Thank Yous

I forgot to add a couple of big thank yous in my previous post (an occurrence that occurs more often than I'd like because I'm just far too scatty) so here they are.

Firstly I would like to thank Jean for being the first familiar face I've seen in over half a year, and also for showing me around her hometown of Haiyan and being an incredibly generous and gracious host. Although I met up with her for only a single day, it was a very welcome tonic.

Secondly I must thank my brother Mark for helping me out with British bureaucracy on two occasions now. When you're at home dealing with your bank, credit card company or insurer is, although tedious, very straightforward. When you're halfway round the world and unable to make phone calls and with no phone number of your own, these mundane problems become monumental. Mark has been invaluable in chasing up these companies on my behalf and then organising conference calls to sort out the problems (one mammoth session with my bank lasted nearly 2 hours).

So thank you, both of you.

An Unendangered Animal

China is home to many animals that are on the brink of extinction: the Siberian tiger, the giant panda, the Siberian crane and the red-crowned crane to name but a few. There is, however, one species of crane that is very common throughout China: the common construction crane (as well as two minor subspecies, the skyscraper crane and the container crane). There is not a town in China that doesn't have at least one specimen, although their breeding ground seems to be here on the east coast, especially Shanghai.

Shanghai is a fascinating city. A sleepy, backwater fishing village just 150 years ago, the Europeans turned it into China's economic powerhouse and the world's busiest port. The vestiges of European domination can still be seen in the neo-classical and art-deco buildings that dot the city, especially the riverfront Bund, the erstwhile British jewel of Shanghai. The city was also a synonym for gambling, prostitution and opium dens, and so fell out of favour during Mao's communist tenure. But seeing as vice is now the flavour of the month Shanghai's back in business. The city's new renaissance is starkly represented by the Pudong area, which mirrors the Bund across the Huangpu river. There the architecture is more modern and definitely more hit-and-miss. The most striking being the Oriental Pearl Tower, which would give Prince Charles an apoplectic fit. But aesthetics aside, Shanghai has advanced dramatically in the last couple of decades (not that I was here 20 years ago, but I've seen before and after pictures).

I suppose that's one benefit of an autocratic state: there's far less discussion and pussyfooting about; when they want something done it gets done. Plus they don't have to worry about pestering NIMBYs and BANANAs interminably holding things up. Two construction projects demonstrate this particularly well: the maglev train that connects the city to the airport and the new deep water port. The maglev train is the fastest in the world and takes only 7 minutes to take its passengers the 30km to the airport, reaching a top speed of 431 km/h as it does so. (It's a German train, but they never managed to build it at home due to constant wranglings about cost and environmental impact.) Well, seeing as I'm here I had to go, so I bought myself a one-way ticket and then took the bus back into town (I wasn't willing to fork out the extra $4 to go back on it!). The deep water port is probably more impressive, but impossible to get to. As there aren't any suitable sites for a port on the coast the government has decided to build one on a cluster of tiny islets ... 30km out to sea! And they've got a road bridge going all the way out there.

Marco's Tip

I've finally made it to the east coast of China and my first stop here is the city of Hangzhou. There is a palpable difference between the east and its people from the west of China. Whereas Kunming and Chengdu were blatantly consumerist Hangzhou has gone far beyond that and is unbelievably bourgeois. Apart from the multitude of trendy bars, clubs and cafes there are the designer label stores and even luxury car showrooms (Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche et al.). But Hangzhou is not crass. It carries this wealth with a certain aristocratic gentility, somehow seeming aloof from the other cities I've visited so far. The beautiful Western Lake with its landscaped parks and intricate causeways forms a focal point for the city and it is the place to see and be seen. Indeed, when Marco Polo passed this way in the late 13th century and he didn't mince his words when he stated that Hangzhou was "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest (city) in the world". Unfortunately the city is mercilessly cashing in on its famed beauty and many of the sights have exorbitant entry fees that, after a while, lessen the allure of the place.

Busman's Holiday

During this past year I have taken countless bus journeys covering many thousands of miles and I believe, in all honesty, that I have become something of a bus connoisseur. I still rave about Argentine buses, but I must admit the Chinese have a novel way of dealing with long, overnight trips. Many people complain that it is hard to get a decent night's sleep, even with the seats tilted back as far as they can go. Well the wily Chinese have got rid of the seats completely and installed bunk beds instead (complete with sheets and blankets), with generally 3 rows of beds, 6 deep. This means that, although you can't really sit all too well, you get a good night's sleep. That is unless you are too tall or too fat or, heaven forbid, both (luckily I'm neither), in which case you're in for a long, uncomfortable ride.

