Hangzhou

Our last stop before Shanghai! Travelling through China has been a lot of fun and we’ll be sorry to see the end of our nice loop from Beijing down southwards, but at least we have Hong Kong to visit again soon.

Hangzhou is very close to Shanghai – only just over an hour away by the lovely comfy bullet train. It’s meant to be one of the most scenic places in China, but our first impression of the place wasn’t actually that great. Mainly because practically every downtown road there is being dug up – including the one outside the Railway Station (so navigation was interesting as there weren’t any road signs) and the street of our hotel (so we had to jump over a deep muddy moat to get to the door). But after we got out of the roadworks it was actually really nice, and well worth going to.

The town is built on the side of an incredibly scenic lake. It reminded us a bit of Udaipur in India – lovely water, hills in the background, but no silly palaces unfortunately. What it did have instead was gardens. Actually you could say the entire 3km long lake was surrounded by one massive garden. Very, very pretty, especially as the entire complex was beautifully maintained and stunningly intricate. We walked a circuit around the shores, and across its two long, garden filled causeways – approximately 14km in total! Luckily there were wonderful pagodas and pavilions every now and then which gave lovely views across the lake which were good for a scenic break.

The only real downside was the weather (again). After we arrived and dashed to the hotel there was a truly spectacular thunderstorm, which we missed getting drenched in by the skin of our teeth! Later it cleared up beautifully, so we went for a stroll by the side of the lake at sunset and saw another silly musical lighted fountain show (this one very cleverly and convincingly mimicked waves and opening flowers to some very cheesy Chinese Pop numbers). Unfortunately the next day was overcast, and the heavens decided to open completely halfway around our 14km lake circuit. We got home slightly damp…

Anyway, it was worth the sogginess for a truly lovely walk.

Hangzhou Photos

The lovely lake Xi Hu at sunset, with a silhouetted Vicki looking a bit sheepish. It is a lovely place - imagine a 3km long lake, surrounded completely by gardens with willows, bridges, pagodas etc. It contrasts completely with the roadworks going on everywhere throughout Hangzhou town itself.

Gary at dusk by the lake, with more willow trees and a pagoda in the background.

Now this is where it starts to get a bit damp. But there were stupid people like us braving the weather, and even boaters on the lake who didn't seem to be too bothered by it.

A rare break in the clouds! Gary by some pretty water lilies.

One of the Pagodas lining the lake, with a small, damp, umbrella wielding Vicki somewhere in front of the escalator leading up to it! It's a very modern pagoda - built directly over the ruins of an ancient one that are preserved in a glass chamber below the building (straight ahead as you enter). This space-age pagoda comes complete with glass lifts which zoom you up to the top floor. Very authentic! But it still looks pretty.

Suzhou

Suzhou is a small city just an hour east of Shanghai, and conveniently for us, on the bullet train line from Nanjing. So we travelled there at high speed in extreme comfort – we were in a carriage so swish we felt obliged to get our laptop out and play with it just to fit in with all the businessmen! I think we’ve got Chinese travel cracked now – as I’ve mentioned before our method for getting train tickets works a treat, and we even managed to get from the train station to the hotel using their bus system this time. Not bad since we can’t understand Chinese, and they can’t understand a word we say… Luckily numbers and maps most withstand linguistic problems!

Anyway, Suzhou is a very pretty place, renowned in China for its canals and gardens. So lots of the streets have lovely green tree-lined pavements and mini waterways running down the sides. Luckily while we were there it didn’t rain too much like in Nanjing, so we were able to look around reasonably well for a change without running for shelter every five minutes.

We scrambled around three gardens – have a look below for pictures as usual. And I mean scrambled. Perhaps the most fun was a rock garden where the rocks were all meant to look like lions (although we only found one that really did). This garden consisted of a few courtyards arranged around a medium sized pool surrounded by a labyrinth of rocks. You’d follow a path up some steps, over the top of the rockery, then down another flight, duck into a cave which would take you underneath where you’d just been, only to climb up another flight of steps to another part of the rockery for a different glimpse over the pool. And then you’d go through another twist and turn and descent and cave… and so on and so on. It was great fun, but a bit wearing on the legs after a while! You felt like you’d climbed a mountain instead of strolling around a peaceful rockery.

