I would say we definitely started off in China with a bang.......Morning 1, The Great Wall Of China. I have been asked a lot what it is like & all I can say is "it's great!!". We travelled a couple of hours out of the city to a section of the wall called Simatai. Our first glimpse of the Wall takes our breath away. It is hard to comprehend that we are actually here & we are actually going to climb onto it. We don't just climb the wall, take a few photos & climb back down (like I had imagined). No, we trek along an 8km section. When I say trek, I mean trek. It is not a smooth, undulating, stone road but a steep, rocky and at times "crawl on your hands & knees" type scenario. How naive I had been. What an amazing experience though & what incredible views. We kept stopping & saying "I can't believe we are on The Great Wall Of China". I couldn't imagine a more perfect way to start our China adventure. So, back to Beijing.
We have a spare few hours to head to the silk market. It is here that I experience my first moment of sadness in China. A young girl who works in one of the tailors shops gets chatting with us. She explains that she works 30 days on, one day off & her work days start at 9am & end at 9pm. That's 12 days off per year plus a weeks holiday (unpaid) - & I thought I was a workaholic!! . Her family lives more than 5 hours out of Beijing so she can't visit them on her days off. The most interesting part is that she seems perfectly at ease with the situation. In her eyes "everyone else does it" & she is quite shocked to hear how easy we have it at home. She seems to be thinking "what on earth would you do with all that spare time???". Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!
What is Beijing most famous for? Tienanmen Square. We headed in on the train (which is surprisingly easy to navigate) and found ourselves standing right on "the spot" where that famous photograph was taken. It's a bit scary, armed guards everywhere & the threat that with spies dotted through the crowd you'd better watch what you say or you get carted away - no questions asked! The square is between Mao's Mausoleum (we didn't go in - Andrew says that looking at one waxy, dead guy is enough for now!) and The Forbidden City. We are the only westerners in a sea of Chinese (I guess with a population of over 1.3 billion people that is bound to happen). We start the slow crawl onto the entrance tower & we spot something that makes us cry with laughter....amongst the throngs of people is another group of Westerners - Americans. They are with a tour group & their tour leader is holding aloft a sign for them to follow....it says "Disney Travel Group" & has Mickey Mouse ears....only the Americans could miss how ironic that looked....Mickey Mouse & Mao's portrait in the same picture!!
The Forbidden City is huge. Some beautiful old buildings & some really bad renovations. After spending a couple of hours poking around in the various halls & temples we made out way out the other side into Jingshan Park. A short walk up to the Pagoda on top of the hill & we are struck by the amazing, panoramic view of The Forbidden City & Beijing beyond...if only it wasn't for the smog. It seems that our first impression of how clean China is slipping slightly. Still we have some blue sky, the weather is beautiful.....& shit, we are in China!!
Back on the train & a flying visit out to the Olympic Precinct. I have a strange fascination with the Birds Nest & am like a hyperactive child when we finally spot it! You can pay a ridiculous amount of money to go in & walk around the Birds Nest & Water Cube but I am happy sitting on the other side of the road repeating to myself "I can't believe I'm in China!". The locals think I'm mental...they're probably right!
An overnight train takes us to Xian - home of the Terracotta Warriors. Andrew has been dreaming of this moment for years. Xian is a lovely old, walled city. We spend time exploring the markets & have a fantastic dinner on the street in the Muslim Quarter. In fact walking back from dinner, through the night market, I experienced my first taste of rock stardom. A couple of Korean guys stopped me & with some really bad sign language, asked me if I would mind having a photo...with them...how weird. I found myself wondering, what do they tell their families at home when they are all gathered around for slide night?? How do they explain these random tourists smiling happily, arms around each other like old friends......hmmmmm?
For us though, Xian is all about the warriors. They do not disappoint. We walk into the first aeroplane hanger & stretching out before us are hundreds of terracotta men. Some completely in tact, some with their heads blown off but all look fierce & surprisingly life like. Amongst the warriors are also horses, carriages & weapons & it the detail that blows us away. Each warrior has a different expression, different armour (depending on their rank) & a different pose. Quite extraordinary. We are luck enough to manage to stay ahead of the big tour groups & get quite a bit of time alone with the warriors. There is also a museum in the complex & we get an in depth look at everything from how they were constructed originally to how the local farmers discovered them while digging a well in the 1980's. There is even a quirky little "IMAX" film that shows the history of the site in surround sound. Out in the obligatory gift shop, we catch a glimpse of one of the farmers who discovered the warriors. His reward for the find is a small booth in the shop, rent free, where he can chose to sell whatever he wants.....that is his only reward....for one of the most significant historical finds in China's history. Interesting........
Next is a 15 hour day train (9am - 12am) to Yichang where we take in a small museum, do some supermarket shopping & generally prepare for our next week - a 4 day cruise on the Yangste River to experience the Three Gorges Dam Project. We boarded our cruise boat - The Blue Whale & headed for bed. The next morning we headed ashore to visit the Dam Wall & ship lock - yes many a joke was told that ended with "that damn wall!!". It is a very controversial project which was only completed recently. The construction of the wall across the river resulted in the river rising 175m, meaning that all the local communities that lived along the shoreline had to be relocated. We are talking millions of people who were simply told that in the name of progress, they would be required to leave their homes & move into giant high rise buildings, purpose built on higher ground. Oh, & by the way, you will like it! Gotta love communism. The wall is an amazing engineering feat but overall I am not impressed with the whole concept. The next few days pass with ease. We are fed like kings every 4 hours or so. We take in the odd shore excursion (more to keep our waist lines in check than for the historical significance I think). One trip we take is with the "boat trackers". A group of men who row you along the river in a boat & when you come to the shallows they jump out & pull you along with a rope. All in about 12 inches of mud.....& we hear that up until a couple of decades ago this was all done in the nude...what a shame to have missed that!
Photo: The view of our trackers from the boat
We disembarked our luxury cruise ship at Chongqing and began our day of transport.....we took a bus to the airport, flight to Guilin, taxi to the bus station, bus to Yangshuo then we walked 4kms to our hotel....pheew! Time to explore our new home for the nest few days..........
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