China, Guangzhou and Chengdu... not quite at the panda part YET!

I will preface this blog with a link to Brian's (my fiancé's) blog as he wrote quite a long detailed explanation of the day; http://virtuallylife.blogspot.com/2012/04/china-good-day-part-1.html ... however this post will be my point of view :)

Brian and I took the MTR (subway/metro) from Hong Kong to the boarder of mainland China (Shenzhen).  Once through customs, found our way to the train station, and hopped aboard a train. When I say hopped, I mean, fought our way through crowds, waited in line, and sat on the floor, because there were no seats, for our train.

There is a lot of prejudice in Hong Kong against Mainland Chinese people.  We kept hearing it from students, adults, teachers and people alike.  Half the time, the people telling us that mainland Chinese are dirty and rude, were people who were in fact FROM mainland China, but now identified as Hong Kong-ers.  Every time Brian or I said something about someone cutting us off, or being rude, or dirty, the students would say, "oh they're mainlanders".  We couldn't figure out the blatant hatred.  I think we figured out where it comes from.

While we were waiting for our train in Shenzhen we witnessed multiple actions that would be deemed as rude or dirty. One in particular.... a girl came over, just a ways away from us. She started to eat her sugar cane.  She would bite off a big chunk, awkwardly chew it, as it was too large to fit properly in her mouth, and spit it out into her hand. She would then throw it on the clean marble floors, RIGHT next to a bunch of people who were, in fact, sitting on the floor.  She continued to do this through two sugar canes until there was a large square foot pile of chewed up-spat out remnants. She then proceeded to wash her hands with about 3/4 of a water bottle.  There was now a stream of water, sugar cane, and spit running towards the poor bums of some girls.  As she emptied her water bottle, she threw it on top of the pile and simply walked away.  Brian sat there for a good 20 minutes with his mouth a gawk unable to comprehend how someone could do that.

We boarded our train to Guangzhou.  Guangzhou really is nothing to talk about.  Our hotel was really nice, small, but really nice and clean!!! The rest of the city seemed to be pretty dirty and the people, not overly friendly.  

Our Hotel in Guangzhou

The Hazmat type hoods provided in our hotel!!!! I think it was for a fire, but never quite sure!

After we left Guangzhou we flew to Chengdu.  As previously mentioned, this was our main mission of the trip.  Get to Chengdu, hug a panda.  We arrived at our hotel.  It was ok.  Apparently pretty nice, and appeared pretty expensive (although we had got it very cheap from an online hotel booking thing).  The thing is, just when we walked in there were men smoking in the hotel lobby, men spitting on the ground IN the lobby.  In China, there are no smoking or non smoking rooms... our room had a whole bunch of little burn marks in the carpet where the cigarettes had fallen.  But, it was a room, a shelter, it was cheap, and close-ish to the Panda Sanctuary.

I really had no desire to even go explore Chengdu. It just felt dirty, and grey.  We pretty much went to sleep and got excited for the next morning.