Epilogue

I thought I'd sum up some of the things we'd come across and learned over the past couple of weeks, and present some virtual awards to the places we had visited. Firstly though, thanks to China Tours (http://www.tourchina.co.uk/) who created an excellent tour. If you hadn't picked up in the posts, we had a personal tour guide on all of the planned days, and thus we could be pretty flexible to make the most of the weather. Of course thanks also to Gill and John without who's very generous funding we simply wouldn't have been able to go!

Traffic

The traffic in China is extremely busy, haphazard and generally pretty lawless. Actually, I spoke to one of the tour guides, and the traffic laws are the same as over here - the people just don't bother respecting them! Along with the enormous (and growing) number of cars, buses and lorries, there are as many two and three wheel vehicles, and these seem to have no qualms about driving down the wrong side of the street, on pavements and down pedestrian crossings. To add to the mix, pedestrians can be found swarming through the vehicles. The unwritten rules seem to be that you should drive blinkered - what is going on to your sides and behind are someone else's problem. Your only concern is to ensure you don't hit anyone in front of you. Oh - two concerns actually, you must also make copious use of your horn. The only saving grace is that they drive pretty slowly - mainly through little choice.

Food

The food here is generally very good, though you need to leave any squeamishness about it back in England. We have eaten whole duck and chicken (heads and feet left on), pigs trotters and whole chopped rabbit. We have seen dishes in the restaurants featuring sea cucumber, jellyfish, tripe, shark's fin (which I wouldn't try on principle - millions of sharks are killed yearly for their fins, and the bodies dumped back in the sea) and other such delicacies. We have seen live seafood in tanks outside restaurants waiting to be chosen
as a main course. These things are the norm in China, but generally speaking the food tastes superb. Note that we never saw either dog or cat on any of the menu's - of course the sort of restaurants that we ate in were either quite posh (i.e. had "English" subtitles) or were entirely in Chinese in which case we'd have been none the wiser.

Some maybe interesting facts - the North of China grows a lot of wheat, the South a lot of rice. Rice is apparently a far less fattening food, and they have a nickname for the potbelly there - they call the beer belly a mien belly (mien are strictly wheat noodles.) In the South where they eat mainly rice noodles (and potato noodles we discovered) they tend to be much slimmer than in the North.

The food in China is typically diced or sliced into chunks small enough for chopsticks. Food is taken directly from the serving dish and eaten, or sometimes dropped into the bowl of rice before eating. Chopsticks were introduced by Confucius, since he believed that people should be peaceful, and so should not use potential weapons - the knife and fork - to eat with. And the tradition has stuck and spread throughout East Asia.

From our whistle-stop tour of China, I found Chengdu's cuisine the best, and Guilin's the worst, but the ranking is all relative - the only dish I really did not enjoy was the smoked pork dish in Beijing.

As far as Western restaurants go, KFC seems to have the biggest foothold here, followed by McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Since the battered spicy chicken is much like traditional chinese chicken dishes, this does not surprise me much. Pizza Hut have seriously bumped up their menu with more traditional dishes with rice and noodles - again unsurprising, since the Chinese don't really do bread or cheese.

Politics

Disclaimer: These are solely my own observations, and possibly bear little or no resemblance to the reality of political affairs in China!

The Chinese people do not seem to have a problem in general with their Communist government. From what I have gleaned from talking to people, Communism is effectively just another Dynasty. The Chinese have a long history of Emperors and Warlords going back 3000 or more years. In comparison, the British I think have had a far more broken history - in the past 2000 years we have been conquered by the Romans, Vikings and Normans, and have effectively had a democratic government for 400 years or more. In contrast, the Chinese find it hard I think to imagine a non-dictatorial government, and so that side of things doesn't much concern them. Combine that with the benefits the communist party has brought to China in terms of equality for women, equality in terms of demolishing the class system, and the benefits of re-introducing the class system via capitalism. China is not communist in the same way as Stalin's Communism - there is full blown capitalism at work here, and those successful in business can earn a fortune, and live a western style life of flash cars, big houses and the like.


Prizes

Most Interesting City

Beijing - this had by far the most to see, do and learn

Best Hotel

Four Points Hotel, Beijing. This was very good, superb facilities and excellent food. The downsides were the location and price of hotel meals

Best Food

Chengdu - even William thought that the food was best here - in particular the double-cooked pork dish, which was basically a spicy dish with bacon

Best Show

The Changing Masks show. The Acrobats and Kung-fu shows were both excellent, but the Changing Masks were just very funny

Worst Traffic

Beijing - followed closely by Xi'an. Pure anarchy, and fairly terrifying as a pedestrian

Best Traffic

Hong Kong - The traffic lights are obeyed, and they even drive on the right (that is to say left) side of the road

Most Fun Activity

The Panda Reserve. The Panda's were pretty delightful. Very funny play fighting, and pushing each other off platforms and down banks. Panda's are so rotund that they actually roll

Best Free Activity

The walk through Aviary in Hong Kong Park

Most Relaxing Activity

The Cruise down the Li River was beautiful, chilled and interesting.

