新疆日記

Day 310: Lamas and Trains and Bears, Oh my!

2008-06-29T11:53:00.002+01:00

Okay, I know. But you see, my computer is broken, so I can't go online as much at the moment. So here's a massive update on the rest of travels and some of what has happened since then.

So, the train to Lanzhou was hell. It was a hard seat, and 24 hours. The people around us were really obnoxious and talking about us, and as soon as they relaised we speak Chinese, switched to Sichuanese, which we don't understand. Then the little girl opposite us was a horrible little girl, bullying her brother and annoying everyone on the train.

We extended our tickets to Xining, as to get back to Urumqi we had to go back to Lanzhou anyway, and we arrived in Xining mid-afternoon. We got to the hostel, and the door was locked. It was the only hostel we knew about in Xining (the capital of Qinghai (literally green sea, but as the Mongolian word for lake is like the Chinese word for sea, they used that word)), so we persisted in ringing the bell. Turns out, the door was locked because there aren't many tourists at that time of year. But they were really nice and let us stay anyway. Only problem: no water. Because it was around -20 degrees, all the pipes had frozen except for one toilet which flushed. I don't know how that worked and nothing else did, but it was really annoying.

Anyway, in Xining we did all the important bits: the Qinghai (the huge lake that the whole province is named for) which was beautiful and still frozen over - the ice was 4m deep. It was cool to walk across the huge lake, but as it was just scenery and there was nothing to do, we didn't stay long. Getting a bus back to a very long time, as you just stand by the road and wave down a bus, but the buses are very infrequent and the first bus we tried to flag didn't stop. But we made it back that evening in time for a really good dinner and an early night - being at high altitude and having been travelling for 5 weeks really takes it out of you.

The next day, we did the Kumbum monastery, famous for it's yak butter statues, which really weren't as amazing as I expected, but they were still incredible. Having seen that, we were ready to get back to Lanzhou to get the train back to Urumqi.

The train to Lanzhou was fairly uneventful, although there were loads of Tibetan people. The coolest part of Xining is seeing all the monks just walking around in their full-on monk clothes. It was quite weird, but cool.

So, we got to Lanzhou, and the plan was from there to go to the farthest west reaches of the Great Wall, see the caves at Dunhuang, and then head back to Urumqi. But by this point, we were just so physically exhausted and missed Urumqi so much we decided just to head straight back. Only problem: very end of spring festival holiday, so there were no train tickets for the next week. So we tried the bus station.

Hurrah! There was a bus to Urumqi. A sleeper bus, which is stupidly expensive, and takes a very long time: 31 hours to be exact. It should have taken around 26 or 27, but we kept making really long pointless stops. Just when it couldn't get worse, the beds are around 4'8 long. Now, I'm 5'10. This made for a very uncomfortable journey. Add to that the ice inside the window, and we were pretty miserable by the time we got back. By this time, it had been about 5 days since we'd showered, so we smelled rather unpleasant, so as soon as we got back we showered and then sat around doing nothing. It was great.

For lantern festival (the last day of Spring Festival), we went up Hongshan (red mountain) in the centre of Urumqi to look out at the city and watch all the fireworks. I took some photos, but because Urumqi's pollution in the winter is so bad, it's just a hazy glow, so I'm not putting photos on here.

A week or so later, classes started back, and it was back to normality until March 18th.

March 18th, 10:30pm local time, I went to the airport. To collect Nicki (my high school classmate and second year flatmate, also a fellow Invernesian). It was really weird to be in China with her, but it was totally awesome. We did the full tour of Urumqi, including places I'd never been to due to lack of motivation. We ate every type of food you can buy in this city, and we went to the Heavenly Lake.

The Heavenly Lake is astounding. We walked up to the lake from the car park, which took around an hour, and was amazing. It was so quiet and peaceful, the air was so clean you could actually taste it, and there were no people to be seen for the whole walk up. I personally think the walk is better than the lake itself (not that the lake wasn't amazingly beautiful). For someone who had just come from the UK, it was probably nice and all, but for someone who has lived in a grey polluted city for 7 months, it was amazing.

Wow this is an abridged version of events.

So after Nicki left, nothing interesting happened until the end of April, when Nikki and I went travelling once again. But I'll tell you about that in the next post, because I remember it more clearly and can post some photos. And also, a lot happened on that trip.

So until next time...

Day 260

2008-05-09T12:55:00.004+01:00

DAY 29 - CHENGDU

MAI BIRFDEE! We had booked onto the panda tour at the hostel, to be collected at 7:40am, so by 7:30am I was ready and downstairs, feeling considerably better, but still not perfect. We were promptly directed onto the bus to the pandas, and 30 minutes later, we arrived. We had to be back at the bus by 10:30, other than that we were free to do as we pleased. So we went straight for the baby pandas (naturally), which were at the back, planning to get there before everyone else and then work our way back towards the entrance, stopping for some tat before getting on the bus.

But when we got to the baby pandas, there was nothing to see. They were all still asleep indoors. We were slightly disappointed, so we followed signs for the 'teenage' pandas, and were once again disappointed. We wandered around the various panda enclosures for a bit, seeing nothing. But then suddenly out of the blue, we saw one! A real one! An adult, asleep, but still, a real panda! We walked around the enclosure and a few others, seeing more and more pandas (clearly, they were having a lie in that day, normally they're active between 8am and 10am). After watching the babies playing for rather too long, we searched for the place to hold one. Right next to where we were.

But before I tell you about that, watch this:

We forked over vast amounts of money (1000 each) and donned sexy blue smocks, gloves and shoe covers, and waited for our panda to be brought in from outside. And it was well worth the wait:

Happier than words can express, we wandered around and saw lots more pandas, red pandas (cute, but slightly sinister - I think they're plotting something) and bought lots of tat (t-shirts, stuffed pandas, pens etc.)

From this point, I'm going to summarise everything we did, because I didn't write a travel journal for this part, and also it will bring me up to date quicker.

We went to the train station to get tickets for the next day to Chongqing, where the queues were phenomenal. You probably heard about the big snow that hit China this year - it brought down the Beijing-Guangzhou rail line completely, which is THE North-South train route in China (not the only, that is, I mean the most important). Which meant the trains were in chaos. Add to that Spring Festival (when everyone and his dog takes the train home) and you have a mess. Fortunately, the queues to get into the train station were only for non-foreign people, so we skipped through those and followed the nice people who let us past until we got to a different section of the ticket office, where we saw another white person pushing through a crowd and being let in to the hall. So we pretended to be with him, and chased him. Then we joined the queue adjacent, when he told us to join his queue. We got talking to him, and it turns out he was trying to get back to Yantai (where one of our teachers and some of our friends used to live), while his girlfriend was buying tickets for her parents back to Urumqi. Oh, and he went to our university, knows some of our teachers and lived around the corner from Nikki. Small world.

After tickets, we can't have done anything important, because I don't remember what we did. In the evening, we got all dolled up for a night out on the tiles. We went to an Irish bar that had come recommended in various places, and had a couple of drinks. However, after 2 drinks, our age started showing, and we were both just tired and needing our bed, so by midnight we were on the way back to the hostel, wondering how one goes about applying for a bus pass.

The following day, we were off to Chongqing, which was...an experience. We got there and went to buy our tickets to our next stop, and had to wait outside the ticket office for ages, the whole time the two of us thinking that this wasn't where we got the tickets we wanted (it was Chongqing's North Station, and we wanted to go North, but China's weird like that), but we hung around anyway, and made sure we got in first, where we were sent to another station to buy tickets.

The central station was chaos. People EVERYWHERE all in huge queues. We found what we assumed to be the ticket office, and noticed the people sitting on the floor waiting. We wondered why they were sitting at first, but it wasn't long until we found out. Did you hear about the riots in Chongqing at Carrefour, when Carrefour had reduced price oil? And people died? Yeah, well, Carrefour weren't to blame. After a short while of waiting, suddenly everyone got up and surged forwards, in the same way that all Chinese people do when barriers open. But the barriers hadn't opened. They were just charging forward shouting and generally war-crying. Then it turned nasty, and people started using their arms, legs, heads and little plastic stools to beat everyone else around the head. At this point, Nikki and I rather swiftly got to a safe vantage point, and watched the carnage. In the end, it took 18 guards plus police back up to control 3 queues. They had to physically drag people apart, and when they tried to make the queuers sit down again, they had to resort to hitting them with truncheons to make them comply. It was quite scary actually. Especially when you realised that no one was safe - little old ladies were coming out with blood pouring down their faces and things.

Nikki went to look at another ticket-y bit to find out if we were indeed at the right bit, as everyone around us seemed to be heading south, and as soon as she got up, a woman from another queue tried to muscle in on her spot, but she was quickly dealt with. Turns out, we were in the wrong queue, so we went to join the right queue. By this point, we were quite sure that Chongqing people were in fact worse than small children, in fact, worse than animals. Add to that the constant staring, pointing and laughing at us, and you make for a not very happy Liam and Nikki. While queueing in the correct queue (where the people didn't riot, but they did still find it necessary to stare, point and laugh (which just makes us do it back (which then makes them annoyed, but if you can do it to us...))), a man approached us and started to speak to us. Wonderful, we think, another "I can practise my English on you?" But no, he was nice, and informed us that the ticket office didn't open until 7am the next day. This was sometime around 5-6pm. So we decided we would go back to Chengdu if we could, or to anywhere there were tickets and get out of there, because it looked like we never would otherwise. So we went back to the North Station and got tickets back to Chengdu for the next day, and then went to the find the Hostelling International place.

All this led to a not so great first impression of Chongqing. We were in foul moods and craved a little western, so went to the "Liberation Monument" (complete with Rolex clocks, and surrounded by Armani, Gucci, Starbucks, Rolex shop etc. (they're SO BAD at communism in China)). We wandered around for a while, searching for some western, and managed to not find it for really quite some time. Eventually, we ended up back where we started, and realised we'd started next to Starbucks, so we went and had coffee (real) and cake (also real). Our mood slightly improved, we went home to bed.

The next day, we got the train back to Chengdu and bought tickets to Lanzhou (a breeze (relatively)), and checked back into the same hostel for a night, and dossed about a lot. It's a shame we didn't get to see much of Chongqing, but from what we saw (lots of big grey buildings, pollution and not the nicest people), we don't know how much of a shame it actually is. Anyone who has good stories about Chongqing is welcome to share them.

As if you needed more proof that China is bad at communism - here is Mao, next to a huge department store, Starbucks, McDonalds etc.

Day 248 - Another long overdue update (I'll get better, I promise)

2008-04-27T12:26:00.005+01:00

DAY 26 - XI'AN 西安 => LESHAN 乐山

In the morning, two incredibly irritating girls disturbed our technique to stave off boredom - sleep. They were screaming, running back and fore and constantly shouting mispronunciations of "mother," "father" and "sister." I was ready to throttle them. They were 20 as well.

On arrival in Chengdu, we didn't go and get tickets for our next stop (le gasp) - we got straight in a taxi to the bus station to do the trip to Leshan. Buses run pretty constantly, so we got one pretty much straight away. The journey was painless and uninteresting, although we did have a brilliant film about a guy that worked at Pizza Hut who was in love with a girl whose office he delivered pizzas to. Really cheesy, and made by China Mobile and NEC.

When we got to Leshan, my heart sank. It looked rather too much like Tangkou for my liking. We walked a little away from the people at the station ("Where are you going?" "Taxi!") and headed towards where we assumed the centre was, but due to heavy bags and things, we got in a taxi. We had no idea what to tell him, so Nikki asked him to go straight on, then that we were going to a hotel. He took us to a Lonely Planet recommended hotel, advertising standard rooms for 230. We didn't know what to do - that was far too expensive. At this point, the lady behind the reception desk informed us there were discounts - 120. Much better. We dumped our stuff and went pretty much straight out to see the Giant Buddha, 71m tall carved/built into the cliff of Leshan where three rivers meet. The story goes that that part of the rivers was really dangerous, so the built a giant Buddha to protect the mariners. There was nice scenery and things, although it was quite misty so you couldn't see far. We joined the queue to get the foot of the Buddha, which moved at a glacial pace and was full of people who felt the need to comment on our whiteness and giant noses. Rather annoying.

After taking photos and things, we decided to head home (the park was about to close and that was all that we had come to see - I couldn't cope with the thought of yet another temple). We walked along the road the bus went and ended up walking the whole way home. Not so bad actually it wasn't that far. We wanted to go to the recommended restaurant. When we got there, they had no tables. But then, it wasn't actually a restaurant, so no surprise there. It was a little side bit on the second floor of a hotel with some large group tables which were all taken apparently. It was also really far away and quite hard to find. It was on 嘉定中路, number 289. Which one would assume is near 嘉定南路 number 200, but no. When 南 (South) becomes 中 (Middle), the numbers go back to zero. We had some awesome kebabs though, some from a Uyghur guy from Kashgar(!). We saw some food places by the hotel, so we went to go there, but none of them could be bothered to cook two dishes and some rice. This is not an annoyed comment, they actually said this to each other in Chinese.

So we went to a kebab place just around the corner, where we had beef, mutton and rabbit (never had it before, 'twas rather nice actually). And I had a random bird which may have ben pigeon, which was far too much hassle to eat. The kebabs shrunk in the cooking process quite considerably, so they weren't enough, so we got more to go. Which included a bug one for Nikki (that's not a typo, that does say bug). And I ate a bug. It was alright actually, bit crunchy with pokey legs and feelers. Full of bug (and real food), we went to bed ready for a good night's sleep (haha).

(apologies for the darkness of the video, here's a photo of what I was eating (oh, and excuse the really bad hat hair))

DAY 27 - LESHAN乐山 => CHENGDU成都

Up bright and early (thanks to a delightful rooster just outside) and ready and packed, we checked out, left our bags with reception and got the bus to the 东方佛都 (Oriental Buddha Capital). We got the same bus out as the day before (it was very near the Giant Buddha), and once again the first bus that came said he didn't go that way. Well, he might have, he said 'no' (in English) and shook his head ambiguously.

We got there, saw the longest reclining Buddha in the world (which is a cheat - they carved the head and the feet, but not the middle - it's just a big blob of trees), and climbed far too many steps to see reproductions of major Buddhist sites from across Asia reproduced here (some bigger than the originals). Knackered, we got the bus back to the hostel to pick up our bags and go to the station, but not before getting still more kebabs (every single thing we ate in Leshan came on a stick) and some of the most amazing fruit in the history of time. No, really.

The bus back to Chengdu was equally uneventful (although there was a 老外(foreigner) on the bus), but on getting off the bus we got rather annoyed that all Chinese bus and train stations (with one or two exceptions) are on the outside of town, almost as if to let their ~~rip-off merchants~~ taxi drivers make more money. We were offered 30 to our destination, but I won't get in taxis to unknown destinations for fixed prices (been stung for that before). We flagged one on the street outside, and he got us to our hostel for 30 exactly. The amusing thing was, as we walked away from the guy offering the fixed 30, he changed his price - up. First 40, then 50 and then 60. Fool. In English though, so maybe he doesn't know the numbers?

We checked into officially the cheapest hostel in Chengdu (Mix Hostel - if you go to Chengdu, stay there), and the cheapest hostel we've been to in China (including dodgy operating basically outside the law guesthouses (fear not family, they're not dodgy enough to be classed as unsafe, they just don't bother reporting foreigners that stay there which is required by Chinese law)) (15 a night), dumped our things and booked tickets for the world famous Sichuan Opera. We got a taxi to a recommended restaurant (we wanted the quintessential Sichuan dining experience, given that Sichuan food is world famous (Sze-chuan to those who use Wade-Giles romanization). But said restaurant didn't exist any more, so we went to a different one, where the food was average and the service poor. The rice had only just arrived when we had to pay and leave so as to not be late for the opera, and not once did we get our tea refilled (to be fair, the manager did shout at one of the waitresses for ignoring us).

We got in the car to the opera and got talking to an American girl from California called Claire, who's a teacher in Shanghai. And then she said the one line I hear far too often from Americans: "Oh, I'm British too!" But this one actually was - born and raised in The Big Smoke 'til the age of 9, then the US 'til 14. Not sure what came after.

The opera was quite good, but the other bits didn't please me quite so much - puppets, erhu playing (to be fair, he was really good, but I'm not a huge fan), shadow puppets (utterly bizarre) and some minor acrobating.

The famous face changing is great, and while I think I've worked out the secret, I'm not convinced and have no way of finding out, as it's a state secret in China, and only 300 people know how it's done.

After the opera, we just went to bed for a rather disturbed sleep thanks to our charming fellow travellers.

