Taiyuan and beyond
With visas expiring and no available seats to Xi'an (our next destination) we could only flee to the town of Taiyuan, halfway between Beijing and Xi'an to renew our visas for another month. We sneaked in by the skin of our teeth, on the last working day before expiration. Unfortunately, the renewal costs $100 each and takes 5 working days, so we've got time to kill. We are currently in
Shanxi Province, not to be confused with the much more happening
Shaanxi Province. Maggie, to say the least, was a bit under the weather, but we managed to make a break for it, and though we must return to this little town to collect our passports in a week, we skipped out to the town of
Pingyao for a few days. Allow me to mention that Taiyuan is a dirty little town that we were all too happy to escape. The one thing of note that we did see were tattoo artists plying their trade on the side of the (extremely dusty and dirty) road. You could hear them yelling
taaaattooooo,
taaaattoooo so we went over to check it out and sure enough, there they were needle in (
glove-less) hand, doing a tattoo right there in the open. Anyway, onto
Pingyao, which is billed as the best preserved ancient walled Han Chinese city, and whatever else you want to call it, it was a wonderful place to lay up for a few days. We'd been in ancient walled towns before, and seen
Buddhist temples before, so we just hung out and took things easy. We were in a really nice guesthouse with free
internet, free DVD movies, good food and cheap laundry, so we were happy to lay around and relax. The town's tourist stuff is centered on only a few buildings, but once you get off the beaten path, it was like stepping back into time. Narrow little winding alleyways that led everywhere and nowhere, and while there wasn't much to see out there, it was nice to experience a relatively authentic ancient town experience by just wandering around and noticing the little things that are so easy passed by. With days to kill yet, we booked our onward tickets to Xi'an and headed north to the city of
Datong, with the idea of staying there for a few days before return to Taiyuan (for the visas) and onward to
Pingyao (and Xi'an.) Though
Datong is a big place, I figured there wouldn't be too much going on, but we were wrong about that. As soon as we pulled up to the hotel, foreigners were thick on the ground. We knew strange things must have been afoot. We arrived relatively late, so it wasn't until the following day that we really got out and headed first to the
Yungang Caves, which, according to the guidebook, no one leaves
unwowed. Luckily, it was only a short bus ride out to the caves, which are basically huge
grottoes carved into a cliff face. Inside each cave (and all over the front of the cliff face) are Buddhist carvings, which date back over 1500 years. There were about 20 or so caves that were open to public viewing, and a fair number that were not. Some of the little grotto/caves were heavily damaged from any number of reasons: weathering, vandalism, the coal mine right beside it, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Some
grottoes were completely empty and/or defaced, but those that remained were quite impressive. The artwork was very ornate, and where weathering had allowed it, extremely colorful. Everything ranged from tiny little inch tall Buddhas to huge 50 foot tall Buddhas and everything in between. Some of the caves you could walk into, but most of them, you had to content yourself by peering over the fence. It was, however, the most impressive were the ones that you could walk into and view the ceiling, little nooks carved out of the wall for more
Buddhas,
bodhi trees and other beautiful designs. We stayed for a few hours
ohhh-
ing and
ahhhh-
ing our way around and then decided to hike a bit...
We heard that there was a section of the Great Wall close by so we struck out of find it. On the ride in, we could see bits and pieces of it along the way. An old guard tower on this hill, a little stretch of wall on that hill. We walked and walked but other than
cruising through some mining towns, we didn't find much. We did see a huge earthen fort that was most likely part of the wall defences, but itself was walled off and we couldn't get to it.
We thought about heading out to a further temple, but it was late (and the car was too expensive) so we hopped back into town and headed to some local sites,
specifically hitting up the "Nine-Dragon Screen," basically a highly colorful and ornamental piece of the ancient city walls that is covered with...you guessed it, nine dragons. From there, we just strolled around town, checking out the
pedestrian market and whatnot. On the way back, we saw some more tattoo artists and stopped by to watch, only to figure out that these particular artists were only doing temporary tattoos (as compared to the all too real ones in Taiyuan.) Being temporary, we figured we'd get some ourselves, which was kind of dorky but fun all the same--Matt got the very masculine and bad-ass like dragon on his left inner forearm and I opted for an abstract
celtic-
esque wrap around the right wrist. You should have seen the crowd gather to see the application, it was like we were getting real tattoos--I think we helped the guys get some extra business. Anyway, the tattoos quickly faded, but it was a good day.