Best Transport

Virgin Atlantic return journey - William was rather taken with the comprehensive entertainment system

Guilin and Hong Kong

Now was to begin the more relaxing part of the trip. Guilin, an area famous for it's beautiful scenery, and painted in countless Chinese watercolours because of this, was next on the agenda. The flight from Chengdu was running an hour or so late, so we were quite late into the hotel. The tour guide was to meet us in the lobby at 8:30 the following morning for our only excursion here, a 5 hour boat trip down the river Li through the mountains.

The trip was superb, the scenery stunning, with a light haze to the air giving it the atmosphere captured in those watercolours. The mountains here aren't big, perhaps 200-300 metres in height, but they are unnaturally steep. The landscape here looks like fingers pointing at the sky, with steep cliffs, large caves and greenery. Despite the steepness, perhaps due to the highly pocketed rock, foliage abounds on these hills.

The river life was really interesting as well, with crows and egrets circling above, boatmen punting their bamboo rafts up the shallow river, usually to hook up with on of the tour ferrys to try to sell their wares (usually jade or fruit) to the tourists, or their shellfish to the cooks whose kitchens are on the aft of the boats. There are water bison wading in the river, families winkle picking in the shallows, women doing the laundry on the riverside, and fishermen with their rows of cormorants on their rafts. Apparently a good cormorant will fetch in 5 kilos of fish a day - they have a collar around their necks which stops them swallowing the larger fish, but they are loose enough that they can eat the smaller fish. We think William may have seen a Kingfisher, as the bird dove into the water, and came up a few seconds later glistening blue and red in the sun.

The following day and a half we spent wandering the lake by the hotel. The lake is a large oxbow lake running through the city and joining the River Li at both ends. The lake has been beautifully landscaped all along its length for the use of the public. We walked right along to the water gate where it meets the Li, the site of a private park which we wandered around. We were hoping to climb to the top of one of the karst mountains, but the one here in the park, though we could see people at the top, had no entrance from this side, and it wasn't at all clear how to find the way up. The second day we strolled around the lake closer to the hotel, having Tea and a game of chess on an island in the middle of the lake.
We had lunch of noodles at a noodle bar (3 yuan - 30 pence - for a large bowl of noodles with pork, including shedded pigs ear, vegetables and sauce) and McD's for Will. I find it a good idea to fill William's boots when we find a western restaurant, as otherwise he mainly eats rice and plain noodles, and sometimes pork, duck or chicken if it's plain enough - but not a great deal of those.

At 3pm we met the tour guide again for the journey to the airport, and (a couple of hours late again) we flew out to Hong Kong.

We arrived in Hong Kong, and here the arrangements were a little different. A tour company called Vigour had a desk here, and we were to find the desk, and they would ferry us to the hotel. The hotel was in the centre of Kowloon on the mainland. Kowloon was exactly how you see it in the films - bright neon lights everywhere, all competing for space in the crowded space above the shop fronts. The hotel itself was set up rather strangely, with the room on the 5th floor, and the restaurant on the 15th. By the time we arrived, it was gone 10pm, so William got to bed, followed shortly by me (after a few very poorly played games of Chinese Chess against the computer - it will take some time to get to grips with the strategy of this very different game!)

In the morning, we had a leisurely breakfast, and laze around until we checked out at 12. I didn't really want to check out any earlier, as we were not being picked up from the hotel until 8pm, so even checking out at 12 gave us 8 hours to fill.

We set off to a Pharmacy - half of which was dedicated to Western medicine, half to Chinese traditional medicine - to pick up some sun cream to replace the bottle we had got confiscated at customs. Then onto the subway, and got the tube through to Hong Kong island. We then headed up to Hong Kong park - the most interesting way up to our goal, the Peak - the summit of the island, which is reached by a steep tramway. The park was really interesting, with desert and tropical plants in a large conservatory, and the highlight, a walkthrough aviary full of hundreds of brightly coloured birds in a huge netted compound.

The tram took us up to the Peak Tower, a shopping centre with numerous restaurants and cafes, and more tasteless and tacky trinkets than you could shake a stick at. We stopped at a Honk Kong style cafe for noodles and tea, and then headed to the very top of the tower to take in the views - much to Williams disgust!

