Having spent quite a while in Beijing, we were keen to move on. 9 weeks left until the flight out of Hong Kong and Megan's planned a route which zig-zags down through the whole country. Currently you can only get a visa for 30 days so we would need to try and get an extension somewhere along the way.
We travelled North to Datong to see the Hanging Temple which is built on the side of a cliff. It was built there to avoid flooding by the river 100m below. There's a dam across the river now so the temple is hanging above a dry valley which makes it look very odd. It's a rickety wooden structure which appears as though stuck on to the vertical cliff face. There are vertical wooden poles which appear to support the temple but the monks put them there for psychological reasons - they do nothing as we verified by waggling them a bit. The whole structure is quite vertiginous. We also saw the Yungang Caves where the Northern Wei Buddhists carved out caves containing enormous Buddhist figures around 400AD. These figures are not carved on the face of the cliff but sit inside large caves hewn out of the rock. So, an 18m high Buddha sits in his own personal 20m high cave all chiselled from the solid rock - no joins to be seen. This is supposed to be one of the most impressive sights in Northern China.
Datong is not on the normal tourist trail so we tended to stand out a bit. Not least because we were clean (when we arrived anyway). The city majors in coal mining (it produces a third of all China's coal) and has 2 power stations. One generates all the electricity for the Shanxi province and the other all the juice for Beijing. There's coal dust everywhere. It coats the streets and buildings, it gets up your nose; it even comes out of the taps! For all that, the people were extremely friendly. The railway station was amusing in that it had a 10m video screen outside which played the same old black and white movie 24 hours a day with Auld Lang Syne dubbed over the top. We never figured that one out!
We'd not choose to return to Datong and we were glad to get on the overnight train to Xi'an. No prizes for what we planned to see there! Mind you, the Chinese May holiday week was approaching so we'd only managed to get "hard sleeper" tickets which meant 6 of us sharing a box with 3 bunks on each side. Worse still, 2 of them were Australian!!! It did only cost GBP10 for an 8 hour journey though!
In Xi'an, the hotel we were staying in wanted to charge us 330 Yuan to take us to see the Terracotta Army, but we managed to get a local bus for 5 Yuan each way . We spent 5 blissful hours exploring the extremely well laid out site. The main "pit" is the one you'll have seen on TV and it's even better in the flesh (clay?). We hadn't realised just how life-like the figures are and that there were so many expressions and poses. There's an excellent museum and surround-cinema film of the history of the warriors. Steve has bought a terracotta soldier. He's about 12" tall and has been christened "Terry". Steve enjoys bartering with the street vendors (Terry was 80 Yuan down to 2!) so much that he ends up buying stuff coz the haggle was good. Unfortunately, Terry's proving a pain to transport around and will probably not last the year intact. Meanwhile, Megan's snuff box collection she started in Mongolia is growing after some judicious haggling in Xi'an.
Xi'an is a cool university town with loads of up-market shops and boutiques. There's also loads of restaurants to try. Despite this, the street food vendors and fortune tellers still ply their trade and it is not completely touristified. We spent many a happy hour wandering the streets and cycling around the perimeter on top of the surrounding walls (1370) . There's an arts and crafts market which was lent an air of authenticity by the shops selling tools of the trade - calligraphy pens and paint brushes the size of yard brooms. Even Steve enjoyed shopping here.
Mountain climbing took on a whole new meaning one day when we decided to get out of the city and into the hills for some fresh air. There's a convenient holy mountain near to Xi'an - Hua Shan (2160m). Mind you, there's a holy mountain conveniently close to most places here. The hotel had a day trip going there so we booked. Of course, it rained. Only the second day of rain and we've been away from home a month now. The last was our foray out to the Great Wall. So, we donned our Goretex waterproofs and boots and got into the minibus with 10 Chinese hikers wearing suits.
