Archive for the 'China' Category
Though it’s not really a part of the budget trip through China, I really like being able to fly places. The flight from Xi’an to Chengdu was an easy as can be, and a nice way to prepare for an even more relaxing week ahead. The guest house sent a car to meet me, which I shared with a Greek couple who spoke no English, who had also just arrived from somewhere in China. The first thing I noticed in Chengdu is, it’s hot here. Humid as well. Almost tropical in fact. The first thing I did after I checked in was to head down to a camping store and pick up some more lightweight pants, a pair of shorts, and some sandals. Outside of some of Tibet, this is going to be a very warm trip from here on out.
The guest house I’m staying in is like a little slice of paradise, almost exactly what I think of when I think of a backpacker place in southeast Asia. The climate helps with that. It’s a little converted apartment complex, with a large courtyard flanked by the front desk and a bar, the latter then opens into an indoor/outdoor lounge with 2 small waterfalls emptying into a coy pond. There are puppies running around as well as two little piglets, and the whole atmosphere is very conducive to just sitting with a book and a beer all day and doing nothing. I had been telling people that this trip was not an easy vacation and they shouldn’t be jealous of me, because it’s a lot of hard work getting around China. Well, this is vacation, be jealous.
My first venture out of the guesthouse on something touristy, on the 2nd day after arriving, was to go see the Giant Panda Reserve. This area is the panda’s natural habitat, and the facility they have here is supposed to be the best one in China pretty much. Unfortunately, it rained, and just for the morning while we were there. The pandas were still out and rolling around as they munched on bamboo though, and they are adorable, especially the babies. The one big disappointment I had was that, because of the rain, they weren’t allowing the opportunity to get your picture taken with one or to hold a baby. I really was considering doing the second option, despite the $130 price tag, because I mean when am I going to get to do that again. I guess nature made the decision for me.
Pictures - Chengdu, China - Pandas
Another great thing in this area is the food. The day I arrived the guest house was having a Sichuan Bar-b-que. There was a table full of all kinds of meat and vegetable skewers, and you picked out what you wanted and paid (less than $1 for a big meal’s worth), and they covered them in seasonings and cooked them up for you. The seasoning they use here is similar to that on the skewers in the Muslim quarter of Xi’an, but a little different. I got one of the girls to write down everything they use (yep, one of them is MSG, though they call it “flavor essence”), though she didn’t know an English word for a couple of them, so I have the Chinese and hopefully one day I can get it translated. Another great dish here is Ma Po Tofu, spicy tofu with ground pork. There’s also Hotpot, where you basically have a big soup heating in the middle of your table and you dip meats and veggies into it to cook them, but I wasn’t a huge fan of that.
The next day I went out and just walked around downtown Chengdu for a while, and there was some interesting stuff to see (yet another giant statue of Mao), but for the most part it’s just another big city in China. There was a nice park, and I tried to go to the art museum, but I guess that was closed for May Holiday. After that I just went back to relax and get ready to go hiking on QingCheng Mountain, or so I thought.
That night I got my first introduction to something I’ve seen all over every city I’ve been to in China: KTV (Karaoke). I met a group of travelers, mostly Brits, an American and an Israeli guy as well. They were celebrating one of the guy’s birthday, and invited me to come out with them to KTV. Mind you, I met them around 9pm and we didn’t leave until after midnight. They said they just wanted to check it out and we’d be home by 2, so I figured why not. We didn’t get home until 6. Karaoke is not at all like what you think of in the states, it’s serious business here. You arrive at any one of dozens or hundreds of venues in the city, and they’re all probably the most glamourous, showy places you can go in China. It’s a huge complex, several stories high, and you are let in by a door man, escorted by another man to the elevator, taken up by an elevator man, and then met at the elevator by your host and 2 waitresses. Keep in mind, we went to a rather cheap KTV place as well. You rent a room for around $10 an hour, and then you have a TV, two mics, and a computer loaded full of music, Chinese, Western, you name it. The songs have all been recorded by a new artist, and the videos are pricelessly cheesy. We had a great time, but needless to say, I didn’t make it to the mountain the next day.
In the afternoon the next day (I slept most of the morning after KTV) I went back downtown to a movie theater to see Spiderman 3 (or as I’m now calling it, Spiderman 90210, if you saw it, you understand). They do a few English showings every other day, so except for the Chinese subtitles it was just like at home. The price was almost the same as going to a movie back home, so that meant it was all westerners and affluent young Chinese there, and the whole place was very clean. You even got to pick out your seat when you buy the ticket and be shown there by an usher i the theater.
I continued my pattern of relaxing most of the following day as well, though I did take a Sichuan cooking class for a couple hours. I learned to make my favorite, Ma Po Tofu, as well as Fish-flavored Pork (it doesn’t taste like fish, and there’s no fish in the recipe, but I didn’t like the taste regardless) and some twice-fried green beans, which were really good. I have the recipes, so hopefully when I get home I can run down to Chinatown and get the ingredients and make them again.
On my final day I decided to make a day trip out to Leshan to see the one other thing I really wanted to go to in the area, the Grand Buddha Dafo. At 71 meters tall, he’s the largest Buddha in the world, so I couldn’t pass it up. At breakfast I met up with an English guy I had met a few days prior, and he came with me, as it was on his way to a mountain in the south he was going to spend a few days at. We got there and decided to opt for the ferry along the river facing the statue, rather than enter the park and climb up and down the stairs next to him. This was definitely the best decision, as we got a great view of Dafo with very little hassle, and we could see the stairs from the boat. They were only wide enough for one person, so there was just a massive line of people slowly moving up and down. If you got stuck behind some little old Chinese woman (which are over half the tourists at any Buddhist sight) you could be on those stairs for an hour or more, hardly moving. After the ferry we parted ways at the bus station, and I got back to Chengdu just in time to have a great Beijing duck dinner with my KTV friends.
Pictures - Leshan, China - Dafo
Chengdu, China
Tomorrow I’m leaving for my 10 day trip through Tibet. I’m excited and a little nervous, not sure what to expect. There’s been a bunch of controversy there lately, as about a week and a half ago, 3 stupid Americans (hippies without a cause) decided to stage a Free Tibet protest at Everest Base Camp. Now I’m all for getting China out of Tibet, I think what the Chinese did is awful and a good reason why the Chinese government is just as bad as those in the Middle East, but the way these 3 did it was moronic. No one in China knows about the protest as the government quickly hid it, and all that was accomplished was: a) they’re Tibetan guides all lost their jobs b) travelers who had been planning to enter Tibet on their own (which was previously possible) were stuck and could no longer do that.
Fortunately, being on a planned tour, my group should be alright, as we got all the proper permits and have a guide taking us around. Speaking with the owner of my guesthouse about things, however, there’s just never any sure bet when it comes to these things, and at the whim of some Chinese officer we could be deported or worse. However, I’m sure it will be fine. Also, I don’t know how much internet access we’ll have, especially outside of Lhasa, so if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t get too worried. I’ll be getting to Kathmandu, Nepal on May 17, and I should have access again once I get there. I’ve decided to change my trip a bit, I’m going to spend about two weeks in Nepal and then just fly straight to Vietnam from there (probably via Bangkok). My previous plan was to re-enter China once more for a little while, but that just looks to be too expensive and would be a huge rush through the parts I’d be seeing. Maybe one day I can come back and see them; I’m finding that I actually wouldn’t mind returning to western China.
