China

YANGSHUO

We crossed the border successfully and made our way to Guangzhou where we had to swap trains to eventually get us to Guilin, where an hour and a half bus journey would arrive us at our destination; Yangshuo. We had booked ahead our accommodation in Yangshuo and informed our host (Ken) our estimated time of arrival (ETA-you can take the man out of the ambulance service but...) of 1700hrs.  After discovering the trains were not every ten minutes and the journey times were more than we had researched, we arrived at 2100 to Kens disappointment as he had invited friends over and prepared us a welcome meal of lobster. The meal hadn't gone to waste and we made up for it by drinking to much beer and playing games until 0200. To our surprise, although the group spoke little English, we managed to grasp the concept of a complicated Chinese dice game, which we loved. Ken was great, we stayed here for 5 nights and he made dinner for us on a few nights whilst we provided the cold, local beer; 30 cans for £10.08!! 

Yangshuo is stunningly beautiful; yet we had not even began to explore it! We walked to the local and famous street (West Street/Xi Jie) where numerous cafés, restaurants and shops selling souvenirs lined the narrow path. At the end, ran the Li River, fast flowing, whilst having a backdrop of lush limestone peaks poking up behind the landscape. 

Cormorant fishing is still practiced in this area and we were lucky enough to meet a cormorant fishermen whilst walking down the Li river. 

Whilst here, we enrolled onto a cookery class in a local restaurant, our class consisted of Rosie and I plus an American couple. Firstly, a trip to the local market to buy produce to cook with. This was an eye-opener and not for the faint hearted; after walking through the vegetable half and our chef explaining the different veg, she gave us the opportunity to wait or return before entering the meat section. We, being open-minded people, opted to venture forward, having previously read of the Chinese's love for controversial meats. It was fairly tame at first with small cages of overheating ducks, chickens and rabbits in, then to the 'hardcore' quarter where tens of kittens and cats were crammed into tiny cages and puppies and dogs into not much bigger ones, with dog meat hanging, ready to be purchased. This was difficult to witness and we hastened our steps to exit back to the veg section and consequently back to the kitchen ready to cook. 

Luckily, we didn't ponder too much on what we had seen and dressed in our obligatory apron and hat.

It was amazing, we followed our chefs instructions on preparation of the meat and vegetables and then how to cook it; we were rewarded by allowing to eat this banquet as the finale, with a cold beer of course! 

Following our stay at Kens guesthouse, we had already booked into the 'Giggling Tree'. A Dutch ran hotel of just 20 rooms in a converted barn, which overlooked picturesque rice paddy fields with the limestone peaks in the background; it was completely perfect, peaceful and exactly what Rosie and I were waiting for! 

A 'must do' whilst staying in Yangshuo is to float on the Yulong River, aboard a bamboo raft. So we hired a tandem bike for the day, biked 2 hours to 'Dragon Bridge', which is over 600 years old and embarked onto our raft. 

After a 2 hour trip over small rapids on the river, we were reunited with our bike and off we rode home, via a local café to meet Ken, it was owned by his friend who had restored an old house into a beautiful place for coffee and a great waffle! 

It was an amazing day and such a great way to see local, tiny villages.  We rode through fish farms, rice paddy fields and ancient villages, a beautiful and perfect day which we would never had done had we not got on our tandem! This was the start of the next few days on our bikes...

During one of our bike rides we bought some local honey from this lovely lady and her happy grandson..

The next day we cycled to a cave around an hour away, we weren't to excited by seeing the cave (we've all been in caves before) but this one had a natural mud bath and hot spring. We patiently followed the stalactite tour and then to our delight we were the only ones who wanted to go in the mud bath, so we had it to ourselves! We felt like kids splashing around floating in the mud before relaxing in the hot spring. 

The next few days were spent exploring, whilst our evenings were relaxing and drinking local beer, Yanhshuo was a beautiful place that we will miss. 

Now off to catch a flight to Beijing...

BEIJING

We flew to Beijing, also known as Peking, and found our apartment in a 'community' full of tower blocks. It seems the majority of the Chinese population live in this type of housing due to overpopulation and crowding.  Our host drove us around to show us the local area for shops etcetera. We dumped our bags in the apartment and went to explore locally; a part of Beijing that rarely saw western people walking their streets. It felt a bit like being back in India with people staring at us, the pavements and roads unkempt and the noise of car horns beeping away. 

We found a restaurant that was on the side of the road where you choose meat and vegetables and cook them yourself on a griddle-style pan with a fire underneath; we've realised by now that we like cooking our own food! Amongst the usual pig lung and cow intestine we managed to decipher, from pictures, a meat which looked edible and some veg we recognised. Luckily for us, our gamble paid off and it was delicious. We walked back to our apartment through communal outside areas where local residents were dancing, singing and practising tai chi. 

