Personal Thoughts on China

China has definately been an amazing country to travel around and after two months I still have so much I want to see and experience here...so I will definately be back soon. After all the warnings I was getting about how difficult it would be for me to travel alone here, I was pleasantly surprised that travelling here is so very possible. All you need is a lonely planet guidebook and a Mandarin phrasebook can come in useful, although i don't have one.
The country is stunningly beautiful, very clean, peaceful, and the people are generally very helpful and kind. Travelling with a local Chinese has also been great. Its enabled me to understand and appreciate the culture, politics, religions, and philosophy. I was able to visit places and experience things most tourists would miss, the Chinese lifestyle, local customs, food and jokes. In fact I know some of you won't agree with me here, but I think that eating the local food, whatever it may be, is an important part of really understanding their culture. Since being here I think that food is one of the most fundamental parts of a culture, not just the eating of it but understanding the reasons behind why they eat the foods they do, and the philosophy of the way in which they eat. I think that mealtime is a very important part of the social life of any culture.
Anyway I did really enjoy the Chinese food and am truly addicted to it, I think I will really miss it after i leave tonight and my health has never been better.
Well enough about food, and back to travelling.....although travelling with a local was an amazing introduction to the country, when I'm back I will definately do it alone, preferably with a motorbike, the mountain roads are great for this. The few weeks that i did travel alone were an amazing experience, you don't have anyone to bounce ideas off or to support you in any way, you have to rely completely and totally on yourself and you meet the most intersting local people. Its great for boosting your confidence. And don't take books or music with you, its better to be totally immersed in the culture and the place, this way you really make the most out of it.
If anyone is thinking of travelling in China, DO IT!!! And travel alone, it will be a life changing experience.
And just to get a bit political, I found an interesting quote in Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, I thought it might make President Bush feel a bit better:
" I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definately mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue, it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work. We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."

Tengchong

I was staying in this little town called Tengchong for 5 days. It is near the Burmese border and there are no tourists there at all. The people there are a mix of chinese minority called Lisu, chinese people and Burmese that have managed to escape from their military dictatored country. I met 2 americans there, so hung out with them and had really good fun. We found
this tiny local burmese restaurant where they served burmese food in their front room to the local Burmese men. We ate here every day breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were going away for the day we would get maasa ( the wife) to cook us a lunch. Sometimes I went to the fantastic fruit and veg market and bought aubergines or karela (yes for you Indians who can't
beleive what they are reading, I opted to eat karela and aubergines!!!) I then took them back to Maasa for her to cook them up for me into a curry while I had a cup of burmese tea which was just like the Indian tea. It was very tropical in this area too...lots of banana trees pineapples, passion fruits, tamarind...it was heaven.
Also met this Burmese guy who spoke perfect English perfect Burmese and perfect Chinese. He had been in prison in Burma for being a political activist against the military government. Anyway he told us about Burma and Tengchong and even invited us to his English class where we met his chinese students.
The volcanoes and tropical surroundings in this town were amazing, and the hot springs we had to ourselves all day as we lounged in the clear springs, cooled down under waterfalls and swam in the pool in the hot sunshine, with only the birds and butterflies and the man giving chinese massages to keep us company. I really thought I had died and gone to heaven. The springs and
geusers ranged in temperature from luke warm to 97 degrees C (230 F). We tried out the local bars and the lethal home made liquer, which only a hardened English drinker like me could handle!! Played lots of cards and had great company....thanks I and Alex for the great time, hope to meet you both again soon...maybe Burma or India?? Hopefully i'll have learnt a few more card games by then and won't subject you to drunken Donkey again. (And I the Himalayas do exist, I had a look on my map.)
Karaoke in the local, I really like Chinese pop music...even find myself humming it all day. But then I do have a strange taste in music.....country and heavy metal!
The Lisu minority had customs very similar to the Indians, they wear red when they get married and the girl has to cry to show that she is sad to leave her parents, if not they pinch her to make her cry. The girl then has to go to the husbands house and drag her husband away from his parents. sounds good fun.
This minority wear tree bark on their backs to protect and support their backs when carrying baskets on their farms.
The nearby town of Heshun which has the oldest rural library in China was very pretty too. Little cobbled streets and 600 year old wooden houses. At the top of the hill was a beautiful temple, with the Buddhist, Confucsion, and Taoist beliefs in one place.Tengching also boasts some amazing wetlands, which I didn't get time to see and has tree climbing fish and two headed snakes!I definately think Tengchiong was the best place I have visited in China, but may not be so nice for long. There are a lot of new hotels being build for the expected huge Chinese tourist boom in this area. Good for the locals I suppose but sad for me. The genuine goodwill of the locals will probably be lost in customer care and commercialism.
Back to Kunming on the sleeper bus 17 hours instead of 14 as usual. Funny that I can only sleep on trains and buses now and have trouble sleeping in hotels. ( I slept a total of 16 hours in 96 while in Tengchong) Well back on a sleeper bus tommorrow to Hekau on the border of Vietnam.
I had a business card made up too so I don't have to keep writing on scraps of paper which are a very precious commodity when you are travelling. Surprisingly the Chinese made a mess of the spelling on the first set so did them again. I now have lovely green environmentally friendly cards with all my millions of letters after my name just in case I really go out of my mind
and decide to work in civil engineering again...

