```iamsharonang--

memories-

Sunday, June 24, 2007

cco china trip 2007 - beijing n dongbei
08/06/07 - 18/06/07

08/06/07 Friday
parents sent both me n bro to airport,reached earli around 9pm, when flight is only at 0015hrs. its interaction time..actually quite a few people came..like primero, junda..shuxian. just hung around n talk while e com is busying themselves with checking in. oh yesh. saw yingchun n her bf noel at e airport. thats new =p also, one of e juniors, nyein, wore a dress! golly. look at that man. we took a hellafa time to go in..such that we had to make our way to the boarding gate immediately. it was so exciting. another trip-at last. CA970 (sin-beijing), was sitting beside my bro. and was totally shag out from the weeks' events, slept quickly. i felt so at ease being on a holiday, i simply knew it was gonna be different. away from work n singapore.

09/06/07 Saturday
0620hrs arrived at BCIA, tink it stands for beijiing china international airport? helped to get e luggages off the belt n put them together. kinda fun. my last china trip i was in luggage crew too! hhe. time was a little rushed..had to get onto e internal flight CA 1609 (bj-changchun) @ 0750hrs.on e internal flight, there was

western n chinese meal. bro took chinese, i took western. n here's e difference.
both r quite nice lar.upon reaching changchun airport, some ppl had probs going out due to misplacement of the baggage tag thing, but heck, we managed to get out afterall.there were people there to welcome us with this long red banner, took a group foto, shall upload if i can find someone to send it to me. hung around with jiamin, shuhui n my bro..took a few pics. changchun's a great place..its spacious n new. boarded e bus, i sat with wangui ;) but everybody was half asleep. our first stop was lunch at some zoo-like place. okay, maybe greenhouse. alfresco dining? its back to having coke n sprite/sevenup as the main drinks on the table..and many many many dishes.

here's one of the dishes. we found it so cute n new..who cares, just eat. there was also a brinjal dish. i love it ;p haoyong (dis ex-dunmanian who's now a prof. zai!) came after e meal, told us '"eh, wai mian you deer"..so out we went, looking at the "mei hua lu" those deer with white spots on them..and turkeys as well. machiam go to zoo. n you know what..somebody came along telling us that e dish we saw just now was egg with deers blood! whew. tell me about it.

next stop- HOTEL! swiss belhotel changchun. looks good. got international name. stayed in room 609 with wangui as roommate. check it out man, e room is quite good. had a short rest before dinner time. dinner was at some "yu mi" restaurant. e guide, "xiao qiao jie jie" was saying that their speciality is some "yu mi bing"..yu mi=corn. hhe.it was a place with a table in each room n there r dui lians all over e place, n each room has diff designs. took e one with a pig farm like design..sat with keewei, guifu, jianfeng n co..wad a mix. one thing about this trip, is that ppl just sit with anybody. no obvious clique-ky thing. hha mark this, 3/4 way through, jiamin n shuhui came over to complain about their table- e best mix: weixun + sec4s + sec3s! after dinner, its back to hotel..perf next day, so everybody's required to rest. hongdui ppl werent allowed out. but e other duis i heard went out..as for me, while wangui had her meeting, i watched zorro n read my hardy boys book (i borrowed 4 from NLB before chuguo!) to sleep. (e original plan was to play cards with jiamin, shuhui n wangui, but shuhui concuss oreadi!) lol.

10/06/07 Sunday
breakfast was quite heavenly! best breakfast for e trip i suppose. buffet-style, with a good mix of chinese n international food. hmm. quite relaxing morning, prac erhu, napped, before assemblying at 11.15am for lunch.hmm lunch (forgot details). took a few pics at concert hall. look:

on e way to dinner, charlie sat with me on e bus. omfg. and then i was emoing throughout dinner. dinner was "yao shan"..kinda closer to korean style i guess?.. with "gou qi zi"..n "wu ji tang"(black chicken soup)..and there was some dubious soup that yinchun insisted was deers' (but we debated later, n concluded that its beef la.lucki i din try) i ate lotssa veg, cus i felt that it tasted very singaporean.