*Note I’m posting this a couple days after having written it because I’m having trouble getting my last photos onto the laptop to upload. Hopefully I can fix things in a day or two.*
The Chinese certainly have an interesting definition of “VIP Luxury Express” bus. That’s what I took from Pingyao to Xi’an, as it was only a 6 hour trip rather than a 12 hour train ride. The seats were crammed incredibly close together, even the Chinese on the bus looked like their legs were cramped against the seat in front of them. Fortunately I’ve learned on this trip that uncomfortable, long journeys are easily forgotten, especially when they bring you to great destinations.
I hadn’t really thought much of Xi’an before I came. I knew the famous Terracotta Warriors were near by, but other than that I didn’t think there’d be much interesting in the city. I was very wrong. Xi’an quickly became on of my favorite cities on this trip. There’s a relatively large Muslim population and history to Xi’an, which has given it a unique character unlike other Chinese cities I’ve been to. Also the location of my hostel couldn’t have been better, right in the middle of town, which is rare. Generally hostels are near the train stations or in the cheaper parts of town, but being right in the center of things and able to walk to so much great stuff makes a huge difference.
On my arrival night, the most important thing I had to do was sort out my onward travel to Chengdu. May 1 marks the beginning of a huge national labor holiday week in China, and booking train tickets can be near impossible. I wanted to leave on the 30th, but there was no way I was going to get a train. For some reason though, I was able to get a 50% off plane ticket on May 1. Not sure exactly why they are giving discount travel at a peak time, but I took it and booked an extra night in the hostel.
The next day I did the Terracotta Warriors tour to try and beat the weekend and holiday rush. We actually went to three sights along the way. The first was the Banpo Museum, the sight of an excavated Neolithic village about 6000 years old. The whole thing is covered with hangars now. There’s not a lot to see, a few foundations from huts, some broken pots, and a few skeletons. It’s much older than anything else in China that I’ve seen so far, however, so it was interesting in that respect.
Next up were the Terracotta Warriors themselves. This area was only discovered about 30 years ago, by a local farmer who was digging a well. After he found a few shards and reported it to the government, archaeologists came and discovered thousands of life sized clay warriors buried in the ground, each one unique from the rest. They were placed here as part of the funeral of one of the most famous Qin emperors of China, about 2500 years ago. This emperor was the on who started the great wall and helped unite (albeit by conquering through force) all the provinces of China for the first time. About 2000 of the warriors have been excavated and left in their trenches, in 3 separate pits, but another 8000 or so still remain buried so that they may be preserved. Initially, the warriors that were excavated were covered with bright paint, but for years they were left out in the elements before the current hangar over them was built, and the paint quickly faded away to expose just the clay underneath. The whole site was amazingly impressive and I wish we could have gotten closer to them, but after seeing the way Chinese tourists treat other sites, there wouldn’t be many warriors left if you could get within arms reach of them.
The final stop was the Emperor’s tomb itself, about 5 miles away from the warriors. Evidently the warriors were buried as a bit of a diversion to the emperors’ many enemies who would have loved to destroy his tomb. In fact, every warrior has at least some damage where those very enemies came through at one point and cracked them. The tomb is really just a large mound with steps up to the top, and there wasn’t much to see. There was a performance of some kind of ceremony for the emperor, but it seemed more to be in the spirit of things with a modern flair than anything authentic.
Here are some pictures from that day:
Around Xi’an, China
That evening I met a guy from New York and a pair of sisters from Scotland in the hostel, and we all went out to the Muslim market street (close by) to check out the market. I love night markets like this, really the only other place I’ve seen a good one was on Temple Street in Hong Kong, and this place reminded me a lot of what I liked so much about that one. We did a little browsing and had some snacks from one of the vendors, and then called it a night.
The next day in the morning I visited the Bell and Drum towers in Xi’an. These were very conveniently located right next to my hostel (the Bell Tower Hostel) so I was able to see both in less than an hour. They were nice towers, and in both of them I was able to watch a musical performance featuring the instruments in their names. I came back to the hostel and met up with the Scottish girls again, and we went back to the Muslim quarter for some food. Most Chinese food has lost almost all appeal to me at this point, you can’t get anything generally isn’t drenched in oil and all seasoned more or less the same. The Muslim Chinese food, however, wasn’t like anything I’d had before, and I loved it. We just had some soup with noodles, but the seasoning they used was much different and a better flavor. Even the soup was less oily and salty than most Chinese soups I’ve had. And at the table to gnaw on while you wait were cloves of garlic. My breath might not have been to great after, but I love garlic and was in heaven. The girls caught a train that night, but we exchanged emails as it looks like they’re doing a similar trip to me and will be in a lot of the same areas at the same time, so hopefully we can meet up somewhere.
On the following day I went to two sights. The first was the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and the temple surrounding it. The temple was nice, large and peaceful, and the pagoda definitely lived up to its name as being Big. The whole area around it was also very clean and new looking, ready for throngs of tourists. In the afternoon I went once again to the Muslim area for more food and to check out the Great Mosque. I really liked the Mosque, it’s about 1300 years old and was something different from all the temple’s I’ve seen that are starting to look the same. The food was the best part of the day though. I had beef skewers and a different kind of soup, which had a bunch of bits of broken bread, some noodles and meat, and a bunch of spices (including a lot more garlic, mmmm). The skewers were the best, I wish I knew how they seasoned them because it was fantastic. I’m going to be on the look out for some kind of Muslim Chinese food place when I get home, though I’m not too optimistic about finding one.
I spent a lot of my final full day in Xi’an just kind of relaxing. I’d seen pretty much all I wanted to see. Also, the hostel was probably the most lively one I’ve been to yet, and that meant every night I was staying up pretty late having drinks with new people I was meeting, and that was catching up with me. That night I went back to the Big Pagoda for a water and light show, with another guy from New York I met. It was a really good show, but only 15 minutes long, and the crowd of Chinese was massive, being the night before the first day of the May Holiday.
Today I did a little shopping in the market for some souvenirs and sent them home, as Xi’an is supposed to be one of the cheaper places to buy the stuff that every market in China sells, and I couldn’t go the whole trip without a couple mementos. I’m catching a flight to Chengdu in a few hours, where I’ll ride out the May Holiday week and hopefully not get too swarmed with people. It’s the first day today and already the street outside looks about ten times as packed as it was on any other day I’ve been here. There’s a lot of people in this country.
Haven’t posted in a couple weeks now, just haven’t had a chance to sit down and write really, so while I have a lot to write about, I may end out leaving some stuff out just because there’s so much. I’ll try to cover everything of note that I did.
