China Part 2

It was now time to bid ben farewell in Beijing, leaving him on his lonesome (awaiting the call of duty) and showing us that maybe there is still hope for chivalry.

Team S&N departed en-route for the train to Wutai shan enjoying the comfort of a soft sleeper and the warmth of a bed - savouring what few hours of sleep we could for a rather early 3am arrival at our destination. Exiting the station we were lucky enough to grab a cheap bus ride into the wutai shan province and get some of the brief shut-eye we could before pulling up somewhere near where we needed to be (some crazy woman's hotel). We haggled a dude to drop us at our actual hotel which was locked and gated behind a giant wall. We were freezing our plums off and with the little luck we had under the cover of darkness, Nick managed to remove the lock off one of the gates which gained us entry to the other side. Our hotel was pretty much the same deal so we just tried to get into the building in the same fashion. Once we were in we were welcomed with typical Chinese hospitality - not a soul in sight and no one to give a shit (not that they would anyway). We slept in the lobby until dawn - waking to a bunch of randoms and finally the "concierge", who kindly told us that there were no rooms (we both called BS). Awesome.

We got to experience the real Wutai shan in all its glory: back alleys, the locals - even the stray dog while we tried to find a place to either stay or leave our luggage. Guess what? No luck. We found a local "farm soil" restaurant to chow down and have some steamed buns; they were more than happy to offer a place for our main packs after we had spent 2 dollars on food there. We hit the temples deciding to just "explore" with no real worry for the order or places we visited. The main attraction was the giant white Stupa donated by Indian buddhist emperor Ashoka which contained a plethora of prayer wheels along the outer wall and one giant one of to the side.

Wutai Shan is the home of boddhisatva Manjushri - the enlightened being of wisdom. So naturally, each year hundreds of students come here before their exams, spin the wheels and pray to him for good marks etc. We spun the wheels as well and took plenty of photos with the camera, exploring the inner sanctum and making our way to the end of the main courtyard where a mini golden temple had been constructed (reminiscent of the golden pavilion in Japan). Two other sites were checked out in the area including a … temple next-door to a familiar hotel that rejected us not so long before.

Time to leave and get to Datong. We asked around the town how to get to Datong - we had to trek over some construction zone to get to a bus station, which then directed us out and around a corner and up a dirt road that was littered with the occasional turd and happy go lucky restaurant. We could see a bus in the distance - the same one that brought us here! We jumped on it pretty happy with ourselves when suddenly one the randoms we asked for help from earlier brought some yellow toothed taxi driver onto the bus trying to get us to get in a cab with him instead of taking the bus. It was going to cost us 100 each to get to datong by bus including the transfer from the train station. This taxi driver obviously brought someone here and was going back anyways so, with Nick translating, we haggled him down to 200 for both (the same price) - which was hilarious. It worked out better for us anyways as it was more comfy and less work on our part having to worry about transferring etc.

We hadn't been able to see the road in but we got to see it on the way out. Breathtaking views and a stretch of plowed, winding road with 2 metre high walls of snow that offered passage for one car. Between the random piss break and a toll point we arrived at a hotel in datong and an opportunity for a well deserved sleep.

Datong is a random place; and once again China's population seems to be a catalyst for metropolis type cities in the middle of nowhere. You could literally drive through datong in 20 minutes and be out the other side, only you would have brushed by about 3 million people, it's just crazy. The aesthetic of the place gave off a cold war type feel, you had countless apartment blocks and 20 story high-rise buildings like the 'projects' completely derelict and unfinished, almost as if they had been standing for 20 years. We came here only as a base for a day trip to the hanging monastery. We were unlucky, everywhere the lonely planet led us seemed to get us nowhere - even with Nick's grasp of mandarin no one we spoke to could help with directions. We ended up drawing pictures on paper and again nobody seemed to be able to help; those who seemed to know would send you to the bus station, and when you got there no one knew how to get there. We gave up after going to a hotel nearby and receiving another dosage of fuck all help from the locals. We utilised the rest of the day exploring Datong and visited the giant U-shaped wall that inhabits most of the inner city. This thing is massive and stands about 15 metres high and a few kilometres in displacement, it gave us quite the view and offered a great 360 degree view of the city (see pics). About a ten minute walk from the wall is the bustling Datong market that offers your typical Chinese attractions: stall food, carnival games and horrible music. Considering the day was initially a disaster, venturing around town and seeing a more intimate side of Datong kinda turned out to be therapeutic. We wrapped the day up quickly after and took yet another 300,000 stares to the face before reaching the hotel for the last night.

