Well, well, well, after a while - HELLO, again!

My, it's really been a while since the latest English update, so.... Let's get the situation fixed!

Okay, so... Where've been? At first, the last couple of days in Beijing (Jan 4 - 5th), FINALLY we got to see the Great wall! Yay! And how was it like? Well..... Big! And Jari made an EXCELLENT remark, noting that "this wall is clearly NOT meant for tourists". The reason for that was quite simple: to be strategically efficient, the wall was built mainly on the top of hills, to cover the valleys below and make the passage extremely difficult for the enemy. Well, as a result, the passage on the wall was mainly stairs. And a LOT of stairs. Stairs going up, stairs going down, going up, up up and UP again and then aaaaaaal the way down. And sometimes the wall just went up and down WITHOUT any stairs.

Before we left to the Badaling-section of the wall (which was about 60 km away from Beijing), we changed our clothes into clean ones and I even packed my wool sweater with me. "In case that there would be cold." Yeah, right! Okay, the advice for the next travellers going to the Great Wall: Don't take a shower BEFORE the walk, and the sweater.... You don't need it. Phew!! Instead, pack a lots and lots of water with you. We walked approximately 2 kilometers (although it´'s quite hard to estimate, the climbing makes it feel SOOOO much longer) until a sign "No Visitors) cut our route, and then we walked back to the point where we began. But indeed, every drop of sweat and every angry word against steep climbing was TOTALLY worth it!! Just being in touch with something so ancient and mythical.... Wow. And besides, looking the scenery? Truly wonderful.

The taxi-trip to and back from the walls went fine, too! Our taxi driver surprisingly did NOT know more than a word or two of English, but the rest of our "productive" conversation was held with sign-language(ish). And the man on the steering wheel kept his word; the price was exactly 600 RMB's, as we agreed before taking the trip.

The next day went only by looking around the remaining parts of Beijing that we haven't still seen, and taking a bit of acquintance to the Beijing's metro line. Just to be sure how to travel to our train station - that would have been quite TOO adventurous just to find out that very same thing on our departure day, with backbags, and getting lost in the HUGE crowd of people. Sooo... We decided to find out how the system works, and luckily for us, at least with metros the system REALLY works! Phew!

But yes, the trainride from Beijing to Shanghai went smoothly! We had huge predictions on about what kind of train are we going to ride, speculating wether or not the sleeping compartments would be heated, or would the train even be powered by a steam-powered locomotive. (But luckily, China abandoned steam-powered locomotives in 2006 - so no worries for that to these travellers!) But it's always quite exciting to see, how a long-distance trainride goes in a totally foreign country.

As it was our turn to climb on the train, we were quite... Surprised.

Yes, a bullet-train. HOLY SMOKES! I mean... Sometimes I really wonder, what ever happened to the Finnish railway system? I thought that we had at least SOMEWHAT modern never-on-time -trainsystems, and that the Finnish railways can at least somewhat moderately offer a decent and a comfortable trainride, at least when comparing to China.

I can throw that misbelief into a garbage can right now. I feel that the Finnish railways.... Ehm. Okay, WE should start to learn from the Chinese. And from the Germans. And from the French. Damn.

We had totally a cozy compartment, shared with one Chinese, and one Morgan Freeman -lookalike, whose country of origin was still quite mysterious. Each bed had one flat screen TV on the wall, just opposite the head, so it was truly comfortable to lie down and watch some FREE (!!) movies, offered by the Chinese railways. Although dubbed in Chinese, of course - but it didn't prevent me to enjoy watching "Finding Nemo", yaaay!

But yes, the very next morning, the train arrived COMPLETELY ON TIME. (Yeah, I could say something about the Finnish Railways, but.... You know it. Meh.) And our Mentor in Shanghai, mr. Juha-Matti Toivonen, was waiting for us on the station - which was nice! This way, our trip came to be soooo much easier, my goodness, Shanghai really is... a BIG city! (Well, everything's big over here!) But since we had Juha as our truly HELPING hand, struggling through this network of buildings, neon lights, crowds masses and traffic jams instantly became muuuch more easier!

About the Shanghai... What is this city like? Well, it's much easier to compare this to Beijing. Two words: Totally Different. Where Beijing was more like an "original" Chinese city, with a few tall buildings here and there and with some original parts of the city still left unrenovated and some parts of Hutongs still prospering, Shanghai is - like Jari said - "China in the future". There's a massive area called "Bund", which was built only in 20 years. And there's nothing else but skyscrapers, neon lights and everything that a metropolitan city needs to look like a metropolitan city. The hutongs are almost nowhere to be found, instead, there's only older parts of Shanghai just a bit further away from the city center, where traffic slows down and where tiny shops and markets cover the lower level of buildings. After all of that fuzz in the city centre, coming to these older parts feels like... Heaven!

But one only needs to take one turn towards the city centre, and then the massive big-city-life appears again. There's no ultimate way to escape from that.

Mocving around Shanghai is fairly easy - especially with a taxi. Mr. Toivonen has really been AGAIN an excellent help! Of course, no-one in here still speaks English (not even in our hotel), but luckily, Juha can give the taximen the coordinates. But when he's absent - thank GOD for camera phones!! You need only to take a picture of a certain bus stop (they are always on a intersection of two roads, so they are hard to be missed by a taxi driver), and then you just show the picture to the taxi driver and say something like "There! Me there - you drive?" etc. And you really can tell by the face of the taxi driver, whether or not he's willing to help you. And traveling with a taxi also provides an excellent way to look around Shanghai and especially to amaze, how the slalom through city's traffic goes. Luckily I'm not a taxi driver in China!

The next thing to move around with is the metro. It covers VERY well the streets and corners of Shanghai, and is cheaper than a taxi - but! Of course, to be well-covering metro, there really are a LOT of metro stops in this city, which means that a trip from A to C goes through stations D, G, T, X, ß, K... So it takes some time to get there.

About the buses... Ehm, they're pretty good, too. The problem is, that we can't use them, if Juha's not present. Sooo... Well, they work - if you understand, WHERE to get off and WHCIH bus you should take.

Shanghai doesn't offer as much cultural sightings as Beijing, so, basically we're here to explore the city's different areas and markets. Certainly, that's the best way to further see the differences between Beijing and Shanghai - how fun is that! And today we're planning to go to see the Shanghai's Ocean Aquarium - we'll see, what can we find from there.. "Oh look, a fish!"

See you next time!