David Sirota's "Amazin Adventure in China!" His Rick Steves view of his Exprience, Here:

[KoKo]

NOTE: This is the first in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential Chinese government censorship/sanctions for publishing while in China. You can browse the entire photo and video catalogue from our trip here.

As some background on our journey, my wife Emily and I visited both coastal and the less-well-traveled interior regions of China for about three weeks in June and July. We were guided around the country by my longtime friend Mike Levy, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in China and who has a forthcoming book about his experiences entitled "Kosher Dogmeat." These reports describe what we saw through the eyes of a progressive and just an average American.

I don't purport to be any kind of China expert - three weeks in the Middle Kingdom does not make a sinologist. Nonetheless, I hope you read these reports to both to get a sense of the travel and tourist sights/sounds/tastes China offers, and to hear about the political and cultural topography we experienced. - D

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JULY 14, 2009 1:37PM
An American Griswold In China: Gateway to the Mainland
NOTE: This is the first in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential Chinese government censorship/sanctions for publishing while in China. You can browse the entire photo and video catalogue from our trip here.

As some background on our journey, my wife Emily and I visited both coastal and the less-well-traveled interior regions of China for about three weeks in June and July. We were guided around the country by my longtime friend Mike Levy, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in China and who has a forthcoming book about his experiences entitled "Kosher Dogmeat." These reports describe what we saw through the eyes of a progressive and just an average American.

I don't purport to be any kind of China expert - three weeks in the Middle Kingdom does not make a sinologist. Nonetheless, I hope you read these reports to both to get a sense of the travel and tourist sights/sounds/tastes China offers, and to hear about the political and cultural topography we experienced. - D
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DAYS 1 & 2: Gateway to the Mainland

Our trip begins in Hong Kong, the gateway to the Chinese mainland. We landed here on Friday, 6/19, at around 1pm and were downtown by around 3:30pm. The subway system, as Mike promised, is extremely efficient. Indeed, everything here is extremely efficient - there simply is no waiting for buses, taxis or subways. It kinda makes you wonder - if they can be this efficient in China, why can't we be so efficient in America's big cities?

On our first day, we first wandered around the Central district on Hong Kong Island, inadvertently stumbling into a series of alleyway markets that sell everything from dried shark fins (which environmental officials have urged the Chinese to stop eating) to textiles to incense to strange fruits we've never seen.

From Central, we took the subway across the channel to Tsim Sha Tsui, on Kowloon (the peninsula of mainland China that Hong Kong island sits across from). We walked along Nathan Road, which is known as a high-end shopping district and stopped in at the famous Peninsula Hotel (though we did not have traditional tea time there). For dinner, we ate at a cheesy Cantonese restaurant in the Miramar Mall - it was actually like an American chinese restaurant, though we were the only westerners in there.

Walking back towards the tip of the peninsula along Nathan Road, we saw a bit of the laser light show that happens nightly against the skyline of the Hong Kong island cityscape across the water. Then we took the Star Ferry across the channel and cabbed it home.

Our bodies had not (and still have not) adjusted to the time change, so we were up extremely early on Saturday.

Breakfast at the YWCA (which is included in our hotel fee) is a strange mix of western and Chinese food. Fried eggs, potatoes, meats, green salad, vermicilli noodles, cereal, hard boiled eggs and pork dumplings. Because we were up so early, we were among the first on the Peak Tram - the old cable car that takes people up to the top of Victoria Peak.

The city on Hong Kong island is built on the steep north face of Victoria Peak, with streets cutting the mountain into a series of steps (our hotel is in "mid-levels" - ie. the middle of the slope). The tram takes you all the way up to the top of the peak, which is less a peak and more an east-west ridge. From the top, you can look north over the top of the Hong Kong island skyline over to the Kowloon skyline. You can also look south towards the South China sea and the outerlying islands (more on the islands in a second).

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_sirota/2009/07

More...with links to Days 1-3 for those who want to know more...and it's good read....

/14/an_american_griswold_in_china_gateway_to_the_mainland

[KoKo]

1. Apology: Took me so long to revise this post ..folks might have ignored it...

So...I'll give a bit of a kick for "Edit."

[Individualist]

2. K&R

[KoKo]

3. The foodie thing...I read before dinner...........

I can understand why we get so much "uninspected crap" from China that kills our pets and does "who knows" what damage to the rest of us.

They just "don't know what they eat" and they must be immune to the toxins ....they are just trying to get ahead. We don't get "real news from China" ...just like they don't get "real news" that's of consequence from the US. :-(

But, the Foodie Situation is a disaster according to "Western Tastes" in food..UGH~

[KoKo]

4. The "Link" goes to "Not Found" but here's the ORIGINAL that WORKS!

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_sirota/2009/07/14/an_american_griswold_in_china_gateway_to_the_mainland

[Gabi Hayes]

5. anybody who's interested in the above should really like this:

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze )
by Peter Hessler

In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. In River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Hessler tells of his experience with the citizens of Fuling, the political and historical climate, and the feel of the city itself.
"Few passengers disembark at Fuling ... and so Fuling appears like a break in a dream--the quiet river, the cabins full of travelers drifting off to sleep, the lights of the city rising from the blackness of the Yangtze," says Hessler. A poor city by Chinese standards, the students at the college are mainly from small villages and are considered very lucky to be continuing their education. As an English teacher, Hessler is delighted with his students' fresh reactions to classic literature. One student says of Hamlet, "I don't admire him and I dislike him. I think he is too sensitive and conservative and selfish." Hessler marvels,

You couldn't have said something like that at Oxford. You couldn't simply say: I don't like Hamlet because I think he's a lousy person. Everything had to be more clever than that ... you had to dismantle it ... not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it.
Over the course of two years, Hessler and Meier learn more they ever guessed about the lives, dreams, and expectations of the Fuling people.
Hessler's writing is lovely. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant--and just as often, funny. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. Hessler returned to the U.S. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too. --Dana Van Nest --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

check out the uniformly glowing reviews here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060855029/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk