China
I've just returned from three weeks in China, my present to myself to mark the end of my most recent job.
My trip was made up of three parts:
1. A guided trip organised by a member of my Perth bushwalking club who is originally from Beijing. It included seven days of hiking on various parts of the Great Wall and four days of sightseeing in Beijing.
2. A long weekend hiking trip to the Bashang Grasslands near the Mongolian border with Beijing Hikers. Most Beijing Hikers are expats, since hiking is not a popular activity among the locals.
3. Four days by myself in Xi'an, the city closest to the Terracotta Warriors. I assumed before doing any research that it would be a relatively small place, but it's almost twice as big as Sydney!
Things I wasn't expecting:
1. Beijing is full of black BMWs and Audis and other new, expensive cars.
2. Most places didn't feel as crowded as I was prepared for. The public spaces are BIG and some streets have very good provision for bikes and walkers.
3. Many people are tall. My not-quite-5'6" wasn't at all out of the ordinary even for a woman. Looking at family groups, there appear to have been huge height gains in two generations. At one of the guesthouses we stayed in, the grandmother was about 5' and tiny, the mother was about my height, and the granddaughter was 6' and strongly built! According to this Slate article, the average Chinese 6-year-old is two inches taller than in the late 1970s thanks to better nutrition.
4. Except at the really big tourist spots like the Terracotta Warriors and the easiest-to-access parts of the Great Wall, there seemed to be very few foreign tourists. I was the only obviously foreign person in line for the National Museum next to Tiananmen Square on the day I went, and one of just three I noticed among thousands at the outdoor fountain music show on my first night in Xi'an. Domestic tourism far outweighs foreign tourism, which on reflection is hardly surprising given the population.
5. Despite that, no one paid me any undue attention at all, in either the big cities or tiny villages. I've heard other people say they were frequently asked for photos, but that didn't happen to me. Maybe you need to be blond or of a more interesting shape or size!
6. Relative to food, tea is very expensive - around 2/3rds or more the price of a main course in a restaurant. That would make it about $20 a cup in Perth! The serving staff, on one occasion they could speak English and I tried to order it, went to some pains to talk me out of doing so. "I advise you order the juice!"
7. Rice isn't served with the meal! It's served at the END of the meal, and you only eat it if you aren't yet full! I spent a lot of time thinking "I wish they'd bring out the rice" before having this explained to me.
8. I was under the impression that very sweet sauces were a Western bastardisation of Chinese food, but some of the home-style dishes we were served were extremely sweet. My favourite was eggplant and green pepper in what was basically a sugar sauce. Apparently it's an authentic northeastern dish. I looked up recipes and made it my first night home, reducing the sugar a little! A savoury dish I liked a lot was julienne-style potato in vinegar.
9. The standard of English translation is poor, even on official signs in the Olympic city of Beijing. Hundreds of freeway signs say "Don't Follow Clowsely", an error a simple spellcheck could have prevented. There's either a huge shortage of competent translators, or they just don't care very much. That said, I didn't appreciate prior to my trip quite how difficult it is to learn English from Chinese.
10. You don't put toilet paper in the public toilets! You put it in the wastepaper basket next to the toilet and hope someone takes it away soon! Also, toilet paper is generally not provided - you bring your own.
My favourite thing was all the people, especially retired people, using the parks day and night to exercise, dance, and play mahjong and cards. In the park around the Temple of Heaven, a group of maybe 60-75 year old men were doing gymnastics on parallel bars and high bars. Just around the corner from the airport hotel where I stayed on my last night, people of all ages were ballroom dancing in a big paved quadrangle to Chinese popular music. This has to be far healthier, both physically and mentally, than the way many Australians spend their evenings.
Worst thing was without doubt the air pollution. It wasn't an issue the first week, but depressingly bad by my last day - and my "depressingly bad" wasn't actually that bad by local standards (153 or "unhealthy" on this meter). Second-worst thing was the noise pollution caused by incessant honking while driving / riding. It's not the aggressive-but-infrequent Australian style of honking, but rather a constant "I'm here on your left", "I'm here on your right", "I'm moving into your lane", "Coming through!" kind of honking. Driving in Perth seemed blissfully quiet on my way home. 85kms from my mother's house to mine, and not one honk!
