China (part 2 - Beijing)

After a great morning at the Terracotta Warriors, our lovely guide, gorgeous George, accompanied the Beijing 5 (Aoife, Jenn, Mel, Ben and I) off to the train station for our glamorous soft sleeper train off to (you've guessed it) Beijing.  This was a bit of a side trip, but it was all organised for us which made it really easy.

The girls' luxury cabin aboard the sleeper train

Slippers!

Gosh we're civilised with our glasses of red wine

We arrived fairly early the next morning, but had an epic 1 1/2 hour wait in a very bargy queue to get a taxi up to our hotel.  After a quick wash and feed we were straight out on the subway (just as clean and cheap and safe and easy as the Shanghai one) to the Forbidden City.  Other than the fact it was completely packed and there was rubbish EVERYWHERE (what is it with China and making a mess of national monuments) it was an amazing place.

Aoife, Jenn, Mel and Me doing our best Chinese poses at the Forbidden City,
accessorised with audio guides

Where's Ben?

Ben, Jenn, Me, Mel

Me, Aoife, Jenn, Ben

The next day was similarly exhausting as we decided to save money and get a bit adventurous and join a government tour (rather than hotel or tourist tour) out to the classic section of the Great Wall, and the Ding Ling tombs.  Much to the bemusement of all the other people on the bus (all Chinese) we bought tickets and plonked ourselves in the back row for our little adventure.  The first stop was rather inauspicious, at a waxworks with models of all 16 Qing dynasty emperors or something equally thrilling.  We declined to go in, and the next stop was much better, at the Ding Ling tombs which were pretty cool.

I swear Chinese people have more photos of us than we have of them. We were quite the tourist attraction.
This was waiting outside the waxworks.

Trying to blend in with the Chinese crowd, Ding Ling tombs

Inside the Ding Ling tombs

Mel, Jenn, Aoife, Ben and me at the Ding Ling tombs

Ding Ling tombs

From there we went for a fantastic included lunch, where the poor Chinese people on our table looked at us in horror (not least because Aoife had her chopsticks round the wrong way!)

Aoife, Mel, Me, Jenn and Ben with our lovely food

After the destruction

From there it was finally on to the Great Wall at Badaling.  We were dumped in the car park in the rain and then informed that we had to buy a cable car ticket up to the top.  A long queue in the rain (with a crazy chinese woman inserting herself under Mel's umbrella) and we were off to the top.  The wall was completely heaving, it was a bit rainy and the visibility was terrible, but it was really nice to see the place for real.

More Chinese getting their photo taken with us - this little kid was just shoved in!

With the lovely Cinderella

Out on the town

At the Irish bar

You can take the Irish out of Ireland.....

The next day was a bit of a wander round; Tiananmen square, the Foreign Legation area, a wee bit of shopping (sorry Ben!) and then off to the Olympic park.

Celebrating 90 years of communism.
I have to say that the place didn't seem too communist - lots of wealth kicking about.

Long lines to see Chairman Mao.  We didn't bother.

Bird's nest stadium

Water park

Inside the Olympic stadium there were waxworks of all IOC chairmen over the years.
It was bloody hilarious.  I thought this one looked a bit like Cathal!

Final day in Beijing and we were absolutely knackered!  Aoife and I went off to a temple and then to a temple of shopping and then we all headed off for a (very delayed) flight back to the truck which was now parked up in Chengdu.

Lama temple

Lama temple

Lama temple

Lama temple

Fake flowers for sale outside the temple

Silliness in the mall

China (part 1)

China: 29th June 2011 to 28th July 2011

Total days travelled: 103

We crossed into China via the Torugart Pass where it was freezing cold and snowing a ton, waited a wee while for our fantastic and lovely guide George to turn up and then crossed over fairly painlessly into China.  How very exciting!  


I absolutely adored China.  It honestly wasn't on my list of countries that I most wanted to go to, and I was a bit worried that it would be all a bit too mental, and I'd heard horror stories about the loos/gutters which didn't fill me with joy.  But the place was fab.  Yes, it was completely manic and the traffic was bonkers and there were people everywhere, but the toilets were (mostly) fine, the people lovely, the food fantastic etc.  Loved it!


Our first city was Kashgar/Kashi in the far West of the country.  There's not necessarily a whole lot to do there, but it was really interesting as it didn't really feel like we'd left the Stans.  There were a few classically Chinese looking (ie Han Chinese) people around, but most people were Uighur who are Turkic peoples and Muslim.  There's really quite a lot of ethnic tension, and talk of the region breaking away from China (hence the recent flooding of the area with Han Chinese) and indeed, a little while after we left, there was a mass stabbing incident which seems to be related to these tensions.

