Bye Bye Beijing

Well, I'm back in the UK. I've been home for a week and a day - my goodness is it strange to be back! It's a decision I was brewing over for some time, and it wasn't an easy one to make. However, I always knew I wanted to leave while there were things (and people) I would miss, and there are plenty of both. I've had an amazing year, some fantastic experiences, been through the rollercoaster of highs and lows and I'm ready for a new challenge. London calling... or something like that.

My last few days in China were a frenzy of getting things done - particularly some travel writing I was commissioned to do for www.everytrail.com. I wrote tours to The Summer Palace and Kunming Lake, The Olympic Park, the Lama temple and Nanluoguxiang hutong and to the Great Wall at Badaling. It was a really interesting experience, visiting somewhere and keeping a specific eye out for what tourists need to know and how to go about doing stuff then marrying it up with a)interesting information to make people want to go the places I'm writing about, and b)formatting in line with the website's. Also, and I hope this isn't a developing theme for when I visit somewhere/ something I'm intending to write about, it rained heavily on every occasion. Nice.

I spent my last day in Beijing doing some of the challenges that were suggested to me by some good buddies over dinner on my penultimate night. I went to Jinshan Park behind the Forbidden City for a view over the whole of Beijing, visited the Pearl Market and ate scorpions on Wangfujing (three touristy things I'd missed out on thus far) - I didn't quite manage everything on the list, but heyho it's a reason to go back. Scorpions, in case you're wondering, just taste of deep-fried spicy crunch. The Pearl Market was super cheap and pretty calm compared to other markets in China, but the bustle of the Silk Market is more fun. The view from the hilltop pavilion that is the raison d'etre of Jinshan Park was lost in the filth of a muggy Beijing pollution day - a far cry from the blue skies, breeze and wafting floral scents of my parent's garden where I'm writing this. However, this is Derby and that was Beijing so I guess it's swings and roundabouts.


After a last dinner with some more friends, and finishing off packing (everything, including souvenirs, fit into the bags I came out with - how proud am I?) I got a ride to the airport for my flight home, again in the pouring rain. I flew with Aerosvit, a Ukraininan airline, changing at Kiev. I'm not sure what I did, but somehow I got upgraded to Business on the flight from Beijing to Kiev and had three seats to myself so I could stretch out and sleep. It must've been the Indiana Jones t-shirt... or me being polite in an empty airport at 3am, or the ridiculously early flight time. Whatever it was, it meant I arrived reasonably fresh faced for the transfer and got over any remaining jetlag pretty quickly. I always knew I liked the Ukraine...


Mum and Dad met me at the airport with a pork pie, apple juice and the wherewithall for ham sandwiches - maybe not a triumphant return to my homeland, but oh boy it was homely. So, what now for me? Well, first conquering action is to get a job. After that the top 3 things on my list are 1) save money for clearing debts and a big trip somewhere down the line, 2) carry on writing and get published somewhere in the UK, and 3) get some skills to make me an uber employable prospect (not to detract from my current level of *hopefully* super employable what with all my transferable skills and life experience...) - a fluent second language would be handy, some website creation/design skills and maybe something a bit left field like massage are all in my sightlines. One thing's for sure, the last year has made its mark and my horizons have been irrevocably broadened and (as you've heard me say so often) "I've got a Plan." Watch this space. 

Hiking the Li River - Yangdi to Xingping

I haven’t hiked properly ever, but my Dad is a big fan of long walks, so for his birthday I hiked with him along the Li River from Yangdi to Xingping - all 20km of it! We got up earlyish and headed to Yangshuo bus station, just off Die Cui Lu, to catch one of the many daily buses up and down the river. We’d taken the precaution of having the characters for “Yangdi” and “Yangshuo” written down, as well as having my phrasebook in our well stocked backpack (water, dry towel clothes, fruit pastilles, cameras, money and waterproofs – all the essentials) but over each parked bus were signs for where each bus was heading and my Chinese was good enough to ask if this was the right bus (score!) and we were fine. Dad and I got seats with our knees up by our chins over one wheel arch – the last two seats that were actually seats – and off we trundled. You pay for tickets on the bus once it sets off, and two tickets from Yangshuo to Yangdi set us back the almost unbelievably low sum of 18RMB for two; less than the price of a Starbucks coffee.

