Cultural observations: China

We spent only a few short weeks in China, but there were a lot of funny quirks about the place that I'd love to share. They're an interesting and innovative people.. and gave us a few giggles more than once!

Babies

Most Chinese babies do not wear nappies, they have a hole in the back of their baby pants and when they want to go, their mam or dad lift them over a bin and let them do their business! We’ve seen this in bus stations, on buses, in airports, wherever. Thinking about it, it’s environmentally friendly, low cost for the parents and means that potty training is a whole lot less stressful. I just felt sorry for the babies, they must get awful cold bums.

Couples

If you are a young and in love Chinese couple, you can show your undying devotion by… wearing matching shirts! And if you’ve got a little sprog you can dress them the same too! Everyone wins, especially the tourists who can have a good old sneer at you. And there’s no worry about colours running in the wash.

Toilets

Oh my god they’re awful. I didn’t expect to be shocked, sure I’ve been travelling in Asia for nearly six months, I’m pretty toilet immune. But these took the biscuit. At one bus stop, I queued up with lovely Chinese girls in floaty dresses (see next entry) to squat side by side (no partition) and pee into a hole in a concrete floor. Lovely.

That was the worst, but otherwise the toilets were squat pretty much everywhere (even in airports!), with varying levels of cleanliness. And elderly people who can’t squat carry around a little stool with a hole in it for use in the loos. I shit you not.

Fashion

Chinese women take huge care in their appearance and it shows. Floaty dresses, pastel colours, high heels, lovely handbags and perfectly coiffed hair. But even though they all look nice, there’s a distinct conformity and lack of individuality. I saw no Goths, no emo kids, no hipsters, nothing out of the ordinary. A subtle manifestation of the controlled environment everyone lives in? Perhaps.

Some of the older generations still wear plain dark clothing, communist style trousers and tunic, often a very stark contrast to the younger multicoloured generation.

Eating

As in most of Asia eating in China is an important social activity. Food is served in the middle of the table and everyone uses their chopsticks to pick morsels from each of the separate dishes. If you don’t like something, you can just spit it out onto the paper tablecloth that covers the table. Slurping, sucking and gulping are all perfectly acceptable.

Cold water and beer

Don’t expect to get your beer served cold here! The Chinese don't really go in for cold drinks, it’s believed they’re unhealthy. So water coolers are actually water heaters and dispense tepid drinker water.  

Doorways

In Chinese belief, doorways have huge significance, particularly the threshold of a house. You often see banners and murals and pictures adorning them, they’re very pretty.

Exercising

Every evening and morning the parks are full of people, usually elderly, dancing, doing tai chi or yoga. It’s great to see how active and social people are and must build a great community spirit.

Numbers

There are some weird hand signals for numbers in China. We had to use hand signals a lot as not many people speak English. To signal six, you close your hand into a fist, and then stick out your thumb and pinky and wiggle your hand. How this means six is beyond me, but that’s how they do it! Ten is also weird, you cross your two index fingers. It could have saved us a lot of confusion if we'd known this from day one!

They are the main ones I can think of, but in such a fascinating country there are undoubtedly other quirks and differences to home that I've missed. Picking them out is part of the fun when travelling in China!
Like you needed another reason to go...

Xi'an and Beijing

Xi’an is another huge Chinese city, polluted, congested and very hot. We stayed in an awesome hostel (of all the countries we’ve visited in the last year, China has hand down the best hostels - plus they don’t break the bank) and took in our penultimate Chinese city.

The Muslim market is probably the most colourful and fun place in Xi’An to spend a few hours and haggle with very savvy locals for some overpriced souvenirs. We had a streetfood afternoon which mainly consisted of Damien saying Ooooh that looks weird and then me eating it. 

With a slightly churning stomach we cycled round the 14km long city walls on a funny mountain bike tandem thing.

The next day it was time for another big hitter – the Terracotta warriors. This incredible collection of lifelike statues was buried for over 2000 years until a farmer sinking a well unearthed a part of the site. The warriors were buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang in around 200BC to protect him in the afterlife. Every single one is unique and there are about 8000 in total, some with horses and chariots and others with detailed weapons.

Naturally the huge warehouses built to cover the warrior pits were really crowded but you still could get a sense of how huge the tomb was. Archaeologists are still painstakingly reassembling the warriors and it’s pretty cool to think that in a few years there will be hundreds more whole ones.

