Back to Tianjin, China

... riding in the put-put ...

We spent a long day in Beijing.

The next day we went only have 1/2 way – just to Tianjin.

Greg loves the beautiful new cruise terminal where we are docked.

In order to make it a pleasant place for westerners the Chinese play western music.

Whomever chooses the music picked a seasonal genre for us to hear – Jingle Bells play for us in April.

This is the place where reading English is as interesting as it can get, for there is a translation needed.

One of the beautiful restaurants was called Heaven on World, a huge sign on top of the restaurant that could be seen from the train, enticing us in. 

“Heaven on Earth is what they meant to say,” Greg whispered to me.

Getting off at the Citizens Plaza and looking around would have been enough to do.

Can you help us find a street market?

Hoping we could squeeze in a Traditional Market Wyona approached some young students who looked like they might speak English.

She said to them, “I see taxi drivers refusing to take people who are speaking Chinese to them.

What chance will we have in them taking us.”

The students went to work, later explaining that many of the taxis are not licensed to go over a nearby bridge and they have to refuse passengers who want to go there.

... thanking the driver with cash ...

To get around this problem, she put is in two put-puts telling the driver to take us to a market – what turned out to be a market celebrating traditional beauties of China.

Before we she left the young woman said that she doesn’t live here, but that she was meeting friends to go for western food and they wondered if we would like to join them.

We laughed and said, no, we have come a long way for Chinese food. Western food just won’t work for us.

... pearl display at street pearl stall ...

At the market, I found a pearl vendors and some silk scarves.

After negotiating prices on those for me, and further down the way, Wyona found another pearl vendor. “I want both of these necklaces and ½ of another, all restrung and I will be back at 3 pm to get them.”

 ... Wyona at pearl merchants ...

Wyona told them all of that without speaking a word of Chinese, nor them speaking a bit of English.

Sign language is a wonderful thing.

 And so was this market.

Many days later we were saying, “What was wrong with our heads. Why did we leave that market so early. We should have spent every cent we had there.”

... red rope is to keep too many customers from entering the store ...

On our journey home, the subway line we needed to take was broken.

We would not have known, just the 5 of us standing there waiting for a train.

But the penny didn’t drop for us.

 OR ... keep your hands out of the subway door ...

A young man with fashionably shredded jeans tried to speak to us.

Then he went to find someone in the subway to translate for him.

She came back and said in English, “This person is telling you that you should not stand here, for the train will never come. Follow him and he will take you to the right spot."

... goodnight Tianjinn ...

That was the answer to a tourist’s prayer.

One not yet even uttered.

Arta 

Going to Beijing

... dividing up the precious money ...

“Where do you catch the #102?” and “Does the #513 give change?”

Those were the first questions we heard after we had run through the parking lot, past the Celebrity Tour Coaches, trying to make our way to Beijing on our own and save the $450 the tours would have cost us.

No, the driver did not give change so an English speaker ahead of us on the bus opened up his wallet, gave Greg change for a 50 yuan and that answers the next question,“How did we pick up with those Australians?”

Greg hadn’t remembered that they were the ones who gave us the change to get on the bus.

They too were making their way to Beijing on their own.

Unlike us, they had never travelled somewhere before where no one spoke English.

And that was the glue that stuck them to us.

Wyona had sign-languaged her way into a young fellows heart who had a suitcase, and she trusted that he could get us off of the street where the bus dropped us, and into a train station.

We took an hour on the underground, then another hour on a train to Tianjin, and then a half an hour on a bullet train to Beijing.

... vendor selling paper hats ...

There wasn’t a corner that wasn’t fraught with difficulties – all five of us trying to figure out where to buy tickets, how to put the tickets into the turn styles, how to read the tickets so that we got on the first class trains and into the correct seats.

Grandma, can we take your picture?

“Grandma, can I take your picture?”

That is what two young girls said to Wyona in the square by the Forbidden City.

Yes, and you get in the picture too, she said, and in return, tell us how to get back to Tanggu.

“Oh, we are not from here, but we are tourists from another place in China,” they laughed.

.  guarding the Forbidden City ...

“Look at me. Now I am walking like an old person.” Those are the words of the 9th person who was crammed into a 7 seater taxi that brought us home.

