Hey everybody!
On January 9th we jumped on a soft sleeper train (a bit too luxurious for us rough and ready backpackers but the only ticket available this time of year whilst the chinese masses are on the move for their New Year)from Da Tong to Pingyao. We had been told that Pingyao was one of the best preserved of the old Chinese towns so we were full of hope with high expectations. After the smog ridden, concrete built Da Tong we were yearning for something far more aesthetically pleasing, or at least somewhere where we could breathe! But we stepped off the sleeper train to find a city that looked identical to the one we’d just left, concrete high rise buildings everywhere, looking in onto a big square that had harsh cold music blasting out of the speakers giving the town an eerily communist feel. Amy, Tom and I started jogging our way down the long grey road in an attempt to escape the masses of hotel owners who desperate for client s at this time of year come hunting for westerners at the train station.
However our luck soon changed. Nestled amongst the mass of concrete the old city of Pingyao was everything it had promised to be. Inside the tall city walls was a different world, very few cars are allowed, the streets are all cobbled and traditoinal red chinese paper lanterns hang from each of the shops all of which have the traditionally curved tradtional roofs. We found ourselves a gorgeous hotel all built in the traditional ming style. The bedroom consisted of one huuuge bed that spread from one end of the room to the other, our own shower, toilet (with a seat!), tv, and water cooler, and all for 4GBP a night. Tom soon left as the idea of sharing a beds with us to mad english girls was I think, somewhat daunting.
We spent the next two days living a life of luxury. The first day Amy decided to make the most of the huge bed and crashed out for the day whilst i went to explore the old town. I ambled down the quaint streets marvelling at how people live, although the town is mainly geared towards tourists, the locals seem to have managed to have preserved their way of life suprisingly well. People cycled buy on their bicycle carts selling their wares, and many chinese people still stopped too watch a westerner go by (later some chinese asked to have their photo taken with amy and i). As i walked down the road an old man with an extraordinarily wrinkly face beckoned me into his shop, he offered me tea for free and we spent an interesting hour trying to communicate using my entire range of broken mandarin (5 words!), the rough guide, his gadget to convert chinese to english and a cartoon childrens book written in english and underlined in chinese. We established where I came from, that he had lived there all his life, that i was to be a student and then speant much time speakiung in our own language at eachother although whether we were conversing about the same thing I have no idea!
The next day Amy and I agreed to be given a tour by a poorly clothed, old, cold looking old man. We mainly agreed to do it because we felt sorry for him but it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve made this trip. Another 3 english people came on the tour. Rather than take us to the stale old tourist attaractoins Mr Liu (our guide) took us to see 3 schools, a number of othetr interesting view points and an old ladies home. The children in the schools were gorgeous, they crowded around us fascinated by our cameras, we were allowed to walk into their delapidated but colourful classrooms and even play some games with them..we even got to see their toilets..nice. Their toilet is the front of their school, or everyhere in fact, the parents remove the children’s fly’s so if the kid needs to pee they just do..we were met at the school gates by a little boy issuing a wee fountain from his trousers..delightful. Our guide also took us and got us invited into an old ladies home. She spends the whole day sitting on her bed smoking and watching the world go by from her tiny window, her single room that doubled up as a sitting room had a very large picture of Mao on the wall (who she professed was the best leader of all time). Conversly the other walls were coated with posters of western models. She was very welcoming offering cigarettes and tea a plenty, it was a fantastic opportunity to talk with a local (our guide translated) about her views on this weird and wonderful country. Although not officially included in the tour, we stumbled upon and were invited in to take part in a traditional funeral. The funeral had a far less somber atmosphere that those in the west, the family who’s grandmnother had died had decorated the passageway to they’re home with colourful garlands made of paper, inside their small courtyard a trumpet band was playing very upbeat music and everybody was dressed in white.
At the end of the tour we bought Mr Liu a meal and 3 very thick pared of socks as an extra thank you present. We then made our way to a bar that was blasting our Bob Marley with the fellow members of our tour group, and ended up making friends with the Chinese waitresses and Amy and I even danced with them as the evening progressed (even though we did feel like ungraceful giants compared to them..chinese people are tiny!). The next day we went to a very uninspiring temple, the Shaolin temple, with our former tour group, the funnest part of the day was going to the temple which involved goin on the motorway in a Golf buggy, hired for us my Mr Liu.
