(Update from September 21, 2011)
Ni hao from Chengdu, Sichuan province, south-western China! It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is our last day in China… or at least, in China Proper before we head onwards into Tibet. An enormous amount has happened in the last 5 weeks, so I have plenty to fill you all in on!
My last travelogue finished up after our epic camping trip through the Gobi Desert in Southern Mongolia, and afterwards we spent a good few days back in the capital city Ulaanbaatar in general recovery mode… enjoying sleeping in beds, showering every day and not having to start a fire every time we wanted a meal. After a few days in the (relative) luxury of the city, we decided we’d perked up enough to start planning our next Mongolian camping trip… this time up through the wild Northern Steppes. This time, though, the twist was that instead of travelling from place to place in an ancient, bone-shaking minivan the way we’d done on our Gobi desert trip, we decided to go on horseback! So with a couple of other people we met in our hostel in Ulaanbaatar, we caught a bus along bouncy, rutted roads to the tiny town of Terelj… a sweet enough place, though not much more than a small collection of ramshackle buildings with brightly coloured rooftops built around a couple of dirt roads.
Upon arrival we met up with the guides we’d organised from Ulaanbaatar, tentatively made friends with our horses, loaded up the poor pack horse with all our food, water and tents, and set off. It didn’t take more than 15 minutes plodding along on our horses to leave Terelj behind and be entirely surrounded by the Mongolian wilderness. The landscapes here were quite different to the ones we’d seen in the Gobi Desert, but again – they were immensely vast, very beautiful, and I’ve never seen the sky so big or so blue. We spent 5 days riding our horses through endlessly rolling steppes and hillsides, and it was all just gorgeous. The hillsides were covered with long waving grasses in brilliantly different colours, and there would often be little patches of forest and woodland to ride through where we could spot animals.
Our guides were 2 brothers; the elder one 25 and the younger one 15. Neither of them spoke a word of English but they were both incredibly sweet, and rode their horses with that loose-shouldered, slack-hipped, easy grace that all natural horsemen have. In fact, many of the families who live in gers (the white, circular felt huts that the nomadic tribes people live in) are so isolated that they are totally reliant on horses to get from place to place, so many of their children were riding before they could walk. The older guide had a very ancient looking rifle slung over his back, which he’d use to shoot their food for the day. Every now and again we’d bump into another Mongolian on horseback, usually completely in the middle of nowhere. If it was in the evening and we’d already set up camp and lit a fire he’d typically stop and have some tea with us; but if it was during the day when we were still travelling he’d just ride along with us for some time chatting genially with our guides, and then head off on his own merry way again, resuming his journey from who knows where to who knows where!
By the end of our 5 days on horseback, we were all feeling decidedly tender and sore around the rump; especially because we hadn’t been given proper saddles to ride on. Instead, we had the Mongolian version, which is basically just a saddle-shaped bit of wood with a slight layer of padding that constantly needed to be smoothed and evened out to prevent it bunching up into an uncomfortable, knotty lumps under the backside. Because we’re not as tough as the Mongolians, we’d wind up mournfully rubbing our behinds each evening and doing strange yoga-esque contortions to try and stretch our sore muscles. It took me a good day to stop feeling bow-legged after returning to Ulaanbaatar!
So upon our return to the city and civilisation, we had 2 days to wash the smell of horses off ourselves and our clothes before embarking on our last leg of the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which would take us into China. I was sad to leave Mongolia… we spent a month there all up, and though much if it was very ‘rough’ travelling (no showers, sleeping in tents, gathering our own firewood and cooking our own food) it was really good fun and the landscapes we saw there were extraordinary to the point of otherworldly. Pickpockets aside, the people were really kind and helpful, and it was mostly very easy to navigate. It’s certainly not a country I’d recommend to everyone… to enjoy it you definitely need to be willing to just sit back and roll with the punches because it’s not the most organised place in the world. But if you’re willing to rough it and don’t mind getting your hands dirty then I’d put Mongolia on your list of places to visit, because it’s cheap, beautiful, and tremendous fun.
So after a tearful farewell to the great people we’d spent most of our time in Mongolia with, we climbed back aboard that train (yet again) and chugged off into China. We crossed the border at the town of Earlian, and headed straight for Beijing. My immediate impression of China was that I was surprised by just how different to Mongolia it was. I didn’t realise it until we got there but for some reason I’d been expecting it to be quite similar, considering that they are both Asian countries right next door to one another. But China had a very distinct, different feel, and both Marco and I noticed it straight away. The most significant difference was the pollution; Beijing was covered in a blanket of smog and so humid we were both dripping sweat as soon as we stepped outside. I really enjoyed Beijing, but I must confess that I think that the location of our accommodation influenced my opinion because it certainly didn’t feel like the huge metropolis I know it is. Our hostel was in one of the small ‘hutong’ districts that are tucked into the city here and there. The hutong districts are basically small pockets of the city that are filled with a labyrinth of small, winding dirt alleyways that only have room for pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws. So it’s a kind of oasis from the busy streets loaded with cars and trucks that rattle by in the city proper. The small dirt lanes of our hutong were crammed with street vendors frying all sorts of delicacies, groups of men playing dominoes and mah-jong at outdoor tables, fruit sellers and an ample selection of dogs, cats and chickens that meant the area managed to maintain a true ‘Asian’ feel.
We did all the things you’d expect in Beijing… first up, we trooped like dutiful tourists through Tiananmen Square. I must admit I was actually a little disappointed in it. Perhaps it was just because the day was so smoggy we could barely see past the ends of our noses, but it was so hectic, full of traffic and polluted that I couldn’t grab hold of that feeling I usually get in places where real, serious History has gone down. It was so thronging and teeming with busy, ugly, modern day life that I couldn’t imagine that student in the white shirt who so famously faced down the tanks. Still, it’s always interesting to finally see a place that we’d heard so much about, and it would be impossible to visit Beijing and skip Tiananmen Square, so I’m still very glad we went!
Much more rewarding was simply strolling through the city itself, which in spite of the chaotic travel was actually quite pretty. There were lovely lakes with small paddle boats going across them, and willows hanging down over the footpaths surrounding them. We’d wander along beside these lakes and watch as the Chinese men had swimming races and then argued furiously with one another over who had won as they stood there dripping in their underwear. We also visited the Birds Nest Stadium and the Swimming Cube that the 2008 Olympics were held in, and ventured out to visit the mammoth Summer Palace that lies on the outskirts of the city. Built centuries ago, it’s acted as a political hub for Beijing for many years. It’s a gorgeous place with lush, lavish gardens and grounds that are still maintained, and loads of temples and buildings all with beautifully Buddhist names, like ‘Courtyard of Wisdom and Serenity’, ‘Temple of Fragrant Incense and Perfumed Blossoms’ and ‘Hall of Eternal Peace, Enlightenment and Harmony. I’m making these up, but you get the gist!
We didn’t visit the Forbidden City at that time as we knew we’d be returning to Beijing and wanted to save something up, but instead leapt on the bullet train and, in a ridiculously short 5 hours (look at a map – it’s a bloody long way!), we shot to Shanghai. Shanghai was a busy and bustling city with lots of European influence, and one of the most truly remarkable skylines I’ve ever seen. It’s filled with very distinctive sky-high buildings, including one that looks like several bright purple spheres on a skewer, and another that looks like a giant twisted sail with a gaping hole in the middle of it. Shanghai didn’t have as many distinctive sights as Beijing, but none the less it had a very vibrant atmosphere, and at times felt almost like New York with massive neon advertising everywhere and hoards of people. We spent 3 very pleasant days there, strolling along what’s known as the ‘Bund’ – the stretch of boardwalk along the river that affords the best views of the city skyline, and poking through jam-packed marketplaces. Another feature of Shanghai was the shamefully stereotypical Chinese hawker, standing on every street corner with a laminated card showing pictures of watches and handbags who would grab me and holler “Missy Missy!! Come my shoppy!! You buy bag, watch, DVD, jewellery!!! Come with me, looky looky looky!!!!!” I know that’s a shameful stereotype and I’m sorry, but it’s not an exaggeration! Everywhere we turned we heard “Looky looky looky” and saw Chinese salesmen desperately trying to entice us into their store. Luckily they weren’t too aggressive though, and it was easy to shake them off.
One of the absolute highlights of our time in Shanghai was an evening at the theatre to see Chinese Acrobats perform. They were absolutely amazing, and so flexible they seemed to have no bones in their bodies. To mention just one of the acts, we saw a woman play the clarinet while balancing an entire, multi-level tray of full champagne glasses on her nose, at the top of a ladder. To add to the incredulity of it, there were no safety nets or wires at all… these people were really up there whizzing about on trapezes and riding unicycles along slack-ropes without anything tying them on – if something had gone wrong, it would have been immensely ugly. Luckily nothing did go wrong, and it was a great performance all round. The only other thing I’ll mention is that those acrobats wear very, very tight, lycra outfits with not much underneath. And by not much, I mean nothing! So by the end of the evening, I knew those acrobats. Intimately. Every knobble, crease and crevice of them. That’s all I’m saying.
Another point that deserves mention is the bamboozling Chinese approach to riding the metro. To give credit where it’s due, the metro systems in the major cities are a credit to the engineers who designed them… cheap, clean, and efficient. When the metro pulls up and opens its doors, though, the Chinese adopt the following approach: CHARGE!!!! For such an incredibly intelligent country, they haven’t yet figured out that it’s better for everyone if you stand back and allow people to finish getting OFF the metro before shoving your way ON. So at every single stop, there is a huge clash in the doorways as people try to simultaneously barge their way in and out. It’s always bedlam, and gets quite savage. They also have their peculiarities on long train journeys…. they seem to love bringing their laptops/video games/various noise-making devices, and playing movies or games at absolute top volume, seemingly immune to the fact that not everyone might enjoy listening to roaring artillery fire, or the blood-curdling screams as some dastardly villain is slowly decapitated in a knife fight. The Chinese love their slasher flicks!
From Shanghai we began working our way back up the coast and headed to Qingdao, which is a small seaside town and apparently has lots of attractive German and Bavarian architecture. Unfortunately, though, we had very bad smoggy weather the whole time we were there and could barely see a thing! Frustrating, but you can’t win them all. From Qingdao it was back to Beijing where, excitingly, we met up with a good friend of ours from Australia – Blake Shaw. Many of you know Blake - for those of you who don’t: he is a great chap, shared a house with us for several years, and also happens to speak very serviceable Mandarin! So as well as being excellent company, he’s made much of our time in China infinitely easier in many ways by helping us communicate with bus drivers, food sellers, and locals in general. The other remarkable thing about Blake is that he happens to be very, very tall and very, very blonde…. both things that the Chinese are most definitely NOT. So he constantly walks through a kind of parted sea of open-mouthed, gaping Chinamen and women who stare up at him and blatantly take photos. Marco also cops quite a bit of attention on account of his fairly heavy facial hair – another area where the Chinese are comparatively challenged. Seeing them stare at us in the subway, when everyone is jammed in together, is particularly hilarious!
