Archive for March, 2008
My Chongqing, China 3-day Experience
I have been in Chongqing for 3 days so far. I do not know any Chinese. Interestingly, many of the signs for streets and even inside buildings like for toilet or exit, there is the English version. Actually many businesses often show both the Chinese characters and the English name at the same time. Very impressive, although most people do not appear to speak any English.
I am finding Chongqing to be pretty modern. There are lots of poor areas as well, in fact, the modern and old are often side by side on the same block, there is a mix mash as the city is still modernizing. The mix of modern and old is quite similar all over the city, and seems to get along just fine.
Every block has many tiny shops, plus many sidewalk ’shops’, such as selling various items on a blanket, shoe polishers, carriers (guys with bamboo sticks to carry stuff for someone), and many more. Lots of duplication too! The shops practically repeat every few blocks. The exact same ‘china mobile’ cell phone shop with its distinctive green/white banner can be found by walking in any direction within a few blocks. There is this outdoor cell phone bazaar area in the Nan Ping district, in a downtown area, and there are literally 100 people selling cellphones, each of them with their own table or suitcase of 10-40 cellphones each. All that duplication is probably because labour is so cheap. One grocery store I went to had a crazy amount of employees, there were groups of two-three them standing around each mini-section of the store.
The driving here is pretty interesting, they don’t really pay much attention to the lines on the ground, and will even cross the road against oncoming traffic to stop there, facing the wrong way. Pedestrians don’t have right of way, but will try to cross when they can. It is not unusual for some to be standing in the middle of the road waiting for the next break in traffic. Taking the the bus is very cheap, going from Dan Zi Shi (area where I’m staying) to Nan Ping district is 1 yuan and takes about 2 0 minutes. There is a person on the bus that comes to you and collects the fare, so it doesn’t matter what entrance you get on. Taking the taxi to Nan Ping district is about 16 yuan. I’ve been going to other places and averaging about 30 yuan or so. It’s relatively straightforward to get around, just have to say the area name or point at a piece of paper with the Chinese writing on it.
Food is quite cheap. There’s this awesome Chinese fast food chain called ‘Country Style Chicken (CSC)’ that gets very busy, and it is only 9.90 yuan for most of the meals. I haven’t tried hot pot yet, but Chongqing’s hot pot is supposedly famous.
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RSS feed.Beijing, China Airport
The Beijing airport is huge and brand new and most of the staff there appear to speak some English, they are probably required to take classes in preparation for the Olympics. It is so big that you have to take a train to get from the arrival building to the departures building. All the signs have English on them as well.
Indoors:
Outside:
Chinese Airports are Highly Accessible for Westerners
I caught a plane from Vancouver to Beijing, and then from Beijing to Chongqing. I did not know any Chinese at all, and I found the whole process very straightforward. The airports have Chinese and English signs for everything, and a lot of the airport staff also speak English, especially in Beijing (due to the upcoming Olympics of 2008).
Arriving in Chongqing, it is pretty easy to catch a taxi, but you have to speak the Chinese name of the location that you’re staying at. Or you could have the Chinese characters written down that you can show. Taxi rates are pretty decent, getting from the airport to a place closer to the actual city was only about 40-50 yuan.
2 commentsWhich Airline Should You Use to Travel to China?
There are a number of different ways you can find a flight from your country to China. First of all, do you have a Chinese visa? If you do, then you won’t have any problems entering the country. There are a number of international airports in China. Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are the most common places to enter China. If you land in Hong Kong you may not need a visa, but you will need a Chinese visa in order to enter mainland China. Beijing has recently created a new international airport in preparation to the Olympics, so their facility is more updated.
Since you have a Chinese visa, you can look for deals at your local travel agency or you can search online and pay with a credit card. Where are you flying from? You can check out Kayak.com to search through the different discount airline websites to find a flight that is the right price for you. A new airline that offers some discount prices to fly to Hong Kong is Oasis Hong Kong. You might want to check out their website to see if they offer a flight near you. So far they only offer flights from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada and London, England.
I flew from Vancouver (YVR) to Hong Kong (HKG) with Cathay Pacific and the flight was comfortable even though it was over 14 hours long. I was then able to connect with a flight to Chongqing (CKG) with the airline Dragon Air, Cathay Pacific’s domestic airline in China. I’ve traveled by air to Beijing and Shenzhen and have found the domestic airline service to be generally the same.
Which airline do you think is best to fly to China? Do you know where to get the best deals online?