China wrap-up
Stats:
- Time spent in China: 30 days
- Spending whilst in China: £570 (£18/day)
- Photos added to album: 500 (maxed out Google’s limit!)
Stops:
- Beijing (the whole 9 yards – vibrant, friendly, fantastic treasures, cool art scene, fantastic eating, thoroughly modern and efficient post-Olympics infrastructure; shame about the air pollution that all typically deprives it of blue skies)
- Zhengzhou (a mallrat hell hole with non-English-speaking locals largely unreceptive to foreigners, pricey electronics superstores, ugly signage and dilapidated concrete housing)
- Xi’an (lovely open city with great eating, a lively Muslim Quarter, the tedious Terracotta Army, great trekking to nearby sacred mountains, warm people and good nightlife)
- Nanjing (a buzzing but not altogether pleasant city, home to the gut-twining Nanjing Massacre memorial and museum
- Suzhou (relaxed, open, ever so pleasant canal-veined town home to preposterously manicured, finicky Chinese gardens copied all around the world)
- Shanghai (a busy, charmless metropolis too caught up in its affairs to offer a backpacker much – but after the sun sets, blessed with great nightlife, though you have to seek it out)
It may be a post-Olympics afterglow, we felt very welcome indeed (and not for our money!), and were surprised by how much curiosity awe were generating; I’d imagine China’s extremely safe to travel in, too, no matter how far from the beaten path you stray – we saw very little in the way of scams (beware overly long taxi rides, and unexpectedly expensive menu items in watering holes the locals aren’t too fond of) and rarely if ever worried for our safety. Transport is largely flawless – clean, modern, reasonably cheap, and serving the right routes at the right times; though taxis can be expensive around the big cities – best avoided.
United as a country very early on and a real crib of advanced human society throughout the ages, China’s cultural wealth cannot be understated. But having lived under authoritarian Communist rule for so long, there’s clearly a lot of aspects to Chinese society that casual observers such as us will have missed despite spending a month there – a veil that I guess only more permanent arrangements (working/living there) provide you with an opportunity to lift the veil a little.
Present-day curiosities
- Gigantic, luxurious Internet cafes wasting thousands of man hours every day as spotty Chinese teens play World of Warcraft curled up in their rented armchairs
- Culinary curiosities- silkworm, sheep’s spine, various penises (“Sheep’s Dick” listed on one menu we saw)
- Insane table service – lining up, sometimes three waitresses-abreast, waiting for you to peruse the menu – sometimes jumping in and pointing, turning pages (from your hands!), garbling some Mandarin at you…
- Mao’s Mausoleum – the most elaborate, revered waxwork setup you’ll ever encounter. Shhhh!
- Overly ‘renovated’ (read – reconstructed in the style of’) tourist sights
- Tourist groups – everyone wearing the same hat and dumb/astounded expression, herded by a sqawking megaphone-wielding lecturer – grrrrrrrrr
- Everything shrouded in persistent grey mist – modern urban sprawl, barren countryside, sharp mountains and beautiful national parks alike
- KFC. The Colonel’s everywhere.
- You love it. Suzhou’s best club night.
- Bizzarre modern art. Trying too hard? Too little to say? Or too much?
Verdict? Loved pretty much every moment there. It’s a country in the ascendant as a fiercely strong economy and world power, its people love it and take pride in it, and it has so much to offer the foreigner – I’d expect myself to return at least for deeper tourism; or more likely seeking a move there if work allows it.
Related:
- Quickie
- Quick update – I’ve only just pushed the wrap-up of our tour to China to the blog (here) but since China we’ve spent 2 weeks in Japan, just under a fortnight in Bangkok and the northern rainforested and silver-sand-ed Thai island of Koh Chang, and are currently doing an extended visa run into Cambodia, via [...]...
- Travel bureaucracy: a nightmare
- Some stats: 4 friends. 7 visas to be obtained. 2 weeks to go before departure. 7 months abroad! 6 visits to the India visa centre. 3 visits to the chinese centre. 1 lost receipt – crucial. 1 lost passport photo – crucial. £350. Some observations: - both China and India now outsource their visa applications [...]...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.