Shanghai Xian and Quingdao

We spent three days in Shanghai, Chinas largest and most modern city. Whilst there we spent the first day walking round the old town, the classical Chinese architecture of the shopping area a change from the glass and steel monotony. The Yuyuan gardens were pretty, being similar to the west lake in Hangzhou. We both purchased communist hats, Robert bought a brown furry hat for winter whilst I purchased an army style flat cap.  

For lunch we ate at Nanxiang Steamed bun restaurant. The buns, which were more like dumplings were filled with meat, and whilst tasty they weren’t as outstanding as Lonely planet and the street signs pointing one there suggested.

In the afternoon we walked along The Bund, the old European quarters of the city, with its 1930s neoclassical architecture lining the Huangpu River. There is a rich history attributed to this part of town, one grand building formerly the home of the Shanghi club, a British expats institution (where naturally no Chinese were allowed), and the bank of china at a time considered the finest building in Asia. In contrast to this European vista, was the modern skyscraper filled panorama across the river (which includes the Shanghai financial centre, mainland Chinas tallest building at 490m). The city, originally a British then French Concession immune from Chinese law was a financial powerhouse and Chinas biggest port in the 19^th century. It was also unofficially known for its gambling dens, brothels and opium trade.  We stayed in the Bund area till the evening, when the haze faded into the darkness and the city lit up, revealing the second best skyline yet seen in Asia.

The Bund

The next two days were far less productive, though we managed to visit the site of the first Chinese Communist party conference in 1921, a one storey house turned museum which was fairly interesting. We also visited the Shanghai museum, the most famous in the city which presented the changing face of Chinese art, cartography, coinage and pottery. It wasn’t really my cup of tea though some interesting parts were finding out that buildings painted on vases and pots are still used by historians to understand ancient Chinese architecture(as many of the wooden structures haven’t survived), and that the first money used in China was actually metal spades.  Having failed to get a train ticket we ended up leaving for the historic Xian a day late. We could only get a seat for the 21hour journey. Seating class was in the same carriage as standing class and it was jammed with people the whole way. The feats of endurance I witnessed were astounding-people standing for hours on end, or whole families (all three of them) curled up in corners, children layered on mothers, mothers on fathers. Westerners wouldn’t have accepted such cattle class travel.

I expected a feast of history from Xian, Chinas ancient capital at the end of the Silk Road, though unfortunately the city turned out to be a modern metropolis bar a few exciting traditional parts. From our suitably ancient hostel, a former Ming Dynasty house excellently located just inside the city’s 600 year old walls, we explored the lively Muslim quarter. Aside from the mosque, the bustling area didn’t contain much Arabic influence in an architectural sense, however there were a few rug shops and plenty of Chinese Muslims going about their day in fez’s and veils. The street food defiantly had a different look to it, with meet sold on skewers and some excellent beef wrapped in a deep fried sort of pancake, like a kebab. There was also a bazaar which seemed unfortunately to be catered to tourists (I purchased a poster of Mao here). The second part of the day took us to the impressive 16^th century drum and bell towers, the latter unfortunately now the centre of a multilane roundabout and accessible by only by underpass. We were fortunate in our timing to see some drum and bell performances.  

The train was like this for 22 hours

Street food in the Arab District

Street market in the Arab District

Drum Tower

Watching a performance in the bell tower

Bell tower at night

Whilst queuing to get train tickets out of Xian on our first day (an attempt which failed meaning we had to get a coach) we met two Danish girls, Helena and Simone who we traveled with to the terracotta warriors. Despite having heard from several travelers that these were unspectacular, Rob and I both thought they were very impressive. They were located in pits spread across three giant halls (by giant I mean aircraft hanger size). The first hall contained the military headquarters with several hundred warriors including generals(though not many are actually on display), followed by the other two, the largest of which contained six thousand warriors, all with unique faces, all facing east in battle formation. This bronze armed, battle ready force, until 1974 buried underground in wood and earth covered bunkers, was built by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (Qin dynasty 221-206BC). It is theorized that he believed he would still rule after life, so needed an army to keep control of his kingdom here on earth. The sight was fascinating.

