Jeff in China 2002

(background image is a modified image I took of the Great Wall on this trip)

WARNING: The linked-images are fairly large for best quality

Overview

Pics (below) and words from my trip to China, 18 July - 3 August 2002.  My main and original reason for wanting to visit China was to see the Great Wall, and take it from there.  Why the Great Wall?  Well, it's one of the 7 Wonders of the World and I've always wanted to see it.  And what better time than the present when I have the will and the means?  :)  After seeing it, I can say there is absolutely nothing like being there!  Back to my travel plans...well, in the end, I met several friends on the internet, and decided to visit 4 different cities (with my internet friends acting as guides) in China (cities in order of my visit to them): Shanghai (largest city in China), Nanning (southwestern, inner China), Wuhan (central eastern China), and Beijing (near the Great Wall).  Oh, yes...it is quite true: I went alone.

Flights/Hotels/Destinations

I flew out of El Paso to Dallas on Thursday, 18 July 2002 (First Class, gotta love those FrequentFlyer miles), Dallas to Tokyo (Business Class on Boeing 777), stayed overnight in Tokyo on Friday, 19 July (viewing distance to New Tokyo Airport, Narita) at the Narita Excel Hotel Tokyu, flew to Beijing the next morning, Saturday, 20 July (one hour time change between Japan and China), then, after some hectic and quite stressful happenings at the extremely unorganized Beijing Airport, I was off to Shanghai...on a later flight...original flight was cancelled, but I befriended some Europeans during the wait.  2 from England, 1 from Ireland - they were on their way to Shanghai to teach English in a small town north of Shanghai...they would spend 4 weeks teaching before returning home.  Anyway, baggage was "delayed" by one day upon my arrival in Shanghai  :-|  Stayed at the Pu Dong Holiday Inn in Shanghai, visited New Shanghai (including Oriental Pearl, pic below), and People's Square.  Flew to Nanning (via Guangzhou) on Wednesday, 24 July (after deciding to stay in Shanghai an extra day).  Nanning was the furthest inside China that I ventured, and it was clear by the very, very slim chance of finding a local who spoke any English, at all.  

A side note: Several times (in each of the cities), I would ask (in Chinese) if someone spoke English, then they would say "No" (in Chinese, which is "bu whey," in case you were wondering) and then start speaking to me in Chinese.  I learned how to pronounce the few Chinese words I know quite well - so well, in fact, that they thought I was fluent in Chinese and would just start talking away.  It was pretty amusing for me to tell them (also in Chinese) that I had no idea what they just told me (that line I practiced a lot because I knew I would need it a lot :)  

Ok, back to the travels...from Nanning, I flew (again, via Guangzhou) to Wuhan.  I actually had a 6 hour layover in Guangzhou where I was able to meet one of my long-time internet friends, Stephanie.  In Wuhan, I saw the Yellow Crane Tower (pic below) which is a mere 1700 years old.  I tell you, it is so amazing to see this stuff...especially when you have visited places in the States where most historic sites will include things on the order of a couple of hundred years of age at the most (except for things like the "Meteor Crater," which I have also seen ;)  After Wuhan, I took a quick flight back to Shanghai, and from there flew to Beijing.  Beijing was my final stop where I would finally see the Great Wall!  :)

Ok, those are enough words about the travel, for now...on to the good stuff.

Image/Video Footage

On the trip, I took both still images and video.  Stills captured by my Canon PowerShot A40 at 1024x768 (though, I should have set it to 1600x1200, but I had underestimated the amount of compact flash storage versus how many pics/movies I would take...ah, well...so it goes) and "super-fine" settings...all on auto, except for the some of the night shots where I disabled the flash to capture building lighting.  The movie video footage (which I will not include here for reasons of large file sizes) was captured using my Sharp VL-AD260U Hi-8 camcorder.  Due to its relative bulkiness, the camcorder footage was only taken at each of the hotels I stayed at (for purposes of helping me to remember more details of the trip) and the Great Wall and Forbidden City.  Yes, there were other places where I had wished I had brought the camcorder along, but there are always lots of "coulda/shoulda"-type things on trips like this.  Both scenery capturing devices were recent purchases in anticipation of my trip.  Below are some of the still shots taken with the Canon.  Hope you enjoy this brief tour of my travels  :-)

Jeff

Shanghai

Nanning

Wuhan

Beijing