Shanghai, China, 16 - 20 May 2012

Arrived in Shanghai early and used the metro this time to find the hostel to stop any "ooh, is this our stop? I don't know, everything's written in Chinese" bus journeys. The hostel was The Phoenix and was in a great location and only a short walk to Peoples Square, so we showered and headed out for a wander. We eventually made it back to the hostel 6 hours later after a lovely exploratory walk, which became a slightly confused meander, and escalated quickly into a "where the bloody hell are we" trudge. Made it back tired slept well, and had breakfast in a bakery on the corner. Croissants and coffee later, we walked to and along the Bund. This is just a big embankment which was made on the river so that the ships could dock, and as all the money was there, the banks were also built. Quite nice with all of the grand skyscrapers of steel dominating the skyline, and below the old banks of brick and stone. When the Chinese had their own national bank built, their only want was that the building was higher than it's European built neighbours. They failed twofold; the result was a brick monolith with no imagination in its design, it only stands out due to its lack of anything interesting to contribute to the Bund, and the roof designed didn't sit properly and so when adapted to work it didn't sit the highest as intended.  
Some nice views of modern China (with a strong ex-patriate flourish), and lots of brides and grooms having pictures taken in the sunshine. We walked further North across a lovely old bridge of which the Chinese had actually bolstered the name of the town of production from the steel. I assume that it was Sheffield or something from Shanghais history, but can't confirm this.
We took the metro to the French Concession which used to be the playground of artistes, gangsters and whores, but now is full of malls of western brands. We were looking for a small maze of backstreets called Tianzifang. This had lots of touristy shops, some kitsch shops, little bars and restaurants and a lot of Chinese charm. It wasn't entirely authentic, was being put on for us, but a pretty little place. We decided against paying the inflated prices in one of these places and found a real Chinese chopshop a few doors down doing big steamed dumplings with pork and spring onion, and pak choi, spinach and garlic. Then found a place with BOGOF ice coffees which were a great ease to weary feet in intense heat.
Next day the plan was to get to the train station to buy tickets, then head to old town, but we couldn't extend our stay at our hostel, so had to pack up and move out. We ended up in The Captain right on the Bund which was crap to be honest. The staff were uninterested, next to no facilities, and our "mixed dorm" we booked online apparently didn't exist so we didn't even get to stay in the same room. The place boasted a rooftop bar, but this was stupidly overpriced, about £4.50 a beer when everywhere else I'd paid 60p to £1 tops.
We booked train tickets for the 32 hour epic to be to Chengdu 2 days later and as we walked back with the evening and weather closing in, Jos mood got worse and she got a little upset. Nothing serious, she was just a little homesick, and tired of moving on all the time. Travelling is great fun, but it can really tire you out, so she had a little cry on my shoulder. It didn't help that Shanghai isn't really anything new and exciting. It's a prosperous city but very Western and impersonal. Anyway, in an ironic sentiment, I treated her to a Starbucks, which did the trick and cheered her up. We then bought some tickets to the Shanghai Acrobatic Show for the following night. I spent the rest of the evening battling to backup our photos (heard way too many horror stories!).
Next day we decided we'd book ourselves back in at the Phoenix as the Captain was a dive with strange people staying there who blowdried their hair at 2am and 2 western girls who looked a lot to me like prostitutes. So in the rain, we took our big bags back to the Phoenix and then headed out to wander yet more shops and malls. We stumbled across a cinema in one mall with really cheap seats to see The 3 Musketeers in 3D, but proper 3D glasses, not the crappy disposables we have at home. This did not make a horrifically bad movie any better though sadly, and I left the cinema feeling dirty and that the money would've been better spent being farted into the wind for 90mins.
After the cinema we decided to go to the Old Town despite the weather. Getting out of the station into the rain we wimped out and dived straight into McDonalds for a coffee and cards. After a caffeine hit and our confidence bolstered, we ventured forth and found the Old Town isn't really very old at all, but really quite new, made entirely of concrete and made to look Oldey-Worldy, with traditional style buildings stilted upon a big fake pond. It ticked the last area of Shanghai off the list though, so we can't say we haven't tried to see everything! The most entertaining bit of the place was a shopfront under construction with a bloke on a ladder with no PPE on at all using an angle-grinder on top of the hoarding, spraying sparks all over himself and half the busy walkway with the shopping public underneath him! The man wouldn't have just lost his job in the UK for doing that, he'd probably be locked up! But the Chinese didn't bat and eyelid and just walked around where the sparks fell.  