That evening, after the Danes had left, making their coach with seconds to spare we ate a hearty meal of blackbean covered fish at a local restaurant. On the last day we rented bikes and cycled the 14km around the city’s impressive outer walls, built in 1372. The authentic watchtowers located every few hundred meters, were worth the exercise, though the towerblocks that house the masses (6.5million people to be precise) surrounding the walls hardly helped one immerse oneself into the city’s past.

Cycling the city walls

In order to kill some time before Beijing, our penultimate trip in China took us a coastal city called Quindao. Aside from being recommended for its beaches (which turned out to be terrible), the town is called little Switzerland by the Chinese due to its German influence from its time as a concession (calling it little Switzerland was very much of a stretch- it was defiantly more akin to Leningrad then Lausanne). Aside from a few churches, the German’s greatest influence on the town was the creation of a Brewery. For Quindao is the home of China’s most famous drink-Tsingtao beer. Of course, during our visit, we took a trip to the one hundred year old brewery, heading on the obligatory tour. This turned out to be very interesting, with rich history of the brewery under initial ownership of the Germans, then Japanese during WWII where it was used to produce Asahi, and finally the Chinese. One interesting point was finding out that the oldest, still valid food law in the world was The German Beer purity Law created by Wilhelm IV back in 1518 which said only barley, hops and water could be used to make beer! 

After the tour we went and had a few drinks and food on beer street, trying some different varieties of the beer (my favourite of which was of course a black beer, think Robert preferred the original) and eating supposedly famous kebabs which were just average.

The only other thing of note was, on the last night, randomly heading down a small alleyway off the cities main street and finding a wealth of seafood barbeques. Here we ate some exotic foods including starfish, before getting on the last long train journey of the trip in China, an easy 5.5 hour stint on a bullet train to Beijing.

Hangzhou and Huangshan- The Hallelujia Mountains

Hangzhou, a city of 6.6 million people, is famous for one attraction, its west lake. This was added as a UNISCO world heritage site just three days before we arrived there, the lake with its ancient bridges, stunning Leifeng Pagoda and unique ecosystem is considered to be a fine example of classical Chinese scenery. Dai left us after one night in Hangzhou, heading off to go hiking, whilst Rob and I spent two days walking round the lake admiring the human and natural scenery. It was quiet (at least by Chinese standards) and very scenic, greenery was everywhere from the trees which covered every path and surrounding road to banks of lilies extending into the lake. We saw the tomb of a Chinese General, Yue Fei, climbed the pagoda as well as visiting the interestingly named sites such as White Lotus Leaf and Red Carp pond. We covered a fair bit of ground, returning at night to our hostel where we sat down with some 60p 2.5% snow beer(all beer here is weak but generally tastes good) in the cat and bug infested hostel. 

West Lake viewed from the lofty heights of Leifing Pagoda

China, whilst extremely impressive, has been a bit frustrating at times.Although we should be speaking Chinese (we now do know three phrases, how much?, hello and thank you) people here don’t seem to understand hand signals. When we walked into the hostel restaurant on the morning and imitated eating they didn’t seem to understand we wanted food. Doing washing was a bit of a palaver, it was desperately needed in Hangzhou yet despite bringing them wet washed clothes they didn’t seem to get that we needed to dry them (it was through a stroke of luck that we found the drying room). However I must say the Chinese have been really friendly, saying hello randomly on the street and always seeming willing to help you out without expecting anything, unlike the money leaches of South East Asia.