The train ride from Datong was horrible. Initially when booking tickets we were left with little options and had to settle with soft seat tickets - we thought that it wouldn't be bad but it was; we sat in a 4 seater booth for 14 hours crunched up against other passengers and the smells of god knows what.. I think they overbooked the train because people littered the corridors and toilet areas at the ends of the carriages. One family had taken refuge in a booth with their baby that whinged all the time - probably due to the horrible flap pants they had him wearing (pants with no front or rear seams - so you could see everything), another dude was eating a bag of nuts and throwing the husks all over the carriage and the occasional passenger spat freely on the floor. Our knees started to give way and we couldn't get any sleep because of the dumbass rail attendants, yelling louder than a town cryer,  trying to sell milk teas and juice at 3:30 in the morning. Nonetheless, arriving in Xian was like waking up on xmas and we were just glad to be out of the heap of shit we just spent 14 hours in.

We headed into Xian by foot from the station and settled into our hostel after spending a good couple of hours trying to locate it. The rest of the day was spent wandering around town and soaking in the bright lights and high energy of a bustling city. We both ordered dinner at a chinese restaurant on the side of the main drag and got the same thing. The dish was supposed to beef with broccoli in sauce and what we got turned out to be much different. The dish had mushrooms, road sausage, bamboo shoots, stalks of some sort and the meat was white and riddled with bones that we thought was frog. Scott was pissed because the dish wasn't what was ordered (it was the most expensive one on the menu). So after trying to talk to the waiters he went up and had words with the owner who didn't want to have to deal with it. In the end they didn't want to argue and conceded; Scott managed to haggle them down 13 yuan a dish and we pissed off for another DQ session (Dairy Queen).

Day 2 we headed en route to the Terracotta army and soaked in the amazing history standing right before our eyes. The main attraction has 3 large museums (one being a hangar) each in a different stage of excavation with the hangar holding the bulk of the burials. The warriors, funnily enough, were first discovered in the 70s when a couple of local farmers were digging a well. After finding some remnants the whole area became a site of cultural history and taken over by the archeologists. Each warrior is unique and no two are alike, all being sculpted to protect Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife. We were blown away at the amount of work involved and sheer size of the army. Even though a large portion of the figures are damaged, ones in good nick still make the majority. The terracotta warriors blew us away and was definitely a highlight of China, much like the great wall. We spent plenty of time here and took a large array of photos - and no doubt there is still plenty left to unearth.

Our last destination in China on the itinerary was Louyang and we reached it rather quickly by high speed rail (so much better than the last train ride!). We checked into a random hostel on the outskirts and jumped on the wifi to torrent the latest walking dead episodes (we were a couple weeks behind). We went out and did our typical scout session to get a geographic feel for the place and find the bus station for the next days adventure out to the Shaolin Temple near Deng Feng. We also found our local DQ and mall complete with Master Hong's restaurant - where we ate our supper each night.

The trip out to the Shaolin Temple was rather easy as we had the transport figured to get to the bus station and we encountered a rather lovely lady there who helped us get tickets and ushered us to the correct bus. We were worried she was going to hawk us for money but she never did and it was probably the best help we received in China. We spent a good portion of the day at the Shaolin Temple, which is part of a much larger martial arts training area - built up over a large spread of the hilly landscape within the Songshan mountain basin. There are numerous martial arts schools of various Shaolin disciplines here and large courtyard areas the size of football fields scattered around the main road's embankment for training. We were unfortunate not seeing some in practice but we got to see the main attraction, the temple, in all its glory. The temple(s) itself is situated on a hill in a 4 tier configuration that houses meditation rooms and various buddhist statues, including Bodhidharma, the Indian yoga master with blue eyes and a wild beard credited with introducing the roots of Shaolin to China, and infamous for his "face the wall" meditation. We explored all the open areas and exited soon after making way to a hill scattered with Stupas (filled with the cremated remains of former Shaolin grand masters). On the way out we walked past another baby with those ridiculous flap pants and had to witness him take a piss on the sacred path.

We forked the cost of paying triple for a high speed rail ticket back to Beijing and covered the 1200km in about 4 hours (much better than spending 15 in a heap o'shit) and were just glad to be back in the nation's capital.

With a couple of days left in Beijing before flying to India we checked in at our favourite chinese accommodation: Dragon King Hostel and spent the rest of our time watching movies, eating out and going for a few more Dairy Queen runs before meeting back up Ben and departing...