That evening we took the metro to the Shanghai Circus to see our acrobats. The show was brilliant, well worth the money, with pots being juggled, people jumping through spinning hoops, contortionists, and a cage of death which was a spherical cage of about 5m in diameter with 1, then 2, then 4, then 6, then 8 motorbikes riding around in! 4 of them spent about 5 mins riding around at speed less then 4" from the rear tyre of the person in front of them! Was a great final evening in Shanghai.
Next morning was our last day, and we had our epic trip to Chengdu that night, so we had a lazy day playing cards, drinking coffee and just trying to stay inside and out of the torrential rain! Was good though and Jo was thankfully back to normal again. We went to the same dumpling place we'd been to a few times before and I did my usual "talk loudly in English, then use charades, then give up and point at the Chinese menu and hope for the best" before we took the metro to the station. Next stop Chengdu for pandas and Buddhas!

Xi'an, China, 13 - 15 May 2012

Arrived in Xi'an, and managed to find the right bus to take us near our hostel thanks to some guys in Pingyao. Unfortunately, after that it was down to a Lonely Planet map and me. I'm not bad at navigating, but it does take things like an accurate map, and correct street names to navigate well. As Lonely Planet maps seem to be or possess neither of these, it took a while to find Han Tan Inn, but it was worth it. The place was only 6 months old, and was more like a hotel than hostel. We dumped our stuff and heading out searching grub, but lack of authentic little cafes and restaurants meant that we ended up drinking coffee in KFC, and eating strange cakes from a street stall. Nothing is as it seems with cakey things, and if I saw a cream cake, I wouldn't be surprised if it had beans in the middle and wasn't sweet in the slightest. Our cakes were very odd, and best of a deep fried bad bunch. We were still tired out, so we got some kip for a couple of hours before venturing out again, which was a mistake, as it was a Sunday and the shops and streets were mobbed. Jo hit the hay early that night and I stayed up listening to a man sing English songs in the bar, but who obviously didn't speak English as the words were more sounds and he paused for affect in strange places.
Next morning we wandered around the Muslim Quarter, looking at all the stalls and searching for a bloody great mosque. All we managed to find was a shedload of fake watches which Jo managed to get in a row over with a woman on a stall because she was doing "bad business" all because she didn't want the bloody watch in the first place! Daft woman thought it was a bartering technique! We then walked miles along quiet stalls selling calligraphy bits, and along the city walls, past trees full of caged birds, and out towards a supposedly famous pagoda. The pagoda was a bit pants and in the middle of a big park you had to pay to get into, so we carried on in search of a "curio market" which sounded interesting (so long as it wasn't somewhere they killed cats). Turns out that it doesn't exist anymore, but a massive brand new Crowne Plaza hotel does in its place, so we wandered back, for some dinner.
Following morning we got up early and went to see the eponymous Terracotta Army with Lucy and Tim who we met in our hostel. The place is split into 3 "pits" but these are housed in aircraft hangars. They are huge, and all with different ranks of soldier or infantry, and with many still covered in the buildings which the emporer had build around them, so you can still see the sunken structure of these roofs, under which must still lay hundreds of untouched artefacts. What makes it so strange is that it was all uncovered so recently, in 1989, when a farmer dug a hole for a well. That was in the corner of pit 1, where the famous pictures of rank upon rank of soldiers are best preserved. A lot are heavily damaged where buildings collapsed on them over the years, but the archaeologists seem to be big puzzle fans from the work you can see going on. We headed back, went to the post office and offloaded the Chinese teaset I bought in a moment of either clarity or madness (which struck me dumb, as when I asked how much, she said a number well below what I was wanting to pay, but I had to barter a bit, so I knocked off a couple of quid and got some jasmine tea thrown in for free), and a load of other crap plus some guidebooks I'd been lugging around since December, then back to the Muslim Quarter for some early dinner before our next train that night to Shanghai!