By the way, I have also been tinkering with my site of late and I have now transferred all my pictures to a more user-friendly photo album and converted the old album into a site for audio only. And to inaugurate the fact I have added a new audio track, that of some chanting Tibetan monks.

Something Old, Something New

Hubei province isn't much of a tourist destination, but it contains two places that I have wanted to see since the start of the trip. The first is the mountain temple complex of Wudang Shan. I've met many people who haven't heard of it, but to any aficionado of kung fu movies they will instantly recognise it as the birthplace of Taijiquan (or T'ai Chi) and the perennial adversary of Shaolin (to hip-hop fans the name may be recognisable due to a famous rap band/posse/crew?). And because everybody goes to the Shaolin monastery I had to check out Wudang Shan and its crazy Taoist monks. The mountain monastery complex (remember, shan means mountain in Chinese) is very pretty with the requisite number of cliffs, peaks and isolated temples, most dating from the 15th century; unfortunately it's undergoing a major refit with tons of workers and scaffolding all around, which slightly detracted from the whole spiritual atmosphere that one expects after seeing the ending of Crouching Tiger. The place was also lacking in T'ai Chi masters jumping buildings in single bounds and fighting evildoers, though the town at the foot of the mountain has a sizeable foreign community made up of new-ager types learning martial arts from local, wizened masters (I even met this Australian guy who was planning to stay for 3 and a half years!). The town also has a nifty street of shops specialising in swords, spears, halberds and other metal, pointy objects whose main purpose is to hurt, maim and dismember (pretty cool actually). However, most people that you ever see practicing T'ai Chi are of the geriatric variety and they don't look very threatening at all. Actually you see a lot of these older T'ai Chi practitioners throughout China, especially in the earlier hours of the morning hogging the parks, and some of them are remarkably supple.

So that's the old. The new is close to the town of Yichang. Never heard of it? I'm not surprised as it's a town of only 4 million inhabitants, which is rather paltry for China (personally I'm intrigued as to what all these people actually do). The town is grim and boring, but it is the gateway to the 3 Gorges Dam, the world's largest construction project. (For the pedants out there the dam will be the largest in the world with the highest peak electricity generation capacity, but will lie in second place behind the Itaipu dam for annual production. That way both will be able to claim to be the biggest.) The sight of it was definitely impressive as it loomed out the haze that has been following me for the past couple of weeks. The haze made it impossible to see the entirety of the dam which gave it an almost ethereal, otherworldly quality. Being the organised fellow that I am I thought I could just turn up and be shown around the construction site by a personal guide ... and I wasn't wrong. Sort of. Officially you have to book on a tour, but the people in the next-door town have a nice little cottage industry going on showing tourists around by taking them through the "back door". So there I was clambering over barbed wire fences and wriggling through holes in walls, which was probably as exciting as seeing the actual building site itself. I'm still undecided about the dam itself. On the plus side it will produce the equivalent of 18 nuclear power stations-worth of electricity, may help ease flooding downstream and allow oceangoing vessels to sail 600km further upstream. On the downside it has hidden what was unarguably one of China's natural wonders and there is a possibility that the whole thing will silt up in the not-too-distant future. But then, that's the price of progress I suppose.

Sleeping Panda, Aching Calves

Hmm, I really think I overdid the Emei Shan descent. I thought I was pressed for time (I needed to catch the last bus) and so I ran down 2000m of steps in 3 hours. My calves don't like me much now. But that doesn't matter, as I have found a hostel in Chengdu with a DVD player and a large selection of films, and so I have decided to spend an extra day here. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province, which is almost a country in its own right: it has a dizzying variety of landscapes (from mountains to forests to plains), many ethnic groups, and population-wise it would rank as the 12th biggest country in the world, just after Mexico. And out of all of China's different cuisines, Sichuan's is probably the most widely exported abroad. There is however one local speciality that I have not seen in any Western Chinese restaurants, and that is namely Chengdu's famous hotpot. The hotpot consists of a large pot of stock that bubbles away in the middle of the table whilst the diners place various ingredients (anything from chickens' legs to cabbage) into the cauldron (hubble bubble toil and trouble) before fishing them out a few minutes later. It's quite fun when your in a group, though we were unaware that the stock is always fish-based. Whoops, there goes my allergy.

