World Travel Stories

Tag: China

  • Mt. Emei (Emei-shan)

    Emei means in Chinese ‘the eyebrows of Buddha’.  One says you can see the ‘halo of Buddha’ in the clouds when standing on the top and the light is dim enough.  Along the way to the summit (many many steep stairs) there are macaw monkeys, which will grab everything and can be quite agressive.  There are different monasteries, temples, sacred caves, … and tea houses(!) on the mountain – you can stay overnight in a monastery which is an authentic experience.  On the ‘golden summit‘ (3077 m) is a monastery and many ropes with padlocks attached by visitors. You can go up by bus most of the mountain and then continue to the top by cable car.  If you want to go all the way on foot, count on one long day (13 hours or more) starting from Baoguo Temple (551 m) near Emei-town.  Another alternative is to have yourself carried all the way up in a bamboo chair (yes, some people really do this !).

    Mt. Emei On the summit of Emei-shan

  • The Great Wall of China

    MUTIANYU, SEPTEMBER 1999 – SIMATAI, JUNE 2002 – One of the biggest ‘tourist traps’ of China, maybe of the world.  But still , it is just awesome to see it with your own eyes, and on my second visit to the great wall, I was again very impressed with its grandeur and atmosphere.
    I don’t like to go twice to the same place, because when revisiting a place, the magic of the first time visit is gone, you compare with last time, etc… and of course there is simply not enough time in one lifetime to go more than once to the same places.

    But with regards to the Great Wall , the story is different.  I visited it two times, but I went to different sections of the wall, which gave me different views and only increased my awe for this masterpiece.  And I experienced even more of the Great Wall as I traveled along it with the Trans-Mongolian train.

    Mutianyu

    This  section is one of the more quiet places along the wall, but still a very touristy place.  It is also an almost fully rebuilt section, which makes walking a lot easier, but still hard – the first impression remains ‘I didn’t imagine it to be so steep, so high…’.  I was there on a hot and sunny day, and the views from the wall on the surrounding mountains were absolutely stunning. We walked for about one hour along the wall and the same way back, doing a lot of stairs .. ! On the wall we met several girls selling medals, and of course I bought one… just couldn’t resist.  Also we met ‘Ghengis Khan’ (in full gear, including bow and arrow) and he wanted to have his picture taken with us (for a small fee of course…) – but we could escape from this one. But we could not escape the line of T-shirts-and-other-stuff-vendors at the endpoint of the walk… there is simply not another way to go and there are so many of them… but it is all part of the experience, after all you are in China’s tourist trap number one !

    Mutianyu, 1999my medal...

    At some points the wall is so steep that it seems almost like a ladder.  And walking really gets tough sometimes,  but the view from the highest point on the wall and the different watchtowers and the mountains,  it makes it so worthwhile.  This is one of the experiences you wish it could go on for a long time, but you have to stop at some point because it exhausts you at the same time.  But the images in your mind last forever. The pure beauty of the surrounding nature and the large architectural structure of the wall itself, it is not your everyday fence, wall, transportation hub or tourist stop. It is something you would want to walk as far as possible, you wont be able to drive it so you might just think to yourself, I want to sell my car, but don’t do that because when you’re done seeing and walking the majestic wall, you’ll need some transportation.
    Simatai

    Three years later, and the images were still fresh in my mind….  I was a bit afraid I would be disappointed from this second visit, because after all I had seen it already, and maybe the reality would turn out to be less splendid than the great images in my mind ?  But soon, my worries were gone, because Simatai turned out to be absolutely fabulous and in comparision to Mutianyu a stronger experience.

    Simatai, 2002

    steep and dangerous ... !

    		 We got to the starting point with the bus, and then I walked all the way back to Simatai for more than three hours.   Simatai is a non-rebuilt part of the wall, and that makes the walk a real adventure, and results into very atmospheric views.  The walk was really exhausting, as the wall goes up and down all the way, with 25 watchtowers on the highest points.  It was hot, 36 degrees or more, and I had 2 litres of water with me, and I needed more !  By the way, the watchtowers are the only places where you can rest and cool down for a while.

    But we had good company…Already from the start of the walk, we were followed by a group of about 15 Chinese and Mongolian girls, and one old man.  They were very ‘worried’ about us, warning us all the time for loose rocks, offering us drinks, etc… of course this was a selling trick, but we enjoyed their company a lot. We shared our drinks and snacks with them (some of them had never seen pringles)… and we had a lot of fun.  After about one hour, they told us all they had to go home, and they all told us ‘please buy book, T-shirt, postcards… we are so tired, we will not make it back, we are hungry, we have no money, look at holes in our shoes….’ What a nice performance of ‘Great wall acting’ !   I bought a T-shirt because I tought they deserved it , after all I was on holiday, and they did this walk multiple times a week, and we have had a great time with them.

