Thomas Fallows in China

An adventure with Stuart.

Fresh from Shanghai we were picked up at the station by my new employer and taken to the apartment they were providing me with. This provided me with the double positive of having a couple of nights’ free accommodation and getting to dump a load of stuff in my new room so that I didn’t have to carry my entire life all round China with me.

First impressions of the new flat were pretty good, it’s massive and looks pretty modern and the area is very glass-and-steel. There was no wifi yet, but I had a lot of films stored on my computer and with no restaurant in the immediate vicinity Stu and I instigated Tarantino and pot noodle night. First up - Django Unchained and the purple pot noodle.

The next day we headed to the old street that ran parallel to one of Suzhou’s famous canals and to the Suzhou museum. We also stopped off at Jinji Lake and looked at at Suzhou’s infamous ‘trousers’ building. Having seen the sights, we headed back for Pulp Fiction and a red pot noodle. That night we headed out to the bar street to see what was happening and it turned out not much. But we found a place with a free pool table upstairs where we could plug our music into the speakers and didn’t have a wasted night. 

The next day we had a well-deserved lie-in and in the afternoon wandered around town. We also fell in love with these freshly made cakes that seemed to be sold on every other street here. That night we had a green pot noodle and watched Inglourious Basterds (after much trouble with the subtitle track. It’s a good job I know a bit of German.)

The next morning, with a considerably lighter bag we headed back to Shanghai for our connection on to the next destination.

An adventure with Stuart (GBR).

School has made it all too easy to find excuses not to update this blog so I am going to try and sit down this afternoon and get to the end of travelling at least and then queue them to come out sporadically over then next week or two.

Our hostel in Shanghai wasn’t the most organised of places. The first room they gave us keys for didn’t have any free beds and then they decided that they didn’t have any dorm beds free at all. The outcome for us was that we got to stay the first night in a twin room with en suite and sole control over the air con/heater. 

Once we were finally had a room we set off for the Bund, strategically located two blocks away from the hostel. The Bund is a row of former bank headquarters and gentleman’s clubs from the concession era, now re-purposed into very expensive boutique shops and the like. It stretches down one side of the Huangpu River, facing the towers and skyscrapers of Pudong which have sprung up on the opposite bank. Other bits and pieces crop up along the walk, such as the former Russian consulate, a statue to an ex-Mayor and the towering monument to the people’s heroes. The sun was out and even though it was still winter, it was the first day I didn’t need my hat and perfect weather for Bund-walking.

After our stroll along the riverfront we went to People’s Park where we saw more skyscrapers poking out above the trees. The park was also absolutely covered with A4 sheets of paper with what seemed like dating profiles on them. Not quite lonely hearts ads, many of them were handwritten and few contained a photo. It seemed like they were brought here pinned to boards or on washing lines by people who presumably charged to act as matchmaker. And really, there were hundreds of the things. In the evening we headed back to the Bund to see the Pudong skyline lit up at night. It had gotten very cold once the sun had gone down though and we didn’t stay for long.

Too late to get into the urban planning exhibition centre, we vowed to come back another day and instead headed to the Shanghai museum which had some interesting items, but to be honest you can reach a saturation point beyond which no more jade pendants are going to excite you.

The next day we headed to a garden, once the private garden of a wealthy merchant, which was fairly crowded but still afforded the odd nook and cranny to escape other tourists. We also headed to an ‘old street’ to remind ourselves that Shanghai wasn’t just glass and steel skyscrapers. We also headed to the urban planning exhibition centre, only to find it was closed on Mondays and vowed to come back another day. We also sorted out the remainder of our transport tickets, including flights from Hanoi, thereby committing ourselves to going to Vietnam. Given the problems we’d had earlier on, it had never been assured that we would even get there so this was an exciting development.

