Pandamonium

Xian was the ancient Chinese capital which marked the beginning (or the end) of the silk route.  It has thousands of years of tradition and history so it has become a traveller hangout.  Many people choose to come directly from Beijing on a night train in 'hard sleeper' class, but I took a detour in Datong which I've already spoken about a bit and I also went to another city called Pingyao.  Apparently Pingyao is the best conserved ancient city in China.  It has a wall that surrounds the old quarter and has allowed it to be preserved almost intact, I say almost because there are two main streets which are full of souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels.  What there is to see can be done in one or two days, but I spent 4 days there!!  Not because I like the city that much but because I refuse to take a night train on a 'hard sleeper'; I've heard a lot of stories of how unpleasant and unique (not in a good way) this experience is and I'll do it only if I don't have a choice.  It wasn't so bad to take it easy in Pingyao.  On the second day I met Agathe, a French girl who was going to do voluntary work in Nepal.  Agathe and I spent the following days walking around the city, seeing the attractions and talking in general.  We were shocked at how much we had in common – literary tastes, family and lifestyle.

 

As there are so many hostels and hotels in Pingyao, they're all desperate for clients, so they offer to pick you up and drop you off at the station for free, and they give presents when you leave the room.  Another sign of the overdevelopment in China, a very common phenomenon.

 

Another night train to Xian and Agathe and I went our separate ways.  I started to walk around the city, eating fried squid in the street, seeing Chinese opera in the park (it sounds like wailing cats) and appreciating the Muslim quarter.  The most famous attraction in Xian is the Terracota warriors which are one hour from the city; that was one of my aims in China, so on the next day, albeit not very early, I went to see them.  Before you get to the entrance you have to walk 7 minutes along a narrow street also full of souvenir shops, so many that it made me wonder whether to see the original warriors!  I could have stayed to see the numerous real-size replicas along the path.  When I went in there were thousands of Chinese tourists that pushed to be able to take a photo and move to the next 'photo opportunity'.  The worst thing was that the statues were quite far back so you couldn't see the details properly – the distinct characteristics of each statue, which is what seems most interesting to me.  Fortunately there was a museum with a few statues in a display cabinet and with the help of a bit of patience and elbowing you can see how wildly colossal this work is.

 

That night in my hostel I met Angus, a 19 year old Australian guy who came to eat with me.  The technique I use to decide where to eat is to see where and what people are eating.  If what I see looks good I order one for me.  This time there was a sign recommending no idea what speciality.  I decided to try it and it turned out to be a mixture of transparent noodles in a very slimy sauce with half raw egg and a load of stuff that I had no idea of – something floury like cereal with an insipid taste.  What I did know was that my body refused to digest it properly and made the following days in Xian slow and difficult.  On one of the next few days I had dinner with Angus and Mare.  Mare had travelled from his native Croatia to China by land.  He entertained us for a while with stories of Pakistan and Iran, and the combination of beer and more greasy food didn't help my weak stomach.  I had planned to go to the Hua mountain on the following day but I had to postpone it, but it didn't matter much as I was corrupted by reading 'The Godfather'.

 

I eventually stopped postponing my trip to the Hua mountain (one of the 5 sacred Taoist mountains).  I was a bit tired of cities and smog and wanted to see a bit of nature and maybe sun.  I started the walk with three English people I'd met on the bus.  They went too fast for me and I was still weak from the lack of food in the previous days, and I was beggining to feel horrible , after a while they calmed down the pace because the mountain was very steep.  A large part of the walk has chains on the sides of the path to help people go up the almost vertical ascent.

When we arrived at the main bit of the mountain from where people walk to the 5 important peaks (north, south, central, east, west), we bumped into thousands of Chinese people who had taken the lazy and expensive option of the cable car.  From there we carried on going up the 'dragon's back', named so because it looks like the back of dragon, and we arrived just at sunset at the eastern peak.  I told myself that had we gone up at my pace, it would have got dark as we were going up.  We spent the night in the hostel at the eastern peak and only an English guy called Wayne and I got up at 5.30 to walk to the eastern peak to see the sunrise.  All that effort to see the horizon full of clouds.  The good thing was that it wasn't at all cold .  We waited a good while and after giving up we saw the sun come out from the clouds on the horizon and we were glad not to have wasted the early morning.

