Xi'an and Shanghai

Yesterday I got back to Beijing from a week-long trip exploring around some new places in China. On Friday we had our end-of-semester exam and at 6pm that day I boarded an overnight train with 5 classmates to Xi'an, China's ancient capital city and home to the Terracotta Warriors. Xi'an is a beautiful city, and much more preserved than Beijing in terms of old architecture as shown by its city walls (and the traditional architecture in the photo below). We spent the weekend there and then took a plane to Shanghai, where we spent the rest of the week. Shanghai was a shocker. After spending a month in Beijing, I could not believe how modern and westernized Shanghai is. Beijing and Shanghai are like night and day. I'm even tempted to say that Shanghai is hardly a Chinese city, especially when you consider that it was founded and then governed by foreigners for so long. Essentially, in Shanghai it is easy to forget that you are in China, you can eat at Western restaurants, only have Western friends, live in Western houses, whereas in Beijing the reminder of being in China is there every time you bite into your pork bun for breakfast or breath in the thick suspiciously-foggy air.

The Peking Opera

The Peking Opera is not really an "opera." It's more of a circus, with characters who juggle, kick swords and spears around in the air, jump over each other and do back-flips across the stage. Nonetheless, it's pretty awesome and definitely better than any circus I've ever been to. In addition to all of the tricks, there is an intriguing plot to the performance (albeit a slow-developing one). The style of singing is often considered "ugly" by Western standards, but I didn't think it was bad at all. All in all, I felt that it was a pretty a touristy experience. Definitely worth going to see, but touristy.

T'is a Great Wall

Last weekend we took a hike up the Sima Tai section of the Great Wall. I felt that it was actually hard to appreciate how incredibly long the wall is when you can only see one small section at a time. One thing that surprised me though was how steep the wall is (which you can't tell from the photo below). It's by no means a stroll along a wall, it's more of a hike up a mountain, which I didn't realize and so was wearing flip-flops. Another thing that surprised me was how many people there are on the wall trying to sell things. These women would come up to us to fan us, follow us all the way up the wall for an hour offering hats, postcards and trinkets for outrageous prices. It took me a while to bargain a fan down from 60 to 15 kuai, and at the end I'm sure she still thought that she was ripping me off.