The other gardens were a little more what you’d expect – pools, pagodas, ornamental trees (including some bonsai ones which Gary hadn’t encountered before) etc. Saying that, the largest garden had a pool with by far the largest carp we’d ever seen – these were black monsters about 3 feet long. The gardens were all peaceful and pretty, despite all the visitors – including of course the usual flag-following, red-capped hordes of traditional Chinese tour groups. Why they all wear matching baseball caps when on tour is a mystery to me, but hey, each to their own. What I don’t like is the way some of the tour group leaders have microphones and loudspeakers, allowing them to broadcast their annoying voices to everyone within 100 meters – really really irritating! Saying that, we’ve seen a fair few European tour groups out here too, but these tend to be a lot smaller than the Sino packs, lack microphones, and are mostly French. They are still pretty annoying and best avoided though!

Suzhou Photos

This picture of Vicki was taken by the pool of humongous carp in the Garden of Humble Administrator. We think that given the garden is absolutely gigantic, the 'Humble' Administrator who had it built was probably not all that humble. Not very humble at all! It may be huge and elaborate, but it's also very very pretty though - lots of pools with water-lilies, bridges, pagodas, pavilions, and of course elegant trees and plants.

Gary emerging from a cave in the Garden of the Lion Rocks. you get an impression of the sort of labyrinthine nature of the place - all prettily arranged around a pool with the usual Chinese Pavilions...

More of Gary - this time in a very realistic alternate universe where he has grown taller than mountains. As you can see, there were really impressively realistic bonsai displays - this one with the strangely shaped rocks was especially good as it looked exactly like a miniature version of a (very pretty) mountain range.

Yet more ponds, water-lilies, trees, pavilions, and this time Vicki with a boat. I think get the idea! A nice town Suzhou, but just as well it didn't rain!

Nanjing

Nanjing has a reputation in China for being hot. So hot in fact that it’s described locally as one of he ‘Three Furnaces’ – the hottest places in China each summer. Well, we’re brave – or at least after Delhi’s 41 degree Celsius we thought we could survive anything – so we didn’t let that put us off. And just as well as Nanjing is a nice place to visit. Very lively, some lovely parks, good for wandering, has a great subway line, and it wasn’t at all hot when we were there. My one complaint would be the rain – Nanjing was more of a shower than a furnace!

It never really stopped raining! I’ve rarely seen weather so miserable – and you have to remember this is written by a Welsh girl. It just drizzled on and on and on… Which is a bit of a shame as we got soaked repeatedly (even after buying a spare umbrella), and we didn’t wander around and explore as much as we’d have like to. We did manage to have a look at a big park full of lakes and islands at the north of town during the only break in showers in the 5 days we were there, but even then we got a bit damp at the end of our stroll. Truly impressive wetness.

In a way Nanjing is one of the better places in China to survive wet periods. This is mainly because it is thriving – it has lots of shopping arcades and malls or covered areas to explore. And they are worth exploring as they are so different from the ones in the UK. Our favourite was an endless underground labyrinth called ‘Fashion Lady’ which consisted of two layers of interconnected cave-like tunnel networks, lit with lots of neon and fake flames. It was entirely filled with tiny boutique girls fashion shops – although how you’d ever find one you specifically wanted I don’t know as it is impossible to navigate in the place. Just finding an exit is a major undertaking! It’s like an entire underground (and highly fashionable) city, complete with restaurants packed in a long row, gaming arcades, and of course more and more shops.

