Enter the PRC, and her high mountains.

We walked across the bridge into China and I marvelled that people could still walk into a protected country in 2008. I do not count crossing Europe¡¯s non borders where customs officers have become a rarity and the fences have been taken down. This was the People¡¯s Republic of China. The largest Communist country in the world, with a controlled economy and a state that ¡°likes to make sure that things go smoothly¡±. This is as far as I will go at this stage, not because I am typing this up in High Yunnan on the boundaries of Tibet, but because I believe it to be true. By the time, we had lugged our hmong blanket and souvenirs into China we were sweating nicely. The sun had come out and we looked for an entry into the smart, but much smaller customs house. A sign in English was embossed in gold over the front. ¡°to be friendly and to encourage better human relationship with border and countries¡±. Which I think roughly translated as ¡°We are here to do our job and protect China but be as hospitable about it as possible. Unless you are Vietnamese in which case: mind your language¡±.

As soon as we walked into the glass doors we were pounced upon by Chinas Border Security Force. They politely asked us to fill in our forms and asked us to open our bags. This mean¡¯t every item had to be placed onto a desk. To speed things up, I used my back pack cover and then turned my pack out on top of it. I hid nothing. Cisca¡¯s pink passport amused them no end. They looked at it, and her passport and decided that her old passport was still valid, and that the Vietnamese were peasants. Far more interesting to them were my brace of British Passports, and Indian PIO card. They looked at all of them in turn and checked the details against each other. They understood the concept of the Indian card being a VISA for 20 years, and were puzzled by the brace of British passports. I tried to explain that I needed on for travel while I got visas on the other. Finally I pulled my Turkish passport out. ¡°Look¡± I said ¡°this may not look good but there is a perfectly rational explanation. I have one Turkish mother so I have one Turkish Passport and I have one Indian Father and they don¡¯t allow two passports so I have one Indian Visa, and because I am British I have Two British passports.¡±

The Chinese guard opened the first page of the Turkish passport, saw the crescent and star and suddenly seemed to understand everything. He handed it back and said that we could re pack. Turks obviously do not cause too much trouble. While we were re-packing our clothes the health inspector came up and asked for our health forms. I had forgotten all about this from my days on the trans Siberian. We filled them in and I looked with distress at the sars heat seaking cameras. I would surely set them off. I made a joke to one of the border guards that I was sweating like a bandit. He ushered me into a pristine public toilet and I felt obligated to wash my face. Then he rushed off and returned with two cups of drinking water. Finally I was offered an airconditioned office to cool down. I politely declined this as I really wanted to try and catch the 1320 express to Kunming.

Immigration took some time as one guard had to explain to the other that I was a bonafide traveller. After 6 minutes of deliberation I heard a thud, and I was in. The guards could not decide what to do with Cisca and eventually stamped her pink passport while cursing the Vietnamese voloubly. I was starting to like these guys more and more. Perhaps they could keep the facetubing back packers out too?

After Immigration a nice young girl insisted on x-raying my bags, she pulled me up on my lonely planet guide book. She leafed through it and then leafed through it again. I could not understand the interest, Taiwan was the same colour as china and all of the Aksai Chin had been given to China. ¡±this book is forbidden in China.¡± She said politely.
¡°Why¡± I wailed. I needed this book, I bought it in India in 2000 and it had enormous sentimental value to me.
¡°Because Taipei has the same symbol for city as Beijing¡±
¡°Oh that¡¯s very easy to solve¡± I had been down this road before in Morrocco. ¡°I¡¯ll amend it¡± I pulled my biro out and made a huge black dot where the star had been¡±
¡°You see Taiwan is part of China¡±
¡°Absolutely I agreed, Taiwan is an integral part of China¡± I said with great sincerity. (While apologising silently to my Friends Alan and Pei Yen).

The Girl was so surprised with my sincerity and book scribbling that she gave me the book back and sent me on my way. Cisca followed and Jonathan was waiting on the other side. He had wisely torn his lonely plummet book up and hidden it. The pretty customs officer had other uses, she was a mine of information. She had told Jonathan that rail services to Kunming had been suspended and gave directions to the bus station. At the bus station we came across a CITS office. We thought that here we might buy bus tickets. The door was locked, but a young chap came running up shouting ¡°excuse me, excuse me¡±. Mr Li was the CITS representative in Heikou. He organsised tickets for us to Kunming, coffee on the street corner and food to be brought from the best restaurant in town to our street table. He was one of life¡¯s fixers. He even helped us book an airline ticket from Kunming to Lijiang on E-Long. A painful experience.