Hua mountain is known for having one of the most dangerous walks in the world.  This is because until a few years ago it was possible to do the walk along narrow planks that were placed on a precipice.  Now this fun has been ruined and there are cables and harnesses  in this section.  Even still it was a fun part and Wayne, who had a fear of heights, was very excited to have been able to do it.  After this short and emotional journey there is a cave that serves as a Taoist temple.  That explains why people go on such a dangerous pilgrimage, as a sacrifice.

We went to see the two remaining peaks on the way back to Xian.  I spoke to Wayne about lots of things, especially the UK.  He was very sociable and kind, characteristic of people in the north of England.  I was really happy to have done the walk.  My body felt renewed and full of energy.  So many cities had left me a bit tired, although I also felt that my new energy was being drawn away on again arriving at the central path and going up the northern peak where the groups of tourists contaminated the place with their presence.

 

That night in my hostel I was taken over by temptation and ate roast meat, because my body didn't want to go back to Chinese food yet.  I don't think all that much of Chinese food.  The taste doesn't seem exquisite or addictive and often seems to be just a load of really greasy noodles with 3 or 4 pieces of some cheap tasteless vegetables.  When they put meat in it it is such a small quantity with miniscule bits of grease with meat but tends to be more grease.  It's the type of food that doesn't fill you up but rather gives you enough energy until the next meal.  I think that's why the Chinese are so skinny.

 

Another eventless night train to Chengdu.  There I met up with Angus again and we went out to eat with 2 British guys full of energy.  At first I liked Chengdu.  There's no old town but it has a good feel about it.  There I tried the best food I've had in China, a soup with pig's leg that didn't taste like Chinese food, and I also had a good time with other travellers.  One of those nights we went out on the town and arrived at a street full of bars that was so full of life that we could hear the sound of the birds and insects on the surrounding trees, so we escaped from that place and ended up in a much more appropriate area.  It was Halloween and some people were dressed up.  The best bit was when a couple of Mafia chiefs fought amongst themselves to give us shots and have us as their friends. It was as if they were saying, you stole my foreigners, no – you stole them from me, they were mine first…

Among other things I saw the panda conservation centre which was full of pandas and people making noises like 'so cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute'.  I also went to Leshan to see the biggest Buddha in the world and yes, it was huge!!

That's how my days in Chengdu were spent, with travellers in the hostel, deciding which route to take, getting massages.  One of the massages was done with cups.  It left red marks on my skin which look as if I had chicken pox on steroids.

 

I met really cool people in Chengdu and I quite liked the place.  Apparently it's the second favourite city for Chinese people to live in.  I left Chengdu one morning after having been out, and I slept a large part of the journey to a town called Kangdin, but that story is for the next blog entry.

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Pekinese

I carried on sleeping while they changed the wheels of the train, as Chinese railways have different sizes to Russian ones.  When I woke up it was already morning at a train station.  I remembered that Demian and Joe (those from the Mongolian group) got off it Datong and I went towards their compartment (first of all taking a toilet break).  When I arrived they had already got off (then I found out that they had looked for me while I was in the toilet) and I couldn't say goodbye from a couple that was so energetic.  It was a shame and I went to look through the window, capturing bits of the Great Wall from time to time.  Not only that but you could see something that you couldn't see before: people, constructions, farms, roads, development.  We were definitely not in Mongolia.  Silvia asked me where I was going to stay in Beijing and I told her I would stay in the Hutong.  She asked me which and I told her in the Hutong.  She released me from my ignorance by telling me that hutong is a collection of alleyways of typical Chinese life, with eating places everywhere, incessant bicycle bells, people screaming and throwing yuans in card games, a thousand and one shops, public toilets and many Chinese flag.  That's how my hutong was and the best part was that it was very untouristy.

I was invited that same night to an underground Chinese metal concert, that looked promising, but before I went out I met 3 Argentinian girls: Julia, Yael and Romina, and had to choose between spending the night with 3 really nice girls or to see people moshing Chinese style.  I decided to hang around chatting and left the metal of my adolescence.  When we went to have something to eat we couldn't stop looking at people taking their dogs for a walk and saying, this one's going in the pan, this one's really skinny, this one looks like it's going to taste bad.  Luckily that night we didn't end up eating dog but a really spicy dish with camaroni and pepper.