hhe. concert went okay-ly. even my bro's yunluo went properly. today i got to talk more with wangjing (she's guiying's junior in music school..now twenty odd only, and that's her) after perf, a mad ruch, cargo crew keep cargo, ready to be sent to beijing. while i helped to clear abit n went out to the bus.took some pictures..jiamin bought me "bing hong cha" =) amazingly, there was no supper provided, not like previous trips.. got back to hotel, played bridge with jiamin, shuhui n wangui! lols.

11/06/07 Monday

woke up with a bloated tummy. din feel good. had diarrhoea many times. din really eat much. but they like to force me to eat. (wangui n jiada). today's going to be a long long trip to changbai mountain. our guide baded us goodbye n wished us success for our next perf in beijing. she's one nice n cute guide. oh yes, we appeared on changchun's newspapers. on e bus, another guide "xiao zhao" entertained us throughout. there was one segment whereby one-by-one ppl went up to tell jokes or singsongs. and there's my bro

lunch was bad. but we couldn expect much from e mountain eateries. there was a dish, we were kinda expected to roll stuff in the crepe-like pastry. also e toilets were so bad that i din even go in. hhe.yup, so this changbai mountain, is e borders of china n north korea. majority of the inhabitants of the area is the chaoxian tribe ppl, chaoxian, as we all know is e name of north korea. so many of e signboards have korean words on it, and e houses are built with triangular roofs,in e shape of a "he2"- korean style. as we continue on our journey, i felt worse n worse, plus e uncomfortable seats. aching everywhere. jianfeng became e merlion for awhile cus he vomitted on e bus twice?..it has to be the food we ate. finally,there was a stop at a petrol kiosk-with commendable toilets too. just cant forget, i kinda went crazy- according to wangui while in the queue for toilet. from my pov, it was like i blanked out, and i found myself losing balance n have no foothold so i grabbed anything thats within reach for support- and thats wangui. i was hugging her like its my life. haha! but e feeling was good =p dinner, of course..its e same style. but this time, cus mr jiada was sitting beside me i was forced to eat. i ate porridge just to please him.

finally. we reached civilisation. see some houses, hotel, hospital..and some shops. along the way, there were trees- super tall. they are called "mei ren song" urm, pretty woman pine? its different cus there are many "eyes" on the bark, when branches are supposed to branch out. and we were told they are easily hundreds of years old. reachd the next hotel- "jia ri jiu dian" holiday hotel? quite chui, this hotel..again, expected cus its like in e mountains? but i couldn be bothered la. i felt like an ass, so bad that i left the tv on, read my book n went to sleep darn early. got woken up "in e middle of e night" at 10.50pm..wangui's bringing shuhui to hospital..ask if i wanna go. wah. no thanks besides, i wanted to sleep. shuhui's feeling lousy too. oh yes, stayed in room 309.

12/06/07 Tuesday

e silly morning call woke us up super early in e morning..6am? not sure..i saw wangui's bed unoccupied. got a scare, thought she wasnt back yet, turns out she's in washroom.lol. ok la, i felt much better today. itinerary was to tour changbai mountain, in e evening go to another hotel in another city..turns out that my bro's e one not feeling well today, so he's officially in wangui's care. only today did they know i had diarrhoea yesterday..all along she dint know. hrm. some roommate. lol.but i ate an apple in e morning, i felt so happy. i like apples. plus i ate wangwang too! we had to travel up..from about 800m above sea level to 1000+, then transfer to a bus called "huan bao che" environmental-friendly bus?..but i dun see why it is so. oh yes. we had another guide today, she's called "xue fei"..a damn pretty n sweet guide whom i love looking at. lols. so far, all e guides have been nice and/or pretty n cute. hhe. first up, was to go to the "zhu feng" of the changbai mountian range..we were grouped into 6, and each group took a jeep up e mountain. heard there's 72 turn

s in total. so now, we'r set to go more than 2000+m up above sea level. e jeep journey was way way too cool! even though e thing was moving at around 40km/h, 25km/h off its speed limit 15km/h, it felt fast. and each turn has to be made so precisely so we wun go shooting off the mountain. hhaa. view was breathtaking too! e air was super cooling as well. had to walk up to see the "tian chi"..crater lake, as changbai mountain is a dormant volcano. its said that only 30% do ppl get to see the lake as often, its covered by fog/mist. so, according to many, we are damn lucky to have seen it.nice..its nice, but when u look down and imagine if one loses their footing..brr.there were many many bugs around e area, despite e cool air. some were green, blue, yellow...ladybirds too!