    And at the end of the walk, I was exhausted, dehydrated, but still looking back to the wall and its surroundings, and it was again hard to leave the place …

    The train stops there too !

    A few days later, I boarded on the Trans-Mongolian train , bound for Ulan Bator.  The railroad follows the Great Wall for quite a while, and this was my third encounter… many nice views from the train, and there is also a stop not far from Badaling, the most touristy place along the wall.  And seeing it from behind the windows of the train, it was almost hard to believe I had been on this wall a couple of days ago… It seemed so steep and so ‘impossible’ …
    But I know I have been there , and that the memories will last.

  • Three days on the Yangtze river

    CHONGQING, SEPTEMBER 1999 – One of my goals when coming to China was to see the world famous ‘Three Gorges’ on the Yangtze river.  The way to see them is by taking a ‘cruise’ onto the Yangtze river.  I went for a three day trip from Chongqing to Yichang.  Most of the trip was done using a big ‘cruise’ ship.  Don’t imagine this ship as being a luxury ship however. To the Chinese these boats are often the only way to get away fom their village.  

    The ship has some ‘luxury’ cabins for tourist (which are clean cabins but not at all luxury ones…) and the rest of the ship is standard cabins that are used by Chinese people, with communal showers and bathrooms.

    Porters carrying the luggage

    From the moment you arrive on the docks, porters try to convince you to carry their luggage.  It’s hard to convince them you have already hired a porter.  Taking your backpack yourself onto the ship would be a big offense to these men.  The porters also carry the rest of the ‘load’ of the ship – like the laundry (sheets etc…), the food and other goods that need to be transported.  Everything is loaded manually.  It’s interesting to be on the ship and watch the loading process – it takes many hours.

    During the three days, the ship stops several times to allow the tourist to visit some little village, sometimes there is a temple – for the Chinese this is just their endpoint or the place they have to load or unload their goods.  Most of the little villages will disappear because the water level will rise 135 metres when the Yangtze dam will be completed.  Millions of people are to be relocated because of this dam project.  Along the sides you can already see white housing blocks that will become the new homes of these people.  Their current houses will be ‘dismantled’ stone by stone.  Nothing is wasted here.  What struck me however was the amount of waste on the river.  In fact the whole river is a floating garbage dump.  Everyone throws their garbage from the ship into the river !

    Old and new villages
    Lesser three gorges

    A main attraction is the visit to the ‘Lesser Three Gorges’.  These are very narrow gorges with only shallow water levels.  It takes small boats to visit them.  I also went on a tour with one of these small boats.  The sights are really spectacular.  It happened a few times that the little boat got stuck – the boatmen used bambo sticks to keep the boat floating.  Suddenly the boat stopped near to the side.  Everyone had to get off.  It appeared that our boat had an engine problem.  When we were all on the shore of the river the boat left and went for spare parts… We were left alone in the middle of nowhere. Half an hour later the boat arrived again and we could go on.

    After this exciting trip, we boarded the big ship again and were ready to continue on the Yangtze.  That was however not possible : the ship had an engine problem and could not leave !  After 8 hours, a couple of beers and a lot of fun in the karaoke bar, the ship finally left the dock again.  It was already late in the evening.  In the middle of the night I woke up by the sound of a bell.  I walked out of the cabin and saw that we were in a giant lock.  It was the temporary lock of one kilometre long that is built due to the dam project.  The Yangtze is blocked here by a temporary dam and the ships have to use this lock to go further.   A few hours later we could go ashore and our wonderful cruise was over.

    But we had one more big event coming up: the excursion to the dam project.  This is really the most giant project I have ever seen.  A complete city is built where the construction workers live, housing 50.000 people in total.  The building site itself is unbelievable.  Giant trucks are dwarfed by the walls of the dam and locks that are being built.  The rock dust in the whole area blurs your view.  My black boots were white covered with dust when I left the construction site.  As a tourist you have only limited access to this site.  There are obviously a lot of guards and they do not like you taking pictures of everything.

    Dam construction site

    Currently, phase one of the dam project is terminated. The dam project is scheduled to be complete in 2007,  the ‘Three Gorges’ will be history then.