Cisca and I went for a walk while Jonathan tried to get his travellers cheques changed. We walked along the river and looked at Vietnam. Heikou really was a peninsular. On all sides we could see the green Hills of Vietnam. When we came back, Mr Li was laughing nervously and watching a television.
¡°there has been an earthquake near Chengdu- ha ha¡± he laughed. ¡°900 dead at least- ha ha¡±
¡°Are you worried?¡±
¡°My parents live there and I cannot get through¡± He stopped laughing. He was clearly a little nervous. We expressed our hopes for his family and went to the bus station. Here we found that Mr Li had not been quite as useful as we thought. He had not bought us three window berths as we asked, but three beds at the back of the bus on a bank of five beds. There were no barriers between the beds and there was no way that we could all fit together. So we sat with our heads bowed looking out of the windows. The only consolation was that we could open the windows. (Which the bus driver kept telling us to close with no success) This was the second worst position on the bus. Only the berths above us were worse. But we were on the bus and moving. We half lay, half sat and the bus departed. It ran parallel to the river and Vietnam for quite some time.

This had been quite a day to get to know Johnny Reo. He was a 41year old architect from New York, who could just be 41 if you looked carefully enough. Quieltly spoken, superfit, and well mannered he was the farthest example of a new yorker that I could think of. After working for five years on a large project he had managed to wangle two months off work paid. This rather shocked me, for it suggested that he had worked very hard with no time off for 5 years. Was it worth it? I wondered. His patience had been tested when Cisca had been held up by the Vietnamese and yet he had not been bothered. He merely went on ahead and looked for the train. When he had finished with Chinese customs he merely sat there waiting for us to appear. And now he was jammed into the middle of the bus with a snoring Chinaman who kept elbowing him in the side on one side and my feet on the other. Rather embarrassingly I dozed off with my head pointing towards the driver and he carried on chatting to Cisca. He could not believe some of the conditions that Africa threw at us. But he took it on the chin and carried on listening. The bus wound around the hills of southern Yunnan and we climbed up towards Kunming; We were disturbed in the twilight by a Chinese Soldier with a flack jacket and Kevlar helmet and no weapon. I looked out at the checkpoint and saw a bunch of young men in smart uniforms and flack jackets but not a pistol to be seen between them. I was amazed. We were barely 100km from the border and the army was unarmed. If this had been the metropolitan police in London they would at least have pistols if not a machine gun. Our passports were taken from us and we were registered in the system. They were returned to us, by the young but pleasantly smiling (as opposed to nervously smiling) conscript. So many travellers have reported many negative experiences at the hands of the Chinese Authorities at various checkpoints, but I believe that being able to speak Chinese would negate these experiences. Our five words and phrase book became more and more useful, they became a passport to the friendliness of the Chinese. We started on the conscripts by saying hello, and thank you.
¡°one hundred words by the time I leave¡± said Johnny. ¡°that¡¯s what I want to know¡± (At the time of writing -a few days later-We have only mastered 15 phrases/words.)

The bus drove on into the night and I checked the BBC world service website on my blackberry phone. The earthquake death toll kept rising from 900 to 2000 to 5000. By the time we arrived in Kunming it was up to 9000 people. We contacted our families back at home to let them know that while we were 1500 miles from Chengdu we were safe and not dead. We had no idea of the scale of the catastrophe that had hit China. As I make these notes in Deqen, 25,000 are confirmed dead and the toll is supposed to hit 50,000. Four million people are homeless and hundreds of thousands have been injured in some way. The president of China himself has visited the disaster zone and declared this to be the worst natural disaster to ever hit the People¡¯s Republic. And yet we had felt nothing.

At Kunming, we decided to try and use the air tickets which we had attempted to book through the Chinese Internet site called E-Long. Despite their rhetoric and inability to process my credit card, the booking had been held and we waited in Kunming Airport for their representative to turn up and collect our cash. If this had been a tour of famous airports then we had all the names in the bag now. We had flown in and out Pochentong (Cambodia) Than Sohn Nhut (South Vietnam) driven past Vung Tau, Da Nang, Bien Hoa and Nha Trang (South VietNam), and now we were in Kunming, the end station of the Burma road. And when the Japanese cut the Burma road, the Americans and the British decided to create an airbridge between Calcutta and Kunming. They flew supplies over ¡°the hump¡± into southern China to assist Chiang Kai Shek with his fight against the Japanese. 500 airmen were lost in maintaining the airbridge, which involved flying heavily laden Dakotas at 20,000 ft above the mountain ranges. Unlike Vietnam, where the airports are littered with the detrius of war, Kunming had nothing visible remaining from the 1940¡¯s. The airport was a modern building with lots of glass and marble, but adorned with most horrid glitzy gold writing for everything except the toilets. The entire airport was set up to cater for the Chinese business or leisure traveller. The only concession to toutists were the occasional state sponsored mini coffee table books on Yunnan. I obliged the state and bought one. Our agent eventually turned up an hour late, took our money and handed over three computer print outs with a stamp. These were our electronic ticket receipts. No receipt no flight. Welcome to electronic china.