We’d deliberately saved up some of the best tourist spots in Beijing in order to visit them with Blake, so after we’d had a good quality catch up on everything that had been going on at home, the three of us headed out and attacked the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is a mammoth complex in the heart of Beijing, surrounded by an enormous stone wall, which is in turn surrounded by a broad moat of water. It was China’s imperial palace for over 5 centuries, and housed emperors, empresses, various nobles, countless concubines and endless streams of eunuchs to serve them all. Although it received a small amount of damage during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, an entire army battalion was swiftly sent to protect it and as such it came through relatively unscathed. It’s a sprawling palace, absolutely vast in terms of both scale and detail. The buildings in it are all single story and arranged around beautiful courtyards with gardens and water features. Tourists are not allowed inside the actual buildings themselves, but we could peer through the windows and open doorways so we spent a good half day wandering through the various wings of the palace. The detail is quite incredible… the rooves are all tiled with golden, circular shingles that interlock into one another and curve up at the corners in the quintessentially Chinese fashion. Underneath, the eaves are painted in intricate patterns of bright red, greens, yellows and blues. At the very top of the palace was the beautiful imperial garden, which is still lovingly tended and has glorious juniper trees and lovely, peaceful temples. It was a very interesting place to be, and crazy to imagine all the intrigues and debauchery that must have gone on there in its heyday.
As enjoyable as the Forbidden City was, it still didn’t hold a candle to what we did the next day, which was undoubtedly the greatest site we saw in all of China (no prizes for guessing what!). The Great Wall. How aptly named it is. With Blake’s language skills we cleverly navigated a train and 2 buses out to visit the area of the wall in Jinshanlin, about 4 hours outside Beijing. I’m sure you’ve all seen photos of it so I won’t harp on, except to say that it’s definitely one of the highlights of our entire trip. We walked along it for 10 kilometres, and though some areas were much more run down than others, in general the whole stretch was in pretty incredible condition, especially when you consider that it’s been standing there for centuries withstanding attacks from the weather, Mongolians AND swarms of tourists. We were lucky in that there weren’t actually that many people where we were, so we were able to walk for whole sections without seeing other people, which was marvellous. The scenery it runs through is stupendous, too. Enormous mountain ranges in every direction, and the Wall snaking its way along the top of the very highest ridge of all.
We also took Blake to visit what’s archaically known as the Peking Night Markets, which feature an assortment of incredibly exotic foods, adventurous even by Chinese standards. Tentacles feature heavily. Loads of things like deep fried starfish, raw snakes on skewers, sheep testicles, disgustingly sloppy, slimy sea slugs, entrails of all kinds and an abundance of creepies and crawlies. Marco and I each ate a scorpion, among other things, and Blake was particularly brave and ate a baby shark, just thrown into the fryer as it was, eyeballs and all.
This brings me to another major point about China – the FOOD!!!!! Oh my sainted aunt… ye gods and little fishies, and bless my socks and whiskers... it is AMAZING. It scores the trifecta – cheap, fresh and delicious. SOOO much better than the ‘Chinese’ food at home. Our first week here I ate so many dumplings I thought I would wake up wrapped in pastry. Dumplings are a little piece of heaven on a plate – I could eat them all day long without a break. Also the noodles… there are so many cheap, colourful little corner food stalls that have a counter out the front with a massive pile of dough and a cheerful little Chinaman beating it up, rolling it around, tearing it into noodles and throwing it into a wok right there. I’m talking Kung-pao chicken, juicy tofu, hot-pots full of chilli, and stir-fried anything you can think of. It’s not only delicious; it’s EXCITING because there always is an undeniable element of risk … especially in places with no English menu. Intestines seem to be a dietary staple here, and we often eye unidentifiable bits of meat on our plates with great suspicion. None the less, we have been gobbling and guzzling away like mad, and though we can’t necessarily identify everything we eat, none of it has made us sick yet. Touch wood!
It does sometimes put you off your meal, though, when the waiter carrying it to your table clears his throat, and with much juicy hacking casually hurls a giant gobful of saliva onto the restaurant floor right by you. If the smell of China is its delicious food, then the sound is undoubtedly the rich, throaty hocking and hacking of phlegm from the locals, followed by the slap of a spitball hitting the pavement. It’s not considered rude to spit in Chinese culture, and they do it with gutso and pinpoint accuracy… indoors, outdoors, on trains, busses and even (or it seems especially) when they’re either preparing or carrying food! Putting a backpack down on the ground becomes a tricky business in itself, with all those shiny little oysters to avoid!
But I’ll get back to the point. From Beijing we boarded the overnight train and headed to the quaint and picturesque town of Ping’yao. The Chinese overnight trains are very similar to the Trans-Siberian railways, except the beds are arranged in triple decker bunks instead of double deckers. We travel in the class known as ‘hard sleeper’, which is the cheapest available excluding the ‘standing cabin’ (we’re stingy, but not that stingy!) It’s somewhat noisy with the snoring Chinese all packed in together like sardines, but infinitely more comfortable than a bus.