We spent a little time here on top of Victoria Peak, William did some drawing, while I told you about the events of the day thus far. We watched some scaffolders erecting some bamboo scaffolding against the side of the Peak Tower. The structure looked pretty sturdy, and an advantage of the bamboo over steel became apparent - to get the ends of the scaffold neat and tidy, they simply took a saw to it! Another tram ride back down the hill, and a bus down to the central docks, and we saw the city in all its technicolour glory, as by now it was dark, and the skyscrapers of Hong Kong town and Kowloon across the water were lit up. In my opinion this was far more breathtaking a view than the skyline as viewed from the Peak!

We took a ferry across to Kowloon - a remarkably quick and cheap journey at just under 40p for the two of us - where we went up to the viewing platform over the harbour to take some shots of Hong Kong town in all its glory ("Not more photo's silly Daddy!")

Another bus ride took us to the middle of Kowloon and the brightness of all it's neon, and wandered back to the hotel where I sit with a large Mocha, William with a hot chocolate, waiting until 8pm when our tour rep will take us back to the Airport and the long journey home.

Chengdu

The following morning we were taken to the airport for the flight to Chengdu. Chengdu is the capital of the Szechuan province. Chengdu has China's largest Panda reserve, though the mountains where they live in the wild are 4 hours drive away. Chengdu is in a large bowl at around 400m above sea level surrounded by mountains, and as such it is generally wet. Sure enough, when we landed, it was drizzling and around 10 degrees. We met up with the tour guide, and she suggested that we postpone the trip to the Panda reserve until the next day, as we had plenty of time then until the next flight, and the forecast was good.

During the trip to the hotel, the guide filled us in on the ways of the Chengdu people. Apparently the people here are very lazy. They are said to take after their Panda's in that all they want to do all day is sleep and eat! A good place to come for retirement apparently, but bad for the young people as they just learn to slack off and relax! The climate here is damp, but generally warm - mid winter gets down to around 10 degrees at its coldest (and so yesterday was considered very cold), and they never get snow. The area is renowned for it's spicy food (the Kung-Po Chicken and Szechuan dishes we have in English Chinese restaurants are from here.) The city is surprisingly much larger in population than either Beijing or Xian at around 30 million people to Beijing's 22 million or Xian's 26. Hard to imagine really coming from a country with a total population of just over twice the population of Chengdu!

The schedule for the evening was another show. This included the regions famous "Changing Masks" show. In the meantime, we unpacked and checked out the city center. Chengdu's city centre is very modern compared to that of either Xian or Bejing, it is very clean, there are pedestrian bridges in many places, reducing the need to dice with death considerably, and the traffic is much much saner. The drivers still seem to consider obeying traffic lights optional, but they seem to have more respect for, and more of, the traffic control officers who stand at junctions to assist the lights in controlling the traffic!

We had a late lunch in the centre, William had a McDonalds, and I had some meat-in-a-bun meal from a street vendor, which was spicy and very tasty. We had to meet the Tour Guide at 7:45 for the show, so at 6:30, we headed out to find dinner. I thought this would be plenty of time, and we headed for the City Square in order to find a restaurant. Of course the square was surrounded by museums and acadamies, and by the time we found a restaurant, it was almost 7pm. We found a restaurant close to a McDonalds, the idea being that I eat some local cuisine, and we get a takeaway burger for William. So I ordered a beer and some food, and we waited, and waited. After half an hour, we really needed to get William fed and back to the hotel for the show, so I told them (in hand signals mainly) that I needed to go, and they gave me the bill - thankfully just for the beer. Downstairs, the McDonalds had had an influx of people, and was heaving - there was no way we'd get a burger and still make the show, so we just legged it back to the hotel.

The show was great - William thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly the Changing Masks, which were very impressive (they changed their masks in the blink of an eye - hard to see how, but presumably involving strings somehow), the Shadow Puppets, and a comedy show involving a beaten and henpecked husband! We made do on a couple of boiled sweets until the show was over, and made it back to the hotel for dinner shortly before it closed!

I let William have a lie in the next morning, as the tour guide wasn't picking us up until 11:30. We went to the old part of town first. In Chengdu the old part of the town was sort of a cheat. It was two parallel streets called Narrow Street and Wide Street, but they have been recently rebuilt in the old style - similar to Beijing's Hutong area. The streets are very popular locally and with tourists, and had various tea shops, restaurants and trinket shops. There was a nice irony in the fact that Wide Street was narrower than Narrow Street, but the tour guide didn't really get it when I tried to explain. Two things stood out here in the "old" part of town, one that Chinese people often get their ears cleaned and shoulders massaged at Tea shops, the second was that we stumbled across the filming of some soap opera or other. We saw the lead actress give one of the actors a good slap round the face before they cut the scene and collapsed into laughter!

