Taiyuan to Hohhot to Beijing - An Inner Mongolian Adventure - Also Haerbin

Sam and I made it to Hohhot (the capital city of Inner Mongolia) feeling a little weary after our second sleeper train in 2 days. After a brief rest, we went out in search of a tour company to ask about the Naadam festival and trips to the grasslands. Unfortunately, the Lonely Planet, usually such a traveller's bible let us down in some important respects.

Firstly, the map to the tour company was rather inaccurate, which is understandable considering that they tried to fit maps to every notable place in all of China into one book, but still annoying when you're trying to find something.

Secondly, the book informed us that Hohhot was a good place to see the festival which was celebrated at the horseracing grounds there. In actual fact, there was no evidence of festival at all in the city, and the tour operator told us that it was only happening at one of the grasslands about 200km away.

Thirdly, it told us we should be able to get a tour for a 200-300 RMB, but in order to get to the grasslands where the festival was, we would need a private car and a guide and the total cost would be more like 1100 RMB each, insanely over our daily budget. He managed to bring this down to around 800, or 700 for a tour to a closer grassland, but in the end we had to leave because there was no way he could come down to our price and no way we could go up to his.

Instead we found a public bus to the town (although it barely qualified as a village by English standards) of Zhaohe on the nearest grassland Xilamuren (still 120km away), and hoped that fate would smile on us when we got there. We were rewarded by some lucky coincidences and an amazing time, all for about 300 RMB, a much more reasonable price.

The 2hr bus journey took us through some stunning scenery, rolling (chalk or limestone?) hills that were easy to picture some millennia ago as the bottom of an ancient sea. Chinese driving, which is pretty terrifying in cities, became even crazier on the windy hill roads and our bus driver frequently overtook several large trucks at a time, on a corner, on a bridge, blaring his horn all the while. Another interesting feature of the bus was that the air conditioning only worked when the driver had his foot on the accellerator.

When we got off the bus we were immediately approached by a woman who asked us if we wanted to go horseriding and motioned us towards a small minivan. We said ok and got on the bus along with a Chinese man called Jang, who turned out to be invaluable to us, since he could speak passable English and therefore translated for us throughout the trip.

A short drive away we came to a yurt camp overlooking Zhaohe and were shown into a yurt and given some very milky (yeuch) tea. A yurt, in case you didn't know, is a round sort of tent, although all the yurts here are now more permanent structures on a concrete base. Jang translated for us and we ordered some lunch (a very difficult task if you're faced with a menu in Chinese characters I can tell you) and negotiated a price for horseriding.

We ended up riding for 3-4 hours around the grasslands on what were essentially ponies, since the horses of Inner Mongolia are rather smaller than the English variety. My horse was the tallest and seemed to have a thing for Sam's horse since he was rather protective of it. Not sure if the motive was sexual, since all the horses were male, but when Jang's horse came anywhere near mine, mine would spin around and try and nip it in the face or neck. This was quite challenging for me, because I've only been pony trekking a couple of times before so I wasn't quite prepared for my horse to suddenly lurch off to one side in a violent assault on a fellow rider's mount.

Also very different from previous pony trekking experiences was the fact that the horses occasionally went very fast indeed. None of this trotting gently round the countryside with a hard hat for us. No, our guide (an expert horseman) would hiss "Sshh Sshh" and the horses would immediately speed up, generally to a canter, but occassionally when we whipped them into a frenzy into a full gallop. We all tried as best we could to hang on and find a position that didn't involve bouncing up and down like a crazy thing when the horse went at all above walking pace. It was exhausting but good fun.

And the scenery was wonderful, a clear blue sky (the first unsmoggy sky I've seen in China) stretching over an endless, flat, scrubby grassland punctuated by sandy paths and trails forged by horses, cars and motorbikes (for the people of the grassland have all the mod cons these days). The landscape looked lifeless at first but soon I noticed insects everywhere including insects that looked like crickets or grasshoppers on the ground but had markings like butterflies when they leapt into the air. When we stopped I also saw small birds (chasing the crickets) and butterflies, and a tiny frog the size of my thumb, and a large stag beetle that was trying to burrow under a mound of grass.

