The Long Trip Back Home, day XXIX-LI: China to Hong Kong
Last time I updated I had just arrived into China, on the last leg of the Trans-Mongolian Railway, crossing the border from Mongolia earlier that morning, and finally pulling into Beijing Train Station in the capital's centre.
After an extended disembarkation, strapping rucksacks and backpacks to ourselves again and shuffling out to the platform, we met our last tour guide Snow on the platform, and stepped into the bewildering stream of people out into the front of the station, into the writhing throng of people standing for other arrivals outside. We immediately attracted attention: 10 Western backpackers slowly shuffling out looking for the nearby bus parking lot was apparently different enough for the locals to grab cameraphones and immediately start taking photos - without permission - as we went by, some of us still half-asleep. It was something we'd have to reluctantly get used to.
Once folded into another mini-bus, we plunged head-long into the usual chronic Beijing traffic. As hectic and undisciplined as I thought Mongolian traffic was, I learned new levels of recklessness on the capital's roads: pretty much if you had a clear path, you took it, regardless of what traffic lights or even pedestrian crossings said otherwise. That and the sheer number of vehicles on Beijing's roads far outdid any other European peak-hour traffic jam I'd ever sat in before, rather reminiscent of African traffic rules (keep walking across the road and never stop!). It was something else I'd have to get used to: while in the capital for just under a week most of us clocked up an impressive number of near-misses just attempting to cross the road with a green light.
We eventually arrived in our hotel in the Xicheng district, in the inner circle of the capital, about 20min walk to Jingshan Park, I learned later. I was given a private room again thankfully, and thankfully had a quick shower to wash the train journey off, before reassembling downstairs. The official tour ended on Sunday morning: as it was already Friday afternoon, we had only 1.5 days in the capital before most of us flew home (myself and one or two others excluded, who were picking up other trips to start in Beijing in the next few days). The group predictably split: those with a limited amount of time on their hands immediately went off to visit the Forbidden City, while the rest of us enjoyed a local Beijing local bus ride to Jingshan Park - the highest hill just north to the Forbidden City in the centre of the city - and spent the afternoon there, walking up the hill for an impressive view southwards over the former Imperial palace. It was also a saddening view of the city's ever-increasing pollution issue: despite the sunny forecast, the sky had a gray haze over it which I later recognised as smog, shrouding the city and severely curtailing any aerial view over it (I could not see the buildings to the east and west of the palace walls, for example, further than 200m, before they disappeared in the chemical haze). Some of us developed annoying coughs or slightly red eyes trying to adjust to the extra pollution levels in the city (I suppose I got too used to the similar haze that used to terrorise the tube network under London). Afterwards - after picking up the rest of our group from the northern gate of the Forbidden City - we walked down to Tiananmen Square - the largest city square in the world, and with a questionable recent history, as most Westerners would know - for a walk-around and an introduction to the Chinese Communist Hall, and of course, the Heavenly Gate to the square's north, adorned with an oil painting of Charmain Mao himself. Snow later took us to the Silk Markets in Beijing's east - known for its cheap knock-offs and fake items - using the Beijing metro, giving us a crash-course on how to use it (only 2 yuan - 20p - a ticket!) and for a belated dinner.
The next day was a boat tour along the river through the Longqian Gorge to the north of Beijing, which was included - but we managed to arrange a slight detour to visit a section of the Great Wall of China on the way back, to those leaving the next day wouldn't be deprived of one of the highlights of China. That night was our travelgroup's last night in the capital: Snow lead us to a lovely restaurant along Qianhai Lake (northwest of the Forbidden City) for some good quality Chinese food (and our chopstick skills became readily apparent!), as the sun set and the shops all around the lake lit up in neon magnificence, and we bid Snow one last goodbye.
Sunday was check-out day: I left my baggage at the hotel and dedicated my day to wandering Tiananmen Square (with the beautiful Qianmen Gate to the square's south), but as large and impressive as the square was, the baggage checks just to get into the square, and the numerous PLA soldiers standing to attention in the square itself (and the unmarked plainclothes police wandering around, and the poles bristling with floodlights and CCTV) gave a somewhat guarded and watchful atmosphere to the place. Understandable, given the place's history: I was very careful while wandering around not to attract too much attention, but as a rather tall Westerner with long red hair, I received enough from the hordes of other Chinese there, many asking in Mandarin (and occaisonally in broken English) for a photo with them - and many not even bothering to ask - on their cameraphones. I had realised that most of the Chinese here were tourists themselves, many from far-flung stretches of their own country (China is the world's third-largest country, with 1.3 billion population), and other English-speaking Chinese had explained to me later that simply to visit their country's capital was an experience, and that many of them had never seen a non-Chinese face before: we might as well have been movie stars to them, as usually that was the only place they ever saw Westerners. I later crossed the road under the Heavenly Gate (and said hello to Mao's picture) and spent the rest of the day in the sprawling and utterly absorbing Forbidden Palace Complex, built nearly 1000 years ago and occupied by many Chinese emperors over many dynasties; so many rooms and steps! It's hard to describe exactly how big the complex was, but it was more or less a city in its own right, with nearly 9000 seperate rooms, thousands of connecting passageways, and bridges over atrifical moats and countless gates to protect the emperor from his subjects, of which the complex was off-limits to (which is why it was called the "forbidden" city). When the complex finally closed at 1700hrs, I caught another Beijing bus back to the hotel, recovered my bags, and took the metro south to the new hotel the next travel group was based out, about 15m walk from the western gate of the Temple of Heavenly Peace, I found out later, close to Beijing South railway station.
Monday I enjoyed a long sleep-in, and then spent the rest of the day visiting the nearby Temple of Heavenly Peace, a huge park just south of the centre of Beijing that the emperors used to use for sacrifices and diven guidance: it was detailed and impressive enough that it occupied most of my afternoon, returning back to the hotel to meet the first person in my next travel group (an Irish called, of course, Patrick, on his first international trip out of Europe), take a long shower, and then go down to meet everyone else in the group that evening. Oddly enough, I was the only Australian in the entire group - and due to my passport and accent was usually considered British (teehee) - in a group of mostly other English, German girls, the British/American couple from my last Trans-Mongolian railway trip, a South African Zulu, the Irish and myself. That night we introduced ourselves to our new group tour leader, called Jiachen (or the Western name "Linda", as she prefered), over our first outing of Peking duck.
Tuesday was an epic day: an entire day devoted to the Great Wall of China. I had already seen a small section over a busy highway last Saturday, but this was at the larger and less touristy Mutianyu section, to the city's north-east. We took a minibus out of the city two hours and spent the rest of the day climbing the parapets and the sifting stone levels of the wall, curving and climbing over the mountains with some impressive vistas, far away from any cities and traffic. The more involving sector included a 250m stretch with a 60-degree up-angle, requiring use of arms and legs just to scale that section of the wall: sweaty and tiring business, but there was always locals selling water and beer for inflated prices. Chairlifts back to the ground had been erected for foot-sore tourists, but half of us elected to take the toboggan ride back down for an extra thrill. I loved my day there: despite rather sore muscles the next day, it was an incredible experience and something else I can cross off my life achievement list. Some of us later took a metro to the Chinese Olympic Park to see the site of the 2008 Olympic stadium - nicknamed the "Bird's Nest" - for a look-around.
Wednesday Linda took us on an orientation walk, through some of the suburb's hutongs (Chinese alleyways) into the Qianmen sector just south of Tianamen Square, mostly covered souvenir stalls and Westernised shopping malls, before another visit to Tiananmen Square and then onwards into the Forbidden City. I had already seen this in my own time a couple of days previous, so I passed on the opportunity: I had another problem unfortunately, as with all the exertions yestreday on the Great Wall had developed a large blister on my little toe that had popped last night outside the stadium, making walking extremely painful. I instead met up with them outside the northern gate to the palatial complex some hours later - giving myself a break from walking - and then wandering into Wangfujing Street (commonly known as Snack Street, due to the Chinese stalls dediated to all sorts of foodstuffs), where we saw all sorts of snackfoods: boiled and caramelised fruit, deep-fried meat on sticks....and this included deep-fried scorpions (still live at the time!), snake and spider (on a dare, I actually tried some deep-fried scorpion.......um, crunchy). There was some good opportunities for souvenir shopping as well, before we returned to the hotel and this time visited a local dumpling restaurant for a quick and cheap feed.
Thursday was a free day, and our last in the capital, so I put it to good use: rising early I returned to Tiananmen Square to visit the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, lining in a queue for two hours and then shuffling past the preserved Chairman for a 10-second glimpse of his pale, waxy visage underneath a Chinese flag; I guess that's the second dead and preserved Communist leader on my list after Comrade Lenin in Moscow I can cross off (all that's left is now Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang). Next was a visit to the Lama Temple by metro, to see the former emperor's palace converted into a lamasery (a monastery for training Buddhist monks), before striking out to the north-western edge of the capital to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Emperor's Summer Palace, made as an alternative to the Forbidden City for the emperor to escape the stifling heat of the capital along the rolling shores of his own private lakes and islands. I managed to leave the complex on time and take the metro all the way back to our hotel, check out and collect my bags, getting one last dose of wifi internet.
We departed with the rest of the group at 1530hrs, taking a raft of taxis to Beijingxi railway station (the capital's western main station), for an overnight sleeper train to Xi'an, south-west of the capital in Shaanxi province. It was a Chinese 3rd-class sleeper, stacking six to a compartment and no doors, but this was old-hat to me and some of the group, already having survived a 3-week journey on the Trans-Mongolian Railway previously, so it was no surprise we were the ones who settled into the routine of eating pot noodles for dinner and bedding down in shared compartments the easiest that night, waking up to our new destination early the next morning.
The former imperial capital of many of China's dynasties was here at Xi'an - or Chang'an, as it used to be known as then. Still a little dopey from (for many) the first overnight train ride, we caught another flurry of taxis to our hotel within Xi'an's city walls - the only major city in China still have intact walls, we learned later - to take a shower and a quick break, before we had a quick orientation walk of the city to the wall's eastern gate. We were able to take a walk on the top of the wall in a complete loop - all 14km of it - or hire bikes to do it, which most of us did and cycled our way around the inner city, stopping for photographs at the impressive Southern Gate and its former temple complex nearby. Later that afternoon we took a local bus to the Da Ming parklands to visit the Buddhist temple with its seven-tiered (and leaning!) pagoda, being intoduced to a Chinese calligraphy session as well.
As the sun set, we took another local bus into the Muslim Quarter of the city: the quarter lit up in neon as we descended into the labrynthine alleys of souvenirs, street-food, bakeries and other controlled chaos. The cities other major lankmarks were nearby: the city's Bell Tower marked the centre of the city with the major cross-roads, with its accompanying Drum Tower not too far from the entrance of the Muslim Quarter, all lit up beautifully at night. I got to know these landmarks rather well, as I became seperated from the group later that night and got hopelessly lost attempting to trace my footsteps: thankfully the Xi'an Tourist Information Centre near the Drum Tower knew their stuff and managed to get the lost Western tourist back to the right hotel franchise (there were 12 hotels within the city that had the same name!) later that night!
Saturday was another epic day: a day trip to the (former) farmlands to the east of the city, that 40 years ago had uncovered the monumental tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who had united the warring states of a fighting China in 221 BC, and that when he died 15 years later, had his tomb guarded by many thousands of life-sized terracotta figurines, shaped into warriors, complete with horses and chariots, in a variety of defensive poses, to defend the emperor even in death, all buried in crypts underneath the earth. The modern-day site was contained in three pits - the first one being the largest - with much of the reconstructed warriors in their original poses: many of them had either shattered due to earthquakes, other farming techniques sending shudders into ground, or even broken into soon after the emperor had died and had been looted and shattered; it had taken Chinese archeologists decades to slowly piece together many fragments into the thousands of warriors we saw today, and there were many more still being patiently pieced together even now. The crowds were also impressive as well: there was only the occasional Western face amongst the hordes of mostly Chinese tourists, doing their usual jostling and take-no-prisoners approach to queuing, usually shoving their way to the front in order to see anything that I had long become used to (height had its own advantages in China, I had quickly discovered). Pits 2 and 3 had other Terracotta Warriors carefully selected out and encased in their own seperate glass cages, as exampled of their own meticulous construction and particular features: apparently each Terracotta Warrior was unique, none with the same face. The entire experience was incredible, and it was another item I could cross off my life achievement list. After a quick meal, we took the bus back into Xi'an: I dropped out of nightly plans with a possible return to the Muslim Quarter being drawn up as I had developed a rather nasty headache and opted for an early night instead.
Sunday was another travel day: we had the first half of the day free for our own, so I did indeed return to the Muslim Quarter (this time in daylight) and explore it again, this time successfully finding the quarter's Great Mosque and spent a relaxing hour there, before walking through the city again and spending time at the city's southern gate (and the former temple just inside the gate) before returning to the hotel and once again going through the usual ritual of reclaiming baggage, passports and checking out.
It was the usual dash in a minibus across the city - choked with traffic, naturally - to arrive at the railway station at roughly 1500hrs, check in and camp at the right platform, boarding our next overnight sleeper service heading east this time; most of the group had, at this stage, already gotten used to bunking in groups of six and had already settled down into the process of pot-noddles, tea, and the limited space to manoeuvre, rising again the next morning when we pulled into Shanghai's main railway station.
Shanghai's main railway station was fairly close to the centre of Shanghai itself, enough that the taxi dash to the hotel wasn't too far away (it was actually fairly close to the famed Bund district, on the western bank of the river Huangpu). Once registered and rooms claimed, we engaged on a city orientation walk, with a short walk to the Shanghai Museum in the middle of People's Square for the rest of the morning, and a leisurely walk along Nanjing Road East - the neon-lit pedestrianised commerial axis running east-west through central Shanghai. After a hurried dinner, we were given the chance to see an incredible Chinese acrobatic show, performed by the ERA Shanghai troupe....it was incredible, featuring contortionists, incredible choreography and stuntwork, eye-popping physical strength and balancing, and was crowned by a circular cage with seven roaring motorcycle riders! The soundtrack was mesmerising too, featuring tradional Chinese rhythms, instruments and percussion.....an amazing night I was happy to pay extra for.
Sadly, it rained over the next few days - the first I remember it actually raining decently since Kazan, and that was many weeks ago, so I really shouldn't complain - but it greatly curtailed any planned outings. We managed to see the Bund - bristling with and collection of colonial architecture as European powers took ever-larger slices of the city for themselves during the 19th and 20th century - but the wind and the rain didn't make for an enjoyable experience. We also attempted to visit the French concession in inner-western Shanghai, known for its preserved architecture (and even visited a Communist Museum dedicated to the founding of the PRC in 1949), and visit the core of old Shanghai in Yuyuan Gardens (and even attended a Chinese traditional tea ceremony).....but again, as the rain washed out most of what we tried to do, it wasn't as attractive as it should have otherwise have been. It was only on the last day in Shanghai the rain held off for long enough to decently explore along the river (both the Puxi - the old city west of the river - and the Pudong - east of the river bristling with new buildings and the city's needle-tower), the Bund along Puxi, back to Yuyuan Gardens.....Wednesday was a long day for me, but I'm glad I woke early to take advantage of the drier weather and actually see the city a bit better.
It was another dash to Shanghai South railway station in another fleet of taxis later on Wednesday afternoon - choked with traffic, naturally - to arrive at the railway station at roughly 1600hrs, check in and camp at the right platform, boarding our next overnight sleeper service heading south-east this time; unlike the previous two sleepers, which had dividing walls (but no doors) to separate the compartments from the aisle, this train had none: anyone tall enough for the feet to stick out of the bed (like myself) was automatically relegated to the top bunk of the three simply to avoid impeding the aisle with them (this wasn't the best option, as there wasn't enough space for me to even sit upright on the topmost bunk, so it was an impressive act of contortion just to get up there and into a decent position to sleep! After the usual round of pot-noodles and tea had been consumed, we awoke at Guilin railway station on Thursday morning, shuffling into a private mini-bus to drive the next two hours on twisting Chinese mountain roads to get to the historic Longji mountain rice terraces area.
We had travelled quite a distance south in our last overnight train, and the temperature had picked up notably, a few degrees warmer than Shanghai, but what was really notable was the humidity: it was only a 30min walk uphill from the tourist drop-off point to Ping'an, the tourist village in the middle of the Longji terraces, with only our day-packs (we paid to leave our rucksacks back at the entrance point under guard), but we felt every step upwards, and most of us were soaked in sweat by the time we arrived; the vistas across the mountains of rice terraces delicately slicing into the slopes - now slowly starting to turn yellow as summer gave way into autumn - carved out and tended to for the last 800 years was incredible.
The next day was a guided walk up to Dazai higher up the mountain-sides with a local walking guide, only I was stupid enough to twist my ankle only an hour's walk into things and needed to hobble back down the mountain and effectively missed the rest of the day: from what I heard, the sun was out, the humidity was palpable, but there was a mud-bath at the end and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Most of us stayed up that night to marvel at the clear sky and engage in some amateur astronomy, sing some impromptu karaoke, and drink beer until 2300hrs.
Saturday was a steady limp back down the mountainside to a pick-up point for a transit bus to drop us back to the park's main entrance point, where we retrieved our rucksacks (and repacked everything after two days' sweaty clothes were packed away), and our tour leader managed to arrange a private mini-bus to drive us back through Guilin and onwards durther south to Yangshuo, a touristy but incredibly-well located town plonked in the middle of karst outcroppings, effectively surrounding - and penetrating through in areas - the town with sharp fingers pointing towards the sky. Despite a flat tyre slowing us down, we got there late in the afternoon on Saturday, packed ourselves into another hotel room (we were really beginning to appreciate air-conditioning, as the humidity was really notable now), and dined in a noodle-bar for dinner.
Sunday, most people had opted for a daytrip around the karst outcroppings surrounding Yangshuo - which included a lot of walking and cycling - so that effectively ruled me out on a weak ankle; I kept inside most of the day, avoiding the hottest part of the day but ventured outside later in the afternoon for a little exploratory walk (and to get some laundry done, as I was nearly running out of clean clothes; the weather was forcing all of us to change more often, I expected). Monday I'd opted for a t'ai chi lesson to begin the day - thankfully my ankle had sorted itself well enough to do so - while others participated in courses of calligraphy and even a beginner's kung fu class in the town's park; we visited a skybar for an interesting look out of the town (amongst the karst croppings) for a beer or three and some entertaining games of table football late that evening. Tuesday some of us had opted for a Chinese cooking class, which I actually quite enjoyed: after a tour of the local farmer's market, we were driven to a cooking school, given our own separate woks, prepared our ingredients, and cooked things like vegetable and black fungus entree, kung pao chicken, the local Yangshuo beer fish, and even making our own dumplings, all of which we were free to eat after everything had finished cooking!
It was another late afternoon private bus transfer back to Guilin late on Tuesday afternoon, arriving back at their railway station early in the evening for our last sleeper-train to Shenzhen and onwards to Hong Kong; those of us who participated in the cooking class earlier that day had no need to invest in dinner that evening, as full as we were. We arrived at Shenzhen around 1030hrs on Wednesday, spent the last of our Chinese yuan, and crossed the internal border at Lo Wu into Hong Kong quickly afterwards.
The first of October is a China-wide holiday, held to celebrate the declaration of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong on this day in 1949; our tour guide had warned us that trying to cross internal Chinese borders could take up to three times longer due to a lack of staff tending the immigration posts, but to our surprise, we got through immigration and customs in only 30min (not including a heart-stopping moment when I'd misplaced my document wallet - holding my British passport, foreign currency, onward tickets and my credit cards, which thankfully a good citizen had noticed and handed into the authorities, I received it back into my trembling hands 30min later), before embarking onto the HK metro and were whisked into central Kowloon in the next 30min, checking in one last time as a group into our hotel before drifting out to explore the area around Jordan for some lunch (and immediately noticing that despite the currency change from Chinese yuan to HK dollars, prices had indeed drastically increased).
We were gathered up one last time to walk to Tsim Sha Tsui, on the northern side of Victoria Harbour, to watch the Harbour light-show (as the lights across the buildings on both sides of the Harbour - Central/Wan Chai/Sheung Wan and Tsim Sha Tsui/Kowloon - flicked on and off or changed colours artistically to music) at 2000hrs. After one last meal as a group, we returned to our hotel briefly for a quick birthday bash to my roomie Patrick, whose birthday it was today; some members of the group had colluded with the tour guide and even bought him a cake! By this time it was close to midnight, so after a spirited goodbye to our tour leader, we returned to the Jordan area for one last (birthday) beer as a group, before we dissolved the next morning and went about our own arrangements.
I had already booked a lovely 4-star hotel out near Mongkok (just north of Kowloon) and had shifted there earlier on Wednesday, so on Thursday I dedicated the day to exploring both sides (the island and the New Territories) of Hong Kong. The last time I had been here was in November 2006, just on 8 years ago, and had been based on Lantau Island out west of the harbour, so I was already familiar with many of the attractions and the layout of the former British colony. I must admit though I was surprised by all the new buildings that had cropped out by the harbour (including another harbour reclamation project out by the Convention Centre to claim back more ground to build on)....and, of course, by the pro-democracy student protests being carried out across HK, mostly around the Connaught Road area of Central outside the City Hall, and the Central area of Hong Kong island; despite the fact the protests were ramping up further and going on for longer than people expected, it was quite well-behaved: the police (after the previous week's tear-gassing) had learned some restraint and had even closed off main roads through Central and Admirality for protest marches, and the protesters themselves ensured not to target police specifically and were otherwise quite polite to authority figures. I was free to walk through the sites at Central - and did, but I didn't hang around, as I didn't want to be misidentified as a protester myself - while I wandered around both the Kowloon and the island halves of HK, visiting temples, buildings, protest zones and even a trip on the famous Star Ferry (like last time), crossing Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central.
Thursday's day-long walk around HK finally culminated with a visit to the Peak tram (queues of an hour, in a hot, humid day!) to ascend Victoria Peak 550m above Central and Sheung Wan, in the middle of the island, for a marvellous aerial view of Victoria Harbour; I had missed visiting the Peak lookout the last time I was here and was determined to visit this time, timing my visit to ensure I could witness the sunset and the gradual electronic lighting-up of the buildings, and I was dutifully impressed. I even had some company up there, bumping into Marijke (a German member of our travel group, we had become fairly friendly during the trip) while in the queue for the Peak tram, and we stayed together for the rest of the evening, eventually descending by the tram (another 45min queue!) together, taking the metro under the harbour, finding a place to eat close to where our original hotel was, and one last shared beer together, before surprisingly but pleasantly we both retired to my hotel that night.
Friday I had set aside for a day-trip to Macau, just like the last time I was here. While wandering through Harbour City shopping complex yestreday I had bught advance tickets for the TuroJet hydrofoil water taxi services from the international China pier at Kowloon; it was here I returned to Friday morning with my tickets and passport for the 1130hrs service, and screamed across the mouth of the Pearl River over to spend the day in the former Portuguese colony on the other side of the bay. As I did 8 years ago, I retraced my steps from the Maritime Terminal to the Hotel Lisboa (the famed hotel/casino complex that was the core of Macau's gambling culture), and to the old Portuguese core at Senate Square, visiting the Ruins of St Paul's church, up into the mountain fort, exploring the old architecture, brightly painted in the traditional Portuguese-style colours, and even getting enough time to visit the Macau tower to see the peninsula from 330m up at the observation desks. Macau also surprised me by all the new construction: despite not having that much room, there were many new casinos (Macau's relaxing of standards had let in many of the Las Vegas franchises with their signature decorated complexes, but the one new construction that stood out was the splayed arms of the Grand Lisboa, the Hotel Lisboa's extension into a new building, that was notably the tallest building in the entire peninsula. I walked back to Senate Square and was able to get a public bus (thankfully Macau took HK currency on a 1:1 basis, so I didn't even need to change currency into the Macanese pataca) back to the Maritime Terminal in time for my 1930hrs departure, screaming back on the TurboJet high-speed hydrofoil to Hong Kong, arriving back in Tsim Sha Tsui just over an hour later (and through immigration again), arriving back to my hotel and the beginnings of an impressive lightning storm by 2130hrs for a well-needed shower and a repack. Marijke was already at the airport for her flight back home to Hamburg by the time I returned, so we shared one last online conversation before I turned in that night.
This morning is my first flight in the 1.5 months I've been travelling: I've managed to clock up an impressive 12,000kms or so, from London to Hong Kong, solely by rail; this respresents roughly the one-third marker on my epic trip back home. My Air Asia flight to Bangkok - and the next sector of my trip home - departs from HKIA in about 2hrs, so I'd best sign out and get going!
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After an extended disembarkation, strapping rucksacks and backpacks to ourselves again and shuffling out to the platform, we met our last tour guide Snow on the platform, and stepped into the bewildering stream of people out into the front of the station, into the writhing throng of people standing for other arrivals outside. We immediately attracted attention: 10 Western backpackers slowly shuffling out looking for the nearby bus parking lot was apparently different enough for the locals to grab cameraphones and immediately start taking photos - without permission - as we went by, some of us still half-asleep. It was something we'd have to reluctantly get used to.
Once folded into another mini-bus, we plunged head-long into the usual chronic Beijing traffic. As hectic and undisciplined as I thought Mongolian traffic was, I learned new levels of recklessness on the capital's roads: pretty much if you had a clear path, you took it, regardless of what traffic lights or even pedestrian crossings said otherwise. That and the sheer number of vehicles on Beijing's roads far outdid any other European peak-hour traffic jam I'd ever sat in before, rather reminiscent of African traffic rules (keep walking across the road and never stop!). It was something else I'd have to get used to: while in the capital for just under a week most of us clocked up an impressive number of near-misses just attempting to cross the road with a green light.
We eventually arrived in our hotel in the Xicheng district, in the inner circle of the capital, about 20min walk to Jingshan Park, I learned later. I was given a private room again thankfully, and thankfully had a quick shower to wash the train journey off, before reassembling downstairs. The official tour ended on Sunday morning: as it was already Friday afternoon, we had only 1.5 days in the capital before most of us flew home (myself and one or two others excluded, who were picking up other trips to start in Beijing in the next few days). The group predictably split: those with a limited amount of time on their hands immediately went off to visit the Forbidden City, while the rest of us enjoyed a local Beijing local bus ride to Jingshan Park - the highest hill just north to the Forbidden City in the centre of the city - and spent the afternoon there, walking up the hill for an impressive view southwards over the former Imperial palace. It was also a saddening view of the city's ever-increasing pollution issue: despite the sunny forecast, the sky had a gray haze over it which I later recognised as smog, shrouding the city and severely curtailing any aerial view over it (I could not see the buildings to the east and west of the palace walls, for example, further than 200m, before they disappeared in the chemical haze). Some of us developed annoying coughs or slightly red eyes trying to adjust to the extra pollution levels in the city (I suppose I got too used to the similar haze that used to terrorise the tube network under London). Afterwards - after picking up the rest of our group from the northern gate of the Forbidden City - we walked down to Tiananmen Square - the largest city square in the world, and with a questionable recent history, as most Westerners would know - for a walk-around and an introduction to the Chinese Communist Hall, and of course, the Heavenly Gate to the square's north, adorned with an oil painting of Charmain Mao himself. Snow later took us to the Silk Markets in Beijing's east - known for its cheap knock-offs and fake items - using the Beijing metro, giving us a crash-course on how to use it (only 2 yuan - 20p - a ticket!) and for a belated dinner.
The next day was a boat tour along the river through the Longqian Gorge to the north of Beijing, which was included - but we managed to arrange a slight detour to visit a section of the Great Wall of China on the way back, to those leaving the next day wouldn't be deprived of one of the highlights of China. That night was our travelgroup's last night in the capital: Snow lead us to a lovely restaurant along Qianhai Lake (northwest of the Forbidden City) for some good quality Chinese food (and our chopstick skills became readily apparent!), as the sun set and the shops all around the lake lit up in neon magnificence, and we bid Snow one last goodbye.
Sunday was check-out day: I left my baggage at the hotel and dedicated my day to wandering Tiananmen Square (with the beautiful Qianmen Gate to the square's south), but as large and impressive as the square was, the baggage checks just to get into the square, and the numerous PLA soldiers standing to attention in the square itself (and the unmarked plainclothes police wandering around, and the poles bristling with floodlights and CCTV) gave a somewhat guarded and watchful atmosphere to the place. Understandable, given the place's history: I was very careful while wandering around not to attract too much attention, but as a rather tall Westerner with long red hair, I received enough from the hordes of other Chinese there, many asking in Mandarin (and occaisonally in broken English) for a photo with them - and many not even bothering to ask - on their cameraphones. I had realised that most of the Chinese here were tourists themselves, many from far-flung stretches of their own country (China is the world's third-largest country, with 1.3 billion population), and other English-speaking Chinese had explained to me later that simply to visit their country's capital was an experience, and that many of them had never seen a non-Chinese face before: we might as well have been movie stars to them, as usually that was the only place they ever saw Westerners. I later crossed the road under the Heavenly Gate (and said hello to Mao's picture) and spent the rest of the day in the sprawling and utterly absorbing Forbidden Palace Complex, built nearly 1000 years ago and occupied by many Chinese emperors over many dynasties; so many rooms and steps! It's hard to describe exactly how big the complex was, but it was more or less a city in its own right, with nearly 9000 seperate rooms, thousands of connecting passageways, and bridges over atrifical moats and countless gates to protect the emperor from his subjects, of which the complex was off-limits to (which is why it was called the "forbidden" city). When the complex finally closed at 1700hrs, I caught another Beijing bus back to the hotel, recovered my bags, and took the metro south to the new hotel the next travel group was based out, about 15m walk from the western gate of the Temple of Heavenly Peace, I found out later, close to Beijing South railway station.
Monday I enjoyed a long sleep-in, and then spent the rest of the day visiting the nearby Temple of Heavenly Peace, a huge park just south of the centre of Beijing that the emperors used to use for sacrifices and diven guidance: it was detailed and impressive enough that it occupied most of my afternoon, returning back to the hotel to meet the first person in my next travel group (an Irish called, of course, Patrick, on his first international trip out of Europe), take a long shower, and then go down to meet everyone else in the group that evening. Oddly enough, I was the only Australian in the entire group - and due to my passport and accent was usually considered British (teehee) - in a group of mostly other English, German girls, the British/American couple from my last Trans-Mongolian railway trip, a South African Zulu, the Irish and myself. That night we introduced ourselves to our new group tour leader, called Jiachen (or the Western name "Linda", as she prefered), over our first outing of Peking duck.