We went to a local restaurant for lunch, where I picked some spicy double-cooked pork, William chose pigs trotters, and the tour guide ordered an aubergine dish and cold cooked rabbit. The rabbit came on-the-bone. It seems that a lot of poultry, and apparently rabbit as well, is cooked whole, and then chopped into slices before serving. With duck, the head is left on the meat, and with chicken the head and feet are typically on the plate when it is served! The rabbit was cold and served with chilli oil and satay sauce. The trotters were served in a sauce, and were reasonably tasty, but basically you are eating skin and fat - there's not a lot of meat on the feet of a pig! Apparently the Chinese really like offal, including trotters, chicken's feet and the like, and they are more expensive than ordinary meat! The other dishes were delicious, particularly the aubergine.

The Panda reserve was great. The weather was warm and dry, at around 16-18 degrees, and the pandas were active and playful. We got loads of footage of the baby and teenage panda's playing - adults are far more docile. Frankly it's amazing that Pandas have made it this far - they do not really seem geared up to survive as a species. Here are the reasons why:

1. Pandas, though once carnivores like their Bear cousins, now eat bamboo. And not just any bamboo, arrow-stalk bamboo only found in the mountains.
2. Because they have a stomach built for eating meat, their digestive system is very poorly tuned for digesting bamboo. This means that they need to eat something like 50lb of bamboo daily to maintain their weight.
3. The Panda's sexual cycle is a once per month thing - to breed they have a very small window of possibility each month.
4. Pandas are basically anti-social, and prefer their own company, so when females enter that small window of sexual activity, they spread their scent around the forests to try to attract a mate.
5. Pandas are fussy - once they have found a potential mate, the chances are they won't find them attractive enough to mate with.
6. If they do get pregnant, they have a 9-30 month pregnancy period before giving birth, and typically give birth to a single baby.
7. The babies are born helpless, and practically furless, which in the cold mountain areas pandas prefer, this is bad. They are not truly self sufficient and fully grown until they are around 2 years old.
8. Given all of the above, Pandas have a 10 year lifespan - so only really a 6 year window to possibly have babies.
9. Pandas, given their strange diet, find the need to conserve their energy for the rare occasions they may need to try to reproduce, and so spend most of the time they are not eating asleep.

It really is a wonder that these gentle, lazy, sleepy animals still exist in the wild at all. In captivity they only manage to reproduce using artificial insemination.

After the Panda Base, we headed to the airport for the flight to Guilin.

Xian

The new tour guide met us at the station, and had hired a chap to carry our bags for us. It was raining in Xian, and the trip to see the warriors was in the morning, so we had a day to ourselves. The tour guide organised a trip to a theatre/dumpling restaurant for the early evening from 5pm, so we just had lunch to sort out. With the weather being so miserable, and the evening meal being dumplings (which I was fairly sure William wouldn't eat) we found a local KFC for lunch and filled him up with chicken and fries. In the afternoon we spent some time in the hotel's pool and played some chess until it was time for the show.

The show turned out to be a disaster - William obviously hadn't slept that well on the train, and was showing signs of being tired during the meal (which as predicted he ate little more than the rice). For my part, the dumplings were great - really tasty and interesting as they form them into the shapes of the main ingredient, such as little pigs or fish. After the meal, we were ushered up to the show, but rather than the usual theatre style seating, the seats were arranged around tables, and we didn't have a very good view - William could hardly see anything. He got into a bit of a strop, and refused any of my suggestions to get a better view. In the end, he fell asleep 15 minutes into the show!

In the morning, we were picked up by the guide to visit the Terracotta Warriors, and thankfully the weather had cleared right up, and we had a nice dry day for the visit. First we stopped by a Jade factory where we could see them carve and polish the Jade and they could then try to sell us their wares...

After a spot of lunch, we were taken up to the warriors.

The Terracotta Warriors were created by the first Emperor of a united China. Prior to this Emperor, China had been feudal, and there were 7 warring states. This emperor united the 7 factions, and built the Great Wall. Before he died, the Emperor had his army of terracotta soldiers built to protect him in the afterlife. He believed that they would protect him, and also protect the united China from his enemies.

The Warriors were not quite finished when he died, but his son brought them all together following his fathers wishes, and the craftsmen who worked on them were killed to protect the secret. The pits that the soldiers were lined up in were covered with wood and earth to hide them. Unfortunately, the secret leaked out, and one of the Generals of one of the kingdoms the Emperor had united came to destroy the Warriors and hence destroy any chance of China remaining united. He failed in his task, as a single kneeling archer was left unbroken, and China remains today united. The archer has become a symbol of luck in at least this region of China.

The Warriors were only actually uncovered in 1974 by a local farmer who still signs autographs on site today. In fact the warriors were known about by local people long before this, as they used the area as a burial ground. While excavating tombs in the area, locals would often come across body parts or faces, and assume them to be demons of the underworld!