  • On the night train

    BEIJING, SEPTEMBER 1999 – Traveling by train is always interesting. In China it is a real experience.  Not only the buying of the ticket is a challenge (I had the tour company doing this for me),  finding out how train travel  ‘works’ is as exiting.  Waiting in the main hall of Beijing railway station is already impressive.  A lot of Chinese use the train to visit their family, or to go to school (university) or work.  A lot of people still don’t own a car and distances are big in this country ! 

    All of the passengers are waiting in one big hall – mostly standing or sitting on the ground or on their luggage. As soon as the gate to the platform opens, everyone starts rushing through that gate.  Since all places on the train are numbered, there is no need to hurry, one would think – but luggage space is limited (and some of them have a couple of chickens with them or a sack of vegetables).  We just didn’t care and waited till the crowd had gone through the gate to go to our train.

    What bed am I in ?

    As soon as we had found our carriage, we had to hand over our ticket to the guard of this carriage.  He gives you a metal or plastic token and folds the ticket in such a way that it fits into his ‘book’. This ‘book’ is his tool for knowing where everyone is going and where everyone is located on the train.  In the morning he will come by some time before your stop, to return your ticket and collect the token – never loose this token, this would distress the system heavily !

    On the train there are great opportunities to discover the Chinese people.  As ticketing is not centralised, each railway station  has some places reserved for the train. When buying a ticket, finding adjacent places is often not possible,  which results in a mixture of Chinese and the odd tourists in the same compartment.  Conversation is not easy, but with the help of a little phrase book, you can manage fairly well.  Usually the Chinese are very interested in looking at your guide books etc… On one of my train travels I have encountered a Chinese Civil Engineer that spoke English almost fluently.  This was an ideal situation as he could be my interpreter.  Another good thing is to bring a bottle of wine or spirits, to share with the Chinese, you’ll make friends easily.

    Stop in railway station

    The Chinese railways have three classes of carriages :  ‘soft sleeper’, ‘hard sleeper’ and ‘hard seat’.  I’ve traveled in the first two ones, the last mentioned is just an overcrowded carriage with wooden benches.  People are everywhere, including under the benches, in the aisles, even onto the overhead luggage rack.  Making your way through such a carriage is a hard job. A ‘soft sleeper’ compartment has soft beds, only 4 of them, and a door that you can close.  The ‘hard sleeper’ compartment has 6 not too hard beds, but no doors at all.  As a train travel can take up to 20 hours, people have brought their food to prepare & eat on  the train .  It can get very messy after a couple of hours (I’m deliberately not mentioning the toilets !).  On each train you can also get thermos cans with hot water to make tea.  They use a coal fire to boil the water.  For the ‘rich’ traveler, there is a restaurant carriage.  The food is not according to high standards here, but they really cook everything on the train ! At one occasion when sitting in the dining carriage, the kitchen seemed to be on fire … which was quickly extinguished.

    Another great thing about train travel in China is the stops in the railway stations.  On every occasion people approach the train or even board the train to sell something, mostly food or drinks.  Mostly the scenes are interesting and colorful.  Sometimes the train stops in the middle of nowhere – because of some technical problem or because another train has to pass by.  Then you have the kids of the country side approaching the train.  Giving these children a postcard of your home country or just talking to them in English (some of them speak some English) is just plain fun !  As a tourist you are the big attraction !
    Unexpected stop encounters

    When the train finally arrives at its destination, you get the same rush as where it all started.  This time you mostly end up a square in front of the railway building, crowded with people waiting for their relatives or friends. A parking lot with buses, cars and the tourist sector people that try to sell you excursions, hotel or restaurant bookings, etc…

  • Going to the summer palace

    BEIJING, SEPTEMBER 1999 – I arrived alone in Beijng ‘old’ international airport – the new airport (currently used by international flights) was to open some weeks after I arrived.  Airpanes were parked next to the runway, in the same way as you would park cars.  We had to wait for the ‘stairs’ to get of the airplane – facilities were obviously very limited here.  After some walking through corridors and onto stairs, and after going through visa control and collecting my luggage,  I arrived in the main hall of the airport building.  The crowd was overwhelming – hundreds of Chinese walking, standing, sitting, shouting…elbows had to be used to get through.  

    After I changed some dollars into Yuan (some search work necessary to find out where the ‘bank’ was and the procedure to be followed) , I was ready for my first trip by Chinese taxi into the city of Beijing.

