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Published: February 27th 2007
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Those of you who know us will probably realise that we're writing this entry after returning to the UK - those of you who don't probably won't care!! Anyway, time to bring you up to speed with our last few weeks in China...
After leaving Xi'an by train we stopped at ZhengZhou & went off to visit the Shaolin Temple & it's arse-kicking monks! They certainly put on a good show - smashing things on their head a particular highlight for us - but we did feel a bit let down by the touristic nature of the place, which has been "improved" for the forthcoming Olympics (a theme we were to see more often in Beijing).
The next day was spent (almost entirely!) on a bus travelling to Beijing - Spring Festival is fast approaching & train tickets are selling out already; you have to get up early (literally) if you want to be one of the 150 million people travelling by train in this period, hence our use of buses!!. Arriving in Beijing at 9 o'clock, we were dropped in the middle of nowhere (as much as you can be there) & eventually got a taxi driver to
take us to the nearest Metro station, from which we found our hostel & then our beds! The hostel was down a hutong - small alleyways throughout Beijing - and close to the Lama Temple, which was our first sight-seeing stop. Convieniently, it was also near "Chinese Food Street" which meant that going hungry was not an option (bar being unable to decide what to eat!).
In the next week we visited some of Beijing's fantastic sights. The Summer Palace was a beautiful and extavagent holiday home for the emporer, though the frozen lake made somewhat of a mockery of the name! Ti'anamen Square was as vast as all the pictures (no tanks though), and we even found time to pay Chairman Mao a visit in his Mausoleum in the middle of the square - somewhat bizzare experience walking past his embalmbed body and into the gift shop! The Temple of Heaven came at a time when we were definitely feeling "templed out", but that it still impressed us says how manificent it is in its vast grounds. Beijing also provided the venue for most of our gift shopping (and hard bargining too!). One of the highlights though was
the Peking duck - lovely, and amazing value can be found.
Zoe's dad came up from Shanghai for the weekend, and we took in the 2 biggies of the Beijing area - the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Both were somewhat daunting with their spectacular size, and it's easy to see why they are some of the most well known sights in the world (and icons of China). We arranged a driver & took a 3 hr ride to the Jinshaling section of the wall, from where we walked across hilltops & mountain peaks to the Simatai entrance to the wall - the sense of isolation up there was fantastic, and only occassionally interrupted by hawkers or fellow tourists. It was definitely worth the extra travel time (there's nearer parts of the wall to Beijing) to see the wall in its various states of disrepair - the parts renovated with painted breezeblocks somewhat lacked authenticity though! Nonetheless, an amazing experience to stand on something so old and vast, which has stood the test of time relatively well. The Forbidden City was our last stop before heading off to Shanghai - had the best part of a day there
& still managed to feel we could have stayed longer. Unfortunately, some parts of the Palace were undergoing an Oympic facelift, but we took it in turns to be "audioguide" and managed to navigate our way around the maze of ancient buildings (and people). It really was incredible to get such an insight into how the emporers of the past used to live.
After flying to Shanghai with Zoe's dad, we embarked on a week-long tour of nearby cities whilst he headed off to work for the week. First stop was Nanjing, where the highlight was a trip up Purple Mountain on the cable car & walking back down - nice to be out of the city air for a while. After this, we headed to Suzhou, a city with waterways & ancient gardens throughout - very nice & def worth a visit, despite the weather we endured! From here we also conducted a day trip to ZhouZhuang - a much smaller waterbourne city, and arguably more attractive. Final stop was Hangzhou - revered as "the most beautiful city in China" (by chinese tour companys nonetheless!) - here the vast West Lake is the number one attraction, and it's
easy to see why.
Back in Shanghai we visited the main sights of the Bund (old riverside colonial buildings that wouldn't look out of place next to the Thames), Shanghai old town & french quarter (fascinating insights into how people really live here) as well as the shopping mecca, Nanjing Road & Peoples Square. We also took in the Shanghai Musuem (ok, but lots to see) and the Science & Technology Musuem (good quality games to play!). We visited Zhoujiajiou with Zoe's dad - another waterbourne village where (allegedly) some of MI3 was filmed, which kept us entertained all day! The circus was a brilliant night out, with magician, trampolinists, a spectacular finale & of course the famous acrobats. Shanghai Zoo, however, was not such a successful visit; some of the enclosures were small, and the common sense of Chinese visitors even smaller - feeding boiled sweets in wrappers to monkeys & throwing food/wood/stones at the tigers to wake them up. Undoubtably, the highlight of being in Shanghai was not any one particular place, but the pyrotechnics used to see in the year of the Golden Pig!! So much gunpowder smoke from firecrackers & impromptue firework displays in the road - safety is definitely not a Chinese word, as the man swinging lit firecrackers around his head prooved!! The lion dances we saw were also really special, and the celebrations more than made up for the huge increase in Chinese tourists everywhere!!
All too soon we were saying our goodbyes to Ken at the airport, and then our hello's to family back in England - the end of the adventure (and the start of a new, less interesting one!).
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