It took something like 2 years to piece together enough of the army to open the site to the public. By the 1980's two more pits had been discovered, with the generals and archers in. While we were visiting, archaeologists were excavating some further pits in the main area, and piecing together more lines of warriors.

The overall impression you get from the place is pretty awesome. The scale of what this Emperor had done in order to protect himself and China in the afterlife was pretty astounding, particularly given that this was more than 2000 years ago, and each warrior was hand-crafted, each having a different face - these were not mass produced from a mould!

Finally, the tour guide took us down to the Muslim Old Quarter where the street markets are and there is a large Muslim population. The Bell and Drum towers of the city also reside there. We went back down to this area for our tea - but went to the Pizza Hut in a shopping centre near the Bell tower to fill William up after the previous night's disaster.

Beijing Day Three

Our third full day in Beijing was a free day. We planned in two days over the trip as days free of travel or sightseeing so that we would have time to rest and contemplate what we had seen so far, and to simply have some downtime. This turned out to be a very good plan - I don't think either of us had expected to have the days quite so full!

So we had a lazy morning with no alarm, a late breakfast and then packed up the bags ready to check out. We then went down to the hotel spa and took a dip in the pool. After checking out and leaving our bags in the safety of the hotel reception, and after a second abortive effort to change some travellers cheques into Yuan, we braved the public transport system and took the subway back into central Bejing and the Hutong area for lunch and to buy some gifts.

Note for future travellers to China: when travelling in China, use a credit card to withdraw funds, and if you absolutely must use travellers cheques, get them in Stirling or US Dollars, not Chinese Yuan as the Chinese refuse to believe that such things exist...)

Chinese public transport is cheap - Taxis have a fixed tariff system, with anything up to 3km being 6 Yuan, with 2 Yuan for every km over that - though we were warned to ensure that the driver turns the meter on, as they will try to sting tourists for far more. This made our Taxi ride to the nearest subway 12 Yuan - around £1.20. The subway was clean, new and busy, with 10 lines. Possibly due to the 2008 Olympic games all of the stations were written in both Chinese and Pinyin (the romanization of Chinese in western characters), and most signs were also in both Chinese and English. To get to our stop, which involved a couple of line changes, it cost 2 Yuan each - just 40p for two tickets!

The subway station once we got to our destination was on the edge of the Hutong. The signs here were nearly all in Chinese, and it wasn't obvious how to get to the market we were looking for. In any case, we were hungry, so we ventured into a small restaurant in one of the side streets, and with a combination of gestures, pointing at menus and covering up of the parts of a noodle dish that William didn't want (effectively everything but the noodles!) we ordered some sort of spicy sweet and sour dish, a bowl of plain noodles in a clear soup, and some tea. The food was delicious, and the price an eye opener. So far we had paid around £45 and £28 for the two hotel meals (the first was the one where I over-ordered). The Duck had been £18 but had been a good local restaurant for locals - no English on any of the menus and I had to gesture and point to get what we wanted, and take the waitress to the bar to show her what drinks we wanted. At this restaurant in the Guilin, just a normal café for normal people, the price was 46 yuan - £4.60. Much more reasonable!

After eating we wandered around until we found ourself at the bell tower. Traditionally, Chinese Cities have a pair of towers in the center, a bell tower which rings at 6am, and a Drum tower which beats at 6pm. We had a map of the city, but it was not detailed enough to navigate the warren of streets that make up the Hutong. We bumped into a pair of Western ladies also walking toward the bell tower, and struck a conversation as we braved the traffic to get across the road.

"Hi, where are you from", I asked. One had sounded American, the other English.
"I'm from the South of England, Chichester", said the British one. I replied that I was from Brighton.
"I live here", said the other. Typical yank - not "I'm from Wyoming, but currently live here" or similar, but, "I live here" like she was practically a native!

We established that they had been wandering through the Hutong looking for the Bell tower, and I took the English lady's advice on the way to the market. "She's very good!", said the American, referring to the other's map-reading skill. We spotted a Tourist Information office and picked up a more detailed map of the area. I'm glad we did, as after 10 minutes of walking down the road suggested by the English lady, we realised that none of the streets matched up, and that she'd sent us completely the wrong way!

Note to prospective tourists: ignore the advice of other bemused tourists, however confident they come across! The fact they'd been "cutting through" the Hutong should have been a giveaway.

