WHY I WANTED TO VISIT CHINA ? CHINA JOURNEY

 My husband and I love to see new places and we plan an international trip once in 4 or 5 years. This time we planned on going to China . usually we travel by ourselves and book the trips through a travel agent but we discovered that as we were becoming older, trying out local cuisine and experimenting was becoming risky for our palates and guts, so we selected a travel agent this time for a group tour after much research. We found S.O.T.C very customer friendly and luckily their office was within walking distance from our residence.

As we were proceeding on our travel plans, our agent told us that there was a group tour to China and Japan planned for 15 days. As middle class people usually are , we are also very budget conscious and seeing China and Japan on a single shot sounded very attractive for us

My husband has a patient who is running a Dosa restaurant in Japan and had heard a lot about that country from him. I had my own reasons to visit China . Ever since my childhood I am an avid reader , Pearl.S.Buck is my favorite author and I have read almost all her books .

She lived most of her life in China and it is through her vivid writing I became very fascinated by China which is very similar to our country in its vastness , population and culture

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries to China, and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 there. The family spent their summers in a villa in Kuling town, Mountain Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that she decided to become a writer. 

Her book The Good Earth was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces"; she was the first American woman to win the prize. The novel is about a Chinese family who lives in a village on the cusp of World War I. The book experienced a revival in popularity when Oprah Winfrey brought it to the attention of readers in 2004.

When I asked the SOTC agents about China they had a smile on their face , they said China has changed a lot now and we would be seeing only the tourist spots popularly shown , I thought it doesn’t matter, let me see China personally and form an opinion myself

As I usually do a lot of research into any place before we visit it ,I went through many sites about China 

 Ever since China has opened its doors to the world in the 70’s, it has experienced rapid growth and change. More and more tourists from around the world are flocking to the country to experience its rich history and culture

China has entered its digital era literally with a bang with its highly developed shared transport, high-speed rail, mobile communication and payment and Internet shopping.

Most essential for the China trip is a passport and visa, enough money or a card . Cash is mostly preferred, though hotels and restaurants accept Visa and Mastercard

When traveling in China we may need to pay with cash, official currency of China is the yuan, otherwise known as RMB or colloquially as ‘quai’.

Notes are available for 1RMB, 10RMB, 20RMB, 50RMB, and 100RMB. There are also 1RMB coins available, as well as smaller fraction known as ‘Mao’ for the Chinese leader who adorns them.

We packed clothes as per the weather which was early summer and took our medication too . Our phones we equipped with a VPN as many websites such as Facebook, Google, and Instagram are blocked in China and some applications on access to emails require a VPN connection

We took an adapter for our phones and laptops as China uses 2 or 3 thin-pin sockets at 220V , this we feel is the most important item to pack for any international travel , otherwise we have to hectically search for adapters as soon as we land in that country 

Though in India we have plenty of Chinese restaurants and we love Chinese fried rice and noodles , it has region wise other special dishes like Beijing roast duck, Shanghainese soup dumplings, spicy hotpot rice noodles and dim sum.

The Chinese do not tip and the tourists aren’t expected to either which again is very important to know as in some countries it is rude not to tip

Other than the chain stores and boutiques, we can practice our bargaining skills and not accept the marked price or first price offered.

Finally the D day arrived and we were all set to go , having completed all the formalities of visas for both the countries and insurance ,as we went just before the Covid struck, we were comparatively comfortable, further to our delight we were informed that instead of the big group which we had expected we were going to be in a smaller group of 3 couples and a father and son from Mumbai, Chennai, my husband and me from Hyderabad.

All of us were flying from different cities , enroute touching Kuala Lampur , Singapore and Hongkong