Suna in Wonderland

When guest visiting your place, being a host is not easy at all. Showing scenic places is pretty easy but when it comes to restaurant, i find it bit of headache. Have to consider price range, place, hygiene level, taste/characteristic of food and service while able to show Chinese culture.

Here is one nice restaurant to pay a visit.

We went to Sichuan hotpot restaurant “海底捞火锅” (HaiDiLaoHuoGuo). Friday night, day before 中秋节 and without reservation, we were in bad timing. We waited for one hour to get a table, but it was still ok, because there were plenty of things to do while waiting. Have place to sit for waiting, cards, chess, game supplies, computers with internet, nail beauty service, drinks ,snacks, fruits and shoe polishing were provided all free. Customers can kill their time without being bored, more importantly not likely walk out of restaurant tired of waiting. In our case, my sister went for nail beauty service, and my dad and I had time to catch up stories while waiting for my husband to arrive.

Nail beautify service

Once we got seat, food was of course good quality and tasteful, but more amazed was the service they provide. Provide endless hot towel to wash your hands, cloths to clean your glass, transparent cover for your phone on the table, hang apron for you and also have cover for your bags. Plus whatever you order, they respond very quick. It’s real good even extreme service that you rarely see in China. Another fortunate thing was that they had English menu that made our lives easy. We had great time together. My dad can be very tenacious when it comes to restaurant service, but he was fully satisfied.

One thing should try to order in this restaurant is Laomian (老面). Someone will come to table and start dancing with dough making thin-wide noodles. I think this is highlight event in this restaurant. Also have sauce buffet that able to make your own sauce here.

It’s depends on what you order, but four people came out restaurant all full and satisfied, we paid about 300 RMB. Very reasonable price and after this good service even felt we should give some tips.

There are 9 of them in Shanghai, and can check out at http://www.haidilao.com

Living in a big city is surely convenient in many ways but periodically you start to get sick of it, at least for me… Of course China surely has many places to see  nature, but  when it comes to arranging long distance trips laziness emerge and try to negotiate.

After long negotiation, Joop and I decided to go to a little mountain (about 99m above sea level) called “Sheshan”, situated at Songjiang area. Considering the distance,  easy transportation (metro line 9 “Sheshan station”) and the fact that it’s still a mountain, it was perfect place for us.!

So, Saturday morning, sky was clear. After nice breakfast, we were headed to out of the house. Then…….suddenly it started to rain with thunders!! What the….

49% of our mind said, 'Let’s stay at home and we can go tomorrow' 51% said ' let’s just go and see what happens. Finally, we decided to go!

Fortunately when we arrived at Sheshan, it was dry and even could see such a blue clear sky. Temperature was perfect for hiking and there weren’t much of tourist which helped us to enjoy our quiet times.

Sheshan is divided into 2 parts. East Sheshan and West Sheshan. It used to be one mountain but divided in 1980, due to building highway. However it’s possible to visit both sides in one day. Once got out of the metro station, we took bus (no.92) and got off at Forest Park. It took us about 10min to get there via bus.

Get off @ Forest Park for East Sheshan & Sheshan for West Sheshan is Sheshan

Both part had nice features ,which gave us no time to get bored. We started from East part and ended at West part. East Sheshan has nice quiet national forest park, survival game area and camping space, on the other side, West Sheshan has catholic church and the oldest china astronomical observatory.

Catholic Church built in 1920, was even before China Communism

Astronomical observatory (Enterence 12RMB) Can see cool 3D movie and old devices for observing stars

After surrounded by nature for about 4 hours, though legs are  shaking and stomach is crying out loud, but I felt pleasant satisfaction.

Practicing Kungfu @ Bamboo Forest

@ East Sheshan

Pagoda

Around the Sheshan, there are many other interesting places. There are sculpture park, happy valley (amusement park), golf course and fake beach.

@ Front of Sculpture Park. Thanks to rain, I've never seen this clear blue sky in Shanghai!

Definitely nice place to spend weekend! I will surely visit again when I crave for nature.Now I am recharged with green energy and ready to live Shanghai city for a while

I remember when I was young, my mom made me watch lots of Walt Disney movies and sesame street videos, hoping that it would help me to learn English quickly. I think i watched more Disney cartoon more than Korean cartoon. When I reached high school, there were options for 2^nd language course. Options were French, German, Chinese and Japanese, but people mostly took either Japanese or French. Many Korean mothers send their kids to very expensive English kindergarten and number of kids go abroad to learn English has increased rapidly past 10 years.

