China!
The transfer from Beijing airport to the hotel was fun as I chatted with the driver via translation apps. We discussed traffic, queuing, politics and humor.
The hotel was nice, right by the metro, though there wasn't much interesting within walking distance.
I was very frustrated to discover how little of my usual tech I was able to use. In 2004 China blocked Google. All of Google. Facebook, YouTube, Netflix and the BBC are also blocked. This means I couldn't get email, use google maps to navigate, upload/backup my photos, do any blogging (I'm writing this in notepad and will add it to the blog later), or even play Pokemon as that uses Google to authenticate. Particularly not having Google Maps was really frustrating for me as I wasn't happy about just going off to explore by myself without that as a backup. Without there being much around locally either I ended up spending the first day before the tour started just hanging out in my room and reading. Felt like a bit of a waste, and now we've been shown round a bit there are some things I'd have liked to go and see.
I think the novelty of going to new places is also wearing thin for me. I've seen so many new places over the last 8 months that "new is the new normal", and not so exciting/interesting any more. I've even been having a few thoughts of just cancelling the rest of the trip and heading home so I don't 'waste' my trips to Japan and India when I'm not actually feeling excited about going there, but I wouldn't get my money back, so it's not a good idea. I'll just need to plug on with it!
Met up with the group in the evening and we all went out for dinner. Another 'full' group of 16 people, which I wasn't terribly keen on last time - it was just a few too many people to actually get to know everyone's name, but they all seem like nice and fun people and I'm hopeful that this group will be better. It's about a 50:50 split with older people (60's) and younger people (30-40's). At dinner it was traditional 'chinese banquet' style with a round table and all the dishes on the lazy susan in the middle. One weirdness was that they didn't bring out the rice until the very end, which Alex, our guide, says is normal in some areas of China.
Day one of the tour proper and we were off early (6:30) to miss the Beijing rush hour and visit the Great Wall. About a 2 hour drive, one of the hours taken up just with getting across Beijing! It was pretty darn cold to start of with. I've been in shorts and sandals for the past 3 months, so it being 5 degrees outside was a bit of a shock. Walking up in the sun on the Wall it quickly warmed up though.
The wall itself runs along the crest of the hills, so we took a cable car up to it, and then walked along it taking in the sights and and taking photos. Many of the trees had blossom and the shoots of new leaves, it was very pretty and we had sunny skies. The steps on the Wall are a bit odd in that they are not of a uniform height, nor are they used consistently in steep places. On one slope there will be lots of small steps, where another slope (just as steep) will be a smooth ramp, and there are also random flights of big steps here and there too. It meant you really had to watch your feet a lot of the time. Working our way up to Watchtower 20 was quite a climb, but it was worth it.
I'd been recommended to take the louge back down the hill, but when I got there I was hungry, there was a huge queue, and everyone on the louge itself was going really slowly which would just frustrate hangry me, so I took the cablecar back down instead.
On the bus trips Alex shared more information about China. He talked about huko's (the town/city where you are officially resident). You can only vote in your own huko, and changing huko can be very difficult to do, particularly if you want to move to a big city, so many people just don't bother with voting. Alex also told us that he was an unofficial/secret second child. He is 'official' now (they have paid the fine), but when he was younger he had to call his mother 'Auntie' and he was moved around various relatives a lot to avoid being detected.
Back in Beijing I was a chivalrous white knight again, as one of the ladies on the trip couldn't get any of her cards to work in the ATM's. She sent me some money by Paypal and I took it out in cash so she wasn't stuck pennyless! A bunch of us went out for dinner without Alex and ended up ordering a lot of weird stuff that wasn't particularly nice!
Day two was around Beijing to Tianamen Square and The Forbidden Palace. I look out of the window in the morning and see something I've not seen for a long time. Rain! It was also really cold out there and I wish I'd taken my gloves and llama hat with me!
We took the metro into the city and Tianamen Square. It's vast. Not particularly picturesque, but vast. It was also damp. Around the square are the national museum, Mao's tomb and the Forbidden City.
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| Shenanigans trying to keep rain off the cameras |
In the underpasses under the roads, many people were sheltering out of the rain and we were quite surprised to find the place also full of a haze of cigarette smoke. It's not till you smell it again you realise how much nicer is it in the UK now we have the ban on indoor public smoking. There were also people smoking in some of the restaurants we were in, luckily not close to us. One was even right under the 'No Smoking' sign!
In a similar 'different to the UK' vibe, people ignoring/pushing into queues seems to be much more common in China than I've seen anywhere else. It's not that everyone does it, or there would be utter chaos, but for example at security at the airport, there is a queue of 20 people or so, and one Chinese lady just breezes past and pushes in. Similarly on the roads, most people seem to queue properly, with a minority just driving up closed lanes to push in. A much more significant minority than we have in the UK. Our guide did warn us that if people push into a queue just to let them rather than make a scene. I don't know if this is a recommendation so we don't start an incident, insult an official, or just to make his life easier trying to sort it out afterwards! It does really get my goat though.
In the Forbidden City (the Emperor's Palace) there are many wide open paved squares that looked like an awful lot of wasted space to me. The buildings were, as you can see, impressive, but not massively twiddly. We didn't get into any of the buildings, I'm not sure whether that's because we didn't have time or because you can't get into them. I was impressed by the design of the ramps in the city. They are not smooth, instead each row of bricks has it's upper edge raised slightly, which gives a lot of grip and lets you use the ramp for carts, horses and people.
After the Forbidden Palace, we walked to a backstreet shopping area, which wasn't of much interest, then on to the Pearl Market, a very touristy shopping mall that I hated. You couldn't walk past a shop without someone shouting at you to come in and buy whatever they were selling. I find that sort of pushy sales technique to be extremely off putting.
After that was a nice dinner and a Kung Fu show. It was a sort of artistic stage show with lots of fancy kung fu style acrobatics. Well put together, and some of the children performing in it were extremely good!
Next day we got on the bullet train and headed for Shanghai. I'm currently sitting on the train watching the countryside whizz past the window (though it seems to be mostly industrial or farmland so far).
Get the feeling there is more detail here than the past few posts? Well, there is. I'm actually writing this up within a few days of things happening rather than 3 months later and I'm remembering so much more. Must try to keep this up!
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