We stopped at a sort of farmstead with a little lake where a huge group of Chinese tourists were trying on traditional Mongolian dress. We tried some on too and I have a picture of us looking very silly which I'll show anyone who is interested. After we took the clothes off they informed us that we had to pay 30 RMB for the privilege. We bargained them down to 20. It seems that the selling technique of the grasslands is to give you something or let you go somewhere and then charge you for it afterwards. We didn't really mind that they were trying to make money out of us, since most of their livelihood seems to depend on tourism these days, but it's hard to shake the notion that someone is trying to rip you off when they want to charge you 3 RMB just for looking at their lake. Still, this didn't even come close to spoiling the experience for us.

We returned to our horses and carried on to a field with tussocks of grass and a couple of cows (which made the view look rather English) and after another bonerattling horseride back to the yurt camp ate roast lamb and scrambled egg and tomatoes (a common dish here) and rice, and had a long nap. Our tiredness was mostly heat-induced, as we were rather sunburnt by this stage.


Later we went and looked around Zhaohe and saw a Buddhist temple there, and bargained for some souvenirs. Later still we went to a nearby yurt camp where the locals were putting on a musical show for tour buses full of Chinese people, like a sort of Inner Mongolian cabaret.


Unfortunately we turned out to be the main attraction here, along with 2 rather tall Dutch boys. Chinese people openly stare at foreigners and often come up and ask for photos (especially if the foreigner is particularly foreign looking) and they have no notion that this could be considered at all rude. After about a million pictures had been taken and after my very shoddy Mandarin had been tested to its absolute limit the dancing and singing finally started and the Chinese tourists (most of whom were very very drunk) kept clambering up onto the stage with the performers to have photos taken with them, while they singing and dancing. If I had been trying to perform up there I would very quickly have resorted to violence, but the Mongolians seemed used to it, although a little weary all the same.


On the bus on the way back to Hohhot, I sat for a short time next to a small boy who leaned forward to his mother and grandmother and whispered excitedly, saying "waiguoren" (foreigner) over and over. It was very funny, and I mind much less when a child stares or is interested in me. It's quite amusing to watch their open-mouthed shock when they see you, or their genuine curiosity about what sort of creature you might be. Still, having grown up in London and being quite used to all sorts of people from all sorts of places, it's still very strange to be such an object of curiosity and fascination (although not so far hostility) simply because you look so different.


From Hohhot we got a train to Beijing and went to see the Forbidden City, a huge walled palace complex that will be familiar to viewers of Chinese films. Everything they say about Beijing air quality is true. On our first afternoon we climbed up a bell tower and later a hill with a pagoda overlooking the Forbidden City and the view from both was completely shrouded in smog. The contrast was especially great because we had come from Hohhot where the sky is much clearer - a brilliant cloudless blue on the day we left.


From Beijing we went to Haerbin, a Russian influenced town in the northeast of China. They have a splendid Russian church and some beautiful buildings, which it was very nice to walk through at sunset. Yesterday morning (Saturday 2 August) we went to a Siberian Tiger park, which is ostensibly set up to save the tigers and let them into the wild, but which is more a sort of safari for tourists. Still, despite the dubious scientific merit of the place, it was amazing to see the tigers so close, and there were hundreds of them, as well as a few lions and other big cats. Also, it was good to see that most of the tigers looked healthy, which was not at all the case when I went to Shanghai zoo where all the animals look rather drab and unhappy.


After the tigers we dropped in on Haerbin's Science Museum which is very very cool indeed. It has lots of interactive exhibits (just like Launch Pad at the Science Museum in London for anybody who remembers it) and it felt like being a kid again let loose in a place with lots of cool toys.


We then got an afternoon train back to Beijing (since due to the annoying way the Chinese train system is set up we couldn't get a night train) and eventually got to our hostel here at about 12.30 last night, by which time I had developed a horrid cold. Because of this I spent all today in bed instead of going out to see all the amazing sights Beijing has to offer, so I'm currently feeling a little sorry for myself.