My trip was made up of three parts:
1. A guided trip organised by a member of my Perth bushwalking club who is originally from Beijing. It included seven days of hiking on various parts of the Great Wall and four days of sightseeing in Beijing.
2. A long weekend hiking trip to the Bashang Grasslands near the Mongolian border with Beijing Hikers. Most Beijing Hikers are expats, since hiking is not a popular activity among the locals.
3. Four days by myself in Xi'an, the city closest to the Terracotta Warriors. I assumed before doing any research that it would be a relatively small place, but it's almost twice as big as Sydney!
Things I wasn't expecting:
1. Beijing is full of black BMWs and Audis and other new, expensive cars.
2. Most places didn't feel as crowded as I was prepared for. The public spaces are BIG and some streets have very good provision for bikes and walkers.
3. Many people are tall. My not-quite-5'6" wasn't at all out of the ordinary even for a woman. Looking at family groups, there appear to have been huge height gains in two generations. At one of the guesthouses we stayed in, the grandmother was about 5' and tiny, the mother was about my height, and the granddaughter was 6' and strongly built! According to this Slate article, the average Chinese 6-year-old is two inches taller than in the late 1970s thanks to better nutrition.
4. Except at the really big tourist spots like the Terracotta Warriors and the easiest-to-access parts of the Great Wall, there seemed to be very few foreign tourists. I was the only obviously foreign person in line for the National Museum next to Tiananmen Square on the day I went, and one of just three I noticed among thousands at the outdoor fountain music show on my first night in Xi'an. Domestic tourism far outweighs foreign tourism, which on reflection is hardly surprising given the population.
5. Despite that, no one paid me any undue attention at all, in either the big cities or tiny villages. I've heard other people say they were frequently asked for photos, but that didn't happen to me. Maybe you need to be blond or of a more interesting shape or size!
6. Relative to food, tea is very expensive - around 2/3rds or more the price of a main course in a restaurant. That would make it about $20 a cup in Perth! The serving staff, on one occasion they could speak English and I tried to order it, went to some pains to talk me out of doing so. "I advise you order the juice!"
7. Rice isn't served with the meal! It's served at the END of the meal, and you only eat it if you aren't yet full! I spent a lot of time thinking "I wish they'd bring out the rice" before having this explained to me.
8. I was under the impression that very sweet sauces were a Western bastardisation of Chinese food, but some of the home-style dishes we were served were extremely sweet. My favourite was eggplant and green pepper in what was basically a sugar sauce. Apparently it's an authentic northeastern dish. I looked up recipes and made it my first night home, reducing the sugar a little! A savoury dish I liked a lot was julienne-style potato in vinegar.
9. The standard of English translation is poor, even on official signs in the Olympic city of Beijing. Hundreds of freeway signs say "Don't Follow Clowsely", an error a simple spellcheck could have prevented. There's either a huge shortage of competent translators, or they just don't care very much. That said, I didn't appreciate prior to my trip quite how difficult it is to learn English from Chinese.
10. You don't put toilet paper in the public toilets! You put it in the wastepaper basket next to the toilet and hope someone takes it away soon! Also, toilet paper is generally not provided - you bring your own.
My favourite thing was all the people, especially retired people, using the parks day and night to exercise, dance, and play mahjong and cards. In the park around the Temple of Heaven, a group of maybe 60-75 year old men were doing gymnastics on parallel bars and high bars. Just around the corner from the airport hotel where I stayed on my last night, people of all ages were ballroom dancing in a big paved quadrangle to Chinese popular music. This has to be far healthier, both physically and mentally, than the way many Australians spend their evenings.
Worst thing was without doubt the air pollution. It wasn't an issue the first week, but depressingly bad by my last day - and my "depressingly bad" wasn't actually that bad by local standards (153 or "unhealthy" on this meter). Second-worst thing was the noise pollution caused by incessant honking while driving / riding. It's not the aggressive-but-infrequent Australian style of honking, but rather a constant "I'm here on your left", "I'm here on your right", "I'm moving into your lane", "Coming through!" kind of honking. Driving in Perth seemed blissfully quiet on my way home. 85kms from my mother's house to mine, and not one honk!