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M R . R O W E N ' S T R A V E L S
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I flew from Nepal to China and I was immediately struck by differences between the countries. In Nepal there weren't good roads, or no roads at all, and the cars were all over twenty years old, and there were animals loose in the city streets. I was pleasantly surprised to find that arriving in China is very much like arriving in an American city. There are comfortable taxis and buses waiting for you and there is an express highway running from the airport to the city. The city was filled with shiny glass and metal sky scrapers. It was definitely different from what I thought China was going to be like. It made me think about how coming from America we get ideas about things, but we really don't know the truth until we see for ourselves. Well, I quickly learned a lot about China. I stayed with a friend of mine, Andrew, who had lived and studied in China for over two years. Andrew now speaks Chinese very well and that was good, because very few people spoke English and I didn't speak a word of Chinese. The first thing I noticed about being in China, was just how Chinese everything was. I mean all the signs were in Chinese characters, there were no English signs. All the restaurants were Chinese. And most importantly, all the people were Chinese. And wow, were there a bunch of people. Every day I was in China, I was amazed by how many people there are. Everywhere I went, the market, the park, the tourist sites, the street, there were hundreds of people around. No matter what time of day or night, there seemed to always be a lot of people. While I was in Beijing, I saw some incredible old buildings. I saw the forbidden city and the summer palace. These were the home and vacation home of the emperors of China hundreds of years ago. They were enormous and every inch of the buildings was covered with paintings or sculptures or tiles. It was beautiful and so different than the castles of kings or the mansions of rich people. They were amazing. During the day, while Andrew went to work, I would borrow his bike and explore the city of Beijing, the capital of China and one of the biggest cities in the world. It was enormous. I biked for an hour one day and was still on the same road, and still not out of the central part of the city. One thing that was very different from America, was that so many people use bikes to get around. I saw mothers on bikes, business men in suits on bikes, I saw delivery boys on bikes, I saw all kinds of people on bikes. It was really fun to be a part of this big pack of bikes. But I had to be careful, because in China cars don't stop for people walking or biking, the cars just go and the bikers have to stop. It took some getting used to, because in America, I'm used to cars stopping for me when I'm in the cross walk. But not in China. After spending two weeks in Beijing with my friend Andrew, I flew way out west to a city called Uremichi. This city is along what was called the old silk road. Long ago, before it was easy to sail ships from Europe and other places to China, people used to have to go over land. People in Europe and the middle east wanted things that could only be found in China, mainly silk. So they would cross the long hard desert along this road that came to be known as "the silk road." The places along the silk road were little towns, but still with lots and lots of people, in the middle of a huge desert. When I rode there would be nothing but sand and rocks between each town. Sometimes the towns were hundreds of miles apart. While I was out in these places, I felt as far away from America as I've every been. The towns are as modern as an American town: they had phones and restaurant and street lights and traffic lights and everything. But everywhere I looked, everywhere I listened, everywhere I ate, everywhere everything was Chinese. I went a whole day without speaking a word of English, because there was no one to speak it to. It was hard at times to do simple things, like order my dinner, but I had a little book of Chinese phrases and words. I found that people are always really nice, and you can communicate a lot by just using your hands, facial expressions and gestures. The land out on the silk road was beautiful. The desert with its colors of sand and stone. The mountains and snowy peaks with a perfect little lake right in the middle of them. I spent some of my days just walking around the desert and the mountains. I traveled in between towns by buses and over the longer distances by train. I took one train ride that lasted 24 hours. When I finally got off the train, I was ready to not get back on another train for a while. But the transportation system in China was great. After being in Nepal where there are few roads, and the ones they have aren't so good, I was very surprised how easy it was to get from place to place. I stayed in Xian with another friend of mine named Marty who has lived in China for about two years and now he's an English teacher there. One day I went in to his class and talked to them in English about me and my trip and let them ask questions. They all wanted to know about America and what we think about China. I told them that many people in America don't know very much about China. China is a very big country. It's like America in that there are different parts with different people and things in each. New England is very different from California. And it's like that in China, one part is the same as another, so it's hard for me to tell you what China is like. I can just tell you what the parts that I visited were like. I will say this about China though, it is very old and has an amazing amount of history. But China is also very modern. There were so many people talking on cell phones in China, I never went more than one minute without hearing one ring. China is an exciting mix of old and new. And you can't forget, there are so many people!
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