But currently I noticed that things are changing. My little cousins in Korea, primary students, are very busy cramming Chinese character these days and every month they set for Chinese character test. English is still important in Korea but Chinese is quickly becoming as important language. And this seems to happen not only in Korea but also in other parts of the world.

Yesterday, my husband showed me a cartoon called ‘Nihao Kai-Lan’ which is airing in The Netherlands. He said, It is mainly targeted for Chinese kids in Netherlands, but many of Dutch kids also watch it. I watched few episodes, and it surely is fun, attractive to kids as well as very educative in terms of learning Chinese.(I also decided to watch this everyday to learn Chinese and Dutch for myself ) Many of easy Chinese were repeated carefully in the middle of English/Dutch, so that kids would not feel overwhelmed or perhaps not even realize that Kai-Lan (Main Character) spoke different language. My husband and I joked that; pretty soon parents would not able to understand what their kids saying.

Nickelodeon has introduced ‘Nihao Kai-Lan’ cartoon in US in 2008 and now it has expanded to Ireland, Canada, The Netherlands, Russia, Israel and France. It really got shocked and once again realized that China is surely next world power. Most shocked was the fact that it is aired in US. While many of Americans does not think that US would not step down from world biggest power, yet young generation is already preparing to face China.

US just downgraded their credit rating and China is busy making RMB as world currency. I wonder in near future, Chinese would become compulsory language in school education just like it did with English.

So Finally I went to Beijing, Capital of China!

Despite of power outage problem had occurred couple of days before, we still decided to take bullet train to Beijing. Cost was 555RMB for single journey for 5.5hours. Surprisingly 5.5hours was not that long as I expected and facility of the train was pretty good except for lunch box.

Bullet train to Beijing

When I first arrived in Beijing, I felt it had totally different feeling from Shanghai. Starting from language, Beijing people were using more ‘err’ sound that, many of taxi drivers had hard time understand me and vice versa. While Shanghai taxi driver would be focus on take you to destination area, Beijing people loved to talk with passenger, even very private matters from your marriage to politics. Another interesting thing was Beijing people seemed to have more sense of direction. Instead of ‘turn left’ and ‘turn right’ they ask you weather they need to go to ‘west or East’ or sign saying ‘ticket office is at north side’.

I have heard about Beijing traffic, but never expect to be this serious. First of all, It was hard to get a taxi and every taxi ride took minimum 1 hour. Local people said, Bus is as much as slow and metro is packed with people all the time that, during rush hour you need  2 shirts to go to work, because you will be wet from your sweat + others by the time you got out of subway station. Not only car traffic, but also human traffic was unbelievable. Every ticket office had endless confusing cues taking about average 1.5 hours to get a ticket. I was bit annoyed the fact that we had to waste a lot of time on waiting on line, while purchase ticket in internet might have saved us time and energy. Wonder when China will introduce online ticket system. “Patient” was the key to survive in Beijing and perhaps that’s why most of people are very calm and lay back style.

Traffic @ Beijing

Feeling of city was very different. If Shanghai buildings are described as tall and thin, representing fanciness & richness, Beijing buildings were short but grand, representing strength and history. Tiananmen Square specially gave me bit of strange tension feelings.

@ Tiananmen Square

We stayed near by houhai lake. on first night, we explored restaurant area besides lake. I felt like this place was like Hongmei road in Shanghai except that they have lake here. This lake had totally different face during the day and night.

Houhai Lake during the day

Houhai Lake @ night

On Saturday, we visited one of popular part of great wall, ‘Badaliang 八大亮’. Seeing endless walls, I just could not close my mouth. It just took my breath away by its grandeur.

@ great wall

One of most important meal I had to have in Beijing was of course ‘Beijing duck’. We went to ‘DaDong’ restaurant and enjoyed delicate duck with lovely friends. At this restaurant, chef will bring the whole duck (including head) and perform cutting in front of you. Meat will be served on the table, and for the bones, you can either take home or ask them to make soup on the spot.

@ DaDong restaurant (Check out chef behind us!)

One interesting episode in the restaurant was that, I unintentionally called waitress as ‘prostitute’. In Shanghai, as calling waitress either ‘Fuwuyuan 服务员, meaning service person’ or ‘xiaojie 小姐 means young lady’ Since I felt that xiaojie feels more affection, I used to call them as xiaojie. When Chinese friend arrived in restaurant, she stopped me using xiaojie, explaining that it can represent prostitute especially in Beijing. No wonder, they were not happy whenever I try to order…

Last day, we went to the Forbidden City, Zijin Cheng 紫禁城. It was magnificent, and half a day was not enough to see all of the palaces for sure.

