Following our trip to China, I thought I would put together a travelogue so in years to come, anyone can find out what we got up to (from my point of view), what we saw and appreciate my insightful wit (yeah right).
4 April:
We arrived at Sydney airport for an 11:30 flight. No dramas with the flight other than the fact it was an ancient 747 which JAL had not upgraded, so there were no TV screens on the back of the screen, just the ceiling mounted kind. It wasn’t really a problem though as both Heather and I were reading. We landed in Osaka (Japan) at around 8pm and transferred to the hotel airport. When we eventually got dinner it set us back about ¥4000. Heather reckoned that there were about 40 yen to the dollar; I reckoned there are about 8. Either way, I haven’t checked as it’s my credit card that took the hit for that one (ignorance is bliss). I wouldn’t have minded but we only had a salad – warning, Japan is expensive!
5 April:
We left Osaka and flew in a nice comfortable plane (JAL again) for the 2.5 hour flight to Beijing. Here we were introduced to “plane cam” which is basically a camera in the nose that shows you take off and landing – don’t know if they show it during a turbulent landing though. They have an aerial camera which allows you to look down on the world (ideal for American tourists).
On arrival at Beijing, we met a rep from the travel agency we had booked the China tours with and handed over $2000 US (yep, we had carried that around with us) and in return she gave us flight tickets to Shanghai and a piece of paper confirming our itinerary. We were left to our own devices for a couple hours, so it was off to pay the Airport tax (50 Yuan per person) and test our knowledge of the local language. Once we found a bar, I got a waitress’ attention and tried the line “lee ann chintow” (note all these spellings are phonetic and not spelt the correct way) – that got us two beers. After a few repetitions of this, I tried “dwo yeow chen” and we became slightly unstuck as she immediately fired off in rapid-fire Mandarin and neither of us had a clue what she was saying. It turns out it was how much we owed, which is handy because that was what we thought we asked.
Anyway, we eventually arrived in Shanghai and met are guide called Helen. I was really keen to see Shanghai, because I had seen Fist of Fury, Drunken Master and God knows how many other Kung Fu movies set around Shanghai, so had expected dirt streets, rickshaws, etc. I was completely wrong (naturally) as it was a huge sprawling metropolis with a really thick smog layer and tons of buildings lit up with advertising signs (think Piccadilly Circus after overdosing on steroids and you’re part of the way there). As we landed in the evening, we were taken straight dinner and then on to a cruise on the Yangtze. Finally, it was off to the hotel.
6 April:
We travelled from Shanghai to Suzhou (by minibus) and basically did a tour of the following: Tiger Hill (actually a large mausoleum sprawling over several acres), the Hansan (Buddhist) temple and Silk factory. This is where we bought our first souvenir which was silk duvet and pillow cover set. They also had silk duvets which I was quite interested in (basically the stuffing is made of silk from double cocoons). In the evening, we went to a show at the Master of the Nets Garden. Basically, it was locals recreating the entertainment of the Ming and Qing (pronounced Ching) dynasties – as it was in the grounds of a Qing house, it was very atmospheric. I got video footage of it, so I will be making a DVD some time. Interestingly, the ancient Chinese liked their women to sing like cats being tortured with a set of electrodes – certainly was a bit surprising at first. Then it was off to the hotel for the night. We also learnt a Chinese expression “he makes the fishes dive deeper” (I can’t remember the Mandarin for it though). I originally that this means a person is ugly, but in fact means they're really good looking and the fish are diving deeper as they are shy. One thing I noticed for the first time in Suzhou was that everyone carries around empty jam jars with a teaspoon or two of what looks like tobacco in them, reason for them later.
7 April:
First excursion of the day was to the Humble Administrators Garden, which funnily enough is a garden (and a mighty large one at that). It was very relaxing to chill out in. Then it was off to Zhouzhuang, which is basically the Chinese equivalent of Venice. Here we learnt another word (courtesy of Helen) “Boo Yeow” which is (my interpretation) “I don’t want your cr*ppy merchandise”. It was very heavily used in Zhouzhuang as it’s a tourist trap.
After this, it was off to Shanghai (goodbye, Helen) and to catch a plane to Xi’an (more airport taxes and beers). On arrival at Xi’an, we met Jackie our tour guide (I had to refrain from asking if his surname was Chan) and had dinner, then off to the hotel.