Kunming

Finally met someone from England after 2 months of being in China. Guy (from Wales actually) Hi if you are reading this! Had a really great time, went to see Shillin Forest which was a huge natural landscape of tall limestone pillars. And the best thing about it was that we were the only
ones there. It was amazing. We climbed the pillars, chilled out in caves and almost didn't make it back home....as there were no buses and we were miles from anywhere. Then this lady in her rickshaw appeared as if by magic, took us to the highway and spent 2 hours trying to hitch us a lift.

Lijiang (Yunnan Province)

A larger version of Dali, a beautiful very old, well maintained town, but full of Chinese and western tourists, again it was full of cobbled streets selling hiipy stuff. I wanted to go to the Tiger Leaping Gorge...the deepest gorge in the world and with the Yangze River meandering in the valley below, but the road was closed due to landslides so couldn't go...was gutted, I'll have to come back here at a better time of year.

Anyway I wanted to get away from the crowds, so we went by bus to a village nearby, Baisha. Here the local people were of the Naxi minority. The Naxi minority is based on a matriachal system where women rule...My kind of place!!!
These were similar to the Bai but wore different clothes and spoke a different language. They lived in little clay houses, probably a few hundred years old. The people of a single minority all wear the same clothes, its like a uniform and they wear so many layers, it's a wonder they don't boil to death. But they were very friendly, I think I would like to stay here a lot longer.

These minorities were originally travellers/gypsies who had over the few 100
years or so settled in the Yunnan province but were still living very basic lives in simple houses with their main occupation being farming.

Dali (Yunnan Province)

The further south you travel the quieter it becomes and Dali is one of the quietest places I have come across, a little town in the mountains with Chinese minorities. However as soon as you enter the old part of town, it is heaving with western hippy travellers. Hippy Haven.

There are quaint little cobbled streets with huindreds of shops selling heavy baggy cotton clothes, little wooden hippy hostels and lots of cafes serving western and chinese food. An old chinese lady even tried to sell me drugs, her English was impressive as she whispered"you like to smoke ganja?" -under the pretence of selling me some handcrafted beadwork.

My willpower not to buy anything failed me as i was tempted by those colourful huge baggy very heavy and not very practical hippy clothes!!! And i bought my 4th pair of walking boots in the last 2 months in hte hope that this time they will be comfortable and fit properly.

The local food was delicious....I wouldn't eat anything western again, after the deliciuos local food. The local resaurants, away from the western crowds, have an assortment of fresh vegetables displayed outside their grim little 'front rooms'. You can chose whichever you fancy, take a very low stool at a low table, ghet a cup of green tea and within minutes the
vegetable had been fried up with some meat in a lovely spicy sauce. So we
had this 3 times a day. Yummy.....

We spent a day horseriding up the mountains. A local villager took us on a couple of horses up past little villages further up the mountain where women were washing their vegetables in the streams outside their little stone houses, then up through the farms of corn and fruit trees, up through a Chinese graveyard and then into wild pine forests. Aty the top we came to a
beatiful Taoist temple. The local gilrs were singing and dancing their traditional dances to make money and got us to join in. We ate some delicious local snacks while wondering around the temple.

The views from up here of the town down below the lake with islands and the surrounding mountains was stunning.

Spent the next day visiting some old untouched villages around the lake away from tourists and very relaxed. We spent the day with local people who were of the Bai minority and learnt a bit about their way of life and their traditions, clothes and food.

Chengdu (Sichuan Province)