The next day we finally went to the urban planning exhibition centre, a rather interesting account of how Shanghai grew and grew during the 19th and 20th centuries and how it plans to keep on growing throughout the 21st. One example was the expansion of the subway system to a frankly ridiculous 22 lines over the next twenty years or so. Lunch was the Shanghai speciality fried dumplings. Crispy fried dumplings filled with meat and boiling hot soup, they were delicious but very difficult to eat with chopsticks, much to the amusement of the two ladies sharing our table. Then we made our way to the train station and on to Suzhou.

I had never really been that interested in visiting Shanghai. In fact, if Stuart hadn’t been with me I probably wouldn’t have bothered coming during this trip. I had always imagined it to be a clinical, sterile place; devoid of anything Chinese and at best a pastiche of western cities. It turns out that I was wrong. Shanghai is the one place in China that I’ve seen west and east meld seamlessly. The Bund speaks to Shanghai’s colonial past and the mirroring Pudong, its independent future. The apartment blocks put one in mind of New York but the restaurants and corner shops below retain their Chinese character, appearing to have almost been carved out of the brickwork.

Shanghai has been the best surprise so far.

roadtorowingrio:

I really should have written this last week as I managed to get up to the lake on both 16th and 17th Feb, and it was the best yet! Turns out there is another girl my age who has just started sculling (she has been sweep oar rowing for a couple of years but never done sculling before that weekend!)…

I have only just discovered this blog, but I think it’s awesome. I’m so proud of you for taking on a new challenge and even if you do have an off week here and there you’re persevering. Keep up the good work! Rio or not, I want to see you tearing up the water with your rowing one day.

An adventure with Stuart (GBR).

Soooo, the trains were fully booked up and we had ourselves a bus from Xi’an to Shanghai, a distance of over 1300 km. It was a sleeper bus, something I didn’t even know existed, but here it was. Everyone had their own sort of bed going lengthways down the bus arranged into three rows across and maybe six or seven going back. And a top and bottom bunk. 

The bus left in the early evening and I only managed to read for an hour or so until the light got too bad to see anything (apparently having electric lights on a bus is a ridiculous idea) and not wanting to listen to music for fear of running my phone battery down, with its all-important Google Maps, there wasn’t much else to do but cover myself with my jacket and close my eyes.

After a couple of hours we stopped at the kind of place that passes for a service station in China for dinner. Stu and I, expert planners that we are, had brought pot noodles with us and got off the bus to ‘borrow’ some hot water from the guy in the shop. He however was adamant that we could only have is water if we bought the pot noodles from him and even when I offered to pay him essentially the price of the noodles again for the water he refused. And then I found out that his pot noodles were highly inflated to triple their usual price. So, not willing to let him win we walked off. I had planned to come back and steal some water when he wasn’t looking but he stood guard over it until we left. Having seen our plight, one of the other passengers pointed out that there was a hot water tap on the bus, although that hope was dashed as one of the drivers promptly came over and told us quite sternly that we were not allowed to eat our noodles on the bus.

I sat pretty indignantly through the next section of the journey as the old couple below us peeled hard-boiled eggs onto the floor, tried to force rice wine on each other and unwrapped basically a whole roast chicken to eat whilst fuming that in the driver’s eyes it would, of course, be laowai and his flipping pot noodle that messed up the bus. I couldn’t possibly be mad at the old couple though, especially as they later gave us a couple of eggs to share and a can of cold, drinkable mystery soup that we passed on.

The bus trundled on, occasionally stopping at petrol stations or just by the side of the road to pick up and drop off packages as I drifted in and out of consciousness until, somehow, it was morning. 

We began dropping off passengers in the towns along the way until we got to one where most people got off when suddenly a group of police officers strode up, one brandishing a camcorder, and having presumably serious discussions with the drivers. After a few minutes I realised that they had actually pulled their 4x4s across the front and back of the bus as well, to stop us driving off. Anyway walkie-talkies were talked into, papers were fetched and many cigarettes were smoked until one guy was led away. I still don’t know exactly what happened except he came back about half and hour later looking pretty rueful and carrying some papers with a big official red star stamped on them.