Tomorrow, we were going to do a 10km walk along the Great Wall, but I don't think I'll be up to this, so I think Sam will do that and I will go to a more touristy, less physically intensive bit of wall instead and see if I can fit in some more sightseeing in the city as well, since I missed out today.


We're going back to Shanghai on Tuesday night (on another hardseater train woo), so I'll be able to seem some friends there before I fly home on Saturday afternoon. I arrive early Sunday morning and I'm looking forward to seeing you all very very soon.

Hong Kong to Macau to Shenzhen to Guangzhou to Xian to Taiyuan

I'm currently in an internet cafe in the not particularly touristy town of Taiyuan and the Chinese government obviously took against my last blog entry for some reason because it took me about 15 minutes and as many proxy servers to finally get onto here to write anything. After all that effort, I suppose I'd better think of something worthwhile to say. Here goes...

On Thursday 17 I got up nice and early and caught a ferry over to Macau. This is a very strange place indeed. It's like Hong Kong in the sense that it was a foreign concession, and was recently returned to Chinese rule, but instead of the British, it belonged to the Portuguese. This means that the place is full of Mediterranean style squares and crumbling, once-grand buildings in a confusing mishmash with Chinese influences, writing and people. The signs are all in Chinese characters and Portuguese (with a few in English too) and Macaunese food is a mixture of all sorts of influences, and incidentally quite tasty.

I managed to translate quite a lot of the signs and things because Portuguese seems to have some similarities with Italian, and English of course. I think I'll never complain about being in a European country and not being able to understand the language, because it's unbelievably harder to get around in a country where the script isn't even the same so there's no way you can make an intelligent guess. This is most annoying in train stations where there are no English signs meaning you end up queuing for half an hour in the wrong queue before you get to the front and are directed somewhere else with a vague hand gesture.

I only had time to stay in Macau for one day - I would definitely go back for more, just because it's so strange there - so I mainly looked around the churches and other buildings of note in the centre of town. One church had a collection of religious artefacts in a mini museum to the side, and when I got to the top floor I found a sign that rather disconcertingly read "Max load of this floor 10 persons". Since I was the only one there, it managed not to fall in, so that was alright.

Other sights of note include the ruins of St Paul's church (where only the beautiful stone facade is left standing) and the fort next door to this. The fort contains a very good museum and from the roof there are not only great views but also cannons. You can't go wrong with cannons. I was resting by one of these when a local child came up to me and starting talking to me. At first I was wary because children who can speak any English in Asia usually just ask for money, but I think his mother was just sending him to random foreigners to practice his English, which I suppose must be an effective way to learn.

On Friday I got the ferry to Shenzhen and met Sam. We wandered round the park there and went to a museum and the next morning caught the train to nearby Guangzhou (Canton). We stayed on this nice little island in the river called Shamian Island and were only slightly weirded out by the abundance of American couples with one or more Chinese children on the island. Guangzhou must be a popular choice for US wannabe parents.

Lucy will be pleased to hear that we ate several times in a diner on the island called Lucy's. It even had a flashing neon sign. One day when we were walking the 200 metres or so from our hostel to the diner, the wind picked up hugely sending clouds of dust and grit flying and dislodging palm leaves to fall on unwary people below. The wind can only have lasted 10-20 minutes. The weather in Guangzhou is very strange, as well as phantom winds there were also rain showers that either consisted of a few sparse drops for ages or very heavy downpours that lasted just a minute or two.

We stayed in Guangzhou 3 nights and went out on the first for Sam's birthday, ending up at a Lonely Planet recommended nightclub that had clearly changed management since it was written up. There was a huge poster on the door of a lineup of scantily clad women and one of our companions asked warily what kind of club it was. The black guy who seemed to be the owner or manager said "Just a club" and so we followed him in to find a dancer writhing (in a rather bored fashion) around a pole in her underwear. She disappeared after a few minutes and we spent the rest of the early hours sitting around the corner hiding from the loud music (and ignoring the smell) while Sam beat pretty much everyone at pool. Something he does regularly.