We decided to take a high speed train to Beijing as an alternative to a flight (it was about 20 quid cheaper) and the futuristic looking thing glided into the city in a short five hours. It was a comfortable, pleasant way to travel, although throughout the entire journey the landscape outside was drenched in a yellowy haze, giving an eerie post-apocalyptic impression.

We stayed in one of Beijing’s hutongs, the atmospheric narrow alleyways that make up the older parts of the city. These days the hutongs are being gobbled up in pursuit of apartment blocks and highways, but many still remain and a stroll around them is an interesting insight into an almost forgotten way of life. Men sit round hole in the wall eateries, women handwash piles of laundry in the street and every so often you catch the unmistakable whiff of a public toilet, as few of the tiny hutong dwellings have their own bathrooms.

Our first day was unusually bright and sunny, so we hopped on the metro and made for Tiananmen square, the all important and imposing symbol of modern China, with the great helmsman lying in state in its concrete heart. There’s a system of underground tunnels leading to the square which ensure that everyone who sets foot there has been through a metal detector and searched - if the cops don’t like the look of you. This and the fact that the square is a barren grey place with a very visible police presence leads to an overall feeling of restraint and control. It’s not a relaxing place either, there’s no shade, nowhere to sit and not much to see. But history weighs heavy here, not least the massacre of student protesters less than 25 years ago.

Day two was all about the wall. It ain’t hard to guess which one! We visited at Mutianyu, a restored part, renowned for its beautiful location. Unfortunately it was a really misty day and the wall hid behind a frustrating grey haze. Nonetheless we tramped along about 6kms, winding up and down over a densely forested mountain. It is a graceful and mystical structure and it’s hard to believe that in not so long ago, locals were encouraged to pilfer building materials from accessible sections of the wall!

To descend from the mountain there was a giant slide which was pretty fun!

The last full day in Beijing we spent visiting the Forbidden City and Mao’s body. To get in to see the Great Leader you are subjected to some strict security protocols and taking photos or even talking are forbidden. The Chinese shuffle past the body reverentially. Mao has two armed guards flanking him and at this stage looks pretty orange, but I guess it takes a lot of make up to make a nearly 35 year old body presentable.

The cult of Mao is fascinating and mystifying. I guess there’s no opting out in China but to idolise a man who instigated a famine that killed 20 million people is hard to comprehend.

The Forbidden City was our final bit of sightseeing and an impressive site to round off a busy few days in Beijing. The complex of temples and palaces was built during the Ming and Qing dynasties of emperors and has a whopping 980 buildings. Until the fall of the final emperor in 1912, the area was totally off limits to the city folk and stood huge and foreboding in the middle of Beijing. Now it’s a huge tourist attraction and an incredible collection of elegant Chinese buildings and interesting artifacts. We wandered through the city with about a million Chinese tourists.

Ambushed again...

The next day it was time to bid adieu to China and jet off in the middle of the night to Kuala Lumpur. Then take another flight to Jakarta. Then stay in a hotel. Then take a flight to Makassar, Sulawesi. Then another one to Gorontalo, also in Sulawesi. Then take a 13 hour boat. But the thoughts of being reunited with a certain Belgian/Irish couple and five days on some beautiful islands were enough to keep our spirits high!

A taste of Tibet

Apologies for the mis-leading title - Tibet was unfortunately firmly off our itinerary. There’s lots of bureaucratic nonsense to go through to get permits and even then you can’t travel independently and must be shepherded around in a 4x4 with a tour group. It’s an effective means of stemming tourist inflow into Tibet and any resulting sympathy to the cause.

However we luckily did have the option of visiting western Sichuan, where the population is mainly of Tibetan descent, the mountains are high and snowcapped and usually tourists can do as they please.

We hopped on an eight hour bus to Kangding, the provincial capital. The town is a mix of typical Chinese development (apartment blocks, office buildings) and the natural addition of an icy blue river dissecting the main street and magnificent mountains always visible in the background.

We stayed in a great hostel ran by a friendly American couple who live in Kangding with their two children. On our first night the main square of the town came to life with hundreds of people dancing round in a circle to music blasting from a soundspeaker. Apparently this is a common evening occurrence in Chinese towns! I couldn’t get over how friendly everyone seemed to be, we were smiled at and hello’d at every few steps. Faces had changed, from delicate Han Chinese features to rounder cheeks, darker complexions and coarser jet black hair. Many of the women I saw were wearing traditional headbands and long swinging dresses.