The journey took about two hours, winding through the town and its outskirts then fields, rice paddies, villages and the spectacular karst mountains that were shrouded in cloud at the top. The bus gradually filled up as we drove along, the lady who got on with a bunch of leeks in one hand and a live chicken in the other was the last to get a seat – perched on the edge of a study wooden box with a piece of newspaper under the chicken in case it disgraced itself. A couple of stops after that, when the bus was essentially full, we managed to cram on another twelve or so people who all seemed to have their faces in each other’s armpits. Cosy wasn’t the word, but at least it wasn’t a hot day; that could’ve been uncomfortable!

The dock at Yangdi, looking south

We were sat in front of a German couple who were doing the same hike as us. When we arrived at Yangdi, we lost them for a little while in amongst the tiny old lady-hawkers offering bags of peanuts, mangy looking kumquats and the interrogative calls of “Hello? Hello, bamboo?!”  from everyone in sight but it wasn’t long until we bumped into them trying to get across the river too and agreed to join forces. The Li trail crosses the river three times – the official ferries cost 4RMB per ticket, but unfortunately, the first ferry was out of action when we arrived and we were all at the mercy of the local bamboo rafters who were quite happy to charge a premium. Dad and I got separated from the Germans and were tailed for fully forty-five minutes by one particularly irritating tout who appeared and interrupted whenever I was asking a different rafter to take us across the way. He managed, every single time, to dissuade them from helping us which was hugely frustrating. Eventually we caved and, along with two American guys, paid him 40RMB (for the four of us) to motor us across. The Germans managed somehow to get across first.

Monsoon!

The first part of the trail that we followed at first cut through a small farm before descending to a sort of meadow beside the river then back up and away through the trees, but it varied hugely along the route from cobbled pavement to a concrete embankment literally along the edge of the river to Dad and I scrambling over muddy banks (though I think we weren’t on the proper path at that point.) I think because we didn’t go on the official ferry, we started in a slightly funny place, but heyho it didn’t matter – we could see the river and that was the point. We caught up to the Germans, who had waited to cross the river with us and the six of us were punted over the river by a somewhat sceptical rafter who didn’t like the idea of 7 adults on his bamboo raft, and carried on walking. After about half an hour, we heard an ominous rumble. The sky was black above us and we all scrambled into waterproofs before continuing – just as well because before we’d gone ten paces (pretty much) the heavens opened and I experienced my first monsoon. The rain was so heavy that the others decided to shelter for a while and have a break for lunch – Dad and I pressed on. The Yorkshire-man’s logic here was that we’d get cold as well as wet if we stopped, and we’d still have 15 clicks to tramp, so, on we went. I’ve never seen rain like it! It lasted at least two hours and walking through it was one of those surprisingly exhilarating feelings – sort of sublime, seeing the power of nature in an already indescribably magnificent setting, but also definitely ridiculous; what the sheltering natives thought of bedraggled me tramping along looking like a drowned rat and Dad in his blue poncho, bushman’s hat and brogues as we passed, I do not know.

One definite bonus of the downpour is that it stopped the droning succession of motorised bamboo rafts (and larger boats) that follow each-other up and down the river like a watery motorway. When you look at the back of the 20RMB note, or any other pictures of the karst landscape along the Li River, and go “wow!” you don’t imagine seeing it with the constant thrum of outboard motors as your soundtrack. I’ve lived in China long enough now that I really ought to have expected the hawkers and the calls of “hello? Hello, bamboo?!” that followed us along the river, but I didn’t. Silly me. I definitely didn’t realise how much of an alien concept the idea of hiking along the river was; apparently no-one could get their head around the idea, hence the “hello, bamboo?!” calls that followed us as ubiquitously as the outboard motors.

The day cleared up after a while and walking was pleasant. We didn’t bother to stop for food anywhere, except for me buying a very disappointing pomello and a couple of teeny fish on a stick from a couple of smiley and toothless farmers by the side of the path – fortunately we had the somewhat damp tube of sweets in the backpack for an energy fix. The fruit pastilles were lucky to get away with just dampness, we discovered just how not-waterproof the backpack was on the last river crossing - Dad wrung out the towel and my “dry” shirt, but there was no hope for his poor sandals!

The route that we took stuck closely to the river the whole way down. Although the trail isn’t exactly marked and we were kind of following our noses, it didn’t matter particularly – the route is pretty obvious and we saw plenty of other foreigners on and off. We also saw plenty of mountains, boats and river scenery (thoroughly gorgeous) but not as much rural life or farming as I’d half thought we might. Just as we were coming to the end of the hike though, an old lady led a water buffalo (I think) down to the river. Not knowing anything about the habits of buffalo, I was just expecting it to have a drink but it carried straight on into the water, turned around to face us and settled in to wallow. I swear it scowled at the Chinese guy snapping pictures next to me. Its owner squatted down on the water’s edge to await its convenience, and since it showed every sign of being in for the duration, we pressed on again.

