Tickets!Sunday 24 August 2008
Friday 22 August 2008
From coast to coast
Four and half months and we've made it to the edge of the Pacific. Standing on Shanghai's Bund a couple of nights ago, the stone buildings of the old foreign concession behind us, the bustling river and neon-lit skyscrapers ahead, we at once felt close to London and a million miles away.
Much of our route through China has been decided for us. In the far west and the Tibetan areas it was impossible to go anywhere but the major towns without an expensive escort; no one would sell us a bus ticket and foreigners are not allowed to hire cars. Sichuan is also partially closed because of the earthquake.
But as with the rest of the trip our best experiences have often been in places where we had few expectations. Urumqi is a bland modern city but wandering the main park watching local people move between spontaneously formed choirs, waltz beneath small pagodas or play chess we noticed more and more had stopped to look up at the sun. We'd been told we wouldn't be able to see anything of the solar eclipse so far east but half an hour later we were in dusk surrounded by people holding up an odd array of used photographic films and X-ray plates.
Later we went for dinner at the huge night market. At ten to six there was nothing there. Five minutes later the police waved forward the hundred or more wheeled carts thronged in a cloud of charcoal at the end of the street and by seven there were rows of brightly lit stands prepared to grill anything that once moved, plastic chairs lining the pavement and armies of beer vendors. Tom tried the small strips of rubbery sheep's oesophagus but we both drew the line at still wriggling insect larvae.
Further west in Xi'an and Beijing normal service was resumed and we joined throngs of Chinese tourists at the government's clearly delineated range of sites. Most were none the worse for their touristification but it's odd to climb a mountain without once leaving a paved staircases and to find hordes of hand-bag wielding tourists at the top disgorged from not one but three cable cars. Even the tranquil waterfalls and bamboo forests where they filmed parts of crounching tiger, hidden dragon were not immune. Boring stretches of the path were equipped with little fairy-light covered pavillions and the final waterfall was acessorised by a string of unicycle and motorbike riding trapeze artists.
Olympic-crazy Beijing was especially busy but we loved it nonetheless from the swanky peking duck restaurant to the murky old alleyways and the misty grandeur of the summer palace to the bustling counterfeit clothing market. There's something a little disallusioning about seeing olympians bartering for fake gucci watches but the main olympic park which we managed to sneak into for the first day of the athletics was much more impressive than I'd expected. Finally there was dinner with mysterious "frances the diplomat" at the beautiful old courtyard house of his "entrepreneur" friend. The entrepreneur spent much of the time painting calligraphy onto huge scrolls while Frances held court at a table with an automatically revolving central section and a range of "big" and "medium-sized" bosses none of whom ever let on what business they worked in. I put a fair amount of my energy to avoiding the deep-fried chick carcasses revolving past in a nest of fried noodles.
We were only given a 30-day visa so have decided to extend the overlanding further west. Final destination: Tokyo.
Much of our route through China has been decided for us. In the far west and the Tibetan areas it was impossible to go anywhere but the major towns without an expensive escort; no one would sell us a bus ticket and foreigners are not allowed to hire cars. Sichuan is also partially closed because of the earthquake.
But as with the rest of the trip our best experiences have often been in places where we had few expectations. Urumqi is a bland modern city but wandering the main park watching local people move between spontaneously formed choirs, waltz beneath small pagodas or play chess we noticed more and more had stopped to look up at the sun. We'd been told we wouldn't be able to see anything of the solar eclipse so far east but half an hour later we were in dusk surrounded by people holding up an odd array of used photographic films and X-ray plates.
Later we went for dinner at the huge night market. At ten to six there was nothing there. Five minutes later the police waved forward the hundred or more wheeled carts thronged in a cloud of charcoal at the end of the street and by seven there were rows of brightly lit stands prepared to grill anything that once moved, plastic chairs lining the pavement and armies of beer vendors. Tom tried the small strips of rubbery sheep's oesophagus but we both drew the line at still wriggling insect larvae.
Further west in Xi'an and Beijing normal service was resumed and we joined throngs of Chinese tourists at the government's clearly delineated range of sites. Most were none the worse for their touristification but it's odd to climb a mountain without once leaving a paved staircases and to find hordes of hand-bag wielding tourists at the top disgorged from not one but three cable cars. Even the tranquil waterfalls and bamboo forests where they filmed parts of crounching tiger, hidden dragon were not immune. Boring stretches of the path were equipped with little fairy-light covered pavillions and the final waterfall was acessorised by a string of unicycle and motorbike riding trapeze artists.
Olympic-crazy Beijing was especially busy but we loved it nonetheless from the swanky peking duck restaurant to the murky old alleyways and the misty grandeur of the summer palace to the bustling counterfeit clothing market. There's something a little disallusioning about seeing olympians bartering for fake gucci watches but the main olympic park which we managed to sneak into for the first day of the athletics was much more impressive than I'd expected. Finally there was dinner with mysterious "frances the diplomat" at the beautiful old courtyard house of his "entrepreneur" friend. The entrepreneur spent much of the time painting calligraphy onto huge scrolls while Frances held court at a table with an automatically revolving central section and a range of "big" and "medium-sized" bosses none of whom ever let on what business they worked in. I put a fair amount of my energy to avoiding the deep-fried chick carcasses revolving past in a nest of fried noodles.
We were only given a 30-day visa so have decided to extend the overlanding further west. Final destination: Tokyo.
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