Invasion of China

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Soooo. The boat trip. Originally scheduled to take two days from Osaka, but a typhoon put paid to that and we anchored in an inland bay of Japan along with 50+ other ships and tankers in the strangest 'car park' I'm ever likely to witness, for 2 extra days. The day we finally set sail across the East China Sea was not a pleasant day AT ALL thanks to the rough seas left behind by the tail end of the typhoon. 
But we eventually sailed into the Shanghai 'frog' as the boat crew said, and it's ever-growing skyline determined not to remember or ever mention the boat. One good thing to come out of the boat trip (actually there was two, I can now make an origami talking crow) was Uncle 'Shanghai' John. We befriended John on the first day and got on really well, he is an English teacher here in China, and he taught us some essential Chinese to help us through, as outside the major cities not much English is spoken. 
An amazing addition to John's generosity came when he escorted us all the way to our hostel via the city's metro and asking a few policemen for directions! We couldn't thank him enough and offered to meet up again later in the week, which we did in a cafe filled with Chinese kids having English lessons over breakfast. The nicest guy we've met in our 3 months so far!! Hero.
Shanghai doesn't really have any redeeming features. It's a very new city, any history or heritage they may have had has been brushed aside to make way for neon signs and tourist shops. There are very few buildings more than 100 years old! we spent the first two days mooching around these areas and feeling unimpressed by it all. Although, the night-time view across the bay to Shanghai's Pudong district and it's skyscrapers including the 3rd highest building in the world, the Shanghai World Trade Centre, was definitely impressive!!
The highlight of Shanghai came on our 3rd day when we visited the Chinese Propoganda Poster museum, hidden away in a basement of a block of flats and not easy to find at all. The museum has 100's of posters printed from throughout the reign of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao, and is a fascinating if somewhat disturbing record of recent Chinese history. In the age before China had television en masse, this was the government's best way to get a message across to it's population, even if the messages, in retrospect, are particularly foolish. Such as The Great Leap Forward when Mao instructed everyone to ditch farming and concentrate on steel and industrial production, whilst also ridding the nation of it's pests (insects, rats and birds). As history showed this was dumb; no birds means no predator for insects so the population exploded and destroyed the harvests for years and years pushing the country into famine. Not really a Great Leap Forward was it..

We left Shanghai and headed for Nanjing, 90 minutes on a superfast train travelling at 200mph the whole way!! We wanted to come here as we'd both read a book called 'to the edge of the sky' by Anhua Gao which is the story of her life as the daughter of two revolutionary martyrs during the height of Mao's power, and is mostly based in Nanjing.
We arrived at our hostel of choosing only to find there was only two beds left... in the small attic room next to the 24 hour bar on the top floor... but it was cheap and it ended up being a good room, private for the cost of a dorm and our own air con! :-)
Nanjing is the site of a massacre by the Japanese in the early 20th century and there is an amazing memorial site dedicated to those lost. Again it's a bit disturbing as they have left the pit where they found the remains open for all to see, and the museum charting the events of the time was very one-sided, giving me the impression that China saw itself, through the eyes of it's citizens, as eternally innocent and peaceful.. hmm..

From Nanjing we got on another 200mph train to Beijing, this time covering 1200km in 4 hours!! Incredible! We found our hostel with no problems and for the first night had to stay in separate dorms even though we'd booked ahead... Beijing is a very modern yet very proud city, treasuring it's heritage, and it has a much friendlier ambience than we'd experienced thus far. We went out to find somewhere to eat and ended up in a local place and with the help of the owner who spoke some English and helped us choose, had some really nice pork rolls and spicy chicken noodles for next to nothing! 
The next day we jumped on the metro (20p to go anywhere!!) to Tian'amen Square. The biggest public square in the world is surrounded by huge soviet-style monolithic museums and memorial halls and in it's centre is the plinth-like hall housing Chairman Mao's casket, which had the longest queue of people I've possibly ever seen trying to get in! This month is the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party here so the frenzy is that tiny bit extra with displays all over the city 'celebrating' the fact.
Opposite the square through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, with a massive hanging painting of Mao on it, is the Forbidden City. A huge complex of palaces, halls and gates built in the Qin Dynasty for the Emperors, it's easy to see why they rarely left! I can't imagine there would be anything outside the walls that they would need! We followed our nifty GPS-operated audio guide around the grounds learning about crown princes and empresses, halls for morning meetings only, and about the 20 or so palaces inside! We spent an easy afternoon inside here but were really shattered once we got back to the hostel via some food! We'd eaten at a kind of Chinese food pick n mix where you just buy a pre-loaded card and go to whichever counter tales your fancy and take food from it! cheap as chips! 

We'd arranged a tour with our hostel for the next day, out to visit some fence that the Chinese put up to stop Mongol warriors from coming in and ruining their grass. 
The Great Wall of China is incredible and fulfilled all our hopes and preconceptions of what it might be!! Incredible vistas on a beautiful day (for a change from the frog), and to be walking on this monument was both surreal and exhilarating and alone made the whole trip worth it!! The section we visited stretched for about 6/7 miles and we walked most of it including the longest, steepest steps I've ever seen which we conquered with pride and exhaustion! I felt sorry for the soldiers who had to patrol this wall once upon a time. 
China so far has been more modern, newer than I expected with little regard for their cultural history as something worth holding on to, but single moments like the Great Wall make you forget all of this and appreciate what this country once was and how different it will become, even in my lifetime. Moments of realisation like this are what I signed up for. Gaining  an appreciation of what the rest of the world used to be, how much this means to them, and then what they're trying to be now and in the future.

We're in Xi'an at the moment and heading to Chengdu tomorrow to visit the Giant panda reserve, and I will update you all when we can!

G&R 
xx

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