But Sichuan isn't just about the food. It is also home to one of the most iconic animals on the planet: the giant panda. The range of the cuddly critter lies almost exclusively within Sichuan and the national panda research and breeding facility lies on the outskirts of Chengdu. That was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up, so off I went early in the morning to be able to catch them before they go to sleep for the best part of the day. The place was absolutely warming with tourists (me included, of course), though the locals were managing to be the most annoying by displaying 2 archetypal Chinese traits. The first is the inability to not shout, and the second is their complete disregard for signs. The fact that the signs in question asked for visitors to be quiet so as not to disturb and stress the animals made it even more galling for me. I therefore derived considerable pleasure from pointing out these signs and getting the people to shut up. The pandas themselves lived up to their reputation for cuteness by producing a great many saccharine poses for the cameras. Actually I say that but I was just happy to be there and see them.

How Do You Like Your Bud Sir? Big!!

Ouch, my legs hurt. I've just spent the past 2 days walking up (and down) Emei Shan (or mount Emei). Emei Shan is the tallest of China's four, sacred Buddhist mountains (China has 9 sacred mountains: 4 Buddhist and 5 Taoist), at 3100m. The whole mountain is studded with steps all the way from the base to the summit. I've tried finding a definitive number with no success, but suffice to say that it lies in the region of the many tens of thousands. This makes the ascent, and the descent as well for that matter, technically unchallenging, but knackering in the extreme. This being China, though, there's a road and monorail all the way to the top, and if you do feel you have to take the pedestrian, pilgrimage option, then you can always hire a palanquin and reach the top like royalty (for a price of course). These options all insulted my fine, backpackers' sensibilities, and so I decided to rough it and walk all the way to the top. The spectacular views were unfortunately slightly muted due to a visibility of barely more than 50m, but the visible bits were still very pretty and I was also glad for the exercise. Apart from the many monasteries that dot the mountainside one of the top attractions on Emei Shan is its population of Tibetan macaques. The cheeky little monkeys (though some of the males can get rather sizeable) terrorise tourists by grabbing any loose food and bottles off them, or even ripping any plastic bags they may be carrying. It's actually quite amusing and appeals to my sense of schadenfreude. I did get a taste of my own medicine whilst walking in a remote part of the mountain when I got ambushed by a large male who noticed me munching on an apple. It was quite alarming when he started pulling at my trousers and baring his teeth, but I would be damned if he was going to get my apple. When I started kicking the bastard he noticed a group of Chinese tourists further down the path that constituted a much easier target and so he left me alone.

Included within the same UNESCO complex (I'm on a world heritage collecting spree at the moment) as Emei Shan is the Buddha of the nearby town of Leshan. This seated bud, built 1200 years ago, is the tallest stone Bud in the world. Measuring 71m from top to toe, his ears are 7m long and even his fingernails are bigger than I am. He was built overlooking a section of rapids on the Dadu River in the hope that his presence would help save sailors from the treacherous waters, which in fact he did. So much stone was dislodged and dumped into the river during his construction that the rapids were tamed. (Maybe there is something to this Buddhism malarkey after all?)

Floody Hell

The road linking Sichuan to Tibet is certainly among the most beautiful in the world, but the breathtaking gorges also make it a rather risky place to live as well. As it was pissing it down on Sunday night in Litang I was snuggly huddled under my blanket. The people living in the valley above the town of Yajiang weren't so lucky as many of the houses, bridges and a good chunk of the road were swept away when their stream became a raging torrent. Unfortunately for me, the valley also contained the only road out of Litang. No buses were leaving Litang so we had to hire a minibus again and have it take us as far as the road would go. From there we had to walk. Luckily it was mostly downhill all the way (otherwise the 15km, with 20kg on my back, would not have been so much fun) with beautiful views. However there were places in which the river had swept away everything in its wake and the only way of getting past was by scrambling along steep paths with the churning maelstrom of the river just beneath. It was also sad to see people whose entire livelihoods had been swept away, though at the same time it was heartening to see them getting on with things and trying to make do as best they could.

My next day's travelling didn't fare much better either. On the bus heading east from Kangding I thought I was away from the landslides, floods and other natural disasters. How wrong I was. We almost missed the landslide by 10 minutes, but in the end we sat there for over 4 hours. Still, I had been bracing myself for a night in the bus surrounded by spitting Chinese, so I was happy in the end.

But now I am, finally, away from the most mountainous areas and so hopefully will not have any more travel hiccups (touch wood). So a word to the wise, if you ever do plan to travel in China I'd recommend you don't between June and September.

