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Shanghai at night was as to be expected.. the same as Shanghai by day except darker with flashing lights.
We were hoping to climb up the 87 floor Jinmao tower- not the way Frenchmen Alain Robert did on the outside only to be arrested as soon as he got to the bottom again, but by the stairs... unfortunately this is Shanghai and a lot more modern than Devon so we had to take the lift... up 87 floors in just 45 seconds! The tower had views all across Shanghai- very tall, big and grey.
The flight to Chengdu was 3 hours.... we had to fly rather than a 30 hour train otherwise we wouldn't have time to do anything on arrival the Chengdu before going to Xi'an. I slept most the flight.. Justine nearly had to wake me up as i was almost on top of the Chinese man next to me! We were pretty hungry the last section of the flight (we'd been hoping for a flight meal) so asked about any food that is served...the menu was a choice of two.... either duck neck or special Chinese waffle. We waited until we arrived at Chengdu for some chicken noodles. Although in flight meals weren't included... in flight aerobics were... for just a 3 hour flight lots of interesting exercises were provided for everyone to copy in the last 15 minutes!
More noodles and Chinese dumplings have been ate... i think we'd be good competitors in the chopstick challenge.
We went to a Chinese face-changing opera show. Fairly good, especially the face changing part where the faces change color- i still can't quite work out how but my only suggestion is they substituted wheat-a-bix for chameleons for breakfast. As well as face changing there were acrobats, music, singers, puppets and a hand shadow section. The hand-shadows were a lot better than when Anna and i used to make shadow puppets with our head-torches when we were camping.. think we got as far as crocodile and goose!
We went to the panda reserve a big nature reserve with lots of well kept pandas. The photos attached are of one panda family- unfortunately i can't upload the pandoramic photo on here!
We were bamboozled by how few pandas are now in the wild- due to the complicated breeding procedure and their laziness.. they'd much rather sleep or eat bamboo.
Chengdu also had a park in the center, where the locals come and sing and dance- lots of different sections of music blaring out and people dancing along... very cultured but a bit of a headache.
Prior to our next flight to Xi'an we had a Chinese meal of chicken noodles and meat dumplings... unbelievable spicy, we think it might be a possible Chinese joke.. see white people and add extra spice! We'd chosen to fly again as its only an hour for third flight compared to a 20-30 hour train, so as were short on time gives us more time in Xi'an.
Xi'an is surrounded by city walls built during the Ming dynasty.. kind of a Chinese version of Caernarfon. We decided as this was one of our last destinations and we had 3 nights we would stay in a 2 bed room in a hostel rather than a dorm... of course we got something slightly different.. what we thought was called a 'deluxe suite for two' containing a private shower with a garden view costing $9 was actually a double bed with a main road/shopping mall view and a glass enclosed shower and toilet so not quite the 'views' we were looking for! Probably should stick to what we know best... dorms!
We visited the usual city sights and somehow got swayed to thinking we could be ladies and have our nails painted.... after an hour and half or utter boredom we had pandas on our nails.. this promptly led to a visit to the market for some nail polish remover.
We went to the 8th wonder of the world (so claimed) the Terracotta army. I'm sure if it had been discovered sooner it would be within the 7 wonders, so i guess calling it 8th is fair enough. This was a life size army of thousands of warriors built from Terracotta to guard over the soul of China's emperor at the time Qin Shi Huang ready for when he died. His dead body was to be buried in a tomb in an artificial mountain he had built secretly taking 38 years and 700,000 people. The Terracotta army was to look like an army and contain thousands of warriors and horses in battle position. When Qin died his brother buried him and killed the 700,000 people so no one knew the secret. Within the mountain is the tomb but also an underground palace for his afterlife- rivers flowing mercury and ingenious defenses against inhibitors- so the Chinese still haven't gotten in.
In 1974 the army was discovered by a farmer looking for water... (we saw this farmer!) they had all been covered with earth to hide them now Qin was long dead and the farmer started destroying them as he didn't want the Chinese government to take all the money (or something like that) but there is still plenty remaining and more being discovered. Some are not being dug up so the color can be preserved until they think of a treatment to protect the colorings. The Chinese believe these warriors protected Xi'an and the area from the recent 2008 earthquake.
We had a variety of Chinese foods with rice at the Terracotta army, some looked like the neighbors had emptied out there kitchen caddys on a plate but they tasted better than they looked.
Xi'ans most famous city landmark is the Big Goose Pagoda built in AD 651 to house buddhas sutus who was bought over by a linguistic monk. Its surrounded by temples and massive water fountain area and has a fountain and light show every night for people to come and see. We went to see it and had all the fountains dancing to the music and lighting up- very good if you take away all the barging and shoving people wanting a good viewing spot.
Next.. a 5 hour bullet train to Beijing which we nearly missed as it was going from a new station 30 km out of town rather than the ones on the map which are withing 4 km of town, again speeds of 300 km+ per hour.
As our time in china is coming to an end we have come up with a travelers guide of how to be Chinese:
1) forget your table manners
2) don't talk, shout at the top of your voice
3) one photo isn't enough
4) the queue starts at the front of the line, then form a big mass
5) line your bowl with cling film- it saves on the washing up.
6) in a relationship wear matching clothes
Since the last blog we learned that in China the 'only child' issue I was talking about is called 'little emperor syndrome'
so.. Chinas been enjoyable... you'll never understand China until you visit.. an insight to how 1.7 billion people live. a pollution struck white skied country with extremes of glistening skyscrapers to the poorer suburbs. Everyone thinks of china as some high flying up coming county- but its still i the same league per capita as Nambia. Chinese friends i have in the UK must be very western cultured, you'll never understand the chinese culture until you visit.
The closest i'll be to China in the near future is looking at the 'made in China' stamps on the bottom of almost everything... Justine's looking forward to English-Chinese-takeaway (not once have we seen a prawn cracker on the menu!).. and perhaps i'll replace my knife and fork with chopsticks everynow and then.
Next... Bejing- Berlin - London.... i'll be staying in London whilst Justine gets took back to Devon... one day i'll be lucky enough to have someone wait for me at the airport but until then public transport has its use.. a night in London then head back to Bangor. Time to begin to think of packing our rucksack and finding the cleanest piece of clothes we may have left..a month of hand-washing hasn't done wonders!
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NANNY
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I THINK IN YOUR SPARE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK; YOUR BLOGS ARE VERY INTERESTING. ANNA COMING TOMORROW. LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING U SOON. LOVE TO BOTH. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX