China, the Sequel

The main attraction of Chengdu is the panda breeding centre where most people head off to but I decided instead to hire a bike and take a small city tour. I had a lovely day cycling through the city to the main square, the local monastery, the Tibetan quarter, across the rivers, through parks and in among the contrasting old and new buildings. At most of the hostels here you can hire a bike for the bargain price of one pound for the day, so it was a cheap day but full of pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed Chengdu.

The next day we were back on the train for the long journey to Lijang. A small town popular with Chinese tourists, Lijang’s big attraction is the old town with its winding cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings. It’s so easy to get lost as there is such a maze of streets all looking fairly similar to each other. At night the restaurants all light up their red lanterns outside the doors and the town becomes most enchanting. Through the day you can see that the whole place is surrounded by beautiful big green hills, and when the haze really clears up even bigger mountains capped with snow come into view.  The train journeys are taking us through gorgeous mountain scenery, the water from these are used for China’s hydro power and we’ve passed several places where the gathered water is shooting through enormous gates or crashing down their purpose built waterways, what a spectacle! As with the truck though it’s very difficult to capture photographs while moving along, the perfect shot will suddenly have a stray tree blocking the entire image or else it’s all just one big blur!

We also had a quick stop in Dali, another Chinese tourist town whose main attraction is their old town. It’s very similar to Lijang but without the old town being quite as quaint and unlike Lijang it’s not pedestrianised. In an effort to get out of the town and see some scenery I agreed to go horse-riding up to a hillside temple from where we could get views of the whole town. It wasn’t really the best introduction to horse-riding for a beginner, the path was so incredibly steep and so muddy the horses kept slipping and it was really quite frightening, not just for our safety but that of the poor horses, especially mine which seemed to be a bit of an oaf and kept tripping and stumbling. All the way up we had the extra fear of knowing that we must also come back down this way but I needn’t have worried as going down the horse showed far more control and gave me a lot more confidence. While he continued to stumble and got a little bit stuck almost throwing me off (the owner quickly grabbed me and held me on the horse!!) I had by then been shown how to steer him and slow him down and I soon felt like I was Robert Redford in ‘The Horse Whisperer’ riding along with the reigns in one hand, feeling quite in charge of my steed! It turned out to be really good fun and the cold beer I had earned tasted all the better for it even though I continued shaking for a good half an hour!

The next and final stop in China is in Kunming, a fairly large city with all the expected High St goodies on our doorstep. I didn’t find many amazing things to go and visit here so decided on a fairly relaxed couple of days, except for our night out to the Chinese karaoke or KTV. The Chinese are reportedly crazy about karaoke and there are KTV places dotted about all over the place so we had to go and experience this! It was of course necessary to ensure a suitably drunken state was achieved before unleashing the beasts of karaoke and I feel we managed this exceptionally well. We arrived at the KTV to find it really quite posh; the staff all wore smart uniforms with little waistcoats and smart trousers. The KTV room we were given was a very smart little living room with a leather corner sofa built in, a glass coffee table (full of beer and popcorn!) and a big flat screen TV. We wasted no time at all in getting the party under way and gave it our all, singing and dancing and having a great time. I looked in other booths to see the Chinese people all sitting sensibly on their sofas and singing from there, the contrast to ours was extreme, if you looked in ours there was carnage! Dancing on the sofa, beer bottles everywhere, everyone was on their feet dancing and singing except one person who was asleep in the corner and the floor was awash with spilled drinks! It was so ironic, we had come here to laugh at the Chinese people’s karaoke, but the Chinese people were all looking in our windows and laughing at us! It was the best time, and as a karaoke hater I am converted!

The food so far has been delicious; the Chinese like their food hot though especially in the Szechuan region where the Szechuan peppers add a real tingle to your mouth. One of our truckers had spicy pasta and afterwards had a visible facial twitch for a good 15 minutes. Not many of the dishes are like those from home (in my limited experience) except the Cantonese style sweet and sour which have been similar. Outside the main dishes we’ve ventured into the world of strange Chinese foods and have tried many different things including pigs ear, chickens foot, pig trotters and some kind of treated egg. The pigs ear was in a very spicy sauce and mostly just tasted of fat and gristle, the worst part was crunching through cartilage which I didn’t enjoy. The chickens foot smelled amazing, the skin tasted good but the bones and toenail, while soft, were still a little crunchy for my liking. The pig trotter was also in a very spicy sauce but it was mostly just skin, there was some meat on it though which tasted delicious. The egg was brown the whole way through, from the outside it looked like a chocolate egg but it tasted a bit salty, not egg-like at all, we think it was possible boiled in soy sauce but haven’t managed to get it confirmed. The other interesting foods are the crisps, cucumber flavour, corn flavour, lime flavour which were really nice and of course chilli flavour which were hot hot! Everything is also served with chopsticks which is a great way to eat, much nicer than the Indian and Nepali way of just using your fingers!

The school holidays in China are the same as the British ones and so this is high season for Chinese tourism. At home this would mean there are children everywhere and it took a while for it to dawn on us that this isn’t the case here, the one child rule has kept a lid on this and suddenly I’m far more aware of the fact there are hardly any children around. It’s rare to be bothered by children playing loudly or even to see children together as all the children are solitary and will be paired with an adult. It’s so sad to think of an entire generation of children who will grow up without siblings and therefore lead to a further generation without cousins or aunts and uncles. It makes me wonder if India would ever consider such restrictions or have the control to implement them.

Chinese toilets have surprised me given how clean and structured the rest of the country seems to be. In one of the train stations the public toilet consisted of nothing more than a length of trough and sections like cubicles but without doors. The people inside are clearly seen in their squatting position with absolutely no privacy whatsoever. While one girl was in a cubicle another lady came in and stood watching her, at point blank range, while she wiped herself and got dressed again, it all seemed so indecent and made us feel uncomfortable. I’m quite used to the squat toilets now and will occasionally even choose one over a throne depending on my mood, but when it comes to public transport I would definitely prefer a throne!  All the trains have squats and I don’t enjoy this balancing act, maybe this is why locals find it acceptable to use the bins instead?! A lady on the train held her child over the bin while he pooed into it, as if that’s not bad enough they were standing next to a vacant toilet at the time! Everything seems so normal here until you just have a little scratch at the surface!

Next stop is Laos, we have a week there and while I’ve enjoyed China and all it’s quirks I’m quite looking forward to the next stage of the adventure.