Here’s my Beijing Pictures:
Beijing, China
The day after my last post I made it out to the Great Wall, on what has been by far the best organized tour I’ve been on the entire time I’ve been here. I organized it through one of the hostels in town, and at around 7 am a bus picked up a group of us from there (which of course meant that I had to be up around 5:30 am to make it there on time). The entire group was Westerners, about 40 of us, and we spent 3 hours crammed into a bus designed for much smaller people. It was worth it though, as when we arrived, they just dropped us off at a trailhead and pointed us in the direction of the Wall, and said they’d pick us up about 6 miles down. It took about 30 minutes to get to the Wall, and then we were able to hike along it for about 3 hours. The views were amazing, the whole thing is built along the top of a mountain range, so you are very high up and can see far into China and Inner Mongolia. The weather couldn’t have been better either. I was surprised how small the actual wall was, I really though it would be much taller and wider for some reason, but it is still humbling when you see that it just goes and goes for as far as you can see, and still goes much further than that.
When we came to the spot where we were to end (it became impassible pretty much here) there was a zip line down to the bottom, or you could take the path. I took the zip line. A little old Chinese woman helped me into a harness, and then just said “okay, go!” The drop was about 200 feet down and it was probably 500 feet long, over a small lake. I haven’t done something like that in a while, and it’s a little unnerving just casting yourself out into nothing like that, but once I got going it was fine.
Pictures - The Great Wall, China
The next day I went to see some of the other sites in Beijing, the Lama Temple and the Summer Palace. Lama Temple was a very nice temple, though I think I’m getting a little apathetic to the temples now. When you see a dozen or more of them, even though they are all different, the similarities make them all start to blend together. I’m going to try and hold off on seeing too many more temples until I get to Tibet.
Summer Palace, on the other hand, was a great experience. It’s located in the northwest corner of Beijing, and was used as an escape from the Forbidden City by emperors in the hot summer months. The front is a large palace on a hill, and then behind it is a massive lake with an island in the middle connected by a large bridge. Even with the masses of Chinese tourgroups the place was relaxing and beautiful. The luck I’d been having with Beijing weather continued as well: the sun was shining and the air was relatively clear.
On the following day I left Beijing for a couple days, heading to the former Summer Retreat of the emperors in Chengde. The weather, unfortunately, didn’t follow me, and the sky was cloudy when I arrived. The main attraction here is the Summer Mountain Retreat, which is nice but very similar to the Summer Palace. There is a simple wooden palace ground in the front, behind which is a medium sized lake, followed by a large flatland that was used as a hunting ground, and finally a mountain to hike through. The last two have recently had the native deer reintroduced to the area after they were all hunted away, and small groups of them were running around everywhere. The town also is home to a number of large temples, which I didn’t have time to visit (see above as well). Finally, I did get a chance to visit Sledgehammer Rock, a large rock precariously balanced on a cliff overlooking town. The most interesting part of that trip was the chair lift up to the rock, which was exactly what it sounds like, up the side of a mountain, a hundred or so feet off the ground with a strong wind blowing, and looked like it was around 20 years old with minimal maintenance. Sometimes you just have to trust in Chinese engineering…
Pictures - Chengde, China
I got back to Beijing on a Friday, and spent Saturday hanging with Tiffany and her friends around town, not doing much of anything specific. Sunday morning I caught an early train to my next stop, Datong. Before I go any further I just have to say again thanks to Tiff for putting me up for so long!
Datong, 1000 years ago, was the capital of it’s province and is surrounded by relics that reflect that. Now, however, it is known for producing one-third of all of China’s coal, and the air reflects that. Fortunately, I just got into town and booked one night in a hotel and a train leaving late the following night. Then I managed to arrange a taxi to take me around to all the sights, for basically the same price as going on a tour group (I’m getting better at this haggling thing). The weather here was, surprisingly, very cold and raining.
The first stop was the Yungang Buddha Caves. This is a series of 50 or so caves, 20 of which are currently open to the public. The inside of each cave is full of Buddhas that have been carved into the rock face, some as small as a few inches and some as tall as 50 feet. The size isn’t properly reflected in my photos unfortunately, the caves were pretty small so I couldn’t take any pictures with something in the shot to establish scale, but trust me the large Buddhas were massive, and the intricacy of the groups of small ones was mind boggling. The oldest caves are around 2500 years old and the newest around 1500 years.
Next up was the Hanging Temple, a 600 year old temple literally hanging from the side of a cliff. It’s really small and cramped inside, and obviously built for people much smaller than I. Climbing up the steps inside, I had to more than once get on my hands and knees and kind of worm my way up through the opening to the next floor. Other than that, there’s not much to say about this place. It was amazing to visit, but the pictures do much better to describe this than I can in words.
The last major stop was the Wooden Pagoda, the largest and oldest (1000 years) completely wood pagoda in the world. Unfortunately, an earthquake a few years ago cracked one of the major supporting beams, and now you can only climb up to the second floor.
Finally, my guide “threw in” a stop to a small town that was once one of 17 fortresses in the province, and the last one with the majority of it’s walls still intact. The walls that are left are just mud now, as all the bricks have been pulled by the locals who live in the village to make houses. I had an interesting discussion about this kind of practice with my guide. He explained that the Chinese mentality towards these ancient sites and relics has become unfortunate since the Cultural Revolution in the early part of the last century. While most tourists (and to be fair a fair amount of Chinese) look at an ancient fortress or temple or even the Great Wall as something of historical significance and beauty, your average Chinese person just sees it as old. The mentality is that new is much better, even if the new thing is just a square brick house rather than an intricately architected structure. If they’re not careful, the Chinese will end up destroying all of their history in the name of “progress”.
Pictures - Around Datong, China
From Datong I caught an overnight train to Pingyao. Unlike my final stop in Datong, Pingyao is a fully intact walled city complete with fully traditional buildings. The city itself is about 600 years old in it’s current state, and around 200 years ago it became home to the first bank to issue checks as we now know them. During the Cultural Revolution, it managed to fall off the map a little, and so didn’t succumb to the same destruction in the name of progress pretty much every other city of a similar style did. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Yangshuo: a small, traditional city that’s become a tourist trap and full of Westernized guest houses. That isn’t to say I didn’t like it there; on the contrary I had a great time and I’m impressed how well they’ve managed to maintain everything in it’s original state.
Yesterday I just spent most of the day relaxing, I’d been on the move quite a bit and some downtime was nice, if for no other reason than to organize and finally upload all my pictures since the last post. I did manage to take a little time to visit a famous home about 20 miles north of Pingyao, Qiao Jia. The house was like a small version of Pingyao pretty much, though the intricate woodwork over every door was amazing.
Today I’m catching a bus to Xi’an for a few days, home of the Terracotta Warriors. From there I’m hoping to get to Chengdu in preparation for my Tibet tour, but right now is the beginning of a huge national holiday week in China, which is supposed to make travel nearly impossible. We’ll see.
Pictures - Pingyao, China
Pingyao, China - Qiao Family Mansion
I ended up staying in Busan even longer than I had planned. Wanting to go hiking in Jirisan National Park, I thought about moving to a city a little closer to the park, but the cheapest room I could find there was about double what I was paying in Busan, so I decided to stick around and just do a day trip to Jirisan. Since I made this decision at the last minute, I was going to be in Busan for another two nights. This left me with one day to kill and not a whole lot of new stuff to see. That day I just went back to the beach and took a 1 hour sightseeing cruise out around some small islands near the coast, and then didn’t do much else. There was a nice British girl staying at the guest house at the same time as me, waiting for her English teaching job to start, and it was so nice to have someone who actually speaks English well and have a normal conversation over a couple drinks that night.
