Ni Hao!

Flying into Beijing (via Kunming) was very comfortable onboard China Eastern Airway, the seats are roomy and the pitch is the longest I’ve ever seen in cattle class. The food was tasty and the toilet was NOT squat, a dreadful thought that had occurred to us in airport before boarding – imagine!!

Beijing’s a very modern and swish city, in the taxi from the airport it felt like such a treat to be in a big car with seatbelts and a suspension, driving on orderly roads with lanes and no tooting. Chinese girls are very into their fashion of short shorts, short skirts, fancy dresses and big wedge heels. There’s more flesh on display here than we’ve seen for months and it’s made us a little prudish to start with as we gawp at the tiny clothes the girls are wearing. China has been far more westernised than any of us had realised, and there’s a lot more money here than we expected which is a pleasant surprise, but we’re still in the city so maybe the rural places are another story, without the truck we’re unlikely to find out.

We only had one day in Beijing so we rushed out to the wall on public transport and took a cable car ride up to it. The place was so busy, I think the whole of China came to view it too as all the other tourists were Chinese, but this is different to India, we joined a queue! We haven’t had the pleasure of an orderly queue for some time now. It was a lot hillier than I expected, we walked along about a kilometre of it, some bits had steps and some were just steep cobbles with old ladies holding on to the railings for dear life in fear of their flip flops sliding them back down to the bottom. We might have stayed for longer if we hadn’t been fighting through the crowds to get anywhere but it was amazing to be standing there on the Great Wall of China! Had we had time and paid more we could have taken a tour which would have taken us out to a much quieter part of the wall but that wasn’t an option for us. On the way home I hopped off the underground to take a quick look at Ti’an anmen square before heading back to the hostel to reacquaint myself with the group I hadn’t seen much of for 2 weeks. That evening we went to the night market, a tourist attraction of various small beasts available for deep frying and tasting. There are skewers of scorpions, starfish, seahorses, centipedes, grubs and goodness knows what else. I tried a scorpion, the man coated it in spices and so it ended up tasting quite nice, it was crunchy and bits of the shell hung around in my mouth but the worst part was getting over the mental issue of putting shell, claws and a sting in my mouth. We also tried snake and possibly dog (who really knows?!) and I really wanted to try a spider but when it came to the crunch I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

The next day we took a bullet train followed by a sleeper train to Xi’an. Unlike the planes though the toilets on the trains are squat and not the most pleasant! You can squat and try to keep your balance as the train jolts it’s way around the corners, some of them have a bar for you to hold on to while you’re squatting, just hope it’s dry! Taking the trains means we’re among the local people a lot more, all the stations are rammed full of people, it is currently Chinese school holidays so everything is busy. Chinese people are such a mixture of polite and friendly and rude and shouting, but what they all have in common is the more revolting habit of spitting everywhere! Not just a small discreet spit but a full on throat curling hack followed by a loud spit! It’s horrible, even on the train, you’re just settling down to eat your noodles and in the background someone lets out a big loud hacking sound, and not into a bin or into a sink, they’re happy to just allow it to land on the floor!

Xi’an is home to the fairly recently discovered Terracotta Warriors. It’s thought that once the excavation is complete there may be as many as 6000 warriors who have been lying underground for over 2000 years, every one has different facial features and is an individual. There is still a lot of work going on at the site as they were only discovered in 1974 and as none of them were in one piece they are slowly picking out the army and piecing them back together, it’s a huge project which won’t finish there as a nearby pyramid shaped hill is thought to hold the extravagant tomb of Qin himself. Entering the biggest archaeological site packs a visual punch as you’re face to face with a huge area containing an army of hundreds of soldiers with some horses dotted around. Fantastic!

Xi’an is an ancient capital city and the start of the Silk Road and was surrounded by miles of city wall with smaller walls within. The centre of Xi’an resides within one of the inner walls, about 14km round and we spent a lovely couple of hours cycling around the top of it looking down onto the old town and the temples. It’s no small structure, about 30m high and the same wide so it’s the perfect size for a short ride.

Back on the train again and headed for Chengdu.