The main attraction, in the red corner - China

So we caught the train from Hong Kong to Beijing and spent 24 hours as the local tourist attractions. They're not a subtle people, the Chinese, they just stare. The other thing you notice pretty quickly, and which explains a particular sign we saw in a restaurant in Malaysia, is the spitting. It's relentless. And it's not just the men - you'll hear somebody hacking up the biggest mouthful of phlegm you could ever imagine, and when you turn round, expecting to see somebody choking to death, there'll be a little old lady depositing half a lungful of mucus on the pavement. It's something you just don't get used to.


And so to Beijing. Soon to be famous for hosting the 2008 Olympics, the government is doing it's best to make sure everything looks just right. Unfortunately for us that means a lot of restoration work at the major tourist attractions, but don't despair, there were plenty of sights available to photograph for your viewing pleasure.

Let's start with Tian'anmen Square...


Ooops, sorry, that'll be a tour group. Get used to them, they're everywhere, sometimes with matching hats, always with a flag. We are SO glad we didn't take a tour. Let's try again, Tian'anmen Square...


Hmmm, big open space. In fact the biggest public square in the world with the National Museum on the left, Mao's Mausoleum on the right (slap bang in the middle of the square, somebody's ego needed one last massage) and the Monument to the People's Heroes between the two. The Great Hall of the People is just behind us, facing the museum, and out of shot on our left is Tian'anmen...


...the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian = Heaven, An = Peace and Men = Gate). Oh look, a picture of Mao. Heading through Tian'anmen takes us to the Forbidden City which was off limits to the public for 500-odd years...


That's the Meridian Gate and in front are the five bridges spanning the Golden River. But we can't hang around here all day, we've got lots to see.

The other big sight, in a direct line south of the Forbidden City, is the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors went to pray for good harvests (amongst other things). In fact, here's the Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests - we've gone a little arty here, but as I had to wait for a whole load of tour groups to disperse before getting a clear(ish) view, it's going in...


They also had some unusual pavillions. Good for lazing around in - it was a very hot day...


Come on, follow the guy with the flag, we're off to the Summer Palace next.

North-west of Beijing (incidently that's Bei = North and Jing = Capital, as opposed to Nanjing which used to be the capital, Nan = South. See, it all makes sense.). The Summer Palace was where the Emperor went in the summer to escape the heat of Beijing - we spent an afternoon wandering around and barely saw half of it. Beats a caravan at Skegness...


And the canal runs all the way from the city, so he didn't even have to catch the bus.

This next picture goes in because we had to pay an extra 10 yuan EACH to go up (that's about 60p!). This is the expensive view from just inside the gate...


And lovely it is too, thanks Col. Is it time to go to the Great Wall yet?? I've been dying to see this since I was little (You're still little) Actually I think you'll find I'm averagely tall here in China (Whatever...short arse)

OK, since you're here now. Tell me Jen, just how big is the wall??...


(Sigh) If you're going to be silly about it I'll have to tell everybody myself. The Great Wall of China, or Wan Li Chang Cheng, is approximately Wan Li long. That's 10,000 Li to you and me, or about 3000 miles. The bit we saw at Mutianyu was about 2 1/4 kilometres long - it was plenty to walk along as once again it was roasting...


Standing on the ramparts you can almost imagine a tired invading army, having struggled for days over the forested mountains and valleys, finally reaching the summit of the final ridge only to find that some joker's built a bleeding wall there. D'oh.

One more picture, just to keep Jen happy...


And that's the wall. It's grrrreat.

We left Beijing on the train, heading for Xi'an (pronounced She-an). Xi'an is known as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. Discovered in the early seventies, they were built around 2000 years ago by the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. He was the first emperor to reign over a united China. Of course he didn't actually build them himself. That would have taken forever. Let's have a look...


Look at all of those. They're life size and apparently they all have different faces!! Who'd have thought. Also, there are still remains of the original paint when they're first dug up, but this soon degrades with exposure to the atmosphere and they look as you'd expect. Let's see one close up...


I'll let Jen tell you more about these later. We didn't see much else while in Xi'an, not that much can compare with the warriors, but we did go to the Big Goose Pagoda (I have no idea why they call it that), all seven-storeys...


and there are a couple of very impressive towers in the middle of town. The picture below shows the nice view, using some handily placed grass, and also the reality of the huge roundabout they've built around the Bell Tower...


Here's an interesting point that I forgot to mention earlier. If you look at the roof you can see a line of little figures (they're actually animals) that, as well as helping to keep the tiles in place, denote the importance of the building. The Bell Tower is an eight-er, which is pretty good going, I think the maximum is eleven which is how many the Hall of Supreme Harmony has (it's in the Forbidden City). I'd show you a picture, but it was being restored, and the picture hanging from the scaffolding really didn't do it justice.

After a few days in Xi'an we flew down to Chengdu to see pandas and potentially climb a mountain.

We stayed at Sim's Cosy Guesthouse which, true to it's name, was most cosy. Something else that was Cosy, was Cosy the pig...


She's a bit of a star, and unfortunately Jen now wants a pig. Can you house train pigs?? Anyway, while in Chengdu we went to the Panda Breeding and Research Centre. If you go early in the morning you get to see them having breakfast. If you go at any other time you get to see them sleeping. Decisions decisions. Just for you we put in a special effort...


Ain't they cute. With their big teeth and claws.

