I am on the can.
By the way, China fills their toilets up with hot water. I can feel the steam right now on my rear end. Maybe if they took away the idea of "Tide Cold Water," things would be more green.
This will be our second day out in Xi'an (pronounced, "Shee-Ann") and I believe we're seeing the Terracotta Army. There is also a traditional Chinese theatre show scheduled along with another dinner banquet.
But let's get back to Pearson International Airport and Toronto – the real motherland.
Joe Warmington dropped me off at the airport and I checked into Hainan Airlines. They sent me up to the KLN First Class Airport Lounge and I immediately ran towards the mini bags of almonds and peanuts.
We boarded our plane at around 5 p.m. I was surprised to find out that fellow traveler Chloe Tse's mom works at the Sun and I was also about to fly to China with my city editor Jonathan Kingstone's mother. What a small world.
I show the beautiful stewardesses in purple my boarding pass and instead of the usual two-finger point to the right towards economy class, they welcome me to first class. Holy moly.
I felt like a hobo. Well, a hobo in first class.
Seriously.
I'm not used to this. I'm used to eating the scraps left from business class and my legs falling asleep from being squished. And if ever there was a flight to stretch my midget legs out, this was it.
Thirteen hours. YYZ to PEK.
Relatively painless made by getting to know Chloe, this sassy lesbian, next to me. We seem to have formed a bond – And before Jim Thomson suggests, I'm not implying we're bonded by a Chinese finger trap.
Also, a shot of Bailey's helped put me to sleep.
The airline staff gave us slippers, the seats reclined into beds, the blankets were duvets. I fell asleep trying to watch Easy A twice. Ah, life is good.
After 13 hours though, all you want to do is hit the hotel and go to bed. But we still had another four hours ahead of us by getting to another terminal to board our ride to Xi'an. Four hours later, we made it.
At the beginning of these junkets I always look for the one "problem" person in the group – the someone who makes it difficult, feels entitled. I'm still sleuthing it out but I think I might've figured out who killed Col. Mustard with the notepad.
Xi'an.
If you speak Cantonese, no one will understand you. It's strictly Mandarin and the two are not interchangeable. Also, I keep getting told I "can't speak Chinese," which makes me wonder if Mandarin-ites think they're all that and a bag of chips.
We left the hotel around 10 a.m. The jet lag didn't really occur to me.
First stop was the Wild Goose Pagoda. Legend has it in around 625 AD, this temple was built. The Buddhists took it as a sign from their God that it was good fortune when a wild goose dropped dead at their doorsteps, offering them animal meat after a steady diet of vegetables only. So they named this temple after them where many still come today to pray.
We also took a city tour where I found out just how crazy Asian drivers.
I no longer believe the stereotype that Asians are bad drivers. I wholeheartedly think Westerners couldn't cut it out here. There really aren't too many traffic laws, you see scooters with whole families on them splitting lanes, whizzing by pedestrians and between cars, buses and bicycles.
It's insane there aren't a thousand fatalities each day. You can with some of the photos I'm posting. So why are we called bad drivers over in North America? If you get used to driving this way in Asia and come over to Canada and pull the same shit, everyone will label you that. The traffic is awful here, especially around 5-8 p.m. Eight million people – one million of them have cars. Makes the DVP not even that bad.
The tourism association scheduled us to attend a conference with the head of Xi'an Horticultural Expo 2011, a big deal to the city. It's essentially a giant flower show they're construction for April and tons of work needs to be done. They want 12 millions of visitors to come to this city. What was weird was the news story for the Chinese reporters and TV cameras was us. Canadians were coming to the city, so they were treating us like A-List Celebrities (Maybe they heard we flew over first class?). But we'd ask questions during the conference and photogs would be trigger happy. It felt like the pressure was on.
The dumpling banquet at dinner was interesting. I think, 18 courses. I ate frog. I'm more looking forward to trying the scorpions on a stick.
Cindy, Brick (our tourism contact), Chloe and I toured the night market. It was very similar to Hong Kong's Temple St. Market, selling overpriced souvenirs to tourists, but with one very distinct difference: the smell. The smell of stinky tofu made Chloe wretch a few times. And nearly getting hit by speeding scooters cars and bikes in the tight alleyways. No one gives a shit about pedestrians so always look forwards and backwards. No one will stop if they hit you.
I am having a great time in Xi'an. My family (dad's side) is originally from farther south in Canton on the mainland, but this still feels like "the motherland."
National Jennygraphic continues...
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