Xingping

After a last half hour or so, we arrived in the charming tourist trap that is Xingping… to find the German couple and the Americans had already arrived. We hadn’t seen them since we marched off into the rain, so I’m fairly sure witchcraft was involved and was tired enough that I said so! I asked the way to the bus station (Chinese lessons finally paying off) and we wended our way through the traditional houses and souvenir stands to the bus station and managed to get the last couple of seats and some standing room on the bus back to Yangshuo. The Americans, who were standing, had to keep ducking down to the floor to pass police checks, but apart from that the journey back was without incident. The whole hike took about 5 hours. I was thoroughly worn but mostly dry again by the end of the day, and I’m so glad I did it – Happy Birthday Dad.

Wilsons vs China part 2: trains and trees

a view across Mongolia from the Trans-Mongolian express

I have a bit of a confession; I like trains. Not in a count-the-numberplate, anorak wearing kind of way – more in the ‘relax, slow down, look out the windows and see life’ kind of way. I did seven straight days on the Trans-Mongolian express (sorry - I've just realised that post doesn't have any pictures) coming to China in August 2010, I interrailed around Europe July-September 2009 and most recently I took my parents on a 24hr ride down to Guilin from Beijing.

Flying around China is undoubtedly the quickest way to get around, it’s not too expensive either, but, if you’re in a hurry to relax then your holiday is oxymoronic to start with. That’s my feeling anyway. You see life out the windows of a train. You slow down because you have to. Having control (and internet) taken away from you for twenty-four hours can be something of a shock to the system, but oh boy does it take you away from the usual routine of city living. Chinese trains are unlike anything back home – at any one time more than a million people are said to be using the railways, there are several different classes of trains and classes of seat within those trains. You can only book your tickets ten days in advance, and you have to do it in person either at an agency or at the station.

Beijing West Station

The first time I got on a train in China, I was heading to Handan to start teaching. We had hard seats, all our luggage and the train was so crammed you literally had to climb on people to move down the carriage. A tiny woman bullied people out of our seats and fed us boiled eggs; a lady sat opposite didn’t realise how desperate her baby was until the poor child literally exploded all over her lap. I took Mum and Dad soft sleeper; there’s such a thing as a cultural experience taken too far. Both journeys, incidentally, started from Beijing’s West Station – a gigantic transport hub to which the subway (somewhat inexplicably) doesn’t go yet.

We had a Chinese lady sharing with us overnight, but her stop was midmorning so we didn’t see much of her. With my halting Mandarin I managed to tell her we’re English, that I live in Beijing and that we’re going to Guilin. I didn’t understand a word she said to me, except that she has sisters. This meant we had a four-berth, rattling box of China pretty much to ourselves for twenty four hours and were free to question and comment and guess about what we saw out the windows.

My parents are keen gardeners, so their point of comparison was the wildlife and agriculture we passed through. The interesting thing from our point of view was that all the farms seemed to be at subsistence level, none of the giant farming conglomerates you see at home or in the States as far as we were aware. For a place as huge as China, this must (we thought) keep life at a very local level. I’ve subsequently done a bit of research into Chinese agriculture – not much mind you – and we were close to being right! Sort of anyway.

farmland around Yangshuo

Around 300million people are employed in the agricultural sector, which (at one estimate) contributes to 12% of China’s GDP. China doesn’t have that much viable arable land in percentage terms, but 75% of all crops grown are food crops. We hadn’t factored history into our thinking, or at least, I hadn’t. (Maybe Mum and Dad did and I slept through it.) China and agriculture had something of a fraught relationship in the 20^th century. Before the Cultural Revolution, the country was a feudal state with the kind of peasant farming that goes with it. After the devastation caused by the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958, which I really don’t know enough about to be able to explain properly (hence the link), farms and farmland began to be re-distributed back to small holdings in the 1960’s. The rest of the century seems to have been a long exercise in cleaning up the mess left by unfettered idealism. This meant we did get to see the stereotypical rice paddy farming, complete with water buffalo and lamp-shade hats though.

We also saw plenty of trees that were similar but not quite the same and flowers that they’ve got in the garden back home. This was more noticeable when we got off the train and were walking past nicely done herbaceous borders, but set us thinking about the links between gardens and open spaces and how they’re universally important to people. Again, this set me off on a bit of research, mainly from reading Bill Bryson’s "At Home" it has to be said, about plant hunters and the fortunes that were made taking new species of plants back to England to be cultivated. While I was doing this, I found out about Robert Fortune who went undercover to steal the secrets of tea growing from China in the mid 19^th century.