Ping’yao was a beautiful place, albeit very touristy – and teetering on the edge of tacky. The city was built in the 1300s, and the ancient part of town remains more or less unchanged architecturally. The buildings are all low, with curly-cornered rooftops, and are built along a tangle of narrow, twisting streets. Unfortunately, many of these little streets are now lines with stores selling crappy Chinese souvenirs, so a certain amount of imagination is required to really picture how the town would have looked when it was newly built. Nonetheless, it was like stepping back in time, and we hired bicycles and enjoyed riding through the alleyways soaking up the ancient feel of the place.
From Ping’yao we headed to a much larger town… Xi’an. Xi’an is a booming metropolis, and one of the most visited places in China for one reason and one reason only – the famed Army of Terracotta Warriors. We arrived in Xi’an very early after an overnight train ride and were buzzing with eagerness, so after dropping our packs off at a hostel we decided to head out to see the warriors straight away. They are a fair way out of town, so (again with the help of Blake’s Mandarin skills) we cleverly navigated our way there on local buses. Now – the irony of the situation was that in order to actually SEE the terracotta warriors, we had to virtually BECOME warriors ourselves, and do battle with the endless swarming, charging, bullying, barging, TYRANNICAL groups of Chinese tourists. I realise that this is one of their national treasures and of course every Chinese person has a right to see the warriors, but they seem to adore travelling in large, organised tour groups. They all wear dorky matching hats or tee-shirts (if not both), and follow a Chinese tour guide who yells at them through a crackly megaphone and leads them around like sheep. Individually, the Chinese people seem to be nice enough, but when they are in packs batten down the hatches and prepare for stormy weather because they morph into unforgiving, brutal mobsters!! Elbows come out and gloves come off as they shove their way to the front. They seem to subscribe to the view that Might equals Right, and that as they are in a group they take priority over single tourists like us… perhaps it’s a Communist thing? ANYWAY!!! I’m ranting, so will go onto say that with much pushing and shoving on our own behalf we did finally manage to get a good look at the Terracotta Armies. They are in three pits, in various states of excavation, and a kind of aircraft hangar has been built over each pit so tourists can walk around and view the warriors from above. Many are still in pieces embedded in the ground, but there are lots of rows of completely excavated, more-or-less flawless warriors and horses that stand in their battle formations. The remarkable thing about them is that no two warriors’ faces are alike – they all have their own unique features and expressions. They were built by a Chinese emperor almost 2000 years ago, and in spite of the bedlam that reigns around them, there was something wistful and almost sad about them. The thought of them standing there for millennia, so silently and expressively, made me feel a little nostalgic for some reason. At least…I think it did. It was hard to properly form an opinion because I’d feel nostalgic for a moment, and then be jabbed in the ribs by an umbrella-wielding Chinese tourist, so perhaps my judgement is a bit off!
The day after our trip to the Terracotta Warriors we explored the centre of Xi’an, and spent most of the day wandering about the Muslim Quarter. This is a couple of blocks of the city where the streets are lined with absolutely amazing food stalls selling an incredible array of cheap, freshly cooked meals and snacks. The area also had loads of outdoor butcheries, where young fellows would sit on the pavement and merrily chop up a cow carcass with a machete. The butcher stalls themselves had outdoor tables loaded with raw meat, kidneys and livers the size of watermelons. There were also huge tubs of intestines, which (queasy stomach alert!) the vendors would blithely plunge into up to the armpits, stirring in herbs and who knows what with their bare hands. We ate some really delicious food there (including the best beef noodles we found in all of China), but also had to skip smartly over the streams of blood that ran down the gutters from the butchers’ stalls and raw food preparation. It’s one of those places that seem so honest about the food – you can see absolutely every stage: from the whole cow or sheep head that’s been hacked of and is lying casually at the back of the stall, right through the process of preparation, and finally the cooking itself. Smelly, but I love those kinds of markets!
From Xi’an it was back aboard the overnight train onto another famous Chinese city – Chengdu – which is where we are now, and where, sadly, we said goodbye to Blake earlier today. Though we’ve only been here 2 days, we’ve already seen a couple of the best things Chengdu has to offer… firstly, one of the world’s best breeding programs for the desperately endangered Giant Panda. We got up bright and early as we’d heard they were most active in the cool of the morning, and were lucky enough to arrive at the research centre just in time for breakfast. We got to see groups of giant pandas gorging themselves on bamboo, climbing trees and generally rolling around looking cute. We also got to see some 6-week old baby pandas, covered in new black and white fuzz. Gorgeous!
We also took a 2 hour bus ride to see the largest Budda statue in the world, built over 1200 years ago. Although it was another situation where we had to face the onslaught of the merciless Chinese Tour groups, it was a beautiful statue to see, with a tranquil eyes and a calm, serene expression on its face. It’s carved into the side of a cliff, over a running river, and is utterly epic in scale. Over 70 metres high, his earlobes alone are 7 metres long!
