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Now we've left China we thought we'd add a few random thoughts that we didn't get round to putting on previous blogs - things we noticed, things we liked, things we disliked etc. We had such a good time in China and would recommend it to anyone. Seriously, China is ace! You should go there! We will definitely go back at some point and would love to go and see the parts of China that we missed out this time, like the North West and Tibet. China was an amazing cultural experience, the country has so many beautiful sights, and the food is gorgeous! If anyone is planning on travelling in Asia soon then make sure it's on your itinery!
So here are our top likes, dislikes, and things that kept us amused for the 6 weeks we spent in China (sorry for the generalisations, these are just things that stood out to us):
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Spitting. You just can't get away from that ccccccccccchhhhhhh phut sound. Delightful
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Squating. The smelly toilets, obviously. And people seem to squat all the time in the street instead of standing or sitting around. Must be good for those thigh muscles
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Children. We didn't see many children really, and when we did it was strange to see them without siblings. No 5-children families running around screaming like you get in Britain! And the children seem very well behaved, I don't think I saw one tantrum or heard them crying in the streets at all.
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Babies. They don't wear nappies. Ever. They have holes in their trousers to poo out of! I really can't get my head round how this works and it worries me slightly!
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Safety. Or more like the total lack of it. There doesn't seem to be any safety requirements for vehicles, driving, boats, anything!!! The amount of times I saw a whole family squeezed onto a speeding moped! Crossing the road was a kamikazee adventure! There was one tiny life boat on our Yangzi cruise boat! Not one taxi or public pus I got into had seatbelts! The list goes on. And don't get me started on the TOTAL lack of health and safety we saw in some restaurants...
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Pop music. Chinese pop music is great - very very cheesy. We must have heard the same 5 or so Chinese songs about 100 times while we
were in China. It got to the point where we could sing along, even though we had no idea what we were singing! It must have been there top 10 songs or something because we'd hear them all the time. In the department stores they always seem to be playing 90s pop music and I've heard more Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Britney and the Spice Girls here than ever before! Fantastic
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Pushing. It was amusing at first but got very irritating after a while! Well we are British and the British DO love to queue.....
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Obsessive Photo taking. Chinese tourists really must have the most boring photo albums ever. They take millions! And always with someone posing in it, obligitarily making the peace sign with their hands. They also seemed to love taking photos of us two. Well I can understand that one...
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The trains. Always crammed full, and always an adventure. You can buy 'no seat' tickets on the train, and loads of people get these then hope to find free seats or beds. So it's always fun getting on a sleeper train - "will there be a random person asleep in my bed when I get on the train?!". Train stations are even more of an adventure. They seem to breed touts and every station we've been to in China has had at least 10 million people sat (or rather, squating) outside it.
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The buses. As I've already said, they never have seat belts. Alway a hair-raising experience. Bad driving, lack of window wipers, incessant beeping of the horn, unexplained delays, cramming as many people as possible in....
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Smells. Some wonderful, like the restaurants and street stalls. Some awful, like the drains in Shanghai, and the toilets of course, Oh and that horrible train we got from Datong to Xian!
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Food. This was one of the highlights of China for us, and also one of the great cultural experiences! We ate so well in China, and so cheaply. I used to think I hated Chinese food but now I am a big fan. The food here is nothing like the takeaways in England. There's so much more choice and variety. We LOVE dumplings, which we'd never had back home. And all the familiar sauces here are a million times nicer - sweet and sour, black bean, oyster, soy etc etc. So tasty and fresh. And with lots of crispy veggies! And much spicier than we're used to. The street food is great aswell (mostly), although we saw some things that we wouldn't touch. Such as the live skewered scorpions wriggling around on a food stall in Beijing!
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Tsingtao beer. So cheap, so great. Can we even get this back home?
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Chinese TV. Hilarious, from what we saw of it in our hostel rooms (mostly when Paul was ill). There is an opera channel. There always seems to be a pop concert on with middle aged men in suits waving banners in the audience! We saw a brilliant children's talent show called 'super juvenile' and there was a scary little girl singing "I'm a Barbie girl". There seems to be a million cheesy Chinese soaps. There is an English channel (CCTV 9) which has business news every half hour and shows great propaganda programmes telling you how wonderful China is. We love the dubbed films and there are always 'highlights' of films being shown - we saw The Matrix Reloaded highlights at least twice.
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Chopsticks. Very tricky to use, and we always drop food. But they are fun and we love them!
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Signs. See photos. Some were hilarious. We saw so many dodgy translations.
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