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Published: August 7th 2007
Hong Kong to Beijing China is insane. I have absolutely no idea what is happening for at least 99.9%!o(MISSING)f the time, and for the whole of that time I firmly believe there are no rules whatsoever. People can spit, smoke, drink, shit, piss, cycle and drive seemingly whenever and wherever they please. Drivers, including those of pushbikes, motorbikes, trikes, trucks and buses have right of way all of the time and drive wherever they please - roads, pavements, markets, train station waiting rooms, pedestrianised streets; a motorcyclist came to a sideways skidding halt two inches from Katie on a mall, and we were very nearly mowed down as a bus used a pedestrian crossing under a flyover!
For the other 0.1%!o(MISSING)f the time the rules are made up by petty, uniformed jobsworths, and it's brilliant!! The myriad of these uniforms is beautiful to see, and the power wielded, or 'face' that must be kept at all costs if wearing one, is clear to all, whether it be barking orders through a megaphone or throwing a cartoon frown directly at an infringer. The reason it is so hilarious is because all of this power is so perfectly false
- a queue jumper at a train station will get a royal ear bashing and filthy look, only in order that the uniform doesn't lose face, but the infringer will generally be allowed to continue infringing. And all the people in the uniforms are usually so very young and fresh faced, and good fun when you approach them, having a lot more laughs than most people I know in their jobs! That's one thing we have found so enjoyable about China so far - the people have been so nice, smiley and helpful... except bus drivers, but they're the same the world over.
We have only visited a few places so far in our short time here, simply seeing the grand sites that China has to offer. It has been a lot harder for us to even slightly begin understanding the culture here due to the massive language barrier (we have bought a phrasebook, and I have so far had one question understood!) but we are slowly beginning to see China in all its glory. Despite the highly contagious western corporate disease that is clearly in evidence here (McDonald's, KFC, even a Starbucks in the Forbidden City) that is
making it easy to forget where we are, reminders that we are actually in China, its history and strong traditions are creeping through. Recently, whilst in the Summer Palace in Beijing, we noticed an elderly lady who must have been one of the last generation to be subjected to the practice of feet binding. Looking nearly crippled, she could barely walk, and only then with the aid of at least one other person, on feet that were hardly five inches long, and horrifyingly narrow. It was also around this time that we realised
Mao memorabilia
As seen in every market in Chinanone of the kids away on their hols with their families had anyone to play with. The one child policy is obviously still strongly in force here, but it still took a while for this moral issue of our time to sink in. The traditions, culture and natural and political history are, however, on grand display within every single one of the truly amazing sights we have seen since arriving here.
It is quite difficult to describe the scenery fully here. We have seen some truly beautiful landscapes and enjoyed some breath taking views, but visibility has been a problem in all of the places we have so far visited, we assume, due to the pollution. This gives everything a hazy, almost drained colour, but far from spoiling what we have seen, it seems to have added a little mystique to it all, and gives every sight and the surrounding countryside that very misty feel that you see so often in paintings and photographs from here.
That said when we started our China experience we landed in a very warm and sunny Hong Kong. Unbelievably for an early March day we even swam in the sea and to
our delight, as we noticed once we’d swam out to a pontoon, with millions of jelly fish! Thankfully (after a fitfully anxious swim back to land) we realised, due to the vast number of kids picking them up and playing with them, they were the non-poisonous, completely harmless ones.
Hong Kong was spent in a flurry of activity with Leonie and Martin taking the role as our fantastic tour guides. As a city break HK has it all. An array of activities are offered: drinking cocktails in bars to rival London’s; hiking in the vast New Territories; Taoist temples; sunbathing on sandy beaches; haggling in the huge markets (the enjoyment and sense of achievement from successfully bartering for something has become quite addictive, and now means we are amassing a substantial collection of useless tat!) One of our favourite temple excursions was the 10 000 Buddhas Monastery, where the steps up to the pagoda were lined with lifesized gold buddhas in various poses with differing amounts of facial hair and comedy expressions. At the top the rooms held the remaining 9000+ mini buddhas to heed our scepticism. On the way down we were shown on our way by the
Punting in Yangshuo
Singing lady and megaphone not shown resident macaques (we think) who’d come out to ensure a rather speedy descent (they looked mean, honest!)
Hong Kong is a great way to ease in to China, with the British rule only ending ten years ago the English influence is great. Expats fill the streets and it isn’t hard to find English signs and speakers. Yet a slightly watered down version of the Chinese culture is there to be seen (including individually wrapped duck tongues and livers as well as chicken feet in pick’n’mix sweetshops!) It wasn’t until we crossed the border at Shenzen with Hannah, Charlotte and Leonie in tow that we realised what we were letting ourselves in for. The English signage just dropped off and we were left to point in the vain hope that someone else knew where the bus station was. They did and we managed to get on our first Chinese sleeper bus. Much to our delight the travel agent wasn’t lying when they sold us the bunk beds, they really were (although they were designed with our slightly shorter and much skinnier Chinese friends in mind!) This was by far the comfiest bus trip we’d had… although the constant hand on
horn left us with a few less hours actually asleep. It also wasn’t as punctual as we’d hoped, the puncture in the middle of the night put paid to that!
