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Published: February 18th 2012
Hello everyone, sorry for the delay –but here follows my look back on our time in China (pre-Christmas) and our festive travels in Hong Kong. China is so damn big and we crammed so much into a month that I’ve decided to split the blog into two parts.
Here’s the first, which covers entering China on December 14
th through to leaving Hong Kong on Boxing Day. Part two is on the way soon… Make yourself a cuppa tea and enjoy
reading!
Never had I banged my head against so many proverbial brick walls in such a short space of time as when we walked from Vietnam into the border town of Hekou, in the south of China. The Chinese ‘head banging’ feeling would actually end up being something that we would get used to in time -and that isn’t to say that travelling around China got easier as we went along- but rather that the frustrations simply became more familiar as our travels continued in this most enigmatic and fascinating country.
So, the brick walls came thick and fast in the first two hours; the Bank of China not changing foreign currency (and
every other bank in town sending you to the Bank of China because they are the only bank that changes foreign currency), the out-of-town bus station selling us postage stamp-sized tickets made of something thinner than fax paper which were wholly unfathomable, and trying to check into a hotel for the night with only a Spanish-Mandarin phrasebook to help us. Bear in mind that due to the fact that I am a hopeless male devoid of the ability to multitask, if I have to translate once (from English to Spanish) my brain struggles, but translating TWICE, from English to Spanish, then from Spanish to Mandarin using the phrasebook? Useless, absolutely useless. Employing a seriously cringeworthy Chinese accent as I read the phonetics, I’ve never felt more British as I gradually just got louder and louder as I repeated the words for ‘room’, ’one’ and ’night´(with plenty of pointing of course) under some inane illusion that increasing the volume ensures understanding. Note: It doesn’t.
Now readers, just think for a moment about the last time you checked into a hotel. Done? Ok, now try to remember how long it took to complete the check in process. You probably
can’t remember, because it probably wasn’t significant. I’d bet it took five to ten minutes max. Here in Hekou, our check in took one hour. One. Hour. We were the only people in the reception. Us, two staff and a Spanish-Mandarin Phrasebook. This was pretty hard work, and the smiles did begin to fade after forty minutes or so, but we got there somehow, and having finally dumped our backpacks we spent our first night in China mostly doing three things; being giggled at by bashful schoolgirls in a fake Chinese KFC (the only thing open after our lengthy check in), being screamed at (think girls-at-a-Take That-concert screams) by teenage girls on the back of a motorbike, and being told by seemingly the only English speaker in the town that we were “very very brave” to be travelling around China without knowing the language and without an organised tour group and native guide. Brave…or Stupid? We were about to find out, but one thing was for sure, China was going to be a challenge. And we were well up for it.
We’d got a great-sounding recommendation for our first China stop, from a rather gobby Polish lass we’d met
in ‘Nam. And as we boarded the local bus in Hekou, bound for the magical stepped rice terraces in the mountain village of Yuanyang it was time to feel the stare once again as every pair passengers’ eyes was fixed on us outsiders. As the bus climbed, the outside temperature dropped, and in turn, so did the jaws of the local mountain villagers who literally encircled us as we stepped off in to the cold. And this was proper England-in-winter cold. That’s cold. We felt it particularly of course, as we’d been on the beach in Na Trang less than a week ago. Brrr.
The scene here was very different. It was all a bit sci-fi; below-freezing temperatures, visible breath in the air, the town shrouded in thick mountain mist and the beady-eyed villagers glaring at us as if we were aliens alighting a spaceship (see pic of Chinese visa details about tourists being aliens). China really was beginning to feel more like another planet rather than another country. It really is quite intimidating to be stood in the middle of a circle of fourteen or fifteen people who are watching your every move. And while the tension was
nothing that a quick “Ni Hao” (hello) couldn’t break, as the locals sniggered at our limited Mandarin, it was the feeling of being watched that no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t get used to, and indeed we never would do, right up until leaving Beijing a month later.
First job here though, was to break the circle and establish which of these Westerner-transfixed gentlemen would like to be our taxi driver. We knew that we would have to get a lift to our hostel on the other side of the mountain, and as you can imagine, ordering a taxi was a little tricky to say the least.
