Advertisement
Published: November 2nd 2009
WARNING: the following update contains a lot of text. The country and our experiences here were so great, I couldn't do it in less words. So if you don't have the time just click through the pix and scroll down to the final conclusion and summary, that captures the essence of our trip to China.
China - Land of the Chinese
Chinese restaurants are everywhere and it's full of Chinese,..and so many. People here move fast forward - it feels like someone pushed fast forward on the remote control, and crowds push us around, but we push back. Spitting on the streets and in buses is the norm, so I adjust.
From the least crowded place on earth to the most crowded one, from blue skies to grey skies: Although we have a great time, people, food and travelling here is great, I was not really impressed by the sights we saw in China in almost one month, except from the great wall and the Terracotta Army maybe. I think most sights we saw are heavily overrated and therefore not so exciting as promised, except for historians, buddhist monks or first timers in Asia who haven't seen any temples before:
Often the view is poor (mist and grey skies constantly surround all sights), so we do not even see what is promised; everything is totally crowded with (especially local) tourists and you have to pass thousands of souvenir shops before you come to a sight. Therefore looking back at it, the sights were more a means for us to move from one place to the other and travelling itself was the actual high light of the trip which we enjoyed more than the sight seeing.
China, the number 1 country of the world
Modesty is not a Chinese virtue, at least not in the tourism industry. The Chinese love superlatives: everything is the best, the tallest, largest, most magnificent and so on. All tourist tickets and guides will continously tell you so. If a mountain is constantly covered in mist & fog so you can't see a thing (eg Mt. Emei), then the fact that you don't see a thing is called the sea of clouds, a natural wounder, which 'astonishes many tourists'. The ticket for the cable car to this mountain (with zero view, all we saw was grey mist) promised:
'..the natural sight seeing is so beautiful on the way that it may let you feel relaxed and so joyous even forget to leave' (original quote).
Great development ?:
China is way more developed than we expected. In the big cities the streets are clean, the buildings new and people are dressed fashionably. This is our first time in China, but I guess that the Olympic Games exalerated the modernization process in China big time. We witnessed at least the same in Shanghai: the city is getting ready for the Expo and old houses are torn down and new big buildings are built. Whereas in Beijing you still find many nice little streets and houses, Shanghai looks more western, most parts are very clean/ almost sterile, and therefore lacks the charm that Beijing still has.
Great Eating - aka it's very delicious' :
Food in China is diverse, plenty and everywhere. On one menu card, besides the usual dishes, we find pigg ears, ox heart, and my favorite: ox penis. We skip the exotic dishes - I already ate a dog once in Vietnam - and stick to the more obvious ones. We eat the obligatory beijing duck in Beijing with our personal
chef slicing the pieces in front of us. We check out the Sichuan cuisine that is said to be very spicy, especially the hot pots. As a chilli lover I am a bit dissappointed by the 'spicy' food, as for me it tastes more like an overdose of salt. The best food & atmosphere you can get on the streets: in the small streets there are numerous tiny barbecue places offering great food for almost nothing. There you can sit on tiny little chairs (maybe the smallest in the world?) and enjoy food and drinks in Chinese company.
Great Drinking:
We had many great drinking experiences with locals on our trip: In a restaurant where we enjoy a beer during lunch, 2 guys insist that I drink with them. They didn't speak any English so I couldn't understand. They were even following me, till someone translated their intentions to me: they really wanted to drink with me, I was told, ...they gave me a beer and I had a beer with each of them and they even thanked me for that. ....In a night train, two local other guys see us drinking beer, come to us and immediately buy
us two more bottles, although ours still were more than half full. ...ahh why can't it be like that everywhere I go?
Smallest beer glasses in the world: Although you mainly get 0.5L or larger beer bottles, the Chinese drink from the smallest beer glasses I ve ever seen: with approx. 0.15 L, I would rather call it a shot glass to drink liquor, but still though we got used to it and like it very much.
Great Hair:
China apparently is also the land of the hair dressers, as I've never seen so many
hair dressers in any other country: they are everywhere, in some small streets you might find 10 next to each other. And they are all open from very early in the morning till very late at night.
Great Posing:
Upon arrival, when we get out of the taxi, first thing that happens is somebody asking me to pose with him and his friend on a picture. For the rest of the trip we would pose on different locations on different occasions. We probably will be in hundreds of Chinese photo books soon. I guess that's how celebreties feel. The Chinese themselves are the
masters of photo posing. They have trained this not so ancient art over the last decades and have reached perfection. Even little kids already have a repertoire of at least three different poses, when a camera is pointed at them. I am quite impressed and inspired to further develop my own posing skills, I hope they will improve during the scope of our trip.
