China Trip, Day 5 - July 29

Today was our last day in Beijing, so we packed and brought our luggage down to the lobby to checkout and get it loaded onto the bus. Angie collected our passports and tickets to get us checked in on the airline. Because of our excursion the night before, Siegrid, Aisling and I were watching very closely to make sure that people showed up at breakfast, hoping we hadn't lost anyone! We didn't. We actually had a little time at the hotel after breakfast and then left and went to a very early lunch before going to the airport. Angie spent some time on the bus comparing Beijing and Shanghai. Beijing is actually bigger than Shanghai - 16,800 sq. km compared to 6000 sq km in Shanghai. However, the population of Shanghai, at 19 million, is larger than Beijing's 17 million. Beijing was feeling pretty crowded to me, so I could only imagine what Shanghai must be like. Angie indicated that Beijing is often known China's Washington DC, while Shanghai is known as China's New York. A third city that we visit, Hangzhou, is known as China's Venice, because it's full of canals. Angie also mentioned that the food in Shanghai is different to Beijing, commenting that it's more sweet and less seasoned.

After lunch, which was very good, we said goodbye to Angie, Hunter and Mr Wu, the parking master, at the airport. We went to the gate to find that our flight was delayed, so we spent some time playing cards at the gate. Then our gate was changed, and we had to run to the new gate.

While waiting for this flight, I had a rather bizarre bathroom experience. Now at the airport, at least all the bathrooms were western style, rather than the Chinese "squatting" style, which I really found hard to master. Anyhow, I went into the airport bathroom, and found that the lines were by stall rather than one single line. I, of course, got in line for the slowest stall. I was standing there for so long I was wondering if it was out of order or something, when the woman who was in there dropped her compact. Turns out she was putting her makeup on in there. She finally came out. I was pretty quick in the bathroom, but the woman in line behind me knocked on the door like I was too slow. It was very weird.

The flight from Beijing to Shanghai was bumpy, but we arrived safe, although quite late. We flew into Shanghai Hongqiao airport, the domestic airport. There's also an international airport that we would fly out of later. Nobody's luggage got lost, so we went to the terminal and met our new bus captain, Jenny. It was definitely hot and humid when we got to Shanghai, but it seemed less smoggy than Beijing. We saw the sun there, which we hadn't seen at all in Beijing. We got on the bus and drove to our first stop, Souzhou, about two hours from Shanghai. I thought that Shanghai looked quite different to Beijing as we drove along the freeway. We arrived in Souzhou at about nine. It was really pretty charming. There were lots of canals, and it was very nicely lit up. Also, the streets were smaller, it's a much smaller city than Beijing, and the way the driver maneuvered the bus was pretty amazing. While there were still a lot of bikes on the roads, there were also a lot of mopeds. I don't think I saw a single helmet on a bike or moped rider in China, and in Souzhou, the mopeds didn't seem to have lights either. Jenny explained that the government encourages the use of mopeds, which are electric, to minimize pollution, by levying large taxes on cars and motorbikes.

We got to the restaurant, and the food was different to what we had in Beijing. There was a soup made from some local plant that grows in the lake, I forget the name. That soup got mixed reviews, but I personally liked it. Jenny made a joke about food - Chinese people eat everything with two wings except a plane and everything with four legs, except the table. Also, Jenny seems to be pretty obsessed with marriage and romance. She made several jokes about Chinese women looking for a 3C man - a man with a car, career and credit card.

Jenny also talked about the Family Planning Policy in China. Angie spent a lot of time talking about this too. They noted that without this policy, the population in China would be about 1.9 billion. (It's currently 1.3 billion). They were very careful to point out that it's not just a one-child policy, it also encourages later marriage and later childbearing, and they both pointed out several times that there are exceptions to the one-child rule. For example, if you and your spouse are the child of two only children, you can have two children. Also, they discourage learning the gender of the child before birth to avoid abortions. It's really interesting that previous generations were really encouraged to have lots of children, as Mao felt their strength was in their population. It's amazing that they have gone from families with six or seven children to one-child families in the space of a single generation.

In Souzhou we stayed in a Holiday Inn. It was very new and the room was nice.