The next day I got up really early as the bus ride out to Jirisan was supposed to take about 3 hours. As luck would have it, a middle-aged Korean man decked out in hiking gear (Koreans love to wear the latest trendy hiking gear it seems) sat next to me, and though he spoke very little English, we figured out that we were both doing the same hike, so he became my friend for the day. The bus ride was long and we finally arrived at the trailhead, Ssangyesa temple, which was flooded with tourists. Having seen so many temples already, and this one wasn’t much different, we made our way quickly through and began the hike. It wasn’t a very long, though pretty steep, and after about an hour we reached the desination, Buril Pokpo, a waterfall. We stopped and shared our lunches, which like the entire hike, was pretty much silent as neither of us spoke the other’s language. I think both of us had hoped to do more hiking, but there really wasn’t much further you could go on a day hike, so we turned around and headed back. It was a good thing we did too, because there was an endless train of cars and people trying to get out of the area, and the bus ride back to the intercity bus terminal, which had taken 45 minutes on the way in, took 2 and a half hours on the way out. We barely managed to catch the last bus to Busan, and I think if I hadn’t had a local with me I might not have made it at all. The guide book really suggests you do a 3 day camping trip to see a lot of Jirisan, and I think if I ever return I’ll try and do that; spending a total of nearly 8 hours on buses to do maybe 3 hours of hiking just seems silly. Never the less, a fun day.
The following day I caught an express bus back to Seoul, returning to the same guest house I had stayed at before. Didn’t do much that day, the bus ride took about 5 hours so by the time I got to Seoul it was late afternoon. I did manage book a DMZ tour for the next day, which was something I really wanted to do.
It’s hard to say whether the DMZ tour is worth it or not, which is the exact impression I got from everyone I talked to about it. It costs nearly $50 for the most basic tour, you see 3 sights pretty hurriedly, and there are no pictures allowed hardly anywhere worthwhile. The first stop upon entering the DMZ, after having your passport checked by a South Korean officer, is the 3rd tunnel. Since it was established at the cease fire agreement, the North Koreans have made several attempts to dig tunnels under the border in preparation for an invasion of the South. They seem to get found every time, however, and always try and make an excuse or blame the South for digging it. The 3rd tunnel is the closest to Seoul and one of the larger ones (large meaning about 5′ around), and when they found it in the 70s, the North Koreans quickly threw coal all over the walls and ground and said they were mining. Riiiiight. You have to take a little tram to get down to the tunnel, and then you can only walk through about 300m of it, and of course you have to leave your camera in a locker before you decend.
The second stop is an observation tower overlooking the whole DMZ. Unfortunately the day I went was fairly foggy, so the view into the North was limited at best. They said beforehand that pictures here are allowed, but only behind a yellow photography line. The line is about 20 feet back from the edge, so if you try and take a picture all you really get to see is a row of people standing looking out onto an indistinguishable landscape. And if you try and sneak one closer, there are soldiers everywhere who are highly trained at quickly erasing photos from all models of digital camera.
The last stop is the final train station in the South. The tracks continue on to the North, remnants of the time before Korea was divided, and a map shows where the station in the North is, as well as planned stations along the way, which will be built after the ‘reunification’. The whole time on the tour, our guide and all the signs talk about the ‘reunification’, the time when the North sees the light and joins with the free people in the South. They speak about it like they already know exactly when it will happen, but there’s no sign at all from the North that it ever will. Both sides seem to enjoy their propaganda in one form or another.
My flight back to Beijing left early the following morning, so I called it a night pretty early. The flight was pretty uneventful, and yet again I made it through Chinese customs with no hassle what-so-ever. I keep reading stories of getting hassled on travel websites, and even two girls I met in Korea had their guidebook taken away because it showed Taiwan as a separate country. Not sure how they even got searched, but I really couldn’t have had less trouble. My friend Tiffany, who has been soooo kind as to put me up for my stay in Beijing, met me just outside customs, and we caught a cab to her apartment.
She has a really nice place in a good area, 14th floor of one of the many high rises, 2 bedroom, costs about $500 US per month. A US salary would go a long way here, and Beijing is probably one of the more expensive cities in China. Pretty much the first thing we did was go get a massage at her favorite spa, 30 minutes neck and shoulders, 60 minutes on your feet, and all you can eat snacks, drinks, and small meals for about $9. Gonna have to find more of these places, though I’m a little skeptical about trying to find a legitimate massage place without a local helping me. That night we met up with some of her friends and had a few drinks, but called it a night pretty early, as waking up at 5:30 am didn’t really leave me ready to hit the town.
The next day I had to go drop my passport off with the Vietnamese embassy to get a visa, and then Tiff showed me around some other parts of town. Now I’ve already though that all of China was under construction, but Beijing makes that look like nothing. Everything is being redone in preparation for the Olympics in 2008, which is bad for me as it’s all scheduled to finish maybe a month before the games start. One thing she asked me to help her with was set up a wireless router for her apartment, so we went to a Techno Mart to do some shopping, and finally found a decent looking one. We got back and it turned out it was a Chinese only model of a similar Linksys router I know, but all the configuration was in Chinese, and neither of us read the characters (Tiff speaks well but reading the characters is another story). Fortunately, being the technical genius that I am (and having set up so many people’s wireless routers before), I figured out the basic stuff that needed to be set up, and now her apartment has a secure wireless connection. Just hope no one needs to go in and change it ever.
I really wanted to do some touristy stuff the next day, and Tiff has been here so long she’s seen everything many times over, so I went off on my own to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. Beijing’s subway is years behind places like Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, and even Guangzhou. It was probably the first one built in China, but the whole city only has 2 real lines, with a 3rd covering some of the western outskirts. Of course, 10 more lines are under construction right now. Eventually I made it to Tienanmen, which is impressive if for nothing else than it’s size. There’s a mausoleum for Mao smack in the middle of it, where you can go in the morning 8 to 11 to see his preserved corpse. I got there too late, but I think I might try and go back. The Square is surrounded by the various Communist headquarters buildings, and with all the soldiers marching around, it has a feeling somewhat akin to how I think Moscow may have been during the Cold War.
Across the street from the north side of Tienanmen is the entrance to the Forbidden City. It’s a huge palace, much much larger than any of the one’s I visited in Seoul, and the red walls and gold roofs were a good contrast to the blue, green, and pink of the palaces in Korea, which were starting to become repetitive. Unfortunately, the grandest hall in the center was, of course, under renovation and covered with a huge green screen. Several other buildings were closed as well. My biggest disappointment, however, was the audio tour guide I got, which according to my guidebook was supposed to be narrated by Roger Moore, and that was the only reason I got it. They must have recently changed it, as now instead of a prerecorded walk through, you get a small electronic map that gives you a narration based on your location. The voice, however, is just a Chinese woman speaking English, and I wanted to hear James Bond telling me about the Emperor’s of old!