Anyway, we’re now moving on to Suzhou now, a smaller town with pretty gardens and canals. And we get to travel by posh Chinese Bullet trains again – while in Nanjing we perfected the art of buying rail tickets in China! And this is a very useful skill to have believe me! All you have to do is check a rail timetable on line in English, chose the train number you want, and then write down your request in Chinese on a slip of paper. Hand this to the ticket office person (who will speak only Chinese) and you get exactly what you want with minimal hassle as long as you book a few days in advance to ensure the train isn’t full. You just have to remember to write down all the details, translating to Chinese symbols using the Rough Guide of course: town names (departure and arrival places with a nice friendly arrow from one to the other), date of travel (the Chinese write dates in exactly the opposite to the way we write dates in the UK), train number and time of departure (easy – no translation needed!), soft-seater class, number of tickets, and thank you at the end! Simple! Ah well, it worked a treat to leave Nanjing, and you do get a real sense of accomplishment for buying your own tickets in a completely different and very difficult language – especially if you manage to totally avoid agencies and hotels.

Nanjing Photos (in the rain)

Umbrellas in Nanjing!

If it wasn't raining it looked pretty bleak, as you can see across the lakes towards the centre of town. This is partially due to the Chinese smog though - most places over here don't see a truly blue sky very often.

A very neon-lit arcade - with a very blue Vicki feeling self conscious in the middle.

A very scared Gary about to go for a hair cut. This is his first of the holiday (put off until his hair got incredibly long and floppy due to cowardice). He definitely needed it!

An even more scared Gary after the haircut... He wants to go back to Peppy's in Cambridge for another one! Very fussy if you ask me :)

Zhengzhou

Zhengzhou is attractively described by the Rough Guide to China as the most important railway terminal in the country – and as such ‘hard to avoid’. Well, I suspect it’s true – afterall we used it as a stop off to break up the journey for a few days between Louyang and Nanjing on the way to Shanghai – but it’s a little unfair on the place. It’s actually quite a nice, lively, pleasant town. We spent a nice day or so wandering around, especially as there is a Haagen Das Café you can stop off in when you feel like a rest!

One drawback is that although Zhengzhou is modern, leafy and pleasant, has good supplies of chocolate and ice-cream, unfortunately it doesn’t have many good coffee shops. We tried what we thought was a safe café for lunch, only to discover a sandwich that was a little like the Indian interpretation of Chinese food – pretty dire. A shame as it’s nice to have simple western food from time to time, no matter how much you like Chinese.

Moving on from Zhengzhou was interesting too. The rail station is huge, but actually really modern. We got the tickets a few days before we left by trying to write down destinations in Chinese symbols along with dates of travel, times and train numbers. Unfortunately we got served by a really unpleasant woman who was evidently unimpressed by our efforts, and just jabbered at us in incomprehensible (and very very fast) Chinese – not even trying to be helpful. So when the tickets came back with the right date but the wrong time of departure and train number we feared the worst. Especially as Zhengzhou is a long way from Nanjing and we had been hoping to get what we thought was the only fast train of the day. Instead we suspected we were going to be stuck on wooden seats for about 10 hours in a packed, unreserved smoking carriage. Not great. But we were really lucky – we ended up on what was effectively a Shinkansen bullet train! We whizzed off at over 100mph in great comfort, guzzling instant noodles made with the boiling water that’s always supplied freely, just like the locals do. Not bad as the trip only cost £15 each and covered over 500km!

Anyway, we are now in Nanjing, which also seems nice, apart from the fact that it hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived. Just like home :)

Zhengzhou Pictures

The Pagoda in the middle of Zhengzhou - it's a strange double pagoda, and reasonably modern. Strange! But a nice way to display a clock tower. Gary in the large leafy park in the north of town. It's a curious park - it has the usual pagodas etc, but also has a mini theme park complete with roller coaster, water-slides, boating lake etc - as you can see below from the picture of Vicki.

Luoyang

Luoyang is off the beaten track. OK, it’s not in the middle of nowhere – it’s actually reasonably sized city even thought it’s not a well known tourist destination. The main reason I’m feeling a bit removed from civilisation at the moment is due to extreme chocolate withdrawal symptoms. You can’t get any here unless you pay really really extortionate prices in a posh hotel lobby – and I’m not that desperate! Everywhere else we’ve travelled we have managed to get hold of the odd bar, or perhaps a chocolate brownie in a coffee shop, but not Luoyang. It simply hasn’t been infected with chocoholism yet. Grr.

