20100813

Start of China Blog

So, for the last two weeks, I've been in China, taking pictures, and documenting what can mildly be said to be an experience of a lifetime. Unfortunately, due to the Communist government there, a lot of US websites got blocked, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, so there was almost no way (short of using supar slow VPN to bypass the internet censor) of updating or posting things. So, over the next several days (read: weeks to months), I'll be posting my [mis]adventures in China. Edited heavily from original journaltasticness (which ended up being 23-ish pages in Word, Calibri font, size 11, single space), with pictures (hopefully). If you wish for the unedited verison, just let me know. I may send it over your way. A word of warning, though. Contains lots of ranting, opinions, and... well.. me.

Sad to say, though, the trip isn't done, as I hoped it would have been. This two week trip has kicked my ass, and I'm literally crawling home. It's the trip that just won't end. Today, the flight from PEK (Beijing) to YYZ (Toronto) got delayed by an hour, which resulted in my family missing the connection to CLE (Cleveland). Staying in Toronto at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (by the airport) overnight and catching a 9:05AM flight tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I'll be back by noon tomorrow.

I figure I should throw some things up as notes for now (and I'll edit the post as needed when more notes are needed).

Note 1: Chinese currency is known as the yuan (元) (as in 25元). Also prefixed by the ¥ (as in ¥25). Also displayed with "RMB" suffix (as in 25 RMB). 1 USD ($1) is equal to about 6.6 to 6.7 yuan

Note 2: China's time zones on the easter coast (which is a pretty big swath of land) is 12 hours early to Eastern Standard Time (New York time). All times (if any posted) will be based on EST, so tack on an extra 12 hours for actual time the post was written.

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