Day 165: Episode 3

DAY 7 - TAIYUAN => PINGYAO

 

So, we got to the Taiyuan and went to the ticket office.  Or rather, we joined the 200 yard long line.  Literally.  Seeing how slowly the line was moving, we decided to try the bus.  On arrival at the bus station, we discovered that on account of snow, there were no buses running.  People in a taxi offered to take us for 600.  Fat chance.  So it was back to the long queue at the train station.  Only now, it was longer.  Like, an hour.  In the freezing cold.  After earning some chilblains, we were randomly pushed to the front of the queue.  Well, I say the queue, the first queue was a queue to join the queue to get into the ticket office, where you joined another queue.  We eventually got tickets for a train, but no seats.  Two hours?  Not so bad, we think.  But it was so crowded I could barely breathe.  How naive I was, that was not crowded (see day 18).  Anyway.

 

Eventually, we got there, where a seriously obnoxious man kept saying "Hello!" and "How many (hotel)?"  I don't know about any other white people. but one room is one hotel is usually enough for me.  Turns out, he was from the Harmony Guesthouse, where we had considered staying as well.  We got our tickets to Shijiazhuang, and went to find a taxi to the YHA China place.  But as we walked along the road, the obnoxious man followed us.  We told we we couldn't speak English, but that didn't stop him.  Eventually, we found a taxi, but the driver informed us that taxis weren't allowed into the old part of the city (true).  He suggested we get in the nagging man's rickshaw, but there was a bigger chance of a duck farting in church than us going with him.  This annoying man being the same one that actually got into our taxi, snatched my book out of my hand to read it, and seeing that I had written down his hostel, got even more obnoxious.  I was so close to removing his face when an unlicensed black cab pulled up next to us.  We paid him 20 kuai and he drove us as close as he could to the hostel, and walked us the rest of the way. The good thing about unlicensed taxis - they can take you into the bits taxis aren't allowed in.  But of course, it was a complete rip off.  We didn't care though. 

 

The hostel was brilliant, really old traditional house.  We went out to eat some traditional local food - we had these big flat noodles (cold) with a tomatoey spicey dip, some cold cured beef thing, and a hot chicken dish.  All lovely, names all forgotten now.  After eating, we went to bed as it was rather late and we had to be up early to see Pingyao before the train to Shijiazhuang.  Quite excitingly, our bed was a Kang - a traditional old style brick bed with a fire underneath (although ours didn't have a fire). 

 

DAY 8 - PINGYAO => SHIJIAZHUANG

 

In the morning, we once again slept in until 8, but got ready quickly and went out to see the sights.

 

We did the town tower, which was considerably less magnificent than the book made out (it said that climbing the town tower and listening to the sounds of the city below was a memorable experience - it was worth it, but not the best bit).  Then, the city walls, which apparently look like a turtle, earning the city the nickname "turtle city."  Clearly, these people have never seen a turtle.  On the city walls, I made my first ever snow angel.  And last, as it was so cold.  Not much to say about the walls really, although while walking we discussed 4th year, and I think I might take French now and just work a lot.  And Nikki's thinking about not taking a second year out.  All this got us rather excited about studying, which makes a nice change :D

 

After the walls, it was lunchtime, definitely.  We tried a few places on the main south street, but they were all either stupidly expensive or smelled really strongly of varnish.  We settled on our hostel in the end, and decided to go for western food, because we could.  So we had toast, followed by a Cajun Chicken sub for me and a Lasagna for Nikki.  It was nummy.  And the coffee was good.  Yay.

 

After eating, we went to Rishengchang, the first bank in China.  We saw some old things of which we weren't allowed to take photos, and some old things of which we were allowed to take photos.  As computers are all out to get me, I can't actually get the photos on to the internet at the moment, so you can see when I get back to Urumqi.  We then found a Tat Emporium and got our names written on grains of rice.  The woman just used a pen.  A PEN.  No magnifying glass or anything. So I got my Chinese name on one side and Pingyao 2008 on the other.  Nice and tacky.  Nikki got one too, and some cloth shoes (one of the recommended buys in Pingyao).  Then, it was off to the train station to go to Shijiazhuang. 