The next day I met up with Silvia in front of the forbidden city, of which nothing is forbidden!!  As tehre was a festive week in China for the commemoration of 60 years since the founding of the republic, Silvia and I had an emotional shock at seeing how many Chinese people there were everywhere.  It was incredible, Chinese people to the left and right, Tiananmen Square, which is the largest in the world, looked like a jungle of people that moved erratically in all directions.  That's why I say that the forbidden city is no longer forbidden, because there were also crowds of people everywhere, so much so that we kept having to take breaks.  After the immensity and solitude of Mongolia, China is a very strong mental challenge.  The forbidden city was enormous and somehow monotonous.  Yes, it's beautiful and grand but after a short time the buildings look the same with very few interesting variations (the same goes for all the temples I have seen in China), so that after a few hours of break-crowds-break, we decided to leave and go to Jinghshan park located in the north of the forbidden city, and it was necessary to free ourselves a bit from the crowds.  I say a bit because the park was also full of people.

We stayed in the park until sunset and from there wer left for the night market where you can buy lots of weird stuff.  It's a really touristy place as the same people take photos next to spines with scorpions and noodle dishes.  Before you ask me, no, I did not eat dog, and yes, I did eat other interesting things, among them: scorpions (crunchy), silk worms (with the taste of sand), seahorse (it tastes like fried fish), starfish (crispy and a bit strange in the centre) and some other things I don't remember very well.  One of the things that I most liked to find was a type of Kumis, like the Colombian one. I hadn't tried one of those for ages.  We finished off the day in Tiananmen Square where in spite of being almost 11pm there were still thousands of Chinese tourists.  I was reduced to a state of idiocy watching the military parade that was constantly being presented on 2 enormous screens (also on the metro and on buses).  It goes without saying that the Chinese want to show off to the world with their military arsenal and barbaric capacity of coordinating and managing large masses.

The following days I carried on with my touristy activities, more temples and also the Olympic park.  The Olympic stadium is very impressive with its bird nest design.  It reminded me that in the market they sold bird nests to eat.  In theory the bird saliva mixed with straw works as a type of encouragement.  I didn't try that one either.

One of those days Silvia convinced me to try Pekinese duck in an elegant place.  I went because they say it's really worth it and really delicious.  When we arrived they sent us to the 5th floor, so imagine the size of the place.  We ordered a duck between two of us and one of a thousand chefs came and cut it in front of us.  Then they gave us the duck's identity card (I suppose its the cage where it lived) and we ate.  If I'm honest, it didn't impress me.  It tasted of home-made duck, the difference being that the skin was not dry and crispy but soft and very fatty.  They manage this by inflating the duck before cooking it until the skin comes away from the meat.

Something I really admire of Chinese culture is that they go to parks a lot, to walk, to dance in groups, to play cards, stretch and relax.  It's strange seeing the old people stretching using the different facilities that have been installed for that or doing gymnatics, somersaults in the air tied to a bar as I saw with Thomas and Silvia (we tried and didn't even reach half of the required height) or another time they were playing instruments and a large group of passers-by came to sing in unison the songs that surely bring them memories of their childhoods, or whole families (from grandfather to child) stamping a type of saucer with feathers in the air.  I remember how difficult it was to get my grandmother out to play volleyball. Those parks are very welcoming.

One of those nights I was speaking with the Argentinian girls and they told me they wanted to go to the Great Wall to sleep there one night.  I liked the idea and we started discussing the issue, concluding that it was very cold without a sleeping bad (I'm really wimpy about the cold) and we didn't find a place to rent one so they organised a place where we could stay in a village close to the wall.  The idea was to arrive at a place called Jinshanling and then walk 10km to the village called Simatai.  We arranged to meet at 8am but like good Latin Americans left only at 9, making us miss the bus to Jonshanling.  We took the next bus and after several hours it left us in the middle of the motorway, in a place where there was nothing, only a police station.  From there we managed to arrive at the right place but before that we had a few problems with police officers whom we asked in Chinese about the bus: minibus jinshanling and they looked stunned, as if they were calculating the first 10 numbers of the square root of 2.

Julia was ill but still decided to continue with the walk, but as was expected the walk ended up being too difficult for her physical state and we had to go back.  That was the beginning of the big soap opera.  To begin with, we didn't go back very fast because Romina and Yael were very happy taking photos.  When we arrived in Jingshanling it was already night and there was nowhere to stay apart from a hotel that cost 400 yuan (40 euros) or there was a taxi to Beijing for 550 yuan.  We decided to stay but they didn't let the girls because they didn't have their passports, so we had to phone a hostel in Beijing and get them to send a photocopy by fax.  That took several hours and the three girls changed their minds every two minutes - we're staying, we're going, staying, going, staying.  I finally persuaded them that logistically and financially it would be better if they went back to Beijing.  When they finally decided to leave the copies of the passports arrived and they started again with the - we're staying, leaving, staying, leaving, staying, ahhh!!!!  They ended up going to Beijing and that's as far as the story goes because I stayed.  I wasn't that desperate to pay for a hotel so I walked towards the mountain looking for a place where they rented out sleeping bags.  I rented a sleeping bag and a couple of insulators that were not very cheap but four times cheaper than the hotel, and went towards the wall.