DAY 28 - CHENGDU成都

In the morning, after a truly awful shower with pressure ranging from painful to drip and temperature from scalding to ice, I had some toast and awaited Nikki. Then, we walked to the Wenshu Monastery. Or rather, we tried to. But the directions from the girl at the hostel were rather vague (apparently they make sense to women and not men) and we ended up walking in the exact opposite direction for rather too long. We eventually turned round and walked back the other way, stopping to get Nikki some sugar cane. I had heard you can eat sugar cane, but had never tried it. I say eat, you don't actually eat in, you chew it then spit it out. It's not that great, it's got the texture of chewing on a branch (unsurprisingly) and not much of a flavour.

We found the monastery and the folk street it's on, and it was mobbed. It was one of the days of Spring Festival (which lasts for 15 days, not just the one like western New Year) when you are supposed to go to the temple and pray. We were somewhat bored of temples, so we had a wander through the grounds and the nice garden and then found the teahouse inside and sat there for quite some time. They say that in a Sichuan teahouse, time slows down. It kind of did actually. I drank lots of tea to see if it would make me feel any less unwell (I was starting to feel slightly ill you see). It didn't. After a walk around the grounds, we explored part of the Folk Street, which was old and full of tat and (surprisingly) Uyghurs selling Xinjiang style kebabs (although they were completely different to kebabs in Xinjiang).

We headed to the Cultural Park to see a Taoist temple "in the grounds," which is Guidebook for "outside the grounds." We found it, and as it was the first Taoist temple we'd seen, I was quite interested to see what it would be like. For those who haven't been, imagine a Buddhist temple but with different statues. Seriously. There are no other differences. Disappointed in that, we went to Dufu's cottage (Dufu was a poet in olden days who lived in a cottage in Chengdu for 5 years, and said cottage has been preserved and turned into a tourist attraction).

But just before we went into the cottage grounds, lots of boys in tarzan-esque costumes came out and performed a bad dance out of time to bad music. It was quite amusing to watch. I got given a red dangly new year thing with money on it, and a cow gave me a card saying 2008 - Ox (which it's not, it's Rat this year). Anyway, we critiqued lots of calligraphy (Chinese calligraphy largely looks scrappy and sometimes just plain illegible)., saw his cottage and it's really rather nice grounds (lots of green, the first real growing bamboo I'd seen and things), posed where Mao did then headed back to the hostel for a short relax.

Around dinner time, we decided to eat at the hostel, so we looked at the menu, but nothing appealed at all. So we went out, and found a restaurant called 老妈兔头 (old mother rabbit head) where the waitress very helpfully asked in English if we could speak China. At first, I thought she said cello. Fortunately, Nikki was slightly more logical and worked out what she was asking. We said yes, and ordered. First, a fried seasonal vegetable dish, some kind of meat strips and 鱼香茄子 (which translates to Fish Fragrant Aubergine, but isn't actually fish at all), all of which should be straightforward enough. But oh no. For the seasonal vegetable, we had a choice, but the choices were fired off at such speed I have no idea what they were. Eventually, she went to the kitchen and brought out some identical looking leaves (the difference was in one hand she had one leaf and in the other hand a bunch of them), so we picked one. Then did we want big or small bowls of rice. She was still going at great speed, so Nikki asked her to go slower, when the waitress got really embarassed and apologised a lot, and then carried on as before.

By this point, I was feeling even more rubbish, so I picked at some aubergine and we headed home to bed, praying I'd feel better for the pandas the next day. We had pegged feeling rubbish on exhaustion (4 weeks constantly moving, less fun than you'd think), and some sleep and a slower next day should see me right.

Day 229 - Long overdue next installment of travels :)

2008-04-08T16:49:00.001+01:00

BLOGGITY BLOG

DAY 21 - WUHAN武汉 => XI'AN西安

As per usual we went to the train station first to dump our bags (I wonder how much we spent on left luggage?), then got a taxi to the Yellow Crane Tower. One driver offered to take us for 100, then lowered his price to 90. There's one price he could shove. We walked away from the train station a bit, and waited for a free even-numbered taxi (there is a restriction on which cars can use which bridges on which days in Wuhan). After about a million hours, we got one (for 25).

We decided we could do this one slowly (which was quite hard, I got too used to Speed Tourism(tm)), so we wandered around slowly, seeing pavilion after pavilion. We saw a stele featuring 2 of Mao's poems, and his "calligraphy," which looks like it was done by a blind person with their feet. Truly awful. But of course, it was Mao, so everyone had to tell him it was good.

We saw lots of things, including the Yellow Crane Tower, which had an exhibit showing it through the ages, and the current one looks nothing like the first one. Suddenly, it was 4:30, and it closed at 5:30, and I wanted to go to the little shop where they painted a picture using the characters of your name. But it was closed when we got there :( On our way, a Chinese girl who was sitting on the grass with her boyfriend ran over and asked "Can I help you? Thank you!" And gave me her camera. We wondered how long they'd sat there waiting.

