The perfect day - China

Yesterday was a very good day in China, probably our best since coming here. We woke up fairly early to the sound of roosters and the sun streaming in through the skylights - neither of which was going to damper my mood as 1. there were roosters and birds just outside and 2. the sun was shining through the blue skies and 3. there was no busy highway anywhere around. We were in the China that we came here looking for and had almost given up hope of finding.

The morning was spent relaxing in the hostel's hammocks and enjoying their wonderful, western style breakfasts but after a few hours we were itching to see more of the countryside so we rented a couple of bicycles and set off for the Dragon bridge. Along the way we bumped into a group of people that we had met in a hostel in Guilin and some others that had joined them along the way. We passed a Chinese lady who asked if we were going to Dragon bridge and when we said yes, she decided to become our defacto guide. Good thing too because it wasn't the easiest place to find so we appreciated her presence pointing the way at every junction.

The karst scenary was there in full glory as the backdrop for the rice and various vegetable fields and little villages. We stopped to rest by trickling streams, spotted chickens which had got loose in the rice fields, little children probably going home from school for lunch, water buffaloo having a swim, locals tending their fields and most importantly very few people around. We felt like we were having a genuine countryside experience, seeing how real farmers lived.

Once at the Dragon bridge - which is just a brick bridge which local rumour says that it was built by farmers several hundreds of years ago without the use of any cememt, our guide asked if we would like to go to her family restaurant for su fan which we think means lunch. It was lunch time and without any other reason to pick a different restaurant, we went along. Turns out that the dining tables and chairs are on bamboo rafts with little roofs on the river, tied to the restaurant. We tried the home-made rice wine as well as some meat, veg and tofu dishes all washed down with the local ice beer. Perfect.

After lunch, the others decided to keep cycling while Johan and I caught a bamboo raft back down the river, with our bicycles on the back. Again, the scenary along the river was beautiful and the ride was peaceful... until we came to one of the levees in the river which occured every 500m or so. The river seems to be terraced, like the rice fields, we're guessing that it's to help the farmers channel water through their fields when they need to flood them. What it meant for us was that each time we had to go over a little water slide in our bamboo raft - which was sometimes a little scary and always a little wet!

We got dropped off about 15 minutes cycle from the hostel so we made it back just before dark. Sitting down in the outside restaurant/beer garden, we shared a bottle of local flour liquour with an american guy we met and chatted politics and travel ideas and ate lemon chicken and rice. In all, a wonderful day.

Found it

And just after that little rant, we finally found exactly the China we were looing for.

As I am typing this we are sitting having breakfast in a lovely little hostel in a countryside village (yes a village - with almost no people - the first place we've been with less than 1'000'000 inhabitants). There are chickens, roosters and dogs running around my feet fighting for scraps, we can hear crickets and birds in the woods just outside and there is one of the trademark karst mountains that the Guilin region are famous for withing arms reach...

We are feeling the energy returning. This is exactly what we came here for, and the next few days we'll be doing a day trip or two into the countryside, look out for loads of pictures :).

And there are some more coming as well - yesterday we went to the Lijiang rice fields which is a huge area of terraced rice fields on the tops of hills/mountains a few hours north of Guilin.

The day started with a visit to a visit to a tiny village inhabited by a minority group, Yao Chinese, who take pride in their long hair. They are apparently only allowed to cut it once, when they are 18, and even then they are not allowed to throw that away. They put on huge shows for the tourists wher they wash their hair and comb it while dressed up in traditioal clothes. We opted to not go to the show, but sat down by the tiny little stream in the sunshine, dipping our feet in the water and watching the normal day-to-day ambling of the villagers and some of the Chinese tourists frolicking in the water Turns out that was a good decision, not only were we spared the touristy show but we saw a few of the girls that had the day off wash their hair in the stream and prepare the vegetables for lunch. So we got to relax, play in the water and see an informal 'show' and we were spared the majority of the shopkepers trying to sell us stuff, not bad at all...

After that we headed up to the summits, it was a 35 minute walk up a lot of steps (we love those by now, we really really do) winding through a village, touristy but I believe there is still a big part of it that are working the fields. Nevertheless, the views along the paths and from the top was quite stunning. In almost every direction there were terraces nestled around every small peak or hilltop and tiny paths winding through between them, and people out farming them. And fortunately the weather was defying the forecasts of rain and provided some sunsine through the cloudcover, but most importantly it did not rain.