Tuesday was an epic day: an entire day devoted to the Great Wall of China. I had already seen a small section over a busy highway last Saturday, but this was at the larger and less touristy Mutianyu section, to the city's north-east. We took a minibus out of the city two hours and spent the rest of the day climbing the parapets and the sifting stone levels of the wall, curving and climbing over the mountains with some impressive vistas, far away from any cities and traffic. The more involving sector included a 250m stretch with a 60-degree up-angle, requiring use of arms and legs just to scale that section of the wall: sweaty and tiring business, but there was always locals selling water and beer for inflated prices. Chairlifts back to the ground had been erected for foot-sore tourists, but half of us elected to take the toboggan ride back down for an extra thrill. I loved my day there: despite rather sore muscles the next day, it was an incredible experience and something else I can cross off my life achievement list. Some of us later took a metro to the Chinese Olympic Park to see the site of the 2008 Olympic stadium - nicknamed the "Bird's Nest" - for a look-around.
Wednesday Linda took us on an orientation walk, through some of the suburb's hutongs (Chinese alleyways) into the Qianmen sector just south of Tianamen Square, mostly covered souvenir stalls and Westernised shopping malls, before another visit to Tiananmen Square and then onwards into the Forbidden City. I had already seen this in my own time a couple of days previous, so I passed on the opportunity: I had another problem unfortunately, as with all the exertions yestreday on the Great Wall had developed a large blister on my little toe that had popped last night outside the stadium, making walking extremely painful. I instead met up with them outside the northern gate to the palatial complex some hours later - giving myself a break from walking - and then wandering into Wangfujing Street (commonly known as Snack Street, due to the Chinese stalls dediated to all sorts of foodstuffs), where we saw all sorts of snackfoods: boiled and caramelised fruit, deep-fried meat on sticks....and this included deep-fried scorpions (still live at the time!), snake and spider (on a dare, I actually tried some deep-fried scorpion.......um, crunchy). There was some good opportunities for souvenir shopping as well, before we returned to the hotel and this time visited a local dumpling restaurant for a quick and cheap feed.
Thursday was a free day, and our last in the capital, so I put it to good use: rising early I returned to Tiananmen Square to visit the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, lining in a queue for two hours and then shuffling past the preserved Chairman for a 10-second glimpse of his pale, waxy visage underneath a Chinese flag; I guess that's the second dead and preserved Communist leader on my list after Comrade Lenin in Moscow I can cross off (all that's left is now Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang). Next was a visit to the Lama Temple by metro, to see the former emperor's palace converted into a lamasery (a monastery for training Buddhist monks), before striking out to the north-western edge of the capital to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Emperor's Summer Palace, made as an alternative to the Forbidden City for the emperor to escape the stifling heat of the capital along the rolling shores of his own private lakes and islands. I managed to leave the complex on time and take the metro all the way back to our hotel, check out and collect my bags, getting one last dose of wifi internet.
We departed with the rest of the group at 1530hrs, taking a raft of taxis to Beijingxi railway station (the capital's western main station), for an overnight sleeper train to Xi'an, south-west of the capital in Shaanxi province. It was a Chinese 3rd-class sleeper, stacking six to a compartment and no doors, but this was old-hat to me and some of the group, already having survived a 3-week journey on the Trans-Mongolian Railway previously, so it was no surprise we were the ones who settled into the routine of eating pot noodles for dinner and bedding down in shared compartments the easiest that night, waking up to our new destination early the next morning.
The former imperial capital of many of China's dynasties was here at Xi'an - or Chang'an, as it used to be known as then. Still a little dopey from (for many) the first overnight train ride, we caught another flurry of taxis to our hotel within Xi'an's city walls - the only major city in China still have intact walls, we learned later - to take a shower and a quick break, before we had a quick orientation walk of the city to the wall's eastern gate. We were able to take a walk on the top of the wall in a complete loop - all 14km of it - or hire bikes to do it, which most of us did and cycled our way around the inner city, stopping for photographs at the impressive Southern Gate and its former temple complex nearby. Later that afternoon we took a local bus to the Da Ming parklands to visit the Buddhist temple with its seven-tiered (and leaning!) pagoda, being intoduced to a Chinese calligraphy session as well.
As the sun set, we took another local bus into the Muslim Quarter of the city: the quarter lit up in neon as we descended into the labrynthine alleys of souvenirs, street-food, bakeries and other controlled chaos. The cities other major lankmarks were nearby: the city's Bell Tower marked the centre of the city with the major cross-roads, with its accompanying Drum Tower not too far from the entrance of the Muslim Quarter, all lit up beautifully at night. I got to know these landmarks rather well, as I became seperated from the group later that night and got hopelessly lost attempting to trace my footsteps: thankfully the Xi'an Tourist Information Centre near the Drum Tower knew their stuff and managed to get the lost Western tourist back to the right hotel franchise (there were 12 hotels within the city that had the same name!) later that night!
Saturday was another epic day: a day trip to the (former) farmlands to the east of the city, that 40 years ago had uncovered the monumental tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who had united the warring states of a fighting China in 221 BC, and that when he died 15 years later, had his tomb guarded by many thousands of life-sized terracotta figurines, shaped into warriors, complete with horses and chariots, in a variety of defensive poses, to defend the emperor even in death, all buried in crypts underneath the earth. The modern-day site was contained in three pits - the first one being the largest - with much of the reconstructed warriors in their original poses: many of them had either shattered due to earthquakes, other farming techniques sending shudders into ground, or even broken into soon after the emperor had died and had been looted and shattered; it had taken Chinese archeologists decades to slowly piece together many fragments into the thousands of warriors we saw today, and there were many more still being patiently pieced together even now. The crowds were also impressive as well: there was only the occasional Western face amongst the hordes of mostly Chinese tourists, doing their usual jostling and take-no-prisoners approach to queuing, usually shoving their way to the front in order to see anything that I had long become used to (height had its own advantages in China, I had quickly discovered). Pits 2 and 3 had other Terracotta Warriors carefully selected out and encased in their own seperate glass cages, as exampled of their own meticulous construction and particular features: apparently each Terracotta Warrior was unique, none with the same face. The entire experience was incredible, and it was another item I could cross off my life achievement list. After a quick meal, we took the bus back into Xi'an: I dropped out of nightly plans with a possible return to the Muslim Quarter being drawn up as I had developed a rather nasty headache and opted for an early night instead.
