Traveling in china

We came back from China. We traveled in the land for a little more than 3 weeks. It was lots of fun. Fantastic experience, some times we loved it and sometimes we (I) wanted to just run away. It is really huge country we spend five nights in the night train. I liked people in the countryside a lot although there were some strange habits that I could not get used to that! (like spitting, public toilets, etc).

It is crowded; I mean hundreds of people where ever you go! There are so many people in the streets. Lots of movement and energy! I really like that.

It is weird when you are some where and there is no way of communication. And what ever you say they do not understand! And some times even the body language is different! Ah getting food become such a challenge… ;) very simple things that generally you do not think about it becomes very important, like: eating, going to toilet and talking! (with the same order!)



"Here is an example of toilet, in a hotel. Very friendly and social! (we almost always used the touristy ones, which had a separating wall! Luckily!"

Finding the train and taking bus, etc all was great fun! Trying to pattern match the Chinese characters and make sure that actually the bus goes in the direction that you had aimed for! Especially in such a crowded country, where every body and everything is running, can be fun. In Shanghay and Beijing the metro stops had some English written too, so you could just count after how many stop you arrive. We got pretty good hand on it, people were usually very nice, we could double check the characters on our ticket and the lonely planet book and we would ask people. They were generally very nice and helpful.

We both were surprise to see extend of the capitalism. I did not see any sign of communism, except of the Mao’s photo hanging in some places. Nothing of the social security, forget it! All is about Money…. or maybe people were treating us differently because we were tourists. No matter if went to temple (which I always had this romantic view of peace and happiness) or went to a mosque or an archeological site, people (officially or unofficially) were trying to get some thing from us. Pretty much opposite from the idea of happy people, who share everything and fighting capitalism, when money is evil!



"Trains, Hard sleeper, top view. It was very nice, noisy, with many people. Indeed Chinese do not like the walls, the hard sleeper compartments also do not have any separating wall."

Getting away and learning how to say “NO” to people who suddenly jump in front and try to sell some postcard, jewelry, etc was a challenge. Especially at the beginning when we (Simon) wanted to say politely that actually we do not need this 5kg Buddha statues! And definitely we can not pay 80 € for it!

If you want to go, you should go soon, this tourism industry is changing the country and people tremendously. We ran away from them by going to north, and to inner Mongolia.



"Beautiful mountains of Huangshan, in early morning."

The nature was pretty, I was astonished to see that the Chinese painting of the mountains with round peak, is actually exist and it is not just a static imagination of painters mind! Amazing, really pretty! Walking on the great wall was fun too. It was raining and I really enjoyed it. All the time thinking of Marco polo who walked there, (Iranians know what I mean: the stories of Marco polo and his travels trough silk road to china, was on Iranian TV for tens of times, in all the forms of film and cartoons, and I was a fan of him!)



"On great wall. It was very dreamy. All day rained, and the view was spectacular!"

In short we went to mountain, and desert, in the north. Hehe, Simon made(!) me to drive a camel, YOUHOU , at last after 30 years of life I saw a camel in real! And it was such a fun riding her. She was going slowly, you would feel like sitting in a boat, with a relaxing rhythm, until she would reach a hill! Then it was scary! Because she would forget that actually I am sitting on her back! And I might fall down of the hill, as the result of her strange movement of neck and bending of her body!



"Me, riding a pretty camel. It was a pretty desert."

In short we started from Shanghai, to Hangzhou, Huangshan, Xian, Zhongwei (Shapotou District) in desert, Yinchuan, Bayanhot (city in inner Mongolia), and we came back from Beijing.
I’ll write a couple of stories from the trip.