next stop was e "chang bai pu bu" e waterfall! but guess what, we had to climb n climb..and climb again to see it. tough one. fortunately i felt well enough. its was PT. whew *sweats* its 30mins to, and 30mins fro of walking..climbing i mean. so this is the waterfall we've worked so hard to see. this waterfall, is the outlet of changbai lake. the changbai lake has no inlet, but has outlet. the next lake we'r looking at..theres no outlet, but has inlet. wonders of nature. tried the hot spring egg- egg cooked in hot spring..est about 80 deg centigrade. egg cooked normal, egg white coagulates first, followed by yolk. this time round, egg yolk coagulates earlier than the white. egg tastes superb! =) went to the small lake "xiao tian chi"..nothing much, except for a rare foto taken with eugene. lol. finally, our last destination, the "di xia shen lin"..sounds like HSBC tree-top walk, but its machiam walking on the boardwalk trails of macritchie. nothing much, just a stroll with wangui in and out, playing with e bugs that are around.

finally, we'r off the mountain. lunch din eat much, but i ate another apple n wangwang on e bus. after lunch, we'r gonna go on a 4.5hr journey to "yan ji"..so called "yanji"..cus its somewhat near the boarders of china n north korea. had a stopover a

t "lu yuan" where we went to look at those spotted deers and there were russian n korean products on sale. this is due to china's close proximity to korea n russia. according to the guide, they traded their herbs n stuff for these products, so they are going at a lower rate than over in the respective countries they came from. trust me, e journey back was way way cool! e scenery was damn nice. even wangui, who was half-asleep woke to look at the setting sun n the nice lake. i totally felt like kayaking in it. hhe. it was quite late when we reached yanji for dinner..sat with the relatively older ppl like shaodong, shuhua, keyang, benson...din eat much, cus i was craving for bei mian. wangui was being exceptionally moody, reckon it was lack of sleep..n of couse *winks*..anyway hongdui wasnt let out to buy snacks. that night, we had our first "water-parade" at weixun's room, cus we had to be briefed about whats gonna happen at the train station. and guess what? jiada bought us cup noodles n biscuits! i think is i tuo-fu one..but anyway thanks! lol. i ate e mushroom-chicken one that night, after a wangwang. glutton. i read my book, did some exercises on e bed cus i thot i ate a lil too much.. and waited half-asleep for my dear roommate to come back. oh yes, this was e night that my bro went to hospital too. anyways, she freaking came back at 1am? and i fell asleep immediately after she came in. ha. this was in another hotel, "da zhou jiu dian", stayed in room 506.

13/06/07 Wednesday
its the train day! had a small breakfast on e 2nd level of the hotel..before going to the "chao-shi" to buy some snacks for e trip. hda this fruit-milk drink which looked dubious but quite tasty. first up was chao-xian zu musuem..looked at those korean stuff la. wasnt really interested. i was really looking at seeing more chinese history thingy..like e terracotta warriors, huaqing chi of the 2004 china trip..plus, e timing w

as so rushed that we din really see much. next up was the "xiong le yuan". it really din become a "le-yuan" after we were told that the bears were reared for their gall. think every few days, they had to "chou dan"..plus,e place stank. but i din sae the bears werent cute la. too bad we din get to see e process of the dan being chou-ed. but i gurantee our appetites were ruined. besides the time factor, e thot of e bears were stopping us from eating our lunch. for a moment, we thought we were gonna miss e train cus e food took years to come.look at the comm's faces..all stressed. hah! so we reached e train station. carried luggages for long walks..up n down steps. and its like crowded. our guide, xiao zhao, bought boxes n boxes of cup noodles for us.damn nice. the plan worked. everybody and the luggages were on board a few seconds before the train (K216) departed. had to bid farewell to our guides..xue fei included. so it was re-arranging time on the train. i took e top deck. fun. read books,