Ah well, we’ve only had a brief stop here on our way down the Yellow River towards Shanghai. The main attraction is a very extensive set of carved out caves on the banks of the river – Buddhist monuments carved since 492 AD. You could describe the work as prolific. Looking from a distance at the river cliffs where the caves have been carved is like staring at the side of a sponge or a termite mound – thousands and thousands of caves, niches, and nooks of varying sizes are all crammed into the cliff face with no area of rock untouched. I’m reliably informed by the Rough Guide that there are 1350 caves, containing in total over 110,000 carved statues. Lots in other words. Most are reasonably small – less than 50cm high – but a few are immense. The most impressive cave has a Buddha in the middle who is 17m high and has ears 5m long!

Anyway, it’s a nice place to spend an afternoon wandering around. Tomorrow we are off again though, this time to Zhengzhou – or at least I hope we are. We bought train tickets today in the station office, where they speak and write no English. We suspected as much though, so we prepared in advance by writing down the departure and arrival towns, dates, and train numbers all in Chinese format (including lovely drawings of the Chinese Characters for the cities). It sort of worked. I think. We ended up being served by a very unhelpful unfriendly woman, but we managed to extract from her tickets with the right towns on them with trains leaving on the right dates. Unfortunately that’s where the success story ends – the train classes were wrong (so we’re going to have to survive journeys several hours long standing up), and one of the tickets is for the wrong train, so we’ll arrive in the middle of the night. Ah well, I’ll have to work on my Chinese scripting. It’s easier than trying to understand and speak the language – trust me!

Luoyang Photos

A very big Buddah with a very small Gary in front! This is the carving with the 5m long ears in case you were wondering. It must have taken a while to chisle out all the rock around him - especially as he is flanked by some really evil looking statues! The second photo shows Vicki with the same Buddah, from accross the river. This is the best place to get an impression of just how many of these caves were carved out of the rock. It does look like an ants nest doesn't it?

Xi'an

Xi’an is a large city in the Shaanxi province – best known in the West perhaps as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. Actually it’s a really nice place too, so we decided to stay here for about a week to relax before setting off by rail down the Yellow River towards Shanghai.

Once again, like Beijing Xi’an demonstrates that in China they do everything on a huge scale. For instance the City Wall – in some ways it’s almost as impressive as the Great Wall. Well, it isn’t quite as long or situated in the same stunning scenery, but its actually taller and wider, and stretches for over 14km around the inner city areas. Best of all, it’s been well restored, and you can hire a bike out and cycle around the whole perimeter! We decided to go for a tandem and wobbled our way around, stopping occasionally at the various impressive watchtowers and gates. It’s a really nice way to see bits of the city.

When the city wall was restored to its present immaculate state, they also touched up the surrounding moat, and put in some gardens between the two. The result is a lovely strip of trees with pathways you can wander along as you walk along the outside of the wall. There’s even an outdoor gym section which has loads of exercise bikes, monkey bars, tyres, stretching things, twisting discs, and other metal contraptions which we couldn’t work out at all! A nice way to exercise in a pleasant garden though – much more attractive than the gyms you usually see in the UK.

Xi’an also has a few nice Pagodas – the main two are called the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda for some reason. They’re both made of bricks so look a bit like factory towers with shelves, but they are pretty big – the larger one is about 60m tall, whereas the smaller is only 45m high as the top was knocked off in an earthquake a few hundred years ago. Still, they are nice to wander around, particularly as they are both set in immaculate parks. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is now surrounded by an area that’s almost like a theme park – it’s full of festive shops and stalls, but also boasts a gigantic fountain over 60m long that sends hundreds of jets of water up every few hours to pieces by Mozart. Very surreal! We managed with our usual skill to accidentally see a performance just as we came out of the Temple Complex surrounding the Pagoda. The show went well with a giant ball of lemon-flavoured candyfloss from one of the stalls!