Feeling most righteous after our thirteen hour bus journey we felt that we could sidetrack to western Yunnan by air, as long as we returned to Kunming to continue our overland journey to Beijing. This may sound pathetic to the reader, and perhaps it is, but on a few recent occasions, while on a journey through a fascinating land, I have wavered and caught a plane. Upon returning home, I curse myself for not continuing overland and seeing the country. Feeling rather pleased with ourselves we waited for our plane to arrive. We had boarding cards for a flight number that started with FM. I had no idea what FM was. And so I stood waiting by the gate looking to see who would come. China Southern, China eastern, Lucky Air, Deer Air, Xiamen Airlines, Sechuan Airlines and many others came and went. But none were ours. Finally a dirty looking 737-300 pulled up at gate no 6 and actually stayed there. Shanghai Airlines was FM. I had never heard of these chaps in my life. But this had to be safer than the bus. We waited and waited and still no one boarded us. Half an hour late a young woman with a tinny loudhailer started to make announcements in Chinese, everyone got up and walked to the door. A I got to the door, she shouted at me in Chinese and barred my way. I suspected that at an enormous international airport like Kunming, the ground crew would speak some English, so rather than reach for my phrase book, I asked her what was wrong with our boarding cards. Her answer was to shout at me in Chinese. I asked her again politely and she ran off shouting in Chinese though her loud hailer. She was clearly furious with someone or something. I guessed that she was boarding the transit passengers from Shanghai. This was concerned some moments later by a bi lingual passenger. Many other Lijiang bound passengers tried to board and she shouted at them. Eventually, while she was off shouting at someone else in the lounge the Tibetan passengers barged past the door and towards the aerobridge. To no avail, they were stopped at a second checkpoint at the head of the bridge. The short angry lady with a Japanese bob haircut never actually boarded the Kunming passengers, she just barged past us in an angry manner and the Kunmingers stormed past her buddy and onto the aircraft. Tired of the bus, and tired of the late travel agent and tired of being shouted at and shoved for ten minutes I decided to give the young lady some polite and friendly advice that would help her expedite her tasks in a more auspicious manner in the future.
¡°Madam¡± I smiled at her and paused. ¡±You work in an international airport -¡° ¡°Fucking learn to speak English¡± I hissed at her quietly, but most vehemently.

She seemed to take in my feedback and I am sure will act upon it.

The Shangai Airlines 737 was old. My seat was broken and continually reclined. The food was pork, The legroom was mediocre but not shocking. What was most frustrating was that every headrest had ¡°star alliance¡± written on it. ¡°aarrrrgh¡­ Now I have to make another retro-claim for miles¡± I cursed. But most importantly Shanghai Airlines climbed out of the smog into the sun, and then descended into Lijiang. We dropped down through the clouds and circled the base of a a large mountain on our wingtip. We lined up and made a perfectly good landing. Meaning that we were all still alive, and my teeth were still in my head. I praised the pilot, said goodbye to the crew, collected my bag and caught the bus into town in sheeting rain.


The old city of Lijiang was a tourist town. It had been beautifully preserved and had numerous groups of Chinese tourists barging through it. The inns where we stayed were mostly old Chinese houses that had courtyards. They had charm and views, but no food. Food was found in the plethora of restaurants and traveller cafes in town. The caf¨¦¡¯s were expensive by Chinese standards and I found the whole town a little contrived. Sure it was old, but it was too well maintained. We spent a frustrating day trying to organise our onward transportation. Lijiang was not on the Chinese rail network, and every travel agent wanted to sell us a flight. When questioned about where to buy rail tickets they stated in no uncertain terms that this was quite impossible. Cisca very sensibly suggested the CITS office in town, but before we had to go there we found a young woman behind a desk in a guest house who claimed she could sell us tickets for a Y30 commission. Her name was ¡°pretty¡±. She acquired train and plane tickets for us, and when pushed organised a taxi to take us towards the Yu Long snow mountain. (the Chinese have this habit of calling anything tall a snow mountain.) The taxi was a tiny effort that looked as though it had its roots in Korea. It huffed and puffed to a village complex which demanded an entry fee of Y190. We declined and went to the next temple complex where they demanded Y120. Here we caved in, and we entered an ancient but deserted complex. At the summit there was a tree with a thousand different types of flower. During the cultural revolution one monk had watered the tree and kept it alive. His photo was exhibited at the top. I was impressed with the way in which the distribution of information in China has moved on so much.