Spent a good 5 hours out there, then made my way back to the apartment. Some friends of Tiffany’s invited us to see their other friend perform at the international school at which they worked, so we decided to go, not really knowing what was in store. Turns out, the school is a high school for international kids, all in English, who’s parents live in the highly affluent suburbs of Beijing. We had just come to their annual talent show, and the friends were just doing a small skit in an intermission time. Now I knew to expect the unexpected on this trip, but sitting through a Western high school talent show was not at all something I would have though I’d be doing! At least I know now that Western kids here are just as awkward, shy, and nervous as teenagers as they are back home. After sitting through 2 hours of performances, we were all ready to have a few drinks, so we headed back to town and went out to some clubs.
I can definitely tell Beijing is a much easier place to live as a Westerner than anywhere else in China. It’s to the point that you can pretty much live in a bubble that’s mostly devoid of China, only occasionally having to deal with a cab driver or local shop owner who doesn’t speak English, but really that’s just like home too.
Yesterday we all got a pretty late start after the previous evening’s fun, so after lunch Tiff, one of her friends, and I went to a lake in the middle of town that is surrounded by a bunch of nice bars and restaurants and shops, and just walked around. We met up later with most of the same people from the previous night for a couple drinks on a rooftop bar overlooking the lake, followed by some great Indian food for dinner. The weather has been excellent here as well, though apparently it’s pretty rare for it to be so nice. For once I got lucky with weather.
I haven’t yet gotten to post my Beijing pics, but I did post some new ones from Busan, as well as the ones from Jirisan, so here’s links to those:
Busan, Korea
Jirisan National Park, Korea
I took my first flight of the trip (aside from getting here) from Shanghai to Qingdao on Sunday, as the price was actually less than a train ticket. The layout of the coastline makes the distance the train has to go much further (20 hours) than the flight (1 hour). Upon arrival, however, I learned that the airport bus I was hoping to take into town had stopped running at 7:30 pm, while I didn’t get in and get my bag until close to 10. There were plenty of cab drivers waiting by the bus terminal ready to take people on the long drive into town. They all started shouting out rates and I finally got one guy to say ¥70, which is what the hostel had posted on their website as a good rate into town would be. About halfway through the ride, however, while we were in the middle of no where, the cab driver slows down and says “maybe today is ¥150″ and stares at me. I didn’t know what to do, so after protesting a bit I agreed to pay him when we got to the hostel. He continued on and was satisfied. We finally arrived and I quickly grabbed my bags, handed him ¥70 and ran inside the hostel. He was not pleased, but he didn’t follow me in so I guess it worked out. By this time it was close to 11 pm, so I just turned in for the night.
The next day I did my usual first day in town deal of walking around and seeing the sights the guidebook recommends. Qingdao is a port town that was occupied by Germany for about 30 years at the turn of last century, and the whole place feels like a German city. There are narrow, cobblestone streets and all the architecture looks very German. The Catholic Church is one of the more famous places in town. The other reason to come to Qingdao is the beaches, and they are pretty nice, though it’s still fairly cold and windy there this time of year, so I didn’t get to spend much time soaking up the sun.
The next day I really wanted to see the Tsingtao Brewery, which is probably the only reason this city is internationally known. The girl at the front desk said I had two options, there was a Museum of Beer near by, or the real brewery, called the World of Beer far to the east part of town. Feeling adventurous, I decided to opt for the far away one and see the real brewery. She was mistaken. The World of Beer is not the brewery at all, but rather a big amusement park, which looks to have been abandoned for a number of years. I walked around the fenced off outside looking for someone who could point me in the right direction, and eventually found a single gate open. I walked in, and found some cars parked in front of a building with a girl standing outside, so I walked up and went in. Turns out, this building has been converted into a “massage parlor”, and they were very embarrassed when they realized that’s not why I was there. However, since no one else was around and I was now inside, I was free to explore the rest of the park on my own and I took a bunch of pictures. Few things are as creepy/cool as an abandoned amusement park, though during the day and surrounded by luxury high rises, it wasn’t as creepy as it could have been. After that it was still fairly early, so I caught a bus back and set off to the museum.
The museum is where I should have gone in the first place. The actual brewery is in the same complex, and the entire area is obviously devoted to beer (the street it’s on is literally called “Beer Street”). The tour was very good, obviously promoting how successful Tsingtao beer is compared with all other Chinese beers. Also at the end they are anything but skimpy with the samples, and I got a free glass. Hopefully it’ll survive in my pack for a while!
Near my hostel there is a little market running down one of the streets (Qingdao is also very hilly, which is different from pretty much every other city I’ve been in so far). Every morning I’ve been there and picked up some fresh fruit and pastries for breakfast, which has been very nice and convenient, as finding good breakfast in this country has been difficult at best (the locals all eat noodles and soup for breakfast and I’m sorry but I can’t handle that). Being a port city, there’s a lot of seafood at the market as well, and last night I went there with the chef from the hostel and bought a bunch of fresh oysters for him to cook for me. It was delicious and 8 huge oysters cost $1.50 including the chef’s cooking fee.
Today I’m going to catch an overnight ferry to Incheon, South Korea (the port near Seoul, my first destination). After spending a while in China it should be interesting to see the differences (or lack of them) in another Asian country. I’ll be traveling there for almost 2 weeks, then catch either a ferry or flight (not sure about cost yet) back to Beijing.
Here’s my photos from Qingdao:
Qingdao, China
Don’t let anyone tell you differently, 26 hours is a long time. That’s how long the train trip from Xiamen to Shanghai takes. Even with the 7 or so hours of sleep I got (not consecutively, still no luck sleeping very well on trains), that’s still 6 hours longer than the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong took. I managed to read through almost 2 books in that time and still had time to kill. But finally we rolled into Shanghai and I caught the metro to my hostel. Exhausted, I went to bed pretty early and slept for about 11 hours. In the morning I woke up refreshed and ready to see the city.
And I immediately felt like gagging. I’ve definitely noticed the pollution in China, but this is the first city where I was able to taste it strongly in the air. Every few hours that day I had to duck inside somewhere for a bit and breath some “fresh air”. I didn’t let that stop me though, and I went down to The Bund, the stretch along the west side of the Huangpu River that was the center of Old Shanghai, and is still covered with much of the old Victorian era buildings from that time. While there, I decided to book a tour up the Huangpu to the mouth of the Yangzi which took about 3 hours total. While 100 years ago I have a feeling this same cruise was part of the romance of Shanghai, now it serves more to illustrate the vast commercial shipping that is served by the river. The shoreline the whole way is covered with nothing but shipping container yards and cranes, and along the water is almost a traffic jam of boats. It’s just a small percentage of the goods being transfered in and out of China, which really puts into perspective how much this country exports. After about 90 minutes, you reach the Yangzi river, which dwarves the respectively large Huangpu. You can’t see the shoreline on the other side, but the entire horizon line is again nothing but commercial shipping boats. By the time that finished it was getting dark, so I grabbed some dinner and, after a brief time checking out some of the same sites around the Bund I had previously seen, now at night, I headed back to the hostel.
