I graduated from College (University) in 2015 and sadly I haven’t had the time to go anywhere because of work. Writing about a trip I took to China during my time in College (January 2015) brings back so many memories. I don’t know that I remember the trip in great detail, but I will try my best to be as accurate as possible.

Before I proceed, I would like to inform you that my trip was as much an educational trip as it was a fun one; which essentially means that I went to China with my school (for a class) but I still had a lot of fun!

I am going to be dividing this post into two parts; the first will be about all the provinces we went to and the places we visited while we were there, and the second will be more of my reflections/ thoughts about my time in China. I would also like you to know that although I will be highlighting some similarities and differences between China and America I will try my best to be gracious.

Part 1

We left Grand Rapids, Michigan on January 8^, 2015 and didn’t arrive in China until the 10^th (I don’t remember the exact details, it was a really long flight). We visited 5 provinces; Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Shenzhen, and then Hong Kong.

The first stop was Beijing. We stayed in a hostel that was right next to the train station (It was literally right beside it) which made moving around easy. Riding the train was a very interesting experience; relatively easy tasks became increasingly difficult because of the language barrier even though we had a classmate who went on the trip with us as our interpreter. While most of China speaks mandarin, different parts have their accents, language, and dialects which made it harder for us to communicate properly with the people as we travelled down South. While in Beijing, we visited the pearl market, the Great Wall of China, the Olympic stadium, the Forbidden City, and the temple of heaven.

Great Wall of China

Olympic Stadium

The Forbidden City

I know, we look so cool!

Half Nigerian, Half Chinese

The Temple of Heaven

Next, we went to Shanghai which wasn’t all that different form Beijing in my opinion. It still had the big city feel. We used an overnight train which actually had beds that we could sleep in. The train ride was pretty cool, it was fast, quiet and relatively clean. During our stay in Shanghai, we went to see an acrobatic show but sadly we were not allowed to take pictures or film. It was also in Shanghai that I got to see a man paint glass/crystal bottles from the inside of the bottle! (I obviously had to get one for myself…with my name inscribed in Chinese)

Man paining glass/crystal bottles from the inside of the bottle

Masterpiece!!

We visited Hangzhou for a day. We had heard about the famous Alibaba headquarter and its comparisons to google and the likes and we decided that we had to see for ourselves. Needless to say, it was exceptional. I felt like I had just stepped into the future, or at least a movie about the future; everything was so cool & big and, everyone was so nice!

We stayed at one of the hostels in the Xiamen University. The university campus was right by the beach and we would always take walks down there. Xiamen was where I would say I had a lot of my adventures. I think just being around a lot of young people, and having the weather warm inspired me to explore. I visited the Buddhist temple which was close by the university campus, and I remember getting lost a couple times and having to point and use hand gestures in order to communicate.

Staying in Shenzhen was bitter sweet, we were wrapping up the trip and so everyone was beginning to feel a little homesick, nonetheless a little sad cause we didn’t want the trip to end. The rest of the class went on to Hong Kong but I never actually got to go. We (my Nigerian friend and I) didn’t realize that we would need visas to enter Hong Kong from China as Nigerian citizens as we thought the Chinese visa would carry over.  While the rest of the group went, we stayed back in Shenzhen, in a really nice hotel (I don’t remember the name) that was close to the dock. The upside to staying back was taking a ferry from Shenzhen to the Hong Kong airport, and getting money back from the immigration in Hong Kong since we didn’t spend money there!

We left Hong Kong at 11 am (Hong Kong time) on the 28^th of January, and arrived in Chicago at 11am on the 28^th of January (Chicago time) isn’t that cool?

I hope you enjoyed it, stay tuned for part 2

XoXo

Warami is a fashion/Devotional Blogger you can check out her blog here: https://wildwai.com/