Our driver was not to be outdone, he then took us to a village that had no entry fee. Here we were encouraged to walk around the old section of the village. Apart from three tourist restaurants and two shops selling Mao hats, the entire village was closed. We walked past endless rows of closed wooden buildings, until we saw a road that led through some large wheatfields. We walked up the path and towards the ¡°lower¡± peaks of the snow mountain. An ethereal light shone on the hills, the corn and the mountain ranges in the far distance. Old women laden down with baskets of grass, staggered past us. A man cycled past with rickshaws of goods. Only a mile from a tourist zone we were in true rural china. This was the real china that few Chinese or foreign tourists see. Many parts of china are stunningly beautiful, but as domestic tourism takes off, so does the infrastructure that the Chinese tourists demand. Excellent restaurants, good roads, airports, cable cars, viewing platforms and board walks. It was a little bit like Switzerland but with more gold plate and noodles. Lijiang did not do it for me. The contrived old town, the cloud covered peaks and the hordes of visitors were not conducive to peace.

The bus to Zhondian was new and comfortable. Few people smoked, and the driver was safe and had good road manners. We climbed up in the rain and grey clouds, over a pass and and into Zhondian. Zhondian, sometimes known as Shangri La by the Chinese was a small town that lay at 3200m of altitude in a wide valley. In many ways it was similar to its Indian counterpart, Leh. All that was missing was river to run through it. The town had a distinctly Tibetan flabour. All the buildings in the new town had been constructed in the inward leaning Tibetan style using wood and stone. Even the barracks of the Peoples Liberation Army looked slightly Tibetan. Indeed 50% of the population was reported to be Tibetan. The rest were Muslims or Han Chinese.

The old town was pleasant enough, but every shop catered to visitors, not to local people. Zhondian was however less contrived than Lijiang. There was a different atmosphere to Zhondian, which I will cove in my next blog, a certain frontier town attitude, mixed with tolerance and goodwill. After all, its very hard to be nasty to people at 11,000ft in winter. Zhondian was a melange of Uygur Muslims (Turks far from home), many Tibetans and a very few Chinese. (mostly running a shop or an army). We checked into the Dragon Cloud Hotel in the Old town. It was run by a young man called Mr Camel. he was a po faced han chinese who perpetually wore a leather jacket, but upon questioning, he was a mine of useful information and was actually quite pleasant.

Apart from its atmosphere Zhondian has some very special (and rather pricey) tourist attractions. These being sum tseling monastery, and some whopping Snow mountain nearby. (everything in China is whopping!) The chinese say that anymountain more than 14000ft high. They have a good few of these in Yunnan! We visited both. We missed out on the twin lakes National park and the nesting place of the black necked cranes.

The monastery is situated on a hill two and half miles from town. We had heard two rumours about the monastery. One that it was closed and the police had cut it off to tourists, and another that there were 600 monks working and praying in the complex. When we rounded the last bend it was full of tourists, (but not so many as to make the experience at all frustrationg and there was not a police man in sight. Unfortunately, there were barely any monks in sight either. So neither of the rumours were quite true. The Monastery was interesting in that all the photos on the altars were of some young man and the money was in Yuan. The venerated Old man who lives in the Norblinka in Dharamsala is nowhere to be seen. I have little sympathy with our tibetan friends, but I do think that a certain People's Commitee might want to relax a few (worship) rules here and there in order to promote some more mutual harmony. The situation is almost there, but not quite.

(If you wonder why this is written in british civil servant speak it is beacause these notes are made in Peking). Please email for further clarification.

We visited Zhondians other main attraction, the cable car to the snow mountain. We arrived at 15,000ft and looked at the madjesty of the mountains. We wandered around a bit but there is something special about seeing a mountain when you have walked to it, not when you ride up to it. Mr Reo behaved impeccably at all times as you can see from the photos.

Every night the Tibetans would meet in an elevated square and dance in a large choreographed circular fashion to loud music. We could not work out whether this was practice for a festival in June, or whether this was a normal facet of life in Zhondian. In any event, the townsfolk seemed to enjoy their dancing enormously. Young women in jeans would dance next to city slickers in skirts, boots and stylish coats, next to old men in sports jackets and trilby¡¯s. Every night we would gravitate to the square to watch the routine. It was an addiction to watch the dancers and, because we had no idea quite what was going on, it was fascinating.

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