Potential illegalities notwithstanding, I was quite glad that our bus was allowed to drive off and after a tortuously long lunch break just outside Shanghai (we still hadn’t eaten) we finally made it into the city 23 hours after leaving Xi’an. As we headed to the nearest subway station we swore: never again.

Huashan, 24.1.13-25.1.13

An adventure with Stuart (GBR).

Time to climb a mountain. Well, we’d been in two cities for a week and China really does come into it’s own when you get out into some nature. 

Waking before dawn, we set off with Stephen a guy from Hong Kong who was staying in our hostel and got the bus from Xi’an to Huashan, a couple of hours away. On the bus we met Kristina, a Lithuanian girl who seemed pretty relieved to find other westerners. Once at the gate we got the chance to put our totally-still-in-date-and-didn’t-expire-when-we-graduated-in-summer student cards to good use, getting some hefty discounts. Unfortunately for Communist China, who’s country is supposed to belong to the people, its leaders have realised its natural beauty is a great money-spinner.

Another short minibus ride and we were at the foot of the mountain. Faced with a choice of paths up the mountain we opted for the steep-but-taxing ‘soldier’s way’, almost immediately coming across a large frozen waterfall. Having already seen a good number of pictures we prepared for the occasional near-vertical stretch of stone steps carved into the mountain, but weren’t prepared for China to have put ‘no entry’ signs over them and built a safer but much less interesting staircase off to the side. After passing the first of these stone ladders by though, we remembered that instructions on signs in China are really taken more as suggestions than anything else and hauled ourselves up the next flight we came across; steadying ourselves with the chains pegged into the sides as we went. 

On we pressed, finally conquering the soldier’s way and reaching the North Peak in time for lunch. The view from the peak was incredible. We were fortunate to have a very clear day, free from the mist that sometimes clings to Chinese hills an mountains. Away to the west stretched lower peaks in the mountain range and directly in front were miles of green and yellow fields drawing the eye to a down in the distance. The only blemish was a layer of smog that hung in the air, either from the town or a nearby city, creating a second horizon - one between earth and smog, another between smog and sky.

After a quick lunch of Xi’an flatbread, we stuck off south, there were many more peaks to see before sundown and looking at some of the drops from this rather sheer mountain none of us wanted to still be walking in the dark. We headed over Green Dragon Ridge which fell away sharply on either side and headed through Golden Lock Pass, the railings crammed full of padlocks with names and dates engraved on them, some of the older ones beginning to rust, and interspersed with red streamers. By this point Stu and I had gotten a bit ahead of the others, and after a quick text to give directions, headed for West Peak. There must have been some communication problem however as the others ended up carrying on to Central Peak.

West Peak was no less spectacular than North Peak. A narrow ridge led up to the peak which fell away sharply on the other side. A little scramble up to the highest point led you over rounded rocks at let you peer as far a you dared over the low-slung chain that separated you from the drop. The view this time was not of fields nor towns but a vast sea of mountains rolling away into the distance.

South Peak was only a short hike away, less than an hour and although it was the least impressive of the peaks we visited it was also the highest and so warranted climbing right to the top. Up here there was snow and ice lying on the ground an I walked very gingerly to and from the summit. Right by South Peak is something we cam to call the ‘plank-walk’ an optional extra on the mountain for those brave (or stupid enough) to try. Wearing a harness with two clips which you constantly have to keep re-clipping further along a guide rope - making sure at least one is attached at all times! - you navigate down a set of iron railings, along a set of hollows cut into the wall and further onto a plank walkway just broad enough for your feet with a sheer drop we reckoned to be at least 1000m below. The views are stunning, best to look out rather than down, and although my heart was in my mouth at times concentrating on the steady clipping and unclipping meant I was able to get across without freezing halfway through. At the end you reach a small alcove temple which Buddhist pilgrims regularly used to visit via this route without the safety equipment.