Having seen all of that, we got a bus to where we had seen Starbucks (oops). But annoyingly, it didn't open until the following day. Rude. So we went into Theatre, a supermarket with loads of imported goods. Including spray deodorant (!!!). So we bought rather a lot. There were two streets we wanted to see at night, but we were both tired and not in the mood, so we just went to the train station to wait for our 10:12pm train. We got talking to a group of Chinese people, who kept telling me my Chinese was better than Nikki's, which I hate. I never know what to say. Eventually, they went on their way, and we waited. And waited. And waited. Nikki went to check the big sign to see if we were in the right room, as our train hadn't appeared on the screens above any of the gate at 9:40 (they let you on to the platform around 20 minutes before the train, and get you to queue a fair bit before that). Then I went a little later, and the signs had changed to 晚点：2302 (Late: 23:02). Poo. We waited some more. And more. The Chinese guy opposite clearly understood everything we said, given away by his laughing at my jokes (which I like, because my jokes are rubbish and really not worth laughing at). At 00:15, we finally got on the train. Nikki and I were separated (Nikki in car 16, me in 12). While on the platform, the Chinese guy starting talking to us in English, proving he did understand. He asked which bit of the train we would be in, and I said 12. So was he. He asked which bed I was in, so I said 18上, he was in 19中. Someone to talk to! But no, there's a wall between 18 and 19. So I just went to sleep until the morning. Exciting.

DAY 22 - XI'AN 西安

In the morning, nothing happened. Once we got off the train, we went for tickets (just for a change), but this time wasn't a simple as one might think. I saw a sign above a door that said 售票厅 (ticket hall), so we headed for it. But part way there, we were stopped by a guyard who asked for our tickets. We didn't have any as yet, obviously. So he very helpfully told us in English that this was a train station. So we had to go back the way we'd come and around a bit market-y bit to get to the ticket office (as he said we weren't allowed to go the way we were going for whatever reason - this is China, you learn to accept these things).

Tickets to Chengdu in hand, we went to get a taxi to the hostel. But at the taxi rank, none of the taxis sitting there empty would take us. But I knew that the hostel was right next to 钟楼(the Bell Tower), so we got a bus there. And found the hostel quite easily. We checked into a 10 bed dorm (hurrah for YHA card, it ended up really cheap :D). I gave them some laundry, and we went to the Muslim quarter. By quarter, I mean one street. Whilst waiting for Nikki, I stuffed my face, as I was bored. So we got to the Muslim bit (which Catherine would absolutely love) and wandered about, realising this was a prime location for procuring tat. Then, we went for food. We decided to try a local delicacy (which we had read about in our reading textbook actually) - 羊肉泡馍 (Mutton boiled flatbread), which was as good as the book said. The portions were huge though. It's basically a big soup with mutton, noodley things and torn up naan in it. Whilst in the restaurant run by the butchest woman in China, we had a bottle of amazing orange stuff, which is sold only in Xi'an, and is essentially orange coloured fizzy sugar water. Nummy.

Quite tired, we just went home and went to bed, planning to get up early and see lots of sights.

DAY 23 - XI'AN 西安

I got up at the crack of 7:30 and showered and got ready to go and see the world famous Terracotta Warriors 秦始皇兵马俑. Nikki slept in a bit, so I checked internet, had terst (toast for those not from Hull) and pretended to write some diary before waking her. We got the bus to the warriors, and battled our way through people telling us a guide was necessary as there were so many 'relics.' Pit 2 was closed, so we saw pits 1 and 3 and saw some exhibitions, one of which had some truly brilliant propaganda. It was amazing how good these things were, considering they were made over 2000 years ago and then lived underground before being accidentally discovered by some farmers digging a well. I would post photos, but see below. Having seen it all, we went to get the bus back to Xi'an, where we bumped into Zack (a guy from Guam who was in our dorm). On the bus, we then saw Lucy and Heidi, two Australian girls from our dorm. Weird.

The bus arrived at its terminus, the train station, where we tried to get a bus to 南门 (the South Gate), but the only gate south we could see was 和平门 (Gate of Peace), so we got that. Then walked through a tourist trap that was actually quite nice and on the way to the 南门. We climbedthe gate and looked around a bit. The views from there are meant to be the best, but all I saw was tall buildings, industry and an expressway.

We headed for the Bell Tower, in order that we might climb it, but it close as we got there (literally, the people one in front of us in the queue got tickets, we didn't) on account of it being New Year's Eve. Slightly disappointed but also quite tired, we went back to the hostel and had some dinner, then showered and got ready to celebrate New Year. Which meant Clean, Nice Clothes and No Hat (!). We went and sat with the Dutch girl from our dorm and had some coktails. 长岛冰茶 (Long Island Iced Tea) nice, XYZ not. We moved to sit with a big group and chatted a bit. We had asked the people in the hostel what was happening to mark the New Year, and we were told we could go to KTV maybe. Not a good sign. After a bit, we went to a club caled Salsa. They had dancers on a glass stage, and some brilliant western music to which we boogied a bit. Some of the people we were with were somewhat undesirable (smoking hash in the club, shouting at the non-English-speaking staff in English, refusing to let people take a chair we weren't using etc.), so we left them and sat with a Chinese guy who had lived in South Africa and was really, really sweaty due to his very enthusiastic dancing (which stopped only to take a swig from his drink). He was really nice, and bought us all a round of weird drinks (I'd seen all night people getting champagne style buckets with sparklers and weird blue and pink drinks in really long stemmed champagne glasses).

Around 2, I was tired so I headed back (via McDonalds (not called Maccas (and not nice either, not sure why I went)). Whilst there, Nikki and the Dutch girl (I wish I could remember her name) caught me up and we walked back together. Heidi came back just afer us, and Lucy was already there. They proceeded to very loudly discuss their nights and their need (mostly Heidi's actually) for "Maccas." They went as far as sticking a note on the door for Zack telling him not to come in without McDonalds. But he never did come back. The poor Korean guy in our dorm must have been getting really annoyed (after spending the new year on his own in the dorm) at the noise, as he was leaving that morning.

