After spending a fair amount of time being very British and moaning about the weather to anyone who would listen in Korea, we were looking forward to visting warmer climates again. As you can imagine, we were unbelievably thrilled to find snow on the ground when we arrived in the Chinese port town of Tianjin! Needless to say we didn't hang around too long, and took what is currently the worlds fastest commuter train outa there, and to Beijing (which actually turned out to be further north - missing the whole planning aspect yet again me thinks!).
I remember previously mentioning that India was "big", and it is very big indeed. However, we were soon to discover that China is India and a lot more. I am led to believe that Mahoooosive is the technical term. We soon realised that we would never get to see much in the little time we had - especially as train tickets are like gold dust over the lunar new year. A word of warning to anyone planning to visit China; avoid travelling over the new year! Competing with literally billings of people for train tickets (there is only one government run train company - surprise) is a mission of the highest order. Travel agents have no chance to help as tickets go on sale exactly 5 days in advance of the journey, and often run out in hours. Visiting the train station was like visiting a camp site as loads of people decided to await ticket sales time. We enjoyed a fair bit of luck, and a lot of eye-spy, acquiring our ticket from Beijing to Shanghai. But hey at least we joined in the with locals!
England has a few things in common with China asides for the weather. The biggest (apart from the Olympics) is that we both built big walls to keep out the riff-raff from up north :-) Both were eventual failures, but the Chinese version is certainly a more impressive exhibit that your average garden wall - some might even call it Great! We decided to explore said wall by hiking 10km of its length, and we did so with just two other Brit's a German and a local guide (don't put it past us to get lost following a single wall, hence the guide) . So much for the term "The Great Wall of Tourists"; for most of the journey we were the only people in sight! That is apart from the odd sentry or local selling your postcards or beer; the latter which we appreciated more. 10km is not really that far, but once you factor in the insane amount of stairs... therefore the beer :-D) To see why the wall was so effective in deterring attacks, I have uploaded some photographs ->
You should also find some photo's of the Forbidden city, and Tiananmen square where a man once famously stood in front of a tank (which was attacking those who stood up against the communist regime). Interestingly we discovered that the tank division in question then set up defensive positions in the city, worried that other divisions of the Chinese army might seek revenge for the massacre.
Utilising our well earned train tickets we next visited Shanghai - the most hi-tech city I have ever seen. It would not be too extreme to suggest that this may be the worlds number 1 economic hub in our lifetime. The plans for the city are rather ambitious, but the worlds biggest air and sea ports are already in their 2nd phase of construction. Asides from the obvious question 'where is all the money coming from?', I see nothing to stop Shanghai reaching its goal. Best of all for us - it's still cheap at the moment; 50p for a very large bottle of local German created beer, making this one of the best party cities around.
I write this from the Hong Kong hussel and bussel, where the Chinese New Year has just been welcomed in. Realising time is not on our side, we have booked an Air Asia (Asian equivalent of Easyjet) flight to Bangkok tomorrow. We will then travel to the forgotten land of Laos, where I have been well informed that jumping in a tyre tube and floating down a rivers is the best way to get around. Sounds great to me...! So I'll be leaving you for now; till the next time xx
(p.s. don't forget to check the latest photo's).
