Northern China - A Beast of a Blog - Part I
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2008
1
25
51
Trip End
Ongoing
Xi'an,
Shaanxi,
China
Thursday, October 2, 2008
So.... we started our time in China in Beijing and the first hurdle we had to overcome was getting the bus from the airport to the hostel we booked before we left Japan... We managed to find the right bus without too many problems, but working out where to get off wasn't so easy... the driver stopped and we thought we heard the name of our stop, so we got up, but before we could get to the door, it was closed and we were moving again... so we thought, OK, that couldn't have been it then... But we were wrong... fortunately the traffic in Beijing is horrendous, so we hadn't gone too far by the time we asked the driver if we should have got off... After that it was fairly straight forward and we found the hostel pretty easily, although it was a pretty sticky and uncomfortable walk with our backpacks on... I was absolutely, positively exhausted by the time we got there, so I pretty much had a bite to eat and went to sleep at about 5pm... not to wake up again until 7 the next morning... and it did me the world of good!!
Me at Tianenmen Square
We set out pretty early and headed straight for Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City (also known as the Imperial Palace). We didn't realise it until we got to China, but there was a public holiday that means that every man and his dog is out and about and travelling around the country. The Square wasn't as big as I was expecting... you kind of go through a little tunnel under a gigantic Mao portrait and then into the square and then go through to the Forbidden City from there... It is made up of lots of palaces and we got audio guides to tell us about everything we were seeing... although mine was a bit stubborn and didn't always work... 
Card games at the Temple of Heaven
When we came out we got a bus to go to the Temple of Heaven, which we just walked around... there were lots of people playing what looked like a very complicated card game, and a Chinese version of Haki-sac, which has a feather attached to it, making it glide down onto your foot... As we were leaving the palace, we crossed over the road to have a look at the Pearl Market... it sells a lot more than pearls though - designer everything... fake, obviously, but still, pretty good copies... They will start at prices like 250 Yuan, and drop to less than a hundred or even lower, so bartering skills really help here! We didn't buy anything, but were pretty tempted by the I-phones they were selling for about £40... not much use to travellers though!!
Me jumping outside the Bird's Nest, Beijing
The next day we were going to go another palace and lake, but instead hopped on a tourist bus to the Olympic Park. Originally the bus we got on was going in the wrong direction, and it took a lot of asking and gesturing to work that out... For some reason, people don't want to point or play our games of Charades, so we were getting a bit frustrated when the bus conductor just kept repeating the same thing in Chinese... it must be what our European cousins experience when British people visit their country and repeat themselves in English louder and expect them to get it somehow... haha... Dispite asking at the hostel for directions, they failed to mention that you needed a ticket to get in there... but luckily the tickets are free, so the people on the gate let us in anyway... they said that it's difficult for foreigners to come and visit, so they would make an acception, which was very nice!! We walked up and had a look at the bird's nest and the cube and a few other buildings, and spent quite a bit of time posing for silly photos, and then made our way back to the bus stop. 
The Great Wall
The next day we got up and got onto a tour bus at 6am, to take us the a hiking spot on the Great Wall of China... I think we chose wisely, because I've heard people say that it was really crowded on the wall, but we barely saw anyone... it was a little bit of a challenging walk, but nowhere near as hard as I had expected... just a lot of up and down, up and down... The section that we went to is the best preserved part, so we were really lucky... it's immense... You try to see if you can spot an end to the wall, but it just keeps going into the distance as far as you can see... When we got to the end of the hike, there was a zip wire going over a damn... It looked pretty scary from the approach, but when I got up there, it was actually really tame, but still awesome!! 
Me on the flying fox! Great Wall
The next day we had a mini-sleep in and then decided to sort out our transport out of Beijing. Our plan had been to head to Nanjing or Jinan... unfortunately that just wasn't meant to be... it was a few days before the start of China's main national holiday and every train from Beijing to pretty much anyway was fully booked... so we asked about every possibility and finally decided to try and get a bus from Beijing to either Nanjing or Shanghai, as travel further south was said to be easier... 