Today is our very last day in China (at least, it is if you count Tibet as a separate country), and so it marks the end of our epic overland journey from Moscow in western Russia, to Chengdu in southern China. We have spent a ridiculous number of hours on trains – days on end, sometimes – but I really love overland travel. Tomorrow, though, it’s back on a plane and we’re off to that most romantic Shangri-La … TIBET! It should be magnificent: all the more so as we’ll be meeting our good friend Jane Munro at the end of it, and after that my Dad, who is coming to meet us to go trekking in Nepal! So not only have we been treated to Blake’s great company, we have even more faces from home to look forward to.
Hoping you are well and happy, and sending much love. We miss you all.
Jenny xxxx
Ni hao from Chengdu, Sichuan province, south-western China! It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is our last day in China… or at least, in China Proper before we head onwards into Tibet. An enormous amount has happened in the last 5 weeks, so I have plenty to fill you all in on!
My last travelogue finished up after our epic camping trip through the Gobi Desert in Southern Mongolia, and afterwards we spent a good few days back in the capital city Ulaanbaatar in general recovery mode… enjoying sleeping in beds, showering every day and not having to start a fire every time we wanted a meal. After a few days in the (relative) luxury of the city, we decided we’d perked up enough to start planning our next Mongolian camping trip… this time up through the wild Northern Steppes. This time, though, the twist was that instead of travelling from place to place in an ancient, bone-shaking minivan the way we’d done on our Gobi desert trip, we decided to go on horseback! So with a couple of other people we met in our hostel in Ulaanbaatar, we caught a bus along bouncy, rutted roads to the tiny town of Terelj… a sweet enough place, though not much more than a small collection of ramshackle buildings with brightly coloured rooftops built around a couple of dirt roads.
Upon arrival we met up with the guides we’d organised from Ulaanbaatar, tentatively made friends with our horses, loaded up the poor pack horse with all our food, water and tents, and set off. It didn’t take more than 15 minutes plodding along on our horses to leave Terelj behind and be entirely surrounded by the Mongolian wilderness. The landscapes here were quite different to the ones we’d seen in the Gobi Desert, but again – they were immensely vast, very beautiful, and I’ve never seen the sky so big or so blue. We spent 5 days riding our horses through endlessly rolling steppes and hillsides, and it was all just gorgeous. The hillsides were covered with long waving grasses in brilliantly different colours, and there would often be little patches of forest and woodland to ride through where we could spot animals.
Our guides were 2 brothers; the elder one 25 and the younger one 15. Neither of them spoke a word of English but they were both incredibly sweet, and rode their horses with that loose-shouldered, slack-hipped, easy grace that all natural horsemen have. In fact, many of the families who live in gers (the white, circular felt huts that the nomadic tribes people live in) are so isolated that they are totally reliant on horses to get from place to place, so many of their children were riding before they could walk. The older guide had a very ancient looking rifle slung over his back, which he’d use to shoot their food for the day. Every now and again we’d bump into another Mongolian on horseback, usually completely in the middle of nowhere. If it was in the evening and we’d already set up camp and lit a fire he’d typically stop and have some tea with us; but if it was during the day when we were still travelling he’d just ride along with us for some time chatting genially with our guides, and then head off on his own merry way again, resuming his journey from who knows where to who knows where!
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| Marco with our friend Kim, our Mongolian guides, and a Mongolian we met in the wilderness. |
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| Marco looking particularly dapper on horseback. |
So upon our return to the city and civilisation, we had 2 days to wash the smell of horses off ourselves and our clothes before embarking on our last leg of the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which would take us into China. I was sad to leave Mongolia… we spent a month there all up, and though much if it was very ‘rough’ travelling (no showers, sleeping in tents, gathering our own firewood and cooking our own food) it was really good fun and the landscapes we saw there were extraordinary to the point of otherworldly. Pickpockets aside, the people were really kind and helpful, and it was mostly very easy to navigate. It’s certainly not a country I’d recommend to everyone… to enjoy it you definitely need to be willing to just sit back and roll with the punches because it’s not the most organised place in the world. But if you’re willing to rough it and don’t mind getting your hands dirty then I’d put Mongolia on your list of places to visit, because it’s cheap, beautiful, and tremendous fun.
So after a tearful farewell to the great people we’d spent most of our time in Mongolia with, we climbed back aboard that train (yet again) and chugged off into China. We crossed the border at the town of Earlian, and headed straight for Beijing. My immediate impression of China was that I was surprised by just how different to Mongolia it was. I didn’t realise it until we got there but for some reason I’d been expecting it to be quite similar, considering that they are both Asian countries right next door to one another. But China had a very distinct, different feel, and both Marco and I noticed it straight away. The most significant difference was the pollution; Beijing was covered in a blanket of smog and so humid we were both dripping sweat as soon as we stepped outside. I really enjoyed Beijing, but I must confess that I think that the location of our accommodation influenced my opinion because it certainly didn’t feel like the huge metropolis I know it is. Our hostel was in one of the small ‘hutong’ districts that are tucked into the city here and there. The hutong districts are basically small pockets of the city that are filled with a labyrinth of small, winding dirt alleyways that only have room for pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws. So it’s a kind of oasis from the busy streets loaded with cars and trucks that rattle by in the city proper. The small dirt lanes of our hutong were crammed with street vendors frying all sorts of delicacies, groups of men playing dominoes and mah-jong at outdoor tables, fruit sellers and an ample selection of dogs, cats and chickens that meant the area managed to maintain a true ‘Asian’ feel.
