Shanghai and Beijing

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Ni Hao

So as Sarah and I were semi sleeping on the flight to Beijing - the earthquake hit China. Sarah and I were completely unaware of this major event, until mum sent me an email about it. However switching on the TV (and this is still the case over one week later), over half the 48 TV stations were reporting the earthquake 24/7 - including the one English channel. The coverage itself is interesting as it is clearly government run.

Shanghai is a very modern city. Some of the old buildings remain. But the skyline is dominated by sky scrapers of every shape and size imaginable. Sarah and I did all the touristy things. We wandered around The Bund (the river side), walked around the Old Town and the French Concession. On the last night we headed up the highest tower (Jinmao) for evening views of the city and it's surrounding smog (we actually aimed for dusk to watch the sunset - but missed it as we could figure out how to get across the other side of the road). My photos of Shanghai are limited as my camera crapped out after day two - but at least new ones are fairly cheap in Shanghai and I picked up a new one for NZ$220.

From Shanghai we flew to Beijing. The first thing we noticed was the smog, so the Olympics may be interesting as the pollution is currently really heavy (although all industry within a 500km radius of Beijing will "voluntarily" stop production from July 1st and cars will be allowed in on even or odd number days during the olympics). In Beijing we have spent out time exploring the numerous temples - including the Lama Temple, one of the best preserved Tibetan temples outside of Tibet and the Temple of Heaven. We also managed to navigate our way through Beijing's public transport system to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is a gorgeous park surrounding a lake with awesome little Chinese bridges and the Palace itself was interesting, very colourful. It was even possible to escape the hordes of Chinese tourists.

Many of the Chinese tourists, it would appear, have never seen westerns up so close. So Sarah and I have become a bit of a tourist attraction ourselves. I've lost count of the number of times we've been dragged (literally) into photos.

So now we've met up with our tour group. The group is dominated by Kiwis, with two other couples from NZ, and 3 Aussies, a Canadain couple and one Pom. The tour leader, Mark is also British. They are a lovely group of people so the trip should be fun. Yesterday we went up to a relatively unvisited section of the Great Wall. We walked a 10km stretch of the Wall. The middle section was the most interesting as it was the bit that was unmaintained - the stairs were crumbling and the towers were falling over in places. The view was superb - like what you see in the pictures, but on a much grander scale. It quite amazing how it zigzags up and down the ridges. Today we ventured to the Forbidden city and Tiananmen Square. We had a local guide, who filled us up with all sorts of information. Although we were unable to talk about 1989 due to the secret (but rather unsubtle) police and the thousands of cameras focused in on the square.

Tonight is the overnight train to Xi'an.

Hope those in NZ are surviving the cold snap 😉

Cheerio
Cielle

Ps. Sorry about the photos - I would add more. But I can't read Chinese. I don't understand why the computer and the camera won't talk to each other

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Comments

[Alison]

Seahorses
Most alarmed at your food market pic - do they really eat seahorses? how? baked on a stick? with chilli sauce?