After a few hours of snapping away with my camera we were heading back to Guilin and on towards Yanhshuo and the hostel for the night. We met this lovely Dutch couple on the bus who told us they were staing at this lovely hostel out in the countryside, which we had been eying up, but decided to not stay at, since the weather was going to be so bad and it is an outdoors kind of place. But with their assurance that we'd still like it better than the city if it rains and our doubt of the accuracy of the weather forecasts we changed our plans, arranged accomodation and made tracks for the countryside. We checked in to a massive room with two big beds, a table and some chairs, a huge ceiling fan and massive mosquito nets covering the beds and, most importantly, a truly great chef.... If you are ever in China, do not miss the outside-inn.

Today the plan is to take a walk by the river, or a bamboo raft down it or just sit here in the hammock and sway in the gentle breeze until it turns dark. Either way, we have found some peace.

China blues & greys

I am now officially all China'd out! If I never have to see one more pagoda, negotiate with one more taxi driver, eat one more dish with mystery meat, I will be happy. Of course I've picked totally the wrong place to get to this point as the city of Guilin is supposed to be known for it's beautiful karst scenary and laid back attitude but honestly, to me, it's just one more big Chinese city.

The Blues
Please allow me a moment to break from my usual cheery self and give you a real picture of China from the ground level.

1. Chinese people, as far as I can see, are obsessed with redefining themselves and becomming the big, powerful, superpower they should always have been. What this means in practice is that everywhere that we go there is evidence that anything that is old and interesting is being systematically ripped up or torn down to make way for skyrise apartments and office blocks.

If there is something that has had special significance then it is designated a tourist spot or scenic area of some rating (from 3A to 5A) and then they slap gates on it, charge you 40 RMB and it immediately becomes overrun with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Chinese tourists. It then becomes a bit of a battle to see anything of worth.

2. Something like 94% of all tourism in China is by Chinese domestic tourists and what that means for the Western visitor is that they really aren't that interested in you. Sometimes it's good - some of the tat-shop keepers just ignore you because they can't be bothered to communicate with you and there are loads more tourists that speak their language that they can harass instead. But most times it's not so great - taxi drivers either hike up their price to ridiculous levels or refuse to take you or you pay your 40 RMB to enter a museum only to find that all the commentary is in Chinese.

3. It's easy to forget about trying not to offend the Chinese person next to you when their behaviour defys all of your own social norms. It seems to be a popular sport for Chinese people to push, shove and elbow everyone around them just to get ahead in the queue to get on the train even though everyone has a designated seat and there is plenty of time before the train leaves. People are constanty hacking and spitting everywhere, even right in front of where you are walking so you have to walk around their phlegm. And the noise, people find it acceptable to talk at the top of their voices to their friend who is sitting 1/2 metre away from them, or honk their horns costantly on the road. Not to mention the chaos when you are trying to cross the road, even on a pedestian crossing, when the green man is showing.

At first it's interesting, and you put up with it because you are trying to be culturally sensitive but when I lost my rag the other day with the taxi driver who wanted to charge us 30 RMB for a journey that was clearly worth half of that, you realise that you do have a limit. FYI, after the little outbreak he dropped his price to 20 RMB so maybe I'm on to something there...

4. Finally, I have become so cynical about the quality of anything that I would like to buy, be it in the tat-shops or markets or even authentic looking shops. I bought a "Kipling" daypack and Johan bought a "North Face" daypack in a market and they are both clearly knockoffs. While we were at one of the famous sites in Beijing we got invited to see an "exhibition of art student works" and then were invited to make purchases afterwards. We didn't buy anything and found out afterwards that it is a scam that they run in several famous sites and that the works of art aren't done by students but are prints that can be bought in the markets at a fraction of the price that they are asking for. Why are scams like that being run from places like the "Temple of heaven" or the "Forbidden palace"? How could the authorities permit that? Don't they know that it completely ruins any credibility that the site had? And when you find out that you've been swindled that it forever puts a dark cloud over your entire China experience?

Of course, several of the scenic spots and tourist designated sites are themselves fakes. He Fang Jie, the ancient street in Hangzhou was probably build less than 20 years ago, yet it is where you are directed to go to see Song dynasty houses. The entire site of Fengdu in this site is reputed to have a history of more than 2000 years however once there you discover that the site they take you to has been relocated from its original site to the other side of the river and further up the mountainside as the original Fengdu was covered by the waters of the Yangtze. And that the jade sanctuary is under construction and looks like a brand new hotel/spa complex...

