this whole affair began back in september, when i received a phone call from my grandmother asking me if i was free for two weeks in july. she gave me a trip to china as my sixteenth birthday present, going with a choir out of grosse ile [this little island town close to detroit]. i started counting down the days. i learned conversational chinese phrases. i practiced the stupid latin church music until i knew it frontwards and backwards and hexagonalwards. and then, on the ninth of july, i caught a plane to beijing.



grandma and i at the chicago airport. god, transpacific flights are the worst. i could not sleep AT ALL. and they fed us five meals. i'm not even kidding.



and they fed us another meal on the flight from tokyo to beijing. everything in japan is a lot more aesthetically pleasing. they don't have employment laws, so it's okay to not hire a flight attendant because they're not ethereally beautiful i guess. also, they served us tea in a real teacup and gave us real metal cutlery. thumbs up, japan!



this is the beijing airport. it is roughly the size of luxembourg. also, it was dead empty when we got there. this was mildly creepy.



i didn't sleep my first night in beijing. partially because i ate so much on the plane and didn't sleep then so my natural biorhythms were thrown waaaaaaay out of whack, but also because i had "golden slumbers" stuck in my head. it was cruel and unusual. consequently, since i had not rested in about 36 hours or something, these photos are really. really. really bad.

here you can observe china's national bird, the crane. /bad joke



in tian'anmen square. the cnn hat got surprisingly good reviews.



im in ur squarez, watchin ur statuez~~



mao's mausoleum. no cameras are allowed inside, so i couldn't snap a shot of the chairman. you're only allowed in there for a minute at a time, probably because the party doesn't want you knowing that he's made out of paraffin, although any old idiot with eyes could have seen that. despite the fact that a good foot or so of plexiglass blocks your view. oh yeah, and don't let the smog fool you! it was hotter than hell out.



the aforementioned chairman at the entrance to the forbidden city.



the forbidden city. where the emperor lived with his 3,000 concubines in his 9,999 rooms. or something like that. this is where those tourists got stabbed, by the way.











i gave up on photographing after that, i got really sick at lunch and just kind of slunk around all day. jetlag is a bitch. not much happened after that though, aside from wandering around downtown beijing and watching two girls from the group eat fried scorpion from the street vendors. this is the beijing jade museum, the next day. he carved that from the outside in. then we went to the great wall... and sang.



although we got there an hour late because felipe calderon decided to be an asshat and get ~*vip access*~ and shut down the whole damn wall for ever and a day. after our impromptu performance, which was met with much awkward staring from tourists of all nations, i climbed up the steeper [but less crowded, as you will see!] part of the wall with one of the younger women from the group.



observed some ancient graffiti...



and brought my newspaper to true world-renowned status. :']



i know that it doesn't look very bad, but you have to remember that it's built on a friggin' mountainside. that mofo is STEEP.



view from the top of the wall. note how everyone and their mother decided to come that day.





i met katrina at the top.



and she needed help on the way back down.



something like #3 on the list of my top ten things that i never expected to see in china.







we went to a cloisonne workshop that had a restaurant on the second story.



justin decided that this would be a good time to try the chinese sake. he's really quite a lush, that boy - during the course of the trip he also sampled several native beers, chinese whiskey, pomagranate and rice wine and probably some other unidentifiable liquor that i haven't remembered. i declined to engage in alcohol consumption at that particular moment.



saw botticelli's venus and the mona lisa for sale at the friendship store in beijing. exorbitantly priced.



the olympic hotel that i like to refer to as elvis.



the bird's nest, which we were not allowed to get any closer to, so we had to take pictures from the side of the freeway.



we went to the peking opera, which was really more like slapstick and acrobatics and kickass swordfighting with a little bit of... uh... "opera" added in.





this was the "opera" singer. my program identified her as "the goddess sprinkling flowers," but she sounded more like a dying goat to me. also, this show would have been really great with subtitles. this country would have been really great with subtitles. there was this one instance where katrina and i were going down from the twelfth floor of our hotel to the first floor in an elevator. it stopped unexpectedly at the fifth floor, and when the doors opened we were greeted with the sights and sounds of a bunch of chinese businessmen and women yelling at the top of their lungs. at the elevator. at us, presumably. this continued for several seconds before the doors shut, with nobody having gotten in. nothing like hearing several dozen people you don't know screaming like they're going to spoonfeed you your eyeballs in a language you don't understand.







the next day we went to hutong alley, an historic beijing neighborhood. another impromptu concert ensued in some poor sap's courtyard.