From
Datong, it was on to
Taiyaun for the night and onward to Xi'an for a few days. Just as a quick side-note:
Taiyaun has become our least favorite place in China. After arriving there Thursday night so we could get our passports on Friday morning we hardly could have predicted the annoyance the city would cause. Up early Friday morning and after a quick breakfast of
Nescaffe, biscuits and juice we headed down a few doors to the ATM (one we have used many times in other cities) and no go, the machine didn't accept our card.
Ok, we try another. No luck.
Ok, maybe one more. Still no luck. Ugh. After (no joke) 10 ATM tries at 4 different banks and 3 hours latter, we were beside ourselves, the passport office closed from 12-3:15pm and we had to get back to
Pingyao by 7 to catch an 8pm train! We had half the money to pick up our two passports. We got mine out of hock and then were making our way to the last ditch effort: Bank of China 2km down the road (through full 2 km of dust, dirt and road construction, building construction...) of course the ATM did not work for either of us there. So, I took a number (201 was my lucky number and they were serving 150 of course) to try to get an advance on one of the credit cards and sat...at 12 the guard said 'our regular 10 windows will now close to only 3 windows...' @#%&! I was prepared to wait and did for a good 40 minutes before I got up (when only 165 was called) and tried the ATM again...SUCCESS! I couldn't believe it (I had to practically squeeze out a little girl in the attempt), but I felt, yes we were now in business. I walked out of the bank elated and headed the 2 km back to our hotel to get Matt...as I walked I guess I started letting my mind drift a bit and well all of a sudden I felt a small finger at my back, I turned and gasped as I saw a young kid quickly pull his hand away, with a cigarette half hanging out of his mouth with a smirk on his face and start off in the opposite direction. Bad news. I quickly looked down at my bag and saw the zipper had been pulled back halfway and opened it expecting my wallet to be gone; thank God, it was there, with the passport just out of hock, but it could have turned out bad. My complaining came to a slight stop and I thanked God and all the good karma for looking out for me at that moment. With our cash and bags in hand, we headed for the passport office, camped out and begged them to let us in
early (they didn't), but we finally got in, Matt was first in line and we grabbed the goods and ran to the bus station, got a bus with 5 min. to spare and made it back to our little
Pingyao in time for a shower (much needed) and food. We got our train to Xi'an and now, after a few days in Xi'an, its west into
Xinjiang, but those stories are for another day.
Beijing!
After the horrendous flub that left us without tickets, the owner of the guesthouse pulled some strings and found a way to sneak us on the train to Beijing. The catch was that we would end up in a hard seat, which is the seating area directly below Purgatory. Admittedly though, for the first 25 hours, it wasn't so bad; we had our own relatively un-cramped seats and while we could have had better neighbors, the one’s we got weren’t too bad. The hardest part was just the physical sitting for hours without really moving too much. Getting up means losing your seat to the chair-less vultures who float in the aisles so there was little opportunity to walk around. The seats were cheap though and it worked it out nicely that we were on the train for two nights in a row (from 2.00am to 9.00am the following day) so we didn’t have to spend money on accommodation. The second night was tough though, old ladies and snotty kids trying to usurp our seats throughout the sleepless night and then we were running hours behind schedule, which definitely didn’t help our sanity as the ride dragged on for 3 additional hours. It was the longest and most uncomfortable train ride that we’ve ever had, and while it was nice to save a bit of money, we’ve decided that we are never going to do that again and will be taking sleepers from here on out on the longer rides. The bad train food left our bellies in a sorry state and the sleepless nights left us both in a dazy-funk, akin to jet lag and we were like zombies. We were picked up (thank god!) at the train station and taken right to our hotel: the Hutong Inn. Hutongs are narrow little alley-ways that run throughout the city, many of them are protected from bulldozing now and our place was nestled among some of them. However, many of the hutongs are being destroyed to make room