Chengdu is also the birthplace of Ma Po Tofu, which is apparently a famous spicy Tofu dish. The original restaurant, ran by Ma Po herself, is just round the corner from the hostel. A good excuse for a nice feed. And on the way there is the Wen Shu Temple - three storey, buddhist, too big to fit in the photo, enjoy...


About 130km from Chengdu is Emei Shan, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Most of the Chinese tourists take the bus up to the cable car and then the cable car to the top. Most stupid foreigners try to walk it. We stayed the night at Baoguo before heading off for a day of walking. Baoguo Temple (Declare Nation Temple) is a good place to take a photo of the mountain - good job there was a sign there to tell me so...


It was kinda like climbing stairs FOR SEVEN HOURS. At first it was enjoyable - the scenery, the temples, the lack of tour groups. After two mostly enjoyable hours, some cheeky monkey tried to steal Jen's walking stick!!!


After four hours we were dearly hoping the estimate of six to eight hours was a gross exaggeration. After six hours we were beaten, dragging ourselves up step after god-forsaken step, dreaming of selling the house and buying a bungalow, wondering why we didn't listen to a whole nation of 1.3 billion people and take the damn bus. The monastery we stayed in was basic - well it was basically a building site. It didn't matter, they fed us and we slept, knowing there was still two more hours walking in the morning. The big thing about a trip to Emei Shan is seeing the sunrise from the top. It's a nice idea, most people miss it due to the huge traffic jams of buses all trying to get to the top at the same time. That and the almost permanent cloud cover. Rather than take the risk of being disappointed, we decided not to get up at 3am. When we eventually made it to the top at about 1.00pm (the queue of an hour at the cable car would have been annoying if we'd been trying to see the sunrise) there was plenty of lovely cloud to justify our laziness. There's an enormous statue at the top, along with various shops and restaurants, and of course temples...well worth 9 hours of hell...


We took the bus down.

From Chengdu we flew to Guilin, and from Guilin we headed straight down to Yangshuo where we stayed in the Yangshuo culture house. It was really a homestay, rather than a hostel, and Wei and family made everybody very welcome. There were lessons available in calligraphy, painting, language and various other chinese pursuits for those who wanted, but the highlight of every day was the huge evening meal they provided. The stuffed peppers were the best. We tried some calligraphy and painted some bamboo, here's Jen's effort...


Not bad. We can flog that down the local market to some other dumb tourists. Yangshuo is mainly known for it's scenery - lots of limestone stacks, the area round Guilin is the inspiration for the old chinese landscape paintings featuring steep mountains and cliffs (I can't guarantee this information, I'm just trying to justify going there). Have a look for yourself...


That's from the top of Moon Hill, I'll save the photo of Moon Hill itself for the upcoming slideshow (which, incidently, is currently numbering somewhere over 5000 photos. Be afriad, be very afraid!). From ground level it's looks more like this...


We had a pleasant day cycling around the countryside along the river and past paddy fields. And we had an interesting day in the Water Caves, one of the local big tourist attractions, which we visited with people we met at Wei's place. We were escorted around the underground tunnels by a guide who pointed out various rock formations and informed us that they looked like the tibetan plateau or a dog or buddha - he couldn't understand why we weren't taking it entirely seriously. It was most bizarre. The saving graces were the mud pool and the water pool. We spent half an hour diving into the water pool, and in the mud pool we just got dirty...


(Left to Right: Marie, James, Me, Jen, Pete, Linda and Paul)

Almost finished now. Finally from Yangshuo we headed to Shanghai, 29 hours on the train from Guilin. We'd learnt after our 24 hours of hard-seats from Beijing to Xi'an that a sleeper was definitely worth the extra yuan. And at 20-odd quid a throw it was a bargain.

And at Shanghai everything ground to a halt as we hit our travelling wall. We had plans to take day trips to a couple of places, but instead we just lounged around the hostel and took a couple of trips into Shanghai's main shopping district. Motivation had deserted us. As the saying now goes - we couldn't be buddha'd. And with that, this blog will also grind to a halt. I'll let Jen fill in all the fine detail I've missed out. Thanks for getting this far (sorry Sam, I tried to keep it short, but big country equals big blog, nothing I can do).

Thanks Col, but I think you've pretty much covered everything. I was going to add a bit about the bizarre bagged fruits we saw in Xi'an. I think they were pomegranites. Each fruit had its own clear plastic bag around it, hold on a sec did I take a photo? ah yes I did, it was taken from a moving bus so its not exactly in focus but I think you can just make out the fruit...


...are still on the trees. Odd. Very odd.

Other noteworthy points include the 2 dogs which sit outside every doorway. We realised that one always has a ball to play with while the other is stood on a puppy. Actually they're supposed to be lions and with a bit of reasearch we discovered that the ball signifies male playfulness while the cub signifies a lioness and maternal instinct. Here's one proud mommy in the forbidden city...

Doesn't she look motherly. Perhaps not. Ok, here's a pic thats sure to elicit some broody coo's and sighs...

How sweet is that. He's ony a few weeks old :-)
(Can you house train Pandas?)

And so on that note we'll round up the China edition of the blog. If you've ever fancied being in close proximity to fabulous sights and 1.3 billion people who think you're the main attraction - then China is THE place for you.

Thanks for reading the whole gubbins. Now please, seeing as you've got this far, you might as well leave a comment to prove it. You know we'll love you for it.

xxx