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| Outside the Trans-Mongolian train ... and |
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| ...inside the Trans Mongolian train! |
Much more rewarding was simply strolling through the city itself, which in spite of the chaotic travel was actually quite pretty. There were lovely lakes with small paddle boats going across them, and willows hanging down over the footpaths surrounding them. We’d wander along beside these lakes and watch as the Chinese men had swimming races and then argued furiously with one another over who had won as they stood there dripping in their underwear. We also visited the Birds Nest Stadium and the Swimming Cube that the 2008 Olympics were held in, and ventured out to visit the mammoth Summer Palace that lies on the outskirts of the city. Built centuries ago, it’s acted as a political hub for Beijing for many years. It’s a gorgeous place with lush, lavish gardens and grounds that are still maintained, and loads of temples and buildings all with beautifully Buddhist names, like ‘Courtyard of Wisdom and Serenity’, ‘Temple of Fragrant Incense and Perfumed Blossoms’ and ‘Hall of Eternal Peace, Enlightenment and Harmony. I’m making these up, but you get the gist!
We didn’t visit the Forbidden City at that time as we knew we’d be returning to Beijing and wanted to save something up, but instead leapt on the bullet train and, in a ridiculously short 5 hours (look at a map – it’s a bloody long way!), we shot to Shanghai. Shanghai was a busy and bustling city with lots of European influence, and one of the most truly remarkable skylines I’ve ever seen. It’s filled with very distinctive sky-high buildings, including one that looks like several bright purple spheres on a skewer, and another that looks like a giant twisted sail with a gaping hole in the middle of it. Shanghai didn’t have as many distinctive sights as Beijing, but none the less it had a very vibrant atmosphere, and at times felt almost like New York with massive neon advertising everywhere and hoards of people. We spent 3 very pleasant days there, strolling along what’s known as the ‘Bund’ – the stretch of boardwalk along the river that affords the best views of the city skyline, and poking through jam-packed marketplaces. Another feature of Shanghai was the shamefully stereotypical Chinese hawker, standing on every street corner with a laminated card showing pictures of watches and handbags who would grab me and holler “Missy Missy!! Come my shoppy!! You buy bag, watch, DVD, jewellery!!! Come with me, looky looky looky!!!!!” I know that’s a shameful stereotype and I’m sorry, but it’s not an exaggeration! Everywhere we turned we heard “Looky looky looky” and saw Chinese salesmen desperately trying to entice us into their store. Luckily they weren’t too aggressive though, and it was easy to shake them off.
One of the absolute highlights of our time in Shanghai was an evening at the theatre to see Chinese Acrobats perform. They were absolutely amazing, and so flexible they seemed to have no bones in their bodies. To mention just one of the acts, we saw a woman play the clarinet while balancing an entire, multi-level tray of full champagne glasses on her nose, at the top of a ladder. To add to the incredulity of it, there were no safety nets or wires at all… these people were really up there whizzing about on trapezes and riding unicycles along slack-ropes without anything tying them on – if something had gone wrong, it would have been immensely ugly. Luckily nothing did go wrong, and it was a great performance all round. The only other thing I’ll mention is that those acrobats wear very, very tight, lycra outfits with not much underneath. And by not much, I mean nothing! So by the end of the evening, I knew those acrobats. Intimately. Every knobble, crease and crevice of them. That’s all I’m saying.
Another point that deserves mention is the bamboozling Chinese approach to riding the metro. To give credit where it’s due, the metro systems in the major cities are a credit to the engineers who designed them… cheap, clean, and efficient. When the metro pulls up and opens its doors, though, the Chinese adopt the following approach: CHARGE!!!! For such an incredibly intelligent country, they haven’t yet figured out that it’s better for everyone if you stand back and allow people to finish getting OFF the metro before shoving your way ON. So at every single stop, there is a huge clash in the doorways as people try to simultaneously barge their way in and out. It’s always bedlam, and gets quite savage. They also have their peculiarities on long train journeys…. they seem to love bringing their laptops/video games/various noise-making devices, and playing movies or games at absolute top volume, seemingly immune to the fact that not everyone might enjoy listening to roaring artillery fire, or the blood-curdling screams as some dastardly villain is slowly decapitated in a knife fight. The Chinese love their slasher flicks!
From Shanghai we began working our way back up the coast and headed to Qingdao, which is a small seaside town and apparently has lots of attractive German and Bavarian architecture. Unfortunately, though, we had very bad smoggy weather the whole time we were there and could barely see a thing! Frustrating, but you can’t win them all. From Qingdao it was back to Beijing where, excitingly, we met up with a good friend of ours from Australia – Blake Shaw. Many of you know Blake - for those of you who don’t: he is a great chap, shared a house with us for several years, and also happens to speak very serviceable Mandarin! So as well as being excellent company, he’s made much of our time in China infinitely easier in many ways by helping us communicate with bus drivers, food sellers, and locals in general. The other remarkable thing about Blake is that he happens to be very, very tall and very, very blonde…. both things that the Chinese are most definitely NOT. So he constantly walks through a kind of parted sea of open-mouthed, gaping Chinamen and women who stare up at him and blatantly take photos. Marco also cops quite a bit of attention on account of his fairly heavy facial hair – another area where the Chinese are comparatively challenged. Seeing them stare at us in the subway, when everyone is jammed in together, is particularly hilarious!