This was also where we rejoined our climbing companions and with dusk approaching we moved to East Peak. By the time we arrived the moon had risen but the sun hadn’t quite set giving us a beautifully coloured vision of the skyline. Stu and I were grateful for our forethought to bring pot noodles as we sheltered from the cold that descended on this clear January night atop the mountain. With only a brief visit outside to see stars - an uncommon sight in the cities here - and Google Sky pointing out Venus and Jupiter we bunked down in in our frankly grimy and overpriced hostel. But there is a reason people want to sleep, or rather wake up, on the eastern peaks of mountains.

In the pitch black an alarm went off and the shuffling to put on multiple layers of clothing began. Hat, scarf and gloves completed the preparations and we stepped outside into the not-quite morning. My breath was immediately taken by the night sky. Where last night there had been a few dozen stars, now hundreds shone in the sky, whether through earthly rotation or my eyes accustoming themselves to the darkness I can’t say, but the sight was every bit as incredible as any view of the mountains and one I’m not likely to forget in a hurry. Still, it wasn’t the hundreds of stars we were here for it was the one very close one. As we climbed to the top of East Peak to wait for sunrise the wind howled fiercely and we hid behind a large rock to escape the worst of it. Gradually the blackness of night gave way to purple then blue, a distant mountain range remaining silhouetted against the sky. Warm though my gloves were, occasional removal to take photos was costing me the feeling in my fingers and my toes were going the same way as slowly night became day. After an hour or so yellows and oranges began to halo the distant peak and a long thirty minutes later brilliant light glinted over the precipice. As the full shape of the sun rose into view, it was difficult to tear your gaze away, despite the obvious damage it was likely to do your eyes. Feeling very fulfilled at having seen such a magnificent sunrise but desperate to get some feeling back in my extremities we set off down the mountain, concious of transport we had booked from Xi’an late that afternoon.

Going down was much easier than going up and after a pause for breakfast at North Peak we went down the mountain not by the soldier’s way, but by the ‘easier’ route. I’m not sure who decided it was easier though. Sure there were long stretches of very gently sloping roadway but also more than a few sections of very steep stairs only slightly more manageable than those we had encountered on the way up. Anyway it was a reasonably uneventful hike down and at the bottom we found a minibus to Xi’an pretty easily. 

Having fully embraced nature on Huashan we were ready for another city.

Xi’an, 22.1.13; trying out a new camera mode

An adventure with Stuart (GBR).

So with New Year coming up, tickets for any means of transport are in short supply. We arrived in Xi’an on our fast and moderately pricey train much earlier than expected. The scene at the taxi rank bears mentioning; as legitimate taxi drivers whipped hundreds of passengers away as quickly as possible, a few slightly more shady characters picked off the odd person from the queue with weaker willpower or better haggling skills than me.

We got to the hostel at 2am, waking up a non-too-happy receptionist in the process and went straight to bed.

The next day we headed to the long-distance bus station, knowing that there were no trains to Shanghai and the remainder of our trip rested on us getting a ticket. Lucky, they had some left so we bought them quickly, then headed to the train station where we managed to buy a couple of train tickets for or onward journey from Shanghai. Feeling much happier with China than we had done the previous couple of days we were ready to explore Xi’an.

Not much of the day was left so we headed to the south gate of the city walls which have been pretty much completely restored. So much so that you can hire a bike and ride round them, which is exactly what we did. A part of me still misses my bike from Göttingen and it felt good to get back in the saddle. I can’t honestly say that the views were amazing but it did feel really cool to ride around ancient Chinese city walls.

The next day we went to the Terracotta Warriors. The whole set-up is pretty cool, they’ve left the dig site pretty much how it was (except for sticking the warriors back together) and built the museum around it so you get to see the warriors in situ as it were. It doesn’t take much time to see the warriors so in the afternoon we came back to Xi’an and wandered around the Muslim Quarter and for the first time since I’d left Chengdu I felt like I was in real China again. Then we got an early night because we had an early star the next day.

Bejing, 17.1.13-21.1.13