myChinaBlog

9 June 2008

We’re Back!!

Posted by Andrew under: 0. Home China Page .

But we have three more cities to blog about! We had a fantastic journey and no one got sick or hurt (ok, I rolled off my bike in Yangshou but those were superficial scrapes - it was either roll or fall into a rice field!). We’ll continue the blog because we won’t see everyone for awhile so please come back to see more pix.

We’ll eventually put ALL the pictures on one whole page so that you can view all the best pix, umm, out of 5,000 or so total, we found that at least 500 were worth showing. Did I mention how impressed we are with the Panasonic Lumix LZ (we got it for safari and it is a great regular travel/trip camera? I found a new setting that I started using to catch movement that I wasn’t aware of before so I think overall my shots are better.

Additional China musings:

great people, everyone we met was helpful, even when we weren’t directly asking for it
we had no idea that we were even in a Communist country, they have a lot more freedom than we realize - just don’t write about dissent or publicly avow your anti-government views
they certainly know a lot of English, enough that we could have broken English-Chinese conversations
the signs, in pinyin and Chinese, are everywhere so I could learn both the written and pronunciation
cleaner than expected, people get paid for recyclable items so they descend on the garbage and it’s taken away
both the Peking Duck and the crispy roast pork are better in China
more bikes in Beijing than Shanghai (and they can’t stand each other, lol!)
Western-style toilet - perfect for homes but unsanitary outside - they’d rather squat!
yes, the Chinese are hardworking and things moved more efficiently than here in the U.S.