If we had to pick one picture that sums up China.. this is it:

China

SHANGHAI
So we jumped on the train early in the morning to head off out of Ulaanbaatar. The train was actually really nice and we had a cabin to stay in all to ourselves. We kicked our feet up and started smashing down the junk food we brought for the trip.

After arriving in Beijing after the 35 hour train trip we had only a small amount of time to get out a fat wad of cash, choke down some lunch and then hit another train off to Shanghai (7 hours). All this training was getting to us and to make it worse the last train was a seated one with little room to stretch out and sleep.

Nevertheless Shanghai popped into view and it was off to learn yet another subway route. We are starting to get the hang of navigation through Asian subways so no issues were faced.

The first thing that hit us about China was the sheer number of people. Clones, all the same height pushing and bustling through the streets like worker ants. Our size is the only thing that lets us breathe in the crowds of the big city of Shanghai but we found as soon as we got out of the subway, the paths opened up wide to accommodate the masses of people.

We settled into our Blue Mountain Hostel and hit the streets right away for a Shanghai night time experience. After finding a small side road market filled with headless animals, writhing fish and endless shouting from store keepers we made our way around the city onto the Bund to catch the full orange moon over the skyline of Shanghai.

The Bund (waterfront) consisted of old western style wall street buildings lit up making for some really nice night shots. These awesome structures lead us around to the top end of Nanjing rd. Nanjing rd is the central shopping street in Shanghai and is ALWAYS crowded. High roller shops and department stores litter either side and traffic is forbidden to make way for the river of Chinese.

Ben bought himself some nice sandalwood chopsticks and we made our way further down. A nice girl approached Nick on the street and asked him where he was from, and shortly after, her wing(wo)man approached Ben. Now having been warned about Chinese (especially Shanghai) girls, red flags popped up and we kept walking, they seemed friendly and asked us to coffee. The first thing out of our mouths was that we had NO money and could only afford one cup of tea so nothing expensive. They agreed so we went up 8 floors to a nice coffee shop to share some tea with our new friends.

We asked for the ¥50 tea when the waitress approached and the girls made their order in Mandarin. After a few minutes of annoying small talk about life in New Zealand our order came out. Only it wasn't one pot of tea. It was a platter spread of exotic fruits, two pots of some chinese flower tea, a wasabi pea dish, salted peanuts and 8 glasses of whiskey. Ben's eyes popped out of his head and we reminded them that we had no money to pay for any of this and that we could only have the tea.

They assured us that it was all fine so we enjoyed the rest of our night. After we started to wrap the night up the waitress came out with a bill for ¥3,200 or $600. This time Nick's eyes popped out of his head and we assured her that there must be a mistake. No mistakes were made and the girls informed us that Chinese girls never pay the bills and the men always do.

We informed them for the third and last time that we actually didn't have any money. Nick pulled out ¥150 or $30 and Ben pulled out a whopping ¥4 (75c) after the girls realised we weren't kidding an awkward vibe hit the room and the quietly asked us to put it on our credit cards. As we lied through our teeth that we didn't have credit cards on us, Ben was made to leave the restaurant and go get his while Nick stayed behind held hostage.

Ben left to clear his head and start cooking up an escape plan while Nick held the fort and cooked up his own. After an excruciating 10 minutes Ben came back upstairs and streamlined straight for the waitress sneakily avoiding the table with Nick and our charming new 'friends.' He informed the waitress that he had no money on the card and that they were lured in by the girls. Dropping buzz words to her like "bad business" and "scam" he managed to silver tongue his way out of the bill.

The waitress sent for Nick to be collected from the booth and as soon as he got out, we booked it down the elevator and into the crowds of 19 million Shanghainese. Laughing (and often skipping) our way back to the hostel to tell Scott of the tales of the night, we witnessed a man ripping his wife out of the car on the highway and more scams of people trying to get money out of us. Our first night was, to say the least, eventful…

JIAXING
The next day we took a train out to Jiaxing to meet up with Ben's friend Jake Zhang that he met on his last trip to China some 13 years ago. The train ride was short and sweet and we were picked up and driven around by our new/old friend Jake. He took us to his father's factory where he runs the exports in, also where thousands of spanners (wrenches) are produced weekly. People earning $130NZD a week seemed pretty content with their jobs as we passed through on our little mini tour.

After a slice of the Chinese workman's life we jumped back into Jake's car and headed off to the East and West lake for a beautiful walk out on to the secluded island with cold winter views of some of Jiaxing's country side. Our mini tour was joined by Jake's bushiness partners and continued with views up on the mountains of the lake and towns as well as a visit to an ancient Daoist walled temple. We smashed some mandarins bought from the street vendors near the lake.