played bridge..den slept awhile. woke, ate..played bridge..bleagh. know why we cant use the washroom while the trains at the station? cus the "flush" actually is opening the lid and letting everything flow down to the rails. but the train was comfy la.love it. look at e juniors doing their work, some listening to mp3, some playing n the older ones like linli looking out of the window. very heartwarming. lights out at 10pm. early.i had a dream. about some cco thing.. that e comm had to go somewhere so we din haf enuff ppl for e concert so wenjing n junqiang's coming to join us in beijing. lol

14/06/07 Thursday
im super piggy on this trip..many ppl were awake before me, was lazing on the bed. the bun and dunnowhat that jiada kept for me was qutie nice. read my hardy boys book n went back to nap. lol! den sat around, talking to linli, benson..and started gossipping. my oh my..din bear to leave the train, its good fun! reached beijing at around 1130am. After nearly 23 hours of train ride..we all need a good meal. indeed, beijing's food was much much much better. but air pollution was bad. our guide was bad too. my bro just told me her surname's xu. super niao, super slack and super cheat money.always say "i think u all r tired, have a good rest"..and she stops

talking. i feel damn pissed. anyway, went to yi he yuan-this big big chinese garden thing. our guide was so lan i din even bother to try to listen. i only know about some "empress dowager" staying there or something like that la. there's this place called "chang lang" -long corridor, about 800m long. the pillars were painted with different drawings, picturing different stories/legends like xi you ji..took a ferry ride in one of the "hu"..forget e name though, okay, e itinerary says "kun-ming hu".. our guide skipped many attractions, held an umbrella and did her commentary while walking ahead. she sucks. okay, so called kun-ming supposed to have oysters in it..so next stop was e pearl shop, somewhat similar to the one we went to in 2004..cheating tourists' money, and the tour guide, i suppose, gets commission. bleagh. i decided not to buy any product this time round.

its dinner-time, but forgot where we went already. beijing's interesting. there was a bridge that says "F=Gmm/r2, f(a)f(b)..."a mths bridge. and there was a music bridge too! we stayed at day's inn hotel.. "zhong xin dai si jiu dian" a pretty nice hotel, thats super long, only 3 stories high.stayed in room 3011. that night, went out with jiamin n benson to buy food- kfc egg tarts (strongly recommended by juniors), popcorn chicken and went back to my room to order room service and eat cup noodles. what a feast! the dish we ordered was "jiao yan xia"..prawns damn nice! heard the juniors played murderer with weixun the past few nights..and he did forfeits which includes dancing and lip-sync. funny.tonight, decided to be more adventurous, went to 3027 there was cindy meixue flea..sec4s joel joyce jiamin..blahblah, waiting to play game. i lost terribly in elephant snap. waited for weixun to come pplay muderer but he came darn late.and only for few secs before going out again. i was also waiting for ms wangui to come back so i can sleep! u see, i haad the room key so i had to wait for her? until around 2+..super tired, cmi so went in search for them --> wangui/jiada & weixun. called a few rooms and checked a few rooms. all not there. bleagh. finally they appeared outside in the corridor. tired man. finally can sleep. and that's e 2nd night i waited for her so i could sleep. thanks jd.

15/06/07 Friday

its the changcheng day! yayness. its nice. but we climbed the worng end- the shorter end. not much kick, cus we reached the end in less than 15min! my bro was e first to reach, followed by meeee! hhe. a few pics..
went to this place making "lan jin xiu" or dunno wad they're called la. some pottery place. went there for lunch. me n jiamin went to buy gelato to eat too. big place. and its today..that i found a target - huizhen! haha jus joking la, but she's prety nice =) n i like her. hhe.
