Legend of Xanadu - 25/06/2007

We headed out of the mountains and back in to the big cities.  The blue sky and fresh air turned into smoggy humidity in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.  We got beds at Sims Cosy Guesthouse, which might be the best run guesthouse I have ever visited.  It might not be there much longer however as, despite (or perhaps because) being over 100 years old it is earmarked for destruction to make way for a high-rise office block.  These few little streets around the charming Wenshu temple are the only pieces of attractive architecture left, but for how long?

Folk Street, Chengdu

Somehow the smog seems to avoid the Panda Rehabilitation centre about 12km north of the centre.  This place is surprisingly well run in the face of huge financial problems (although the government does help).  The pandas are curious of their surroundings but seemingly unaware or at least unworried by the visitors.  The are very relaxed, maybe lazy is a more accurate description! They eat about 20kg of bamboo per day but are very picky and only eat around 20 of Chinas 300 species of bamboo.  Recognising a familiar accent I met a couple from Taverham and we agreed that you don’t see these on Mousehold Heath!

Panda Rehabilitation Centre, Chengdu

In an attempt to escape the pollution of Chengdu we decided to climb Emei Shan, one of Chinas holy Buddhistic mountains.  Call me cynical but I think it is just a marketing ploy, announce it as a holy mountain, lay several kilometres of path and voila, prime retail and hotel space.  The “golden summit” is crowded with characterless Chinese hotels despite being a UNESCO site.  We visited Emei Shan via Leshan, a town that has the worlds biggest buddha carved into a cliff but the fog (smog?) was so thick it was a wasted journey.  After taking a bus most of the way to the summit of Emei Shan we trekked up for the last two hours.  We had seen photos from the summit of beautiful views, the summit poking out over a blanket of clouds.  Unfortunately the weather conspired against us and we could not even see the edge of the viewing platform!  We planned to trek on Emei Shan for three days but we ended up leaving after just one night.  We returned to Chengdu and recovered with a feast of spicy Sichuan food and a bottle of Scotch.

Emei Shan trek

From the frying pan into the fire we headed on to Xian, apparently the cultural capital of China.  The Lonely Planet describes Xian as having an “efficient infrastructure and lack of grit and pollution”.  I think they must be joking!  Within the city we walked past the Bell and Drum towers and through the more exciting, bustling streets of the Muslim quarter.  Here things were more down-to-earth, street hawkers and all manner of foods on offer as well as an interesting mosque with beautiful grounds providing respite from the greyness of Xian.

Market, Muslim quarter, Xian

Of course the main reason to visit Xian is to see the Army of the Terracotta Warriors discovered close by.  The area around is now a big tourist trap with replicas of the Pyramids and Sphinx, hot springs and a cable car ride.  The main site, the tomb of Qin shi Huang is very impressive, mainly due to the intricate details of the Warriors and the sheer quantity of them.  The story of how they were discovered is also incredible, a group of peasant farmers were digging a well in 1974 and uncovered one of the “vaults”.  If they had dug just five centimetres further north they would have missed it altogether!  The fact that these figures have been buried underground since before Christ and lay undiscovered throughout the whole of modern history is amazing.  Apparently there are many more undiscovered vaults in the area but n-one seems to bothered about finding them, maybe they would have to move their museum and in any case they are making enough tourist yuan with their current find.  Of course the site is very heavily touristed, more rude Chinese groups and a smattering of Western groups as well.  Other negative aspects of the sit include the ‘Museum Of the Museum’ and the 2km detour that you are forced to take to exit the site, taking you past crowds of baying souvenir sellers and restauranteers, the direct 200m path that you enter by is off limits.  But I have to admit these are small prices to pay for the privilege of seeing the Army of Terracotta Warriors.

Army of Terracotta Warriors

Our next stop was Pingyao, eight hours further north by train. The scenery between Xian and Pingyao is truly stunning, valleys and canyons and rocky outcrops.  In the past few years Pingyao has become quite a tourist stop but actually we were a bit disappointed.  We were expecting a Dali or Lijiang of the north.  Pingyao is a small town with a complete city wall but most of the town is in a terrible state of disrepair and ruin.  The three main roads have been renovated for the tour groups.  We also experienced the most aggressive touts in China here.  In fact prior to this the only place where we found touts was in Yangshuo and there are enough tourists to keep them busy.  It is good about China that there are hardly any touts or rip-offs but Pingyao has both.  The last two factors that influenced our opinion were the plasma TV’s on the corners advising tourists which souvenirs to buy, slightly incongruous in an ancient town of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the oversized golf buggies that shuttle the lazy tourists around.  Thankfully part of the town is off limits to (most) traffic from 10am to 10pm.  We thought we would stay a while but after one night we bought standing tickets for he next evenings train to Beijing.