Our final destination was Yangshuo, a picturesque Chinese village on the Li river surrounded by huge, sharp karst mountains towering through the mists. Down every alleyway you looked another mountain popped up. We arrived at our booked hostel tired and hungry and started the first of many ridiculous exchanges. After much pointing and signalling the staff managed to commandeer the local part-English-speaking policeman to help us get our rooms. This lucky man was our middle man for all exchanges, when keys stopped working, when we’d run out of toilet paper and luckily for him, when we’d blocked the toilet, which was all rather embarrassing having four tiny women peering over our lav overflowing on to the floor while the policeman laughed and waved his hand in front of his face… I let Katie deal with that one!
We spent most of our time hopping between the many establishments for copious amounts of great food, varying teas (ginger being the best so far), cheap Tsing Tao and surprisingly more
than the odd massage, at two quid for an hour you can’t really say no! When we weren’t pampering ourselves, we were trying to see the surrounding countryside in various modes of transport. Not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into at one point we ended up on a small bamboo boat with a lady singing to the six of us through a megaphone! It was pretty hard not to laugh, but we did decline to sing along as we couldn’t quite read the symbols. We were also shown a local fisherman using the most inhumane technique to catch fish we’d ever seen. He had a number of cormorants tied to his boat, which he untied and set into the water. Naturally they followed their instinct and caught a fish (pretty quickly as well), came up to eat it, tried to swallow it, but nearly choked as their necks were tied with wire. So he just plucks the fish out the mouth and keeps it for his own. I think he could read the utter look of disgust on our faces.
For two people who have spent the last year traversing half the world trying to see as
many animals as possible run free in the wild it has been a bit of a shock coming to China. So far we have seen monkeys dressed up in uniforms and hats ready to perform, cats tied up in shops, huge birds in tiny cages and an array of animals on sale on the corner of the road - tiny puppies, kittens, chicks and even terrapins. It is always difficult looking at menus as there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what will be eaten: dog, donkey, rat, pigeon, shark’s fin and far too commonly turtle. I am sure we’re only scratching the surface too.
After we’d said our goodbyes and left the relative comfort of Yangshuo with its very touristy restaurants with English language menus we made our first stop alone in Wuhan. A typical Chinese city with nothing much to see, and not too used to the English speaking traveller - people nearly fell off their bikes staring at us! This made communicating, and particularly eating slightly difficult as English menus, and even picture menus were nonexistent. We went for a method of pointing at other people’s food and saying a few English words in case
More monkeys
This time on the Great Wall they understood. They did seem to understand the word chicken, so our first meal consisted of a whole one, with its head, wing and leg still attached (incidentally, we left the head). Later on we ended up with a pot of prawns in oil - the waitress felt the need to help us poor souls out and provided us with plastic gloves to peel them, everyone else seemed to cope though, so this drew even more attention to us! Even when there are menus we still have the odd mishap, yesterday I pointed at something I thought was fried spicy potatoes only to find it wobbled its way to the table, Katie was less than happy to help polish it off!
Shanghai proved to be a lot easier, being a far more touristed city we were back to hostels and a few words of English knocking around.
Another very noticeable observation that needs making is how truly efficient things are here. Every single train we have used (so far) has left punctually and arrived on the dot. Despite the spitting, littering and pollution, everywhere is immaculately clean - roads, buses, tubes, in fact, all public transport. And talking
of public transport, in cities of nearly 17 million people, although busy, it is not nearly as difficult to get on a tube or bus, even in the middle of rush hour, as it is in London (however, the concept of letting people off first to make room is clearly lost, making it survival of the fittest.) The population and sheer number of people everywhere is pretty mind-boggling to say the least. Whilst in Shanghai we took a day trip on the train (how quaint!) to what sounded a very romantic, idyllic holiday location nearby - Hangzhou. A smallish town with a very beautiful lake (from what we could see through the driving rain), and a population of a mere 6 million!
We left Shanghai by the plushest means of transport we could find, the ‘soft-sleeper train. A luxurious, fast, and very clean mode of transport which whisked us a long way across the country to Beijing in just 12 hours. Unfortunately for us we hadn’t quite anticipated how far north Beijing was, so had a bit of a shock to find wearing all our clothes really wasn’t enough to endure more than a few hours outside at one time. We explored the Forbidden City for as long as we could, marvelled the humungous Tiananmen Square for a short time and snuck back into a warm restaurant. There is so much history here, much of it very recent, and unspoken, and the presence of so many guards always makes you keep an eye out, for some reason!
Not content with the misty cold of central Beijing we popped out for a day to walk along some of the remaining Great Wall at Mutianyu. We were very pleasantly surprised to find it devoid of people and coated in a layer of snow! This gave the place such a fantastic atmospheric charm we had a great day sliding up and down the steps and slopes marvelling at the giant structure, wondering how they used to cope in the middle of the bitter winter when temperatures are well below zero, carting their produce across the hilly wall. We even met the most friendly hawkers ever here - the few that were about on the wall were mainly Mongolian and just wanted to chat about anything and everything, regardless of whether or not you wanted their door knockers or postcards!
It was not just the sites that really inspired us in Beijing, just wandering through the Hutongs (the alleys and laneways) snaking all over the city, watching the families and communities going about their business, the groups of men playing cards and drinking beer in the street, or just trying to dodge the bikes and tricycles weaving at break neck speeds through these tiny streets gave such a great view of Beijing life.
So far China has been everything - confusing, conflicting, incredibly confident, very funny and at times gruesome, but overall it is not in the slightest the developing country we expected and clearly deserves its mantle of being the country expected to lead the world in the 21st Century.
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