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Dongche, Hongqiao Station, Shanghai
Planned to run 90 trips per DAY between Beijing and Shanghai!Photos:
I had to start a new album for the photos from this trip. Lots of colour & amazing places.
…..the start of the school summer holidays & I'm about to make a round trip to Beijing & Shanghai to separately meet two visiting relatives, one of whom I've never met before. First hurdle, train booking office in Yangzhou. No hard sleeper tickets to Beijing from Yangzhou. Nor Nanjing, nor Taizhou. Soft sleeper? No. There's one hard sleeper available from Zhenjiang, just across the river. OK, I'll take it. Leaves at three minutes to midnight on Thursday.....
…..last bus leaves Yangzhou at 5.30pm. That means a five hour wait in Zhenjiang. Ah, well. There's a lady at the bus station looking distinctive in a particularly Chinese way, probably in her 30's, in a short black summer dress but with lycra style shorts underneath & a pair of those platform-soled shoes with a lot of straps. She has a tough, don't-mess-with-me look about her. I remember this because, when I take my numbered seat at the front of the bus she's sitting in the one next to me. There's no conversation until halfway through the 45 minute trip after
Summer Palace, Beijing
Protect the railings too... she's been talking to the bus driver. Apparently he's recognised me from two previous trips. It turns out she's a quality control inspector, (as she speaks minimal English it takes a while for me to get that).....
…..as we disembark she insists I join her for something to eat before her train leaves at 7.30pm. She insists on paying then, after I wonder aloud what there is to do in Zhenjiang for five hours she asks, “Ni yong wang luo ma?”, (“Do you use the Internet?”). Yes. I don't see the connection. She marches me across the road, to an Internet cafe &, before I know what's going on, she's set me up with a computer & said goodbye. No, she won't accept any money for the internet time. Thank you. Nice to meet you.....
…..there's a year 12 student on the platform from my school, (she recognises my t-shirt). It turns out that, with nearly 20 carriages, she's on a bunk in the same compartment. She's happy, if apologetic to practice her very good English the next day on the 15 hour trip to Beijing.....
…..I spot an apartment block under construction through the train window.
Long Corridor, Summer Palace, Beijing
One of 14,000 paintings in the corridor! Being so used to seeing forests of cranes & endless kilometres of elevated freeways & rail lines, why does it stand out? I can't remember the last time I saw just one being built in isolation.....
…..near the Temple of Heaven kites on tethers of amazing length are barely visible through the impenetrable air of Beijing, except for the led lights flashing along their length. It is hot, in the 30's, with humidity trapped in the all pervading, thick, grey smog. You can sometimes cut the air in Yangzhou with a knife. I'll need a chainsaw for Beijing.....
…..petrol in Beijing is around Au$1.10 per litre, pretty high considering relative costs of living & salaries.....
…..from my hotel on the south east corner of the city I decide to visit the Summer Palace, on the opposite, north west, side of the city. Overnight rain has cleared the air &, apart from the humidity, it's a nice day. The subway in Beijing is modern, clean & efficient & appears to cost ¥2 wherever you go, that's about 30c in Australian money. My map doesn't show a subway line to the Palace so, with the help of several kind
Summer Palace, Beijing
Attention to detail, Chinese style Beijing citizens I take three buses to get there from Xizhimen subway station.....
…..it's quite staggering & even with most of the day set aside it's not enough to see everything. As expected it is not a Palace in the self-contained style of a European castle but a vast complex of buildings, palaces, gallerys, walkways, temples & pavilions around the Kunming lake which covers three-quarters of the area. Despite being looted by allied forces in the 19th century & part of the complex being unforgiveably burned to the ground by the British it has largely been restored. As usual for the sake of brevity I'll have to continually refer you to the Photobucket Beijing-Shanghai album link above. Apart from the quality the sheer area of beautifully painted interiors & exteriors, walkways & gates alone has to be seen to be believed.....
…..my Beijing map is over a year old. On the way back I find there is a subway station within 500 metres of the Palace Gate.....
…..it's a good thing I went to the Summer Palace yesterday. I wake up to a huge clap of thunder as a storm welcomes July the First, the 90th birthday
Long Corridor, Summer Palace, Beijing
More art. How do they maintain it all? of the Chinese Communist party. On the TV a lone news reporter stands in Tian'enmen square under an umbrella, trying to stay dry while promoting the importance of this anniversary to the people, despite the fact that none of them are crazy enough to go & stand outside in the rain to commemorate it.....
…..when the rain eases off I go to the nearby Natural History museum, a fine collection of dinosaurs & prehistoric mammals. It's next to the Temple of Heaven so that's next on the list. It's yet another ordinarily astounding & unexceptionally mind-boggling venue. This is China after all. See the photos.....
…..one thing I am noticing in Beijing. There are more people here of around my height than I have seen elsewhere. Some Chinese people are growing taller. Several women are not so much shorter than my 1.83 metres. The other thing that stands out is there are many more horizontally challenged people here, (is that the current politically correct term?). Still not as many really big people as I would see on a trip to the supermarket in Australia but certainly noticeable in China.....
….the main purpose of this trip is to
Saffron Restaurant, Beijing
Mike and Dave, cousins meet for the first time visit my cousin Mike for the first time. He's a music director commuting back & forth to Beijing helping his protege, Barney, set up a show. We meet at the Saffron Spanish restaurant, as he has suggested. This is after I get to the vicinity on the subway then take a taxi for the final leg. The taxi driver has to ask the way & finally decides it's too hard to cross a busy junction so drops me off with a, “turn left, it's about a hundred metres.....”. With help from a couple of locals taking a walk I make it on time.....