The big day: we were going back to the airport to meet Rosie's parents, Lynette (a.k.a: Todge) and Steve! We were equally as excited to see them, it had been 2 and a half months and Rosie was beside herself with excitement! After a gruelling 2 hours waiting, they appeared from their arrival gate; it was a lovely reunion. We spent the day planning our next week in Beijing and our itinerary for the upcoming 2 weeks we would be spending with Steve and Todge. 

It goes without saying that when you travel around China, you have to visit certain historic and famous monuments, buildings and sites. We firstly visited The Forbidden City, so called because it was off limits to the public for 500 years. It is the largest and best-preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China. It was home to two dynasties of Emperors, the Ming and the Qing, who didn't leave the city walls unless absolutely necessary. In former times, uninvited admission was instant execution but luckily for us it cost just ¥40 (£4 roughly). Containing 980 buildings, we explored just a few and spent a searing hot day there.

Next we visited Tiananmen Square, it is the worlds largest public square and can unbelievably hold one million people! To the south of the square lays Chairman Mao's memorial hall and to the north you'll find the Forbidden City. Mao conceived the square to show the power and enormity of the communist party, in 1989 it was made globally famous by army tanks and soldiers forcing pro-democracy demonstrators out of the square where a massacre ensued. The Chinese government condemned the protests as a 'counter-revolutionary riot', and has prohibited all forms of discussion or remembrance of the events since. Because of the lack of information from China, many aspects of the events remain unknown or unconfirmed. Estimates of the death toll range from a few hundred to a few thousand. Today security remains high at Tiananmen square with many soldiers and undercover police. 

We were all surprised at the lack of western tourists in China, we could count on one hand the amount of western people we saw in our months stay. The Chinese people were fascinated with us and especially liked asking Steve to join their family photos, possibly for their walls back home? I think they thought he was someone famous... Jack Nicholson perhaps?

Mao Tse-tung (Chairman Mao) was the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's Cultural Revolution. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution were ill-conceived and had disastrous consequences, but many of his goals, including stressing China's self-reliance, were generally commendable.

It was too late in the day to visit Chairman Moa's mausoleum so we had to leave the apartment at 0600 to get there for 0700 (when it opens) as it closes at 1100; queues even at that ungodly hour were phenomenal. Still, it took us just two hours to get to see the honoured man, which entailed an ushered and slow walk past him as he lay in his glass coffin. We learned that the colour of his face was too grey so instead they have replaced the lighting with a bright orange bulb, which to us, made him look ridiculous; even still, an amazing site to see. Chairman Mao died in September 1976 and the mausoleum was constructed soon after. His mummified corpse lies in a crystal cabinet, draped in an unfashionable red flag emblazoned with the famous hammer and sickle.

The Summer Palace in Beijing is a beautiful area of lakes, gardens and palaces, built for the emperor to retreat from the city heat during the summer. We spent a day visiting and caught a boat ride around the traditional and stunning buildings.  

During our visit we passed two gentlemen flying kites, not just your average kite, these flew miles and I mean many miles into the distance, so far we struggled to spot them. 

The next day we strolled around the city whilst visiting Hutong's, temples and drum towers, in conjunction with stopping for numerous tea/coffee/food/ice cream breaks. A Hutong is a traditional alley where people live and share communal toilets, full of tiny houses and courtyards with whitewashed walls, with traditional roof tiles and curved corners to finish. 

The largest drum in the tower...

Todge had a job before leaving the UK, to find an awesome Peking Duck restaurant, so one evening, we decided was the night. It was incredible and unsurprisingly, was filled with only locals, no tourists diners were eating. The language barrier in Beijing was surprisingly difficult.  We presumed that it would be easier to communicate than in Yangshuo but we were wrong.  The rest of China was survived by communicating through pictures, numbers on calculators and miming from things such as duck to diarrhoea (ask Rosie if you want to see that one).  We managed to get our order of duck and beer across to the waitress and successfully we were rewarded with the nicest of ducks! 

A 'wonder' on my bucket list, is the Great Wall of China (Chángchéng) or as Rosie likes to refer to it as, the Berlin Wall? She was so excited she got mixed up!

The original wall was started around 2000 years ago during the Qin dynasty when the Emperor Qin Shi Huang requested the construction of walls to keep out marauding nomads. An estimated 180 million cubic metres of rammed earth was used to form the core of the original wall and legend has it that one of the building materials used was bones of deceased workers. 

