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Shanghai
31st December 2006, New Years Eve
Weight: Withering away
Flavours of Fanta consumed: Orange, Banana, Apple & Cinnamon, Melon Soda, Grape, Lemon.
Had been feeling uneasy at prospect of return to smelly, dirty, polluted China however, mood was much lightened by Vik insisting we watch Bridget Jones Diary and all six episodes of Pride & Predjudice. If it is possible to overdose on Colin Firth then we have achieved it. New years resolution number one: don’t want to hear about nasty Mr Darcy and his ridiculous dress sense or see said visage for at least another decade.
Shanghai much as we left it: polluted, smelly and incredibly busy. Given run around by hostel and eventually ended up in budget hotel. Incredibly silly décor - floral meets stripes in a titanic bright red and blue struggle.
Despite Shanghai’s New Year fireworks display amounting to little more than a fart in a biscuit tin, lemon Bicardi Breezers all round and a shot of Quantro with Sprite made for good evening. Chatted with our friend Anna from Oxford and some Americans until the early hours of the morning in the darkness of the hostel lobby. (Hostel staff were annoyed that people were still milling about after 2pm so tried to break up the party by switching out all the lights. Clearly Chinese hostel staff unaware of scientific research (Crockatt, 2007) which demonstrates that while darkness may silence parrots and other assorted tropical avian species, this technique is yet to prove successful on drunken Anglo-American alliances.)

Huangzhou
2nd January 2006
Weight: Despite pizza everyday in Shanghai, struggling to fasten belt tight enough.
Flavours of Fanta consumed: Same as above - soapy Pepsi in Pizza Hut has temporarily put soft drink addiction on hold.
According to Chinese Propaganda TV, Marco Polo described Huangzhou as most luxurious and beautiful city planet. Clearly Mr Polo arrived pre-construction period as, like all Chinese cities, mostly place was being knocked down/rebuilt.
Strangely, Huangzhou seems to have marked change in my feelings toward China. West lake is pretty (in murky brown kind of way); Silk Museum is free and without wishing to sound like a total nancy - quite interesting. Fact: a single silkworm's cocoon produces 1000m of thread.
People here much more relaxed than in Shanghai and Beijing, but not backward in coming forward. Booking in for extra night, the receptionist apologised for a mistake by saying that her boyfriend was staying with her and she was tired because of all the loving. I mean, how do you respond to that? Anyway, as I searched for response, her colleague leaned across desk and asked if I had a girlfriend. When I told her I was married, the tired one perked up enough to laugh at her friend who slumped back into her chair and hid her face behind a book. As I left reception (bemused, confused and considering whether to be flattered or not) the exhausted one was resting her head on the desk and yawning at her jealous, unloved colleague.

Xi'an
6th January 2006
Weight: The search for decent sweet and sour pork continues - I fear nothing will surpass that experienced in Beijing. Wearing rucksack and holding up trousers proving a challenge.
Flavours of Fanta consumed: Can proudly add to the above list - Apple flavour and Lime flavour.
Hostel was converted Army barracks which made for very interesting building. Unfortunately it also meant that trips to showers and toilets from dorm involved trip across two outdoor courtyards in subzero temperatures. Brushing teeth in said temperatures actually negates need for vibrating electric toothbrush due to cold induced shakes.
Goldfish looked sluggish at best, beneath few inches of ice covering their shallow pond.
City is big and active (no issues with too much loving here). Surrounded by high, wide city wall, it is excellent place to walk or cycle. Obviously, it is not really the original wall, and this is fairly evident in some of the finishing. If there's one thing Chinese are good at, its using concrete. They pour the stuff everywhere. Got a gap? Get some cement.
Xi'an is also home to 8th Wonder of the World. Getting through the new "atmospheric, international", tourist-tat plaza was quite a trek through beggars, shop-keepers, tourguides and construction workers.
The warriors themselves were an impressive sight, but you only have to watch the crowd at a St.Johnstone game to understand what two thousand life-size statues looks like. Most impressive thing for me was quality of toilets here. We all commented on it. Probably the second best loos we've seen in China. Not only did the soap dispenser live up to its name in that it dispensed soap, but there was toilet roll readily available and to top it off, there was a hand dryer (just the one) which declared itself to be "American Standard".

Chengdu
9th January 2006
Weight: 27hrs on train has led to dietary collapse. Am living on Pot Noodles and satsumas.
Flavours of Fanta consumed: New Years resolution number two - will drink no more Fanta in effort to save teeth. May consider bamboo as alternative.
Hostel very amusing. Arrived in Chengdu at 5:30am. Very few people around at this time which made the 7-8km walk to hostel all the more interesting. Decided on walking as a) we thought it was only 3-4km b) we didn't think reception would be open c)...can't really remember... bit hazy. We reached the street where the hostel was supposed to be just before sunrise. No - let me rephrase that. We reached the place where the street was supposed to be just before sunrise. By some fluke I spotted the toppled street name sign leaning against the remains of a wall in the mud. Where the street used to be was a building site and by that I mean, there were no visibly completed buildings and no road to speak of. In the dark we stumbled our way along dirt track that had been worn to mud by workmens boots, dodging bricks and open drains as we went. About 300m down we found the hostel. The only building standing. Strangely, they didn't mention this particular quirk on the brochure.
Chengdu is all about Pandas. Joined small tour from the hostel and went to Panda Research Centre which has most successful breeding program in the world having successfully reared 48 bears! What I found most amusing was the highly explicit videos that we were shown about... well... you know - the bee's and the bear's.
It was 8am in the morning and we'd stood in the cold watching bears eating their breakfast for a good hour and a half. Believe me - it was so cold I could see people's "uhhh"'s freezing infront of them. As lights in the Centres freezing cold cinema went down, not sure what I expected - perhaps David Attenborough style Trials of Life thing or kind of Pride & Predjudice with Panda's ("Oh Mr Darcy Bear, you know I've always been partial to a bit of bamboo"). But in darkness of cinema I could hear eyebrows raising and a collective sense of discomfort as the video took a particulalry frank and unnecessarily graphic turn. I mean, for God's sake, we hadn't even had breakfast and suddenly we're watching Panda bears in some really quite unflattering and humiliating positions. I was suddenly cast back to sex education in High School - as far as I recall Mr Henderson was more embarrassed about the whole thing than the class were and basically all I gleened from his classes was that if I get urges I should just pray to God and lash myself with bamboo... it had never crossed my mind before now - but he did have a picture of a Panda in his room...
Anyway - my own discomfort could have been nothing compared to that of poor American dad who'd brought his kids along and sat with them in the front row. They were of an age where Panda bears are still just big balls of black and white cuddly fur that need to be protected from bad men. They'll never look at a panda's the same again.
Last thought on this subject - Panda's do little but eat and sleep, but this constant tiredness has nothing to do with, as Chinese hostel receptionists might put it: "too much love". In fact they only mate once a year, because they're just too damn lazy. They also used to be carnivores, but they can't be bothered chasing things so they moved onto something a little slower. They are surely the cutest, most ridiculous, laziest and stupid animals on the planet. Evolution has really dealt them a crap hand.

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