Ni hao Portsmouth!

Hey guys! I just got back from China! While I was there, I went to Hong Kong and Beijing. Those cities are VERY different. I’m going to tell you a little bit about both:

Remember what I told you about Hong Kong? Hong Kong is actually NOT in China. It is part of the People’s Republic of China (China’s long, fancy name), but Hong Kong people don’t have to follow Chinese rules. My favorite part of Hong Kong was the big light show that covers the entire city! At 8pm every night, all the skyscrapers and big Hong Kong buildings light up in a show with lasers, spotlights and rainbow craziness set to music. It was really cool to see. My friends and I took the Victoria Peak tram to the top of the mountain to watch the sun set. We saw all the buildings turn their lights on and come to life!

While I was in Hong Kong, I got dim sum. Dim Sum is sort of like brunch, but instead of pancakes and bacon, you eat lots of little foods that add up to one tasty meal! I had lots of yummy dumplings and some noodles.

I also did Tai Chi in Hong Kong. Tai Chi is a martial arts practice where you make lots of slow, quiet movements to center your body and help you be healthy. When you get really good at Tai Chi, you can even use it to defend yourself, like karate. Just like karate, though, Tai Chi is mostly about quieting your mind and being healthy, never about beating people up. We learned a couple easy moves, then practiced them with the Tai Chi master.

In Asia, especially China and Japan, tea is very important. I bet you’ve seen your moms or dads drink tea by putting a little bag of stuff in a mug of hot water. Real Chinese tea is made very differently- there’s a whole ceremony involved. Instead of using a bag of tea, you use loose tea, the dried leaves of tea that you pour hot water over to make fresh, delicious-tasting tea. There are different kinds of tea leaves, too: black tea (“regular” tea), green tea, and even flower teas made from plants like jasmine and rose. There’s also a really special tea called Pu’er. Pu’er is special because it comes from fresh, young tea leaves that are picked only from trees high in the mountains of China. I bought a pretty jasmine tea with pretty pink buds. When you puts the buds in a cup, they open their flowers and make delicious flower tea!

I went to Beijing with a few of my friends. I had my 21^st birthday while I was there. I had the coolest birthday ever, because guess where I was? THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA! The Great Wall was built over 2,000 years ago to keep dangerous people out of China. It is so long, you can stretch it from Rhode Island to California, then all the way back again! Astronauts can even see it from space! I got to hike around the wall, and I took lots of pictures. It is amazing to be able to walk around on something that was built so long ago.

I also got to see all of the Olympics buildings. I saw the Bird’s Nest, which is the largest iron structure in the world! It looks really delicate from far away, but when you get up close you see how huge and strong it is. I also saw the WaterCube, where all the swimming stuff happened. It looked like a big square made out of bubbles! There was a fountain in front and water running down the sides of the glass windows, too. I watched the Olympics all the time last summer, so I was really happy to see all the places where the athletes competed.

One thing that made it tough to travel around China was the language. Chinese is really hard to learn, because it is a tonal language, which means the loudness or pitch makes the meaning different. You could say “Yu” in a really high voice, and then say “Yu” in a really low voice, and it would mean two completely different things, like “dog” and “teacup” (it doesn’t mean either of those, I just don’t know any real Chinese examples). This was the only country where nobody spoke any English at all, and it made it a lot harder to do things that are usually easy, like hail a cab or ask someone where a restaurant was. I liked the challenge- it was a good reminder that learning new languages is a really good way to meet new people, and also that you don’t have to speak the same language to talk to each other.

My trip to China was really fun. Ms. Laura told me that you guys are making dragon masks! That’s a really fun project, and there are dragons all around in China! Not real dragons, but lots of gold dragon statues and dragon decorations. In China, the dragon is a symbol of power and strength. I hope you have fun. By the time you do your art projects on Japan, I will be able to come visit you! Japan was my favorite country and I can’t wait to tell you about it in person.