JIPP TRAVELS

So my job had required me to travel out to China for the very first time not so long time ago. China had always been in my bucketlist for as long as I could remember, but given the geographical size of the mainland and the existence of so many interesting places that I wanted to go to, my plan for a trip to this gigantic nation would always halt because I could not decide where to go first and where to go later.

It really was a very last minute call and before I knew I had to scramble all over to get all the requirements done especially the Visa which was not easy to get given the very limited number of slots per day at the Chinese embassy in Kota Kinabalu (picture above). But of course where there is a will there is a way and before I knew I was already travelling to KL where I’d stay overnight before taking an early morning flight out to Hong Kong where I’d have to jump into a connecting flight over to Shanghai.

I really thought the stopover was just a matter of dashing across the departure hall to another gate and jumping into the waiting connecting flight. How wrong I was, as I had to totally get out of the departure hall, ran a few stairs down to the check in counter and do another round of check-in, security check and all, all in one hour! I was quiet exhausted by the time I landed at the Shanghai International Airport about 8 hours after I left from KL. Urgh.

The first thing that I noticed the moment I stepped out of Shanghai airport was the cold weather. I haven’t been to a four-seasoned country for so long that I had almost forgotten the existence of cold winter. The cold washed over me like a splash of acid and the macabre realization that I did not bring a winter coat with me took me to a momentary state of panic attack.

So the plan was to catch up with the rest of the entourage at the Shanghai Train Station, except that it was not THE Shanghai Train Station but more like ONE of Shanghai Train Stations. Either the communication was bad or the taxi driver was too dumb to even care, but he dumped us off at the wrong train station. By the time we noticed that we had less than one hour to find our ways around and took another taxi, this time to the right train station.

So from the train station in Shanghai, we went on a pre-booked bullet train ride to another city called Wuxi. It was late in the night when we arrived at the hotel in Wuxi, and the tugging hunger had prompted us to brave through the extreme cold to look for a restaurant. Most of the restaurants had closed so it was quite a relief when we finally found a small restaurant that served quite good food. Believe me, the taste of a soupy hot meal in a late winter cold is always unmatched!

Following a pre-arranged itinerary, we spent almost the whole first day at a factory doing what we were there to do. We went out briefly for lunch, which was at a Halal restaurant since some of the group members were Muslim. It was quite a feast and the restaurant was quite fancy too. Letting the Chinese hosts do the ordering, it was probably one of the meatiest lunches that I had ever had in quite a long time. They ordered mostly lamb, which was cooked fresh and almost without any of those smell-absorbing spices and gradients that we usually cook our lamb with back in Malaysia. The smell was horrible but the Chinese hosts seemed to enjoy them very much.

After finishing the afternoon session at the factory, the hosts took us over to an ancient town where we did a nice evening stroll along a street called Nanchang Street. I fell in love with the place almost instantly. I mean, it was the China that I had always dreamed of seeing and experiencing through. The township landscape was dominated by a beautiful canal with rows of beautiful old buildings on both sides.

I’d imagine they were probably houses in the past but have now been turned into beautiful shops, restaurants and cafes. The two sides of the canal are inter-connected by beautiful arch bridges at certain locations which reminded me so much of Venice. It was late winter, so the greyness of the buildings and the leaf-less-ness of the trees provided such a classical oriental landscape combination. The experience of walking along the street with all the ancient buildings was such a surreal experience.

After spending a couple of hours at the Nanchang Street, we wrapped up our day in Wuxi with a heavy set of Japanese foods at a Japanese food restaurant.

Being in Wuxi was quite an experience but I was looking forward more to our next few days in Shanghai – the modern cosmopolitan that defines China as a new modern nation.