Next we went to xian just for a day, we popped in to see the terracotta warriors..their really not all their cracked up to be. Maybe Im being cynical but as far as im concerned once you’ve seen onle little terracotta statue you’ve seen them all..definitely not worth the 60 yuan entrance fee. Then we took a flight to Guilin and took a bus to a little known nearby rural village called Caoping. This place was amazing, we really were the only westerners there and the locals watched us wherever we went, selling us water chestnuts and sweet potatoe. The houses were really simple shacks with straw roofs and no sinks. Chickens and dogs were everywhere and people ambled by walking their water buffalo. We found a local boatman and bargained ourselves a trip down the Li River. The river banks were lined with bamboo, water buffalo were busy grazing while massive vegetation covered limestone peaks rose into the air on either side and dissapeared into the surrounding mists. Little men went by on their homemade bamboo rafts. Our destination Yungshuo turned out to be a very touristy resortish, completely different from the smog covered north. We were invited into a bar by a group of guys and had a massive chinese meal.
Since then we’ve been rock climbing, mountain biking to some obsure rural villages surrounding yungshuo, got mullered on vodka fermented with snake and millipides, saved some frogs, conned a con man, taken a 24 hour journey to Chengdu, negotiated public transport round this mad city and had a proper Sichuanese hot pot (its very very very hot..in fact my mouth is still numb..).
The rock climbing really was cool, we were invited along by a bunch of backpackers we met in Yungshuo and brought our very mad and very Scottish friend (her accent is way way stronger than your dads, everyone is a lad or ‘wee lassie’) who shared our dorm along. We climbed up these very strangely shaped small mountains, the highest we got was thirty meters..high enough to make me hold on for dear life till I could no longer bend my hands for a day! After that we went for a meal with the group and ended up doing a large bar crawl till 4 in the morning (this is where the snake and millipede vodka comes in). We then all ambled to the night market to get some kebabs and there we saw a series of poor frogs on the stalls, alive and trying to free themselves from the cruel sharp netting that restrained them. Here the chinese tradition is to skin the frog alive before frying it, knowing their cruel fate Amy and I couldn’t bare to leave them there. So, (much to the amusement of the stall owner who kept teasing us by pretending to skin them, we bargained for and bought the entire lot) and we all walked down to a nearby pond and set the poor things free!
The next day we set out for our marathon bus journey, we’d bought the ticket a couple of days earlier and after speaking to some chinese locals we realised that we’d been conned into buying a stupidly expensive ticket. Our con man (the guy who sold us the ticket) couldnt speak or understand a word of english so whilst we waited for the bus with him Amy and I had great fun venting our anger at him by mocking him, telling him in a collected manner that he was an idiot with a stupid hair cut a terrible job, and other such pleasentries but in a tone of voice that he couldnt guess what we were saying.. very immature but suprisingly fun. Once we got to the station and realised that they weren’t even sleeper tickets but upright seats I really exploded..a bus official took me and the guy to a woman who could speak english and act as translator..I demanded that if we didnt get our money back we’d set the police on him (I was sure he wasnt paying tax on his earnings)..this worked amazingly well and cursing and swearing he coughed up until we paid the correct price for the ticket. After that the 24 hour bus journey didnt feel quite so bad.
We are currently staying in Chengdu the capital of the Sichuan province, a clean and rather unexciting town but a place where the food is fantastic, renowned as the best in China in fact. Everything is dipped in a mouth numbing chilli but is suprisingly tasty. Tommorow we are heading to a well reknowned panda reserve where we are told, we are guaranteed to see many Pandas. We are also planning to set out on a two day trek up an near by mountain, Emai Shan. Here one spends the night in Buddhist monasteries on the way up, the mountain is reputed as being highly populated by monkeys, we’ve even been told to bring a big stick as the very hungry monkeys are often prone to attack!!
I hope you’re all well and having a fab time whereever you are and whatever you’re doing. Keep me up to date with developments :). Dad could you please ring mum again sometime soon and keep her posted on what we’re up to and mainly that I’m still alive?! Thanks 🙂
Take care all and I wish a Happy Chinese New Year! (January 29th),
Lots of love,
Ruth xx