Frequently Asked Questions about my China vacation
Why did you take a tour in Beijing?
I took a tour in Beijing because I was going to be alone in a country where I couldn't even recognize the characters in the language let alone read or speak it. Something always goes wrong when I travel, and it's a lot easier to deal with those problems when you are with someone else.
What did your Beijing tour cost and what did you get?
I couldn't believe the deal I got -- 5 nights in a 4-star resort, my own private tour guide, my own private driver, all breakfasts and lunches, one dinner, admission to all the attractions, and airport pickup/dropoff at somewhat extreme hours -- all this for $840. In short, everything was included except airfare (round trip from Shanghai was about $240), dinners, and souveniers.
Wow! How did you get a deal like that?
I went through www.chinahighlights.com - they have many standard packages from which to choose. But I wanted to see more of the Great Wall than what they offered. So I asked about a custom deal and they set me up. Very easy to work with over email, and very reliable. All of this was completely prearranged before I arrived.
That's still expensive for my blood.
You have many alternatives. Public transportation is widely available, yet crowded, and excursions can be booked via any hotel.
Did you take a tour in Suzhou?
I had one free day in Suzhou by myself so got a spontaneous 1-day city tour through the hotel I stayed at. There are tons of tour guides in Suzhou, and tons of Chinese use them, too.
Was Suzhou really a beautiful city?
All the Chinese I met call Suzhou their most beautiful city, even the ones that had never been there. As far as cities go it wasn't bad. There are certainly tens of thousands of cities that are worse. And it was the nicest city I saw in China. But it wasn't as nice as Vancouver or San Francisco, for example.
I'm not one to call a city "beautiful" in the first place. Suzhou had almost no birds or critters, Not even pigeons. It was very crowded, and the sky was a constant gray. But the weather may have easily been just the week I was there.
Tell me about the foot massages!
In a word, awesome. I didn't see them in Beijing, really. But in Suzhou there was a place right across the street from my hotel, and we passed several more. You get over 1 hour of massage for your feet and lower legs. They slap, rub, frind, pummel, and otherwise torture your feet while you sit comfortably in a chair watching a Chinese soap opera on TV. It feels pretty good - not great - while it's happening, but when it's done and you get up to walk away it feels amazing. I felt five pounds lighter, like I was walking on air on a pair of brand new feet that had never been used!!! And all of this cost me $5.
What was the food like?
The food in Suzhou was very good. They had a lot of fish from the river and a lot of fresh vegetables, presumably grown locally. Beijing was good, too. There it was mostly pork and chicken. The duck dinner I had there was fabulous. WARNING -- DO NOT EAT ANYTHING FROM THE STREET VENDORS. You are virtually guaranteed to get violently ill. I heeded this advice and was fine throughout the entire trip. I also always drank bottled water. But I heard plenty of horror stories about people who did eat the street vendors' fare, and they paid dearly.
Did anyone speak English?
Yes. Certainly the tour guides did, and the hotel staffs did. Most of the locals did not. My driver in Beijing did not speak English. Many of the tourist shopkeepers spoke English. About what you'd expect.
That said, English writing was everywhere. Almost all roadsigns and tourist shop signs had both Chinese and English. Many people wore shirts with (sometimes unintelligible) English phrasing. I was surprised to see that all license plates were entirely English characters - no Chinese at all.
What was the economic situation as you saw it?
Keep in mind that this trip was Sept 2005. I had tour guides in both Beijing and Suzhou. I figure that a tour guide is a pretty middle-class occupation. Their setups were similar - each owned a PC, TV, and a medium-end stereo system in their 70-90m^2 3Br 2Ba apartments, which they owned. Each had the maximum 1 child, each had their wife working. Neither owned a car.
A car is the single most sought after purchase in China. If you have a car you have made it. But the streets are already completely jammed with cars when <10% of the population owns them. If everyone gets a car it will be chaos. But a car represents the ultimate freedom - with a car you can go anywhere at any time - so you can see why the entire population is itching to get one.
I saw something strange in Suzhou, more so than in Beijing. Certainly high-rise construction is absolutely everywhere, but in Suzhou I noticed many many completed apartment buildings with nobody living in them. How can you tell? The apartments that are full have laundry or decorations hanging out of the windows. There are perhaps hundreds of apartment buildings with no signs of life, and hundreds more going up. This can’t be a good sign.
Did you notice any government suppression?
No. People seemed to be able to do what they wanted to do. I noticed no bizarre restrictions. The cable TV stations pretty much looked like American TV stations - they even had 2 music video channels including MTV - but perhaps without as much skin showing. Nobody talked about the government, though, which I probably should have guessed. I didn’t ask any questions either.
What were the people like?
Very friendly and generally happy except for on the road. It’s every man for himself when driving, something that made me think twice about attitudes towards their fellow citizens. My Beijing driver edged out a police car to get across an intersection 5 seconds earlier, for example.
99.999% of them were in shape. So next time you hear someone in America complain about the "impossibly thin model image promoted by our media there’s a country with 1.4 billion people who are all "impossibly thin. These people aren’t complainers either. I saw 80 year old men pedaling bicycles loaded with 50lb bags of vegetables, tons of people bicycling to work... By comparison, here in the USA I see people carrying their laptops in a wheeled briefcase getting on the elevator to go to the second floor. I saw a weird infomercial on Chinese TV - they were selling an abdominizer using an American commercial with Caucasian actors and Chinese overdubs. Who were they going to sell this device to here? Nobody needs it!
Nobody in China is on excessively prescribed medication, and all have an extremely high work ethic. This century will see the USA cede the #1 economy title to China.
Did you go to the Peking Opera?
Yes, and it wasn't very exciting. It's full of caucasian tourists and the show just didn't float my boat. There are better things to see in Beijing.
How do I contact Suzhou's Number One Silk Factory?
Hmmm. Plenty of people want to get in touch with them. According to another travel website I found:
Suzhou No. 1 Silk Mill China Co., Ltd.
No. 94 Nan Men Road
Suzhou City
PRC
lst-silk @ 163.com
011-86-512-65208807 (as of April 2005)
If you find that it has changed, please email me the new info so I can post it.