What is truth? What do you believe?

It's not all gloom
I have to admit that it's not all gloom, and we have done and seen so many interesting things that we need to write them down here just to remember that we did them, that it was real.

Over the last few days we spent some time in Hangzhou which is a city only 1.5 hours away from Shanghai and a truely beautiful place, mainly because of the lake and designated scenic spot in the middle. We spent some time on a tourist boat travelling to the island in the middle of the lake. It was very peaceful and beautiful. Later we explored the "ancient" Song dynasty tat-shop street and were facinated by the Traditional Chinese Medicine museum which had captions in english.

Yesterday on our way to the airport to catch our flight that would take us from Shanghai to Guilin, we boarded one of the worlds fastest maglev train and got up to a speed of 431 km/h which was the fastest either Johan or myself had ever travelled on land. The trip to the airport only took 7.5 minutes!! Very cool.

Today, in Guilin, we went to see the famous Elephant trunk hill which turned out to be a little underwhelming, though it is still well worth a visit and it had a nice park attached to it. Tomorrow we are going to do a tour of some rice paddy fields so hopefully the weather won't be too bad (it's raining at the moment) and we will get to see some real Chinese countryside.

Please forgive my negative post, and be assured that we are having a great time overall, we have met some wonderful people, travellers as well as native Chinese and know that for every negative there are several positives that turn the experience around. I know that one day I will look back at this post and smile and nod, understanding with the full picture what a fabulous and blessed time that we had.

Chilling in Shanghai

So, we have been in Shanghai chillin' in my friends apartment and watching knock off DVD's... in English... for the last few day. It's been such a treat to sit still for a few days and not to think about moving on to the next fantastic place. For all you friends out there who think that travelling is one big holiday, think again, it's hard work to keep moving on and absorbing so many great things.

Shanghai is a great place to take a break, second maybe to a beach somewhere with cocktails and beautiful sunsets... ahhh... Shanghai is a big modern city which is pretty easy for us Westerners, the easiest city that I've come across so far. It's easier to cross the road, get tickets for the underground, get cabs, order food in restaurants... We even had a steak dinner the other night, and Johan tells me that it was very good!

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel
Not much sightseeing though... yesterday we decided to venture out to the infamous Bund of Shanghai . I didn't really know too much about the Bund until I read about it in the guidebook. Apparantly the Bund is the old colonial part of Shanghai which was built up by Europeans who came to settle and do business in Shanghai about 100 years ago - so not that old and it's all down by the river. We went down to the south side of the river to get a good view of the Bund then headed towards the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel to cross the river (click the link to see my review). What a waste of 40 RMB.

Top tip: Take a cab, boat, metro, walk across the river but don't do the tunnel! All it is is a ride in a pod under the river through a really lame lightshow. That's it.

Suzhou
Today we headed out of town to Suzhou, a town about 40 minutes (fast train) out of Shanghai. It was pretty nice, it felt much smaller than most of the other cities that we've been to. We spent some time in a garden called the Humble Administrators Garden. A very odd name for a beautiful garden which is also a Unesco protected site. It was a pretty cool garden with funky rock gardens, lots of water and little pagodas. I liked it.

Afterwards we we caught a little boat and rode through the canals. Our guide realised that he couldn't speak to us and give us the usual speal so he resorted to singing to us. It was a little surreal, but lovely.

Crusing, China style

The last few days have been a real rollercoaster as we decided to cruise down the Yangtze River foregoing the posh luxury cruises that most western tourists took and instead do it the way the locals did, via a "domestic" cruise. What an experience! But I'm rushing ahead a bit, lets start at the beginning.

Chongqing
The bus ride from Emei to Chongqing took 7 hours of mad Chinese driving and honking horns. Johan swears that there is a hidden language in the beeps of the horns, one beep means "hi, I'm here", two beeps means "hi, I'm going to do something stupid like overtake you on the wrong side" and one long beep means "hey! what on earth have you just done!", and stuff like that. Seven hours is a long time to be on a bus that's never silent...

Chongqing was the port town where we catch the boat that we will be staying on for the next three nights of our trip down the river. We had been warned by the travel agent that we should take some food so we found the local Carrefour supermarket. What an adventure! They sold live fish and all sorts of creatures I'd never seen before. Among the pot noodles and other stuff, we bought four oranges for 20 RMB which turned out to be the best oranges I'd ever tasted.