Hua Shan consists of 5 peaks. According to the Rough Guide the circuit could be done in 8 hours. However, the first 3 boring hours could be cut out by taking the newly built cable car up to 1500m. The bus stopped at a village at the base of the mountain and the Chinese jumped out to buy plastic macs, deck shoes and cotton gloves! What's going on here? It's May 1st - Labour Day and the start of a week's holiday so we ended up in the cable car with hundreds of Chinese tourists.
The area is spectacular: limestone peaks and caves - Steve thinks it's like a narrow Yosemite. The cable car went up almost vertically into the mist (like the Telerifico at Fuente Dei in the Picos de Europa). At the top we joined the queue to climb the first peak and then we understood the gloves and deck shoes! These vertical peaks are paved! There are steps all the way to the top and around the 5 peaks, with a rusty chain running along one side to hold on to. Sometimes, there are steel ladders, at other times steps are cut into the rock; but mostly it's concrete, stone steps and paths. Almost as great a feat as of engineering as the Great Wall (and just as wet!).
All these steps killed our legs and made for a bit of a trudge, but the Chinese seemed to have no trouble -all that squatting must make for strong legs! They were also undaunted by the cold wind and rain at 2000m. Their plastic macs seemed adequate too. We felt positively over-dressed as is so often the case. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of a view - occasionally the mist shifted and we got some idea of what we were missing - spectacular 1000m sheer drops. We'll try another holy mountain elsewhere - there's 5 Taoist ones to choose from.
On leaving Xi'an, we were heading East with Shanghai in our sights. This will be our most Easterly point before heading West again up the Yangze River. We took the train to Luoyang which turned out to be yet another Chinese town. Wide streets, hectic traffic, "herro, herro, where you from?". We headed off the beaten track to Deng Feng (pronounced Dun Fun). This involved a 3 hour ride on a local bus (10 Yuan). We bounced and jolted past stone masons carving the ceremonial lions we'd seen in all the temples and, as we headed into the mountains, the clouds lowered and the rain started.
We spent a couple of days in Deng Feng. Here we felt really out in the sticks - probably as even the local bus got a puncture due to the state of the roads. It took us a while to even get a room due to the language barrier and our insistence on bartering.The room we ended up with was directly above the communal karaoke facility! We explored the local temples and took a rain check on climbing the mountains due to...err... the rain which was still omnipresent.
We took an even more bouncy and even cheaper bus to Zhengzhou to get the train to Shanghai. Unfortunately, the newly introduced week long May holiday was coming to an end and the locals had booked all the beds on the sleeper trains to Shanghai. We tried to buy tickets but it's difficult enough at the best of times. In the end, a friendly local directed us to a travel agent where we bought a flight to Shanghai despite Steve's misgivings about internal Chinese airlines. The flight was uneventful if a little scary for one of us. [As a footnote to Steve's worries, we were on a China Southern flight on 7th April when the China Northern one ditched. Hmmm!]
So, we got to Shanghai and immediately caught a bus out to Suzhou about which more later....
We've been in China going on for a month now and our feelings have been mixed as you might expect. At times it's been tough. We've found the language barrier to be the hardest to overcome and a particular problem in train stations. It turns out that the Chinese have problems buying train tickets too - especially at holiday time. Thing is, we're not used to being thwarted at every turn and herded around like cattle! When you're dirty and tired, having some scary railway woman shouting in some incomprehensible language, whilst all around are hawking and spitting is hard to deal with. However, most of the time everyone is extremely friendly and helpful. It's just the system which makes it difficult. We are still eating with the locals and trying to order what we want from the menu although it's frustrating at times. We've both had pretty bad colds too which have dragged on for a long time. Neither of us used to get colds at home so we put this down to new bugs. Talking of which...
Take one chicken foot - preferably cold and rather greasy. Nibble the nail off the end of each claw and spit on to floor. Suck flesh (such as it is) from each wizened chicken toe making as many disgusting noises as possible. Spit knuckle bones onto floor or fellow passengers' shoes. Smear remaining foot bone & sinews over table. You too could witness this first hand by booking a "hard seat" from Xi'an to Luoyang.