Great to meet you aka great business cards: The Chinese love to hand out business cards, regardless if this makes any sense in a particular situation of not and regardless if you understand a word what they say to you: the guy next to us in the train talking to us in Madarin (I guess), hands out his card at the end of the ride, not sure what he was talking about, as he didn't speak a word of English, some random guy on a street who actually spoke a bit of English offers us help in case we needed it and gives us his business card plus telephone number, skype name and two email addresses. Also in the gym, only 3 minutes after having started, a guy is observing me from close distance and
introduces himself to me as the manager of the gym and yep you might have guessed it by now...hands out his business card. After almost a months in China we have a collection of approximately 15 business cards we all received from random people somwhere.
Great styles:
The real cool styles do not come from the young Chinese so called hipsters but from old Chinese men: never seen so chillaxed guys walking on the streets in their pyjamas and slippers on. I am so impressed that I buy one of these cool pyjamas too. I have to admit it feels very comfortable too. From now on I shall also wear my pyjamas when leaving the house.
Great Chackie aka every country needs an action hero:
What Genghis Kahn is in Mongolia and Shahrukh Khan in India, Chackie Chan is in China: he is everywhere: from Canon commercials to food brands, and you can even find him on a shampoo bottle. As I grew up with Chackie Chan movies, I can understand the hype and buy a bottle of Chackie Chan hair shampoo. From now on my hair looks significantly better.
Great work out & the Badminton challenge:
In Chengdu we got to the university campus to find some Badminton players Els wants to challenge. She is lucky and succeeds, while I pump Chinese iron in an old school gym nearby that looks like the one Rocky Balboa was working out in the 80s. The other gyms I check out in Shanghai and Xi'An are already too westernized and therefore less interesting for me.
Great Sex:
I am quite surprised to find so many sex shops in China and sex toys even being sold at the street market. Checking out the offer, I find mainly fake sexual stimulant products with very funny 'English' instruction manuals. One was so funny indeed I had to buy the pack and need to quote the original text:
'... you need only one bag to easily captivate her. Even a virgin can be driven crazy! After 10 minutes, she will feel a strong sexual desire. Her suxuality aroused, thus the vagina juice keeps leaking in large amount and she needs desperately a man's company. She will moan like a lion, loudly even she is already semi-conscious. Note: the moaning will be so loud that you need to pick a soundproofing location (Note: It should never be taken by nonages and children accidentally)'. We didn't feel the promised effect, but had a strong laughing effect instead.
Pay now, enjoy later:
No matter if you order something in a restaurant or check in at the hotel lobby, you immediately are instructed to 'pay now'. So for example if you decide to have more drinks during the scope of your dinner, everytime you order another beer you have to pay for it immediately, even in so called laid back Chengdu.
Point it:
As hardly anybody speaks a word of English, especially outside of the big cities, we can further improve our sign / body language and drawing skills and we laugh a lot. The travel pictionary 'point it' (http://www.graf-editions.de/pointit/point_it_eng.html, also available as Iphone application) also comes in handy. We had our most fluent conversation with Chinese deaf people. We manage to arrange everything.
Chinese underground & youth culture
The first day we arrive in china, we check out a metal festival at 13 club in Beijing. The scene is small but increasing with 3 clubs in Beijing and 1 metal shop (www.xmusick.com). I check out the shop and talk to Wang the
owner who was interviewed by Sam Dunn for the documentary Global Metal (www.globalmetalfilm.com). We check out the indie festival modern sky and talk to director from China Youthology, a research & trend agency focused on Chinese Youth (www.chinayouthology.com). International companies are more and more interested to understand (and exploit) the Chinese youth culture. Companies like Dickies, Converse, Google, Myspace etc are very present sponsors at the festival. An internationally succesful local band that stands out and is worth mentioning is
: 'Queen Sea Big Shark': (http://www.myspace.com/qsbs). Beijing has far more underground culture and artists as compared to Shanghai. Although in Shanghai it is more difficult to find music beyond the main stream, we find an interesting alternative venue (www.yuyintang.org) and check out some post rock bands. I get blown away by the local band
: 'Duck Fight Goose': , a band definitely worth following. Although their sound is a bit 'mathy', on their site they claim 'math is dead' and call their style 'Death Ray Rock'. The band that just started out 3 months ago are about to record their first demo. I can't wait to check it out (http://www.douban.com/artist/duckfightgoose/).