Sunday was another travel day: we had the first half of the day free for our own, so I did indeed return to the Muslim Quarter (this time in daylight) and explore it again, this time successfully finding the quarter's Great Mosque and spent a relaxing hour there, before walking through the city again and spending time at the city's southern gate (and the former temple just inside the gate) before returning to the hotel and once again going through the usual ritual of reclaiming baggage, passports and checking out.
It was the usual dash in a minibus across the city - choked with traffic, naturally - to arrive at the railway station at roughly 1500hrs, check in and camp at the right platform, boarding our next overnight sleeper service heading east this time; most of the group had, at this stage, already gotten used to bunking in groups of six and had already settled down into the process of pot-noddles, tea, and the limited space to manoeuvre, rising again the next morning when we pulled into Shanghai's main railway station.
Shanghai's main railway station was fairly close to the centre of Shanghai itself, enough that the taxi dash to the hotel wasn't too far away (it was actually fairly close to the famed Bund district, on the western bank of the river Huangpu). Once registered and rooms claimed, we engaged on a city orientation walk, with a short walk to the Shanghai Museum in the middle of People's Square for the rest of the morning, and a leisurely walk along Nanjing Road East - the neon-lit pedestrianised commerial axis running east-west through central Shanghai. After a hurried dinner, we were given the chance to see an incredible Chinese acrobatic show, performed by the ERA Shanghai troupe....it was incredible, featuring contortionists, incredible choreography and stuntwork, eye-popping physical strength and balancing, and was crowned by a circular cage with seven roaring motorcycle riders! The soundtrack was mesmerising too, featuring tradional Chinese rhythms, instruments and percussion.....an amazing night I was happy to pay extra for.
Sadly, it rained over the next few days - the first I remember it actually raining decently since Kazan, and that was many weeks ago, so I really shouldn't complain - but it greatly curtailed any planned outings. We managed to see the Bund - bristling with and collection of colonial architecture as European powers took ever-larger slices of the city for themselves during the 19th and 20th century - but the wind and the rain didn't make for an enjoyable experience. We also attempted to visit the French concession in inner-western Shanghai, known for its preserved architecture (and even visited a Communist Museum dedicated to the founding of the PRC in 1949), and visit the core of old Shanghai in Yuyuan Gardens (and even attended a Chinese traditional tea ceremony).....but again, as the rain washed out most of what we tried to do, it wasn't as attractive as it should have otherwise have been. It was only on the last day in Shanghai the rain held off for long enough to decently explore along the river (both the Puxi - the old city west of the river - and the Pudong - east of the river bristling with new buildings and the city's needle-tower), the Bund along Puxi, back to Yuyuan Gardens.....Wednesday was a long day for me, but I'm glad I woke early to take advantage of the drier weather and actually see the city a bit better.
It was another dash to Shanghai South railway station in another fleet of taxis later on Wednesday afternoon - choked with traffic, naturally - to arrive at the railway station at roughly 1600hrs, check in and camp at the right platform, boarding our next overnight sleeper service heading south-east this time; unlike the previous two sleepers, which had dividing walls (but no doors) to separate the compartments from the aisle, this train had none: anyone tall enough for the feet to stick out of the bed (like myself) was automatically relegated to the top bunk of the three simply to avoid impeding the aisle with them (this wasn't the best option, as there wasn't enough space for me to even sit upright on the topmost bunk, so it was an impressive act of contortion just to get up there and into a decent position to sleep! After the usual round of pot-noodles and tea had been consumed, we awoke at Guilin railway station on Thursday morning, shuffling into a private mini-bus to drive the next two hours on twisting Chinese mountain roads to get to the historic Longji mountain rice terraces area.
We had travelled quite a distance south in our last overnight train, and the temperature had picked up notably, a few degrees warmer than Shanghai, but what was really notable was the humidity: it was only a 30min walk uphill from the tourist drop-off point to Ping'an, the tourist village in the middle of the Longji terraces, with only our day-packs (we paid to leave our rucksacks back at the entrance point under guard), but we felt every step upwards, and most of us were soaked in sweat by the time we arrived; the vistas across the mountains of rice terraces delicately slicing into the slopes - now slowly starting to turn yellow as summer gave way into autumn - carved out and tended to for the last 800 years was incredible.
The next day was a guided walk up to Dazai higher up the mountain-sides with a local walking guide, only I was stupid enough to twist my ankle only an hour's walk into things and needed to hobble back down the mountain and effectively missed the rest of the day: from what I heard, the sun was out, the humidity was palpable, but there was a mud-bath at the end and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Most of us stayed up that night to marvel at the clear sky and engage in some amateur astronomy, sing some impromptu karaoke, and drink beer until 2300hrs.
Saturday was a steady limp back down the mountainside to a pick-up point for a transit bus to drop us back to the park's main entrance point, where we retrieved our rucksacks (and repacked everything after two days' sweaty clothes were packed away), and our tour leader managed to arrange a private mini-bus to drive us back through Guilin and onwards durther south to Yangshuo, a touristy but incredibly-well located town plonked in the middle of karst outcroppings, effectively surrounding - and penetrating through in areas - the town with sharp fingers pointing towards the sky. Despite a flat tyre slowing us down, we got there late in the afternoon on Saturday, packed ourselves into another hotel room (we were really beginning to appreciate air-conditioning, as the humidity was really notable now), and dined in a noodle-bar for dinner.
Sunday, most people had opted for a daytrip around the karst outcroppings surrounding Yangshuo - which included a lot of walking and cycling - so that effectively ruled me out on a weak ankle; I kept inside most of the day, avoiding the hottest part of the day but ventured outside later in the afternoon for a little exploratory walk (and to get some laundry done, as I was nearly running out of clean clothes; the weather was forcing all of us to change more often, I expected). Monday I'd opted for a t'ai chi lesson to begin the day - thankfully my ankle had sorted itself well enough to do so - while others participated in courses of calligraphy and even a beginner's kung fu class in the town's park; we visited a skybar for an interesting look out of the town (amongst the karst croppings) for a beer or three and some entertaining games of table football late that evening. Tuesday some of us had opted for a Chinese cooking class, which I actually quite enjoyed: after a tour of the local farmer's market, we were driven to a cooking school, given our own separate woks, prepared our ingredients, and cooked things like vegetable and black fungus entree, kung pao chicken, the local Yangshuo beer fish, and even making our own dumplings, all of which we were free to eat after everything had finished cooking!