Of course, of all the barriers in this country, naturally, it is the language barrier that forms the biggest and toughest wall of all in China, on which to bang your head: the true Great Wall of China, if you will. There’s no room for assuming understanding and you can take absolutely nothing for granted, but you see, not speaking the lingo really is only just the start of your comprehension problems. Let’s take hand signals and gesture for example. “Taxi” is, thankfully, a universal word, so from
this point of view we were off to a flyer, but then came the laborious but culturally-engrained task of haggling for the price. Next, something happened. As we pointed at the taxi, and our destination (that we’d had pre-written in Chinese script) the four or five taxi drivers in front of us began to do, what can only be described as a collective dance move from The Birdie Song, with a kind of Chinese twist. They positioned their hands into the shape of mouths; like the kind of gesture you would do if someone was being a bit mouthy, where your thumb is at the bottom, and your other fingers tap against it, as if to indicate the jaws or lips of a mouth talking. Most of the blokes did this gesture with both hands, some did a slight variation which looked more like they were squeezing invisible stress balls, or anything else round and shapely and soft that you can think of. Ahem. So we watched, and were perplexed -mesmerized in fact- and above all, absolutely stumped. And as I tried in vain to get “with-a-little-bit-of-this-and-a-little-bit-of-that-and-a-shake-your-bum CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP” out of my head, I couldn’t see how we
were going to get past the dancing stage (which, I should say was accompanied by aggressive sounding Chinese syllables that got progressively louder –once again, I thought , increasing the volume does NOT ensure understanding) but for the moment anyway, we were enjoying it. Should we applaud? Was “encore” a universal word? As it happens, the next dance move came swiftly along in the shape of two index fingers forming a diagonal cross –like a kind of vampire deterrent-cum-‘urgh you’ve got the lurgy’ playground gesture. You know the one. So now we had a dance routine, but unfortunately we had no taxi. Or a price. And it WAS damn cold. We began to do what we (wrongly) assumed was a universal hand signal for ‘ten’ (all fingers and both thumbs outstretched) but this brought nothing but puzzled looks. I was incredulous. “What is WRONG with them love?” I whispered to Marta, “surely they know this means ten” We tried ‘five’ –with one hand and nothing. I began counting from one, using my thumb first, then upwards to ten in English, and the taxi drivers did it with me in Mandrin, and then finally it all became clear yet confusing all
at the same time. “One…” I began slowly, “…two…three…four” at this point we were all doing the same gestures; it was going well. “Fffiiiiive” I slowed, spreading my thumb and fingers apart and then suddenly the Birdie Song gesture greeted me, “Aha! The squeezy birdy gob is FIVE!”
As we continued from six to ten, the locals demonstrated a kind of surfer dude-meets-gangsta rapper sign language that I had never seen before in my life. Number six resembled a kind of pinky and thumb ‘cowabunga dude’ telephone gesture, seven was all tappy and crossed, eight looked like an L-shaped seven, nine was one index finger folded at the knuckle and ten was the vampire ‘X’ sign. We were fascinated. This really was like another planet. A planet where something as simple as counting to ten using your fingers and thumbs was lost in translation. As I said, you can take nothing for granted in China. Throughout our month here, it’s fair to say that communication was sometimes frustrating, sometimes amusing, sometimes bewildering but ALWAYS entertaining. Anyway, I digress, back to Yuanyang: Once the mist lifted slightly we were rewarded with some spectacular scenery and we wandered through the rice
terraces to our perfectly-perched hostel, built into the spectacular terrace, but not before stopping for some steaming hot local noodle soup cooked by a lovely lady from a local hill tribe (see first few pics).
Leaving the mountains, our local bus rattled and snaked its way down through hill tribe villages and freezing fog and eventually plonked us in the humongous city of Kunming, still in Yunnan Province in southern China. As our first big city here, it began to hit us just how many people actually live in China (see pics of a packed Kunming street). To put it in perspective, with a population of more than 11 million people, Kunming city has more people in it than Belgium. And it’s bigger. Probably. Anyway, this realisation of the sheer number of bodies in China led us to stealing a lovely little phrase coined by the legendary Carmen Martinez (dear mother of my lovely Marta) in a message she sent to us as we arrived here. I will preempt it only by saying for non-Spanish speaking readers that anything ending in ‘ito’ in Spanish means ‘little’. “Hay miliones de Chinitos” warned Carmen. Indeed there are, Carmen, indeed there are.
So we watched as the Chinitos of Kunming did Tai Chi and line-danced with complete strangers in parks and ate freshly fried chicken’s feet at street food stalls (see pics). We opted out of both and instead bought ourselves some thick winter fleeces at the Chinese equivalent of Asda and struggled to read the train station information boards (see pic) as we were soon on our way to the tourist mecca town of Lijiang on the first overnight train of our travels so far. Lijiang might be an uber-popular destination with the coach-loads of Chinitos (and backpackers) but it is deservedly so; a lovely labyrinth of cobbled streets with traditional tiled-roofed medieval houses. Bit of a shame then, that most of these buildings are now good old Chinese tat shops. But tasteful tat, if you know what I mean. So after our bumpy night train you can imagine how the snow-capped mountains proudly residing over this pretty city through the morning mist was all really quite welcome, and plus, we found some amusement in seeing our breath in the chilly air. This place was beautiful. (See the pics of the town and the morning mist at sunrise).
