Hong Kong and China (Shanghai- Yangshuo)

I was a quite a shock going from the rural tranquillity and natural beauty of New Zealand to the bright lights and busy streets of Hong Kong. In fact there are almost twice as many people living in Hong Kong than there are in both the North and South Islands of New Zealand put together! I met some really nice Canadians who currently living in Hong Kong and they took me on a cable car to Ngong Ping which is one of Hong Kongs Islands where we saw the Tian Tan Buddha statue which is the largest Buddha statue in Asia. I only stayed in HK for a few days then caught the sleeper train up to Shanghai. The train was brilliant as you get a bunk bed and duvets etc although the bunks are so close together that you cant actually sit up straight in them so after 24hrs you do get quite a sore neck!

Although the trains and transport systems in China were really good it was a bit of a struggle getting about at times as trying to decipher chinese characters is just impossible but fortunately the younger chinese people were brilliant and really friendly and would always come to my rescue if they saw me wandering about looking hopelessly lost which was fortunate as this seemed to happen quite a lot in China! Even when they have english translations this can be almost as hard to decipher as the Chinese! Some of my favourate examples of 'Chinglish" that I saw are, 'no louding' (quiet please) 'foamy bolt canister' (fire extingisher) and my all time favourate 'be careful not to be stolen" (beware of pickpockets) I think it could actually take years of study just to understand english signs in China before you could even contemplate trying to figure out Chinese!

I didn't really think much to Shanghai, it was very manic with about 30 million people living there (and it seemed that all 30 mil were on the subway system at the same time which made travelling to/from the train station with all my stuff quite an experience!) But I did meet a really nice Chinese girl called Stella on the train from HK to Shanghai who is a student at HK uni and returning home for winter holidays and she invited me to stay with her in Suzhou which is just outside Shanghai which was really nice as she was great and showed me around everywhere and looked after me really well. Suzhou is famous for having some of the best preserved gardens that date back as far as the Ming dynasties these were really impressive and you could just imagine emperors and their concubines wandering the paths and drinking tea in the pavilions!

After Suzhou I went to a tiny canal side village called XiTang which was really interesting as there was some great architecture there- all the buildings were made out of wood and most had grass growing on the roofs! It was just a maze of waterways and tiny little alleyways just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. Also it was beautifully lit by lanterns at night and if you got up early enough in the morning you would see all the women doing their washing on banks on the canal.

I then decided to go to Huang Shan as it had been recommended by many locals as the most beautiful mountain in China. There are two route to the top of the mountain- the East steps which were described as the hard, long way and the West steps which were described as the harder, longer way. So can you guess which way I ended up going as I couldn't read the signposts because they were all written in chinese? Yes that's right- 6 hours of walking up the steepest (practically vertical at times) steps I have ever seen before I finally reached the summit of the West steps! But I did meet some really lovely Chinese tourism students on the way who decided to adopt me so I spent a few days with them. The scenery on route to the top of the mountain was fantastic and was even better when you reached the top as it was just a sea of clouds with hundreds of peaks just poking through the clouds. We stayed the night on the top of the mountain and watched sunset and then sunrise the following morning which was just breathtaking.

On the students recommendation I then went to Guilin and Yangshou which have some of the best karst scenery in china with hundreds of land masses and rock formations just jutting out of the ground everywhere. Here I met a lovely Finnish girl (Anna) and we did a wonderful trip down the river Li on a bamboo raft and then trekked back from Xingping to Yandi which was fantastic as the trail took you though some really tiny rural villages and farms which I really enjoyed.

Outside of the big cities there really weren't many Western travellers and this often meant that I actually turned into more a tourist attraction than whatever it was that I had gone to see! I lost track of the amount of random people that I have had my photo taken with, some even going to the extremes of hiding in bushes ready to leap out and take my photo as I walked past!! This I found quite amusing but at times the staring could be a little much although I had to laugh as one guy actually drove his moped into a lamppost as he was staring so hard at me and not looking where he was going! It wouldn't be so bad if when you caught them staring they looked away, but they didn't, they would just keep staring!

To be continued....

---

---