I just lost my drain of thought

So I kind of give up on that whole journaling about each day in China thing, because I never got around to it and there were so many days I didn’t write about and to be frank, I don’t think anyone cares that much. haha. I’ll just slowly write about the highlights over time. We went on a tour to Zhang Jia Jie, which is very famous for its mountains, especially this one with a hole in it. I hear it’s really cool to watch the sunset/sunrise through, but we didn’t get to do that. The quality of the tour was sub-par and we had already gotten that feeling at the airport before we left for it because they handed out this new itinerary right before we got on the airplane describing all the things you could do if you pay extra monies. Shady business, I say. The tour itself was pretty fun, because we met this other family from the States and guess what, they are from NorCal. Craziness. We were told we’d be on the tour for four days, but not until the night before we were to leave were we told what time to be at the bus station to get to the airport, which was very late afternoon, meaning we wouldn’t get to Zhang Jia Jie until night time, MEANING it was actually a three-day trip. The first night we were there, we were in the biggest city of the Zhang Jia Jie area, which seriously looked like the projects or something, except not as many bums, and there were a few people out at night. We were not fed aside from the odd Corn Nut type bean things they served on the airplane, the equivalent of our honey roasted peanuts, so my mom and I walked around to see if there was anything worth seeing or eating. Turns out there isn’t much open past 10, but there were some people fruit peddlers. My mom bought some Chinese pears and from another stand this gigantor mango. It was seriously like a foot long and it smelled really good. It didn’t taste as good as it smelled but it wasn’t at all unpleasant. We also bought some barbequed-ish chicken and beef outside our hotel and besides the beef being kind of spicy, it tasted awesome.

The next day we drove for hours until we got to this city called Feng Huang Gu Cheng, which was a pretty cool place but very much a tourist trap. It’s supposed to be sort of like this ancient city, which is what I thought was so exciting at first, but then I realized all the cool looking buildings didn’t originally look that way as I passed by buildings currently being worked on. I suppose it’s hard to preserve buildings that are hundreds of years old, so I don’t blame them, but it sort of detracted from the charm, especially when I noticed all the townspeople we saw were only there to sell us tourists things that they seemed to have gotten from the Indigenous Souvenirs Factory. What is this Indigenous Souvenirs Factory, you ask? Well, it appears to be the place that all indigenous peoples of various Chinese towns get their goods to sell to tourists like us, because I totally saw most of those things when I went to Jiu Zhai Gou a few years ago. Some of the other things that I did not see in Jiu Zhai Gou were awfully similar to souvies my parents and sister have gotten on other Chinese tours. Interesting, isn’t it? I wasn’t mad. In fact, I bought some things, but I didn’t waste as much time looking as my mom and the other family’s mom did. Our moms got along very well.

The main attraction of the city is the river that runs through it. There was a boat ride touring the cool looking parts of the city that had been worked on, but dang was it expensive. So what did we do? We allowed some lady to sucker us into the alternative boat ride, but it was for the lower part of the river. Would the sights be the same? Yes, she says. Were they really? NOT AT ALL. But, I must say, though the sights we saw were mostly dingy and sometimes gross, it was still really fun and probably the best part of going to that city, except when these jerks we didn’t even know were splashing us as we passed by, because I guess it’s the thing to do when you go on the shady boat ride (which did not have enough life jackets), but it may have helped if someone had told us that’s what happens on this boat ride beforehand, because they got a little splashy splash on my camera and I would have jumped out of the boat and repaid them with a paddle to the faces if my camera had broken. Luckily, most of the left side of my face and body shielded my dear camera’s life. I felt kind of bad for the boat guy because he literally pushes the boat upstream with a pole. This is a river we’re talking about. A shallow river but a river nonetheless. I felt bad to the point that at this one rockier part where he has to get out of the boat and actually push it, I got out of the boat, figuring that at least it’d be lighter. My mom had gotten out before me because Chinese people seem to like walking on smooth rocks because it’s “comfortable.” That’s such a load of bull because it hurt like crazy and I regretted my decision to get out as soon as I began walking, slowly trying to catch up with the boat because the sooner I got back in the sooner the pain went away. Stupid experienced boat guy who can walk on rocks while pushing a boat, really fast. Not only were my feet in pain but my rolled up jeans began to disobediently unroll and I was soaked up to my thighs for the rest of the day.

