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Published: September 30th 2009
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Yangshuo county, Guilin
The strange green hills are a Guilin region's trademark Celebrating Passover in Shanghai and more
I'll never forget my first experience with China. It was during my first business trip alone to Beijing so I asked my local representative to write me the hotel's address in Chinese, just in case. After landing and catching the first available cab, I handed the paper to the driver who nodded in acceptance. 30 minutes later I found myself in the middle of the night, near a deserted office building. Fortunately we managed to find an English speaking student nearby to explain us what went wrong - the address pointed to the office address! Since taxis in Beijing are relatively cheap this mistake didn’t cost me much, but the feeling of being a complete stranger in the middle of the night in a huge city without being able to communicate properly left its marks.
And the "trauma" indeed recurred - on our first night in Beijing we went for a drink when it was still light. When we tried to catch a taxi back to our hotel, it was already 11pm. We stopped almost 10 drivers who couldn’t tell the location of our hotel and this is after us showing them the hotel
Longsheng's outstanding rice terraces
Just few hours drive from Guilin these amazing rice fields are terraced upon the slippery hills card in Chinese! It was a bit funny seeing one of them struggling with his sophisticated GPS for 10 minutes before giving up. China is definitely one of the hardest place to travel in without knowing the language.
On our second day something strange happened. We decided to catch a taxi to the Great Wall. I tried some street bargaining by showing the drivers how much I'm willing to pay - I drew 300 RMB (40 USD) and showed each of them. After the sixth attempt (Chinese drivers are tough bargainers...) I lost the money! I thought I dropped it in the cab and felt really bad about it, since I couldn’t find it in any of my pockets and I really tried hard to. 2 hours later, I got up from one of the stairs on the Great Wall and heard a shout from behind "Mister, Mister!". I turned back and saw a 6-year kid running after me with… you guessed right… 300 RMB. Now, I don’t believe in miracles but this one was really a good on you must admit… I was happy again 😊
The next week was dedicated to Shanghai. We planned on a
week visit and to celebrate Passover with our family there. During this week we scouted the city back and forth enjoying its antique markets, modern quarters, water canals and of course shopping in H&M… We were mostly amazed by the wild night life and enjoyed the acrobatic show which was absolutely amazing - imagine 10 motorcyclists in one metal sphere driving in marvelous coordination one against the other without crashing. A perfect scene.
We wanted to use the few days left for seeing some of rural China so we took a flight to Guilin and a short bus ride to the village of Yangshuo. A lot was said about the amazing scenery of the limestone hills surrounding the area but I have to admit that seeing them "live" is quite an experience. We made a short climb up the Moon Hill on the second day and went seeing the river show at night which is not-to-be-missed!
On the last minute we managed to slip another flight to Xi'an wasn’t planned. Its main attraction is the famous Terracotta warriors - statues of the emperor's entire army. If they are not fake as my friend Yaron is saying, they must
Long Sheng Long hair tribe
Very much commericialized but still intriguing, this tribe of long haired women is one of the two attrcations of Long Sheng, besides the rice terraces be one of the world's greatest wonders, no doubt. We ended up our trip with a bike ride on top of Xi'an wall (14 kms of pure fun) and took our flight back to Beijing.
Trip Top 5: 1. The Great Wall
2. Longsheng rice terraces
3. The hills of Guilin area
4. The Terracotta soldiers
5. Shanghai Municipal History Museum
* The title is taken from the song "Whole of the Moon" by the Waterboys which came into my mind during the ascent to Moon Hill.
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