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Published: March 27th 2006
Cruising along the river
The rock formations were amazing, seen here behind a very chilly Jo, Chris, Cat and MattWell here we are in Beijing on our last day of the tour. It's been such a busy 3 weeks that we've not had much time to update the blog. But glad to hear Dave's toilet poem caused so much debate. It definitely wasn't the worse toilet we've seen on our trip, but very typical of the toilets here. There's much more to talk about than the toilets, although within our tour group there was much discussion over them and our tour leader devised a panda rating for them. 5 pandas being a western style toilet, usually only seen in hotels or McDonalds going down to negative pandas which were just a hole or trough with no doors and flush! One of the first questions asked when we were somewhere new was "How many pandas?"
China has been the most fascinating country we've been to so far. We've seen such diversity in the landscape, weather, food and people as we've travelled. We've met some great people on our tour, visited some amazing sites and eaten some interesting food. We started our journey in Hong Kong, which eased us in gently as hong kong is still very different from the rest
Back to school
As we sang along to 'Heads, shoulders, Knees and toes' the children were thinking "What the heck are these weird foreigners talking about?" of China and much more English is spoken. We didn't have much time there although managed to do some shopping. From Hong Kong we got the ferry to China and then flew to Guilin. Guillin has some amazing scenery it's surrounded by limestone peaks and hills.....the kind you seen in chinese paintings. We took the river cruise to Yangshuo through the fantastic peaks with some great names like elephant trunk hill, penholder peak and dragon head hill. The Chinese like to name everything as to what it looks like, although personally i couldn't always see it. Yangshuo was one of my favourite towns we visited, it's very laid back, popular backpacker place so there are a few western cafes, also good shops. We also saw a fantastic opera here. It was all set on the river with the peaks and hills as the backdrop which looked amazing. The whole thing was done on boats with lighting and music, definetly worth going to see.
We visited a couple of other small towns - Dali and Lijang which were both very picturesque with temples and pagodas. Also home to the Naxi minority which you still see about Lijang in their traditional
The lake opera
The lake provided the stage, and they actually lit up the mountains behind in time with the show! The words 'atmospheric' and 'grand' didnt do it justice dress. Although the Han Chinese make up about 90% of the Chinese population there are also about 55 different ethnic minorities, each with their own dress and culture. We saw a group of Naxi musicians perform one evening which was interesting......most of the men were in their 80's with really long beards. Another tradition in the area is cormorant fishing, they use these birds to catch fish and then stop them eating the fish by pulling on a bit of string around their throat. It's not as bad as it sounds, one of the fisherman took us out in his boat and showed us how it's done. They let the bird eat a fish every few they catch so they keep fishing. On the way back from the cormorant fishing our horse & cart man (the roads were too narrow for cars) took us to his village and showed us around his home. I think his wife was a bit shocked when he turned up with 10 westerners, but they were both really kind and welcoming. His wife made us all tea while he told us about village life via our tour leader Candace who speaks mandarin. So many people
Dave and the cormorants
Dave finally found a way even he could pick up a couple of birds we've met have been so open and friendly.
Another highlight of the tour was seeing Pandas at the sanctuary in Chengdu, i even went in to the enclosure to stroke them, although a little scarey as they're pretty big, i also held one of the red pandas which are cute. Chengdu is in the Sichuan province, famous for its spicy cuisine and we did try the traditional hot pot. A big pot of soup, one side mild and the other full of chillies and basically you cook your food in the soup. None of us were that keen and particularly when we weren't sure what some of the meat was, the waitress kept saying it was chicken but it looked nothing like chicken! The food in China has been very good most of the time, although we weren't brave enough to try dog, but Matt and Tony in our group did. Meal times are good fun though and most of the chinese restaurants have big round tables with a central plate that spins around so everyone can get to the dishes. We've become quite skilled in using chopsticks, although i struggle with the noodle soup....very messy! Of course we
Jo and the red panda
Jo wondered if the red panda in her lap was toilet trained had Beijing duck, one of my favourites as our final nights meal.
Davids going to take over now with his 'views' on China........
China is an amazing place. Its impossible to do it justice in a few words and photos, or even for us to get a full view in the four weeks we have. Its obviously huge, with thousands of years of history and over 1.5 billion people. Its also changing at a massive pace. Everywhere you go they are building, painting, growing and developing. Here in Beijing they are tearing down the old 'hutongs' (narrow street single storey neighbourhoods) and building apartment blocks, shopping malls and skyscrapers at a tremendous rate. Everything is gearing up for the olympics in 2008, and for instance in Beijing alone we've been told they will have built over 800 hotels between now and then!
