Digging to China

I've always been the parent who was more about giving my kids experiences than things. While I wasn't likely to spend money on buying them the latest video game,  I never hesitated when it came to giving them the gift of travel.

I decided to take my son on an epic vacation for his 15th birthday. China had long been a bucket list item, and when I stumbled across a great travel package, I knew we had to go. We used a tour company called  Gate1 Travel. Normally I prefer to travel on my own, but with a trip like this, I realized the language barrier and potential confusion could lead to us spending more time stumbling around, trying to figure out where the heck we were and where the heck we were going, than actually seeing the things we wanted to see. And the price was so crazy affordable, I couldn't NOT book this tour.

For $1,500 per person, we were able to travel confirmed from Los Angeles to Beijing, continuing on to Xian and Shanghai. Airport transfers, bus travel, several meals, and lodging were all included. When I researched China travel, airfare alone from LA or San Francisco was over $1,200, so this was the deal beyond deals. We also used mileage to travel from Alaska to Los Angeles, which saved me even more money. This was an eight-day tour (10 total with travel dates) and we got to see all the top sites. We had a tour guide who was with us the whole time, and she was informative, organized and gave us a lot of insight into life in China. We stayed at three different hotels, and all but one was equal to a four-star U.S. hotel. This is me, arriving exhausted at our first stop, where we thankfully slept for several hours before exploring Beijing!

China is an interesting place. It's changed a lot in the last 30 years, becoming more modern and updated. A contradiction in terms, it is horribly polluted (especially Beijing) and breathtakingly beautiful. The people have no sense of personal space and push and shove everywhere they go, but are friendly and engaging. The traffic is one of the most frightening things I've ever seen, yet somehow people manage to drive in it daily without dying (this one I do not get!) There is complete freedom of religion, with temples, mosques and churches in abundance, while the government owns all the land and if you buy a home, it's only yours for 70 years, then it reverts back to the government.

We got to experience things many people never see. We climbed the Great Wall. We viewed the Terra Cotta Soldiers. We saw Shanghai at night (and almost got trampled in a crowd rushing to get on the tour boat in Shanghai), we met new people and tried new foods (jellyfish?!), fought through polluted air and melted in the 100-degree heat. We stood in the Forbidden City, walked Tiananmen Square, rode the Metro, bargained with shopkeepers and lit incense in a temple.

Travel expands one's horizons in ways nothing else can, it gives us new perspective and helps bridge the gap between understanding different cultures and people. We learn acceptance and tolerance by seeing both the differences and similarities in all of us.

My son summed it up perfectly while we were there. At one point he said. "It's so different here." I agreed with him. Then he said "But things are also kind of the same. People are the same." Again, I agreed. Wherever you travel, you will find people living their lives, loving their families, working, trying, existing, doing all the same things we do at home.

At the end of the day, we are all more similar than we realize. Through cultural differences, varying views on life, and living at all ends of the world, we are all just people. And I embrace that.