That night we dropped our bags off in a high roller hotel and went out for a King's dinner… Our own private room with a lazy susan and unlimited food sounded like the kinda ticket we had been waiting for since Mum's home cooked meal back home.

Each of us had an element built into the table in front of us and a pot of soup was placed down on the element. We then continued to throw in  meats, veggies and even skewered prawns that were still alive and wriggling.

The food was filling, fresh and free; the exact kind of thing we needed. We retired to the hotel after a wander around the town square and slept as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

HANZHAO
The next day we jumped in a van and headed to Hanzhao. This was a small city (8 million) and was pretty polluted. After we checked in it was straight out on another mini tour with Jake (no rest on his watch). We wandered to the water front to see old people singing horribly in public and playing cards or Majong. We got through that to make our way to a temple on the hill overlooking the city.

The wooden carvings inside told a story of a snake that turned into a woman and then married some guy and then some monk didn't condone it because she was a snake and so they killed him. Exciting, but the views were to die for and the carvings were some of the best and most detailed we had ever seen. After conquering that temple we moved onto the broken bridge.

This bridge was actually part of the snake lady love story and was not in fact broken. It was hidden in the mists on the water at the end of the day which really made the whole thing seem pretty mystical.

We headed back to the hotel after a huge day of walking but had to hit an all you can eat buffet first and then onto the markets. All in all another full day of travel.

We were finally on a train back to Shanghai and and back to our schedule to relax for a few days before heading off to Wuhan.

WUDANG SHAN
Wuhan lead us to Wudang Shan, a sacred (if not the most sacred) Daoist and martial arts mountain in China. We woke early to hit the 1612m high mountain in the mists and couldn't see shit. The mist was so intense - maybe 100m was the limit.

A cable car at the entrance let tourists get straight to the top of the mountain for a small fee but that just wasn't our style. So off into the misty ice covered paths we went. Slow and steady as the path was unforgiving. The climb took us around 4 hours but the steep staired hike was worth it.

The golden summit gave us views that were breathtaking. Some that rivaled Mt. Fuji some weeks before. The monastery was literally in the clouds and we could see the clouds rolling off the peaks of the surrounding mountains. It was truly a sight to behold. The temple was built around the 1400's so some of the stairs were oddly shaped making the climb more interesting but as we were soaking in the view, the skies began to clear in front of us to give us an even better view.

The trip down was easier as we opted for the pansy option (cable car) making the trip warmer and more pleasant. We exited with time to window shop in the stores before taking a bus back down to the hotel to get some more time on that pillow, preparing for our bus ride to Shiyen…

SICHUAN PROVANCE

We exited the bus in the middle of the night on to the side of the road and checked ourselves into a hotel. After a much needed sleep we hauled ass to the train station to catch our train to Chengdu.

The hostel we stayed at was awesome. Small outdoor gardens and little bridges led to our room complete with a complimentary dog shit on the front step.

In the morning we needed to get to the bus station to catch our long bus all the way up to Jiuzhaigou National park. We plugged in the head phones and took a 6 hour bus ride to the face.

We finally got there and wandered around the town which seemed like a zombie apocalypse had passed through and found a hotel that suited our budget. Although the shower spurted out sand from a hose rather than a shower head and the meat sticks out the front made Scott deathly ill, it was a tolerable place to stay.

We woke up the next morning and headed out to the national park. This place blew us away. Although the scenery was not as lush as it would be in the summer, the aqua lakes and white mountain tops made for an incredible experience. Never had we seen water the colour it was here and never will we.

We spent the whole day here going from aqua green lake to frozen waterfall to river side walks. A truly amazing spot in China that has seemed to slip under the radar for the most part.

After the day of hiking around, we returned back to have a sand shower and watch some movies before nodding off.

We smashed out another 6 hour bus ride back to Chengdu this time suffering yet another small Chinese bus with leg room not enough for Peter bloody Dinklage let alone us. After a crippling bus ride we managed to wander back to Chengdu and our now dog shitless room to crash out.

A good night's sleep was in need after our bus ride as well as the second best shower on the trip. An early start led us to the Leshan buddha. The massive buddha statue carved into the side of the cliff was breathtaking. The ears alone were 7 metres long to get an idea of the size.

We had to move fast as we were climbing another mountain in the afternoon so we engaged extreme tour mode and sprinted up the stairs back to the top. Passing families and old ladies struggling up the stairs as we shot past taking 3 steps at a time. After reaching the top and eventually the road we bartered with a lady (that seemed like more of a soccer mum with a van than a driver) who took us to Emei Shan.