The next day I started off with the Shanghai Museum, which my guide book reported to be one of the best in China. Yet again it did not disappoint (I hear people talk a lot of trash about Lonely Planet, but this Rough Guide book has been right on and great, highly recommend them). There were great exhibits showing Chinese pottery, sculpture, calligraphy, scroll painting, and jade work, all over the past 5000 years.
After that I went to see the rest of the famous areas of Shanghai. The Old Quarter was, in the old days, the ghetto of the city and where all the Chinese lived at that time. It’s since become somewhat nicer, though still no where near as polished and westernized as the Bund and that area. There was a market here, so I had a walk through and saw something I had read about but never thought I’d see. A group of men were all crowding around one of the stalls in the market looking at something, so I though I’d better see what was so interesting. I pushed my way in and saw two men, sitting in reclining chairs, having their teeth drilled! I assume by dentists of some kind, they were wearing white coats. Also they were in front of a barbershop, which I know long ago was the place to go for dental work, so perhaps nothing has changed here. After seeing that, though, I decided it was time to move on to the French Quarter.
Again this is a very polished and westernized area, with huge shopping centers everywhere that would feel just as at home in LA or New York. This area was the first place I’ve seen real houses on the side streets, however. They were all old French Victorian style homes, obviously inhabited by wealthy people and very securely gated up, even in this seemingly nice location. Other than that, though, I’ve seen enough fancy shopping centers already, so I didn’t stick around there too long. One nice thing about being in such a westernized city is the variety of food available, and that night especially I was happy to find a really excellent Indian food restaurant. I can only do so much rice and noodles.
The next day I caught a train to Suzhou, a smaller city about an hour away, which is famous for it’s Chinese gardens. The city itself, like a lot of places I’ve been in China, looked almost like one giant construction project. I think this whole country is going to be rebuilt from the ground up in 10 years. The gardens themselves were really nice, though it’s hard to enjoy them as the serene, tranquil places their original creators had intended while dozens of Chinese tour groups mingle about loudly, stopping long enough at each scenic spot to take a picture there and then dashing off to the next. The final garden I went to was relatively unpatronized, thankfully, and also much larger than the others. Also, it randomly had a zoo in the middle of it, though it was really a sad sight. Most of the animals were in small cages and looked pretty unhealthy and unhappy. There were lions and tigers and bears, lots monkeys and gazelles, and even a camel (which are huge by the way). I got a bunch of pictures of all the places I went in Suzhou:
Suzhou, China
On the train ride home, I met a group of British and Danish kids who were also in Suzhou for the day and staying at another hostel in Shanghai. I tried to meet them for a drink later in the night, but they ended up being tired from the night before, and after looking around the Bund at night for a bit, they took off and I went back to my place. It was a little odd anyway, hanging out with a bunch of kids who just graduated high school and were on their “gap year” (apparently in Europe about 40% of kids take a year off between high school and college, though most don’t travel or anything really).
Yesterday I called up Meijin, a friend of Lily’s she had met in her travels a few years ago. She was busy at work all day (on a Saturday, pretty normal here to work 13 hour days 6 days a week apparently) but told me I should check out some art galleries near by. I must say I’m really glad I did too, it was a little hidden district I never would have found on my own, behind some warehouses, that had been renovated into well over 100 different galleries exhibiting local artists. There was some really great stuff (as well as some really weird and not so great), and a lot of it was really cheap compared to what you would pay in the states. For $500 you could get a very nice, huge oil painting by a variety of up and coming artists. I’m starting to think that a trip back to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and maybe a few other cities in a few years when I’m working and want to do some serious bargain shopping might be in order.
That night I met up with Meijin and her boyfriend at a club on the Bund that had a nice view of the city skyline over the river, but was pretty overpriced for my budget on this trip, so I just hung out with them for a while and talked, and then I headed home. They invited me to have endless Dim Sum this morning with them, which I just returned from. It was really good, I had tried to order Dim Sum in Guangzhou, which is supposed to be the place to get it, but unfortunately the place I went to had a really bad English menu, and I had ended up kind of frustrated trying to communicate with the waitress (who obviously was upset about having to deal with a foreigner) and didn’t get much food. This time we almost had too much, and it was all delicious, so next time I know what to do.
Tonight I’ve got a flight up to Qingdao, home of the Tsingtao brewery (not sure why they aren’t spelled the same way, same pronunciation) and the old German concession. I’m planning on spending about 3 days there and then catching a ferry to Inchon, South Korea, for a little time in that country.
I’ve got a bunch of pictures from all around Shanghai here:
Shanghai, China
I’d also like to take this as an opportunity to talk about some of the differences in culture I’ve noticed over here, as this was something Meijin was very curious to hear what I thought about. First thing, everyone spits and blows their nose on the street. I mean everyone, from children to grandparents, men and women, inside (on tile and carpet) and outside. The only exception is in the nicer westernized parts of town there are generally signs prohibiting it, but even that doesn’t stop a lot of people. I know it’s just a difference in culture, but I can’t help be disgusted by it, constantly having people around you hawking up a bunch of phlegm and then spitting it out in front of you. It’s especially put me off of any attraction to Chinese women.
Second, people are very self-centered. I’m not sure if this part of the culture in general or a result of the one-child policy (my guide book aptly calls it a generation of “little emperors”, pretty much anyone under 30 is an only child), but people are always just paying attention to their own world and needs, more so than I ever noticed in the US. It could also be stemming from the overpopulation in general, I have a feeling that brings out a need to take care of yourself and your own and no one else even more, when there aren’t enough resources or space to go around.
Thirdly, babies don’t wear diapers. They just have these pants with a split in the middle, basically just two pant legs, and when the baby needs to go the parent just finds the nearest garbage can and holds it over. Now I’m still not sure how they know when to do this, that I know of babies don’t let you know when they need to go, they just do, but I have a feeling that, judging by the general standard of cleanliness I’ve seen, the baby just starts to go and you move it over the trash as soon as you can. This is a very traditional Chinese way of doing things apparently, and though I haven’t seen it, the more upper class people do use diapers.
Lastly (for now), everything is exactly the minimum required. The name of the game in Chinese business is cutting costs, so anything that is deemed unnecessary is cut. This can range from rarely cleaned bathrooms to small accommodation to only being served a dish of fried rice and egg because that’s all that was understood. I know it’s just a difference in culture, but it leaves a westerner like me with the feeling that this country is unclean and inhospitable. The exception is, of course, any place that is specifically designed for westerners.
Oh one last little thing for Nick Miller and anyone who remembers his Chinese foreign exchange roommate Kai from freshman year at LMU. I know we all thought Kai was pretty strange, but I can now safely say that he was a pretty normal Chinese guy for his age, so take that as you will.
That’s all for now, I’ll post more from Qingdao before heading to Korea.
Been a little while since my last entry. I’ve traveled quite a ways across the country in the past week or so, as you can see on the map. But I’ll start with where I left off last time.
I spent the day on a tour of the terraced hills north of Guilin, near Longshen. Now there are terraces all over China, and the better part of Asia, but there are few places they cover the vast area and altitudes they do here. A tour bus picked me up at my hotel in the morning and whisked me, a group of Chinese tourists, and a swiss man who, as the only other person who spoke English, quickly became my friend for the day. The trip was about 2 hours long, up winding hills and narrow roads, and our driver was as crazy as any other bus driver I’ve ridden with in China, passing around blind corners, along cliffs, and barely faster than the car being passed. All the while our guide chattered along in Chinese, occasionally mentioning the important things in English as well, such as “toilet here!”.
