Our first school break was for the Chinese holiday called Mid-Autumn Festival, so this post is about our week of September 29, 2023 to October 8th 2023. As we release this, it’s been six months since the trip!

Copied from Wikipedia: 

“The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, is a harvest festival celebrated in Chinese culture. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar with a full moon at night, corresponding to mid-September to early October of the Gregorian calendar.”

It’s an old tradition/holiday to commemorate and celebrate the end of the autumn harvest (farming stuff). 

For us, it meant an entire week off work!

One of Marissa’s childhood friends from Arizona, Corrinne, with whom Marissa had actually worked with before (when she lived in China previously), had been living in Shanghai, China for a couple years now. She and MacGyver were about to move back to the USA, so we decided to take this opportunity and visit them.  As of the time of this writing, they are both now back in Arizona.

Scott really wanted to travel via high speed train to get the experience. Traveling by train in the USA is not very common, but here in China, it’s how most get around because of the affordability. With that, and there being around 1.5 billion people living in China, unfortunately the tickets sold out instantly. 

So, we booked our flights and were off!

But first, on our way to the airport, we stopped at a Taco Bell!

It was….so so.

Higher quality food than a USA Taco Bell and not as terrible for you.

Peep the clear glove. In China, anytime you’re given food designed to eat with your hand you’re given a glove. 

Not gonna lie, it’s a nice feature.

After Taco Bell, which is in downtown Shenzhen, we flew from Shenzhen, China to Shanghai.

We first arrived in Shanghai and, sadly, Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson did not greet us.

So we took a DiDi from the airport to Corrinne and MacGyver’s apartment. (DiDi is the Chinese Uber).

It was about 10pm.

Marissa’s friend, Liana, who took over for Marissa’s old Drama teaching job when she left China 2 years ago, was meeting us in Shanghai too.

Liana lives down by us in a town next to Shenzhen called Huizhou. It’s just far enough away (about an hour) that we don’t visit too often. 

Anyway, Liana and her friend/co-worker (Cody) greet us in the apartment when we arrive.

The next morning we wake and head to Disneyland Shanghai! Corrinne and MacGyver both worked at Disneyland, so today MacGyver was our tour guide while Corrinne was working.

Here is a photo of Corrine and Marissa. We waited in line for about 1.5 hours (with all the toddlers) so we could get our photo with her!

From Left to right: Liana, Scott, Marissa, Belle (Corrinne), Cody, and MacGgyver.

If you can see, Scott just couldn’t contain himself from the excitement of seeing Belle for the first time in his life, a real dream come true.

Below are a few more random photos from the day:

The next day was Sunday, so Marissa and I woke up and went to church. The LDS church there was held inside a big hotel conference room.

We caught a ride back to Corrinne’s apartment with a lady who ironically worked at Disney with Corrinne and MacGyver. 

For the remainder of Sunday we wandered around Shanghai and then got dinner at a SUPER fancy restaurant in an area of downtown called “The Bund”. 

The Bund is just this historical waterfront area of Shanghai. It’s really beautiful. Here is a photo of the group at dinner:

Cody, Liana, Scott, Marissa, MacGyver, Corrinne and of course the bright China flag

Above is the area you’d call ‘The Bund’

And here are some random photos from the rooftop:

After dinner we walked around the Bund and made our way to a roller skate bar! It was called “Riink”

It was fun! Same vibes as the roller skate rink you’d go to as a kid except it was all adults and they served drinks. 

Omg MacGyver

The next day was Monday and we spent the day lounging. Scott, Marissa, and Corrine rented bicycles and rode around downtown Shenzhen. The day was chill. Here are some photos from Monday:

This is a typical chinese mall^ Just massive

On Tuesday Marissa and I woke up and began our journey to Beijing. We were able to book a train from Shanghai to Beijing! But it wasn’t one of the super fast trains. As I mentioned, traveling by train in China is the most common way for people to travel far distances. And this was a national holiday week, so things were packed!!!

The ride was fun. Like an airplane but with a LOT more space. They served us food and had a mini bar on the train car so you didn’t have to call attendants for a drink (non-alcoholic for us of course)

On the train ride Scott was so annoying and couldn’t get over how many high rise apartments there were. The countryside between Shanghai and Beijing was lined with these apartments. Seemingly endless. 

I guess that’s what happens when you have over a billion people in your country. In the below photo you see a snapshot of what we are talking about. This photo is not in or near a downtown metro area, it’s literally out in the countryside.