 

The train to Shijiazhuang was cold, cramped and just generally unpleasant.  Oh, and six and a half hours long.  There was also considerably more talking about us than I would have liked, but that's the Chinese for you.

 

We got off the train at Shijiazhuang North, and for the train to Beijing we had to be at Shijiazhuang station.  So we got a taxi there, bought our tickets for a frightfully early train (7am), and went to the "youth hostel" across the road.  Why it was called a Youth Hostel is beyond me, it was clearly just an average hotel.  We were checked in by Slowcoach McSlow, and went up to our room on the 10th floor.  After about 134 days of struggling with the lock, we got in (at least no one could break in).  We put the key in the slot for power, and turned on the lights.  Or rather, turned on the bathroom light.  The other lights didn't come on.  Oh well, we'll turn on the bedside lamp then.  No?  Okay, the floor standing lamp.  Still no?  How about the desk lamp?  Not that either?  We had no light.  By this point, it was gone midnight, and I had stopped caring, so we used my camera screen for light, and just went to bed, in the dark. 

 

As soon as we lay down, the announcements from the train station started.  And didn't stop.  6 hours later and feeling somewhat less than refreshed and raring to go, we got up and went to catch our train to Beijing, grateful to leave Hebei (the province of which Shijiazhuang is the capital) behind. 

 

At this point I should probably explain something - there are a lot of places we go where we don't actually do anything.  This is because there's either nothing to do (Shijiazhuang being one of them - it's known only for it's coal mining and industry), or we're using it to break up stupidly long journeys (of which some more will come).  Just so you don't think we're awful tourists.

 

DAY 9 - SHIJIAZHUANG => BEIJING

 

In the waiting room at the train station, we saw Sir Staresalot, Miss Curious, the Duke of Noseyville and Lady Neverseenawhiteperson.  One girl stared so much I was on the point of shouting at her when we were allowed to get on the train.  The train was really nice, and apart from Mr Can'tholdaphonecallwithoutshouting, annoyance free.  We accidentally bought toys on the train.  Oops.  2 hours and 40 minutes later, we arrived at Beijing West.  We jumped straight into a taxi and headed for the Templeside (where we stayed when we first got to Beijing). 

 

On arrival, they seemed very surprised to see guests there, and we were then directed to Shop 2, but not before seeing the kittens (who are now not so much kittens, more cats).  We decided to stay in a dorm for financial reasons (60 compared to 200), and the place was really quiet, and so it was alright.  We dumped our things and went pretty much straight out.

 

We wanted to basically to Tian'anmen Square and the things around it, the Lama Temple, the Confucius temple and the Drum and Bell towers.  But first, some western in the form of Subway (yes, the sandwich place).  Which was far.  Bobby (the guy that owns the hostel) said we could get the metro there, but we couldn't find the station, so we just got a taxi (it was quite near Tian'an Men actually, so it was alright).  The Subway was brilliant, not quite like in the west, but it was real bread and nummy fillings :D 

 

We then went to the Friendship Store to buy books, but the collection was poor, and the books were not in great condition, most of them quite dirty and some with folded pages, ripped corners etc.  And it was expensive.  Having bought two tomes, we decided we had earned a break, so we went to Baskin Robbins, which was part of a little coffee place owned by a really nice Italian man.  I had ice cream and coffee, and it was possibly the best coffee I've ever had.  So if you're in Beijing, do visit the little shop next to the Friendship Store.  Right, so then we went back to tourism.

 

We got the subway to Qianmen, the gate at the bottom of Tian'an Men square.  We didn't know which of the two gates we saw was Qianmen at first, as we didn't know that the name refers to TWO gates.  It's actually a nickname for the gate, and I've forgotten the real name.  It used to be the south central point on the old city walls.  It's made up of the Gate Tower (climbable) and the Arrow Tower (not).  After crossing the road 1346089 times to try to get good photos (sun kept getting in the way), and after much confusion, we found the ticket office to climb the gate tower.  But not the entrance.  We walked a quarter of the way round, where we saw the path going through the tower, then half way round again, then back a bit, and eventually found it.  We accidentally skipped the security check (says a lot about the security check I feel), and climbed.  It was slightly disappointing actually, all museum and the top floor was a Rip Off Merchants.  You couldn't see out from the top either. 