Once we arrived at the gates, cars are not allowed inside the area and we had to hike up to the village near the terraces, Ping An. Before I got sick in Yangshuo I had planned to stay in Ping An, there are a number of guest houses here and it’s a pretty popular spot to stay in the summer. With the rain and cold weather, however, I was glad to just be spending a day there, as the prospect of taking my pack up the hundreds slippery, sharp rock steps probably wouldn’t have ended well. The views along the way up were great though. I tried to take some photos, but the weather and fog prevents you from really grasping how high up these hills of terraces go. Long ago, the villagers here realized the land they lived on was fertile for farming, yet there was no flat land to use. Rather than destroy the hills or move to another area, they decided to painstakingly cut small terraces, stepping their way up the hills. The result looks somewhat like a topographic map come to life, and it’s spectacular. The amount of work it must have taken over years and years to achieve this is staggering, and the terraces are still used for farming to this day by the locals. You can have a look at my photos in this set:
Ping An, China
Following an equally precarious bus ride back to Guilin (where I was staying), I bid my new Swiss friend fairwell (his bus left that night) and headed to bed. The next day I had an evening train to Nanchang, so I spent the day having a look around Guilin. For the most part, Guilin isn’t much different than any other moderately large Chinese city. The landscape is covered with the same limestone rock formations that surround Yangshuo, though in the city surrounded by skyscrapers their beauty is somewhat diminished. In the center of the city there is a park for what was the Ming Prince’s Palace. Supposed to somewhat resemble a miniaturized version of the Forbidden City, the best thing to see here was a limestone formation you can climb to the top of and get a view of the whole city. After ascending that I spent the rest of the day walking around the city, eventually heading back to pick up my bags and walk over to the train station. For some photos of Guilin, here’s a set:
Guilin, China
Nanchang was supposed to be a quick stop on my way to Xiamen, unfortunately the same day tickets sold out sometime while I was in the looooong line at the train station there, so I was forced to spend the night in a hotel near the train station. I didn’t look much around the city beyond near my hotel when looking for something to eat, but there isn’t much there for a tourist and the weather was even worse than Guilin (very cold!) so I just stayed in my hotel room and read, and the next day I was off again to Xiamen. If you’re keeping track, that’s 3 nights total it took to get from Guilin to Xiamen.
As soon as I arrived in Xiamen I could tell that this city was doing much better economically than any I had yet been to in China. The guide book says this is a result of being designated a Special Economic Zone back in the late 80’s, which brought all kinds of business to the city. Xiamen is a fairly large city on an island off the coast of Fujian province (joined by a bridge) and my final destination was an even smaller island just off of Xiamen, Gulangyu.
Similar to Shamian, Gulangyu had been the foreigner’s quarters in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and similarly it’s covered in the requisite Victorian architecture. This island is a little larger and more touristy than Shamian, however, and it reminds me a lot of Catalina Island in Southern California. I found a little family owned guest house to stay in, which has provided the first internet connection in about a week that’s successfully allowed me to upload photos to Flickr again, albeit one at a time. After grabbing some lunch I went to Sunrise Rock park, which allows you to climb to the top of the aforementioned rock and look out over the whole island. While I was up there, for probably the third time now while I’ve been at a tourist spot, a tour group of Chinese girls ran over toward me and all wanted to take pictures with me. I guess being the only white person on the island makes me something of a rock star here. When they were done they all ran away again saying “Hallo!” and “Sank You!” giggling together. A cable car from the top of the rock takes you across to an aviary full of exotic birds.
By this time it was getting late so I left the park to have some dinner from one of the seafood places that cover the island, where there are a number of different creatures in tubs outside ranging from fish to crabs to eels (not as bad as in Guangzhou with their worms and toads and beetles). I picked out a nice looking crab and the chef turned it into a delicious fried crab in some kind of sauce. One of the more expensive meals I’ve eaten on this trip at around $15 with rice, veggies and an extra large Tsingtao (my St. Patrick’s day celebration woo!).
Today in the morning I went to Underwater World Xiamen, an aquarium and marine animal amusement park, which turned out to be much smaller than I was hoping. They did have some really cool things on exhibit though, such as the world’s largest complete sperm whale skeleton and skin, a tank of stone fish, an electric eel, and some huge sea turtles. There was also a sea lion/dolphin show at the end, though it was pretty simple compared to the ones I remember seeing at Marine World a long time ago. Following the aquarium, I had a walk around the island looking at all the old buildings and the beaches. On one of the beaches they had these huge plastic balls that were tethered to the beach, and kids would get inside of them and run into the water. It was a really funny sight, all these little Chinese kids running around like hamsters in balls and then at one point they would suddenly get yanked to a stop and fall over inside when the line went taught.
Here’s a bunch of photos from the island:
Xiamen, China - Gulangyu
In the late afternoon today I took the ferry back over to the mainland of Xiamen to take a look at the city. I would say so far, this place reminds me the most of Hong Kong inside China. The city is very clean, everyone for the most part is dressed well and looks like they have some money, the buildings are much newer and there’s lots of construction going on, and even the traffic follows the rules of the road for the most part! Took a few photos today:
Xiamen, China
That brings things up to current. Tomorrow I’ve got a long (26 hour) train trip up to Shanghai where I’ll be staying for 5 days or so. I’m feeling much better health-wise, and hoping that will keep up, and the weather has been nicer here and should continue to be so in Shanghai, so things are going great and I’m having a great time. Lots of people have been keeping in touch, and if you want to the best ways are via IM (I’m usually on in the morning here before I go out, which is early evening in the US) or email. Love to hear from everyone!
One last thing, I posted the rest of my pics from Yangshuo that I hadn’t been able to upload before, so they are in the same set:
Yangshuo, China
It’s been a long 6 days since coming to Yangshuo. The weather on this trip has gone from hot and humid (Hong Kong) to mild but pleasant (Guangzhou) to now cold and rain. The train trip from Guangzhou to Guilin was an interesting trip to say the least, and from now on I think I’m going to spend the extra 15% for the soft sleeper class. The train was an overnight ride, and stopped about every 45 minutes. And at almost every stop, some crazy person would get on, only to be quickly (and loudly, the Chinese aren’t very good at being quiet in general) kicked out out the train. But that meant even if I was sleeping (which half the time I wasn’t even able to) I was woken up. The better class (soft-sleeper) is supposed to have private berths of 4 beds each, rather than an open car of 60 beds like I was in. We’ll see if it makes much difference on my next trip.