for new apartment blocks or Olympic Venues while others are being so heavily renovated that they have lost their former glory. We arrived at our place around 10am or so, but wanted to take it easy and didn't get much further than a short walk around our hutong area, checking out possible grazing sites for the coming days. One little gem that we did find though was yogurt. All over our hutong area there were little stone jars for sale with straws sticking out of them and luckily we had to courage to peep into one of them and found even more courage to try a dairy product from a questionable source, but it was wonderful yogurt, and at about 10cents a jar it was definitely the right price. After a bit of that though, we settled down into our cold air-conditioned room (via the Kyrgyz Embassy) and found a bit of solace in CNN,BBC, and HBO; A month of Chinese TV long forgotten already. The next day found us sleeping in and eventually making our way to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We are only about 30 mins walk, so we strolled through Beihai Park and made it just in time for rush hour at the Forbidden City. I knew we wouldn't just stroll on in, but the place was packed and we had to wait about 20 mins in the ticket line. Personally, I was unimpressed with the Forbidden City, though Maggie may disagree. One of my main problems was the sheer number of visitors in the city; it was like being caught up in a mob and it made it difficult to really wander around and appreciate the little details. I understand why people are there (for the same reason that we were) but it made it hard to enjoy it as much as I would have liked. Also, there was a lot of construction and renovation, so many of the temples were covered in scaffolding and those that weren't covered were restricted to staff only. The magic was though that we were actually in the Forbidden City, walking in the footsteps of emperors and thousands of years of history and if one is able to block out everything else and see it like that then it is all worth it. We strolled around the surrounding parks and had a quick lunch before heading back over to the Kyrgyzstan Embassy to drop off our visa stuff, where we met, interestingly enough, a cool group of people to pass the time with while waiting in line: two Cameroonians!--'footballer agents' very cool, had a great catch up session about Yaounde, Omni-Sport area and their bewilderment at my choice to stay in the EN of their country; we also met a cool Canadian friend, Tang who we hope to see again in the far west and then in Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, we had wanted to do Krygyz & Uzbek visas while in Beijing, but that was not going to work out. We could get the Kyrgz visa next day for a cool $165, but we frugally opted for the 4 day, $55 visa instead. Waiting on that visa kept us in Beijing for the next few days though there were plenty of things to occupy our time. ..
Day Two was spent split up: Maggie on a shopping spree (Maggie would like to note, it was not a 'spree', ahem) and myself checking out some of the smaller, lesser known sites in town such as the Bell Tower, Nuijie Mosque, and the Ancient Observatory. I also rode around on the subway, just because I could (and it was easier than walking) I limped home around 3.30/4.oo, broken, tired, chafed, and blistered.
We were also able to meet up with Rohit (and his mom) who is one of Maggie's Peace Corps friends from her time in Cameroon. Rohit is traveling around for a few months, including a few weeks in Beijing studying Mandarin, so luckily we were able to meet with him and his mother, who had come out to visit him in China for a few weeks. We were only able to meet up quickly, over dinner, but it was a good time.
We also headed over to the Temple of Heaven, the self styled "most famous temple in the world." Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it was pretty cool. We had a little map and were supposed to have read up on things a bit more, but we took the opportunity to just wander around a bit as the area is very spacious and park-like. I may be completely off the mark, but I think walking through the park is supposed to represent the different levels as you pass through towards Heaven. Again, that may be completely off the mark. At any rate, we wandered around, but the most impressive thing was the actual Temple of Heaven itself (as seen in the pictures). Its just a shame that we couldn't climb up in it, though I guess everyone would have wanted to and that would have been mass chaos and not so good for restoration and the like...