Back on track and following the map, we arrived back in the Hutong, and bought some gifts. Here was a good lesson in haggling. The key seems to be to show some initial interest in something you want, but then back right off. In the first shop, I was looking at a Chinese Chess set. The assistant typed 90 into the calculator and showed it to me. I hesitated, and she typed 80. I took the calculator and typed 60, and we settled on 70. In the next shop, I spotted a pair of small lions in bronze. The lions were everywhere in Bejing, and so I thought they'd be good to get. When I looked at the price ticket though, it was 380 per lion! £74 for a small pair of lions was ridiculous, and I put them back. The shopkeeper had clocked that we were interested, but I said no. She brought the price down to 240 each, then 200, then 150 and finally 150 for the pair. I thought this reasonable, so got my wallet out to pay, but only had about 60 Yuan left. I told the girl this, and she came down again to 120 Yuan if I'd pay on the Mastercard. I suspect that the price could have been brought down even further...

We took the subway and a taxi back to the hotel, had a meal in the hotel, tine being short, and were met by a friend of our tour guide who was to take us to the station for the sleeper train to Xian.

A note about tips: The previous night as the tour guide left us, she was talking about how we didn't need to tip her friend who was meeting us to take us to the station, as she'd already paid her for the favour (Regina had another tour group during our free day), she also started talking about how tour guides were poorly paid and she shared a flat with two other girls, and was curious as to how much the average salary was in England. She seemed to hang around for a while before leaving. Now, as Helen will tell anyone, I'm not so good at picking up on subtle hints. But I started to get the feeling as she walked off that perhaps she was angling for a tip. We ended up chasing her to the door and giving her a tip - though I had no idea how much we should give. I think now that I probably gave too little - but hey, I'm new to this stuff!

The sleeper train was as you might expect. Small rooms with four beds. William and I had the bottom bunks, which have a table, and a couple of Chinese lads had the top bunks. The beds were comfortable enough, and duvets and pillows were provided. The Chinese lads went to sleep shortly after William at about 10, and I stayed up an hour longer to write some of this. I woke at 7 the next morning, and left William asleep until about 8:30 to give him time to get dressed before the train arrived in Xian at 9.

Beijing Day Two

We set off a little earlier on the Sunday, to go to the Great Wall. It was raining in the morning (the previous day had been misty but dry), so Regina suggested we went to the Ming Tombs first, and the Great Wall in the afternoon, as the forecast was for the rain to stop around lunch. We stopped off at a Jade factory where they carve the Jade into various intricate designs, and jewelry pieces. Jade us a very hard rock, and is carved using a diamond tipped grinder. This is the same method as was used historically, except that the grinder would have been pedal powered. A pattern started to emerge as the assistant proceeded to encourage us to by things. "Only 1200 yuan for this beautiful generation ball." The generation balls were indeed beautiful, but £120 pounds for a souvenir was far out of our spending bracket! When we started looking at the smaller trinkets, the assistant quickly moved on to find other prey!

The Ming tombs were as you would expect ostentatious. Feng Shui experts were sent out by the Emperor to find a suitable location, and a valley was found with a large mountain to the North, and smaller mountains to the East and West. This is apparently auspicious since the large mountains symbolise the Dragon, and the East and West symbolising the Tiger and something else which I forget. This is actually the same pattern as in the common housing in the Hutong area, where the buildings to the North of the courtyard are taller than the others, and is the residence of the head of the household.

There are only 13 emperors buried in the entire valley, and the size of the graves border on the ridiculous. The largest of these is guarded by a large entrance building, similar to the entrance buildings in the palaces of yesterday, and then you reach the gravestone. This is around 5-6 meters tall, and protected by a tower that was built around it. Past the tower is the burial mound, which is a man made hill above a network of tunnels containing the body and a large quantity of treasure. The tunnels have not been fully excavated, and are not open to the public, but some of the treasures found to date are on display in the entry building to this tomb, and include lots of jade jewelry and crowns, gold and silver ingots and of course Ming Vases.

Only the Emperor and the Empress are allowed to share a tomb, the concubines of the Emperor are not. One story we were told is that one of the Emperors died early, and since none of his concubines, 7 young ladies, had given birth, they were made to commit ritual suicide. While the Empress when she died was allowed to share the tomb with the Emperor, the bodies of the concubines were dumped in a nearby grave, the location of which has never been found.

We next took a walk down the Sacred Way, once the only way in to the Tomb area. It is a long and beautiful walkway lined with pairs of statues of animals and monsters, and fronted by a large entry tower.

After lunch of Chinese food and Tea (and a beer for me; "Why are you obsessed with beer?" William asked me - cheeky sod!) we drove to the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China is around 7000km in length, so we decided to just do some of it. The wall, as most people have seen in pictures, is broken up by regular towers. The part we climbed is very popular, as it is steep and brings excellent views of the mountains and the countryside below all the way to Beijing. There are all of the trappings of a tourist location here - stalls selling "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirts and mugs being the most prevalent. The steps up to the first tower were heaving with people climbing up and back down again, but once we got past that, the number of tourists diminished by about 75% having bought their T-shirts and had enough of the climbing! Past the 3rd tower were a mere handful of die-hards soldiering on upwards.