Leaving Xian by train we reached the mountain ranges within 2 hours. We travelled through these rugged, soaring, lush, green mountains for the rest of the afternoon and all through the night. Sunsetting over the lakes, rivers pretty villages... very picturesque.
Chengdu was another modern city with a very old part. We met another of YangZheng's (my student) friend here, and he showed us around, took us to see a famous poet, Du Fu's house, a thatched cottage, Had lots of traditional Chengdu foodgoose stomach and other delicacies boiled in spicy hot water. I thought the Indians ate hot food, but here in Sichuan, their mild food is the equiavlent of a vindaloo! Spent the afternoon in the old part of Chengdu in an old courtyard , chlling out in comfy bamboo chairs drinking lots of green tea, until the monsoon rains came thundering down, then it was time for dinner. A whole pigs leg each, stood upright with the hollow of the bone filled with gunky pig juice, a pretty straw stuck into it to drink the juice with. They should have gone all the way and stuck a cocktail umbrella in it too. The fatty meat of the foot takes a bti of getting used too - a real delicacy in china. On the whole thought the food in the south and west is very delicious, very spicy. All I seem to do is eat 3 huge spicy meals a day, definately put on weight.
For the next four days we went up to the mountains north of Chengdu, Qui Zhai Gou Mountains, bordering Tibet.
At first we had got on a lovely comfy air conditioned coach, then 10 mins down the road realised it was the wrong one, had to jump off, get a taxi back to the hostel and get the right bus...a crappy old uncomfortable rickety bus with no air conditioning! For the same price too! I was not impressed. But as you will see later there was a very good reason for this!!
The mountains were stunning. The highest in this range is 7000m above sea level, not far off Mount Everest (8000m). We went as high as 4000m and had to take oxygen bottles with us and got altitude sickness!
The lakes were the most beautiful colours i have ever seen, they each had 5 colours the clearest water of electric blue, deep indigo, bright green, orange and yellow. Totally out of this world. And the reflections were so clear, it was as if the fish were flying in the sky and the birds were swimming in the water.
One of the mountains had yellow calcium carbonate deposits running down the mountain forming amazing pools of coloured water....so perfectly formed they looked totally manmade, although they were completely natural. And from above the deposits looked like a huge yellow dragon winding its way down the mountain, hence the name Yellow Dragon mountain.
This whole place was really like being in heaven.
We passed many little villages , small clusters of wooden and stone houses scattered int he mountains. There are 9 Chinese minorities in these mountains and they were heavily influenced by the Tibetan Culture (46 minorities in total in China). It was like going back in time 200 years. The traditional dresses, the royal blue shirts and jackets, embroidered skirts and aprons and even black turbans were worn by the women who were selling fruit from the miles of fruit trees growing on the mountains. We visited some villages, which allowed tourists and saw traditional folk dances and singing by the minorities. Had a ride on a beautiful, huge, white hairy yak and then had delicious though tough spicy yak meat for dinner.
On our journey up the mountain many of the mountain roads had collapsed in the overnight rain and there were regular rock falls blocking the road. So sitting in htis uncomfortable bus for hours on end was not too pleasant. But as we were driving home i was feeling quite sad that we had not got to spend more time exploring the real villages, the ones that weren't expecting hords of Chinese tourists, and just then the bus broke down and the driver ordered us taxis to go to a small village across the river and up the mountain via a rickety rope bridge!
It was incredible, just like a village in India, small dark very simple two story houses along little cobbled alleyways. This village rarely saw tourists and the villagers were very hospitable, inviting us into their houses. They had huge slabs of pork hanging from their ceilings in the main room downstairs. off this room were a couple of little basic bedrooms.
Upstairs was an open area where they stored friut and vegetables carried back in baskets from their farms and washed these in the village stream before eating.
It is a tradition of this particular minority that the woman marries all the brothers in one family, so the brothers all have to share one wife. Not a bad idea I thought, 4 husbands - a bit of variety.
It was so relaxed I could have lived there forever. Anyway we made our way back to Chengdu for more chilling out and green tea drinking with the locals.

Xian (Shaanxi Province)

YangZheng my student had a cousin in Xian so for the whole of our stay here we were chauffer driven to see all the sites.
1st stop, terracotta army. Astounding. Each soldier was based on a real soldierfroma real army, and the detail on each was incredible and on top of that there were thousands of them! It took more than a lifetime to complete them.
2nd stop, a Taoist temple up in the hills. This was very beautiful and very intersting, and I got my fortune told for a small fortune!
Dinner in the evening was the most interesting part though. We were taken by her cousin with his family and friends to a very local barbeque type outdoor very relaxed restaurant, where we all sat around a low tableeating loads of spicy skewered barbequed meat and drinking lots of Chinese beer. They were all really impressed with my bargaining skills and my ability to drink more than them! (And i thought I was a lightweight). I think I was the local hero for a while as they went on about it for days! :) None of them could speak any english but somehow we laughed and joked all night. Soooo much fun.
3rd stop, The Chinese are very much into their tombs, so we went to see the tomb of the first empress of China, although it was all buried and you couldn't see anything except the lovely view from the top of the hill and the interesting local people and children.
4th stop, Xian museum, this had a 5000 year old human skull on display!
Mongolian barbeque for dinner.
Got food poisoning and was bed ridden for a day, persoinally I think it was the dodgy chinese medicine I had been given for a slight tummy ache that caused the poiusoning. The Chinese are hyperchondriacs..they would go to hospital and expect to be put on the drip for a slight cold!!!
5th stop, the old city. This was again very beautifuul, one of the oldest cities in China, lots of markets and ancient architecture and the city is stunning at night, everything is lit up, even the city wall and bridges.
Really worth visiting.
Her cousin had been so kind and generous I was sad to leave. :(
GAMBEI!!! (cheers in Chinese, or in the case of beer it means down in one!)

Email Not Working

Hiya Manish

Well I'm still in China, but am having a lot of problems opening my lycos
account, so could you pass this message onto everyone in your group email,
if you still have the group list, to let them know to use this email address tinatravelling@hotmail.com if they want to contact me.
Thanks
Hi to Manjit
Love tina x