What surprised me was, there were lots of foreigner tourists, but about 80% were Chinese tourist. I wonder, now that more and more foreigners are interested in China, and wants to come for visit, it’s going to be even more packed then now. At the same time I could felt the power of China that they can certainly be self-sufficient.

Happy to back in Shanghai, little less chaos, but Beijing surely gave me big impression. Amazed how every city can give you such different feelings, and makes me curious, how other cities have different characteristic.

Came back from one week of holiday in Malaysia, I am now sitting in living room watching photos that we took. It felt as if it was a dream.

Prior to departure I had little doubt about Malaysia as place for Honeymoon, but I am really thankful to Dirk, Marc and Xander (UnitedStyles) who not only recommended but also sponsored out trip.

Since we were getting sick of city life, we planned to stay in island for one full week, just living in nature. We chose Langkawi, 30 km off the mainland coast of northwestern Malaysia, duty-free island. Moment we landed in Langkawi, we fell in love in first sight start from the airport. Both of us have never seen palm trees forest matching with beautiful light blue sky. Moreover resort was even better than we expected that gave impression no need to leave the resort for rest of the staying.

@ Mutiara Resort

Our original plan for this holiday was to EAT, SLEEP, SWIM and READ. However on the First day, 3 hours of lying under the sun and reading few chapters of the book we already started to feel uncomfortable. We realized that we are too active couple to just lie under the sun. At least one activity was carried every day such as Mangrove tour, snorkeling, riding cable car, visiting night market and drive around the island.

Snorkeling @ Coral Island 'Thank God I am alive!!'

Mangrove Tour: Eagle feeding, bet cave, fish farm e.t.c

people are very kind and easy going, loved that they always smile and greet to us. Every night we enjoyed nice cocktail on the beach bar then waiter would dance with live music with guests. It was very relaxing time in Langkawi. It could not been better than this.

@Seashell Bar

Religion culture was bit shock for me in Malaysia. About 60% of the population has Islam as religion in Malaysia. Especially in Langkawi, people seem to be more serious on their religion than capital, Kuala Lampur. In the Average temperature of 32 degrees Celsius with sunny, hot and humid tropical climate, I was just amazed to see women wearing black burqa covering whole of their body except eyes. Even at beach people would wear it and one time when my husband was taking photo of me with bikini, they hurriedly left the place with little dirty look. At some point, I felt I should cover up little bit for the respect but it was way too hot plus it way my honeymoon! Another interesting part of culture here was that, they like trends in western part of the world yet would filter or mute the sound in radio or TV.

Whenever I heard some people would work hard for 6 months and spend it all on their holiday, I never understood why. Not that we spent all the money on this trip (that would be problematic!) but I finally understood the concept of real holiday. After one week of relaxing and treating myself, I feel charged fully and can be burnt till next holiday.

Some Tips of LANGKAWI~

1. Car renting: Renting a car is really cheap (also Petrol)! We got small car 250RM for 7days

2. Wild Animal : 10min later we arrived in Langkawi we immediately saw monkey and buffalo on the road. Resort manager told us not to leave room door open. Otherwise Monkeys will eat all of mini bar food!!! @ Langkawi also Snake, Lizard, Gekko, Wild pig you name it OH! Do bring anti-mosquito spray!

Spring has finally started.

As it’s sin to stay inside the house with beautiful weather and we started to miss The Netherlands, we decided to look for Dutch town in Shanghai.

Holland village is situated in Wai Gao Qiao (外高桥), North part of Shanghai neary by Huang pu river. It can be reached by subway line 6 ‘North Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone station.’ Once got out of the metro, take taxi to Datong lu & Helong lu.

Amazingly the place was real copycat of Holland.

Except for few differences such as Chinese street/building signs, air conditioner and laundry hanging on balcony. I guess external life can be changed but internal life (culture) is difficult to change so quick. However because of this, it made this place more intersting

Place was much alive than I expected, since I heard it’s a ghost town. We also hoped to have some dutch snack, but guess it’s not that developed yet. Place is nice and quite but better prepare well because benches and restaurants or coffee shops were lacking.  So far this place is purely for architectural scenery and due to this reason many couples comes to this place to take their wedding photos. Despite of beautiful weather we could not see any new groom and bride today.

It’s nice place for a date

About year and a half in Shanghai, I feel much comfortable browsing Chinese website, thought google translate still help most of times. Here I want to share some of useful and popular website in China.

Search engine

http://www.baidu.com/

Baidu is  google of China

http://www.sina.com.cn/

Sina is getting more popular with blog and twitter concept.