It
was always our intention to make the short journey from Lijiang to the brilliantly named Tiger Leaping Gorge; the location for one of China’s most famous treks. Like most things in China, there’s a rather twee legend behind the name –a tiger is said to have leapt from the stone in the middle of the choppy rapids while trying to escape the arrow of a hunter. Yeah I know, but it makes for a cool name though doesn’t it? We wrapped up for the minus temperatures and then quickly stripped our new Asda fleeces off as the gorgeous winter sunshine and it must be said, the tough climbs of the route, quickly warmed us up. The two day walk was easily the most beautiful I have ever done; the gentle rice terrace climbs, the tip toeing through waterfalls, even the grueling 26 bends up to the snowy mountain view at the summit. And of course all the while you get different views at every turn of the shimmering waters below in the bottom of the gorge and surrounded by the crispy-clear mountain air and brilliantly blue wintry skies. We loved it. See pics below including a Drama student pretending to
be a tiger at the end of the walk by the aforementioned Tiger Leaping Stone. Apologies. Talking of the stone (which of course, having walked for two days, you simply have to see), during the descent I actually feared for my life, as the, shall we say, ‘rustic’ path clung to the mountain, we in turn clung to each other in the horrifying absence of a handrail. The Chinese we gathered, don’t really do Health and Safety, after all, with miliones de Chinitos, if one or two fall into Tiger Leaping Gorge… Shrug. Only joking of course.
With winter having a firm grip on us now, it felt cold enough for Christmas, and indeed by the time we’d squeezed in a cheap domestic flight to Guangzhou, we were almost ready for Mariah and The Pogues as we edged closer to our chosen Christmas destination, Hong Kong.
‘Hong Kong for Christmas’ had a certain ring to it we felt, and as we hopped off the ultra-fast and super clean metro system in Central Station on Hong Kong Island and then squeezed, still wearing backpacks onto the delightful 100 year old double decker tram, we were as excited as, well,
as kids at Christmas. It was time to give ourselves a bit of seasonal pampering, and we did so in style, by cashing in on our parental Christmas presents of a couple of nights at a rather plush hotel. This, you understand was a huge change from the cold and grotty hostels of which we had become accustomed, and so obviously, in true backpacker style, we rinsed the place for all it was worth. Toiletries, loo roll, even the complimentary slippers. Still in the backpack. Still haven’t used ‘em.
So, like a true man, I spent Christmas Eve frantically shopping, but afterwards we posed by the mega Christmas tree in Central (see pic) and boarded the famous Star Ferry, which easily lives up to is slogan as being the best value cruise in the world; Two quid gets you whisked across Victoria Harbour leaving the financial skyline of Central behind you and the Kowloon peninsula gleams out in front. In the evening we took up strategic positions at either end of the hotel lounge, and wrapped each other’s presents while taking an occasional sneaky glance outside at the harbour, just to remind ourselves that this was a very different
Christmas. As the air turned cooler and the neon Christmas lights flickered into life on the domino run of city sky scrapers (see pics), we took the funicular to the top of Victoria Peak (which sits beautifully behind the city on Hong Kong Island) and watched the twinkling stars and lights of Hong Kong on Christmas Eve, blew some wistful kisses back to our families and even spotted Santa flying above the city. There was a genuine magic to it.
On the big day, as the morning came, so too did the realisation that not only did Santa know that I was going to be in Hong Kong, but also that he could somehow find his way in to hotel rooms without a chimney. What a guy. On Christmas morning, after excitedly opening our travelling-themed pressies to and from each other (and from Santa), we took a stroll along the harbour and watched ships and yachts pass by in the sunshine and then we found ourselves a great little chilled-out bistro where later on we wouldn’t feel out of place at all in our walking shoes and fleeces, as we feasted on a superb traditional British Christmas dinner. Turkey,
pigs in blankets, mince pies, the lot. Scrummy. So with the traditional Christmas food babies bulging out from under our clothes, and after some cheery Christmas skype chats with families, we sat by the water’s edge on Kowloon watching the sunset behind the Peak on Hong Kong Island. And as the soft sunlight reflected in the pale blue waters of Victoria Harbour and the sleek sky scrapers shone on, we looked at each other and our smiles both agreed that this had been an unforgettable Christmas.
On the 26
th it was time to leave our temporary luxury, pack up those trusty backpacks again and get back to the real world. Well, I say the real world, more like the weird and wonderful world of the Chinitos. China Part Two was waiting for us just across the water…
Until then,
Mike x
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love it love it love it, get writing the next blog you're miles behind yourself!