The wall apparently never did perform its function as an impenetrable line of defence. It did however work very well as a 'highway' to transport goods and people across the mountainous terrain. It's towers were used as beacons to transmit news of enemy movements back to the capital by using smoke signals generated by burning wolves dung.

On our last day in Beijing our host, Aming, drove us the hour and a half to Mùtiányù, a section of the wall that has a cable car ascending and more excitingly, a toboggan to go back down! 

The Great Wall, similarly to the Taj Mahal, was mesmerising and jaw dropping. The Mùtiányù section of the wall is 3km long and has 26 watchtowers and is truly breathtaking to see it snaking off into the distance as far as the eye can see. It was another scorching hot day so we roasted ourselves walking on the Great Wall, it was worth every minute!

Rosie and I on the Great Wall...

XI'AN

Next stop: Xi'an. We embarked on a 5 hour express train ride from Beijing to Xi'an, the train travels at 309km/h, Steve was in his element and even created a painting masterpiece en route. We were met at exit D of 'Chang Le Po' metro station by our next host, with limited English she guided us to her apartment which again, was a 'community' of tower blocks. Her apartment was beautiful, decorated with traditional Chinese furniture, alongside modern, giving a lovely feel and comfort to staying there.  

The reason travellers visit Xi'an from all corners of the globe is to see the Army of Terracotta Warriors. It isn't just Xi'an's premier site but one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world. This subterranean life-size army of thousands has stood guard over the soul of Qin Shi Huang.  It is thought that he was either terrified of the vanquished spirits awaiting him in the afterlife, or, as most archaeologists believe, he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life. 

The discovery of the army, came about in 1974 when peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation. Each warrior is individual and no two faces are the same, the level of detail is extraordinary: the expressions, hairstyles, armour and even the tread on the footwear are all unique. We managed to find the bus station and the number 306 bus which took us to the Warriors.  Prior to visiting I wasn't aware or had much knowledge of the Terracotta Warriors and what they meant; but it was amazing and a highlight of China for me.

Steve and I getting up close and personal to a Warrior replica.. 

Xi'an city was lovely and picturesque to walk around, we visited the very busy Muslim Quarter which is a market surrounded by a large Muslim population. 

We ate delicious octopus 'lollies' and visited the Mosque which was completely different to what Rosie and I had visited in India, the buildings were more of a temple structure, a tranquil and peaceful place to be in a busy city.

We saw hand made candy..

Xi'an's Mosque..

We came across locals selling kites on the street and had them trailing off into the sky..

HUANGSHAN

A domestic flight was our following mode of transport from Xi'an to Hangzhou and then a 3 hour (unbeknown to us) journey by road to Tunxi or now called Huangshan. Our flight was delayed by 3 hours plus an hour sitting on the plane, so after a long and complicated journey we were finally met by Ben, our next host, at the roadside as the hotel was only accessible by foot. 

To our delight, this was the beautiful old street we were staying on...

We walked down lantern lit walkways, lined with stalls and shops either side to a tiny alley to our boutique hotel. A traditional Chinese building, completely furnished as if it was over 500 years old, it was like going back in time. A beautiful open courtyard with original wooden pillars and flooring leading to our bedrooms; all the furniture and beds were original and Rosie had her own 'empress' bed.

Near to our hotel we visited an old ink factory, it's famous regionally for still producing ink blocks in the traditional way. The ink blocks are ground with water by the artist to create traditional Chinese paintings. Each block is painstakingly hand painted with gold ink in beautiful designs. 

Whilst in Tunxi, we travelled to local, historic villages. One called Hóngcūn which is a Unesco World Heritage Site; a charming and unhurried portrait of bridges, lake and riverside views, narrow alleys and traditional halls. 

On another day we climbed a mountain called Qíyún Shān; the lush, reddish sandstone mountain provides a home to the temples and the monks who tend to them. We trekked an hour to ascend to the top which gave us some stupendous scenery and a big sense of achievement, especially given the humidity, which was nearly as humid as when we walked across Lamma Island in Hong Kong. 

The locals in Tunxi were very welcoming and friendly people, they wanted to practice their English and chat to us when they could, it made for a memorable and enjoyable stay!

We ate at a wonderful restaurant on our last night where we ordered too much food, amongst which, unbeknown to me, I picked a tripe dish which was very good indeed. We reminisced on the last two weeks and shared our best memories to the next day where we sadly and reluctantly parted ways, Steve and Todge travelled north on a 5 hour train journey to Beijing and us, a 7 hour journey south to Guangzhou where we fly to Cambodia for our next country of adventure!