China, a great place ?.

China, a great place ?.

China, a great place ?. OK, I'll tell you why I think its so good in this summary. I'll post further updates on it soon. Firstly, let me tell you why I went to China. I met my girlfriend on the Internet, you know, one of those dating sites. (I'll tell you more of that in theing weeks). She is Chinese and I think she is beautiful. I just had to meet her in the flesh so to speak. So I made all the necessary arrangement to visit China, , checked my passport was in order, visited the travel agent who incidentally took care of my visa requirements and tickets. I don't know why, but as hard as I tried on the Internet I couldn't get the price down lower than his quote, so I took it. As the days went by and with my case slowly filling up, I became more and more nervous. I have travelled on my own before, but never so far and to a country were they talk a language that I only know four words at most. The two most useful phrases were "Xie xie" "thank you", and "Ni hao" "how are you". The big day arrived, my friend took me to the airport. Although we were laughing and joking about travelling so far to meet a girl I'd never seen in real life except on web-cam, I was terrified inside. Now I knew from my travel itinerary, it was going to be a long long haul. 26 hours from my first departure airport to the time of touch down, blurry eyed, in her city airport. It was a four airport trip. Every step of the way I had eye opening experiences and as I stepped foot in Shanghai airport the reality of it all became clear. China the country, here I am!. The Chinese writing along with a little English was my first confirmation of the fact, I'm really alone in Asia. Scary!. Nothing could go wrong now, I'm in China. Just one more flight across to the centre. A further 3 hours flight and I'm in the arms of my loved one. I presented my paperwork at the check in. A long time elapsed, with other peopleing and going. Then they say to me. " We have no confirmation of your ticket to travel with us on this stage of your journey" my mouth went dry and my brain wouldn't believe the words I'm hearing. Then I thought, , Okay, your insured and you have the agents phone number. I'm just going to phone, when I remember that I'm seven hours ahead of Spain, , my life-line was fast asleep. By now I'm dripping with sweat, , total panic. Okay, I'll buy a ticket. One last try, can they take me to Air France office, please. I'm happy to say that there was one at Shanghai and it was manned.phew! They sorted out the problem and rushed me through the check-in, the security and customs to a Eastern China airways plane which was by now waiting for only me. I have to say at this point that all the airlinepanies I travelled with were excellent. Okay, it was the first time Ive ever had chicken curry and rice on a plane, but it put me in a real Asian frame of mind. I finally arrive at my destination. By now, with no or little sleep in 26 hours, sweaty with very wrinkled clothing and searching for the right luggage carousel for my flight, I looked around and caught my first real life glimpse of my girlfriend. My first thoughts were oh my god she's beautiful, what on earth is she going to see in me, lol. In my rush to get out to her, I forgot to change my money to "yuan" Chinese money. She paid for the taxi and the evening meal, which I thought was expensive until I used my money converter. Really cheap to me with my western spending power. This is just a summary of my trip, I will tell you more, but as an insight into China, i will tell you this. You have to leave your western thoughts behind when travelling in Asia. I was on a bus with my Girlfriend and the bus was full. A man got up to get off and she pulled me into the seat. Saying your older than me, you must sit down. I told her that in my culture its the woman who sits down, not the man. After a long debate over it and to shut me up, she sat down and I got up. Then, the lady next to her saw me standing and stood up to let me sit down.She insisted. Now I was embarrassed and so was my Girlfriend. My conclusion is their culture is theirs and ours is ours. You can live with the two, but to avoid conflict, , leave your culture at home. I have day by day account's of jaw dropping incidents and how I got on with my beauty from China on further articles. Chris E Young
I live in Southern Spain.