We’d deliberately saved up some of the best tourist spots in Beijing in order to visit them with Blake, so after we’d had a good quality catch up on everything that had been going on at home, the three of us headed out and attacked the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is a mammoth complex in the heart of Beijing, surrounded by an enormous stone wall, which is in turn surrounded by a broad moat of water. It was China’s imperial palace for over 5 centuries, and housed emperors, empresses, various nobles, countless concubines and endless streams of eunuchs to serve them all. Although it received a small amount of damage during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, an entire army battalion was swiftly sent to protect it and as such it came through relatively unscathed. It’s a sprawling palace, absolutely vast in terms of both scale and detail. The buildings in it are all single story and arranged around beautiful courtyards with gardens and water features. Tourists are not allowed inside the actual buildings themselves, but we could peer through the windows and open doorways so we spent a good half day wandering through the various wings of the palace. The detail is quite incredible… the rooves are all tiled with golden, circular shingles that interlock into one another and curve up at the corners in the quintessentially Chinese fashion. Underneath, the eaves are painted in intricate patterns of bright red, greens, yellows and blues. At the very top of the palace was the beautiful imperial garden, which is still lovingly tended and has glorious juniper trees and lovely, peaceful temples. It was a very interesting place to be, and crazy to imagine all the intrigues and debauchery that must have gone on there in its heyday.
As enjoyable as the Forbidden City was, it still didn’t hold a candle to what we did the next day, which was undoubtedly the greatest site we saw in all of China (no prizes for guessing what!). The Great Wall. How aptly named it is. With Blake’s language skills we cleverly navigated a train and 2 buses out to visit the area of the wall in Jinshanlin, about 4 hours outside Beijing. I’m sure you’ve all seen photos of it so I won’t harp on, except to say that it’s definitely one of the highlights of our entire trip. We walked along it for 10 kilometres, and though some areas were much more run down than others, in general the whole stretch was in pretty incredible condition, especially when you consider that it’s been standing there for centuries withstanding attacks from the weather, Mongolians AND swarms of tourists. We were lucky in that there weren’t actually that many people where we were, so we were able to walk for whole sections without seeing other people, which was marvellous. The scenery it runs through is stupendous, too. Enormous mountain ranges in every direction, and the Wall snaking its way along the top of the very highest ridge of all.
We also took Blake to visit what’s archaically known as the Peking Night Markets, which feature an assortment of incredibly exotic foods, adventurous even by Chinese standards. Tentacles feature heavily. Loads of things like deep fried starfish, raw snakes on skewers, sheep testicles, disgustingly sloppy, slimy sea slugs, entrails of all kinds and an abundance of creepies and crawlies. Marco and I each ate a scorpion, among other things, and Blake was particularly brave and ate a baby shark, just thrown into the fryer as it was, eyeballs and all.
This brings me to another major point about China – the FOOD!!!!! Oh my sainted aunt… ye gods and little fishies, and bless my socks and whiskers... it is AMAZING. It scores the trifecta – cheap, fresh and delicious. SOOO much better than the ‘Chinese’ food at home. Our first week here I ate so many dumplings I thought I would wake up wrapped in pastry. Dumplings are a little piece of heaven on a plate – I could eat them all day long without a break. Also the noodles… there are so many cheap, colourful little corner food stalls that have a counter out the front with a massive pile of dough and a cheerful little Chinaman beating it up, rolling it around, tearing it into noodles and throwing it into a wok right there. I’m talking Kung-pao chicken, juicy tofu, hot-pots full of chilli, and stir-fried anything you can think of. It’s not only delicious; it’s EXCITING because there always is an undeniable element of risk … especially in places with no English menu. Intestines seem to be a dietary staple here, and we often eye unidentifiable bits of meat on our plates with great suspicion. None the less, we have been gobbling and guzzling away like mad, and though we can’t necessarily identify everything we eat, none of it has made us sick yet. Touch wood!
It does sometimes put you off your meal, though, when the waiter carrying it to your table clears his throat, and with much juicy hacking casually hurls a giant gobful of saliva onto the restaurant floor right by you. If the smell of China is its delicious food, then the sound is undoubtedly the rich, throaty hocking and hacking of phlegm from the locals, followed by the slap of a spitball hitting the pavement. It’s not considered rude to spit in Chinese culture, and they do it with gutso and pinpoint accuracy… indoors, outdoors, on trains, busses and even (or it seems especially) when they’re either preparing or carrying food! Putting a backpack down on the ground becomes a tricky business in itself, with all those shiny little oysters to avoid!
But I’ll get back to the point. From Beijing we boarded the overnight train and headed to the quaint and picturesque town of Ping’yao. The Chinese overnight trains are very similar to the Trans-Siberian railways, except the beds are arranged in triple decker bunks instead of double deckers. We travel in the class known as ‘hard sleeper’, which is the cheapest available excluding the ‘standing cabin’ (we’re stingy, but not that stingy!) It’s somewhat noisy with the snoring Chinese all packed in together like sardines, but infinitely more comfortable than a bus.