next up, was shi san lin..some tomb of the royal family. again e guide was a lousy as can be. heck her. i wasnt listening much. i only know that there were two empresses instead of one. after which, we proceeded to a tea place..selling t

ea leaves. their marketing strategy was good. and e woman presenting to us was some "dai zu ren" dai tribe from yunnan. her accent was super weird. bought 750rmb of tea leaves, me n bro combined. gosh. thats some money. dinner was at someplace with a stage. hah. but quite late compared to previous nights..weixun mentioned buying a cake for zongyi's bdae, and i volunteered to go with him. actually e sec2s wanted to go, but made so much fuss until yingchun din let. lol. took a cab with him to some place "xin shi jie guang chang"...new world?..found out that china's cakes had to be made on the spot..meaning pre-ordered and they make. one of the better cake shops rejected us as they were closing at around 9.10pm. no choice, went in search of a chao shi. found a section selling cakes and they agreed to make for us! 40min wait. proceeded to kfc to buy e delicious "xuan dou dan ta"..portugese egg tart with some beans inside. yummy! but ex. 5rmb for one. bought 14 for the entire hongdui..met huizhen n huyan at the kfc! super duper coincidental! they went with us to pick the cake..my, its so huge n heavy. even a chinese lady said it was a steal! actually nobody coould tell we were foreigners..offered e lady the 10% discount card that we got, she told us to keep for ourselves. apparently both the lady and the cake maker din know we were going to leave in a few days' time. haha.

cabbed back to hotel. apparently not many ppl know about the meeint at 3018..but after some rounding up and some trouble (not again) in locating both wangui n jiada, we managed to pull of the stunt. zongyi got covered in cream and me n jiamin ended up walking around distributing nearly 1/4 of the cake, we were so glad to see a bunch of hungry performers coming back- some of them went to shifan uni to perform. simply dumped e whole cake into prof's room. dat night, supposed to sleep early, but had so many things - the celeb, another water parade and another meeting called by shaotong near midnight. yawn.finally..

16/06/07 Saturday
Its the concert day, like other days, we din haf to wake so early or leave the hotel early. this hotel's food is not bad too! international style. fooled around with wangui's gaohu back in the room..while practising some of the more

important parts in the concert. 2nd concert's solely hong lou meng, but its important, what a dilemma for myself. (cus HLM is like nothing to prac for erhu2..but yet its impt). for lucnh,w ent to the tea house place, but upstairs la. one e way in the bus, decided to play games with..cindy wang, joel, shuhui..wangjing was watching us interestedy, zhang tian yun also. ha. oh yes. wangjing bought food from inner mongol for us! damn sweet! i like her =p played this tap on ur knees, clap, point point game. in the end, the whole table was playing it during lunch, before food was served, including wangjing and zhangtianyun, who were both teachers! fun! okay...another damn interesting thing abt the restaurant was that there was a stage there, and the performance just started. rmbr the woman who presented about the diff types of tea? she's a dai-tribe person..this performance we were watching is also more of the dai-tribe ones. there was one, in which i think everybody who watched wouldn forget, men with long hair swinging their heads about vigorously. playing around with their hair and looking like ultimate idiots. killed my appetite for a sec..the next scene was a few women coming in, dancing and tapping their feet. okay, i thought women wouldn be so bad, but they started doing what the men did before. golly! what nice dance moves.it was non-stop laughter for awhile.stifling laughters only when waitress came in, to be polite. hah!

performance venue was at beijing ren min da xue..ming de tang. (its funny.

cus our previous perf in changchun..they introed dhs as ming de xue xiao, now we are perfmg in ming de tang) hah.but troublesome, backstage was actually like in the basement. climbing up and down was a chore! got to sit outer row with meixue for some paiwei reasons, even though we are playing erhu2. whee! last day of trip already, must ba wo ji hui take more fotos, and i did. hee. dinner was the best meal ever this china trip, it was dapaoed food with 7 dishes? i finished all the rice for one thing..when i never took more than 3 spoonfuls of rice normally. true enough, the concert was some big thing la. mr wang li ping was there, n the crowd made a big hoo-ha about it. the mc interviewed him for ages! and we had to sit so still i was hoping it would end soon. everybody did notice weixun leaning back and staring not-so-glamly into space though. concert dragged from 7.30pm to past 10pm. way behind schedule. plus, we were supposed to be treated to a meal after tht. yells "im full!". way to the restaurant was LONG, on foot n in the darkness. but i gotta admit that it looked like one of the best meals in china..14 dishes. way too cool. but i was very full from e superb dinner.