Its a very strange place to be in, kind of alien in a lot of ways to the west and more so than any other place we have been. The written language, for example, is obviously pretty indecipherable to us. We spend the first few years at school learning our 26 letters of the
Jo meets the big pandas
"Is there room on that sofa for me?" Jo asked alphabet, they have to learn 11,000 of the more than 80,000 written characters to be considered educated. They generally work 6 or 7 long days each week and children are pushed quite strongly to take many, many extra curriculur lessons after school and at weekends. Everyone seems very focused on the future here, and with the amazing pace of change you can understand why. I read that by 2050 the Chinese economy is predicted to be 75% bigger than the American economy will be by then. When you think what influence America has had over the world in the last 100 years, it makes you really start to wonder what China is going to mean to us all in the years to come.
Its also at times a kind of intimidating place. When you go around tiananmen square, with its obviously well known recent history, its weird to be told that some of the people selling hats or kites are likely to be officials ensuring the right 'behaviours' amongst the thousands of people crowding around. There are things you are not supposed to discuss, many books that are illegal to read, and the media and its messages are almost
Another day, another sleeper train
This is Chris and Cat with Jo on the sleeper train....though 'sleeper' was a bit of an exageration all state managed. I guess for me its given me a perspective on the freedoms we enjoy at home that until now I have taken for granted. For all that, it also seems as well to make China the least intimidating place we have been to in the three months so far. We have always felt completely safe walking around, shopping, catching trains and the like. Apparently there are really stiff penalties for offences against foreigners, though even that seems strange when you think about it. Can you imagine the furor at home if it came to light that we had stiffer penalties for mugging a tourist than a british person?
The only slightly dodgy situation we got into turned out also to be one of the funniest. Six of us went to a bar in Xian one night for a few beers and as the girls fancied a dance. As Jo, Candace (our tour leader) and another girl from the group, Cat, went out onto the dancefloor I sat with another couple of the guys from the tour having a beer or two. After a few minutes Id notice an obviously pretty drunk local guy try to crowd
At the terracotta warriors
Me, the wife, and four thousand ancient stone warriors....very cool :-) his way into their little circle and dance with them. Now Im used to Jo being able to ably handle herself when faced with unwanted attentions in that sort of place, and true to form they had soon made sure the bloke realised he wasnt welcome. Still, he had seemed to take a little bit of telling so I kept an eye out. The guy didnt go far, and after stumbling around to the tune of a Robbie Williams number for a minute or two I suddenly saw him try and force his way into their group again. Id seen enough, so chest puffed out I took the dozen strides to the dance floor, and as they tried to tell him to 'go away' I put myself between Jo's back and the fella and 'moved' him back a few paces. In my best sign language I made it clear he wasnt welcome, gestured to a nearby bouncer that the attention was unwelcome, and went back to my seat feeling my brief bout of machismo was complete. A minute or two later the guy stormed passed me and out of the club. Soon after that Jo and the girls came laughing
The gang
Back from the left; Kelly, Chris, Tony Evelyn, Alan, Matt
Front from the left; Lilly, Cat, Candace, Dave and Jo back to the table. "Did you see that butch girl trying it on with Jo?" they said. Turns out it was a very 'modern' club.... had thought the guys in leather shorts were strangely dressed.
All this talking and we havent even mentioned the Great wall of China and the Terracotta warriors. We walked for over 9k along the great wall, and for both of us I think it was the highlight of the trips. Its very, very weird having grown up knowing about this fabulous thing and then to find yourself walking along it, looking out over the mountain range ahead and seeing it snake along the top. The warriors was also a real highlight, again something that fired my imagination as a kid and when you walk into the main exhibition 'hangar' and see thousands of them lined up and learn about the thousands more to be dug up you cant help but be a little in awe.
We have a couple of hours left in Beijing today, then we board the overnight train to Shanghai to spend the rest of the week there before flying to Hong Kong on Saturday. We then get to meet
Walking the wall
Actually, it wasnt all wallking. At times and after 9k it was climbing, crawling, and nearly crying..... up with Jo's parents and other family before flying down to Australia for her brothers wedding next week. We're both really excited about this, its gonna be great to see everyone.
【One last thing; Want to say a quick thank you to everyone we met in our tour group for making it such a great three weeks. We're looking forward to seeing Alan and Lilly again in Australia, wishing Cat and Chris the best in their return home to UK at the end of their own RTW trip (and looking forward to dinner in their new house!), hoping Kelly gets over her cold and that she and Tony and Evelyn are safely back in Canada and that Matt isnt getting into too much trouble in Thailand. Also our thanks to Candace for leading us through the mad and beautiful land of China....we wouldnt have had anywhere near as much fun without you all!)
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ason
non-member comment
Oh No.
You have new friends and don't need us any more. I bet they're more fun than us and liked the poem too.