The steps in parts, especially up to about the 4th tower were not just steep, but very tall - William had to climb up using his hands and feet in several places! At the third tower we came level with a Pagoda off on the hillside to the right, and up at the 5th or 6th tower (I lose count precisely), we found a small pathway back down the mountain in the direction of the Pagoda. It was really pleasant following this path down to the Pagoda, as there was not a soul on it apart from us, and from the Pagoda we could see the lower reaches of the Wall heaving with ant-like figures. We headed, back up the pagoda path, and then raced back down the Wall, as we'd told the Tour guide we'd just be an hour and a half up and back, and we were a little late! The diversion was well worth it though, as there's nothing worse than being somewhere as beautiful as this amongst a horde of puffing tourists. William put 99% of the people on the wall that afternoon to shame, storming up and down the wall with few rests, no complaints and a real spirit of adventure!

Back to Beijing, and we were taken to Dr Tea's Tea Emporium where we were shown the Chinese Tea Ceremony, and got to taste several different teas. All very interesting and nice, but of course marred by the now familiar post demonstration chants of "Buy buy buy!"

To finish the afternoon, we went to a Kung Fu show, again our guide got us great seats at the front of the non-VIP section, and the demonstration was great. William was as enthralled as he had been at the acrobats, with displays of the many different animal styles, weapons displays, wood breaking, and the speciality - breaking an iron bar with their heads! A quick meal at the hotel buffet followed by bed, and a lie in and lazy day waiting for us in the morning!

Beijing Day One

The Journey To China

The journey to China was pretty uneventful. We headed down to Heathrow by train, and grabbed some western food at the airport before switching to the Chinese diet when we arrive. The flight is long and sleep is hard (William claims to have stayed up all night, but we both got at least 5 hours of bad broken sleep. Probably just as well though, as we were definitely ready for sleep by the time it got to bedtime on Friday night (2 pm in England 9pm in Beijing)!

William was very impressed by the onboard TV system. Paradise TV he called it! A selection of films on-demand, of which we watched about 3, music, a map showing where we were in the flight, a camera pointing out of the bottom of the plane, and games. On arrival our tour guide for this leg of the trip met us, a Chinese girl called Regina (her English name of course!) We got into a car and headed for the hotel, the 4 Points hotel. The hotel is pretty impressive, has a pool and 3 restaurants, and the rooms are spacious.

After unpacking (i.e. unzipping the suitcases), we explored the hotel, and found the pool and hot tub. After going back to the room for swimwear, we went back down for a dip. William stayed in the hot tub so long he looked like a lobster! We ended up talking to a Chinese gentleman and his 10 year old son via the boy's pretty good English and the half dozen words we had learned before the trip. I eventually managed to entice Will into the pool for a swim and cool down!

Dinner was interesting. I ordered a chicken dish for William, some noodles, an Oyster dish and some Dim Sum. Probably would have been fine in a Chinese restaurant in England, but here each dish would have done us both! I made a valiant effort at it though, and managed half of the Oysters, all the chicken (which William shared) a good helping of noodles and half the Dim Sum, but was then ready to burst! Bed cam very shortly afterward - I only made it half an hour longer than Will at 9:30!

Beijing Day One

On Saturday morning, after a breakfast of cereal, noodles, toast and doughnuts (guess who has had doughnuts every morning for breakfast?) we met Regina in the lobby at 9am. We set off on the first of two very busy days. The itinerary included the Emperor's Summer Palace, and the Forbidden City. The Summer palace was very impressive - built by one of the Emperors for his mother, and later lived in by the Dragon Lady - ward to two of the Emperor's in the Ming Dynasty (note that my facts should be carefully checked before quoting...).

Aside from all of the palace buildings in the traditional Chinese yellow and red colours, and a huge hillside temple, there were loads of large boulders full of holes and features. These are apparently a symbol of wealth in Beijing, as they come from a particular region, and finding large ones is hard. If you have one of these rocks in your garden, it shows you are very wealthy. The number of them in the Summer Palace demonstrates the wealth of the ruling class during this time, and one of them, the size of a bus, is called the Bankruptcy Stone - at least two people ended up bankrupt trying to get it moved. The Dragon Lady's Nephew (again - verify the facts for yourself) spent a vast amount of money moving it to it's current location, as apart from the cost of moving the thing, it was too big to fit through the doors, so he had to pay to get the entranceway taken down and rebuilt!

