Traveling the World

For whatever reason, be it a lack of understanding or just pure laziness, we find that very few signs are written correctly in our language. It is unfair to make fun of them for not doing it correctly, however with all the foreigners living in China, didn’t anyone think to just ask one of us?

Children

Some signs I’ve personally come across are “Be Careful and Slip Quietly,” “Tikts Here,” “Feed Pandas,” “No Service for No Clothes,” just to name a few.

As the Olympics approached in 2008, Beijing backed a massive campaign to fix the signs for tourists on the street, hotels, and restaurants, however when I was there in 2009, I still saw many problems. It was the same for me in Shanghai last April, yet as a result of the Expo coming this year, Shanghai followed a similar campaign.

Some people say it’s bad to correct the signs because it shows insight into how the Chinese think, while others say don’t change it because it provides laughter on the trail. My personal belief is that if China wants to be taken seriously as a country with English speakers ready to do business with you wherever you are, then they need to take even more drastic steps to correct these problems, including the way their education system is set up.

Railing

I think the country has done a piss poor job so far in educating their students how to speak English, and as a result have needed to hire millions of foreigners to come and teach the language correctly. If this was done the right way, those signs would never exist. Then why is it that even after foreigners have been teaching English here for almost 30 years, that these problems still occur?

All we can be glad for is that the government is trying it’s best to remedy some problems from the past by changing the signs so those who visit or move here will feel like it’s a serious place instead of a joke. Let’s hope in the future they continue to put forth as much if not more effort!

Itinerary

As I said, my friends are arriving in Hong Kong and going into the Chinese mainland via Shenzhen. From there, they’ll meet Lily and I at Guilin (her and I are coming from Wuhan). In Guilin, we’ll see the beautiful natural scenery that’s infamous amongst people who travel to China (or live here). Then we’ll go over to Shanghai, where I went in April. After Shanghai we’ll move on to Beijing, a city I’ve avoided seeing for the entirety of my time in China! There we will see the extremely old wall of China, the emperor/dictator’s city, and whatever else tourist crap they will throw at us. After, we’ll head to Xi’an, where the terra cotta soldiers are located. I have a German friend there that I’m hoping to meet up with too!

Unfortunately, because my job begins so early, I’ll only really have 10 or 11 days with my friends, whom I haven’t seen since May 2008, when I graduated from university. 3 of them live in Seattle, and the other in North Carolina, so me being a Floridian and now a Chinaman, it was impossible to see them after university. As a result of my job, I have to leave them at Xi’an to return to Wuhan. They are tentatively planning to fly from Xi’an or Wuhan to Lijiang to hike for a few days in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. In the end, they’ll have a few days left to hang out in the surrounding area of Hong Kong. They’ll be free to see such areas as Shenzhen, Macau, Zhuhai, and Xiamen!

Well, that is the itinerary for my next trip! I’m veryyyyyyyyyyy busy from now until then, so don’t expect to see much action on the website!

The two large towers you see above me are the Jinmao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center. They were recently completed, and are located in the Pudong district on the Eastern side of the river that separates Shanghai in half. Like the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, you can go up to the observatories in both of these buildings. I chose to go up to the 100th floor of the Financial Center because it only cost 150rmb ($20), and you could also see the 94th, 95th, and 97th floors on your way up.

I had to continuously pop my ears because the elevator climbed so quickly on its way to the 94th floor. It only took around a minute or two to reach the destination. The 94th floor wasn’t so impressive, so we went to the 95th floor, which itself was still nothing much. We took an escalator from there to the 97th floor, which was a sight to see. On this floor we could see the other side of the river (The Bund) on one side of the building, and the other side showed us the brand new pre-fabricated communities laying further inland.

The 100th floor was amazing! We were walking in between the building on an indoor walkway with a 360 degree view, and since the building is taller than its neighbor the Jinmao Tower, we could look down upon the entire thing. For 150rmb, it’s definitely a treat!

My friend Simon took this photo using his Canon Digital SLR while we were in the Old Town area of Shanghai. As you can see, it was raining that day, and the rain was a beautiful touch in the foreground. The beautiful architecture surrounding her makes for another piece of brilliant foreground material. Despite all this, the mood the woman displayed was the greatest part of the photo, and something you couldn’t do better yourself with the help of Photoshop!

I have no idea what this woman was thinking, but she looks like she was staring off into the distance, as if she were awaiting someone’s arrival. The sadness in her eyes is so deep one must stop and think, “how can someone be so sad?” Her folded hands makes her look stubborn like she’s the trunk of a tree, and she’s not going anywhere. My only hope is that she got what she was waiting for.