8 April:
First trip was to the Tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, more commonly known as the home of the Terracotta warriors. Very impressive, and I got a fair amount of video footage (coming to a DVD near you). Our guide took us to the factory outlet for the warriors, so we didn’t have to pay gift shop prices for the ones we bought home to clog up the apartment with. We also went to a Neolithic village but they were closed for renovations unfortunately. We also went to another Buddhist temple which was very pleasant. Dinner was at a restaurant/theatre venue kind of like Jongleurs (although obviously not stand up comedy). Here they put on another period piece (couldn’t understand a word, even though we were learning new words daily). Finally off to the hotel.
9 April:
This day started with a trip to Wild Goose pagoda, moving onto the Sha’anxi Provincial museum. We also went to the Great Mosque in the Muslim quarter, which was our first real experience of wandering around by ourselves (without the guide) in a market. This was a good experience for later in the holiday and naturally there was extensive use of “Boo Yeow”. Finally it was off to Xi’an railway station for an overnight ride to Pingyao (goodbye, Jackie).
A quick word about trains: In the classless society of China there are 4 classes of rail travel:
Hard seating: There’s a lot of spit on floor (if you’re lucky – if you are unlucky it is worse) and no space to sit down. Think London Underground on a Friday night (with all the drunks coming home) combined with an 8am rush hour. Not good
Soft seating: Better because you are only allowed in the compartment if you have a booked seat
Hard sleeping: rows and rows of three tier bunks. Stalag Luft 13 come to mind anyone?
Soft sleeper: 4 bunks to a private room. If you guess we travelled this class, you have won yourself a free viewing of our holiday photos.
10/11 April:
We arrived at Pingyao at about 6am; I had not really slept all night as I was nervous about missing our stop. The train ride itself was uneventful; our cabin was shared with two travelling Chinese business men and I got to find out what the jam jars were for: it is their own little thermos flask (sans water), and whenever they are somewhere where there is the chance of getting water, they fill it up. We also had a “meal” on the train as well, but the less said about that the better!
At Pingyao we were met by a taxi driver, who actually turned out to be the owner of the guesthouse we were staying at. The guesthouse itself was wonderful, built in Qing dynasty it has been used as a rest house by travellers since it was built. We were however too tired to fully appreciate it as we went to our room and slept for about 5 hours.
On waking up, we bought ourselves tickets that would gain us entry into the 17 or so local attractions and started to explore. We decided the best way to do this was to travel around the city wall so we could look at the city from above. Given that it is 6km around, we elected to get a pedal-cab round rather than walk – we agreed to pay no more than 50 Yuan (the local currency) but the guy asked for a lot less.
After this point, every is a blur (no, not a drunken stupor) so I will list everything that I can recall:
Financial museum: basically this dude back in the Ming dynasty started his own trading company, and then expanded to handle financial transactions becoming a bank
Martial Arts museum: basically this was a museum for the Pingyao courier service who were trained in Bagu (known in the West as Pa Kua) and used to ensure the safety of stuff being sent around the province (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
Provincial Town Hall: Preserved museum where taxes were collected, courts tried criminals and the same prisoners were tortured – plenty of photographic evidence of this was shown (not for the squeamish)
Paper museum: advertised itself as an extensive archive of newspapers from the first origins of paper. Maybe they were having a special exhibition, but there seemed to be an awful lot of the content dedicated to Mao Tse Tung (my thoughts on him later)
Market Tower: located in the centre of the town gave you a nice from above the tower. I lost count of the number of times I bashed my head on the low ceilings (there was a lot of swearing going on)
Foot massages: we both had one of these each after a heavy of day wandering around. I felt quite sorry for girls treating us when we took our shoes off…
We did other things, but I am listing these from memory, so I can’t remember anything else (too many blows to the head)
A quick note about our beer consumption, chintow is actually a brand of beer (and a very nice one too), however the guest house where we stayed did not stock it, so we tried a couple of others: Happy Beer (it’s name) which seemed a bit ordinary (I guess you had to have a few to make you really happy) and Jing Dau, which was a very interesting beer because it was bright green. Naturally, we took a couple of photos of it, and it also seemed to get more interesting the more you drank of it. Fortunately it tasted pretty good. On the 11th we jumped aboard an overnight sleeper to Beijing (soft sleeper again).