Datong, Pingyao, China, 8 - 12 May 2012

Oh dear, only a week ago and already this stuff seems like an age ago.
So we left Beijing on a day train (hard seat) after a little delay at about 9.30. We thought that on an early train out of Beijing, we'd be the first stop, but turns out no, and the carriage was strewn with sunflower seeds, noodle pots and fag ends. It was also packed already with standing room only, but in our naivety, we walked straight past our allocated seats and 3/4 of the way down the carriage before realising this, and behind and in front were dozens of people all jostling for space. We waited a couple of minutes for things to settle so we could walk back up to our seats, but everyone was planted blocking the gangway. We each had our big rucksacks and daysacks each, so mobility was low and people weren't helping in blocking the way. Everyone was already staring at the heavily laden white people, and looked at us almost in amusement as to ask "what are you going to do now", so I got pissed off, threw my daysack on my back and hoisted my huge backpack in the air over my head. I actually got a little cheer from people for this! I carved a path for Jo to try and follow, and kicked out the 2 blokes sat in our seats, then settled in for 7 hours reading whilst Jo slept. We played with a little girl who was with her granny towards the end, but the game got tiresome fast (involved her alternately saying "ni hao" and "hello" and us repeating it back to her. Wasn't such a good game after 20 mins).
Along the way we went through countryside and huge mountains, which were dry and arid, but with strangely green and fertile valleys which had been levelled out. This looked very new and suspect to me, with some marks on the valley walls below us, and after a few miles I saw why; a bloody great dam had been built, with massive concrete pillars of different states of completion reaching to different heights all around. It's obvious there's going to be a bit of a maze of trainlines and roads built around there, but god knows why, there's a dam and that's it. Must have flooded anything else that was there, and destroyed a river further down. Just another instance of the Chinese "we know best and will do exactly what we want regardless of how it affects you" Government.
Eventually we got to Datong, which we knew was supposed to be a dirty town. It looked rank, and we were tired from the journey, so when we discovered that Lonely Planet was wrong and there is no Hostel, but there is a nasty looking hotel with hookers outside and rooms charged out by the hour, wits were getting fraid. We bartered with what used to be the hostel but is now a plush business hotel, and got a really good rate (similar to hostel rates) but for an ensuite double! We met 2 more people in the reception on our way out to look for food, who were in the same boat, and explained the situation. They took a room also, and we went out together. After lots of hassle from cab drivers offering to take us to the Buddha caves and Hanging Monastery, we found a dirty looking place on the main street with tables half in the road. This turned out to have such good food we would return twice more! It had a big robot which cut the noodles off the doughball straight into the water. It also did amazing shredded pork and vegetables in a spicy sauce, and the best steamed dumplings. They were big and almost like bread on the outside, with either pork or spring onion, spinach and garlic inside. We got hassled by a guy who runs a tourist place earlier, and he came back as we were eating with a really good price for a guided tour of Buddhas and Monastery, so Marcello (Argentine/Italian), Ria (Slovakian), Jo and I paid up, went to our beds, and got up the next morning to go!
The 4 of us got to the carpark where the bus would take us from, and witnessed the Chinese workers ethic of how to start the day; around 40 hotel staff dancing together in file, to exactly the same movements. But not just for 1 song; about 5, all with different routines, and then it started to repeat! We were there for 20 mins, and they were going strong the whole time!
The bus trip to the Buddha caves was only about 45 mins, and was uneventful, just through poor and very dirty parts of town, then we were taken around all of these caves, but first we had to walk through lots of newly built buildings and pagodas and buddhas. At least the Chinese tourist industry has made one hell of an effort, with a man-made lake with a series of buildings on a stilted island in the centre you must walk through, but it's a shame they didn't put full thought into it. EVERYTHING was made of concrete, and not all the meeting pieces matched, so where the bridge met the handrail, the design of the newel post was different, and the mix was different so they were different colours. Sorry, building detour there.
The first cave has the biggest Buddha in it, which is pretty huge, but we weren't supposed to take pictures. This is supposed to be a respect thing, but as they'd intrusively put 2 bloody great CCTV cameras on poles alongside Buddha, we paid no heed.