The Great Wall of China
So we hopped in a taxi to the bus station and asked about tickets... it took three different ticket office staff, because each time they were trying to find someone who could speak that little bit more English, to explain to us that the bus to Nanjing didn't actually stop in the town, but on the outskirts, and that getting to town would then be expensive... we were very grateful for the warning - in South America, they would have just sold you the ticket and let you figure it out yourself... as was the case when we arrived in La Paz! So the last resort was to take an overnight bus to Shanghai, for which we bought a ticket... it was much more expensive than a sleeper train, but we were already way over the amount of time we had planned for Beijing, so we went for it... 
Tom on the flying fox, Great Wall
After that we decided to go and check out the clothing market nearby... It was full of women trying to see anything and everything, much like the pearl market, but with more clothes... if you decided you didn't want something, or bartered hard you got the sad eyes, and one woman even held onto my wrist and refused to let go when I said I didn't want the trousers she was selling... I did, however, end up buying a nice pair of linen trousers, which I am proud to say, I hemmed myself, (oh come on, you knew they'd be too long for me) and threw away my long-suffering jeans, which by now, if you caught the wrong angle, were displaying my underwear from the back... Good riddance!! 
Dumpling party!
When we got back to the hostel, we sat in the cafe area and were given dough and filling to make our own dumplings - dumpling party!! This turned into a nice group event, which in turn, lead to us deciding to explore the nightlife of Sanlitun... I seem to remember this ending with me and Richard (who I now call stalker-boy ;) :p ) breaking into a circle of hardcore dancing art students, (one of whom SERIOUSLY resembled Gok Wan) and busting some moves with the best of them... 
People praying outswide the Lama Temple
The next day we had a wee bit of a lie in, and went with Gemma and Christian, a couple we met the day before, to visit the Lama Temple, or Yonghe Temple, which is a Tibetan Buddhist monestary and school... There are a number of buildings there, and you can go from each one to the next in an hour or two... Outside we were confused about the number of shops dedicated to the sale of gigantic joss sticks, but once we got in it made much more sense, as there were a lot of people burning them to purify the air, and praying... Inside one of the buildings is a seriously impressive statue of the Maitreya Buddha, which is carved from a single piece of White Sandalwood and is over 18m tall above ground and 8m below... I got told off in here, because it was the only building I didn't see a 'no photos' sign, and since it was in the Guinness Book of Records, I thought it would be OK... I say told off... A Buddhist monk just gently raised his hand in front of my camera... I just felt terrible for thinking it was OK... Bad, bad Zoe... :( 
The Red Theatre, Beijing
After that we grabbed a bite to eat and a group of us from our hostel headed to watch a Kungfu show at the Red Theatre... The show was called 'The Legend of Kungfu' and is performed by Shaolin Monks. It was absolutely amazing... most of the performers appearing to be made from rubber... and there was a story running along side all the action in both English and Mandarin, although the Mandarin was just subtitles... 
Tom at the hostel in Beijing
The next day we decided to have a nice lie in to prepare for thebus journey ahead... We arrived at the bus station in plenty of time, and checked in to the waiting room... but the whole place was absolute chaos... We were told to go to stand 5... so we did... but there was no sign to show which bus was going where... even in Mandarin (we had the Chinese for Shanghai memorised!). So we tried to go through gate 5 and were pointed towards gate 6... then tried there and were sent to gate 5... then a nice man who spoke a few works of English and who looked very concerned that we might miss our bus, came and told us to go to number 4... this went on until we finally just barged our way through to a bus and found the right one to get on... the nice, helpful English-speaker already sitting in his seat on the same bus!! Shortly after getting on, there was some kind of announcement at the front of the bus and everyone got off... not knowing what was going on, Tom and I just hopped off and followed, grabbing our bags on the way... but the bus we got too didn't seem to have anything in the hold, so we were a bit dubious about loading our bags on... then in front of the bus an argument was breaking out and we just didn't have a clue what was going on... one guy who had been on the first bus put his bags on, so we decided to follow suit... we were then ushered past the arguing and onto the bus... We sat there for an hour and a half, listening to the arguing at the front getting more and more heated, people on the bus sometimes joining in, and at other times rushing to the front to see what was going on... then the police turned up and the bus started to pull out of the station, around 3 hours after we got to the bus station!! The only information we could get out of anyone was that there was a disagreement between the bus owner and a passenger... so I guess we'll never know about that one!! On the plus side, we a man then came around and gave everyone on the bus 60 Yuan compensation for the delay (about a fiver).
