China 2007-Day 1

Let me just say, if you EVER want to go on a trip where you see EVERYTHING in a very short amount of time, go on a trip with a Korean tour company. O_o Sure, you won't have a clue as to what they're saying or what is going on but you sure will see A LOT!

Our tour began with our tour guide who was born in China to Korean parents. I'm sad to say that I don't know her name. She didn't speak any English either, but because I was American, she made a point to get me things that she thought I would like. Which was very kind and thoughtful of her.

Being a transportation engineer, I thought their toll gates were really cool because it actually reflected their culture. I mean look at the comparison between Chinese, Korean, and American toll gates.

China

 

Korea (Picture from Google Earth)

America (Jersey Turnpike Picture from Google Earth)

Who the heck designed these last two toll booths? Engineers?! haha. Even as an engineer, I know that just because things are "modern" doesn't mean that they have to be completely functional. I'm all about adding some ART and beauty to functional things.

Now, don't think I'm don't know the real reason why the Chinese toll booth is so decorative. When you have very limited entry ports into your country in which foreigners enter, you are going to want to give them a very good impression of your country as soon as possible. So you're going to want to spend the extra money prettying up functional and yet boring pieces of property as an advertisement for your country.

However, I think this brings up an interesting (well, to me, anyway) social commentary. In the engineering world, we rarely, if ever, get a client that comes to us and says, "I would like you to make this functional, environmentally friendly, and beautiful." No, rather, what we get are people who come to us that say, "Do the minimal possible so we can save money."

I believe that there are times when being completely functional can be detrimental to the soul. As humans, I believe we are inspired by beautiful things, which is why so many of us spend a lot of money to surround ourselves with beautiful things. Yet, what does it say for a society in which there are cookie cutter buildings? Sure, they're functional and cheap, but do we really want a society of concrete blocks? During my time in Korea, I found it rather depressing to be surrounded by boringly uniform apartment buildings that had a couple lines of paint on the otherwise plain concrete exterior. Where is the art? Where is the culture, the originality, the uniqueness of our towns and cities in the every day buildings? At times, I feel like our societal personalities are being sacrificed for the sake of the bottom dollar. There has to be a way to combine both.

Anywhoo, back to the trip. So the first place we are brought is to a Chinese circus. I don't particularly enjoy circuses, and was feeling rather drained so I kind of slept through most of this performance. I was told by my cousin that it was like the circus we saw in JeJu.

Then we went to dinner, where we had Peking Duck. OHMIGOD, how yummy!! Served Chinese style. In which you have a very large turn table in the center and very long chopsticks for you to grab what you wanted off the table. The people at our table took pity on me and indicated to me that I should use the soup spoon to scoop the pesky soft tofu onto my plate. Every time I attempted to pick some up, I would squeeze it too hard and it would split in two. I think they also got tired of waiting the several minutes it took me to grab ONE piece of tofu. haha Like the JeJu trip, they did not speak or ask about me with my cousin until the next day. They were trying to figure out why I would look at them blankly when they said something to them. ha!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Seriously, find and track down Peking Duck when in Peking (a.k.a. Beijing), you will NOT be disappointed. Yummo!

We later went to this area where they have the street vendors that have all the odd things to eat. Like scorpion and crickets on a stick. Ji-Eun and I stuck to the safer fruit stick.

At this place, which I don't know why we were there, is where I finally saw my first Chinese Guard. He graciously allowed me to take a picture with him.

I guess this was the "Western" district as there were a lot more guards and what seemed to be high end Western stores. I went into a bookstore called, "Bookstore for Westerners." This bookstore had a lot of books in English, mostly about China. I picked up several books about Chinese Medicine and Ji-Eun picked up books about Chinese painting. When I returned to Korea, my relatives rolled their eyes and commented that I was definitely my mother's daughter with all these books that I had accumulated while overseas. ha!

Then around 11 or so we got back to our hotel where we were told that we needed to be up by 6 to start our day. O_o