Beijing
We arrive right on time for the 60th
great (wall) posing
the power of the maueranniversery of the People's Republic of China. It's national holidays and therefore everything is totally crowded. Walking on the streets you have to slam dance your way through the masses. Although a bit exhausting at times, it is great fun. The city is huge and often we sit for 45-60min in a taxi to go from one place to the other. We visit
the forbidden city and
the great wall. The great wall is really great, but after 4 hours of walking I had enough, am quite exhausted and need a great beer in the great wall restaurant.
Shanghai
Very western, developed, clean, many expats, big shopping malls, and more and more old more traditional houses disappearing. We go up the
pearl tower to enjoy the view of Shanghai from 300 meters above. As I am afraid of heights, trying to walk on the glass bottom there and look 300 meters down felt even more scary for me as the tandem parachute jump we did once. In the tower there is also a small rollercoaster and the ride is included in the ticket price, cool. The rest of Shanghai feels a bit to clean and sterile for however we
great (wall) posing
the power of the mauer manage to escape the big boring shopping streets and find the real China in the small streets, were people still sit on the streets to enjoy drinks and food and were spitting is still the norm.
Luoyang
a city of 2 mio inhabitants, pretty ugly, apart from little parts in the old town, where we enjoy drinking and eating at the night market. Within 2 days there we see only 2 foreigners. Also nobody speaks English. The reason for the stop over in Luoyang are the
: Longmen caves, one of China's few surviving masterpieces of Buddhist rock carvings and the
Shaolin temple, the birth place of Kung Fu. The longmen caves are quite long and impressive, the shaolin temple not: most parts of the temple are rebuilt, and there is not a single spot to find with less than 20-30 people posing for pictures. Most part of the very short (30min) Kung Fu show serves the purpose of selling more souvenirs during and after the show.
Xi'An
From the former captial of China, a city with 2.3 Mio inhabitants, we make a trip to the
Army of Terracotta Warriors, one of the world's most famous archaeological findings:
great (wall) posing
the power of the mauer this life size army of thousands stood guard over the soul of China's first unifier Qinshi Huang over 2 millenia before it was discovered by local farmers drilling a well in 1974. It is quite impressive to see the approx. 6 thousand figures that have been discovered so far standing there. The whole area is huge and many more are still to be uncovered. Also quite impressive is the amount of souvenir shops you have to pass before you reach the actual area.
Chengdu
Laid back city, although it's huge again (4 mio inhabitants). Most tourists go there to see the giant Pandas, make trips to Leshan to see
the grand buddha carved in stone or organize trips to
Mt. Emei, China's number 1 mountain with a temple on the summit, which we didn't find impressive at all, as there almost never is a (good) view, as everything is covered in mist. The grand buddha at Leshan is tall indeed with a size of 71 m, but that's about it. Not sure this was really worth the trip.
Yangtze River - our cruise ship experience
For the first time in our lives we go on a cruise! After
some negotations with the agency we booked the cruise with (they wanted to book us an a different boat than originally confirmed for extra charge), we got upgraded to a 5 star cruise ship almost without any extra costs to the original price we intended to spend. Although we don't like organized trips and I always thought I never would be on cruise before I turned 70, to my suprise I have to admit that we pretty much liked the cruise experience: we had a nice luxurious room with our own balcony from which we enjoyed some drinks while watching the scenery pass by. Everything was well organized and prepared, so for a change we did not have to take care about anything at all. And last but not least we could escape the hords of backpackers, as such a cruise is too expensive for them. We were the only ones there carrying backpacks, still though I prefer the word 'independent travellers' (a new expression I learned on the cruise), as opposed to tourists travelling in organized groups. Of course we were the only 'young kids' (that's how people called us there) on the boat, the average age was 65+.
The sights we have seen on the trip:
the 3 Gorges Dam , (of course) the biggest Dam in the world on the 3rd biggest river in the world, the Yangtze River. Furthermore we visited
Fendu Ghost city, some rebuilt temples surrounded by lots of souvenir shops. Also this time I expected more from the scenery on the river, but maybe it was again because of the grey sky that maybe it less impressive. It also may be that I have seen already way more impressive similar sceries at the Halong Bay (N-Vietnam) or around Krabi (S-Thailand).
Conclusion & final summary
China is the number one most magnificent country in the whole wide world. We had a lot of fun with the Chinese, who are really great people.... Nuff said, ...now we have to say good bye to Shanghai, because we have to go to Tokyo.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.636s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0531s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
zwanet meilink
non-member comment
gaaaaaf
via moeder josé wordt ik geregeld gewezen op jullie trip fantastische foto's geniet nu van japan. zwanet