Market in Kashgar

Yum, boiled goat/sheep heads for tea

This was actually yum, fried fish.
Aoife asked (in Chinese) what it was, and the guy answered (in Chinese) "fish" which was classic!

Goat/sheep feet?

Noodles

Market in Kashgar

I was only there a little while though, spending most of my time booking flights and trying to rustle up enough money in cold hard cash to pay for them, before taking off on my own to Shanghai.  I really needed a wee break away from the truck, it seemed a shame to miss one of the major cities in China, and really, all I was missing was a long hot drive across the desert.  I did make it out to a lovely ramshackle mausoleum and to the main mosque in town though which was nice.

Mausoleum in Kashgar

Graveyard in Kashgar

So, off I flew to the fantabulous Shanghai.  I wasn't the most organised and had completely failed to print out my hostel address in Chinese for the taxi driver the other end, but a lovely stewardess wrote it out for me in my book so all was well. 


Shanghai has now been added to the list of cities I would/could live in.  It's really really lovely.  There's a (big, brown, slow) river running through town with the colonial Bund (rhymes with fund) on one side and the flashy, skyscraper zone of Pudong on the other side.  There are also heaps of temples and gardens and museums and shopping (it was so nice to get some new clothes after 3 months on the truck!) and the metro system is 30p a go and flash and organised and clean and safe.  I could go on.... but I'll just post a bunch of photos instead.

Spot the spelling mistake on a frieze on a newspaper office on the Bund

Me at the Bund

Pudong area, taken from the Bund

The street near my hostel.  They're a bit keen on scooters.

Old street with houses in the Shikumen style

Site of the first meeting of the Communist Party of China

Jade Buddha temple

Incense

Incense

Jing'an temple

Jing'an temple with skyscrapers

East Nanjing Road, Beijing

Pudong

The Bund

Coi

Pudong

Yuyuan Gardens

So, after a great trip out to Shanghai, eating great food, meeting lovely people in a really great hostel, it was time for a ridiculously early flight to Dunhuang where I was assured the truck would have reached after my few days off.  Indeed the truck did make it there, albeit a few hours after me, and it was really quite nice to be reunited with my fellow Calypsoites.

The following morning we were up and about for a wee tour round the Mogao Caves, home of the 2nd largest buddha in the world (after the one at Leshan (see later), but previously the 3rd largest buddha after the Taliban blew some up) and some amazing cave paintings.  We weren't allowed to take photos, so follow this link if you want to know more.

The next day was another cracker. We had a bit of a late start for a couple of reasons, then drove all day to the westernmost outpost of the Great Wall.  We quickly set up camp (knowing it was probably our last night under canvas), scoffed a meal, and set off for a walk up the wall.  We were up there with a few beers, some nudity (CJ being culturally inappropriate again!!) and human excrement (there's something about the Chinese that makes them pee and poo on their national monuments, it's odd) for a lovely sunset.

My cunning plan to look tanned - stand next to Irish people!

However, when we got back down again we had been joined by some local police, who quite politely were asking us to move on.  After a bit of a slow pack (to show willing while CJ tried to talk them around), some not so local police, dressed all in black and carrying hitting sticks, appeared.  They were a bit less chilled so we packed a little quicker and were given an escort into town.  CJ managed to bargain down the room price in a 4 star hotel and off we popped for a night in beds (harder than our camping mats, but again, this seemed to be normal in China), complete with free dressing gowns, and a selection of prostitutes in the hallways.  All very odd!

The following day we stopped at the Jiayaguan fortress which was pretty amazing (though pretty much completely rebuilt) and then on to Zhangye for the night.

Detail from the fort

The following day was another driving day, this time to Wuwei.

Cute little girl in restaurant in Wuwei

Musicians in the square in Wuwei

Luoshisi Pagoda, Wuwei

Confucian temple, Wuwei

From there it was a fair bit of driving on slow roads to Lanzhou and then on to Xi'an for a trip out to the Terracotta Warriors.  I'd seen some of them in Edinburgh as a kid and then the recent exhibition at the British Museum (touted as the first visit to the UK, but they were def in Edin years ago!), and these exhibitions were great and allowed you to see some of the more special examples up close, but nothing quite prepares you for the scale of the pits that contain all the restored and yet-to-be-restored warriors.  

Anyway, that seems to me to be quite enough blogging for just now.  I'll be back with more China at some point, and who knows, one day I might even catch up (unlikely as I've still got Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia to write and am in Thailand now!)