Shanghai never sleeps, Shanghai, China

Dear diary,

I have visited also during this 7th (I quess) trip to China in Shanghai. Shanghai is the other big city you can imagine to get answer, if you ask about Chinese cities. Shanghai is totally different city compared to Beijing. The whole structure is opposite, as well as the cities are not even close to each others....execpt the population (16 million or +/- millions to direction or another).

Shanghai is interesting city. It is high city, there are river crossing the city and other side (depending on which side you are), there you can see most futuristic architecture. Pu Dong is the name of this part of the city. We were visiting in the other side and during the coast line of river, there were huge views during the evening. One of the most highest buildings are standing in the other side of the river. Shanghai heartbeat is faster than any other city in China...I would say that the heartbeat of that city is faster than in Hong Kong... Even one common similarity I found from Shanghai and HongKong... My own lousy mandarin China is not understod in either of the cities: in Shanghai they have own dialeg and on the other hand in Hong Kong they speak Cantonese, which is too different from spoken Mandarin.

Anyway, all the streets are pretty crowded, lots of foreigners also can be seen, lots of business and things for shopping (if you like). Pretty crowded and small streets made me restless, so thats why I preferred Pu Dong side, because it has larger streets and less persons walking on those.

Feel the history, Beijing, China

Beijing is the capitol of China. It is large and depending how do you count about surranded areas or sub-urbans, you can get approximately 10-20 million people living in da hood. I always use my explanations number 16 million, because for some reason it is familiar with me. As far as you can understand, Beijing is so big city, that you cannot get good understanding about that just during past weeks. I have been visiting now in Beijing about 5-7 times during past 1.5 years, so I have some kind of understanding that yes, the city is pretty pretty big...I dont have anyting else I would say I understand from Beijing. Of course everyone has different kind of experience, depending what you are interested. There are restaurants, attractions, sightseeings, political issues, food and cultural things, things you can buy and bargain...

I have mainly collected experiences on cultural and historical issues. When I am walking in forbidden city, great wall, big bell temple museum or summer palace, I close my eyes, take deep breath and I go back to those times. I can see, based on what I have read, about Chinese walking across me with armours, with colorfull dresses speaking their language. I can feel, smell and taste the cherry trees, listen birds and feel the history so well, that when I once again open my eyes, I need to get familiar where I am and how much time has passed... It is just like jumping from century to another and back...time traveling. This is just so awsome you cannot do without deasant background information and without standing there, in the middle of where actually was happening. So much sorrow, happiness, political issues, rush, relaxing, harmony and dis-harmony you can feel during one eye flash.

Beijing it self is like public parking place. Don't expect to get anywhere soon...rush hour is almost 07:00 - 21:00 evening :-) Even taxis are cheap, the metro can be the best solution and it is fast, simple to understand and safe. LIke everyone, I have my favorite memories, my most favorite places to eat, visit and drink. I hope you can found your own from the mega-city, which never stops attracting me.

TeaHouse, Beijing, China

Dear Diary,

During visiting once again Beijing, I got experience of interesting new thing: tea house. Of course almost every person in the whole world would recognize, that Chinese and Tea belongs together. There are several famous tea houses in the Beijing as well as every part of China. I would say, that these are like hundreds of years old Starbucks and Robert's Coffees, where you can get all kind of small, tiny and tastfull...

First of all, Chinese tea is so complex issue in general, that I wount start explain about all kind of small details about tast, warmness, cups, different kind of teas and meanings and doublemeanings behind meanings what are happening past years in long "tea drinking culture". For western people I can say, that relax and enjoy. Think what you are doing. Explore everything with open mind...you will be surprised how much you will learn :-)

So...During trip to Beijing, our Chinese host and dear friend and collague JJ (we call her as JJ) asked, have (Ari and me) ever visited in Chinese Tea House. The answer was no....so we went there. Very nice and peacefull place in the second floor near Tiananmen square. First of all, the catalog was presented as pictures as Chinese as English, so in that sence we were lucky. I like lots of Chinese teas but in some sense during that time, I was mostly attracted to flower tea with rock sugar included...So in that sense I made familiar selection.

Then...suddenly I noticed something pretty interesting from the catalog! All kind of small, fancy stuff... I was so happy to see also the prices (one small plate with approximately 3 peases of something), which was about 0.3 - 0.6 EUR/plate, I asked from my Chinese hostress, that can I please please order those? She was smiling to me, partly because she was probably thinking that I was funny (have to admit that part) and partly because she knows I like to eat almost everything, which is not very spicy nor has not any bones. JJ said go ahead and for a first round I order the whole page of these "small things". Then I took a picture of it. The only thing was familiar were these "Spring rolls" what you can eat also in some Chinese restaurants in Helsinki or Espoo (Finland).