Guangzhou was an interesting city with a massive public park - the Chinese do public spaces and parks very well and they really use them, e.g. for tai chi, kung fu, other exercises and games etc. In Guangzhou, the most popular game (and people were playing this in small groups on every street corner) involved a group standing in a circle and kicking a small shuttlecock type thing with a flat base up in the air. We also went to a mausoleum with a good museum attached and a couple of Buddhist temples that were very beautiful and older than ones I'd seen elsewhere. I would be interested to learn more about Chinese Buddhism and religion in general because it all seems rather mysterious when you're just walking around a temple. It's not like going to a cathedral or somewhere, where despite the fact that I'm not especially knowledgeable, I at least have some idea what's going on and what different things are for and/or represent.

We stayed in Guangzhou for 3 nights and on Tuesday started our epic 26 hour hard seater train journey to Xian. Hard seats are the cheapest option on trains here apart from standing tickets, and unfortunately these were the only tickets left. Not wanting to wait an extra day or two we decided to grin and bear it, and actually it could have been a lot worse. The seats were pretty much designed to be as uncomfortable as possible, but at least we had seats. The aisles were full of people who didn't. I couldn't exactly brush my teeth since people were sleeping in, on and next to the sinks (and yes I do mean in the sink, uncomfortable though that may sound), and in order to get to the loos or the hot water tap for instant noodle nourishment you had to battle your way through hordes of people, but we made it.

We then found our way to a hostel in Xian, home of the terracotta warriors. The Lonely Planet and some people I've talked to don't like Xian. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's inevitably quite touristy, maybe because the city itself is very modern and commercial. In any case, I really enjoyed it there. We crammed in a lot in one day, getting up early to go to the terracotta warriors, before coming back to town and seeing the Great Mosque, the Muslim Quarter, a small museum/teahouse, the Drum and Bell Towers and the city wall. I think it was good that I'd seen the British Museum exhibition and some documentaries before viewing the site where the warriors are, because the information there isn't exactly comprehensive. Still the site speaks for itself through sheer size and grandeur (the museum buildings like many public buildings here are grand, Communist, concrete structures) and there was a great little introductory film about Emperor Qin Shi Huang (the 1st Emperor who unified China and built the tomb and the warriors to be his private army in the afterlife). This was shown in a cinema with 9 screens in a circle around you which was particularly impressive for battle scenes or grand sweeping landscapes, because you could spin around and watch different bits of the action.

In particular in Xian I enjoyed walking round the mosque and the wall (which we wandered along at sunset), because both were tranquil, peaceful havens in a busy, traffic-filled city.

On Thursday night (25th) we got the train to Taiyuan and luxury of luxuries had hard sleeper tickets so we could lie down and sleep. We went to another good museum today and ate a bewildering array of Shanxi province noodles and things that were definitely (and emphatically) not dumplings according the guy who translated for us, but looked pretty much like dumplings to us. We're getting another sleeper train this evening (again with beds woohoo) up to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia where (if the dates we found on the internet are correct) there should be a local horse festival with racing and wrestling and dancing going on. We're expecting quite a touristy experience there but then Xian was supposed to be touristy and it wasn't really, so maybe it won't be so bad.

One final thing to end this stupidly long post. What is it with the Chinese and Auld Lang Syne? I've heard it 4 or 5 times on public address systems etc. and in Xian a guy up the bell tower was playing it on an ocarina-type instrument. Every time I hear it I get the urge to count down to midnight and sing along drunkenly while shaking hands with random strangers. It's damn catchy too.

Huangshan to Hong Kong

The passport official at Hung Hom (the Hong Kong train station) looks at my passport with a bemused expression. "Is this you?" he questions, pointing at my passport photo.

What does he expect me to say? No? Granted, the photo would never pass today's strict passport photo standards since most of my face is covered by my tragic hairstyle of 2002, but still, the passport has since got me around the world without a second glance until this guy asks me whether the photo is in fact, me. I answer "Yes," with what I hope is an innocent smile and my word seems to be all the confirmation he requires.

