Click "PLAY" to start song.
ªü·íªº§à¾Ü - Alive
No, i don't know what the title means. No, i don't know what they're saying. yes, i agree, the singing is... pretty bad. yes, the rapping is sad...
they're some new group... that consists of singers and actors XD they give away music and free concerts.. strange yeah? their debut concert was in HK during my vacation :( it's a shame that i missed it.
welcome to my very rushed China journal. during august 2-16, i visited china for the.. well, second time (the first time i went was when i was 3 years old). the party consisted of my mom, my younger brother, and myself.
My Goal:
- to gain a better knowledge of myself, my family, my language, and my background.
this entire trip was a HUGE experience... i didn't only learn about my family and today's chinese customs, but i was able to grow as a person.
alrighty... now prepare for a long, picture-filled story... of my trip to China. :) (some of our trip is missing from the story... i don't exactly remember everything and i'm not sure what happened on which day >.< but they're in order)
sooo... the day before we left.. it was a RUSH! being the kids that my brother and i were, we didn't really panic... but our mom did. we had nothing packed.... so our mom packed EVERYTHING. our clothes, our toiletries, our money.. etc etc. lmao.. honestly, i had no idea if i was ready for my trip or not.. because my mom packed all of my clothes.. and i wasn't sure which clothes she packed >.O
so our first flight was to Japan where we had to stay over for one night. we stopped at the kansai international airport... the flight was 9 hours long... -.- fun, no?
i. love. japan.
it was CLEAN, it was NEAT, it was QUIET. gah!!!! it's so great. i turn on the tv.. and what do i see? anime!!! O_O excellent quality anime... and i don't usually watch anime.. but the graphics were AMAZING!!! and they were up to date too! i wanna go to japan for vacation now.. XD plus the food was excellent and at a good price too.
the next day, we took our 3-4 hour flight to Guangzhou. Guangzhou is where we're staying. it's a city located in Guangdong (i think...). it is pretty much the "capital" of cantonese people. "cantonese" in chinese is Gaungdong hua... which means guangdong language. however, in today's modern society, everybody speaks cantonese AND mandarin. which is crazy... O_O
so we stayed for 2 days.. trying to recover from the jet lag.
china is 18 hours ahead of Hawaii... which is like, the next day, minus 6 hours of hawaii. that's how we calculated our time in China.... XD
"What time is it in Hawaii?"
"It's.... 8:00 yesterday"
so then, we met our tour group. we then flew to Beijing, the capital of China. this is a local tour group... which means everybody were Chinese and spoke in CHinese. in other words, my brother and i were FOREIGNERS! we don't understand any chinese.. XD what made it worse was that people spoke in mandarin... and we understood cantonese more than mandarin.
so we went on our tour bus... not able to understand anything our tour guide is saying. then... for some reason... i smelled burnt rubber.... it was disgusting.. i smelled it for half an hour. then the AC started getting warm. all of a sudden... the smell got worse. then BOOM!!!!
our bus started smoking... (yes, that's smoke outside the window.) apparently, the brake was rubbing against the tire the wrong way or something.
then we got a new bus... and moved on...
then we stopped at this place.... i'm not sure what it was called... the name got lost somewhere with my tour guide's chinese gibberish.
a band playing music.. it was awesome.
then we went to this HUGE prayer place. there were maybe... 5 different buildings. each one had different kinds of gods.
at the last temple building, there was a HUGE god statue which was like... 5 stories tall. it was built out of ONE tree trunk. the foot could probably reach up to below my shoulders. craaaaazy....
one night we had some free time... so the three of us went out to do some late night snacking. we went to this street which was open everynight and it sold lotsa food. noodles, beef sticks, chicken sticks, wraps, etc etc.. everything. there were LOTS of people. it was like Times Square on one sidewalk.
frogs or cacoons? not sure if i spelled cacoons correctly XD
would you like some seahorse? or maybe turtle... or are you hungry for some millipedes/centipedes? (i could never tell the difference).
some time later... we went to General Mao's grave. General Mao was China's leader for a long time. he was seem as a god to some Chinese people
the line to walk into the building was about one mile long... we had to wait for an hour... -.- inside the building, was a huge statue of Mao where people could place flowers. then in the next room... there was Mao's actually body in a sealed up tomb-like thing. before you enter, there's a place where you can "borrow" flowers for 2 yuan. when you go inside, you put the flowers into a cart.. where they apparently push back outside to resell XD
sometime later we went to the forbidden city. it was so awesome.
it's hard to see that it was an actual city... there were all these rules about citizenship and stuff from long ago. like for example, men who worked inside had to get a certain "body part" cut off... >.< ouch.
later on.. after one or two other stops... we went to the great wall of china.
it was PACKED. while we were driving there... we saw a portion of the wall FULL of people... this wall was maybe at a 45 degree angle, up the mountain. it was scary.