On Maggie's Birthday, we headed out to the Summer Palace, which I believe was a summer retreat of the Emperor's. Its only about 15km outside of town, so it was fairly easy to get to, just a bus ride or so, but once getting there, the place opened up into a huge park. Its not much a palace as just a huge estate, filled with temples, lakes, and ringed by stout hills. The place was packed, but it was easy to wander about and get lost. Although, in the Temple of Harmonious Thoughts, which was very beautiful, there was a loud karaoke sing-off which well, made it difficult to have harmonious thoughts. However, the whole place was beautiful and could be peaceful enough to wander around the myriad of trails through the hills and rocks...
For Maggie's Birthday dinner, we went out to have Peking Duck. Neither of us had ever had it, and what better place to have it than in Beijing itself? We located a suitably fancy place, and though there was a wait to get in, they thoughtfully provided free wine while you waited. Neither of us were too good to turn our noses up at free wine, even if it did come from a box. The place was pretty hoppin' with tourists and well-to-do-Beijingers and had a wonderful menu--we ordered a bunch of little nibbles in addition to the "half-duck" (notice the quotation marks...). The chef brought out the cooked duck for our viewing pleasure and we ommed and awwed over it suitability before it was taken away to be cut up. I'm not entirely sure what they did with the half-duck that we ordered, but they sure didn't give it to us. For $10 we got a little pile of duck skin and enough duck meat to fill a thimble or two. Granted, it was tasty, but then we waited and waited, asked after our duck and were rebuffed with the fact that we had already received our "half-duck." I'm not sure if that is the normal portion of Peking Duck or what, but what ever it is, at least we can say we've had Peking Duck in Peking!
We also decided that since we are in China, we might as well check out this Great Wall. The place where we are staying runs a few tours out to some of the sections, but for a bit of a price so we opted for our own route through public transport. We woke up early and long story short, made it to the Jinshanling (sp?) section of the wall by 10am or so. This is one of the further sections away from Beijing (110km out) and it is the starting point for a Great Wall day hike to the Samatai section, 4hrs away. It was nice because since this section of the Wall is considerably far out of Beijing, there were very few tourists and for most of the hike, we actually had the Great Wall all to ourselves (see the photos!) The hike was tough and the sun was beating down, especially since there is no shade along the Wall except for the guard towers. It was amazing though to walk along the Wall; not only to walk along, but to hike a 10km section of the Wall nearly alone.
We slept in the next day...I didn't get up until 9am, though Maggie did a lot better than me. We kinda took it easy, running a few mindless errands on my side and Maggie heading over to the 798/Dashanzi contemporary art area (see: http://www.798space.com/index_en.asp and http://www.artbook.com/9889726238.html). Maggie here: I will highly recommend this 'off the beaten path' gem of an area. over 500+(or more??) galleries, artist residences, studios, music spaces and cool little cafes and bookshops are nestled into a maze of about 1.5km x 2km (give or take) which used to be military warehouses. It was fascinating to take the entire day to just wander through this area and see the movement of contemporary art in Beijing, China and West/East collaborations--everything from paintings to resin sculptures of Chinese miners and young women looking in the mirror...and then 100s of miniature replicas of the Terracotta Warriors painted with the solar system, KFC logos and other influential (?) pieces of Chinese life and fast-paced modernization (this is just how I saw it)...around another corner, slipping into a different gallery seeing photo exhibits of the hutongs in huge wall sized panoramas and so much more. It was a wondrous treasure to find such an outlet after having been a bit of a slave to the tourist attractions--I quickly passed 5 hours without realizing it and had only covered 4 blocks!
Our last night in town we decided to check out Tim's Texas Roadhouse...how could we pass up a place like that? Especially after their little flyer mentions free buffett with the purchase of any drink from the bar. So we buddied up with a Canadian guy we met in line at the Kyrgyz Embassy and headed out there. It was down a shady little alley way of sorts and when we finally located it, we were the only folks in there. They hadn't even put out any food, I guess they figured no one would show up anyway. We didn't have high hopes for the buffet, but it was actually pretty good: stuffed peppers, chips and salsa, potato skins and the like. Free pool and darts on top of it all. They were even playing good Texas-esque music, I heard some Robert Earl Keen and Johnny Cash in there. Despite the empty warehouse-like space, the walls were decorated with Texas and US-paraphernalia. Although I will say (Maggie here again) that it did seem a bit odd that there were fliers all over the women's bathroom advertising 'free drinks for any woman who donates her bra to the walls of restaurant as they are still looking a bit bare'...hmmm, wasn't about to give up mine. The food was greasy and good, the beer was flowing and it was cheap--we had good company and since we were the only ones in the place, full attention of the staff and lots of buffet on the cheap.