12-16 Apr:
This entry is getting pretty long, and my memory is fading by the day so I am going to list the things we got up to in Beijing in one hit. Also, Heather decided that she wanted a special souvenir, so she caught pneumonia which slightly curtailed our activities, anyway.
Shopping: was it possible to go to a large city with cheap good quality merchandise and expect Heather to not spend money? Of course not! Summary of the purchases: 20 or so DVDs ($1.50 each) – funnily they do not work in our DVD player but do in our Playstation, 2 suits and 5 shirts for me and 2 suits and 5 blouses for Heather (between $500 to $600 for the lot) and a string of pearls (for Heather, but she is not having them until her birthday)
Great Wall: the pneumonia had really kicked in for Heather at this point, so we only did about 5kms or so. Very impressive to look at and as it was a hot day the hawkers were out in force – they knew how to entice Westerners “you want water, Coca Cola?” they said as we approached, and then just as we were alongside we were offered “cold beer” – we resisted the temptation though. Once we got to the tower where we were to descend, rather than take the cable car down (which was how we ascended), we took a toboggan ride. This could have been great fun (careering round tight corners at high speed, etc), but there was some dumb woman who managed to cause a 10-sled queue by going down so slowly. She was French, so it explains a lot.
Forbidden City: this place was seething with tourists of all nationalities and was quite pleasant when you got away from them (most seemed to be in tour groups where they walked from when end to the other without looking round any of the quieter parts). The city is huge and is several hundred years old where it was a fortress against invading forces (Mongols, Huns,etc), however American franchises are not going to let 300 years of history hold them back, so inside you can find a McDonalds and a Starbucks. We had planned on getting a photo of ourselves eating a Big Muck in the Forbidden City but fortunately were unable to find it. We saw the Starbucks but gave that a wide berth.
Tiananmen Square: I was fundamentally opposed to going to this landmark for obvious reasons; however Heather was insistent – so my principles were compromised in favour of a peaceful life. There is not a lot to be said about it, it is a very large square where people go to relax and have fun – kind of ironic really. Mao Tse Tung built it so that the unwashed masses could bow down before him (satiating the deity complex he probably had) and he is in fact lying in state nearby. Which quite nicely brings me to my diatribe: Mao Tse Tung has almost God-like status in China and is revered by the population; likewise most westerners don’t really have anything negative to say against him. I find this bizarre given that he killed more of his subjects than either Hitler or Stalin, and destroyed so much of China's cultural heritage. Anyway, we didn’t go look at his entombed body as the queues seemed to go on for miles, kind of like when they release tickets for a Venga Boys concert, (or is that just my imagination?). I was pretty opposed to going anyway, so it was no loss to me – can’t speak for Heather the Red.
Shopping: Did I mention this? We seemed to do a lot of it (boo yeow!)
Shaving: Not really worth mentioning normally, but I had to as when we arrived in Beijing I had my first shave in a week. My legs never have never felt so smooth!
Duck: Not just what Heather said to me whenever we went through one of the doors to a temple, but naturally we could not go to Beijing and not eat its most renowned dish. Very nice, although being duck there was a high fat content.
After all that we flew from Beijing to Sydney (with a two hour stop over in Osaka). Nothing happened on it, so I read a couple of books: the Da Vinci Code (started ok, but soon fell in to the modern writing style) and the Secret Daydreams of a Shopaholic (basically like Bridget Jones’ Diary without the intellectual edge – I could feel my brain shrink as I read it).
So that was basically our holiday from my point of view. No doubt Heather would disagree with some of my thoughts, but that is ok as we live in a democracy. Would I go again? Without any doubt – especially once I found out you could stay and train at a Shaolin Temple for about 40 Yuan a night. Plus we have only scratched the surface of what China has to offer. If we hadn’t already booked, I would have suggested that we rent to bikes and some camping gear and cycled along the 6000km of the Great Wall for our honeymoon.
Highlight for me: Pingyao – beautiful village which matched the “movie image” of ancient China. Not a single sign of a McDonalds, an ATM and hardly any cars. Didn’t stop it from being busy though.
Lowlight for me: Heather getting slightly annoyed by a bunch of obnoxious American tourists in a Western restaurant in Suzhou. Still, it gave me the opportunity to take the Mickey by calling everything quaint in a dodgy American accent and saying “goddam Dora Lee they done and got me some pizza”. Always keen to do my bit for Anglo-American relations!
-17 °C