#2 on the list of things i never thought i'd see in china.

you don't get to see them, but grandma and i were touring hu tong in a rickshaw of sorts. also touring hu tong were a group of peddlers hawking their wares to the choir. now, this was an interesting phenomenon considering that we were in motion. so they were essentially peddling to us from their bicycles. grandma and i bargained with a woman and eventually got six bookbags, ten little purses and ten pairs of chopsticks for $15 USD [got to love that cheap chinese labor, no?]. and we made the transaction while crossing a busy intersection. extreme shopping, the next great olympic sport?





we went to a pearl factory. the only noteworthy occurrences were a) my grandmother buying a ~$350 necklace and b) 26 pearls being in this oyster. holy cannoli.





please excuse my narcissism.



on our last night in beijing, we performed in the catholic church. frank, our tour guide who saw john denver perform in beijing in 1990, took about 150 photos of us - so i hope you enjoy some of these choice shots of me in my sexy performance outfit.







justin was really distressed that he had to play on an electric keyboard.



in every performance photo i am really easy to spot - i am always the skinny one on the far left.



like the rainbow! :']



their choir and soloist. i had never seen anyone get so intensely involved in their music. i cried a little.



katrina on the bus to the airport to xi'an.



we immediately went from the airport to the city wall, which is reportedly the best preserved in all of china. this is elsie, our new tour guide who had an extremely grating voice and a nasty habit of repeating everything twice.





downtown xi'an. the weather was craptastic, as per usual.



fran at the pagoda on top of the city wall. he was like my dad the whole trip, but in the good way! he looked after me and grandma. also, he provided much-needed comic relief at lunch the first day when i was running back and forth from the bathroom to puke my guts up. he's a good guy.





you could rent a bike and see the whole wall. katrina and her sister decided to be speedy gonzales.



i took paparazzi photos of them from the other side of the wall. so they decided to get their revenge.





afterwards we went to the muslim quarter of xi'an, and what was referred to as the "knockoff market." i had been looking for a teapot, but the ones here were around $70 USD. it made me cringe a little. what also made me cringe was when katrina and i went dress shopping and tried on our cheongsams in what was essentially a public toilet. eastern style bathrooms are... well, about eight step downs from western port-a-johns. at least.





according to our tour guide, this is what a seasoned pickpocketer looks like.



this, my friends, is rice wine. earlier in the trip i was giving the waitresses a lot of perplexed looks, as they were continuously offering me beer at every meal. [i later found out that there is no drinking age in china, which would explain that quite nicely] i finally gave in here, as i had tried rice wine vinegar on salads before and enjoyed it, so i thought this wouldn't be too different. although, they did heat it up so it was a little bit cooler than tea and it smelled like what i'd imagine yak's milk would. after having the whole glass i was... pleasantly buzzed. i could still walk in a straight line, but i was starting to get a little chatty. baby's first inebriation: dumpling banquet on the other side of the planet. now that's one for the record books.



believe it or not, that is a walnut dumpling and not fecal matter.





the qin dynasty terra cotta warriors are the only thing that xi'an is famous for, but justin could clearly not make a very good one.



i, on the other hand, was excellent.



my new posse. i bought two little ones that now guard my desk.



these are the fuwa, the olympic mascots, and they. are. EVERYWHERE. including on the way to emperor qin's tomb.









you break it, you buy it?





we went to a tea house afterwards, and i bought green jasmine for half the price it costs me in the states. eat me, import taxes.





and xi'an is nowhere near beijing.



