The Last 3 Weeks In China - Its Been Great!

Asia » China
January 30th 2010

Published: February 1st 2010

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Trog

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Beanies!!!!

Over the last three weeks we have both travelled great distances across mainland China. Everyone knows China is a massive country, but you don’t fully grasp this until you have to travel between the major destinations/places of interest. It’s at this time when you spend 10 or 20 hours on a train....and then look at a map...and realise you haven’t travelled far across the country in the scheme of things. (It doesn’t help that the places that we wanted to go were spread through-out the country).

Another thing we have noticed is there is also great differences between different parts of the country, more distinct than Australia anyway. I guess this arises from the vast differences in the histories of the provinces and which dynasties controlled and shaped them through-out history. There is also many common threads that you would also expect.

Expectations

It’s funny... I don’t really know what I expected of China. But now I am here I know it is not this. It is so vibrant and busy, like other South East Asian countries, but with so many mixes of ancient history - temples, pagodas, bridges, gates, mausoleneums etc. It also filled

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Shanghai's Skyscrapper Metropolis from 88th Story of Skyscrapper

with this great confidence seen everywhere - through the people, the man made monstrous construction projects, the constant embracement of the colour red and their flag.

The major thing that I didn’t expect was the level of construction. Everywhere you go...whether it be Hong Kong, provincial capitals (Nanjing), Massive Cities (Chongqing), Small Cities (Guilin) or towns (Yongshou) you see the same high level of construction. Every block you’re on your sure to see someone extending, renovating or building. You frequently hear the sound of hammers when walking, or a jackhammer, while if you venture out at night, when the construction still continues, you see the lights of welders lighting up the sky and builders heaving construction waste around. Even when you visit attractions, such as Temples or Gardens...where you wouldn’t expect it....there is still construction...with labourers carrying bricks in wheel borrows, baskets or on a large piece of bamboo held at either end by two guys with hard hats.

The other main thread is the Chinese people’s curiosity (even now as I am writing this blog on the train the guy in his 40s in the bed above and cross from me continues to stare at what I

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One of the limestone peaks at Guilin

am doing). It is crazy....and drives you insane sometimes. But you can understand why....we rarely see any other westerners (except in Hong Kong and Shanghai) so when Chinese people see us (a rarity) they are compelled to stare and admire. It was quite freaky at the start. Normally we just smile and then say “Nee How” (Hello). You normally get a funny bizzar look followed by a rushed returned “Nee How”. It’s pretty cool. The younger kids are the funniest though...they are compelled to look - or for a better word focus - until their parents tell them not to, or sometimes try explaining to them how to say ‘Hello’.

LANGUAGE

The Language barrier sometimes makes it difficult for us to communicate and understand what is going on. When ordering food...if there is no pictures...we can usually only determine if its beef or chicken or pork...but not the flavour. Sometimes we can’t even work this out. Hence we do heaps of guessing, sometimes you get something that you like, sometimes you don’t. It also is difficult to convey what we want to Chinese people, get directions or where we like to go. Generally we do

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Yongshou

a lot of pointing a maps...or refer to our electronic translator. It’s also pretty good sometimes, when you can understand what someone is trying to get across just through hand signals and tone. But your never entirely sure.

FOOD

We have mixed opinions about Chinese food. You find lots of dishes with great flavour...lots without. It’s very hit or miss. However, there are frequently three common elements to every dish.....lots of oil, spice and salt. Luckily I like oil and salt. I have also started to like spice. At the start getting Chilli in all my dishes seemed rather odd....more ruining the dish rather than enhancing it....now it is the norm. Its good though, cause it warms you up in the cold weather of winter. Amy isn’t quite as fond as I am though, but she is coming around. We have started to be more trying too...when it comes to street food. You have no idea what you eating. Sometimes when you ask other Chinese people eating they don’t even know...but if its good you just keep eating.

TRAFFIC

The traffic is crazy over here. Not as crazy as Thailand (where people

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Chongqing Downtown Shopping Area

constantly share lanes)..but it’s still an experience. I seem to think bus drivers are the worse - who overtake on blind corners at speed like you wouldn’t believe. You will find people seem to follow traffic lights generally...people on scooters will sometimes cross onto the wrong side of the road, then beep many times to indicate to oncoming traffic they are there. Sometimes they go through red’s (especially at night), plus cars sometimes turn right on red. No one obeys pedestrian crossings (zebra crossings), so you have to be careful when you cross the road, or cross at traffic lights. There is also once major difference found in SOME cities.... the roads are divided into sections. In the middle there will be cars and buses. Then on either side there will be one lane separated by a barrier that will be for scooters (you see heaps of scooters - mostly electric of course - so to not to pollute the already hazy cities or LPG), bicycles, tricycles (which cart goods or people) all competing for bits of bitumen. Then in other places you only see one large multi-landed road with scooters and bicycles keeping to the side or weaving through

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Shanghai Skyline from Padong

traffic. In both cases the scooters and bicycles fly and weave in between each other at speed - with constant ringing of bells and beeping of horns - definitely a sight to see.