Gasping from tiredness, emotion and anxiety I arrived at a tower and realised I had taken the wrong left and I was on a more difficult and less well preserved route.  I arrived at a tower that only had half a roof and the floor was covered with rock dust.  I decided to stay there and have a very bizarre experience.  A place without doors or windows with only the sound of the wind rushing through the ruins.  I asked myself how many people had spent nights on watch, watchning for Mongolian invaders that tried to pass to the Southern empires.  I was there a while, taking delight in the nocturnal shapes of the Great Wall that snaked along the mountains like  a chameleon's spine.  I slept full of joy, at being able to have this great experience.  Ironically the Argentinian girls, who had had the idea in the first place, couldn't join.  A really strange noise woke me up and I saw the sunrise of a red sun that timidly came out through the mountains to then become hidden again behind a constant cloud cover that accompanied my two days on the wall.  After returning the sleeping bag, walking the 10km to Simatai and then half negotiating the return to Beijing I met up with the Argentinian girls again who couldn't believe I had stolen their idea.  Julia asked me what I had done the day before.  She told me that those who had died constructing the wall were buried there.  Good that I didn't have that thought the night before or it would have been a very long night.

The following days were taken up by meeting up with Silvia (from the Mongolia trip) and Thomas (whom I'd met in Baikal), speaking to them and exploring the city with no fixed aim.  Once we saw some streets where everything was in Russian which was really nice for us three as we'd done the Transsiberian, and we almost made Silvia buy a pair of those enormous Russian-style heeled shoes.  Those two went their separate ways and I stayed for another few days in Beijing because I liked a lot about the city.  The remaining days I visited various very interesting places, among those factory 798 which was a factory with electronic items but is now one of those complexes of modern art galleries.  I spent 5 hours there and it was not enough.  It's huge and there was a lot to see.  One of my favourite pieces was an enormous sculpture of a bull that was goring a person against the wall.  Those days I also had good times with Pierre, French, and Boris, German.  Pierre was on the road for a year and hadn't shaved the whole time so looked like a photo of Jesus Christ or Taliban or Dumbledore.  He also used a type of white shirt that he hadn't washed in literally 5 weeks and you could already see splashes of all that he'd eaten.  Boris was more pragmatic and serious but also interesting.  He had gone through several countries by bike and had really interesting projects going on with his gang of cyclists in Hamburg.

I spent my last day in Beijing queueing for an hour and a half, pushing and shoving and watching a large number of Chinese people jump the queue because they wanted to see Mao for ten seconds.  I also had Pekinese duck again in a place that was not as luxurious or tasty, and finally I took a night train to a city called Datong.
In Datong it was horribly cold and after a while I arranged to see the tourist attractions, the Yungang caves and the hanging monastery.  The caves are spectacular, apparently the best preserved in the whole of China, and the monastery brought me memories of Tanya's photos (she suggested I go there).  But after that the city is a disgusting place where I had to spend two days against my will.  It wasn't that bad in the end because I met Alrick, a French guy who spoke Spanish and like a good French guy he knew how to complain about everything.  He really reminded me of the husband of a friend of mine as they were physically similar, very funny and protested in teh same way.  We talked quite a lot and the next day we spend a long time looking for a decent toilet for him as he refused to use one without a proper seat.  We looked in private offices and they were even trying to sell us an apartment in Datong. We refused such tempting offer and his arse has saved in a luxurious hotel where the blue eyed blond guy was treated with high respect。  Alrick left at 4 and I still had 7 hours in that abominable town.  I killed time by getting my hair cut, seeing a street market, and on the net.  I took the train to Pingyao which is where I am now.

Some notes of interest: Pekinese dog comes from a type that lived only in the forbidden city for a long time and that's where the name comes from. It's a myth that the Great Wall is the only structure from ancient man that can be seen from space - you can't see it! Peking or Beijing?  The Chinese created pinyin which is the phonetic representation of Mandarin in Roman characters.  Some names of cities changed when they were transliterated, so Peking is Beijing in pinyin.

Thanks for reading  this long entry.

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