#1. the great wall, pagodas, and... GIZA?!



this is the part where we stayed. picture the barrios of los angeles, and then think of a fifteen-story marble high rise right in the middle. that was our hotel.



we performed at the university, where i was warmly welcomed by a group of chinese college students. but we'll discuss that later.



the little girl in front tugged on my sleeve and whispered in my ear "you is very beautiful!" then hugged my knees and would not let go. i swear to god that it was the cutest thing i have ever witnessed in my life.



chinese dorm food is actually more repulsive than american dorm food. this country defies all logic.



i am miss america, clearly.





they sang scarborough fair. i fangirled.



the tiny girl in front had lungs thrice the size of mine. she sang like she swallowed christina aguilera.



allegra having no bloody clue what she's supposed to be doing? the world makes sense again!



afterwards we were swarmed by people wanting to take pictures [i must be on eighty chinese myspaces now]. the college students seemed to take a particular liking to me, especially this one who chatted me up in the wings the whole show. it went something like this: chinese college student tells allegra she is "very beautiful" and has "a very bright future." allegra tells chinese college student that his english is very good, and embarrasses him in front of all of his chinese college student friends by tackle-hugging him. chinese college student asks allegra for "the pleasure of your name" and she gives him her email address. chinese college student keels over in sheer, unadulturated joy. [he still hasn't emailed me, the jerk]



katrina and i had noodles for breakfast every morning at the hotel.





arrival in shanghai. it was hotter than hell outside, which explains the tarty dress that is vaguely reminiscent of aunt petunia's ensemble at the beginning of harry potter 5.





there was a market under the overpass.



katrina and i did end up buying matching dresses in the knockoff market in xi'an. we wore them to eat some green bean flavored popsicles our first night in shanghai when we went out to the french quarter and the bund.







i am vanna white. i still can't get over the fact that kung fu panda was playing at the shanghai multiplex.





fran also served as katrina and i's bodyguard. in return. we let the group refer to us as his concubines for the evening.



there was a putting green on the roof of the building next to our hotel.



shanghai art museum.



silk factory.







the remnants of lunch. we had watermelon, rice and tea at every meal; but everything else changed. authentic chinese food is nothing like americanized chinese, the only dishes on this trip that i had that were anything like the stuff i tasted back home were some cashew chicken, a spring roll and egg drop soup. everything else was completely new.



no trumpets?



the pudong, shanghai's financial district. that building with the whole in it looks a lot taller close up, because if you're right underneath it the perspective leads you to believe that it just keeps going and going into the clouds. it's hard to explain. we performed at a university here our last night in shanghai.



we had our only little bit of free time in shanghai, so i went walking with a couple of ladies from the group. we went down the seediest part of the city - like, auto mechanic row with a bunch of slums and garbage dumps. so we turned around and started going back up another street towards the hotel when a little green shop caught my eye. we crossed the street and went inside. it couldn't have been bigger than my bedroom, but two ladies and their kids were working there. it was lined with tea from wall to wall. nanette, madeline and i sat down and had a cup of tea. i said "ni hao!" to the woman and she was very enthusiastic about my knowledge of basic chinese phrases. i had been looking for a teapot all trip, so i poked around a little and found one in the window. i asked the woman how much, and she said "60." i said "US dollars?" and she said "no, chinese." and i just about fell over. i pulled out a matching teacup and asked how much, and she said "six." i got a whole china tea set for $10 USD. i'd really love to go back again just so i could visit there and keep going off the beaten path so i can buy where the chinese buy, instead of in all of the communist run shops where the prices are jacked up to american rates.



we went to the yuyuan garden and the market next door our last day in shanghai.





hidden mickey? also, THERE IS BLUE SKY IN CHINA?!?!?!?!?





what i am assuming is the chinese gumby.



i am a chopstick master.







all the swag i had picked up by the end of the trip.

feel free to ask any questions you'd like that weren't elaborated upon in my incredibly articulate captions. all in all, china was a very big, smoggy country that was full of chinese people. whose hospitality was unrivalled.

also, i just got back from my third year of journalism camp. the week was vastly un-noteworthy, mostly just nate and i catching up and eating lots of ice cream.

now, if you'll excuse me, i am going to go shower and get some sleep before i have my four impacted wisdom teeth ripped out of my mouth tomorrow. expect some vicodin-induced, poorly edited updates sometime in the near future.