Costa Rica had sufficiently given me the travel bug. With a combination of my persistent pleading to travel again, along with my brother’s graduation coming in the future year (my parents wanted to “do something as a family before he left”), and my mother’s fascination with China, the travel bug quickly transferred to my family as well.
Just like that, the McDavid’s were off to China. Despite having extremely limited experience with traveling abroad, we hopped on our fourteen–hour plane ride to China and let the adventure of immersing one’s self into a foreign culture and environment begin!
On our two-week excursion to a totally different world we visited four cities: Beijing, Xian, Guilin, and Shanghai.
Beijing
Our experience of Beijing was overcome with the experience of city life while still visiting the more historical, tourist sites such as the Forbidden City.
While exploring the city, we had the opportunity to have lunch with a local family. I am pretty sure the food from this meal was my favorite food on the entire two-week trip. There was nothing over-the-top or fancy about it, but the dishes were absolutely amazing! The food was served on a round table with a lazy-susan in the middle; we all sat around the table and shared each dish while being overcome with the assortment of various sweet and savory dishes that were presented before us (my personal favorite was chicken sliced very thinly with a savory sauce that was mixed with perfectly green, crunchy, and juicy garlic shoots).
The house was in a smaller community that had a very narrow alley-way running through it. In the community, there were probably four or five houses of similar size, and in the center of where the houses were, there was a communal bathroom in which I had my first experience with a true Chinese toilet (quite different than Western toilets!) Although I absolutely loved all the tourist-sites that we visited while in China, it was such an amazing opportunity to undergo some more authentic Chinese experiences while visiting this family.
Also, while we were in Beijing, we had the opportunity to visit the Great Wall, which is only about an hour outside of the city. Reflecting on the experience of actually being at the Great Wall leaves me absolutely awestruck by the experience. I remember the day that we went to the Great Wall so vividly and how absolutely overcome with excitement I was. The anticipation of actually witnessing its greatness in person left my thirteen-year-old self in a ball of wonder. I distinctly remember about twenty minutes into the car ride looking out the window and expecting to see the wall. I thought to myself: if it was really that big, we would probably be driving alongside it for miles before we got to the actual area that we would stop and visit.
Every spot in the trees or change in the terrain in the mountains around us had me squeal with delight as I thought it was a glimpse of the wall, only to be quickly struck with reality as it once again was not the treasure I was looking for. In the end, having the opportunity to experience its absolutely amazing presence and the history that was underneath each of its strategically crafted stones allowed all the anticipation to be 100% worth it.
Xian
After Beijing, we hopped on another plane and arrived in Xian which was not quite as bustling and crowded as Beijing but definitely still had a life of its own. The focal point around our time in Xian was Shi Huangdi’s Terra Cotta Soldiers. This was another especially exciting site to visit because it was another site that I knew about before coming into the trip. We entered into the tomb in which the 8,000 terracotta soldiers all stood stoically before us. Although it was absolutely breath taking to experience the sheer number of soldiers that stood before us, each created by hand with individual, unique facial features, one detail that I found especially interesting was a section in the back of the tomb.
When you first entered the excavation site you witnessed all the soldiers standing before you; however, as you moved away from the entrance you began seeing the initial image of perfected soldiers deteriorate. Some soldiers were missing arms, legs, heads, etc. As you moved back even further, the soldiers had simply become a pile of crushed clay. I was obviously expecting the soldiers to be damaged as I knew that something as fragile as terracotta clay would not with–stand all the years and trauma. What I did find shocking, though, was that in the back there was an area of reconstruction, where the soldiers were being reassembled. Although we could see that they were not all perfect as they initially appeared, officials standing around this area (in addition to countless signs) were extremely strict to not take any images of this section. This desire to hideaway the imperfections paired with the specific way in which the exhibit was laid out and presented resonated with me deeply and gave me a very new perspective when visiting historical exhibits.
In an effort to prevent this blog from becoming a mega–blog, I think I will have to share my other experiences in future blogs in addition to wrapping up my experience with the country as a whole. Although I have only touched upon extremely touristy things (being honest, I was a tourist, so my experience was primarily made up of these types of excursions), I look forward to sharing some less obvious experiences in my next post! Plus, I am excited to share about my favorite city, Guilin. Stay tuned for an ongoing retelling of my experiences and love for this extremely interesting country!
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