A guy from Arizona (Greg suspects he was from Russia from his accent) had to sit on his friend’s lap, and he was perched there, one of his own arms on the driver’s headrest and one on the seat behind his friend.

They had been charged $500 American for their taxi ride into Tianjin in the morning, and knowing they had been ripped off, were standing beside us, trying to negotiate a fairer price on the way back to the ship at night.

Wyona had been off talking to a Chinese businessman this time, and asked him to negotiate the price for us.

Soon there was a yelling match going on, the three taxi drivers who were swarming us, trying to get us to pay their fares for rides pack to the port, and him, yelling at them in Chinese that they were ripping us off.

The language got louder and louder, the taxis were parked out in the street, as though the traffic back up and around them didn’t matter, and the student yelling louder and louder at them, taking on each new taxi driver that stopped.

Finally a larger van drove us, gave us a price of 180 yuan to take 9 people back to the port and we climbed in.

But only 8 of us made it into the taxi ... Greg still out on the street.

 ... We saw a portrait like this in a house in 7 Springs, Lee River ...

“I am not leaving without him. Let me out,” said Wyona.

So everyone scooched over and the Russian / Arizonian sat up on his friend’s lap, to make the whole deal work.

“Can you climb over this taxi barricade?” We were caught between a rock and a hard place – now in the taxi queue, but this time Wyona finding out from the woman ahead of us, that a taxi would take longer on top of the ground, than the subway would take below, but there was no way to get out of the line-up.

Greg was the first one to check out the barricade, to see that it was bolted to the ground, thus stable enough for all five of us to climb it, swing our legs over it, and head back to the subway to get to the Forbidden City.

Not dignified, but it worked. Won’t be able to travel when I can no longer swing my legs over high fences.

Arta

The Truth about Cruising

Greg tells everyone that his favorite joke of the comedians that we saw onboard goes like this.

Cruising is like having New Year's Eve every day. You eat too much. You drink too much. And you wake up and you don't know where you are.

The China / Japan / South Korea / Russia / Alaska cruise is over.  And I know where I am.

I tried to blog, but was frozen out of my account.

"You are blocked because there is suspicious activity in China."

That was me, trying to blog.

The tram driver ... in white gloves

I did send some pictures to Rebecca, but they didn't even go out of my email box to her until I got home today.

So here is what I wrote and what she put up:

Finally!

An email from Arta with a couple of photos.

She said to throw them on the blog.

The first two came with the email title, "Peace Park, Nagaskai". LRT driver wears white gloves"

The next four are from Busan, Korea.

It is what it is!  This is not the plastic food that you see in shop windows.
This is the real thing.

At this point Wyona and Greg were in the bank, exchanging money.

I was outside, mesmerized by the food market I was walking by.

One of the comedians on the cruise also said, "Would people stop taking pictures of food? Are you all from Ethiopia?"

Yes -- some of us with cameras just can't help taking pictures of the food!

Last, three photos from Tianjin and Beijing!

Greg thinks while he tastes new market food.

My travel adventures are about looking at what is going on.

I want to stop and let people pass by me and I like to watch them. 

Greg does twice as much of that as I do.

Wyona's adventures also including shopping -- she sees a new food in a window, and before Greg and I can cross at a light, she has gone in and purchased some pastries, or bought a snack from a street vendor.

This is ordinary to some people.
This is really interesting to a prairie girl.

The picture of Greg eating warily in the market place is a shot of something new Wyona has purchased.  Greg's job is to eat the major part of everything she buys.

Wyona and I nibbling just bits of it.

Then she goes back for a second, because we can't decided if we liked it or not.

No use getting one each yet.

Then we go back and each get one.

The next day we were out looking for more of those snacks when we should have been sight seeing.

More later for interested readers.

Arta

Pearls

“The pearls are beautiful. They match your eyes.” Ever hear a cornier line than that from a jeweller.

I look, but I don’t buy.

I was alone at the pearl seminar on the ship a few days ago – exciting, sitting there, having thousands of dollars worth of chokers and rings passed around the room.

Slipping right through my fingers and on to the next person, after I have taken a good look, especially at the flaws and  dimples that the jeweller has said to look for.