Movies/ Videos

I love tudou (it means potato). They have section for drama and movies for Korea, US, China, England, France e.t.c. Now I do not need to download Korea drama and also practice my Chinese by Chinese movies that can easily found.

http://www.tudou.com/

http://www.youku.com/

Travel (ticket)

These sites are mostly for tickets within China. It’s time to travel~

http://www.qunar.com/

http://www.china-sss.com/

http://www.ctrip.com/index.asp

Public Transportation

http://www.ddmap.com/

http://maps.google.com/

Shopping

http://www.taobao.com/index_global.php

http://www.vancl.com/

@ vancl you order product to be delivered first then check the product. Once you like it then decide to pay.

http://www.360buy.com/

http://www.ganji.com/mobile/client.php

http://www.shanghaisecondhand.com/page1.html

Discount shopping

Can buy cheap movie tickets here~

http://www.lashou.com/

http://www.kutuan.com/shanghai/deal

News

http://www.cntv.cn/

http://www.cri.cn/index1.htm

http://www.chinanews.com/

Ever since we moved to Hong Mei Rd, I rarely go to city center. So when I had appointment in people square today, at first I was feeling bit lazy but gradually started to wonder how this place has changed since last time. (Probably 6months ago)

After nice lunch, my friend Yvonne and I decided to visit largest shanghai book store.

The entire 6th floor building is full of books

<<Shanghai Book City>>  No.465 Fuzhou Road

This Fuzhou road is also has small book stores around the Shanghai Book City. However All the small stores  seemed going to close down soon. All the books were placed in a huddle and people were shouting that they are giving huge discounts. Yvonne explained that maybe the store is closing down due to  Shanghai Book City. I felt bad plus discount made me enter into small store.

I  found 4 Chinese traditional story books with CD, hoping that it would help to improve my poor Chinese. Each book originally costs 79.2RMB so I wondered how much I would get discounted.  20%? 30% or70%?

Interesting part was when cashier weighed the book on a scale!! Half a kilo will cost 15RMB. (Depends on the theme of the book, cost per half a kilo will change. Variation of 6 RMB, 11 RMB and 15RMB)

How heavy is your book?

It was bit shocking concept to me. Content of the book would not really matter but number of pages and quality of paper would matter in this case. If authors finds out about this, it would be very insulting but I guess for seller it makes sense to judge a book. Instead of calculating percentage of the book with headache (i also have headache when i have to calculate discount %), weighing book would be much easier.

So just like I was buying fish or meat, I bought 5 books for 55 RMB . Although I was only planning to buy one book but still i feel satisfied with prices. Guess now my job is to READ THEM!

After I  got out of the small book store, I started to notice that almost all the book stores near by Shanghai Book City, had same discount notice hanging on their door, attracting people.

It’s written 0.5 kg for 11 RMB

All over sudden I started to doubt if this is a market  strategy,  not necessarily clearing out the shop.  So my next mission is to find out if I was an aimed fish or store really closed down next time I visit this area.

I’ve been learning Chinese for Seven months. Since i speak English and I am Korean, people tole me I should be able to speak Chinese fluently in 6 months.  6month has passed, I still can’t talk fluently… It’s way too hard!!!

So here are what happens after 6month of Chinese study and why it is difficult! This problems occurs not only to myself but also to some of classmates who’ve been learning Chinese about 5-10months.

1. 看得懂, 写不懂

6 months of Chinese classes, you get to see lots of vocab repeatedly. Your eyes become familiar with certain words and start to recognize the letters. The problem is, reading is pretty ok, but when it comes to writing the character without looking, somehow can not remember how it looks exactly. You have an vague idea but not 100% sure or just cannot write!

2. I can speak better than that!

During speaking class, teacher makes people talk about their opinion. When someone speaks, you understands and even knows advanced vocab or sentences, thinking that ‘I can do better than that!’. But when it comes to your turn, all the vocab disappears from your brain. why why why?? Is it just me??

3. I must be Stupid!!

After 3months, your text book content obviously becomes longer and harder.Problems is even though you know all the words in the sentence, you still have no idea what this sentence mean.

4. 外国人 Chinese 听懂, 中国人 Chinese 听不懂

Now that you can speak little bit, you also start to understand your class mate’s Chinese. When you understand about 90% of your class mate’s or teacher’s Chinese you feel your listening is pretty good. The moment you go out and start talking to local, your listening ability goes down to 30%. Somehow it’s much easier talk with foreginger with Chinese than Chinese with Chinese.

5. Too much to remember!!

Lastly.. in order to cram one word, you have to remember; meaning, pinyin, 4 tones, and how it looks! Once you know shape of letter then meaning and pinyin sort of comes along. But 4 tones are really confusing. You end up just pronounce whatever you think is true and of course Chinese don’t understand.