Of course the main attraction of Xi’an is it’s proximity to the Terracotta Warriors. Although we spent ages trying to get into the place as they’d moved the entrance (and not signposted it very well), and were absolutely soaked in a sudden downpour, it was definitely worth the effort to get to. This is a truly weird sight. The warriors themselves are impressive – detailed, elaborate, human-sized – and there are LOADS of them. A few 1000 have been unearthed so far, but these are far less than half then number thought to be buried. Some have crumbled away, but many are in really good condition – especially those that face you as you enter the first excavation ‘Pit’. Rows and rows of the things just face you, lined up, lifelike, but absolutely still - they look really spooky! OK, this may be partially because quite a few are headless…

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Luoyang, a relatively small place near some intricately carved Caves. It’s off the tourist routes, so it should force rapid improvements in our Chinese… wish us luck!

Xi'an Pictures

The City Wall of Xi'an... impressively big! The Gate tower you can just see in the very very distacnce in the centre of the wall is actually huge, and positioned only halfway down the length of the wall. And do you like our wonderful bike?! Bits of the wall were up hill, and it was hard going on that thing I tell you! A fun way to get around the city though.
The spooky Terracotta Warriors. Lots of them. All of the heads are different - perhaps modeled after a real army. The really spooky bit is that many heads are missing though. Very surreal. Below is the Small Wild Goose Pagoda - which is actually quite big as you can see from the tiny Vicki in front of it! Not as big as the Big Wild Goose Pagoda though...

...although it is diffiuclt to tell from this photo of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, with Gary in a bamboo grove which formed part of the surrounding garden. The Big Pagoda also had the really silly fountain in which you can see me trying very hard not to get wet while eating a very large and fluffy candyfloss. They do excellent popcorn in Xi'an too.

Return to Beijing

After our brief visit up north to Chengde, we thought we’d stay a few nights in Beijing before starting our trip down to Shanghai. Beijing is such a vast place that it’s impossible to see all of it anyway. Luckily we visited last year, and so we took in the Temple of Heaven and Yonghe Dong then – or this time we’d have been running around like mad trying to see as much as possible!

Anyway, since we enjoyed going to the Badalang section of the Great Wall of China so much, we thought that we’d try and see a less touristy bit. Unfortunately the drawback to the less touristy places is that they are difficult to get to – at least if you don’t speak or read Chinese! But none the less, we thought we would be brave, and selected a section of wall called Mutianyu – this is meant to be a partially reconstructed and partially preserved part quite close to Beijing. And easily accessible by a simple bus trip as we were reliably informed by the Rough Guide. So, we turned up at the crack of dawn at the bus terminal, only to find that no buses were going anywhere near Mutianyu of course. Luckily there was one going to Simatai, a section of wall 3 hours from Beijing that was supposed to be much more difficult to get to. So much for guide books!

So we hopped on the bus and were wizzed away to the back of beyond - disconcertingly going back north almost as far as Chengde! It was worth the 3 hour bus ride though as the Great Wall at Simatai is really well preserved and only needed to be slightly reconstructed. But best of all it ascends from a lake up a steep ridge, to a mountain top that is as jagged as a knife edge. Literally the ground falls away almost vertically from both sides of the wall as you ascend, giving you the most amazing views… I’ve stuck a few photos as usual below to give an idea, but if you get the chance you should really come to China and see this! It is truly incredible.

And to top it all off, at the end of a wonderful climb to the top of the mountain you can catch a rope swing (flying fox) to the bottom! OK, the ride is only down the last 100m or so (and is about 700m long), but it’s still a lot of fun. You get strapped into a harness, and then hooked onto a rope wire to go sliding down over the lake, with spectacular views of the Wall on both sides. You can go in pairs too, so Gary and I both wizzed down at the same time - which is great as not only can you have the adrenaline rush together but the extra weight makes you go even faster!

