China

Turns out you can’t access the blog site I use from China, so here’s a short(ish which actually turned out quite long...) version, written after I got to Tunisia…

We (my friend Anj and I) got to Shanghai early on the morning of the 14^th, and had decided to go straight to Beijing for the first few days of our stay in China. The first challenge was figuring out how to get to the train station to catch a train there. Somewhat surprisingly, it seemed like noone in Shanghai airport after customs spoke any English, so my very limited Mandarin came in handy to figure out that we needed to catch a metro for 2 hours across the city to get to the right station. Conveniently the same line went from the airport to the main train station, so we got settled and prepared for our first metro in China. At the 8^th stop everyone suddenly got off, but we were sure we were on the right line so we stayed in the metro car until someone came back and gestured to us to get out. Everyone had gone into a metro car on the opposite side of the platform, which took us a while to figure out that we should be in too as the line continued there. I just had time to get inside, and Anj was about to get in when the doors closed! A helpful train guard helped her to get her pack out of the doors, but she was left on the platform while I was inside the train… We gestured at each other through the doors that I would get off at the next stop and meet her back on the train. I think we were both a bit relieved when that worked out ok, and from then on we always tried to get into metros side-by-side (and very quickly!)

Turns out main trains in China aren’t too difficult to navigate, a few words of Mandarin go a long way (think: we go to Beijing when buying a ticket). We made it onto the train, convinced a Chinese guy to move with lots of hand gestures, showing tickets and smiling so we could sit together, and settled in for the ride to Beijing. Unfortunately it was pretty foggy so we couldn’t see too much out of the windows. We caught a taxi to the hostel, which was going ok until the taxi driver started looking a bit lost… luckily we had the hostel phone number so he called them to get directions and we arrived at the Happy Dragon Hostel. This has to be one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed at… apart from being really cheap, even by Chinese standards (about NZ $8 per night for a bed in a dorm room of 4), they had their own bar with things planned for most nights, and the staff were helpful to the point of taking messages for you from friends! Plus they spoke English which was much appreciated.

We met some other travellers in the hostel and went with them to see the Summer Palace the next morning. It was beautiful (although freezing, I can see why it was the Summer Palace!). There was a Chinese lady there painting words – but when I say painting I mean that each letter/character was some form of picture, like bamboo, a phoenix, dragon, stalk, etc etc. It was amazing to watch and we all got one – there’s a photo of mine uploaded here. We spent most of the rest of the day exploring the city. We went to check out the hutongs (alleyways) with our new (KIWI!!) friend Liz who’d been there for a while already and discovered some great food places.

The next day we went on a tour to see the Great Wall of China. The part we went to is about 80km north of Beijing, and includes a cable car up and a toboggan/luge down (not very traditional Chinese, but LOADS of fun!!). The Wall itself definitely lives up to the name – we walked along most of the accessible part of the section we were in, and could see the older, non-restored ruins stretching away in the distance. One of the guys selling things on top of the wall had a great thing going – he would ‘attack’ people going towards the older part kung-fu style, then on the way back we’d all remember him. It totally worked, we got some great kung-fu photos and he really looked the part! Then we bought some Xiang Piao Piao (brand of milk tea with coconut jelly bits, they come in plastic cups and get made up when you buy them so they’re nice and hot) off him, definitely our new favourite drink J

That night we met up with my friend Jai, who’s been living in Beijing for the past year. First we went to a restaurant which had performances while you ate – plate spinning, a guy who changed masks just by passing his hand over his face during a dance, and magic tricks included! We got Peking Duck which I was keen to eat. It came with lots of extras – you start off with mini-pancakes (savoury), spread some sauce over it, put some duck inside which has all been sliced up really thinly, then add some fruit sticks (pineapple, melon, and other things which I didn’t recognise). Finally you wrap the whole thing up like a burrito and eat it with chopsticks (which is possible because they’re quite small, about 8cm long). Delicious!!

The next day we set out to go to the Forbidden City, but first had breakfast at a little place near the hostel. While we were trying to explain that Anj is vegetarian (not a common concept in China) and find out which dishes were meat-free a guy eating there came up to help translate. We ended up having a chat, turns out he was from Guangzhou (southern China) and spending a few days in Beijing to see the sights. He decided to come and see the Forbidden City with us, and was nice enough to help us change some money at the bank first. The Forbidden City was lovely, but that day was particularly cold with a biting wind (about -15 degrees) which wasn’t really conducive to wandering around outside. Our new friend decided to stay while Anj and I took off for warmer places. We went to find a place with coloured dumplings that we’d been told about by a couple of Aussies we’d met on the Great Wall. After wandering around for ages (we had an address but you can’t get a taxi near the Forbidden City and we didn’t know which metro stop it was near) we got lucky with a guard who knew the right metro stop to go to. The dumpling place was well worth the trouble of getting there, as they had about 30 different types of dumpling, most of them dyed different colours with natural vegetable dye. We started to order, and after a while the girl taking our orders gave us a weird look and mentioned that you had to order at least 12 of each dumpling… which meant we’d ordered at least 60 between us! They were non-negotiable on that point so we had to cut down… but still got the marinated tofu which was awesome. I have to admit, a lot of the time Anj’s tofu dishes were a lot nicer than the meat options…

That was our last night in Beijing, and we met up with Jai and his British colleague Mike. They showed us a well-known Chinese hutong with lots of bars off it which was really cool. Then we went to a lake with bars all around it which were lit up like Vegas – the tackier scene, but cool to see and with a bit of mutual encouragement Jai, Mike and I tried deep-fried scorpion from a street vendor. It was surprisingly tasty, good spices and very crunchy, you just had to watch out for the spiky bits! Then we all went to a couple of bars with loads of expats – they were definitely in the rich part of town, you could tell by all the Western brand department stores around. Apparently there are riots at the Apple store each time they launch a new product because they never stock enough. The bars were very cool, and to finish off the showcase of different parts of Beijing culture we went to find some Baijiao (Chinese ‘white wine’ which is actually more like really cheap vodka). We got a little bottle from a shop in a hutong along with some Coke (because chasers are necessary for Baijiao). There was a guy grilling BBQ sticks with various meat and veges on them, so we sat down to try out Chinese nightlife food which turned out to be reaaaally good (again, especially the tofu).

The next day we caught a train back to Shanghai, arriving after dark which meant we got to see all the lights as we drove through the city to the hostel. It’s very different from Beijing, kinda reminds me of Wellington (Beijing) compared to Auckland (Shanghai) except of course on a MUCH larger scale… we left our things at the hostel and went to explore the city, optimistically leaving our beanies behind… we quickly realised that Shanghai isn’t THAT much warmer than Beijing so we didn’t explore too much before going back to the warmth of the hostel. The next morning we got up early to have a look around before I caught my flight to Tunisia. It was lots of fun, there are loads of hutongs to explore and you can get breakfast by trying a little bit from lots of street stalls.

Then I went to catch the metro to the airport, feeling much more confident than only 5 days before as I got off to change metros at the right place, and even understood some of the Mandarin broadcast explaining that passengers for the airport need to switch. I’m definitely keen to come back and live in China sometime in the near future, apart from the language it’s such an interesting country, and I like Beijing much more than I thought I would for such a big city.