oh yes, guess what? they are talking about going ktv! (idea sprouted from lan dui people, who went ktv during our first night in beijing)..all of hongdui went, except benson, jiada, wangui, yingchun n myself. too tired to bother la, wouldn wanna risk my health staying up late for unnecessary things. haha. old =x was around 1.30am when everything was settled down n im reading to get to bed. got distracted from my book at times by wangui n jiada's conversation, but ok la, still slept earlier than they did! hah.

17/06/07 Sunday
Last day in beijing. sad. had a hearty breakfast! somehow some people wanted to go bookshop at zhongyang yinyue xie yuan. so our itinerary to gu gong and tian an men was cancelled. many thanks. the bookstore was pathetically small..i din wanna squeeze with crowd. went to music store to buy songxiang n ma =) den walked with sec4 juniors (cindywang, meixue, fle and sheajean) to a "nearby" parkson. good morning exercise. half ran on e way back cus we thought we were gonna be late. stuff there not cheap..but had eye-opener though. so many diff designs of nike shoes. gosh. back at the bookstore, took many fotos, group as well as individual. here goes:

hrm.lunch was at some place i forgot.went wang fu jing after that.. e orchard road of beijing? true to its name. stuff there not cheap, many people realised there was nothing much to buy. biggest steal for many were e books and dvds. speaking of which, i need to go borrow from benson to watch man! i still dunno HLM's story yet! sad case. as for me, i walked about alone, knowing my personality, besides my dear room mate was occupied ma.hor? met jiamin after awhile though. my takehome was bejing2008 olympic games hp strap, polo tees, shoes and many many chewing gums. din manage to buy e shaqima that jieying n jiamin bought for us e other time though..those were delicious! h yes, ate gelato again though.

dinner was at some hotel. met a group of dhs teachers n frens on vacation too.

also a group led by dongyun (aka dingdong), so it wasnt exactly a coincidence. there was tan bee kee, tan wah chwee, lim po seng, kang-tan yeow boey..wad a crowd. dinner was e last meal together. sat wif the 3 huis of yellow group: huiyan, huili n huizhen. clearly i was quite happy cus i was sandwiched between wangui n huizhen. lol. it was quite some photo-taking session there..and more interaction. i like it! huizhen;s a nice person. haha.

once again, beijing's real polluted, glad to be indoors at BCIA for e air outside was really bad. juniors said they saw weng qing hai there with his wushu troupe..prob on e same flight as ours. being typical singaporeans, i managed to steal quite some of the ziplock bags tt the airport provide to store liquids. haha they are stills tashed in my erhu bag. anyway, dad mentioned money changer in singapore dont accept smaller than 100rmb notes..so i made a point to try to spend small notes. bought coffeee+green tea icecream and hesitantly, brought it on board the plane. turned out it was fine to bring it up. plane food was good =) had some catch-eye, but kept waking up intermittently. as usual, bro was beside me. took flight CA975, same one as i took in 2004's trip back. i still have my luggage tag from then on my backpack.lol! reached in about 0545hrs. dilly-dallyed at the luggage belt so i could stay on longer..it has been a great trip!

i love e company. there were no politics n such..it was so nice. but itinerary couldn be compared to 2004's. anyways, here r e crew:

hongdui (xyz/djy): wangui n weixun (leaders), wangguiying wangjing jiada yingchun jiamin shuhui joyce sharon benson esther yunzheng nyein zongyi joel zhiwen junwen n mum cindywang flea meixue jiahui shuyung kelvin hongming kianhong
huangdui (tby/zheng): huili n huzhen (leaders), liugeng chunhe chuncheng zhangtianyun guanyuxian ttk yiusum huiyancuijingyi szewee

bus no. in beijing 2925!

concert#1: huaxiahun guandongmolihua rendingshengtian hongloumeng1 liulaolao shangyuanjie wangningmei zanghuayin chaxiangfeilian majianghong ditanjongkatong(encore)
concert#2: whole HLM series (15 songs), plus dahai,wo de gu xiang (sang by wangliping himself)

we all wanna thank peijean n co. for the superb luggage tags. nobody can agree more. *winks

photos: m supposed to collate all e fotos n put into dvd? wangui propose to make it a nice souvenir to rmbr our trip by. so hey, i need pictures! do send me via email or msg me to log on!asap. thanks.

23:17

-keeps me alive