The Boat
We were travelling second class which means that we were in a room for four people, the other two turned out to be a lovely older Chinese couple. Bless them, they tried to communicate but I got the impression that they never really understood that we didn't understand a word that they said. The boat was... how can I say this... a bit basic... very thin mattresses and um.. a Chinese style loo in the bathroom which did not smell all that nice.

The first full day of the cruise was very misty/foggy and we could hardly see the shoreline. Our first stop along the way was Fengdu, which was supposed to be some kind of ghost city from the Tang dynasty (618 - 907). Turns out that the real Fengdu was one of the casualties of the three gorges dam so was relocated to the other side of the river and up the mountainside. The Fengdu that was there was built in 1994 complete with a ghost ride and an "ancient" jade temple which is currently under construction.

This was a real low point. We wondered what we were doing there.


The light breaks through
That night it rained and rained, the pitter patter on the window putting us to sleep and drowning out the snores of our Chinese companions. But the next day had us up bright and early and when we went to the sun deck to eat our breakfast, the sun was shining, the sky was a bright blue and all of a sudden we could see the mountains framing the river. A beautiful sight... this was the reason why we were there, and suddenly all the other 'inconveniences' did not matter that much.. .

We took a side trip up the little three gorges, going from boat to boat and seeing the incredible gorges as the river cut through. We saw the real ancient Bo coffins hid high on the cliff face where no one should have been able to reach. We met some of the other westerners on the boat, a group of British students who were studying at a Chinese university and a lovely British couple who were travelling for 15 months. We sat in the glorious sunshine and slapped on sunscreen and worked on our tans with the cool river wind in our faces. We went to dinner with the students in the restaurant on board and they ordered for us in Chinese and we spoke English together and had a very good meal.

The last day was just a beautiful but with a slightly earlier start (6am) and we did another side trip on some dragon boats followed by an unsteady pontoon-walk on the river, a walkway up the side of a gorge filled with yet more newly constructed sights and followed by Chinese theatre. A bit much for us at 7am but the others seemed to enjoy it. We left the boat with mixed feelings, the scenery was fantastic and we were glad to have had the opportunity to be there and a little wiser about ourselves and the people who live in this vast land that we are visiting.

To Shanghai
We stayed the night in Wuhan and then flew into Shanghai this morning. We're staying with Kevin, a friend from the MBA who lives in Shanghai. He took us out for dumplings to this little gem of a place and now we're sitting in the living room, overlooking the lights of Shanghai and watching movies (in English) on DVD. It's nice to be in a home again :)

Zen moments

Just been sitting here in a Starbucks drinking a coffee (Starbucks is exactly the same here) and Johan discovered that they provide free internet as well. After the 7hour bus ride to get to Chongqing this morning and the three day "domestic" cruise down the Yangtze river that we are about to embark on, it's good to have some familiar moments to re-group, re-ground and re-zen.

But before we go, if you are ever in Chongqing, two pieces of advice.
1. If you decide to eat at 'Hot-Pot romance', beware of the spice. The "mildly spicy" hot pot contained a kings ransom of chillies. And do use the sesame oil provided and order rice (which is not on the menu)
2. Shop at Carrefour, they have bread, dairy products and most importantly ... cereal. (all of 4 different varieties). For the adventurous, they also sell live fish!

Up the mountain and back

We've been out of reach of an Internet connection over the last couple of days because we decided to get a little adventurous and climb to the top of the sacred (if you're Buddhist) Mt. Emei. Apparently there is a great view from the top especially if you catch it at sunrise - however we wouldn't know, neither will anyone on the mountain this morning, the weather was very misty so you couldn't see more than a few meters in front of you. Anyway, I'm jumping ahead a bit...

Day 1
On Tuesday morning we got up bright and early and headed from the Teddy Bear hotel where all the foreigners stay, to the local bus station. Our adventure started when the bus driver almost dropped us off at the wrong stop too far up the mountain, thankfully Johan noticed and convinced him to drive us down again and drop us off at the correct stop. All to see the fabled "Pavilion of pure music" or Nuixin Pavilion as the locals call it (picture uploaded in our picasa China album). It came with a lovely rope bridge (my favourite) and a beautiful walk along the base of the mountain. But then the stairs started...