I am - as you may have gathered - now in Hong Kong, awaiting my visa which should be ready this evening for the whopping fee of HK$1200 (at 15.4 HK$ to the pound you can work that one out for yourself). Luckily, despite all the current visa fiasco it seems my simple tourist visa should be easy enough to get (fingers crossed etc. etc.), so I think I may even head over to Macau for a day before I meet my flatmate Sam in Shenzhen in China.

Yesterday I spent my afternoon in Hong Kong (apart from getting my visa sorted) wandering through Kowloon park, where they have an aviary full of pretty birds, and walking along the waterfront watching the lazer display show, which incidentally was a bit rubbish. The coordination required was impressive since all the skyscrapers light up in time to music but it just completely fell short of magnificent. I don't know, maybe I'm just spoiled e.g. by the laser display at Futuroscope (remember that one kids? with the white horse charging at you through the sky), but altogether I've seen much more impressive shows on a less grand scale. I'm not the only one either, a German tourist said "Scheize" (or however it's spelt) decisively as soon as it was over.

I was in fact interrupted writing this entry yesterday by the arrival in the internet cafe of Lucie Vickers, a fellow teaching volunteer from Thailand with her friend Fiona, fresh from their adventures in India. Suffice it to say, it was a bit random to bump into her here in HK, so I swore effusively before we went and had a (very expensive) beer in a (not at all) Irish pub.

Today I took the tram up Victoria Peak and eventually found the exit from the shopping centre at the top (everywhere is a shopping centre here). I then walked the 2.8 km circuit around the peak of the hill, partly because I couldn't find the road up to the top (I was clearly not in my best navigating mood) and partly because I thought perhaps my poor legs wouldn't stand the climb after the punishment they received at Huangshan at the weekend. More on that later.

After that I walked through Soho, vainly searching for a Chinese restaurant (they're harder to find here than you might think) and settled for sushi, to which I am now addicted. After that, I took a ferry back across the harbour and went to the art museum and now I'm here, telling you lovely people all about it, wondering if Lucie and Fiona will randomly walk in to the internet cafe again.

Unconventionally I've told you about the most recent events first instead of the least recent, i.e. my experiences up a Chinese mountain. Well here goes - the Huangshan epic.

Last Friday, 6 of us - Lily, Sam, Elaine, Aneesa and Alina and myself - boarded the night train from Shanghai to Huangshan, which rather accurately translates as the Yellow Mountains, a place consistently listed in top tens of what to visit in China. We were all full of promise, and the spirit of adventure - the trip certainly did not disappoint on that score. At Suzhou, we were joined by two volunteers from there (Natalie and Harriet) and the night passed uneventfully, except that the swaying I experienced at the top of a triple bunk bed (incidentally uncomfortably close to the air conditioning) did make it feel rather more like a trip on a ferry than a train journey.

From the train station we caught a bus and when this was pulling into Tangkou (the town at the bottom of the mountain), a man named Mr Cheng introduced himself to us as a local restaurant owner and purveyor of tourist advice, and informed us that the hostel I had booked for us online no longer existed. We all traipsed to the hostel that was supposed to be its replacement only to find they had no record of my booking (so I'm currently hoping the money won't just quietly disappear from my account).

Mr Cheng, who turned out to be a bit of a legend as well as a damn fine cook, made us lunch and booked us an 8 bed dorm at the top of the mountain with no shower. Lily and I had tried to book somewhere at the top of the mountain the previous weekend only to discover that everywhere we tried was full, except suites that cost 1000 RMB a night (at 13.4 to the pound) between two people. So, it seemed everything was working out for the best. Who really needs to shower every day anyway, or even once over an entire weekend, when you're climbing a mountain... At least we would all smell together.

