Time: 3:56am
Weather: 2 degrees, cloudy
After getting off the most packed 7 hour overnight train from Kaifeng to Nanjing where I also had no seats (what an experience!), I'm currently sitting at a 24 hour chain dumpling restaurant waiting, with a bunch of university students returning back to school, for the first subway to start. For not getting much sleep the past few days, in favour of making the most of my time, I feel rather alert so thought I'd take the time to update on a few things.
Although I've been to China numerous times (born and lived there after all), this is my first time travelling here alone. So far it's made these renewed impressions on me:
-traffic chaos, cleanliness, and the number of touts are not too different from SE Asia
-for the most part, people don't seem too keen on chatting with strangers and would prefer to answer your questions with as little words as possible
-most tourist attractions cost money, but there are many free places too like government sponsored museums
-to add to the point above, everything is very commercialized, every place has got their local specialty for you to buy and tourist attractions will purposely build their ticket gates far away from the actual site so you have to pay to take their shuttle
-there don't seem to be nearly as many foreign backpackers, or perhaps they are not as well spotted amongst the masses of the Chinese
-food is great and cheap, as long as you stick to away from very touristy areas. Some of the best foods come from the shabby, hole in the wall roadside shop.
-blue sky exists, even in Beijing! The pollution seems to have gotten better, although I'm told that often they've simply moved factories away from the biggest cities to nearby cities, such as Shijiazhuang which had a pretty evident smoky smell as soon as I got off the plane.
-security and ID checks are everywhere, necessary to keep track of 13 billion people
Leaving Taipei on February 10th, I arrived in the industrial city of Shijiazhuang (in search of the cheapest flight), and was very lucky to meet two people on the plane who brought me to find something to eat (unfortunately the only thing open at midnight in the middle of Chinese New Year was McDonalds) and then directed me to the train station. Eventually I took a 3 hour train at 2am to Beijing, where I got reunited with my grandparents and uncle's family.
After some rest, that first day I went to Nanluoguxiang, a preserved ancient part of town, and Ditan Temple Fair, only held during Chinese New Year and similar to Taiwan's night markets but on a much bigger scale. I ended up staying in Beijing for four days, going to Yanqing Ice Sculpture Festival (originally I had wanted to go to Harbin but it turns out there are ice sculpture festivals near Beijing too), Tiananmen Square, Shichahai, walking through lots of hutongs and traditional architecture.
Like other big cities I've been to such as New York and Tokyo, you can stay in Beijing for a month and do different things everyday. I also did a day trip to Tianjin, which is quite different with numerous European styled architecture, since the city had many foreign concessions in the past. I finally got a taste of real winter as it was very cold and snowed a couple times, sometimes down to -15degrees with the windchill.
On Feb. 14th, I left Beijing for Xian on an overnight sleeper train (China's great with these, saves lots of time and lodging for the night). Coming out of the train station the next morning, I was met with the city wall which is the most complete of any city in China. As the ancient capital for many dynasties and the starting point of the Silk Road, Xian has a very historical feel and an interesting mix of Chinese and Muslim culture. With many points of interest both in and out of the city and lots of delicious food (my favourites being 羊肉泡馍, goat meat soup with torn bits of biscuit dunked in, and 凉皮，transparent rice noodles tossed with spicy sesame sauce), it remains to be my favourite city on this trip. In the two days I was there I went to some of the famous sights such as Clock Tower, Drum Tower, Muslim Quarter, Big Goose Pagoda, Tang Paradise, Huaqing Pool, Lishan, and of course the Terracotta Warriors Museum. Every spot is like a mini time travel experience, in fact, that feeling recurred just about everywhere in China.
From Xian I went hiking up Huashan, one of the Five Great Mountains of China. Huashan is said to be the most precipitous mountain in China for it's steepness, some of the trails go up at a 90 degree angle which nowadays have stairs and chains but people in the past would have just climbed up barehanded. It's unlike any other mountain I've been to, as it's simply big slabs of rock with very little trees, although still very stunning. Everywhere there are these locks of love with red ribbons tied to the side chains. Like Taiwan (probably even more so), the path is very developed with stands selling food and water all along the way and hotels with full restaurants at the top. I met two sisters from Changsha and hiked pretty much the entire time with them, going up the peaks of all cardinal directions (highest was the south peak at 2154.9m).
For the sake of time and safety (many parts of the trail were covered in ice), we took the expensive gondola down. Around 6:30pm when I came down the mountain, there were still many people planning to hike up, doable with the well lit trail. Later that evening I took a train to Luoyang, and stayed there for one day visiting the magnificent Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang Museum, and Old Street. Luoyang was another imperial capital filled with impressive cultural heritages from as far as the Song Dynasty.
You cannot come to Luoyang without going to Shaolin Temple, origin to the well known Shaolin style kungfu, so I took a day to go there, in the Songshan National Park area. The actual Shaolin Temple was filled with tourists and not too memorable for me; what I really enjoyed were the Pagoda Forest, the resting place for many of the monks (looks very much like the ruins at Ayutthaya), and a quiet hike up to Wuru Peak which had a natural cave where Dharma is said to have meditated for 9 years. After Shaolin Temple, I spent a night in Zhengzhou, a city built to be a transportation hub in the middle of China, but otherwise not much to do there.
Yesterday morning I took an early train to Kaifeng, yet another ancient capital, spending the day walking through more historical sights, At the Kaifeng Fu, I took a trip back to the Ming Dynasty complete with reenactments of the emperor going about his duties. Seeing how many people were lining up to go into Millennium City Park, the biggest reenactment park in Kaifeng based on a Song Dynasty painting called Going Up River for Qingming Festival, I decided to forgo what is sure to be a tourist trap and instead spent a while at Henan University, where scholars used to study for the imperial exams, admiring the Grand Hall and the Iron Pagoda.
Part two of the rest of China to come!
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