Saturday, September 15, 2007

News from China, Day 7 - Summer Palace

Ahh, recuperated. Today was a nice, easy pace. Jaime was back to her normal happy self, and so everyone's feeling better.

We loaded Jaime up in the MEC backpack carrier and headed off for the Emperor's Summer Palace. She seemed quite comfortable in it, and eventually slumped over and had a nice long nap, much to the amusement of the locals. The shot to the left was taken in the magnificent lobby of our hotel, the Oriental Culture Hotel. It's a fantastic spot, with marble floors, high ceilings, but no ability to change $US in Yen on Saturdays :)

The Summer Palace is hard to sum up ... it's a couple hundred acres of ancient architecture, jam packed with tour buses and knock-off product vendors, on the shore of a man-made lake. If you get bored of looking at tile roofs and lotus plants, you can saunter over and pick up a Rolex watch for about $8. One of our group (a PolySci prof) bought a watch with the solemn picture of Chairman Mao on it ... complete with a Red Star for the second hand, and a waving arm on Mao.

We learned first-hand about counterfeit Renminbi (Yuan) today, as David fell victim to a neat little money scam that gave him a $14 souvenir that he didn't intend to buy, a piece of paper that looks like currency but isn't quite. It happened as we stopped to buy a fake Gucci handbag from a woman ... yes, we got fake money from the purchase of a fake handbag. After a price of 80¥ was negotiated, David handed over his last 100¥ bill. The woman refused to take it, showing him that it was slightly torn, so David had to take the money back and walk away from the sale. What he didn't realize was that she had deftly swapped his bill with a "torn" (but counterfeit) one from her bag, and so he was walking away not only without a Gucci bag, but also without his 100¥ (about CDN$14). Apparently counterfeit Renminbi is a real problem here. The woman in the picture to the left is not the one who pulled the scam on us, but worked with her. The picture was taken before we figured out we had been scammed, or the smiles might not have been so broad. If you plan on travelling to China, make sure you learn up on how to detect the counterfeits here !

The day ended with a scrumptious dinner at the Chinese restaurant next to the hotel. Vivian, our guide, ordered dish after dish of delicious food as we drank Coke and Chinese lager. They kept arriving on the rotary tray in the middle of the table, and we poked at them clumsily with chopsticks. The eggplant dish would have to be considered the favourite, although the pork meatballs were probably a close second. Jaime tried most of them, and downed a fair bit even in spite of her already-full belly of rice cereal.

Back at the hotel, Melissa gave Jaime a bottle while David and Emily swam in the hotel pool. Then we went to bed early (9 pm) and everyone, including Jaime, had a solid night's sleep. The next day we head off to the Great Wall of China !

3 Comments:

Blogger Sheila said...

So sorry to hear that you were scammed. I went to the link, but I wouldn't want to depend on what I learned there!

8:59 p.m.  
Blogger Hogie said...

Aitken "Restaurantation" meets the East. Nice to see you guys sitting at a table with great food smiling. You must be feeling at home. :~)

The great wall tomorrow. Fill that card buddy, I'm expecting a wicked slideshow when you get back.

So what do you miss most about home?

12:15 a.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

Bummer..What wonderful pics though

6:58 a.m.  

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