TRANSPORT

To travel around cities we generally catch buses. (or the metro - if the city has one e.g. Shanghai and Guangzhou). Lonely planet will give you a few useful trains or buses. This helps us to get to the major sights normally. Sometimes we have to use a bit of guess work. Sometimes you get of close to where you wanted to go. If it doesn’t work out, you may have to catch another bus or a taxi to where you want to go. Trains are usually a lot faster (avoid the traffic) and less busy (except in Shanghai at peak times where they are sometimes so full that a train will arrive and only half the people standing on the platform will fit into the carriages (to fit - this basically involves pushing the people already squished into the carriage to make more room). Metros also have the added bonus that they give you English or Pinyin maps

When

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One of the numerous stairways leading to the city from our hostel

travelling between major cities we use the excellent rail system. Wherever you want to go the train can take you. They can be slow cause they are not always the most direct method - but they are comfortable (fairly) - heaps more so then buses, which bump around all over the roads - plus you can buy food - and even get overnight sleeper cabins. We tend to travel on overnight trains...leaving in the evening...getting in the morning sometime. This way we save on a nights’ accommodation. It does make you tired though cause you sleep really lightly with the thought of people stealing your stuff, plus the noise from other cabin members - particularly snorers.

WHERE WE HAVE BEEN SO FAR

After Macau, I caught a bus to Gangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province (a large city of 10m people) where I saw the Musoleneum of the Nanyue King. It was filled with lots of jade and stone artefacts, plus you got to walk through the actual dug out Archaeological site of the tomb. It was great! Meanwhile Amy went back to Hong Kong. I didn’t exactly like Guangzhou...more like a concrete jungle than anything...with

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Us cruising along the main scenic walkway in Chongqing

lots of unfinished paths and holes in the walkways. Its common through-out china to find uncovered holes (made by workers repairing stuff) or trip hazards - such as broken tiles or bricks left on the ground.. I was actually glad to be on the train out of the carnage of the city and train station (where the hounding is immense). Following this I went to Guilin, part of Guanxi Province, a much smaller and nicer city (only ¾ of a million people live here). Guilin streets are lined with trees while the Li River runs straight through town adding to its beauty. There is also these limestone peaks - which are hard to believe if you haven’t seen them - they are sky-scrapper like in height and sight, and are scattered through the city - it’s absolutely amazing. I climbed a couple of them to get great views over the city. The city had a great feel to it. My hostel was also unreal...right in the centre of town....cheap....warm....great friendly staff...plus the American breakfast was great. This was one of my favourite places I have been. The bus network was great too!

While in Guilin, I went on a

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The lesser 3 gorges

day trip down to Yongshou (the town has about 300,000 people - and feels quite small) on the bus. I am so glad I came here. I thought Guilin was nice...it didn’t compare. This is one of those places you would come to visit for holidays and never leave....there are these massive jagged limestone cliffs and hills surrounding the whole town which is located on a plain separated by the Li River. It is unbelievable how pretty it is. I took a bamboo style raft down the river...my driver didn’t speak English...but it didn’t matter. He putted along real slow...his motor was quite new too...so was rather quiet which makes all the difference. It was relaxing as travelling along the river - seeing this unparalleled beauty....almost majestic.

After Yongshou, I went back to Guilin and meet Amy at the train station. She had caught a train from Kowloon...to just before the boarder...then a train from Shengzen to Guilin.. From Guilin we both caught a train to Chongqing (pronounced Chong-Ching). We stayed here a few days....it was here we saw some of the most real parts of china we have seen yet. This area is less touristy then any place

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The german (Stefan), the french girl (unknown), the two aussies :) , and the american (Chris).

we have been. You see poverty where people are all living on top of each other in these small one room places. Right door to these places there will be massive high rise buildings. Talk about extremes. It was definitely an eye opener. The city had few interesting things to see, but was good to spend time in to see people working on the docks...carrying items up and down the extremely hilly streets, wandering look for food...and even just wondering looking for Dvds.