Pingyao

Beijing really is a behemoth of a city.  Big, sprawling and crowded.  We arrived at 7:30am and started looking for accommodation.  About half an hour later we found the first place and half an hour after that we were sitting, exhausted, in Tianamen Square.  We did eventually find a hotel, cheap and best, but could not check in for a couple of hours so we spent the time walking through Tianamen Square, the worlds largest public square and visiting the Forbidden City.  Playground of the rulers of the Ming and Qing it was off-limits to commoners for over 500 years.  Of course the rise of the Party soon changed that.  These are just a couple of the sites Beijing has to offer, you could not see it all in a lifetime let alone a few days.  The only downside here is that, as in the rest of China, you must pay to go anywhere, even into the parks.  Not just for the foreigners however, there is no dual-pricing in China, everyone must pay. Again, not exactly communistic.  The other problem is that everywhere is being renovated for the Olympics next year.  The Forbidden City is covered in scaffolding and entire districts of hutong (the small old streets full of shops and cafes) are being demolished.  The domestic tourists don’t seem to mind, they continue to follow umbrellas and flags through the building sites!  Even Chairman Mao is undergoing reconstruction.  His mausoleum is off limits until September, a six-moth facelift!  I was very disappointed, after seeing a long-dead Ho Chi Minh a few years ago I was hoping to complete the hat-trick this year with Mao and Lenin.  I consoled myself a couple of days later by buying a copy of Mao’s little red book, once issued to all good Party members, in English.  The best part was bargaining the woman down from 100Y to 20Y.

Entrance to Forbidden City

In Beijing we visited the Lama temple, although it did feel a bit hypocritical to visit a Tibetan temple in Beijing, as well as the Bell and Drum towers.  I am not sure of the significance of these towers (found in many Chinese cities) but they are quite impressive, especially the short-but-sweet drum performance.  On our first evening in Beijing we went for Peking Duck (or should it be Beijing Duck?) and on the second night we watched an incredible display of Chinese acrobatics in the Wangsheng theatre.  Zhonsheng park, close to the Forbidden City, provided an oasis of calm and the Temple of Heaven park revealed the location of one of the images of Beijing used in all tourism brochures.  Perhaps the most impressive of the parks is Beihei park with its colourful nine-dragon screen and beautiful white stupa overlooking the lake full of pedaloes, but no sign of Andrew Flintoff!

Tianamen Square

We used Beijing as a base for a couple of short trips.  We made a night halt in Chengde, an unremarkable, industrial town with an impressive collection of temples on the northern outskirts.  Putouzongcheng  is like a mini-Potala and the Temple of Sumeru, Happiness and Longevity and the Puning temple were both very impressive as well.  Also in Chengde is the Imperial Summer Villa, the biggest park in China but the 90Y admission put us off, the same price as for the Army of Terracotta Warriors.  A dearth of budget accommodation in Chengde meant we ended up in a posh hotel with TV, AC and a bath!

We thought it would be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone and visit the Great Wall at Simatai on the way back to Beijing.  Eschewing the offers of buses from Chengde train station (we thought they were ripping us off) we took a train to Miyun, where the cost of a return taxi to Simatai was much more expensive!  After a lot of bargaining we set off, only to find a diversion en route.  Then, 10km before Simatai the road was closed altogether, probably preparing for the Olympics.  It is nice how they are totally screwing the current tourists and don’t even warn anyone it is closed, many tour groups go everyday from Beijing.  In the end we went on to the Wall at Jinshanling. I have to say it was well worth it.  Jinshanling was deserted, we had the Wall to ourselves, it had a desolate, lonely feel about it, just this forgotten wall snaking through the mountains over the horizon.  In the end we only had time to spend two hours walking on the wall, although I would have liked to make the four hour trek from Jinshanling to Simatai.  For me the experience was up there with Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat as one of the world’s top man-made wonders.

Great Wall at Jinshanling

Back in Beijing we spent a day at the Summer Palace, another beautiful park, this one is where the Ming and Qing used to spend their summers to escape the heat of the Forbidden City.  It is full of small rivers and lakes, gardens full of pagodas, palaces and temples.  It was well worth the admission fee. 