…..we have a great evening. Both Mike & Barney are great company & we cover a lot of topics, while simultaneously trying to contact my sister on Skype using i-pads, largely unsuccessfully. When Barney leaves Mike & I go through some family history which we are both still getting to grips with. The staff speak pretty reasonable English so thankfully I'm not called upon to use my less than adequate Chinese.....
…..it's after 11pm & too late for the subway by the time we finish. There don't appear to be any vacant taxis either. A
motor trike driver stops & asks where I'm going. I tell him it's too far for his trike. He persists. I tell him the name of the subway station near the hotel. ¥100. Forget it, (actually that doesn't translate well, I just tell him, “Tai gui le”, or “too expensive”). “You tell me how much”. OK, ¥50 or about Au$7. No hesitation, he opens the back door, I hop in & we rattle & roll along, until the chain comes off. “Qing xia che”, (“Please get out”). After it has fallen off half a dozen times I get out before he asks. Finally the connecting link breaks. I feel sorry for him & give him ¥10 & start off to get a taxi. No, no! He calls a mate who appears about five minutes later in another motor trike which finally makes it to Puhuangyu station.....
…..Saturday, 2nd of July. After visiting the Yonghegong, (Lama Temple) I go back to the city & browse around the shops for a while before the heat, tired feet & the lure of a draught Yanjing beer at ¥10 for half a litre stops me for a while. I chat to Paul, a
Yorkshireman, who is living in Beijing & is a test driver for Audi, having done similar work for Mercedes &, I believe, Porsche. He doesn't like Beijing that much. I get the impression he's the only foreigner at his workplace & I begin to appreciate my mix of foreign & Chinese friends in Yangzhou.....
…..on the way to Beijing South railway station on Sunday morning, before 6am I spot a middle aged man, dressed only in boxer shorts, sleeping soundly in the back of his trike next to his covered streetside fruit stall. Another has a bed made of four chairs covering half the footpath. Regardless of how you view sleeping on the street, as an option as opposed to a necessity, would you feel safe doing it in London, Los Angeles, your town or city? I think it says more about the safety of China than anything.....
…..I have a ticket for the new Dongche, the Chinese Bullet Train, on the recently opened Shanghai-Beijing line. From Zhenjiang it took 15 hours on the slow train. Shanghai is another 3 hours or so in the opposite direction. The fast train does it, stopping at about six stations on
Chinglish, Beijing
You, too, can be a doozer the way, in 5 hours, at around 300km per hour. You could lose the international airport terminal in Adelaide in the Beijing South railway station. The line has been finished a year ahead of schedule. All this pales before another statistic. They are aiming to run 90 trips a DAY on the 1300km trip between Beijing & Shanghai. Only in China. The ticket cost; ¥550 or about Au$80. About the same as a 200km slow bus trip in the UK from Norwich to London in 2007!.....
…..Hongqiao railway station in Shanghai is just as vast as Beijing South. Duncan, the son of another cousin, is travelling around China, after 6 months in India. He has booked into the same hostel that I have booked, Le Tour Traveller's Rest, not far from the Jing'an Temple. I watch a man trying to get off the subway but get pushed back into the carriage by the tide of people getting on.....
…..Duncan is a legend. Getting around China with no Chinese, after travelling around India is a big achievement, (believe me!). He likes China, despite the difficulties. He wasn't expecting Mao-era unisex uniforms but, after his time in India, where, for
Floating Teapot, Beijing
Eye catching piece of street art cultural reasons, generally only men will actually talk to you & women are covered head to foot, the sight of millions of hotpants & short summer dresses has been, well, not totally unwelcome.....
…..he has also met my colleague, Patrick, from the school, previously staying at the same hostel in this city of around 23 million. Small world. We spend the next couple of days wandering round Shanghai in the stifling, humid air. Even when it's grey & overcast it's hard going. We go through a lot of cold, bottled water & take refuge in air conditioned shops but still get to many areas of the city I haven't seen before. He even tags along when I go to take photos of the Puxi Viaduct, (a road intersection) having heard they illuminate it at night. He's quite impressed too. Wonder if they've considered the same for Spaghetti Junction, at Gravelly Hill, near Birmingham, UK?.....
…..as for other comparisons between China & India, he reckons there is no comparison, particularly in the major cities. There are a lot of issues to be addressed, (Shanghai's air is no better than Beijing's & I'm worried that I'm now thinking Yangzhou air
Yonghegong, Beijing
Lama Temple, entrance is not so bad after all). Still, China has, along with colossal mistakes & draconian restrictions on political freedom, made amazing advances in improving the quality of life for a large portion of its citizens, food, housing & infrastructure. When you're dealing with nearly a quarter of the world's population it's no less than a staggering achievement. Hats off to the Chinese people, &, however reluctantly we foreigners might grudgingly concede, you'd have to include here the positive reforms & policies the government has implemented. As I walk past Shanghai's Aston Martin showroom, (now open) & the Maserati, let's hope they consider, on the Party's 90th birthday, that the rich just getting filthy rich is not a good formula for social cohesion.....
An excerpt that struck me from a copy of the Tao Te Ching which I bought in Shanghai:
…..We turn clay to make a vessel, but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.....therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognise the usefulness of what is not..... For those for whom this is too profound, how about the short, middle aged Chinese lady
Yonghegong, Beijing
Observing Buddhist rites at the rest stop on the way back to Yangzhou, totally unremarkable except for her t-shirt, proclaiming, in English which I'm convinced she couldn't read, in large letters;
…..I'm not easy, but we can negotiate..... The title of this YYW, by the way, is from a sign in the Yuyuan in Shanghai.
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Peter Mullinger
non-member comment
Hi Dave
What a great trip, you are really bringing China alive for us stay at home Adelaide folk. All the best with your adventures. Peter (& Sheila)