We then boarded a three gorges cruise tour boat, from Chongqing to Yichang. We saved money and caught the Chinese tour boat - full of Chinese tourists and guides, with little English spoken at all. Although the boat was basic and old it was still good. We got a separate room with two single beds on the top floor, near the observation deck. We thought we had the best room on the boat.
On the boat also was a German guy, American guy, Finnish Couple and a French girl. We all tended to stick together cause of our common lack of knowledge of Chinese. The Finnish couple and the American knew a little bit of Chinese

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A cart in purple mountain national park

and Amy and I used our translator and we tried to find out the boats exact itinerary. The staff were so disorganised - they didn’t know when we were stopping at places, which places we were stopping at or have answers to many of our other questions. This made the experience even more unreal though.

On the tour - 4 days - we saw a Ghost town (full of mythical statues relating to hell), the first and second gorges (the first we saw in the daytime - so we got a great view - the second with triangular shaped jagged rocks we had to view when it was almost completely dark - so you could only just make out them out, the third we didn’t see at all cause it was dark - pretty bad planning if you ask me) the lesser three gorges (which I think was better than the three gorges - the river was not as wide and the rocky hills were more spectacular!) and the three gorges dam (which was a total waste of money cause they don’t get to see the front side of the dam, get close enough to any of it, plus

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One of the many lions we have seen adorning the grounds an emperors buildings. I love them. I think there amazing! I remember seeing something that said that the lions represent the emporors with their charactistics such as strength, power, top of the food chain...sorta stuff.

the fog made viewing difficult.
We then caught a sleeper bus from Yichang to Nanjing. Nanjing was another city we both really enjoyed. Being an old imperial capital in the Ming Dynasty it had plenty of historic sites to visit. We spend the best part of a full day exploring most of its main sites on Purple mountain. We did so much walking that day. The following day we went and saw its city walls up close and a massive gate built into the walls. The walls are almost impenetrable in size. Of the nights were visited a major shopping district close to where we staying where we bought many DVDs and browsed for many other things.

After Nanjing we caught a train to Suzhou. We were only intending to stay in Suzhou for one night, but were very fortunate to get really cheap accommodation in a hotel, so we stayed for three. We were amazed at how much there was to see. The main sites we saw were a Chinese Garden (better than it sounds), a silk museum and Tongli old town - a historic town also named the ‘Venice of the east’ but with rather dirty coloured

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All the stairs all the way up to Sat Yunsens Musoleneum

water in the canals. It was here we also went to the sex culture museum. This was heaps good to see too, with many statues showing the great imagination of the Chinese people.
After Suzhou we caught another train (what a guess!), this time, one of the quicker trains in china, doing around 200kph to Shanghai. In Shanghai we were meet with a very crowded train station and metro system. It was easy to get to our hotel through the metro though. We unlucky in that we booked accommodation online, only to find out after we had payed, that the room looked nothing like the pictures, nor did it have the features written. That’s life though. On the plus side, It was very central to the Bund and East Nanjing Road, so we visited these frequently. While in Shanghai we were again surprised by the level of construction on a major scale. The whole waterfront on the bund was closed off, plus the pavement in front of the colonial buildings was being removed and replaced. It was the same throughout the city, even in the new part of the city, Padong. We later worked out, this was all, to improve

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Ancient Ming Emperors Massive Palace at Nanjing

the city for the “Expo Shanghai 2010” which 70 million people are supposed to attend. It was a bit of shame not to see the waterfront though. The best view we got of the river was from the 88th story of the Jinamo Tower we climbed. It gave you an almost 360 degree view of the city while also giving you an indication of the overall size of Shanghai (which you don’t get at ground level) - with skyscrapers spanning across the city for as far as the eye could see. While in Shanghai we also did the other tourist things like going to the Shanghai Museum and visiting the French concession. Our overall thoughts are positive of Shanghai, with its loud out there personality and busy narrow streets.

At the moment (while I am writing this) we are travelling to Xi’an on a sleeper train. We were really lucky to get tickets. Most of the trains are sold out cause its almost New Year (Spring Festival - the most important time of the Chinese calendar when all people return home to be with their families). The train is rather clean, quiet (except the guy who is playing the

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Guangzhou Railway Station - everyone looking up to the noticeboard lol

harmonica - that sounded good at the start - but is like death now) and the low chat of the Chinese people further down the carriage.

Well that’s about it for this post, we hope you enjoyed reading all 2,800 words of it.

We hope all is well in Oz too!

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