With the close of the night at Tim's we said goodbye to our Canadian friend and headed off to pack our bags and head out of Beijing--was a good break in the city and good to catch up with old friends (in person, on the phone and high speed internet!) , make new ones and discover some truly amazing things we expected and others we didn't...we jumped on a train to Taiyuan to take care of our Chinese visa renewal. More soon! Check out the pictures!
Mt. Qingcheng & Yangshou
Before we headed out of
Sichuan Province, we decided to escape the craziness of Chengdu and seek
solice in the Taoist temples on the nearby Mt.
Qingcheng. We had previously thought to stop over at a bigger mountain called Mt.
Emei, but reading more about it, it became to sound a bit too touristy for us so we opted for the smaller version. I thought it was going to be a nice little
stroll through the mountains, but it turned into a tough, sweaty uphill slog (we opted out of the
ubiquitous cable car ride!) We passed quite a few Chinese tourists dressed up in nice clothes and high heels, cruising up the
mountain and we are convinced that the Chinese do not sweat. Whereas you could have floated a boat in the amount of sweat that came off us,
ner a drop was seen on anyone else. Anyway, the mountain is dotted with bunches of little Taoist temples and pavilions, good resting stops as you make your way to the summit. At the temples there were no shortages of little shops selling water, drinks, and really anything else you might (or might not) want. While it may seem a bit of a sell-out to turn these
religious temples into
convenience stores, its real nice to have ice cold water waiting for you at every turn. The views were amazing as we trudged up the mountain, and after a few hours huffing and puffing, we made it up to the
monastery that we would call home. We dropped our bags to lighten our load and continued up to the summit where we found a huge gold-plated statue of a guy sitting on a water buffalo (our ignorance leads us to believe that it was a Taoist deity of some kind) At any rate, we climbed to the top of the temple on the summit and had some really amazing views of the surrounding country-side; wonderful mountains. After a quick beer, we descended to "our" temple to check out our digs for the night. Despite being a working monastery, it was a bit of a strange place. Altars were neck-n-neck with little shops selling tourist stuff and the
cafeteria sold grossly over-priced
mediocre food. Epcot Taoist Temple. It also had the foulest smelling bathrooms that I had been in for some time. I seriously had to run out and nearly gagged (and I think I have a pretty high tolerance when it comes to dirty bathrooms). In the end, we can say that we slept in a Taoist
monastery on the top of a sacred mountain, but in reality we slept in a dirty hostel on top of a formerly sacred mountain that has sold its soul to the tourist dollar. After one night, we hiked down and immediately made it back to Chengdu and onward to
Guilin in
Guangxi Province. The train ride was unpleasant, if only because we were surrounded by loud, smoking fiends who played cards all night and all day. It might have been interesting to watch had it been poker or something, but it looked like War or something equally
thoughtless and boring; though every other occupant on the train thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread and came over to watch and cheer. "
Ohhh look! he played a 5 on that 3! Wow, what strategy!" Needless to say, we were quite happy to divest ourselves of those characters. A quick night in
Guilin and short ride the next morning and we have found ourselves in the little town of
Yangshuo, on the Li River.
Yangshuo is a little, backpacker-
esque town and admittedly I was a bit worried about hippies and whatnot, but it has turned out to be a really nice place. Most of the city is just a regular looking town, but there is a main
pedistrain drag full of guesthouses, restaurants, etc were we've spent some time. The first day we just cruised around, felt the lay of the land, etc. We are in a nice, cheap place with free
internet (and A/C! - its damn hot here!) The city is surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of huge limestone
karsts that jut out of the countryside (see the photos) and the next day, went kayaking down the river. Despite being
obscenely hot, we kayaked for nearly 3 hours down the Li amongst the
karsts and had some wonderful views, passing by plenty of local fisherman out there on the river doing their thing.
