. I was hoping a day on the train would be sufficient rest to let them recover, but it looks as though I’m stuck with it until I get back to Denver and can spend a week sitting around with my feet up.