We arrive in Beijing early in the evening and are STARVING. So what does that mean? 

We take a taxi to an area we think will have lots of food and arrive to realize there is no food around.

Perfect.

Then it starts raining.

But OMG, the pollution in Beijing is so bad, the entire area was covered with this haze of what seemed like fog, but looked more gray.

Anyway, we end up taking a taxi to another part of downtown to get some food. We found some food stalls and decided to try eating Scorpions! 

JUST KIDDING!!!

Neither of us were brave enough to try the scorpions. But one day Scott does want to try them…but needs someone else to eat them first.

After a long day of travel, we find our hotel and crash. 

We wake early the next day (Wednesday) and make our way to the meetup point for our booked excursion. Marissa found a small travel company online that does a group hiking trip on the Great Wall of China. 

We meet up and take the 1.5 hour bus ride out of Downtown Beijing into the surrounding mountains where we get to the Great Wall!

In total, the Great Wall of China spans over 5,000 miles across China, so we are only seeing a very small portion of it. For our trip, we hiked about 4 miles up the wall and then set up tents on a flat portion of the wall.

Here are some photos from our hike to the sleep spot:

It was insane to see the wall just went on endlessly and to think this was built in the 1400’s with no big machinery. And what’s even more insane is it’s just high up on the mountain ridges, so it was hard for anyone, and even animals, to make their way around. I mean heck, it was hard enough for us to hike our way on the nice paved stone path!

Most of the wall we were walking on was renovated at some point because we hiked until the nice sections ended and we could see where the wall had deteriorated. Right where the nice part of the wall stopped is where our group set up our tents. This was such a diverse group of humans from all over the world! It was a really fun night watching the sunset on the Great Wall of China while talking to people from all around the world.

Scott was battling the flu on this trip, so he took some Nyquil and we passed out pretty early. The night was cold but manageable. Although feeling like doo-doo, we woke at 6am on Thursday to get some sunrise photos of the wall:

After taking photos, we packed up camp and hiked back to the starting point where the bus was waiting. From there, we made it back to downtown Beijing and spent the afternoon / evening exploring the Forbidden city, Zhongshan Park, and of course Tian’anmen square.

The Forbidden City marks the center of downtown Beijing and is this super old, yet pristine, palace complex that was built in the 1400’s for the then Emperor to live in during winter. It’s basically like the USA white house where the leader and their family lived, except it’s an entire town. It was wild.

It is surrounded by a massive stone wall and then, of course, a moat.

But you could get a birds eye view of the entire Forbidden City from across the street in Zhongshan Park, so we went there too!

Below are some random photos from the day:

If you look closely, the details of these buildings are impressive. It’s all wood and carved to perfection. 

^Weapon Stands

Above is a corner of the Forbidden city boundary seen from the outside of the city.

Once night fell we made our way over to Tiananmen Square:

The next morning (Friday) we got up and made our way to the summer palace (where the emperors spent their Summer). The construction and style was very similar to the Forbidden City Palace (the emperor’s winter home) except the summer palace was out on a lake and built up high on a hill. So beautiful.

Here are some photos from our day at the summer palace:

^Map of the Summer Palace^

^This was a massive walkway built so the people could get from one place to another without getting wet in the rain. And instead of just building it, they had the most intricate paintings the entire length of the corridor.

Stairway up to the top of the Summer Palace

After touring the Summer Palace Marissa and Scott met Devon for Hot Pot back in Beijing. He is an old friend (and coworker) of Marissa’s from when she lived in Beijing back in 2018. 

If you don’t know, hot pot is a popular Chinese dining experience where you cook your own food at the table in a boiling pot of soup. You first choose your flavor of soup and the soup is placed at the center of the table and boiled. Then you choose what you want to eat and it’s brought out a-la-carte. You then pick up the raw food with your chopsticks and put it in the boiling soup for it to cook. You wait 2-3 minutes then take your food out and eat it!

And that’s it! 

That concludes our trip to Shanghai and Beijing!  The next day (Saturday) we woke up and caught a flight from Beijing to Shenzhen. 

Thank you so much for reading our posts!

Our next post will be about our trip to the Philippines for Christmas 2023! Hopefully it doesn’t take us another 6 months to get a post out, ha!

And before we go, we wanted to leave you with one final photo to show you that there is still hope in this world because yes, outside of the USA, airlines still serve fabulous meals on 3 hour flights.