It was another late afternoon private bus transfer back to Guilin late on Tuesday afternoon, arriving back at their railway station early in the evening for our last sleeper-train to Shenzhen and onwards to Hong Kong; those of us who participated in the cooking class earlier that day had no need to invest in dinner that evening, as full as we were. We arrived at Shenzhen around 1030hrs on Wednesday, spent the last of our Chinese yuan, and crossed the internal border at Lo Wu into Hong Kong quickly afterwards.
The first of October is a China-wide holiday, held to celebrate the declaration of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong on this day in 1949; our tour guide had warned us that trying to cross internal Chinese borders could take up to three times longer due to a lack of staff tending the immigration posts, but to our surprise, we got through immigration and customs in only 30min (not including a heart-stopping moment when I'd misplaced my document wallet - holding my British passport, foreign currency, onward tickets and my credit cards, which thankfully a good citizen had noticed and handed into the authorities, I received it back into my trembling hands 30min later), before embarking onto the HK metro and were whisked into central Kowloon in the next 30min, checking in one last time as a group into our hotel before drifting out to explore the area around Jordan for some lunch (and immediately noticing that despite the currency change from Chinese yuan to HK dollars, prices had indeed drastically increased).
We were gathered up one last time to walk to Tsim Sha Tsui, on the northern side of Victoria Harbour, to watch the Harbour light-show (as the lights across the buildings on both sides of the Harbour - Central/Wan Chai/Sheung Wan and Tsim Sha Tsui/Kowloon - flicked on and off or changed colours artistically to music) at 2000hrs. After one last meal as a group, we returned to our hotel briefly for a quick birthday bash to my roomie Patrick, whose birthday it was today; some members of the group had colluded with the tour guide and even bought him a cake! By this time it was close to midnight, so after a spirited goodbye to our tour leader, we returned to the Jordan area for one last (birthday) beer as a group, before we dissolved the next morning and went about our own arrangements.
I had already booked a lovely 4-star hotel out near Mongkok (just north of Kowloon) and had shifted there earlier on Wednesday, so on Thursday I dedicated the day to exploring both sides (the island and the New Territories) of Hong Kong. The last time I had been here was in November 2006, just on 8 years ago, and had been based on Lantau Island out west of the harbour, so I was already familiar with many of the attractions and the layout of the former British colony. I must admit though I was surprised by all the new buildings that had cropped out by the harbour (including another harbour reclamation project out by the Convention Centre to claim back more ground to build on)....and, of course, by the pro-democracy student protests being carried out across HK, mostly around the Connaught Road area of Central outside the City Hall, and the Central area of Hong Kong island; despite the fact the protests were ramping up further and going on for longer than people expected, it was quite well-behaved: the police (after the previous week's tear-gassing) had learned some restraint and had even closed off main roads through Central and Admirality for protest marches, and the protesters themselves ensured not to target police specifically and were otherwise quite polite to authority figures. I was free to walk through the sites at Central - and did, but I didn't hang around, as I didn't want to be misidentified as a protester myself - while I wandered around both the Kowloon and the island halves of HK, visiting temples, buildings, protest zones and even a trip on the famous Star Ferry (like last time), crossing Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central.
Thursday's day-long walk around HK finally culminated with a visit to the Peak tram (queues of an hour, in a hot, humid day!) to ascend Victoria Peak 550m above Central and Sheung Wan, in the middle of the island, for a marvellous aerial view of Victoria Harbour; I had missed visiting the Peak lookout the last time I was here and was determined to visit this time, timing my visit to ensure I could witness the sunset and the gradual electronic lighting-up of the buildings, and I was dutifully impressed. I even had some company up there, bumping into Marijke (a German member of our travel group, we had become fairly friendly during the trip) while in the queue for the Peak tram, and we stayed together for the rest of the evening, eventually descending by the tram (another 45min queue!) together, taking the metro under the harbour, finding a place to eat close to where our original hotel was, and one last shared beer together, before surprisingly but pleasantly we both retired to my hotel that night.
Friday I had set aside for a day-trip to Macau, just like the last time I was here. While wandering through Harbour City shopping complex yestreday I had bught advance tickets for the TuroJet hydrofoil water taxi services from the international China pier at Kowloon; it was here I returned to Friday morning with my tickets and passport for the 1130hrs service, and screamed across the mouth of the Pearl River over to spend the day in the former Portuguese colony on the other side of the bay. As I did 8 years ago, I retraced my steps from the Maritime Terminal to the Hotel Lisboa (the famed hotel/casino complex that was the core of Macau's gambling culture), and to the old Portuguese core at Senate Square, visiting the Ruins of St Paul's church, up into the mountain fort, exploring the old architecture, brightly painted in the traditional Portuguese-style colours, and even getting enough time to visit the Macau tower to see the peninsula from 330m up at the observation desks. Macau also surprised me by all the new construction: despite not having that much room, there were many new casinos (Macau's relaxing of standards had let in many of the Las Vegas franchises with their signature decorated complexes, but the one new construction that stood out was the splayed arms of the Grand Lisboa, the Hotel Lisboa's extension into a new building, that was notably the tallest building in the entire peninsula. I walked back to Senate Square and was able to get a public bus (thankfully Macau took HK currency on a 1:1 basis, so I didn't even need to change currency into the Macanese pataca) back to the Maritime Terminal in time for my 1930hrs departure, screaming back on the TurboJet high-speed hydrofoil to Hong Kong, arriving back in Tsim Sha Tsui just over an hour later (and through immigration again), arriving back to my hotel and the beginnings of an impressive lightning storm by 2130hrs for a well-needed shower and a repack. Marijke was already at the airport for her flight back home to Hamburg by the time I returned, so we shared one last online conversation before I turned in that night.
This morning is my first flight in the 1.5 months I've been travelling: I've managed to clock up an impressive 12,000kms or so, from London to Hong Kong, solely by rail; this respresents roughly the one-third marker on my epic trip back home. My Air Asia flight to Bangkok - and the next sector of my trip home - departs from HKIA in about 2hrs, so I'd best sign out and get going!
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