 

So off we toddled to Mao's mausoleum.  But apparently, that closes at noon.  So we decided to come back the next day, and see the Hall of People and the Museum of the Revolution.  Both closed (until 2008...when in 2008?).  So we went to Tian'anmen, which was covered in scaffolding last time, but climbable this time.  We bought tickets, but the guy wouldn't accept our student cards, saying they were foreign student cards.  Last I checked, Xinjiang was in China.  Annoyed me somewhat, as the student ticket was a third of the price of the standard ticket, but whatever.  We went to climb...but first, we had to check our bags apparently.  But then, you couldn't leave anything valuable in your bag.  So I had to check in an empty bag (but for some tissues and an empty bottle).  We climbed up, took some photos across Tian'anmen square, and saw some propaganda.  All of this to a soundtrack of "Hello!  Five yuan!"  Last time, they were all selling Mao watches, which at the time I thought was awful, but now slightly wish I'd bought.  But this time, it was all Olympics stuff.  Which I don't want. 

 

We got back our empty bags and went to check out Wangfujing street, big for food and night markets apparently.  But there wasn't much of that (read: any of that).  So we toddled off to the Foreign Languages Bookstore (I'm desperate for reading material here), where I spent far too much on books, but it's okay, they're cheaper than in the west.

 

Laden with books, we headed back to the hostel in spite of the early hour.  But it wasn't quite that simple.  We took the subway to what we assumed was the nearest stop.  Turned out not to be.  Took us an hour to walk back to the hostel from there nearly.  But it was okay, we got to see the Financial District.  We ordered dinner and sat down to watch a DVD with a Canadian guy called Simon, who was in our dorm.  First, Evan Almighty, but on my review (one of the worst films I've ever seen), we decided to change it.  Da Vinci Code - poor quality, only in Chinese but the sound was so quiet that I don't know if I could have followed it.  We switched again to Swordfish, cliche ridden thriller, but alright.  The ending was annoying though, left me with quite a few questions.  Anyway, Beijing, important, DVDs I've watched, not.

 

DAY 10 - BEIJING

 

After sleep disturbed by the late arrival of a Swedish girl and the very early departure of Simon, we got up, had breakfast with an Australian couple (Amy and...I never did find out his name), and set off to see Mao's mausoleum.  We got there at 12:01, just as they shut the gates.  So we'll see it in summer.

 

So to the Lama Temple.  Which was surprisingly hard to find, unless we were just being really thick.  We saw the largest Buddha carved from a single piece of Sandalwood (26m), and a lot of generic temple things.  Once you've seen as many temples as I have recently, they all look the same and you begin to stop caring.  So we went to the Confucius temple, about which I have equally little to say.  I did get really quite angry that they had translated the word for the UK to England though.  Morons.

 

We wanted to see the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, as apparently they're good sights to see, but not as touristy as other things in Beijing.  After walking rather a long way, I had the sneaking suspicion we had gone too far south.  So we searched out a map, and indeed we had.  So we righted ourselves, and went off to them.  Arriving at 5pm on the dot.  When they closed the doors.  Quite annoying really.  Well, we can see them in summer too (when we get to Beijing just in time for the Olympics (I must say, I intend to be very far away from the UK for London 2012).

 

As they were last on our list for the day, we went in search of coffee and real pastries at the nice Italian man's store.  Having demolished a chocolate croissant and a coffee, and armed with take-out pastries and Nikki's warm french bread, we went to the Restaurant of the Gods: Quanjude (not a translation by the way, the name means something like complete assembling of morals (correct me if I'm wrong)).  After eating so much duck I thought I would vomit, we walked (read: slowly waddled) to the subway to head home, and even managed to get off at the right stop this time). 

 

And I've already written far too much, and must go and see some Wuhan now.  So I'll write more in Xi'an probably (heading there on the train tonight, just in time for Spring Festival).

 

(an aside: I just ran a spellcheck on this, and I notice I spell Confucius wrong every time.  Why his name if Confucius is beyond me, the Chinese is pronounced Kong Zi).