Evening crew...
Well I’m in Beijing now… last stop, that’s it.. no more China for me – but what a place to finish up, I can’t believe it’s almost been a month – it really has flown by.
Today I’ve been to Tiananmen square, the Forbidden City, visited a school for the education of mentally handicapped Chinese men and woman (ranging between 20 and 40 years of age) and been for a Rickshaw ride.. tonight I’m off to see some Chinese acrobats… busy busy, but I’ve still managed to find some time to post an update.
At any rate, the last week of travel has had quite an impact on me, the scenery and surrounding country side I’ve seen as we’ve weaved from Pingyao (an arid and well preserved old town with fully intact ancient city wall, we stayed in a lovely sorta guesthouse come hotel) to Datong (amazingly smoggy coal producing city well deserving of the name “shithole”) and finally Beijing has been phenomenal - it truely embodied the difficulty of describing China as you see coal mines, sections of the great wall winding over almost desert like hills, piles of waste, farmers hand plowing what looks to be just dust, farmers sorting grain on the ashphault roads as their mules and soot covered sheep mill about, sheets of ice lazing in riverbeds as if they've just forgotten to thaw out with the rest of the dry arid landscape and factories pooring smoke into a hazy sky as the sun sets the colour of an aniseed wheel.
It's beautiful, but no single component would be worthy of the title... I wish I could spend more time in the north, I'm definitely coming back at some point.
So since my last update I’ve done some touristy things (as well as just travelleing):
Terracotta warriors (which was interesting, they have so much work to do yet as they uncover and reconstruct the various relics from the tiny bits and pieces, but the scale of the sight is impressive – another great example of Chinese tourism gone mad)
The hanging monestary (quite fun, no way would a site like this be open to the public in New Zealand – OSH would surely close it down…)
The Yungang Grottoes, Near Datong, containing 51,000 buddahs… approximately 40 caves, containing about 35 very big Buddahs, and heaps and heaps of little Buddahs etched on almost every available surface (including the Big Buddahs themselves) – it’s quite a sight, but I found staring back at the great coal mine on the other side of the road just as enjoyable funnily enough, I’m Completely Buddahed out at the moment, I ended up leaving a little early to go play soccer in the car park, which was highly entertaining (though my cold is still slowing me down)
Wandered along the Pingyao city wall, and watched hoards of obnoxious French tourists marauding the streets at night… Got to try my first big Jujube (there sort of red things, which taste almost like dates but better – they make a sweet fruity soup with the little ones) and caused a road accident (van vs. motorbike collision) which was pretty funny, but you had to be there.
Visited the courtyard, an amazing multi-generation personal residence of a chinese family.. a truely amazing site, on a hillside that was basically a giant dust bowl, of course I would leave my camera in the hotel at Pingyao! gah.. the local houses outside the giant residence are basically holes carved into the side of cliffs.. not a piece of green in site, I really wish I could've got some pictures of this area.. it wasn't beautiful, but it was striking - like much of China really.
It's quite strange, spending so long with complete strangers - it surprising how well the group has worked out, I can only hope my group is anywhere near as good in vietnam when I eventually get there - next stop is Thailand, smoggy rotten old Bangkok - though I might post another update before then, if time permits to tell tales of our planned "big night out" in Beijing... heh
Oh, and I'm off to see the great wall properly tomorrow.. which should be a spot of fun, even if it is sorta clapping out (and still being raided for bricks by farmers in some places ;o)
It's definitely going to be weird leaving China, you develop some interesting skills while you stay here.. such as queue blocking (elbowing grandmas out of the way and bunching in groups to stop people jumping the line), very interesting China traffic negotiating skills (that will get me run over in New Zealand) and an inate ability to dodge spit, which is, of course, everywhere.
What I may well miss though is 1.5 Yuan beers (Piejaiu, which I probably spelt wrong, pronounced pee-jow), about $0.30 for a 650ml bottle, which is perfectly ok to drink in the streets as you walk around..oh and chinese foot massages, which are just great.
What I wont miss is sugar... I'm so tired of sweet bread, hopefully Thailands a little different in that respect!