I’ve always known that history is fascinating stuff – what I hadn’t quite comprehended was how much plants feature in it and how much you can learn about a place from who grows what and why. It does tempt me to go to Xi’an to the 2011 Horticultural Expo. The theme this year is “Continuous Harmony between Heaven, People, and Nature” I assume this grandiose title actually intends to explore the links between people worldwide, gardens and culture in a wider sense. I have to admit, I’m intrigued… maybe that’ll be my next trip out of Beijing? 

Children's Day

China might be perceived as a land of “little emperors” thanks to the one-child policy, a place where children are extremely cherished, but the attitudes to disabilities here are…erm… old fashioned to put it politely. On a day like today, it’s good to know that there are organizations like Bethel in the world working for the good of disadvantaged children to make sure they have some childhood memories as happy as the ones I've just mentioned!

To quote from their website: “Bethel is a not-for-profit organization that provides foster care, education and professional training for Chinese orphans who are blind or visually impaired.” There are two projects, “The Love is Blind project” (located in the couth of Beijing) and “Project 5+5+5” which works around the country to train state-run orphanage workers. You can check out more about their work (and how you can support it) here, and I hope you do!

some of the kids who live at Bethel's "The Love is Blind Project" in the south of Beijing

WORK VERY HARD

I’ve only got the most old-hat excuses in the book to offer you up here for the lack of recent updates, so I won’t even bother wasting your time with them; we’re all busy people after all! However, my new watch word is “time-management” and regular updates here are the way forward. I’m also contributing regularly to the Trekiz blog (I work at Trekiz – we’re a platform for planning travel around China – there’s a real mix bag of stuff coming up for the blog so check it out!) and I’ve got an article coming out in the next issue of The World of Chinese magazine. Exciting times!

So, what have I been up to in the last month? Well, my parents came to visit China for the first time, I’m apartment hunting and I’ve taken up Heyrobics! More on all of that in the next week...

Wilsons vs China part 1: Beijing

“You let them out on their own?! It’s their first day in China!” The incredulity from my colleagues was palpable. Well, yes, yes I did. I had absolutely no qualms about sending Mum and Dad off on their own to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City while I was finishing up the office before going on holiday. China might seem intimidating to get around without any command of the language and a mass of people to get around (even if you can see over pretty much everyone’s heads, score for the tall-gene) but Beijing is really easy to get around on the subway – it’s 2RMB to go anywhere and all the station signs are in English as well as Chinese. I think it gave Mum and Dad a boost of confidence to be able to get around without me. Plus, I’ve done the majority of the properly touristy stuff I’m interested in doing in Beijing so instead I tried to show them the Beijing I know as a local lǎowài.  

 I’ve seen loads of pictures from my friends who pass through the hostel of them having a beer with the donkey that lives on the Mutinayu Great Wall. That section also has the toboggan run down, how could we not go?! Plus, I did the Badaling section of the Great Wall (closest to Beijing) when I got here last summer. It was too restored and touristy for my taste, so to Mutinayu we went.  I’d love to say I’d had a beer with a donkey but did I find the damn animal? No. Big disappointment, but the toboggan made up for it, even though we queued for the best part of an hour for it to be dry enough for safety after a shower of rain. It would have been so much better if there hadn’t been a complete wuss of a Chinese woman four people in front of me (any hint of speed and she’d scream and slam on her breaks, just as the rest of us behind her were starting to have fun) but I did get to hear some choice swear words from the German couple in front of me though; there’s always a silver lining!

We also did Summer Palace as a family (it was hot, sunny, over-crowded and thoroughly beautiful, but under appreciated by slightly hung-over me) but that was the last properly touristy thing I did in Beijing - the Lama Temple, the Bell and Drum towers and the Olympic Stadium Mum and Dad negotiated on their own. Two cultural experiences I made sure they got before we left for the train to Yangshuo was to see hutongs at Nanluoguxiang and to have a proper Chinese massage. I think they appreciated the massages more; what made the biggest impression at Nanluoguxiang was the sign in the restaurant where they had lunch that said simply “no pooing!”