    Beijing City
    To get to the hotel – since I don’t speak Chinese – I just brought a note with the Kanji writing of the name of the hotel.  “Uh huh ” was the drivers response – so far so good.  It struck me that the highway was not at all crowded – that is, the direction going into town – in the opposite direction there were many traffic jams.  When I reached the city, we passed huge hutongs (traditional century-old housing) along the sides of the main roads of Beijing. Further there were the big newly built hotel blocks.  Afterwards I’ve discovered that my driver did some ‘extra sightseeing’ to get more Yuan on the taxi meter display. By the time I arrived in the hotel we had passed it already a couple of times, but the ride was still very cheap to Western standards.

    Some days later I had the idea to go the famous Summer Palace. Since this is located outside of Beijing, and I wanted to try something else than the taxi, I decided to take public transportation – the bus.  My guidebook said that I had to take bus number 808.  Finding the bus terminal on the corner of Chong Wen Men av. and Qiamen av. was the easy part – all I had to do is wait for the bus with the right number on it.   Explaining where I wanted to go was something else… !  Once I was sitting in the bus, some of the ‘staff’ of the bus came along to sell tickets.  Chinese buses always have a minimum staff of three to four people, including a ‘hostess’ and a mechanic, next to the driver of course.  The words ‘summer palace’ only provoced a smile on this lady her face.  Seemingly they were not used to tourists on this bus (I was the only non-Chinese person on the bus).  Suddenly I remembered that I had bought postcards the day before – there should be some picture of the summer palace on one of them.  I went through the postcards, with the lady next to me naming all the places and buildings in Chinese.  I had to nodd everytime to make clear this was not where I wanted to go.  Luckily I finally found the postcard of the Summer Palace.  “This is where I want to go“, I said while showing her the postcard.  An “Aha” later, she gave me the all-Kanji-bus-ticket.  I gave her some Yuan banknotes – she gave me almost all of them back, together with some coins.  This busride was under one US$ for a total duration of one hour.  At least that was the estimated travel time the guide book told me.

    Bus Ticket
    The bus stopped at several locations.  Lots of people getting off.  I was already thinking about the “where should I get off” problem, the bus ride now took already almost two hours.  The bus was maybe going to drive to another village or town.  At one of the stops, I showed my postcard again to the lady that had sold me the ticket.  She made somehow clear to me that this was not the stop I needed.   Some stops later, she approached me, showing this was the stop I needed. There was a small village that had only some dirt roads.  But there were many taxis on this parking lot and there were tourists nearby.  I followed ‘the crowd’ and came face-to-face with the main entrance of the summer palace.

    At first it was not clear to me where to buy a ticket.  I passed a big gate, supposing that this was only the entrance to the park and that there would be a ticket booth further away.  A young man in a uniform asked me “No ticket sir ?”.  I tried to ask “where to buy ticket ?”. He replied “come with me,sir ” and we went together inside the park.  When we were far enough away from the gate, so that the other people could not hear us anymore , he told me “15 Yuan, sir,  no ticket“.  Understanding what he was trying to do, I returned to the gate and went outside again.  Sure there would be some ticket control later on or when leaving the Summer Palace, and then I would be in trouble.  As I went back, I noticed a ticket booth before the gate on the right.  It was closed.  Maybe lunch break or something.  I waited for a couple of minutes till someone came to the booth.  I bought a ticket, went on through the gate again (this time the young man that almost got me in without ticket, checked it carefully…).  To the people standing nearby the gate (probably his friends) , this was very amusing.

    The summer palace visit was really worthwhile.  It is a huge complex however and a little map (with English and Kanji names) is not a luxury item. I got back into the city by taxi.  In China there are generally three ‘grades’ of cabs – the cheap ones only cost a few cents per ‘driving unit’, are the smallest, mostly red, and have the most ‘unsafe’ drivers as was demonstrated later on… On the highway it was starting to rain pretty much and my driver didn’t really notice that the cars in front of him where suddenly stopping ! Fortunately he managed to stop ‘just-in-time’.  I was relieved I didn’t have an accident, he just seemed to go on as nothing has happened.   Of course, being a local, he was used to driving in China.  
    The Summer Palace

    There are a couple of basic rules :

    1) never stop (not for pedestrians – crossing the road is really impossible the first days in Beijing ! – ,  bicycles, cars or trafic lights, just move on slowly and make them go out of the way or avoid them;
    2) use your horn instead of the brakes;
    3) even after a near-accident , just go on as nothing has happened.

    I was glad to be back in the hotel safely, but this adventure had learned me a lot about the real day-to-day China.