Inadvertently for dinner we wandered into a hotpot restaurant. Sichuan hotpot is a delicacy all over China and the gist of it is: you get a big pot of oily broth loaded with chillies and you chuck in some raw meat and vegetables to cook. The result is volcanic and numbs your mouth so much that I have no idea what the cooked food even tasted like. Holy shit never again, we vowed. The only redeeming feature of the evening was the lovely staff who fussed over us incessantly and of course wanted the obligatory foreigner photo. (You want to feel like a celebrity?? Go to China!)

The next day along with a few new friends from the hostel we took a minibus high high into the mountains to a secluded lake in a stunning location. I had forgotten how blue the sky is when you’re a few kilometres above sea level. Wildflowers were blooming, the sun shone and we shared the lake for a few hours with some curious yaks.

Aiming further west we employed the services of a most affable and only mildly life endangering driver and set off towards Tagong, a small Tibetan town higher again than Kangding.

Literally passing through the clouds (4000m) we emerged at a temple strewn with the flapping colours of Tibetan payer flags. There were plenty of cyclists resting there, some of whom were aiming for Lhasa in Tibet! We’re talking about well over a thousand kilometres, all at lung crunching altitude. And even they wanted to take pictures of us! Oh this celebrity thing is so difficult..

Our driver

As we carried on, the villages started to look distinctly Tibetan, the houses square and white with pretty decorated windows. We drove through vast grassland and herds of the ubiquitous yak.

On alighting in Tagong, we took a look round the 1400 year old monastery, which is still an important religious centre. 

After lunch we bid goodbye to our companions who were heading back to Kangding. Having spent the last few days with Chinese speakers, we were back on our own! Through hand signals, we booked a room for two nights and settled in to the lovely but slightly headache inducing decor.

I tried some yak yogurt (pretty good), Damien had a yak burger (ok) and we explored the interesting little town. Much more so than Kangding, the Tibetan influence here was all encompassing. I loved just looking at the locals, the guys had the appearance of Mexicans we decided, long hair, leather tunics, cowboy hats. We had arrived in the wild wild west of China!

The next day we ventured out into the grasslands outside town, making for a monastery and secluded Tibetan village. In the shadow of some seriously vertigo inducing mountains we walked about eight kilometres and eventually arrived at the huge complex.

Some of the monks had a little English and explained that they were from Lhasa in Tibet and were there to study. And we saw the best monk activity yet – rollerblading!

The village is built beside a temple which has dozens of prayer wheels encircling it. Pilgrims walk clockwise around the building spinning the golden wheels as they walk and chant mantras. The Tibetan stream of Buddhism here is mystical and lovely, the prayer wheels are dotted through the countryside, often in rivers so that they are endlessly spinning. The colourful prayer flags are also such an aesthetically pleasing expression of spirituality.

Behind the village there is a hill absolutely covered in flags where sky burials sometimes take place. My understanding of a sky burial is that the body is brought to the top of a mountain, cut in a certain way and then left for the crows and vultures. Because the people believe the soul has departed after death, the body is of no consequence and as graves are difficult to dig in such stony hard earth, the cadaver is given as an offering to the birds. A little gruesome perhaps, but there none taking place while we were there.  

After two short days in Tagong we caught a minibus back to Kangding and went back to the same American ran hostel. The owner had some surprising news; Simon Pegg was in town filming a movie and had been there last night hanging out and drinking in the hostel. And we missed him.. ARGH! I don’t think I would have forsaken Tagong just to get a celeb snap, but it would be pretty cool to meet a filmstar in such a remote place. No one else in the hostel seemed to know who he was! Hector and the search for happiness is the movie in case you’re wondering. It’s going to be released in 2014.

Saving on the leccy

We spent our last night in West Sichuan hanging out with some Israelis and our Malaysian friend Wi Lei. Strangely enough the only other tourists we met in the whole area were from Israel! The people we got talking to reckoned it’s because the Israeli backpackers are always looking for somewhere unusual and special. They’ve certainly hit the jackpot in this part of China! I'd love to come back someday and hopefully have Tibet on the itinerary too. But for the moment we hopped on another bus and then a short plane trip to Xi’an, home of the very famous terracotta warriors.    

