Day 4 Beijing Confiscation

Drove 2 hours back to Tangu Port to wait in the customs office again all day while our 6 customs agents negotiated release of the truck. This was our 3^rd day trying to get the truck out and we had to leave tomorrow to keep to schedule.

After another day of gesticulation and gibbering we were dragged into the head honchos office where we explained that we needed the car released yesterday. He didn’t give a shit – his dumplings were getting cold. 

In the end they confiscated :

• My China and Russia Maps as these were printed in a western country and could possibly have Taiwan listed as a separate country and not part of China...
• My empty 20 litre fuel container
• An empty plastic container for doing our washing in
• A roll of rags
• A hanger for washing 
• A foldout chair
• Georgias blanket!!!

All ridiculous things, but I think to save face they decided to grab something.  We had to ring the NZ embassy for help and a few phone calls were made. They even stayed late to let us have the car that night. I wanted to run the customs bugger over when I finally got to get in and drive but that probably would have meant more paperwork!

So my initiation to driving in China was rush hour from the port to Tianjin to pick up some bags then another 3 hours back to Beijing. I don’t care. I have my truck and most of my stuff and they can catch me if they can!

GEORGIA

Today I decided I was going to abandon my mother, instead of sitting in the cafeteria at Customs  for five hours straight, waiting for one signature…Not gonna happen! So I went on tour for the day with the others, Maurice, Ross and Murray. We took the van to the forbidden city, it was a hot climate about  35 degrees, wasn’t the best idea to where a cotton t-shirt and shorts that were denim and stuck to you as you walked.  Anyway we had a really cool Tour guide named Mr Lee, he was very funny and talked way too fast! But, he knew heaps of information and was able to answer some questions that we were curious about! So pretty good!

We then arrived at the Forbidden City it was packed with thousands of locals, not many tourists. This year 2011 is celebrating the 90^th anniversary of the Forbidden City, so that explains the amount of people.  Other than that it was great! Really smoggy too, so very hard to see for at least 50 metres in front as you were walking.

There were about 9 gates that we walked through to get to the heart of the Forbidden City. It was recently done up in 2008, because of the Beijing Olympics, so most buildings were fresh looking. As soon as we got to the heart of the Forbidden City my Polaroid camera decided to suck a kumara Grrr… so wasn’t able to take cool photos at this point.

We then made our way to the cement factory where most China was manufactured and painted by the Chinese artists, very cool to see, we were told that they had to have a very steady hand to get every detail perfect on the china plates. 

We then had a look in the shop there was a really nice range of different china, and things like Elephants, Monsters and ladies, I indeed enjoyed it!

Just outside the cement factory were little tuk tuks, which are a little bike with a 2 man seat connected to the back, I sat with Maurice, he said he would be my father for the day! Its now about lunch time so, the tour guide took us to a typical Chinese home, where we could interact with the house owner and they would provide us a meal. We had steamed rice, Dumplings, Meatballs, cooked peanuts and even broccoli like home! We did not talk to the house owner though as she was making our kai for lunch.

Our last tour that Mr Lee accompanied us to included a tea house. We got to try about 5 different common types of tea that is a tradition in china, there was jasmine tea, fruit tea, rose tea, yellow tea and lychee tea. 

My favorite tea was the fruit one, it had different dried pieces of fruit, that were full of taste, we let it brew in the pot so we could have a strong taste, it was amazing…so I decided I may have to buy one!

We finished off with a supermarket down town from our hotel about 10 km, it wasn’t like what we expected, but it was good enough to get some basic supplies for the upcoming Gobi desert if needed, I bought about 10 bottle of drinks which was 30 yuan, which is about  5 New Zealand dollars! 

Cheap az!