After walking through the palace buildings, we walked down the long covered walkway (supposedly the longest in the world at 700m) through the gardens to the docks, and took a boat ride over to the other side of the lake. In the harbour was a stone boat, commissioned by one of the Emperors - there's a Chinese saying that an Empire is like a boat - it floats carrying all of it's people, but the people can band together and capsize it. The Emperor decided to build a boat that could not be capsized! Needless to say, his plan failed, and his empire was overthrown by a new Dynasty.

On the far side of the lake, we saw some locals dancing, and playing games, and walked the 15 arch bridge over to a temple on an island in the lake. Here we learned that statues of lions are used as guardians to entryways, and come in pairs, a lion and a lioness. The Lion is on the right as you face them, and has a ball, representing power, under his right paw; the Lioness is on the left, and has a lion cub under her left paw.

After the Summer Palace, we went to a silk factory to see how silk is made, and in particular the duvets that they then proceeded to try and sell to us. The process was interesting though. Once the silkworms have spun their cocoon and become a chrysalis inside, the hard silk cocoon is soaked for a few minutes in water until it has become soft. The cocoon is then pulled apart at one side (they are white oval things around an inch in length) and the chrysalis removed. The cocoon is then stretched over a semi-circular wire hoop about 9 inches in diameter. This is repeated until about 6 cocoons have been stretched over the same hoop. This is then left to dry. To make the duvet, the silk is lifted off of the hoop, and then stretched again to the size of a double duvet, and looking like a huge spiders web. This is repeated until many many layers have been produced.

You are then encouraged to buy anything and everything from the factory shop, and are told many stories about the near magical properties of a silk duvet (I exaggerate of course, and I'm sure that many of the properties are true, but I also suspect that they exaggerated somewhat as well.)

After grabbing some lunch (which was fairly minging I have to say - we only went there because the tour guide was pandering to William and trying to find him pizza, which he didn't like the look of when he saw it - I had a smoked pork dish which looked and sounded good, but had a truly horrible flavour which stuck in my mouth for the rest of the day...) we went to the Hutong area in Central Beijing. This is the old part of Beijing where the older generations live. These are Beijing's equivalent to the English terraced houses and back to backs, or Scottish tenements. They are all low single story buildings, and are built around a courtyard, with small rooms surrounding them. They have a small kitchen, but toilets are shared and of the hole-in-the-floor variety. It was interesting to notice that there are no proper partitions on the holes - just a low barrier. We took a ride on the Rickshaws around the area which was clearly pretty poor, but preferred by the older generation for the sense of community - youngsters prefer life in the high-rises of which there are thousands in Beijing.

We headed next to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. As we travelled around Beijing it became clear just how huge the place is. There are 20 million people living here, many of whom have cars. The traffic is much like London, but the roads criss-crossing the city are 3-5 lanes wide. The driving is crazy here lights and rights of way are treated as just suggestions, and pedestrians and cyclists put their lives in danger at every junction. Between the eating of everything that moves and the ubiquitous sound of the car horn, I think that the Chinese and French must have a shared ancestry! The tower blocks are endless, and many show a real contrast in the spread of wealth here between the tiny courtyard dwellings in the Hutong and the extravagance of many of the skyscrapers.

Tianamen Square was enormous, a large needle in the centre, with the Forbidden City at the North, Chairman Mao's tomb at the South, a museum to the East and a Art gallery to the West. Two huge screens, somewhere around 30m wide by 6m high, were about half way between the needle and the entrance to the Forbidden City displaying scenes from around China in a hugely panoramic view.

The Forbidden City itself was pretty impressive. Huge with pavilion after pavilion forming layers of gateways from the outside world at Tianamen Square to the Emperor's inner quarters. Each of the gateways were guarded by the pair of lions, giant cauldrons of water (to protect against the possibility of fire (in the Feng Shui sense rather than any real practical one), and often a dragon and phoenix - the former representing the Emperor and the latter the Empress. At the far end of the complex are gardens, and then back to the car.

We were reminded many times by our guide that British soldiers pillaged the Forbidden City and Summer palace twice - in 1860 and 1900 or thereabouts during the Opium Wars. Apparently the Emperors Guardian at the time - the Dragon Lady - sold off most of China's navy to rebuild the ruined Summer Palace (burned down by the British in the first Opium War), and left China fairly defenseless. Every time another country declared war on China, she apparently just rolled over and let them in! The effect of the soldiers invasion in Bejing is apparent in the Forbidden City, as the first two lions have been stripped of their gold plating, scraped off by soldiers with their bayonets. The subsequent lions still have their plating, as the soldiers never entered the living quarters of the Emperor, family members and officials.

We ended the day with a trip to see the Chinese Acrobats who were phenomenal, and a dinner of Peking Duck before heading back to the Hotel to sleep.