DAY 24 - XI'AN (春节 (spring festival, Chinese new year))

So, as we were slightly tired and thirsty, we got up later than normal and got ready. Breakfast at the hostel, where we saw Renée who hadn't yet been to bed as someone else was in it and he had her key, so she couldn't kick him out. Once everyone (us two, the Dutch girl and Heidi & Lucy) were ready (and we've given them yet more laundry), the Dutch girl, Nikki and I went out (Heidi and Lucy were AWOL). Nikki saw some people doing portraits and wanted one, so sat down. Several times the police came, so everyone ran, and Nikki was moved to a corner by a shop. I do always wonder why the police don't let people sell stuff on the streets.

While she was having her picture done, the Dutch girl and I went to get takeout 星巴克. Whilst there, we bumped into Heidi and Lucy who were getting sit-in 星巴克. We went back to Nikki and when she was done, we joined Heidi and Lucy, where we said we were going to go to the Big Goose Pagoda, because at the hostel they had said if anything were going to happen, it would happen there. So we all went to the Muslim bit to buy tat. But I had no intention of buying tat to take it to the pagoda and then back, so after one (painfully slow) tour, we went to find the bus to the pagoda. The bus took us to a big square next to the temple, where, surprise surprise, nothing was happening. We wandered slowly to the entrance of the temple, climbed the pagoda, and then as it was clear Heidi and Lucy didn't want to be there and were annoying us, we went to get the bus to 南门 in case something was happening there (they had built a big stage there, so we hoped something was going to happen). But of course, nothing. So we went back to the hostel and dossed about. We told the Dutch girl everything we knew about places in China to go (as she had no travel route yet for the rest of her trip), and then just went to bed. The whole day was quite the disappointment really.

DAY 25 - XI'AN 西安 => LESHAN 乐山

We had arranged massages for 10am, so we got up quite early and packed ready to check out before our massage. Whilst packing, I organised my things and went to put my wallet, translator, student card and camera into the small bag I use and realised I couldn't find my camera. I checked downstairs and it wasn't there. I thought about it, and came to realiseit had ben stolen on the bus from the Big Goose Pagoda to the South Gate by the horrible old (Han) man who was next to me. I was half raging and half gutted, it had over 700 photos from our travels on it. As I was waiting for Nikki, I went downstairs for breakfast. She has a lot of the same photos as me, which is alright, but some are unreplaceable (posing with a Shaolin monk for example).

When we checked out, about 98436189314897 people on a tour were checking in,s-l-o-w-l-y, and Nikki had to go and tell the massage man we'd be there in a minute (he was waiting for us outside - if we booked through the hostel, he'd only get 50% of the price, so we weren't to tell the hostel). We eventually checked out, put our stuff in the luggage room and went to the massage place. The massage was typically Chinese - fully dressed and not at all relaxing (in fact, painful at times). Afterwards, the woman asked if I wanted to try any other treatments, and I said no. Then they said I could try cupping for free. So I did. Ow. But then, not ow. It was a bizarre feeling, and my back had little round bruises all over it for about a week.

After the massage, we went to buy me a new camera. I wanted a 2GB to go with it to replace the 2GB one I'd lost, but it was hugely more expensive than the same card in the same shop in Urumqi, so I just got the one that came with the camera. New camera in hand, we went to Starbucks for breakfast. We'd checked everything off our Xi'An list except buying tat, so we figured we could take the day easy. After coffee and cake, I went to buy tat, but Nikki couldn't be bothered moving and I was hoping to make the post office, so I went alone. I managed to get a fair bit (bartering was so boring - I was willing to pay the prices they said first time. I obviously still bartered a little, but it hardly seemed worth it), then went back to Starbucks to find Nikki, who wasn't there. So I went back to the hostel, and found her. She wanted to buy tat, so we went back around, and bought a little more. We had no time for dinner before our train, so we got some street food and jumped in a taxi to the train station.

We got on the train and went to go to sleep. We talked a lot, and they turned all the lights off at 9:30 (really early for a train). After a bit, a girl came up to us and said, "Please sleep quickly." Confused. Nikki (after several attempts by this girl) asked her to say it in Chinese, and then we found out the guard had asked her to tell us to keep it down, as other people were trying to sleep (now, if only they'd say that to the Chinese people who sit shouting at each other (just holding a conversation - Chinese men seem to have one volume setting - L.O.U.D.) until 3am.

Day 185: Episode 5

2008-02-24T08:56:00.002Z

DAY 17 - QUFU => YANZHOU => JINING => ZHENGZHOU

What a terribly mafan day. In the morning, we got up and got the bus to Yanzhou (for the nearest train station), but tickets to Zhengzhou were sold out. So we got the 15 minute base back to Qufu to get the bus, but there were no buses. So we went to the train ticket place across the road to get tickets for Wuhan. But they had none. But Ms Simpleton said they had tickets for Zhengzhou, which was exciting. But she was wrong. So we went to the bus station again to try for tickets to Zhengzhou, but from another woman. Which she sold us. We weren't convinced the first woman had properly checked, and it turns out she hadn't. Shortly after, we were told the bus had broken down, we had to return or change the tickets. There were no buses to Wuhan either, on account of the huge snow storms that affected the south of China. But there was a bus to Jining, and from there you could get a bus to Zhengzhou. So we did that. BUT at Jining, she told us there were no tickets to Zhengzhou. But her colleague informed her there were. The incompetence of the staff in Chinese transport will never cease to astound me. Anyway. Finally, we were on our way. On the emptiest bus in the history of time. Full sized coach, there were us and two others. After a while, we pulled over in a little village and picked up 6 migrant workers. The journey was unevenftul, although at one point I was listening to my music with my eyes closed and the driver suddenly blasted music REALLY loudly, scaring the youknowwhat out of me.

