a nomad’s travel clutter.

So, we’ve stepped our foot finally on the land of China. Everything went very smooth, we got our luggage, Julian survived the horror and we even arrived half an hour before schedule.

First meal in Wuxi, China. Fried rice with duck, duck soup with blood clots (it’s really common in China, Julian thought it was weird though). It was a local duck xiaochi (small eat) place.

Yesterday we went and picked up Janie’s cousins from school, which they found very embarassing. We passed by the outdoor market for some snacks.

Julian by the market, and center of attention.

The snacks.

Dinner in the evening with the whole family. All the cousins with their parents, only people missing was Janie’s mom and dad and sister.

Slept until 11:00 today, if it wasn’t for Janie’s grandpa we would still be sleeping. So basically we’ve slept 15 hours out of our first 25 hours in China. Anyway, now we have to do something more constructive, so we are planning to go into the DOWNTOWN. It will be warm, very warm. We’ll update next when the internet works, yesterday night it didn’t. Hope you guys are cool up in Sweden!!

Sitting in café trying to alter the plan that did not get altered. Emelie holding MANDARIN phrasebook.

Planning for this trip has a been a (if I may put it myself, I being Janie) h-e-l-l. It started of with me and Julian talking about going to China together, then one day I joked (but had some seriousness in it) that Emelie should come with us, at that time (ages ago) Jen wasn’t very interested since she just got back from China in the winter. The problem was the money. It was going to be a expensive and BIG trip for us just-graduated students, for me it didn’t matter, being the spoilt brat my parents would pay everything, but it was different for them. Emelie got a job though, which she later lost again due to bad planning by a stupid guy. Jen desperatly looked for a job and to her luck she caught the fish by the hook on the first try, and obviously now she works with dead fish (ie Sushi restaurant). Julian already had a job at 7-eleven. Me? Haha, I tried… to look for a job, I really did. But that’s another story.

Anyway during the same time as money problems, we had to fix in the time and book flight tickets. We preliminary booked Air China first when they were the cheapest, until one day SAS released very cheap “only” 4770SEK to Shanghai tickets. Then we had to hurry and make a plan. Now came the whole problem of me and Julian leaving earlier because we wanted to stay longer… or actually this problem was when Emelie had a job (she couldn’t be gone for 4 weeks). Confusing isn’t it? I can’t be bothered. So we came to the decision we did after many toils, and few shedding tears of frustration on my side. We wanted to go to FIVE places in 20 days. Hangzhou, Huangshan, Shanghai, Beijing and Wuxi. The problem was which city to go to first and how long, so we would not waste time and energy. At that point I must have been the only one having a real insight in the Plan, because only later (a week ago) did Jen come up and say can’t we change and go to Shanghai last. Humph.

So here’s what it looks like, and hopefully will look like in the end:

In the end you can’t plan everything per-say, but this is rough. We will have many spontaneous outings along the way (I hope), although i can just imagine the “oh no, I don’t want to do that..”, “can’t we go there instead…” etc. No, just kidding, I think it will work out very well. ^O^

Jen trying to explain to Julian (in vain) cities we will visit and when, but the chinese is just too complicated

One day a talkative, open, wannabe-bohemian, straight-haired, chinese environmentalist bumped into a quiet, shy, wannabe-james bond, half-british, curly redheaded film freak. That day was three years ago, and all the stars in the sky ... [Continue reading this entry]