We took a bus from the bottom of the mountain range to near the top which took a good 90 minutes. The place was COVERED in snow.

Everything was white and the steps up to the walking path were covered, creating more of a slippery ramp than a set of stairs. The walking sticks/monkey bashers were handy for walking but not for the group of peaceful monkeys we encountered munching on some snacks left by the messy Chinese tourists.

We reached the cable car and figured with time short that we should crank it up there with another easy ride. The cable car failed to reach the top so a short hike further on led us to the amazing summit. Emei Shan with all it's white out frozen peak turned out to be the favourite mountain for all of us.

We wandered around the summit which we had all to ourselves for far too long because as we got back we just missed the last cable car down. People started disappearing and so did the light of day. We had to figure out how to get back and figured the only way was to hike it.

Scott was moving faster than we had ever seen. Climbing down the mountain was difficult as we were losing light but also needed to take the icy steps slow so we didn't need to be carried down. As we were reaching the cable car hut after an hour, night had come and we concluded that all the buses had stopped traveling. This set another panic amongst us as we had a plane to catch in 12 hours. We would have to scale the mountain ourselves which meant a hike in the pitch black down a trail that took our bus 90 minutes to drive in the freezing cold. It was possible and we geared up for the worst hike of our lives.

However it was not to be, our luck came through once again with the last car on the mountain parked by the cable car hut. We negotiated a ¥400 trip to the bottom of the mountain which made for an infinitely better ride than it did a story. Upon reaching the bottom our luck pulled through again because the bus to the train station pulled up next to us as we got out of our life saving car. ¥1 to the train station and we were onto booking our tickets back to which the lady at the ticket booth assured the next train was at 3:00am. Our luck wasn't finished yet as a call on the ladies radio sent us sprinting for a train that had just pulled in. Coming to carriage 18 we were told to go to carriage 4. Another 300m sprint to make it just in time would complete our mission to get back to Chengdu. We opted for the nice clean staff carriage, sat down and acted like we owned the place.

BEIJING

Our flight to Beijing was short and sweet but much needed as we were wearing thin of trains. Beijing was a breath of fresh coal… Nevertheless Beijing was much more civil compared to the rest of China. A little cleaner but still surrounded by litter and spit. The food in Beijing was nice and we found a number of good locations for grazing. After getting ourselves into Beijing we headed out into the night to experience Chinese New Year in Beijing.

People were lighting fireworks in the streets, cars swerving to avoid exploding fireballs of cheap Chinese gunpowder. The grown men seemed to be enjoying the explosions much more than anyone else which baffled us. We found our way to Tianmen  Square where we figured we would see the celebrations.

We found no crowds but saw the Forbidden City across the road exploding with fireworks. We had a real nice view of the fireworks all around even though they were often hidden behind walls as they were exploding very low. The place sounded like a war zone with flashes on the horizons and explosions going off consistently all night.

We made our way back to the room and attempted a sleep. The next morning we decided to switch hostels as our room smelled like mold and wet dog. We checked into The Dragon King hostel which had awesome internet and comfortable beds. We were happy and Scott began his usual torrent sweep, sapping the bandwidth dry. We put on a wash and organised our Great Wall trip for the next day.

The Great Wall was an incredible walk. We started out with a bus ride to the cable car and made our way up to the wall. The wall is around 6000 kms long and runs the span of the north of China. We went to a section that is maintained for tourists like us but was rebuilt 700 years ago. The walk was much harder than we thought taking only 3 hours but with an excessive amount of steps.

Our imagination led us to pity the poor soldiers having to walk the wall in a full set of armour. The wall itself isn't very tall but the views showed the wall running the whole length of the mountain range giving us a peek into how long the wall actually was. So much work involved and over 1 million people dead at the cost of building it. The people naturally were buried in the wall as they died making the wall a giant tomb.

We made our way back and to our delight got to ride a toboggan down the hill instead of another boring cable car. We loaded up but unfortunately had a lame family in front of us stopping on the tracks because they were 'scared'. We stopped our toboggans and let the Brady Bunch crawl their way down ahead so we could get enough distance between them and us to go full throttle despite the signs advising to slow down. Obviously the signs were made for the crippled and elderly because full speed down the track was perfectly fun- fine. Despite waiting for the people ahead of us we still caught up but finished the ride soon after.

Great Wall, done back to the city for a feed and a nap, all in all a good day...

PART 2 COMING SOON...