Our final sightseeing adventure was not so rewarding.  In Tiger Leaping Gorge we had read an article about Shidu, only 100km from Beijing and labelled “the Guilin of the North”, surely the holy grail of Chinese tourism?  In a 196 edition of the Lonely Planet we found a short entry, and interestingly Pingyao was yet to be discovered at that time.   We bought train tickets and set off on a drizzly morning.  The scenery around was stunning but the town itself was a disgrace, a disgusting example of the destructive nature of Chinese tourism.  These beautiful sites had been ruined by the presence of bamboo rafting, cable cars and even bungee jumping.  Loud Chinese pop music blared out as the tourists lapped it all up.  The town was full of touts, one woman followed us for hours.  Worst of all was that each and every “scenic spot” had an admission fee so you could not even look at the scenery.  We soon left on a bus back to Beijing.  We had planned to get to Mongolia via Datong and the Yunang caves but after this last experience of Chinese tourism we decided to skip Datong and the Marco Polo bridge and get a night bus the next night to the Mongolian border.  Buying the bus tickets was another exercise in patience as it required two unsuccessful trips to the bus station and a long phone call to a friendly Mongolian guy with an agency in Beijing who helped us get the tickets and found us someone to share the taxi to the bus station.  The sunrise in the morning over Inner Mongolia was incredible, although the fact that we have not seen blue sky, stars or even the sun for two weeks may have made it seem all the more impressive.  A minibus charged an extortionate amount to cross the border (you are not allowed to walk across) and we were in Mongolia. Through the night we had passed close to Kublai Khans ancient summer palace of Xanadu, which unfortunately has been off-limits to tourists for years.  It remains as described by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch, a Legend.

So China speeds onwards, the upcoming Olympics providing the impetus for more development.  I have counted about six beers that are the official sponsor and the worst part is that they probably are.  The fact that no athletes seem to be considering a boycott on human rights grounds is disappointing and I find Chinas sudden improvement in track and field very suspicious.  I heard rumours that their athletes have no choice as to what events they enter, the government makes all the decisions.  Their cricket “project” to be the best test nation in the world within twenty years is laughable; the fact that they call it a “project” is bad enough.  Hopefully if they ever manage to have a cricket team they will be treated in the same was as South Africa were in the 1980’s and Zimbabwe are now. 

China is a scary country with a scary government.  Its human rights record and environmental policies are appalling and the word that seems to describe China most accurately is “greed”, which is forever juxtaposed against the Party doctrine.  Personally I believe that predictions of being a superpower are laughable.  You don’t become a superpower by making plastic rubbish cheaply in large quantities for other countries.  Made in China syndrome affects Chinese as well.  In the past few weeks I have seen pedals falling off seemingly brand new bikes, pots of yoghurt that are impossible to open and a number of pairs of glasses minus a lens or arm.

Of course none of this directly affects the traveller and unfortunately the vast majority of those we have met seem to be unaware of the truth about China.  The food is incredible, although not even a cheat sheet can ensure you get what you think you ordered.  Monikas efforts have included a healthy serving of cold noodles in vinegar with fried pork jelly and onions, her attempt to order aubergine in spicy sauce resulted in a plate of deep fried banana in sweet and sour sauce and her sauted vegetables turned out to be boiled peanuts with carrot and cucumber!  But on the whole, no matter what you get, it tastes very good.  The people are generally friendly and welcoming, although the language barrier can be a problem.  There are some amazing sights to see and, by Asian standards, the streets are very clean (we have seen vans rinsing the streets).  It is good to see people active and exercising and also to see sexual equality, with just as many female bus and taxi drivers as male.  Public transport is cheap and efficient, and China is one of the only countries I have visited where the taxis are cheap and it is safe to use the meter!  If you can tolerate the chain smoking by the majority of the male population, ignoring no smoking signs everywhere, especially trains and buses and if you can ignore the constant coughing up and spitting of big green balls of flem then China might just appeal to you.  The other thing I found a bit disgusting is the habit of drinking an entire bottle of spirits with a meal or on the train, Chinese become quite aggressive drunks and it almost always ends up in an ugly scene, but I suspect that in Mongolia and Russia things might just get a bit worse in this respect.  Finally, just make sure you survive the drivers, who are probably the worst in the world!

I have to admit that despite my misgivings about the government I have thoroughly enjoyed travelling in China and was a little disappointed to be leaving.  In fact I already have an idea of where to go on my next visit!