It was a one horse town

Giant pandas and even bigger Buddhas

At the end of another long day of travelling we arrived in Chengdu in the dead of night. After showing the taxi man the name of the hostel in Chinese on my phone we were quickly deposited on the doorsteps of the Wada hostel and crashed into bed. How did people manage in China before smartphones?? Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province in central China, and would be our base for the next few days of exploring. It took us forever to rise the following day, but with no time to waste we set off to explore the city. Of course like everywhere in China, Chengdu has a fantastic subway system that makes getting around really easy.

We headed for the people’s park for a stroll, which is where the city folk get together in the evenings to drink tea, dance, do tai-chi or just sit around and watch the world go by. After walking around for a few minutes we noticed several flyers hanging up on trees along one of the footpaths, with people gathered around reading carefully. A friendly lady spotted the 2 tourists with bemused looks on their faces and politely told us “for wife!” The signs were a sort of match making service. It just happened that this very weekend was a Chinese holiday, and with that many people were returning home for the weekend and obviously looking for love! We thanked the nice lady by posing for the photograph she wanted of us, and carried on into the park.

Chinese dating

By far the most bizarre thing we saw were the many ear cleaners applying their trade! Yes, that’s what I said, EAR CLEANERS! Gross! The park was full of other odd and interesting characters and it was a nice place to spend the evening.

Ear Cleaner

Interesting balancing act in Peoples Garden, Chengdu

We had to get back to the hostel early enough as we had booked a couple of tickets to the Sichuan opera that evening, something different we thought! It was ok, not what I had expected at all. It was more like an hour long variety show, sort of like a China’s got talent! The standout performance was the finale of face changing where the actors seemingly change their masks in the blink of an eye. It was pretty amazing and no matter how many times or how close they were to us, it was impossible to see how it had been done.

Sichuan Opera 

When I thought of China I always thought of the Great Wall, The Terracotta Warriors and of kung fu. But there’s another even more powerful symbol that everyone seems to associate with the country. They’re big and fluffy with big black eyes and are prone to rollerblading (or so an old Kit Kat ad would have us believe) and everybody wants one! Yes pandas of course!

Chengdu is the location of the only giant panda breeding centre in China, so it was impossible to come all this way and not pay the furry guys a visit. I don’t need to describe the centre itself or what a trip there entailed! I’ll just let the photos do the talking. (Cue incredibly cute panda photos!!)

The lesser known red panda

The tour also included a trip to Leshan about 2 hours drive away, to see the world’s largest Buddha statue. It would have been really hard to reach Leshan by ourselves so the tour was a good choice. All the excitement of seeing the pandas that morning must have really drained us, because all 6 of us on the tour fell asleep in the car straight away. We arrived in Leshan in no time at all and helped ourselves to a nice lunch. Having lunch in China turns out to be a bit of a pot luck game, menus were rarely in English so you just had to choose a few dishes and hope to God you could eat some of them. Everyone digs in to all the dishes and with the help of the lazy susan meal times are a real social event.

With lunch out of the way, we boarded a nearby boat and set off across the river to view the enormous statue. Built in 713AD and measuring over 230ft it’s easily the biggest statue of Buddha in the world and quite a sight to behold. We had chosen the boat as it afforded the best views of the statue and also the 2 hour walk on the mainland in near 30 degree heat didn’t sound too appealing!

Giant Buddha, Leshan

In hindsight, the 4 hour round trip was probably not worth it, but hey! Where else are you gonna see something like that! It was an early night on our last night in Chengdu as we had booked some bus tickets for the next day. Again this was tough as nobody at the bus station spoke English, but once more it was the iphone to the rescue. A quick flash of some Chinese symbols and in no time at all we had our tickets to Kangding in hand. Kangding is a small town in western Sichuan province and the gateway for trips into Tibet. Although we weren’t gonna get to Tibet, Kangding and the surrounding countryside promised a very Tibetan feel. So with high hopes we set off the next day on a somewhat scenic 8 hour bus ride for our faux Tibetan adventure.