We set off and walked an extra section via a waterfall on the way to the foot of the mountain. All of us girls (with me as usual lagging behind) were way too tired by the time we got to the eastern steps of the mountain to climb for another 2 and a half hours up, so Sam went up by himself and basically made it up by the time we did, and we were on a cable car. It turned out to be a good thing that we were lazy, because it began to absolutely bucket it down and even looking for the hotel at the top for 20 or so minutes left us all completely soaked through. The dorm minus shower was starting to look less and less appealing. On the bright side, however, the rain did provide us with an opportunity for some beautiful pictures of us all in our rain macs.

Since everything has to be carried up the mountain, and also just because they can, food and drink prices are very high up there, so Elaine, Aneesa and I, dined on a fine selection of pringle-substitutes, instant noodles and oreos, followed by coffee in one of the hotels. I asked the waitress where the toilet was - in English since my Mandarin education unhelpfully didn't include the word for toilet - but she just looked blank. I mimed washing my hands, and Aneesa, seeing the blank stares continued, made a sound that crossed language barriers and indicated that I really needed a wee, much to everybody's amusement. I found the toilets after that and (not to be underappreciated in Asia) the disabled toilet was an actual proper toilet, not a squat one. Only later did it occur to me that it was quite ironic to have a disabled toilet at the top of the mountain, especially since you had to climb a step to get into the rather small cubicle. Perhaps we westerners are deemed disabled by Chinese hotel owners due to our inability to use squat toilets.

We then climbed up the extra dark, windy staircase to our dorm room, which smelled strange, especially after we had sat and steamed in it a while. In the morning those of us who had managed to get any sleep were awoken abruptly by hordes of Chinese people getting up at 3.30 am to be in plenty of time for sunrise. We followed them, and while most of my friends found a place on a large wide rock that served as a viewing platform, I couldn't see from there and so walked a little further up the hill.

There I found a rock all to myself with a splendid view across the valley and it was incredibly peaceful and calm in that eerie pre-dawn light for all of five minutes before the hordes of Chinese people followed me and set up camp at my feet and on various nearby rocks.

The Huangshan sunrise has got to count as the funniest (and least meditative) sunrise I have ever seen, and served as an excellent lesson in cultural differences. Any sunrise witnessed by purely English people is done so in silence, with any necessary conversation conducted in a kind of reverend whisper. Not so in China. Conversation was loud and almost raucous and increased in volume until the sun managed to peak above the bank of clouds at the horizon whereupon several people actually cheered and clapped as if to say "well done". They then took 3 or 4 photos and disappeared immediately, because obviously the show was now over. I had to suppress giggles through the whole thing.

We then sat around waiting for toast that was on a menu but never actually materialised (presumably because someone had neglected to carry bread up the mountain the day before), before setting off at about 7.30 am to climb down the mountain. We accidentally got split into 2 groups and most people went down the shorter route (again accidentally) while Lily, Sam and myself tackled the western steps. It was magnificent, but physically very challenging, especially since my legs (not yet painful) simply ceased to work properly half way down and I started to walk like some sort of badly put together robot.

This was all fine (although once again I did lag behind a little) until it decided to rain again with a vengeance, resoaking my just about dry trainers (which are still damp today). At one point we took shelter under a tarpaulin over a little shop, and when the rain failed to abate after a few minutes went to look down the next set of steps.

It was at this point that I ceased to cope. The water was coming down in ridiculous quantities meaning we had to wade along the path, and the steps had turned into a vicious looking waterfall. Sam decided to go ahead anyway (being an adventurous sort) and Lily kindly stayed behind with me until the rain stopped, which was luckily not that long after.

We made it to Mr Cheng's restaurant by 1.30pm and then spent the rest of the day annoying him by hanging around there (although he did manage to offload some of us to a random person's swimming pool nearby), until we left for another night train journey in the evening. The whole weekend was generally rather exhausting but on the whole rather fun. I'll bore you all with pictures when I get back.

The end is nigh...

...because this is my penultimate day of working for Shanghai Talk Magazine. I'm also nearing the end of my time in Shanghai, as I leave for Huangshan (the Yellow Mountains) on Friday night and only touch down briefly in Shanghai again on Monday before catching the epic 20 something hour train to Hong Kong. Added to this I fly home exactly one month from today on the 9 August.