Ping’yao was a beautiful place, albeit very touristy – and teetering on the edge of tacky. The city was built in the 1300s, and the ancient part of town remains more or less unchanged architecturally. The buildings are all low, with curly-cornered rooftops, and are built along a tangle of narrow, twisting streets. Unfortunately, many of these little streets are now lines with stores selling crappy Chinese souvenirs, so a certain amount of imagination is required to really picture how the town would have looked when it was newly built. Nonetheless, it was like stepping back in time, and we hired bicycles and enjoyed riding through the alleyways soaking up the ancient feel of the place.
From Ping’yao we headed to a much larger town… Xi’an. Xi’an is a booming metropolis, and one of the most visited places in China for one reason and one reason only – the famed Army of Terracotta Warriors. We arrived in Xi’an very early after an overnight train ride and were buzzing with eagerness, so after dropping our packs off at a hostel we decided to head out to see the warriors straight away. They are a fair way out of town, so (again with the help of Blake’s Mandarin skills) we cleverly navigated our way there on local buses. Now – the irony of the situation was that in order to actually SEE the terracotta warriors, we had to virtually BECOME warriors ourselves, and do battle with the endless swarming, charging, bullying, barging, TYRANNICAL groups of Chinese tourists. I realise that this is one of their national treasures and of course every Chinese person has a right to see the warriors, but they seem to adore travelling in large, organised tour groups. They all wear dorky matching hats or tee-shirts (if not both), and follow a Chinese tour guide who yells at them through a crackly megaphone and leads them around like sheep. Individually, the Chinese people seem to be nice enough, but when they are in packs batten down the hatches and prepare for stormy weather because they morph into unforgiving, brutal mobsters!! Elbows come out and gloves come off as they shove their way to the front. They seem to subscribe to the view that Might equals Right, and that as they are in a group they take priority over single tourists like us… perhaps it’s a Communist thing? ANYWAY!!! I’m ranting, so will go onto say that with much pushing and shoving on our own behalf we did finally manage to get a good look at the Terracotta Armies. They are in three pits, in various states of excavation, and a kind of aircraft hangar has been built over each pit so tourists can walk around and view the warriors from above. Many are still in pieces embedded in the ground, but there are lots of rows of completely excavated, more-or-less flawless warriors and horses that stand in their battle formations. The remarkable thing about them is that no two warriors’ faces are alike – they all have their own unique features and expressions. They were built by a Chinese emperor almost 2000 years ago, and in spite of the bedlam that reigns around them, there was something wistful and almost sad about them. The thought of them standing there for millennia, so silently and expressively, made me feel a little nostalgic for some reason. At least…I think it did. It was hard to properly form an opinion because I’d feel nostalgic for a moment, and then be jabbed in the ribs by an umbrella-wielding Chinese tourist, so perhaps my judgement is a bit off!
The day after our trip to the Terracotta Warriors we explored the centre of Xi’an, and spent most of the day wandering about the Muslim Quarter. This is a couple of blocks of the city where the streets are lined with absolutely amazing food stalls selling an incredible array of cheap, freshly cooked meals and snacks. The area also had loads of outdoor butcheries, where young fellows would sit on the pavement and merrily chop up a cow carcass with a machete. The butcher stalls themselves had outdoor tables loaded with raw meat, kidneys and livers the size of watermelons. There were also huge tubs of intestines, which (queasy stomach alert!) the vendors would blithely plunge into up to the armpits, stirring in herbs and who knows what with their bare hands. We ate some really delicious food there (including the best beef noodles we found in all of China), but also had to skip smartly over the streams of blood that ran down the gutters from the butchers’ stalls and raw food preparation. It’s one of those places that seem so honest about the food – you can see absolutely every stage: from the whole cow or sheep head that’s been hacked of and is lying casually at the back of the stall, right through the process of preparation, and finally the cooking itself. Smelly, but I love those kinds of markets!
From Xi’an it was back aboard the overnight train onto another famous Chinese city – Chengdu – which is where we are now, and where, sadly, we said goodbye to Blake earlier today. Though we’ve only been here 2 days, we’ve already seen a couple of the best things Chengdu has to offer… firstly, one of the world’s best breeding programs for the desperately endangered Giant Panda. We got up bright and early as we’d heard they were most active in the cool of the morning, and were lucky enough to arrive at the research centre just in time for breakfast. We got to see groups of giant pandas gorging themselves on bamboo, climbing trees and generally rolling around looking cute. We also got to see some 6-week old baby pandas, covered in new black and white fuzz. Gorgeous!
We also took a 2 hour bus ride to see the largest Budda statue in the world, built over 1200 years ago. Although it was another situation where we had to face the onslaught of the merciless Chinese Tour groups, it was a beautiful statue to see, with a tranquil eyes and a calm, serene expression on its face. It’s carved into the side of a cliff, over a running river, and is utterly epic in scale. Over 70 metres high, his earlobes alone are 7 metres long!
Today is our very last day in China (at least, it is if you count Tibet as a separate country), and so it marks the end of our epic overland journey from Moscow in western Russia, to Chengdu in southern China. We have spent a ridiculous number of hours on trains – days on end, sometimes – but I really love overland travel. Tomorrow, though, it’s back on a plane and we’re off to that most romantic Shangri-La … TIBET! It should be magnificent: all the more so as we’ll be meeting our good friend Jane Munro at the end of it, and after that my Dad, who is coming to meet us to go trekking in Nepal! So not only have we been treated to Blake’s great company, we have even more faces from home to look forward to.
Hoping you are well and happy, and sending much love. We miss you all.
Jenny xxxx
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