   

An introduction to China - Guilin & Yangshuo

With our newly acquired Chinese visas in hand we started our somewhat roundabout journey to Gulin in Guanxi province. For some tax reason, it was really expensive to fly from Hong Kong to mainland China, so we were going to fly from Shenzhen airport which was just across the border. To get there though we had to get a taxi, 2 long trains with the border crossing thrown in the middle. The journey was relatively stress free, and in true Chinese style every stage was as efficient as the last. We arrived in Guilin late and checked into the cosy Wada hostel in the downtown area.

Guilin itself wasn’t that interesting, even if the strange Australian gentleman in our hostel did say it was the nicest city in China. After a couple of nights we booked some tickets for a boat trip along the Li River to nearby Yangshuo, a pretty touristy town, famous for the stunning landscapes surrounding the town. We saved a few shekels and booked tickets for the Chinese boat and not the one with the English speaking guide, hence we were the only two westerners on the boat.

Like most tourist hotspots in China, there’s no such thing as low season. With nearly 1.4 billion people in the country, there are always hoards of domestic tourists everywhere! There were literally 50 or so cruise ships making their way down the Li River admiring the view. The weather was grey skies and spitting rain, but it was hard to argue with the scenery floating by, large fingers of granite stone starching out in the distance covered in dense lush forest.

While I thought the real attraction was off the edge of the boat, some of the other passengers seemed to be more interested in the two whiteys in their midst. It was funny turning around and catching someone with a big camera, who was obviously taking a picture of us, suddenly change and pretend they were checking the settings. Some were far more blatant, taking selfies on their I-pads with yours truly! I should have charged for the privilege.

The boat took around 4 hours to reach Yangshuo, and we were swept up in the mass stampede of tourists heading towards town. We passed stall after stall of vendors selling every bit of tat you could want. After what seemed like an age, we found someone who spoke English and pointed us in the direction of our guesthouse, which was actually in a nearby village outside of town, nestled in a quiet valley.

After settling in, we took a couple of bikes and made for town. Yangshuo town itself was mostly contained within a few pedestrian streets, packed full of restaurants, bars and souvenir shops. When not off exploring the local countryside we joined the crowds and wandered the streets just taking it all in.

We spent a whole day cycling through the countryside alongside the Yunnan river, with more stunning scenery wherever you looked. Lush grasslands, small lakes with tiny towns in between and framing it all were the imposing granite mountains.

We stopped for some coffee at the dragon bridge, and watched as the bamboo boats floated by ferrying tourists down the river. On the way back we had to cross the river too, but with no bridge in sight, we paid a couple of euro and loaded ourselves, bikes and all aboard a small bamboo raft. Safely on the other side we headed back to town and treated ourselves to some dinner overlooking downtown Yangshuo.

The next day we wanted to catch the bus to Fuli, a small town near Yangshuo famous for its handmade fans. Our guidebook said that tickets should be 3 Yuan so when we were charged 18 we thought we were very hard done by. It was only after a few kilometres that I thought to check my GPS on my phone. We had inadvertently (through no fault of our own) boarded a bus back to Guilin, two hours away! Panic stations! We quickly called “Stop the bus” and jumped on the next bus going past in the other direction. We found ourselves back at the bus stations a few minutes later and boarded the small mini van to Fuli, this time stressing “FOOOOLIE?” to the driver who nodded in agreement.

Arriving in Fuli, we wandered around the mainly empty streets for a while; the houses here were more traditional, plain wood with prayers adorning the doors. People peeked out from dark smoky kitchens to see who was passing. We happened upon a small art gallery where a kind lady showed us around. It seemed as though everyone in her family was an artist. “This one by mi grandmother, this one by mi father, this one by mi husband…” and so on till she finished on her 3^rd cousin twice removed. We bought one of her nice paintings, I think it was by her father.

Back in Yangshuo, the town was in full swing, the streets were packed with tourists not put off by the changeable weather. Instead of having a traditional sit down dinner we decided to dine in one of our favourite ways, random street food night! The premise is easy, if you like the look of it, or you haven’t a clue what it is, buy it and share it! There was no shortage of vendors in Yangshuo selling all manner of street side delicacies. We helped ourselves to some stuffed flatbread, a crispy omelette thing with veg, a lovely duck pancake with bacon, and polished it off with some snails (not nice!).

Our time in the beautiful surrounds of Yangshuo was short, but China is a VERY big country and with no time to lose we headed back to Guilin to catch a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. The Pandas were expecting us!