Randoms who wanted a photo with Tom
After that the journey was fairly uneventful, apart from a dodgy night's sleep and the family of cockroaches that was living in the window seals near Tom's head, and we arrived in Shanghai nice and early in the morning... Unfortunately, we had absolutely no idea where we were... but using a combination of charades, train noises, and the sight of some kind of train track, we found our way to a metro station pretty quickly, and then on to the hostel we booked up in Shanghai... we didn't stick around to long though... a quick shower and change of clothes and then back onto the metro to check out the Bund, which is the name for the embankment area of the city, and is where the famous images of the Shanghai sky line come from... Unfortunately for us, due to the national holiday, which was now in full swing, there were literally (and I really do mean, literally) about a million people there... We could barely get from one side of the road to another... Our plan was to go over to all the famous buildings, up the Jinmao tower and have a drink near the top... but the police had cordoned off the entire road and we couldn't get anywhere near... To our great amusement though, we had two separate groups of people asking if they could have their picture taken with Tom, followed by one guy on the metro trying to slyly take one without us noticing... hahaha...Feeling slightly defeated we decided to get something to eat and found... dun, dun, duuuuuuun.... A VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT!! The first one I'd seen in well over a month... It had every single Chinese meal you can think of, made with tofu and quorn and God knows what else, to look and taste exactly like the meat versions... it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I leaped on the chance to have a full on meal and I enjoyed every bite of it :) :) We then started walking back to the metro, only to find that the subway station we came from had been closed, probably due to the growing crowds... so we walked away from the Bund towards the next station on the line and managed to get on there... then that night was laundry night... we sat in the bar and watched a slightly dodgy copy of the Hulk while the clothes washed and dried and organised train tickets to Xi'An... our next destination...
Me at the Bund - Jinmao tower, Shanghai
The next day we went to the Bund fairly early, hoping that even if we missed out on the view from the tower at night, we could at least have a coffee and SEE it... but it wasn't to be... when we got there there was a queue 100m long to go up the tower, and we didn't have the time of the patience to wait in it... so once again, slightly defeated, we headed back to the metro... It's a real shame, because due to the crowding and our inability to do anything we didn't actually see much of Shanghai at all, and therefore don't have much of an opinion on it... With a little bit of extra time on our hands, we explored the area around our hostel a little bit and bought some supplies to have a picnic on the 14 hour train to Xi'An and then headed to the train station. We have found that people working at hostels are really good at giving you information on things, but leaving out key facts... such as directions to train stations that end with, get off the metro at this stop... only to find that the metro and train station are about a mile apart with absolutely no signs... By the time we got to the station we were seriously hot and bothered and I was really struggling to juggle my day bag, train tickets, luggage and food bag... But we managed to get through the door and through the security check... Every time you travel in China, on metros, buses or trains, your bag goes through a scanner, just like at the airport...
Reading on the train - hard sleeper
This time it was really easy to see where we were supposed to be going and we made our way up to the waiting area... the moment I put my bag down I knew... I didn't have my purse... and I knew exactly where I had lost it... it wasn't in my bag and it wasn't in my pocket... All the bag juggling at the security check... I threw everything on the floor and shouted at Tom to wait with my stuff and double check my day bag... trying not to panic, I panicked my way through the busy station, taking the same path I had on the way there and FLEW down the stairs to the security check area, where a security lady with a very knowing expression on her face, was holding my wallet... I shouted, 'Oh my God!... Shishye! Shishye! Thank you SO much!!' and, completely forgetting where I was, threw my arms around her to hug her... to which she looked both confused and embarassed... ah well, at least she got that I was grateful.. and talk about lucky! Everything was still in there, and I ran back up to see Tom, also looking very worried. We then boarded our train and got comfortable in our hard sleeper... A hard sleeper is where the whole train carriage is split up into blocks, each one with 6 beds, two sets of bunks that go three high on each side. Tom and I managed to get the two lower bunks opposite each other, which was pretty handy!! We didn't do too much... just played cards, lay down and read and ate the snacks we brought with us... they turned all the lights off at about 10pm, which meant a fairly early night and when we worke up early the next morning we were very close to arriving in Xi'An...
I'm going to leave this blog there and continue from Xi'An onwards in the next one... There are LOADS more pictures are up on the flickr pages... and more will follow soon!!