 ... pearls still in the shell ...

This year, I have had a new appetite for pearls but no information about them – shape (round or baroque), size, colour, and skin purity. At least to learn about them. And on any shopping trip, I find myself going into small shops to see what selection they have in their show cases. There aren’t as many available varieties as a person might think – or perhaps I go to the wrong places to shop.

In Tianjin, Wyona and I walked through a market – and we got stuck at a sidewalk merchant’s kiosk – me first of all, and then her later down the line. Now this is a long story. No one spoke English. There were 5 strings of pink pearls. Wyona decided they would look nice, 2 ½ strings for her and 2 ½ strings for me. Now the trouble was, pantomiming this for the merchant and establishing a price. All she did was gather to both sides of her and behind her, many Chinese women, watching her and then the merchant – all of them trying to figure out what she was doing. Her signed language worked – 2 strands, one for each of us, knotted, paid for and picked up by 3 pm.

... every colour, every size, every hue ...

Now if that worked once, it should work twice – this time with tri-coloured pearls.

Put the two strings together and she would be back for them in 20 minutes.

It was when we got home and were studying their natural beauty that she began to laugh.

The pearls are white, pink and peach, one of each and then the pattern is replicated.

Wyona behind the earring rack and speaking with the clerk

The trouble is that the second necklace is 2 whites, 2 pinks, 2 peaches, and then the pattern repeated.

So half of the necklace has one design and the other half of the loop has the other design.

I was wondering tonight when we were watching the TV show were people take in their family treasures and have them appraised by an auctioneer, what the appraiser will say when one of her daughters takes that treasure in the Antique Roadshow, Maryland.

Arta

Bedtime Stories in China

 ...charming tourist market in Tianjinn ...

Wyona and I were too tired to read our emails a couple of days ago.

But we agreed we could listen if they were read to us as a bedtime story for us.

Greg agreed to read.  We listened. That worked.

Last night, just as we were going to sleep we begged for more stories.

Greg studying the streets in the market
We must go back to do them justice.

With no book in hand, he free-lanced and asked if we knew what three ingredients make China so successful today.

Was it the opium balls, I guessed, since I had gone to the lecture on how the opium wars had nearly destroyed China. Greg, who had also been at that lecture, said he wasn’t thinking along that line, but he had three other things to share.

... detail from ceiling of market building ...

The Chinese dictator in the 1980’s who opened up the way for there to be a Chinese business class – that was one important event. Having a single party system in China, that helps to get a lot done. There is no opposition getting in the way of progress. The third item making China successful is an inexhaustible supply of labour. Without hardly a pause between Greg’s last word in that sentence, and the beginning of the next sentence, Wyona seemed to be interrupting him. She was not interrupting him, for she said to me, would you believe Greg is already asleep.

No kidding, I said, waiting for Greg to pipe up. A long silence. You have got to be kidding!

“Yes,” said Wyona. “ I could tell he was dosing off when his words became slower and more carefully articulated. He is way under right now. Our laughing is not going to wake him up. I hope you can remember what he said for it is over now.”

... vendor in the market ...

I didn’t care if Greg goes to sleep in the middle of the bedtime stories. I learned three important things about China from him– more than I can remember from the volumes I was reading before I left on this trip.

Greg is a fantastic travelling companion. He can gives deeper, more academic lectures than the ones we hear on the boat. All he has to hear is a question asked and see an interested listener.

Greg? Why am I seeing so many shipping containers and no factories. This is going on for miles and miles. Maybe 20 minutes now.

Greg? Why are there so many road fly overs and round abouts and no vehicles using them -- no private vehicles on them, and no semi’s? 

She is as interested in me, as I am in her.

Greg? How did you know the exact spot on the street where the incident with the tank took place just before Tienanmen Square?

Greg? How do you know which line on the subway we should be taking? And how did you spot the entrance to the underground.

Greg? Why are the police stopping all of those kids at the bottom of the escalator and demanding to look at their passports? 

Greg has an answer for everything. For the last question, he reminded me that Chinese people are not free to travel in their own country, as we are. They have documents that tell them where they can go and where they cannot go.

A privilege to travel with Greg.

Arta