Mistiming on our part meant our taxi from our hostel in Hangzhou arrived at the coach station just after 9:30, when we believed the coach would leave. Fortunately lonely planet was wrong with the times meaning we managed to get to Tangkou as planned. Tangkou is a small, alpine town, located near one of Chinas most famous mountains, Huang Shan. The mountain is a green, pine tree covered series of outcropping granite peaks. These have mystical names, or strange translations, such as “Beginning to believe peak”, “Stone Monkey gazing over the sea of clouds” and “flower blooming on a brush tip”.  It is most spectacular when a duvet of clouds covers the mountain sides, leaving only the outcropping summits poking through like islands. Huang Shan’s scenery was actually the inspiration behind the Hallelujah Mountains in James Cameron’s Avatar. 

Our plan to climb the eastern steps was thwarted immediately. As the path was closed for maintenance we had to drift up 1000meters through pure mist in a cable car (walking would have been rewarding but I confess I was quite pleased at avoiding the exercise, unlike Robert who was disappointed at missing the climb). At the top we spent the few hours left before sundown walking around some of the viewing points. The weather was cloudy, with a drifting mist turning visible scenery invisible in under a minute. The picture was very different, to what I have seen before in mountains. Where we imagined the top of the mountain to be uninterrupted nature, spare a worn down footpath, it was in fact completely developed, almost shamefully like a theme park. The mountain was covered in paved stone walkways, wooden railings protecting anyone from falling off, with man made viewing points jutting out over the mountains edge. Litter bins were everywhere with employees collecting rubbish and sweeping the paths for the masses ( I will expand on that in a bit).

After seeing some impressive jagged peaks, complete with patchy mist we headed off to our hostel, which we had cleverly booked through our bilingual receptionist back in Hangzhou. However something seemed to have been lost in translation with the receptionist(or maybe she was just dippy) as the 30yuan room she said was available didn’t seem to exist and we ended up spending 120yuan each(£12) for a bed in a dorm at the Shilin Hotel- the same as we were paying way back in Australia. 

Sunset at "Stone Money Gazing Over the Sea of Clouds"

The cost of everything on the mountain was inflated; dinner was £5 at the hotel, for a bowl of what were essentially super noodles. From one of the supermarkets we bought some muffins for breakfast the next morning (the supermarket alongside a police station and Bank of China branch made up but a part of the unfortunate development on this natural wonder). .With little to do that evening we went and saw a slightly cloud obscured, but none the less spectacular sunset at one of the peaks(the fact that this seemed to me to be just another sunset suggests I have been traveling a little long).

The next day we set off on a 15km walk down the mountains western steps. At the start there were only a few tourists alongside the involuntarily tanned blokes lugging supplies of cold drinks and people chairs (see picture) around. The rollercoaster like ups and downs of the footpaths led us to several viewpoints most of which were completely obscured by mist. However as the walk went on the weather slowly cleared, allowing some good vistas of the surrounds . We reached a metrological station around half twelve where we encountered the first mass of tourists. There were literally hundreds of Chinese faced yellow ponchos milling around here, all in huge tour groups which they seem to love. The tour leaders barked orders, painfully amplified by speakers on their trousers. Every Chinese person had a walking stick, I suppose to make them look like hikers, though some of their footware showed they didn’t have a clue. The number of people walking around in smart business shoes or flimsy plimsoles was astonishing. It was funny on the way down watching them walking barefoot and covered in blisters. A shambles. From then on as we slowly made our way along the footpaths (slowly as we were in a human traffic jam for the whole time), the number of people increased, until we were literally at a standstill. We climbed the highest peak in the region, lotus flower, partly in the spirit of exploration, but equally to escape the hordes. Even this had steps all the way up, making the climb tiring but very easy. Even at the summit, 1800meters above sea level, there was a bloke selling drinks, as well as tacky gold medals which the Chinese were snapping up. We continued descending the mountain through the receeding mist ala the Olympic monkey, revealing more fantastic scenery. Eventually we squeezed through the crowds near the second cable car station and from then on, the few hours of the walk downstairs were much quieter people wise. 

Masses on the Mountain

 

The numbers in china are just so staggering; living in London can only give limited preparation for such crowds. The scary bit is the numbers of everything that needs to be made, all those hundreds of millions of digital cameras and mobile phones that everybody has, all shoes and tshirts that everybody wears.