At one point, we left the highway and went through some small villages which were really poor. The people were everywhere and the driver had to sit on the horn to get anywhere. It made me feel quite guilty to see their way of life, but then I thought they wouldn't want pity or anything, they were just trying to earn enough to get by. On the doors, they had hung an upside down 福 (the pronunciation of 'upside down fu') sounds the same as 'bringing fortune'), which I thought was sad - where a lot of people do it for tradition, and businessmen do it in hope of a good next year, these people were hoping for their old hut to stand another year, and for no water-borne illnesses to take their family. And I know some people say it's interesting to see these places because it's 'authentic' and not like all the other 'boring cities,' which I think is a horrible attitude, as these people were (largely) desperate to not be there any more.

Eventually, we arrived at Zhengzhou, and after getting quite lost, we got a taxi about ten yards down the road to the Home Inn (如家), which was amazing for 179 for a twin room. We had dinner in the restaurant, where Nikki was told off for taking photos of the amazing duck dish (with little crispy pancakeyish things that had a character for double-happiness (a traditional wedding thing) on them). Then shower and bed, ready for seeing the monks the next day.

DAY 18 - ZHENGZHOU => LUOYANG

Another rather uneventful day. Rather too many of these. The original plan was to go and buy tickets to Luoyang then go to the Shaolin temple and get back to take the train, but we decided to take the next train to Luoyang. But we decided to take the next train to Luoyang, see the Longmen caves then take the bus from Luoyang to Shaolin temple the next day. However, the next train was at 1:38pm. So we got that, had lunch then got the train, which was PACKED. And I mean that quite literally, even busier than the Christmas when the fog grounded all the planes in the UK. People also kept talking about the laowai (foreigners), which really boils my blood because they're just so rude, and talk about us, justifying it with "they don't understand." Well actually, we do. SO we tell them. After two hours and the loss of feeling in one arm, we finally arrived, which was a huge relief. I've never been so close with strangers.

We took a taxi to the hostel after buying tickets for Wuhan, but by this point it was too late to do anything, so we discussed the rest of our route (the joys of speed-tourism: CONSTANT map, book and internet checking to see where you have time to go), adjusted it (for timing, naturally), and went to find food. It seems nearly EVERYWHERE in Luoyang is a hotpot restaurant, but eventually we found one that wasn't. While hotpot is nice, I'm not a huge fan, as I always leave feeling still hungry, and it's really expensive for what you get (not if there's of people, but when there's only two of you...).

We've also recently learnt that young children in China like firecrackers even more than teenagers in the UK like fireworks and vodka. Lovely.

We half-heartedly looked for an internet placey, but not finding one we just went home, where we saw two computers. But they were broken apparently. So we decided to do our internet things the next day.

DAY 19 - SHAOLIN TEMPLE

Today, we got up at a reasonable time, for once. We got ready quickly, despite an awful night's sleep and went to the bus station to get the bus to the Shaolin Temple. We tried to get a taxi and the driver (a woman, as they ALL seem to be in Luoyang) told us to walk. Quite grateful really, it was really close. We ignored the people shouting "Hello! Hello! Shaolin!" and went to get a real bus. But the woman in the ticket office told us to get in one of the horrible buses. So we did.

They tried to charge us 100 each, but we got it for 50 return in the end. As there were few tourists they have to charge more you see. After a bit, they realised there would only be three people, so we were put on a bus headed for Xuchang. We suspected we'd be dropped off miles away, and the bus was a frightful bore, with the woman in front of Nikki vomiting out of the window rather more frequently than is normal for a healthy person.

Eventually, we got there, aware of having been ripped off (everyone else on the bus had paid around 6-15 kuai (but to other places, not Shaolin)), and also thinking we would have to pay more to get back. Ah well, we went to get tickets after Nikki went to the little girls' room, which meant I got talked at by random people trying to sell me tickets and telling me I don't understand. After a fashion, we got our tickets and went to see the monks. Along the road were some brilliant Chinglish signs, so we took lots of photos of those.

Then, the temple. Which was a lot like any other temple really, just with a lot more monks walking around. After the temple and having our photo taken with a random Chinese man, we saw the forest of pagodas. There's something like 600+ pagodas, each one with the ashes of a notable monk, except for the "common pagoda" which is for the non-notable monks. We saw lots of them, including the common one and the first one. We wanted to eat before the show, so scarpered towards the restaurant where one is served by monks. No idea where it was though. We tried at the entrance bit, but we couldn't go out and back in. But there's a restaurant right where the show was, so we went there. It was 1:30 by the time we got there, so we bought postcards and t-shirts (the shame!) before the show at 2. What these monks can do is stupid. One threw a needle through a pane of glass and popped a balloon. One put the tips of spears on his throat and pushed against them hard enough to bend the handles, and another put two metal rods together and smashed them in half with his head. Which led us to wonder what would happen if someone tried to mug them.

After the show, we ate at a not vegetarian restaurant where the staff were not monks. Disappointing. But before eating we had a photo taken with a monk, which made it better.

We got the bus back to Luoyang at 4 (and yes we did have to pay - 15), and went to search for an internet placey, which we actually did this time. After that, we went to Carrefour to buy decent food for the train the next day (i.e. not chicken feet or pickled eggs). And they had real French bread. It was AMAZING. How I miss real bread.

After getting home, we had the worst night's sleep EVER (for me at least). A weird squealing noise kept coming from either the next room or in the walls. All night, at random intervals. It sounded like furniture being moved. Added to that, I woke up with a splitting headache, which made for a less than fun...

DAY 20 - LUOYANG => WUHAN

God what a crappy day. We grudgingly got up and got ready, feeling like death. We had hoped to go out between 8 and 8:30, but didn't make it out 'til 9. We dumped our bags at the train station and got a stupidly expensive taxi to the Longmen caves. The taxi driver kept pointing things out, like huge residential complexes, saying they were pretty. Bit of an eyesore if you ask me.