so we took the lift up the mountain. we walked for a while... i was afraid somebody would've pushed me off the side. people were runnign everywhere.
after that... (or maybe the next day. i forgot) we went to an emporer's tomb. i forgot why he was important... but we had to go underground. there were 7 (if not 7, more) emporer tombs throughout the mountains... i'm not sure why that one we went to was important. but they didn't allow anybody to go into the other tombs because it was kinda like... disrespectful and people were superstitious.
this is supposed to be the gate to the underworld. we h ad to walk around it.. or else we'd end up you know where. our tour guide said, at the end of the tour, that when we walked through the other side of the door we're supposed yell "WE'RE BACK!" as if we just came back from the underworld XD
we then visited a huge museum-like place which was created to represent the chinese story, "A Dream of Red Mansions." it's supposed to be a really famous love story. it was interesting to see the different settings and how they were supposed to be from a book.
there was a huge water show that night at the end of the museum tour. in the back, there was a wave of water that kept shooting up. then they showed some film on that wall of water. in the front, a boat with actors would be on there singing and dancing...
some lady leaned onto my thigh while i was sitting down... so she could get in front of me. i was sitting on the rocks (there were no chairs). she leaned on me so she could get in front of me. guess what? she stood RIGHT in front me.. and i didn't even know her. so then i got really into the show... and i took pictures with my camera... with flash on. right near her cheek. :) ebil... yesh?
this is a loooooong outdoor hallway at the summer palace where a certain emporer would go... well, during the summer. there was a lotta rain =/
we stopped at another place which was supposed to be somebody's home. however, it was knocked down during the war. at the end of the tour of that place, we got to see a show. this is a real girl... carrying a 1-ton ceramic "bowl" with her feet, with a guy INSIDE... O_O
that was the end of our fun in Beijing...
our plane back to Gaungzhou... this is my brother's writing, and his finger.
in guangzhou, we did LOTS of shopping... my mom bought clothes while i bought CDs and DVDs XD! this was over the 9 day-period in guangzhou after the beijing tour.
i visited my mom's friend... we got to stop by a place that was apparently my dad's old home. i got to visit my dad's childhood home. this was more on the countryside. people are still taking care of my dad's house.
one night, we visited one of china's leader's homes. this particular leader had studied in Hawaii which is pretty cool.
there were 50,000 fish in the entire place.. O_O i think they sold some fish to other places... but.. DANG! that's still a LOT
then we had dinner at this place alllll the way somewhere i don't know outside of Guangzhou...
this is supposed to be a jin doi... (i'm not sure what it's called in mandarin). originally, it's like... 3/4th the size of a baseball covered in sesame seeds. it's liked a fried sweet thing. this one is HUGE!
the restaurant we ate at was very interesting... the men's urinal was a fish tank... with REAL fish. the fish tank had a lid on it, and you'd do your business on top of that... then it would flush into a pipe O_O i think the fish were safe... i think...
the menu options were really interesting...
then i got visit my uncle, dad's side. we got to stay overnight at their summer house. it was reallllly night. the weather was bad though... even during the "silkworm dinner". there were thunderstorms. i got to experience a real poweroutage during dinner at my uncle's place. he lives in one of those community places... they have their own bowling alley, arcade, ping pong room, swimming pools, sauna, library, salon, and other stuff. it was really big.
the next day we ate at a restaurant for lunch. i learned the art of tea. it's really more complicated than you think.
how to make tea:
then we went back to our grand aunty's house... the place where we've been staying the entire time. we got to enjoy our last 2 days... then we came back to hawaii.
next year, our plan might be to go to China for 2 months... and maybe visit Xi'an (where the Teracotta [?] soldiers are located... i'm not sure what they're called) and Hong Kong. this summer was... AMAZING. i wouldn't trade it for anything else. if i could, i'd ditch school and move to china XD
and you thought that the frogs were bad... >.< these are HUGE worm things... gah.
some kind of water beetle
i actually ate silkworm.. (i think that's what it was) it was interesting. it was /kinda puffy when you first bite into it. but then it's crunchy. it almost tastes like a peanut. we also ate ostrich. which reminds me... on the first night, we got to try camel and goose. the goose was like fatty duck. and the camel was chewy and looked like beef.
OMG! A COW!
1. put tea leaves into small pot and put in boiling water from kettle.
2. pour out all the water. this "cooks" the leaves and opens them up.
3. pour more water into the pot and pour water over the lid to keep the air above the teawater warm.
4. right after that, pour all the tea into another pot. this prevents different levels of strength in the tea... this way, the "bitterness" keeps the same. for example: it keeps from having that small water sitting at the bottom of the teapot which usually gets really bitter.
5. leave the lid of the teapot open so the leaves don't overcook.
6. repeat process if you need more tea.