At night we had some street food, which included more of that barbequed stuff, which I probably ate most of, some illusion dumplings (because they were all big but empty inside with a speck of meat), soup made of some mysterious seaweed-type stuff, and fried rice, all of which were AWESOME and only around 20 bucks altogether in RMB! Amaaazing! After dinner, we walked back to the “hotel,” which totally LOOKED cool but maybe was too accurate when emulating those of ancient times. Well, okay that’s an exaggeration, but they turn off the hot water after 10! There was no electricity before 6pm. The other family had a rat in their room..but we were on the top floor, where there is no food.. Think of how many rats there must’ve been in the kitchen! EW! I did not think of that until just now! Not only did they have a rat or mouse or whatever in their room but when the lobby guy couldn’t catch it, he just said to let it be.

The next morning we left to go to the Zhang Jia Jie mountains, which, my sister said were described as having grotesque peaks when she Googled the place. They really are beautiful and it really looks the way so many painters capture them in those Chinese paintings. I find that they look prettiest when there’s a little fog around them, but this particular day was kind of REALLY hot so there was no fog until towards evening. The peaks began looking the same to me pretty quickly, not that they weren’t cool and all, but I’m not really a nature gal. That kind of happened to me when I went to the Grand Canyon too. These kinds of sights are pretty and occasionally breathtaking but during those in-between-the-taking-of-breath moments, almost everything looks the same.

The next day we went mountain watching again but this time it rained. A lot. There was fog alright…COVERING EVERYTHING. I could barely see anything when we got to go up to “see” the cool stuff. There was something called Heaven’s Gate. Did we see it? Maybe? I saw something with a shape but I don’t know if it was that. We saw the Five Fingers. There were lots of other sights I couldn’t see that I can’t remember that were potentially awe-inspiring, but I guess I will never know. People, and by people, I mean me, were getting rather upset because we were walking in the rain in cheap raincoats, wet shoes (unless you decided to wear the footies), with open umbrellas around other CHINESE people looking at things we couldn’t actually see. I decided that that day that the thing I hated most is crowded places with narrow paths filled with Chinese people holding umbrellas, because they’re selfish. They don’t move to the side for you to pass, even though they see that you have an umbrella of equal size. They do no yielding whatsoever. If you’re in their way, they don’t mind doing that cold shoulder push thing. And you know what? When I’m pissed off, I don’t mind either, because I hate rude people and they deserve to be pushed with my cold shoulders!

There was this elevator thing we had to pay extra for that was not quite as exciting as I thought it would be. Basically, you just go down a really high elevator and the view is pretty much the same the whole way down. If not the back of someone’s head or someone’s face uncomfortably close to yours then a couple of the peaks. Luckily, I had a view of something outside and it was all quite pretty. I made a video of the whole ride, which went way slower than I anticipated. The bus ride to and from that elevator was miserable. The first time I had a seat but felt extremely nauseous due to the driver’s horrible steering abilities. The way back I recall standing uncomfortably swaying back and forth and probably bouncing. Here’s where it gets juicy. Supposedly, these buses are supposed to be included in the fee we paid to get into Zhang Jia Jie National Park but the tourguide made us pay him 100 bucks to feel nauseous. But if this said 100 bucks really wasn’t included, the tourguide was profiting off of it (because over there they get paid by the people that tourguides bring tourists to) and not cutting a deal with the our actual bus driver, which he is supposed to!

We went to this other place and this time the mountains were not only visible but a lot of them had cool shapes. There’s one that’s kind of famous that looks like an old man hunched over a little. Another peak looks like a hand with its index finger pointing up. There was also this one mountain that looked like some eyes with eyelashes. Very exciting stuff. I believe after that we did a lot of live infomercial types of things. On a lot of Chinese tours, tourguides take the tourists to these places where they put us all in a room and advertise products to us. The massage place sucked because I could not understand what anyone was saying and the guy refused to give me a massage because I was “too young” but it was really because I couldn’t understand anything and there was no point in him advertising to me, so they just left me there with my feet drowned in a giant bowl of herb stuff. I have to admit that the knife place was really cool though. My mom bought some really cool peelers. They cut wood! WOW! You know you get urges to do it too and with this you really can. haha. We went to a tea place as well, but those are usually a tough sell.

Well, that pretty much sums up my first Chinese tour of that trip. More to come soon, I think. Oh and by the way, I’m feel a bit stressed because my apartment is falling apart!!