Here are my travel plans so far:
First a weekend trip to climb a mountain in Huangshan (and due to my aversion to exercise I can already envision myself being grumpy and exhausted all the way up and all the way back down);

Then to Hong Kong for a visa run and also just to see the place. This, I think, will be the single most expensive few days of my whole trip since Hong Kong is generally quite prices and visa prices have tripled because of the Olympics;

After that I meet up with Sam, my flatmate in Shenzhen near the Hong Kong border, and together we travel to Guangzhou (on the way to Xian), Xian (with the terracotta army), Beijing (with the Great Wall etc.), and some other places further north, possibly in Inner Mongolia (where we would get to sleep in a yurt) and Haerbin (a Russian-influenced town in Northeast China). Don't worry Mum, I'm trying to put Sam off going to Tibet. Maybe we'll save that for another time.

After we do that vague loop around China we'll head back to Shanghai and hopefully I'll have a couple of days before my flight home to relax and maybe do another cookery course (to add to my Laos one and my Thai one) so that I can wow you all with Asian cuisine when I get back.

Working at Shanghai Talk has been great - I've got loads of articles printed which should help me find a job and there is lots of freedom to think of ideas and pursue them. It's really made me think magazines are the way to go for me. Shanghai itself has been equally good, at once stimulating and terrifying, exhilarating and down right smelly. Hopefully I'm off this evening to this event we went to last wednesday at this bar on the Bund (the posh British concession area by the river). For 200 RMB/head (about 15 quid), you get really nice buffet food and free flow Mumm champagne. Mmmm. Classy.

Will keep you posted about my Chinese adventure. Really looking forward to coming home and seeing you all very very soon. Zaijian (Mandarin for goodbye/see ya soon). Wo xihuan luxing, danshi wo xihuan wo de pengyou he wo de jia bi luxing da. (I like travelling but I like my friends and family/home more).

The Chinese authorities...

seem to be smiling on blogland for once. I can now (at least for the moment) access my blog properly, comments and all. Maybe they just really really liked my last post.

Sorry to all for not posting sooner. I was struck down with a very nasty bout of gastroenteritis (some form of food poisoning I assume) that made me rather pathetic for a while. I basically lost my appetite for two weeks as well, which as all of those who know me well will see as a sign that I was really ill. Better now though (with crossed fingers) although quite a lot poorer than I will be until I get the insurance company to pay me back. I went a couple of times to an international clinic at a hospital, and the second time they put me on a drip which was quite dramatic, especially since the needle wasn't placed correctly the first time so it made my arm swell up. I've been walking around for a week and a half with a huge bruise shaped like a butterfly on the inside of my elbow. It was very cool, but even that's faded now.

Aside from that work has been good. The first issue of the magazine that I'd worked on/wrote stuff for came out on June 1 and it was really nice to see it all in print. Yesterday was the editorial deadline for next month's issue and I have even more articles in that one (wahey). In fact, yesterday was a bit stressful: I'd written everything except a profile of a business person for our business page, but neither of the people I'd sent questions to for that had got back to me. And then yesterday morning one of them wrote saying that he really liked the questions and he'd answer them in a few days but he'd had to go back to America because his mum had died.

Of course writing back and saying, actually today is the deadline was not really an option so my boss said we should put his profile next month instead. Of course this meant that we had to find someone else available straight away for an interview and my boss gave me the contact details of this guy who they've been getting potential people from. He runs a sort of business networking group in Shanghai and he was really helpful and found someone straight away who was really interesting to talk to. Writing back to the man whose mum had died was difficult - what do you say to a bereaved stranger?

So now I had a new person to interview and this is where it got stressful, because previously I'd only interviewed people by email and I'd had a couple of days at least to research them and think of some questions whereas now I had 10 minutes and then I had to do a phone interview because he was in Beijing and quite busy. It worked out alright with me asking questions and listening and typing down everything he said as quickly as I could and I'm pretty pleased with the results, but it was certainly a little nervewracking. I think to be honest, I've kind of been spoilt so far by the relaxed atmosphere at my workplace - where I've now taken to rolling in at 11 o clock in the morning. It's probably good for me to have a few moments of pressure/stress.