The first part of our ascent was to get to Wannian Si, a temple at 1000 meters and have lunch there, an easy 300 m higher up the mountain, and the place where the bus driver tried to drop us off. This section is quite crowded, mainly because it is not that steep or long, and there are little shops everywhere. After a 1.5 hour walk we reached it and once we had fended of the monkeys 'guarding' the temple (read: steal food and any unattended bags from tourists) we settled down for dinner in the monastery. From the vegetarian menu we chose spicy chicken and a pork dish.... Turns out chicken was really tofu and the pork was some other unknown vegetable - the monasteries do not serve meat...

Refreshed after a good lunch we set off to the next marker, Huayan Peak, where we knew there would be a place for us to sleep. The ascent to that temple was another 800 meters, fortunately we were spurred on by a pair of porters offering to carry us up the mountain for a small fee. They kept asking me if I needed them to carry me up the mountain, they seemed quite convinced of a sale, pity they didn't know just how stubborn I can be. In hind site, I probably owe them a debt of gratitude as the stretch that the followed us on was probably the most soul-destroying stretch of steps on the mountain. We (Johan) worked out that roughly 6 steps equated to 1 metre upwards so we took to counting the steps and stopping for a break every 10m. Turns out that he wasn't far off, and the counting does help you on as well.

We got to Huayan Peak, an isolated, deserted looking old monastery where Johan had to go searching for someone to speak with. After a few minutes, we found a woman and discovered that the sun would set at 7pm (in two hours time). Put off a bit by the more-basic-than-I-signed-up-for look and feel of the monastery, and the fact that we had at least 2 hours of sunlight left to walk, we decided to press on to the next peak, the Elephant Bathing pool, where travellers who we had spoken to the night before assured us that they had electric blankets. We got there in about an hour, ate some noodles and more tofu and settled down for the night.

Day 2
The other travellers staying at the Elephant Bathing pool must be very early risers because when we went to the restaurant for breakfast at 7am they had already finished serving! Thankfully there was another Chinese guy who wanted breakfast too so he found someone to open up and provide us with some nourishment to start the day. We ate the option that was given to us which included rice porridge (which for some reason was light purple) and a couple of different types of vegetables in sauces. For 6 CNY each, who am I to complain.

Getting going again was tough, every single muscle in my legs was having serious words with me about the sanity of continuing. This time the songs we used to sing in Sunday school as a child kept me going and soon we were in the same familiar slog. We were always being passed by porters or people who live on the mountain, sometimes with what looks like quite heaving loads on their back. I didn't mind so much paying 5 CNY for a bottle of water (it's 2 CNY at the bottom). What we didn't expect to pass was a group of donkeys, fully laden, coming down the hill!

Lunchtime found us at Taizi Ping (2540m) where the buses offload the cheaters who then catch the cable car to the top of the mountain. None of that for these intrepid travellers, we are doing this the hard way. On a side note, do not eat at Taizi Ping, buy one of the ubiquitous pot noodles from someone selling them and eat that instead. Words cannot describe how bad lunch was. Enough said.

The final push was to Woyun and the Golden Summit. To tell you the truth, the last bit went by in a bit of a blur of steps, steps and more steps. I've just been reading through this post and I don't think that it really conveys to you quite how many steps there were. Using our handy 6 steps per metre, I calculate that we climbed over 14,000 steps going up! That's the equivalent of over 700 floors or climbing to the top of the gherkin 17 times! And it doesn't include all the bits where you go down for 100m then you have to re-climb those metres later on.

The summit was a treat. Unlike the temple in Japan where you climbed and climbed and when you got to the top you just found another shrine that looked just like every other shrine, here your reward for reaching the top is a 10-headed statue-thing all in gold and an accompanying gold and silver temple. Lots of incense and even some monks finishing their pilgrimage here. Even though it was cloudy when we got there, and getting cloudier by the minute, nothing could take away the sense of achievement of reaching the top!

The original plan was to stay the night and watch the sun rise the next day however I had picked up a bit of a chill and the call of a warm shower and clean sheets was too strong so we caught the bus back to the Teddy Bear hotel and checked ourselves in for an extra night. So here we are, back at the hotel, warm, clean, fed and looking forward to our 7 hour bus ride to Chongqing tomorrow to hopefully hook up with a boat to take us down the Yantze river. We might be out of touch for a few more days as I doubt the boat will have internet! We do have a flight booked to Shanghai for next Tuesday so we will definately touch base then!