Fifth Grader Shares Story of Summer in China
(Isabelle Deng, Oct. 1, 2016)
Note:  Isabelle Deng is a fifth grade student who is part of the Oakland County Connection Private Literacy Tutoring Program.  She attends Holden Elementary School in Sterling Heights. This is a travel story she wrote for oc115.
KaiPing, China – I was more than excited because I was going to another country half way across the world!  My name is Isabelle and I will be 10 in September!  This year I spent my summer in China with my family.  It was an experience that I will never forget because I made amazing memories there.
I was in China for six weeks.  My family and I traveled over 7,800 miles to reach the destination.   And it took 21 hours of travel time to get to China.  We traveled to China on a plane, but to get around in China, we use taxis most of the time and walked, which was my least favorite way to get around because it was so hot! So as soon as you got outside, the sun would start burning against your skin and make you dizzy and as if that isn’t enough, you also will start sweating like crazy.
I still remember my first day in China.  We had arrived at our apartments at 3 a.m.  I fell asleep a minute after I step into the apartment.  I don’t even think I showered that day.
During my trip, I went to a lot of cool places.  I may not have a favorite but I do have favorites.  One of the places is called the Seventeenth Floor Restaurant.  It is so cool because the walls are all made of glass.  It’s on top of a 17-floor building, and while you eat, the floor will move slowly so you can see the whole city of KaiPing, which was the city I stayed during most of the trip. Every two hours, the restaurant spins one cycle.
Another place was a place called the Window of the World.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the largest miniature world. It was one of my favorite places to go to because it shows miniature versions of some of the world’s most famous landmarks.
The last place I am going to tell you about is a rock museum that holds really rare looking rocks.  My dad’s friend opened it and it took him fifteen years to collect and arrange the whole museum.   My favorite collection was the food collection, where he puts up rocks and stones to look like food on display without carving them. They look so real that it makes you forget that they are actually made out of rock or stone.
In China, there is a lot of traffic because the roads are narrower there. So even past midnight the city is awake with traffic and cars honking.  When I wake up in the morning, all I hear outside my apartment window are people shopping in the market nearby.  In the morning, I also hear music and people dancing in the park next to my apartment.  There is no name for the language of KapPing.  Most people in KaiPing called it “KaiPingnese”.  I can understand and say a few words in KaiPingnese.
Food is big part of KaiPing culture.  Some of the city’s traditional food includes goose, clay-pot rice, green bean paste cake, and fish meat tofu.  The food is so good in China but my most favorite food of all was honey barbecue-flavored ribs.  They would sell it in one of the many markets below our apartment.  I almost had it every day for breakfast in China.  I had it one last time on the day we left for Michigan.
In China, we met a lot of our family and friends.  One thing I noticed about people of China was that their clothing had English words on it, but no Chinese words, even though they were in China!
Another interesting fact is that if a person didn’t have the money to buy a place to setup a store to sell their stuff, they would setup a mat at the side of the road, and put whatever they were going to sell on the mat.  If there were more people in another area, they would move the mat there.  The people who could afford to buy a place to setup their shop, usually have no doors, and most shops would be right below the apartments.
In China we did a lot of shopping.  Most of the time we were shopping for souvenirs.  We shopped for souvenirs for our family and friends in Michigan.  I got lots of souvenirs for myself too!  I bought a keychain, a necklace, books, pencil boxes and pens for myself.
Now I’m back in school and dealing with that annoying brother of mine, and when I look back at the photos I had taken during the trip, it all feels like a dream, and I want to have that dream again.