Christmas in China

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The past week has been really busy and super fun. From Shanghai there was another mammoth train journey to get to Xi’an. The city has a nice feel to it and we had just about enough time to wander around the Muslim Quarter to look at all the food stalls, markets and fur shops and visit the old city walls and buildings before going back to Shuyuan hostel for the night - the best hostel ever! (Well apparently it was actually voted 9th best, but due to its amazingly tasty pizzas, free cookie parties, free drinks, special birthday parties and free games room I would vote it top). We then took a day trip to see the Terracotta Warriors, which sadly wasn’t as spectacular as I’d imagined but did involve a stop-off at Subway so I was happy nonetheless ☺

Then it was on to Chengdu, which is a huge city full of plenty more things to do. We saw a traditional opera performance one evening and then tried the province’s speciality hotpot the next night. It is so spicy the doors to restaurant are kept permanently open and everybody in the place took great delight in watching our faces after the first mouthful. We also went to the famous panda reserve here and I still can’t get over how much a giant panda looks like a man dressed up in a costume. The baby pandas were by far the cutest, play fighting together in their cots, and you could pay £100 to hold one, if only that weren’t equivalent to my budget for 3 days!

From here we took the bus to Jiuzhaigou National Park and stayed here for Christmas; as the only Westerners for hundreds of miles it was a pretty low-key affair with egg sandwiches as my Christmas lunch and a yak burger for dinner. The park was full of vivid blue lakes and huge waterfalls, which made for a very picturesque Christmas day and the hostel’s Chinese guests on the karaoke machine provided the evening entertainment.

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