Other nice things include: the woman from Heart to Heart emailing me to say that the article I wrote about her group (which funds children's heart operations) had already resulted in one person signing up to volunteer with them;

a trip which we took to Hangzhou last weekend which is very pretty and has a huge lake and Buddhist temples and so on, and was lovely even though it rained incessantly and not one taxi driver in the whole town new where our hotel was;

too many visits to restaurants and bars and clubs to mention all of them (this is just that kind of town), but one interesting place thatmmaybe I will mention is a restaurant where you eat in the dark and are served by blind waitresses, you know like in that CSI Miami episode where the guy was killed with a pen? Anyway, it was an interesting experience, unfortunately the food was terrible and incredibly overpriced so I don't think we'll be going back;

my Mandarin lessons which are very cool even though they make my brain hurt - yesterday my tutor even started teaching me how to write a few characters.

You know you're in a totalitarian country when...

3 minutes of silence for a recent catastrophic earthquake is marked and enforced by the blaring of sirens and carhorns. I knew it was the right time to be quiet because it was suddenly really really noisy. Still, despite this, and the problems many people seem to be having renewing their visas as the Olympics approach, Shanghai feels on the surface much like any western city.

People here mostly live in apartments with modern facilities and go to smart office buildings for work and eat out at nice restaurants and shop shop shop in endless malls. Beneath the surface though, the differences become more apparent; what you see here is a city that has undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades. In fact one whole half of Shanghai (Pudong - east of the river), was a marsh until about 15 years ago, and has since become the financial centre, home to the tallest buildings in the city, and the richest expats.

Shanghai is a place of many contrasts - a few broken-down slums remain cradled by towering office blocks and residential flats. People hawk and spit, and urinate all over the shiny new metro platforms, and tunnels and several times I've even seen someone gob whilst on the train. This guy yesterday spat onto the floor of the carriage and then smeared it with his foot, which was unpleasant to say the least. My eyes are constantly full of dust from the roadworks outside my flight, and my nostrils are assaulted everywhere I go, especially at aforesaid roadworks, at which (nocturnally I might add), workmen are installing an underground sewage pipe. Which yes, does mean that the pipe was previously above ground, along the edge of the pavement, so that you had to hop over it to get into a taxi.

Shanghai is a Mecca for all things commercial - history and culture are to some extent cast aside in the search for new and more interesting places to put shopping centres. Believe me, I thought the centre of Birmingham was the most shopping-centre filled place in the world until I got here. There are so many shops and consequently shop employees that it's a wonder anybody is left to buy things. I work very close to Jing'an Temple - which despite being a still-functioning, ancient, Buddhist temple, also boasts a selection of shops around its circumference, and a metro station directly beneath it.

But don't get me wrong - I like it here. There's something very honest about this city. The commercialism isn't just present like it is in the West (where we're kind of used to the idea by now), it's brazen. Embraced by people who haven't had it for so long and are trying it on and finding it fits and buying 10 pairs just because they can.

I feel as though, having been here for a month, I'm finally getting to grips with Shanghai. I know my way around a little, and we've been through one cycle of the magazine (which will be out on 1 June with several articles etc. penned by me, woohoo). I'll write again soon with perhaps more detail about what I've been up to. Just thought I'd give you an overall impression for now.

Ok, annoyed now

Whoever sent a comment about my last entry, thank you, but I can't actually read it. Presumably because somebody somewhere on blogspot said something that a certain government of a certain country that I happen to be currently residing in, didn't like. Grrr. I've figured out a way to post and to view my blog, but this doesn't seem to stretch to comments. So email me or something - it's getting to me that I can't read it. I feel like oppressed and stuff... (although admittedly in the scheme of things not that oppressed).

Oh and I've got my first proper interview tomorrow - I'm going to talk to the founder of a charity that fundraises for children's heart operations. I'll tell you all about it soon.