Tibet-lite

The road north from Zhongdian is known as the back door to Sichuan, and for good reason. The countryside finally delivered on my expectations with narrow, hidden valleys, high mountains and innumerable switchbacks. Indeed, it feels like you're sneaking around the country and that somehow you're doing something clandestine. At one point we were driving through a vast plateau filled with boulders, some small and others larger than our minibus; it was rather surreal.

I ended up spending longer in Xiangcheng than I had originally planned (I wanted to leave the next morning after arriving) because of a cheeky scam that the people in the bus station had going. They would refuse to sell me any tickets to Litang (where I wanted to go) and instead would only offer tickets to Kangding, which cost more than double the price. But what was most galling was the fact that not only do the Kangding buses pass through Litang, but they also stop there for the night. The lady at the desk was as stubborn as a mule and wouldn't budge. Luckily this obstinacy meant that other travellers were in the same boat and so we managed to band together and hire a minibus instead.

Travelling in this part of China is interesting as it allows me to get a feel for Tibet without having to go through the rigmarole of actually going there (Actually, at the present moment it is impossible to get to Tibet, even through organised tours. The whole region has been closed down to the public, and I've even heard of people being refused flights to Nepal because they needed to get a connecting flight in Lhassa.). The most beautiful things here are the traditional houses. They are either grey or white, tapered boxes with colourfully patterned doors and window-frames and garlands of prayer pennants flying from all available spaces. The interiors of the houses are even more intricately decorated, with every available inch of wall covered in vivid drawings, usually in red, gold and green. The streets here also teem with monks in their scarlet robes. However expectations for monks here are perhaps slightly different from what one would expect in the West; here it's not uncommon to see them getting rather boisterous at the local pool halls (for some reason pool is extremely popular round these parts). I'm also glad to be able to cross another animal off my list: the yak. It's actually quite hard not to see the blighters as they are everywhere, though you have to climb to the top of the pasture areas to get to see the really hairy ones. Although I've yet to try the local speciality: tea with yak's butter.

Shangri-Where?

Greetings from Shangri-La. At least that's how the town of Zhongdian (marked Xianggelila on the map) in northwestern Yunnan province, nestled in the Tibetan plateau, is marketing itself. But I'm getting ahead of myself, before arriving here there was some hiking to be done in Tiger Leaping Gorge.

In this gorge the Jinsha Jiang narrows from about 100m to less than 10m in places producing some monstrous rapids, and the surrounding mountains are sheer and impressively tall (unfortunately the summits could never be seen as the craggy peaks never let go of their veils of clouds). There are two ways into the gorge: via the road along the base of the gorge, or along the steep footpaths that wind up the mountainsides. It was never really in any doubt. So Cressica and I shouldered our bags and headed off along the paths, trying to stay clear of other pesky tourists and local people offering horseback rides (it wouldn't be a challenge then, would it?). The night was spent in a Naxi-run guesthouse and the next morning we headed down towards the river to get a closer look at the river and the part of the gorge that gave it its name. According to legend a hunter was chasing a tiger, which, to save itself, jumped across the river at a narrow part of the gorge (still over 20m apart), about 60m above the water. The view was definitely worth the descent down to the river (my legs, however, would disagree with the value of the ascent). Then we had to make our way quickly back along the road to catch a bus to Zhongdian for me, and Lijiang for Cressica. I was hoping to catch a lift back, but that option soon proved to be impossible as landslides had blocked the road at many places, meaning we had to scramble over them (sometimes just inches from the edge of a sharp drop), which was actually great fun. Anyway, we finally did get a lift at the last landslide and I managed to catch a bus to Zhongdian.

So that's how I got to Zhongdian. In James Hilton's book Lost Horizon, Shangri-La was an earthly paradise in a secluded Himalayan valley. But you have to be wearing a pair of rose-coloured eyepatches to believe that of this place. I admit the old town has a certain charm, with wooden houses built in traditional Tibetan style (even the new ones) and a large lamasery (the largest outside of the Tibet autonomous region), but they have an uphill struggle against the insipid grimness of the modern, Chinese monstrosity that has sprung up here. Similarly I have been a bit underwhelmed by the Tibetan plateau. I was expecting soaring peaks, vertiginous drops, snowy summits and all that jazz. Instead what you've got are verdant, rolling hills, albeit at three to four thousand metres. I guess it stems from me selectively ignoring the meaning of the word plateau. Still, I expect things will become a bit more dramatic as I press on. Tomorrow I take a bus to Xiangcheng, some 400km north of here. Under good conditions the journey takes 12 hours. So now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be off to buy some snacks for the trip.