China puts the PING in shopping

It has been a whirlwind of sites and activities in China, but a lack of Internet cafes makes posting a bit difficult. Mom and I have now seen the Great Wall, the terracotta warriors, panda bears, Beijing, shanghai, and a bunch of other small cities that I had never heard of. When I say small cities I mean less than 10 million people. Every city we have been to has at least 5 million and they all have several shopping megaplexes. I have now bought an extra suitcase to lug all the stuff I have bought and I haven't even been to Hong Kong yet. My suitcase contains a terracotta warrior (shhhhh), jade dragons, a chess set, 2 purses, 3 pairs of jeans, and chopsticks. Did I mention that I don't have anywhere to live when I return to Sydney so I have no idea what I am going to do with all of this shit (Gramps, you look very pretty today). Last night, we took the dreaded green train to Chongqing. It lasted 14 hours. The smell of the loo made everyone in our bunk sleep with their shirts over their heads as the smell of our stinky armpits was 10 times more fabulous than the ammonia smell. The train had no A/C so we kept our window open to get fresh air, but we spent the entire night going in and out of tunnels and the noise was deafening. Not happy with Intrepid and their supposed mid-class trip. The night before was fabulous! We went to some culture show about the Tang dynasty which I am sure was interesting but I was just there because the Tang people ate the shit out of dumplings. They were fabulous and this small lady just kept bringing more of them. The pork ones were shaped like little pigs and even had mini tails. They had seafood, shrimp, duck, chicken, and vegetable dumplings. All perfectly bite size. I ate until I thought I was going to be sick (in a good way). In the morning, mom and I rented bicycles and cycled the wall around city of xi'an. You get to ride on top of the wall (it is about street width). It even has a moat all the way around it. Disaster Jean's chain fell off a couple of times, but we were able to fix it. This was very fortunate as the wall is a 14 km square and it would have been a long walk back to the bike hire place. Tomorrow we get on a boat for a 3 day cruise down the Yangzi river. Might pull my hair out from boredom, but we will see.