Christmas Eve in New York City

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2004-12-25 12:18 · New York

What I did today:

Amtrak from New Rochelle to Grand Central. The running time was exactly 35 minutes.
From Grand Central to World Trade Center Site. The new Freedom Tower is under construction already.
Visited Wall Street. I didn’t expect the most important street in financial world is so short. Due to the Christmas day, I didn’t see a single person on the street with suite and tie. Actually, I didn’t see many people there at all.
Heading south, I reached the Hudson River but didn’t take ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
Took Metro Line 5 and reached 86 st. Station. Then visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most important exhibition there happened to be China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD. Many of the selections were found in Luoyang, my hometown.
Finally, we took M1 to the New York Public Liberty and
Went along the 42nd st. to Times Square.
Then went along the 50th st. to Rockefeller Center. The huge Christmas tree is there and there are “people mountains and people seas”.
We went to the Chinatown via Metro 6 (Canel st.) and had a wonderful dinner.
Went back to Grand Central and took Amtrak back to New Rochelle. It ran for 31 minutes.

5 Comments

What a nice blog - what did you think of snow in New York

this year, Jian Shuo? It's fascinating to look at American culture through the eyes of a Chinese visitor. Thank you for your detailed postings.

— Exploratoria · 2004-12-27 12:28

fds

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2004-12-27 23:12

Check if the comment function restored or not.

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2004-12-27 23:14

You probably would have the same impression that Washington DC, the most influential capital city in the world, is also very small. White house is even smaller. I think the philosophy of American culture is making the country run as efficiently as possible. There is no incentive to overspend tax payer's money on anything more than necessary. However, US as a country is underneath a very powerful and rich country, but sometimes visitors can be perplexed at superficial impressions.

— jqian · 2004-12-29 04:32

what were your impresssion of Chinatown? Were you surprised that Mandarin is not really the language in chinatown?

— Tony · 2005-06-17 22:06