We meandered in and out of the caves and soon left our "English speaking" guide behind. Jo and I got our photo taken in front of the big outdoor Buddha, and we left (after a much needed ice lolly to cool us down) for the hanging monastery.
It took us a while to get there, but within a big canyon, after a real 5p-50p moment where we thought we were driving off the cliff, we arrived. The monasteries were there, just chilling on the cliff-face, and we had a lovely view and got some great pics from the car park, so we didn't bother paying the extortionate entrance fee, and Jo, Ria and I just sat in the shade chatting with ice lollies (not TO the ice lollies, we were eating ice lollies... I digress). We got back to lovely Datong, and Jo and I went in search of cash (cashpoint, not mugging or anything), and an internet cafe which was successful in the former but not latter. Datong seemed to get smellier and seedier the more we walked, but this is the modern working class China; a lot of poverty and unemployment, with livings only to be made from selling what you can grow or come by on the kerb. With next to no healthcare for the masses, and such poor safety standards in workplaces (I've worked on some dodgy sites, but what they do over here makes what little hair I have stand on end) mean that there's lots of poorly treated accidents, so some grotesque injuries on beggars. Sorry, digression again. Ria and Marcello were leaving on a night train that evening, but Jo and I opted for a decent nights kip in a lovely room and get an early train in the morning to Pingyao.
Had a lovely train journey this time with three girls tarted up to the nines at 7am on an 8 hour journey who just stared at us, which was amusing to start, but after an hour it's tiresome, 7 further hours later you want to scream at them "WHAT DO YOU WANT?!".
A bloke in an electric trike was hawking for business with free rides to the hostel we were already going to, so we hopped in and prayed for our lives weaving along the main roads, then through the old city gates to the narrow stone alleyways of the old town. Our hostel was lovely, with a bar downstairs which was very cosy (and called Cozy), but nice and light in the heat, and as we went up to our room we saw that Ria had chosen the same hostel and was in the same dorm as us.
We wandered off for lunch, but as Pingyao is such a tourists dream with all of it's originality, the restaurants are all pretty pricey, but as per, Jo and I stumbled across a locals haunt with point-and-shoot menu for half the price everywhere else, and beer at 1/3 the price. We ate there several times. That evening Ria, Marcello and Jo and I went photo hunting in all the atmospherically lit alleys, walls and gatehouses.
Following day we tried a variety of strange and not-so wonderful street grub for brekkie before settling on an egg bun thing with coffee for about 70p to do the trick. After far too much deliberation of when to leave and where to, the decision was taken out of our hands by the trains, and we were heading to Xi'an next in 2 nights time. We found a supermarket and stocked up on stuff for the long night train, then wandered the streets a bit more (Jo and I are very good at this), then found another really good chinese food place that was cheap but much closer to the hostel and with pancakes on the breakfast menu for Jo!
Next day we rented a tandem (after pancakes), and went about some more exploring. Chinese tandems aren't made for 6'2" englishmen. On the front my knees hit the handlebars, and I could barely steer I was sat so close, and on the back was even worse as the handlebars were so low my feet couldn't even go round! The brakes were also pretty shot, and there was no grip on the tyres, so made for exciting riding! I don't think Jo even pedalled for most of our outing! We went around the perimeter of town, and found some nice picture spots, saw the lady we rescued on the Great Wall in Beijing (though she'd forgotten us already!), and then it began to rain, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the hostel chatting, drinking tea and relaxing. When it became apparent the weather wasn't going to let up, I took the bike back. With no-one on the back, and with smooth wet stone underneath, I was sliding and skidding everywhere! I screeched up to the lady, who thought twice about giving my deposit back for my entrance, then thought better of it and sent me happily on my way.
On our last day I stumbled across a building site where an old style building was being made including the carvings done in timber on site. I was chuffed and wandered around wasting half a memory card on it. In the evening, another electric trike took us to the train station, though to add a bit more excitement, he kept his lights off to save battery. Arrived safe, got on and into our little bunks, though Jo was next to a very loud snorer (not me), so she got a great induction to sleeper trains! Got woken up early doors by loads of people chatting stupidly loudly to each other at 6am, but at least they weren't hocking and spitting for once!