Arriving in Guilin with very little sleep, suddenly thrust into freezing rain, and it being 6:30 am local time, I was fortunately able to find a bus to my destination, Yangshuo, right away. It’s here that I got my first glimpse into real Chinese transit styles. Buses try to fill as much as they can at their first point of departure, but invariably there aren’t enough people to fill the seats. That’s no problem, as it’s generally understood apparently that you can just flag a bus down anywhere on it’s route and get on, even have it stop for you anywhere else on the route to get off. So this normally not very far bus ride takes much longer with all the locals getting on and off. The other new experience was putting my life in the hands of the driver. The rule of the road is, if you are slower than me, I will pass you, as long as the oncoming car is smaller than me or not there. My favorite was, on another day, being in a bus which was passing a truck, which were both passing a tractor, on a 2 lane road, in the rain, with an oncoming car having to swerve into the shoulder. The cities, fortunately, seem to be a little more controlled, though still pretty hazardous by US standards.
I made it to my hotel unscathed however, and after a little nap and a shower I rented a bike (the preferred method of transit) and started out to the countryside. It’s hard to do justice in words to the experience of riding around amongst the limestone peaks and small villages that surround Yangshuo; I spent the latter half of the day I arrived and the entire next doing just that. Even in the cold weather with mild rain, it was a wonderful experience, and if it wasn’t so cold, the rain wouldn’t have been so bad, and in fact it really added to the atmosphere.
The third day I took a bus up to an area a ways north of Yangshuo to do a hike down the Li River. The popular way to do the river is either to get on a ferry from Guilin (costing around $50) US or to have a local take you on a bamboo boat. The second option is apparently illegal, and according to some tour guides who were also staying at my guest house, becoming an infraction that is harshly enforced for a fine of around $65 US. Here’s China for you though: the reason it’s illegal to hire a local (and also to take a ferry back to Guilin) is that the way you get back from Yangshuo to Guilin is by bus, and obviously the bus driver needs a job as much as the ferry boat driver, so both must be accommodated. The hike was suggested as an alternative to both by the same tour guide, so I took that and am glad I did. The hike winds down the Li River through all the scenic spots, and requires that you take a few short ferries across when the shore becomes impassible cliff. At some point I got off the right path and fortunately found a local farmer to take me across on her boat, after spending about 45 minutes trying to explain what I wanted. Ami if you’re reading this, thank you so much for that dictionary! Having the Chinese characters next to the words I need saved me! After that little adventure it was pretty smooth the rest of the way, I saw even more beautiful scenery and got a lot of interesting looks from locals (the weather being what it was, I was pretty much the only hiker on the trail right up until I got back to town).
That night I got home, and 3 days of being out in the nasty weather felt like they had given me a bit of a cold, so I decided to book one additional night instead of departing for Guilin the next day as I had planned. And that’s when all hell broke loose. The next day I felt a little feverish and tired, so I just lounged around reading, when suddenly I felt really tired, followed quickly by very bad. To keep this pleasant, I’ll just stay I came down with a bad case of “traveler’s stomach”. If you’ve ever had that, you know it’s anything but pleasant. I ended up having to book yet another night in Yangshuo, as though the first day was by far the worst, I hadn’t slept much and I was still feeling pretty bad. I’m still not 100% by far, but I think the worst is behind me, and I caught a bus back to the main city in the area, Guilin. Tomorrow I’ve booked an all day trip up to the other big site around here, the rice terraces of Longshen, which I had planned to stay in for a couple nights but obviously that didn’t work out too well, so hopefully this will be better. The day after that I have an onward train ticket to Nanchang, and fingers crossed I’ll be able to just get another ticket for a train the same day I arrive to the place I’m really trying to get, Xiamen.
I’ve taken a bunch of photos of the area, though for whatever reason I haven’t been able to post all of them yet. Here’s the set as of now, and hopefully I can add the rest to it soon!
Yangshuo & the Li River, China
Getting into China was hardly the ordeal I thought it was going to be. I left Hong Kong via the train station, heading toward Guangzhou, a 2 hour or so trip that gave me my first glimpse into real China. It’s immediately apparent how much of a developing country this is. Though the buildings in Hong Kong look run down and by American standards it may not seem sparkling and clean, the people that I saw, for the most part, seemed to be doing fairly well for themselves, and there weren’t too many signs of extreme poverty. As soon as you get into China, however, that all changes. In between the even more dilapidated high rises everywhere are mud huts and small, halfway destroyed brick houses that are still homes to people. China may own America’s economy, but it’s privately owned by a few, and most of the populace isn’t seeing a dime.
Upon arrival in China, my trip through customs was surprisingly quick, but then again it was a Sunday afternoon so maybe not too many people are making the trip. The difference between Hong Kong and Guangzhou could not be more marked by their train stations. In Hong Kong, the station looks similar to ones in America, it was fairly calm and clean, with a nice waiting area. Arriving in Guangzhou I was thrown into a huge concrete walled hall lined with little stalls and every 5 feet was someone jumping in my face wanting to sell me something. The ground was wet with who knows what, and I suddenly felt a long way from home. I made it to the subway, which was much nicer actually, and got to my stop. As a contrast, take a look at what the exit from the subway looked like (felt like being in Tijuana) and then I walked 500 feet or so across a bridge to the island I was staying on and my heaven for the next two days: Shamian.
Subway
Shamian
Apparently in the 1800’s China closed all of it’s doors to foreign trade except for a few traders in Guangzhou (then called Canton). However, they were not allowed to leave their section of town, which was Shamian Island. The result was some beautiful Victorian architecture and gardens. Now it’s the most Westerner-friendly place to stay in Guangzhou, and where the hostel is located. Also, according to my guide book, Guangzhou is the place that all the white people come to adopt Asian babies, and it’s true! I’m surrounded by mid-western white families with little Asian kids, and every store here rents strollers and sells baby clothes! But, more than anything, it’s quiet and serene, just what I needed after nearly a week in Hong Kong. Have a look at the picture set for more, including some night shots of the Pearl River.
Guangzhou - Shamian
I was tempted to ride out my two nights in Guangzhou solely on Shamian island, especially with how confrontational my introduction to the rest of the city had been. I thought better of that, however, and ventured out to see some of the rest of the city (plus I had to buy an onward train ticket). If the train station I came into was bad (the east one), the main one in the north was a nightmare. It’s huge, loud, filled with smoke, there’s people sitting around waiting everywhere to the point of being hard to walk around, and of course, nothing is in English. Fortunately I eventually found one window that had English text alternating with Chinese characters and I was able to book a ticket to my next stop, Guilin. Tonight I’ll be taking the sleeper car overnight and arriving around 6:30am, then need to catch a bus to my destination, Yangshuo. The scenery there is supposed to be beautiful, mist covered limestone rock formations lining a river and number of rural farming villages. I can’t wait.
After the train station I did make it out to see some of the rest of the city, and I’m very glad I did. Guangzhou is actually a very pleasant place, the parts I had previously seen seemed to be the only ones that were in fact really bad. Most of the streets are lined with nice little trees, dotted with little shops selling everything from buttons to dried pigs feet to door handles. Unfortunately I had already packed up my camera in preparation for the train trip when, this morning, I stumbled into a little market covering a series of back alleyways that was something out of a book, only to walk 3 blocks and suddenly be in a shopping street on the level of Times Square! The contrasts here continue to astound me. I’ve got another set of photos I took of various places I saw around Guangzhou to give you an idea of the rest of the city.
Guangzhou
That’s all for now, hopefully I’ll have some great pics to be posting after I make it (cross your fingers) to Yangshuo.