Chinese massage can be somewhat intimidating for tourists. Tales of “happy endings” in massage parlours and “scissor-less hairdressers” are rife, but, as long as you steer clear of pink lights, massage here in China is a ubiquitous, inexpensive and wonderful thing. I’ve had full body (fully clothed) massages for as little as 30RMB, but I picked more salubrious surroundings for my parents, and for the weekend we were in Beijing, at least one of us went every day. Dad’s crocked shoulder was eased, the knots in Mum’s bad-back were kneaded out of existence as were the ones in my feet and shoulders and, relaxed to the consistency of the noodles we had eaten for lunch, off we went on the second leg of our holiday… the train to Yangshuo.

The weekend we didn’t go to Qingdao

Oh China… you’re a great country but your train ticket system is a MESS. (You can only book up to ten days in advance and it’s a complete scramble to buy tickets because it’s you vs the rest of the Chinese population – who, it must be said, know how to use their elbows and have no shame about doing so. Also, you can’t do any of it online.) Add this to Tomb Sweeping Festival, and Claire and I were stuck in Beijing rather than heading down to the beaches and beer of Qingdao with our friends Kat (German) and Rafer (Kiwi). So, since the office was closed Monday/Tuesday I decided to treat the weekend as a holiday anyway, albeit a holiday where Saturday counted as a normal work day. We’d threatened to make seagull noises while drinking cans of Tsingtao and paddling in buckets, but in the end we saw bits of Beijing I hadn’t been to before and quite a memorable staycation.

On Friday night, we went out for a few drinks which almost inevitably (since I had no intention of going out) turned into me rolling into bed at 5.30am and struggling to keep my eyes open all morning at work. Fortunately, I’d scheduled myself a day of catching up on admin stuff requiring zero brainpower. Ah foresight! Saturday night we had a quiet one and on Sunday, Claire and I went for our Usual at the Den. We’ve been there pretty much every weekend since the dawn of our friendship and always have the same thing so Susan, the waitress, is just going through the motions when she gives us menus. She knows it, we know it… one day I’ll surprise the world by NOT ordering a Sunday Roast with orange juice and tea. Not for the foreseeable future though. (In case you’re interested, Claire always has a bacon sandwich.)

After Bacon Saturday (belated) we walked down to Ritan Park, which is possibly my favourite place in Beijing. After cycling down and parking up Delilah and Bill (the bikes) we wandered around with the families in the sunshine. I’m going to write more about Ritan Park another time, but we sat for a while by the lake and did some people watching, strolled past the fishing ponds to see kids catching goldfish with lines and nets then toddling past with their catches in plastic bags and I joined the hordes of people taking pictures of the magnolia trees. No climbing on this occasion.

Kat and Rafer came back on the Sunday night train which arrived about 5am. Fortunately, they waited until 8 to pester us for entertainment. I left the three of them making a plan and went for a run down to Ritan Park (even awesomer in the morning) and by the time I’d done that and showered, after much procrastinating they’d decided on wandering around Yashow Market and getting icecream at Coldstone Creamery. The day passed lazily away in the sunshine – after icecream we wandered back to one of our staple eateries, known to us as “Turkish” even though it’s Xinjiang food and nothing whatsoever to do with Turkey. They do the best chicken wings this side of the moon though, have cold beer in the fridge and always say hello when we walk past so it’s quite a good place to hang out. We were there for a few hours catching up before heading back to the hostel and eventually deciding that two-for-one burgers at Blue Frog were the way forward. Blue Frog burgers, apparently, are the nicest in Beijing… unfortunately I fell asleep in/over mine (the burger was rescued before I face-planted it) so I couldn’t tell you. The others enjoyed theirs though, and had so much fun making fun of me that you wouldn’t believe.

After the laziness of Monday came the supreme awesomeness of Pedalo Tuesday. We headed out to Houhai (a lake in the north west of Beijing’s central area i.e. inside the 2^nd ring road) and straight to the docks. Kat speaks Chinese, but I ended up talking to the guy in the hut and managed to get us a four person duck headed pedalo with my carefully honed miming skills and a smattering of basic Mandarin. Proud? Me? Yeah! Well, you try miming pedalo and not looking mental!! Rafer and I “drove” first while Kat and Claire took in the scenery. 

Unfortunately weren’t properly prepared for the high seas – no picnic, no beer and no cutlasses or pirate hats for pedalo boarding antics. We still managed to have a good giggle though. Piracy another day perhaps… We went for a pizza lunch at The Hutong Pizza afterwards; awesome pizza according to the Beijinger and to us. We ended the day with a Leverage marathon and so endeth the weekend that we didn’t go to Qingdao.

Staycation in your hometown? Have you found something cool and new in the city you live in?