After kayaking, we took a little break before renting some bikes and taking a bit of a ride. Its only a few kilometers, but the heat was enough to fry us in our seats, so we crept along at an easy pace. We headed up to Moon Hill, a karst with a half moon shaped hole gouged out of the middle. It was quite a steep vertical hike upwards, but we were rewarded with wonderful views of the surrounding country-side.
We managed to find some good food in town as well. One place had hummus and pita bread, though, ahem, Maggie and I have made better. One woman was also making strange little burritos that were hard to pass up (especially since they were cheap cheap cheap) --a strange little concoction of some sort of pancake-type batter smoothed over what looked like a crepe griddle, then an egg broken over that and cooked on it, then a layer of some brown savory sauce, chilli pepper, crispy flat wantons, then lettuce and top it off a thin hotdog split in half. Hmmm, curious but amazingly good--the woman making them was so quick and skilled with her hands, once all of the goods were in place, with a quick flick of her wrist and what looked like a paint scraper, folder it over, cut in half and steaming handed it over to her husband waiting with a bag. We ate this a lot, probably too much. We also passed some nice restaurants, but we could only afford to peer in the windows and reminisce about in Cambodia how we could afford to eat anything/anywhere we wanted...those days are gone for sure.
We had an afternoon to kill, so we decided to take a little day trip to a place called
XingPing, described in the booklets as a "Photographer's Paradise." We had to check it out! After an easy little ride, we found ourselves in a dirty little town without much charm and attached ourselves to a boat trip through the
karsts (as that is what one does in
XingPing). It started out nice enough, nice boat plying the river though after a bit we pulled over to visit a "model village". Well, the model village had sold its soul long ago and the once proud streets were lined with kitsch and whatnot. By the time we got back to the boat, it looked as if the entire Chinese Navy was passing down the river. There is a bunch of tourist traffic on the river between
Guilin and
Yangshuo--continual boats going back and forth. By the end of the day, they were all headed back up to
Guilin and we probably watched 30 go by before our little boat got in line. The river is only wide enough for a single file line; so a bit of peacefulness was lost in the fact that we were one of probably 100 boats on this tiny river.
After a bit of discussion, we decided to go straight from
Yangshuo to Beijing; skipping over
Hunan Province, where we had originally planned on stopping. The new route would allow us to get our visas (
Kyrgyz) in Beijing, do the Beijing things and be in Xi'an in time to renew our Chinese visa, thus giving us plenty of time to explore
Xinjiang Province in the extreme Wild West. Anyway, this is a heavy travel season so we knew we'd have some problems getting a ticket for Beijing, especially a sleeper (its 25+ hrs!) so we turned to our guesthouse for help booking the ticket. Long story short is that they said they booked the ticket when they actually did not so we ended up sitting around
Yangshou for an extra day waiting on a ticket that wasn't there. They kept saying, "please just wait a little longer, its coming" and all that. Anyway, under the cover of the 2am darkness, we eventually got on a train, after paying some middleman (arranged by the owner of the guesthouse) 60
quai to shuffle us onto the dining car and beg the conductor to give us a ticket. We did get a ticket, but it was for a 'hard seat'...meaning we would sit on a bench (
OK, it was cushioned) for the whole ride with 4 others surrounding us. We both thought we could handle it, but after the 24 hour mark (we ended up being on the train for 30 hours...really.) I was really about ready to lose it--I won't even get into the
madness of the dudes sitting across from us, but I wouldn't recommend this 3 rd class travel for anyone who can avoid it...we spent an entire day
recuperating in our hotel room.
On a happier and well rested note, we're now in Beijing!...we're not really bitter travelers, it just seems that some of our most disgruntled moments are are the funniest tales for you all to enjoy ;-) Anyway, all is well in Beijing and we've been having a fantastic time exploring
hutongs, shopping (me-Maggie, at least) and the big sights; feels like we're almost in NYC. More on Beijing in the next entry...
