Last Day in China - 23 September

We were able to sleep in an extra ½ hour this morning and it felt so damn good! Even that small amount of additional sleep made a huge difference to us. We were on the bus at 8:30 and headed off to the Forest of Stelae Museum. It houses over 7,000 stelae which are stone pillars carved for commemorative purposes with the earliest dating from the Han dynasty (I have no idea how long ago that was). It was interesting for about five minutes but all 7,000 of the stelae looked alike to me so I wandered outside and enjoyed the museum grounds which had small temples in the gardens and also horse hitching stakes which I found to be the most fascinating.

After the museum, we went to the local university where we received a class in calligraphy. It was fantastic. Our teacher didn’t speak any English and we didn’t speak any Cantonese so our tour guide translated for us. It was so much fun! The teacher was very kind and patient with us. We learned about 20 words and how to write them using a calligraphy stylus. At first, I was terrible at it but slowly learned how to do it properly. The activity definitely doesn’t classify as a “touristy” but I am really glad that I had the opportunity to do this.

Afterward, we went to lunch at a restaurant located at the top of a 20-story hotel. The restaurant was supposed to rotate a la Space Needle style but didn’t. I had the same smog infested view of the city during the hour that we were there. The food wasn’t very good either. Overall, it was a very forgettable experience.

We then got back on the bus and went to the Bell Tower which is a 600 year old bell tower that is smack dab in the middle of an intersection. It can only be accessed via an underground tunnel. It was a great place to go to in terms of photos of the city. I’m afraid I’m getting temple- and tower-fatigue at this point and only the most dramatic edifices get my admiration. I need to get over that since we still have many countries yet to be visited that having stunning temples to admire.

With the Bell Tower duly admired, we headed down some back alleys and marketplace to get to the Muslim section of town where a mosque was located. It was a beautiful area (the mosque, not the alleys) and we enjoyed a few minutes of peace and serenity before launching into the market area for yet more shopping. Eileen and I went through the market using the buddy system for getting out of there without spending the bulk of our paychecks. The merchandise was so tempting yet we had already bought more than was comfortable carrying back on the airline. We managed to escape with minimal purchases and got to the meeting point with great relief.

We were back on the bus at 4:30 and headed for the airport to fly to Hong Kong. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and waited around for 1 ½ hours for our flight to be called. We finally got on the plane with our gazillion pounds of merchandise – totally over the 11 pounds per person limit that we had been given. Fortunately, the airline officials didn’t weigh anything and we didn’t have to leave anything behind.

It was a three hour flight to Hong Kong and we were all beyond exhausted when we landed at 10:30 pm. It took us a while to gather in the appropriate place with a few people wandering off to the ATM at a point where we were ready to leave. I thought we should leave them behind but that may have been because I was a wee bit cranky again. Fathom that!

We finally arrived at the ship at midnight and it was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen! We crawled through the terminal (which was actually a shopping mall) and up the gang plank. Fortunately, the security check-in didn’t take more than 15 minutes – it’s taken several hours at other ports. I was whimpering with joy as I opened the door to my room and dumped my 105 pound duffle bag on my bed. I didn’t know what to do first – take a shower or collapse on my bed. I voted for the shower since I was covered with unidentifiable crude from Xi’an and didn’t want to contaminate my sheets. Unfortunately, after the shower I was wide awake so I went up to the computer lab to check my e-mail (how pathetic is that?) and sent a very quick, and hopefully coherent, e-mail to my family. I finally returned to my cabin and crawled between the sheets thanking every god known to man that I was “home”. I had a phenomenal time in China but the relief of being in my own room again was unspeakable. I’ll probably need a couple of days to come to terms with my time in China – hopefully, this blog will help me achieve that.