Well at last! Only few hours before we leave to China!
Departure: Friday 08/06/07 11am
Now, is everything ready? Well… the blog and the schedule certainly are, after several days of hard work and some missing hair ;-). I do hope I manage to keep it up, since I worked so much on it. At least, I will make sure to upload photos every night and write later. As you can see from the schedule, I have planned a lot, seriously, no time to rest. There are so many things to do and so little time, I really struggled to make up my mind with what we should visit. Probably I over did the planning phase of this trip… well obviously I did, but that’s what is fun, at least for me , except the striking headache I now how to bear, it will all be worth it once we are there. From my reading, I have a feeling I will prefer Shanghai.
We are on our way to Beijing and Shanghai for 10 days, with Girish’s university. They are organising a symposium on how to do business in China. I don’t think all of them are travelling to china for that… the costs are subsidised meaning we get to stay in 2 posh hotels (see Yahoo! Trip planner) and flying with Virgin Atlantic without spending a fortune. The only downside is that the symposium is compulsory for the students though so Girish will only have the early mornings and evenings to visit and I will have to be a lone tourist, unless I team up with some of the other people accompanying the students. Lets see… since I have worked so hard on my schedule, I think I will choose the lone path. Who knows, it might be fun! Some Chinese people might take pity on me and volunteer to be my tour guide… I am so charming . I have already found someone in Shanghai!
So how are we going to do for the language you ask. Well fortunately, we have studied a bit of Chinese, for about a year now. In our hand luggage, we have few phrase books, pocket dictionary, CDs, software on the laptop, and plenty of time (11h) to brush up in the plane. I am sure with all these, we will be able to understand anyone talk… yeah right! I don’t even know how to say “please slow down!” Ho well… what’s the worst that can happen. The only big problem we might face, is for the food. Looks quite hard to get vegetarian food in China, however, I have found a few vegetarian restaurants, and they seem to be magically located exactly where I will be at lunch and dinner time, hooray!
China! here we come!
Below are a few facts on China, Beijing and Shanghai (source: Lonely Planet):
People's Republic of China
Capital City
Beijing
Area
9,596,960 sq km
3,705,386 sq miles
Population
1,286,975,468
Time Zone
GMT/UTC +8 ()
Languages
Cantonese (official)
Mandarin (official)
China's language is officially Mandarin, as spoken in Beijing. The Chinese call it Putonghua. About 70% of the population speak Mandarin, but that's just the tip of the linguistic iceberg. The country is awash with dialects, and dialects within dialects - and few of them are mutually intelligible. Of the seven major strains, Cantonese is the one most likely to be spoken in your local Chinese takeaway. It's the lingua franca of Guangdong, southern Guangxi, Hong Kong and (to an extent) Macau.
Religion
Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (no stats available); Islam (14 million), Christianity (7 million)
Currency
Yuan Renminbi (Y)
Beijing
Area
16,800 sq km
6,486 sq miles
Population
13,000,000
Shanghai
Area
6,340 sq km
2,448 sq miles
Population
17,000,000
Departure: Friday 08/06/07 11am
Now, is everything ready? Well… the blog and the schedule certainly are, after several days of hard work and some missing hair ;-). I do hope I manage to keep it up, since I worked so much on it. At least, I will make sure to upload photos every night and write later. As you can see from the schedule, I have planned a lot, seriously, no time to rest. There are so many things to do and so little time, I really struggled to make up my mind with what we should visit. Probably I over did the planning phase of this trip… well obviously I did, but that’s what is fun, at least for me , except the striking headache I now how to bear, it will all be worth it once we are there. From my reading, I have a feeling I will prefer Shanghai.
We are on our way to Beijing and Shanghai for 10 days, with Girish’s university. They are organising a symposium on how to do business in China. I don’t think all of them are travelling to china for that… the costs are subsidised meaning we get to stay in 2 posh hotels (see Yahoo! Trip planner) and flying with Virgin Atlantic without spending a fortune. The only downside is that the symposium is compulsory for the students though so Girish will only have the early mornings and evenings to visit and I will have to be a lone tourist, unless I team up with some of the other people accompanying the students. Lets see… since I have worked so hard on my schedule, I think I will choose the lone path. Who knows, it might be fun! Some Chinese people might take pity on me and volunteer to be my tour guide… I am so charming . I have already found someone in Shanghai!
So how are we going to do for the language you ask. Well fortunately, we have studied a bit of Chinese, for about a year now. In our hand luggage, we have few phrase books, pocket dictionary, CDs, software on the laptop, and plenty of time (11h) to brush up in the plane. I am sure with all these, we will be able to understand anyone talk… yeah right! I don’t even know how to say “please slow down!” Ho well… what’s the worst that can happen. The only big problem we might face, is for the food. Looks quite hard to get vegetarian food in China, however, I have found a few vegetarian restaurants, and they seem to be magically located exactly where I will be at lunch and dinner time, hooray!
China! here we come!
Below are a few facts on China, Beijing and Shanghai (source: Lonely Planet):
People's Republic of China
Capital City
Beijing
Area
9,596,960 sq km
3,705,386 sq miles
Population
1,286,975,468
Time Zone
GMT/UTC +8 ()
Languages
Cantonese (official)
Mandarin (official)
China's language is officially Mandarin, as spoken in Beijing. The Chinese call it Putonghua. About 70% of the population speak Mandarin, but that's just the tip of the linguistic iceberg. The country is awash with dialects, and dialects within dialects - and few of them are mutually intelligible. Of the seven major strains, Cantonese is the one most likely to be spoken in your local Chinese takeaway. It's the lingua franca of Guangdong, southern Guangxi, Hong Kong and (to an extent) Macau.
Religion
Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (no stats available); Islam (14 million), Christianity (7 million)
Currency
Yuan Renminbi (Y)
Beijing
Area
16,800 sq km
6,486 sq miles
Population
13,000,000
Shanghai
Area
6,340 sq km
2,448 sq miles
Population
17,000,000
1 comment:
Hope you folks have a wonderful time out there..
Cheers
Vinay
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