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.
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