Anyway, although wandering around Beijing and the Great Wall has been fantastic, we have to move on. So we’re now leaving for Xi’an, home to the Terracotta Warriors, where we’ll probably stay for about a week. We’ll post pictures of scary pottery soldiers and (hopefully) even more scary food soon.

More Beijing Photos

Simatai Great Wall. You have no idea how difficult it's been to find an internet connection in Xi'an fast enough to load up this piccys. And next we're going into bits of China far less well connected... There may be gaps in the picture parts of the blog as a warning but we'll do our best. Anyway, here is Gary as we ascended to the top of the amazingly jagged crest of Simatai. But if you look at the photos below (taken in the opposite direction) you get an impression of how wiggly the wall is - and how far it goes! It just winds on and on into the distance...

Chengde

Chengde is a relatively small place by Chinese standards – it’s a city with only a million or so inhabitants located 4 hours north of Beijing by train. OK, a very slow 4 hours – even the express seems to crawl at 30mph or so most of the way… But this is our first exciting venture into mainland China outside the Capital Beijing. Which is actually a bit scary, as not many people here speak English, and Chinese is VERY difficult for us to say even a few words correctly. It’s a tonal language – use the wrong up/down/flat/up-down/whatever intonation when saying a word and you change its entire meaning... Nightmare. Even saying ‘Thank you’ is difficult, and asking ‘How much?’ virtually impossible! Oh, and to make matters worse, at this point our reading of Chinese characters involves deciding whether it’s a nice simple squiggle or a nasty complex one, and trying to imagine the character as a man with a funny hat or a house or something. As you might imagine, this method doesn’t work well if you’re in a hurry. I hope this gets easier!

Chengde however was worth the effort. Its main attractions stem from the fact that Emperors used to come here as a summer retreat from Beijing – it’s relatively high in the mountains and so stays cooler (Gary liked this, I froze…). And of course, it was customary for the Emperors to live a life of simplicity out here in the sticks – their palace was therefore modelled after a Manchu village apparently. But a village with 200 odd rooms, umpteen numbers of servants, and a walled landscaped garden a few kilometres in radius with beautiful lakes and deer roaming freely around. Just like the common people lived!

But it was nice to wander around. The gardens were particularly good – again, like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, they are built on a huge scale. They don’t do things by halves in China. The lakes have wonderful islands linked by sweet little bridges with Chinese Gates, and little complexes of pagodas, halls and covered walkways like the shores. Very idyllic, particularly as deer still wander freely and are happy to come close to tourists in search of titbits.

Another nice thing about the Imperial sponsorship of Chengde is that a large number of impressive Buddhist temples were built to the North and East of the town. And again, in a typically Chinese fashion these temples are big. Huge. One temple complex has over 60 buildings, the largest of these looking more like a fort than a temple. Which is great as you can explore them more or less freely.

The only downside we found to Chengde was food – we simply couldn’t find a restaurant that wasn’t either a tourist group trap (i.e. gimmicky, overpriced, and with no menu on display) or a fast-food joint. The Rough Guide to China was particularly unhelpful here – after saying ‘you can eat well in Chengde’ it listed only one restaurant (miles from where we were staying) and then miss-directed you to a vague area where apparently there were ‘lots of overpriced but OK tourist restaurants’. As I said, really helpful. Anyway, at least the starvation only lasted two nights, and we are now on our way back to Beijing, where the food is great!

Chengde Photos

Gary meets a 'wild' deer in Chengde! We've never seen them so tame (most likely due to over feeding from the hoards of Chinese tourists that flock here) . The park which used to be the hunting ground of the Emporers is full of lakes and pagodas as you can see in the photo below. It's also completely surrounded by miles and miles of a large wall to keep the pesky peasants away from the game...
One of the magnificant temples in Chengde. It's difficult to convey the size of them - but to give you an idea the main hall in this one (the tall building at the back of the photo) houses the largest wooden statue in the world - a Buddist Goddess of mercy called Guanyin. She's huge (23 meters high), but beautifully carved and has 42 arms - each with an eye in its palm. Apparently there's an eye in her belly button too.