We were worried about time, as our train wa at 1:40pm, but the caves don't take up that big an area, inspite of there being around 2300, not counting niches (9000ish). So having finished quite quickly, in spite of exhaustion, we got a stupidly expensive taxi to the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China. Turns out, it's actually not in Luoyang, but a nearby town named after the temple. It was rather like every other temple actually, and the current one is all new (relatively - it was rebuilt in the Tang dynasty).

Having seen that, we got back in the taxi to get the very uneventful train to Wuhan. I had expected it to be like the train to Luoyang, but it was relatively quiet. We had no seats, but we found a bit by the train door behind one of the doors at the end of the carriages, so it was quite private. We got constant stares, just for a change, and considered hanging something over the glass and charging 2 kuai a look. We'd be filthy rich if we had.

Eventually, we got to Wuhan, jumped in a taxi to the hostel, and went to bed. The hostel was run by a British guy and a possibly Swedish girl. The British guy was telling us about how when he went to get his Chinese visa, he ook his old passport as it had a previous Chinese visa, which they might have wanted to see. When he got the two passports back, they had stapled them together. How typical.

DAY 183: Episode 4

2008-02-22T09:22:00.002Z

DAY 13 - HARBIN => CHANGCHUN => SHENYANG => DALIAN (or, the day of three provinces)

This was a rather dull day really. We got an early train to Changchun, had lunch in "Favourite Land," and a short time later we got on the train to Shenyang, where we did nothing much really, but we did buy noodles, which ended up going rather farther than expected. The noodles were because our journey was 8 hours, and there's a law in China that you're not allowed to get on a train without instant noodles. But actually, our train journey ended up being only 4 hours and 9 minutes. It was a nice train too, soft seater, which we had never done before.

On arrival at stupid pm in Dalian, we got in a taxi to the Jinjiang inn, and slept rather a lot. In a rather comfortable bed. Not that expensive, and really classy. Brilliant.

DAY 14 - DALIAN => YANTAI

So, the day I had been dreading had arrived. It's also another day where basically nothing happened. We got up, got a cab to the ferry port and chatted loads to the driver, who showed us nice bits of Dalian. We bought our tickets for the ferry (which I assumed was the 3.5 hour one), had some lunch and killed some time (read: stalled) for a bit, then went to the waiting room. After a bit, we were put on a bus with the other 10 passengers, which led me to fear that we were going to be on a really small boat. We drove about 700 miles to the boat, when I was relieved to see it was a real boat. With about 3496873946791387698 people on it. We went to find out seats in the seating room, but there were none left. We were in seats 5 and 6, but the actual seats had no numbers on them. And they were all taken anyway. And not a single person in the room did not STARE. In a really obnoxious way. It was hardcore gawking and laughing at us. I'm quite used to staring, having been in China for 6 months now, but this was in a league of it's own, and was probably the worst I'd had up until that point.

So as we had nowhere to sit, we decided to sit in the corridor. Have you ever heard the stories about how the Chinese over fill their boats and they sink? Well, this one was quite full. Didn't sink, but was definitely overfull. At one point, this guy came up to me and just started blabbing (would a 'hello' or an 'excuse me' have hurt? Maybe not in China, but in the west we tend to start conversations with strangers with something other than just...mid-conversation), and as I hadn't been aware that he was talking, I didn't respond, and he assumed I didn't understand. Which annoyed me.

Well, as I really REALLY don't like boats, I just got stuck into my book (100 Years of Solitude by Gael Garcia Marquez - one of the best books in the history of time - read it).

Anyway, at just after 9pm we finally arrived in Yantai, and took the free bus to town, from where we took a taxi to the youth hostel and went to bed. There's rather a lot of posts where that features multople times.

DAY 15 - YANTAI => JINAN

Finally, a day we did things! Firstly, we went to buy train tickets and put our bags in left luggage, which was not the most exciting thing we did by far. Then we wandered around looking for Korean food, as we had heard that the Korean food in Yantai is some of the best in China, on account of all the ethnic Koreans there.

But after an hour, no joy. How bizarre. So we ate at a random Chinese place, where the waitress pointed out the western food, which I quite frankly did not want. We each go a set meal, mine Chicken Curry, Nikki's some kind of beef. We also ordered some Oolong tea, which was marvelous. Our food came as the main thing, rice, soup, kimchee-esque stuff, a green leafy veg in gravy and a weird yellow-ish substance. It had a texture between thick yoghurt and jelly that got waterier further down, and had crabstick, ham and possibly other delights. Needless to say, I didn't eat mine. The rest was really good though. The drink that came with it was weird though - cold and slightly sweet, with an almost tea flavour somewhere. No idea what it was.

Anyway, I talk about food too much. After eating, we had a look for an internet place, where we found Tracey had sent us loads of useful things about Yantai (she used to live there), so we copied it all down and went to find the number 17 bus from the train station. On the way to the train station from the internet placey, we went though a huge night market, which was cool. Loads of people were selling small (whole) squids on sticks that they fried right in front of you. Kind of gross. We couldn't find it, so we got another bus to the university. But it was the wrong university. So we got a bus to a stop labelled Train Station, and discovered that the train station currently in use is a temporary one, as they have demolished the old one and are putting a new one in its place. And the 17 didn't stop their temporarily, or so I thought. I realised after I had translated wrong, the sign said "temporary bus stop" but I read it as "temporarily stops being a bus stop." But anyway.

So we took a taxi to the Yantai university (working on assumption here), and ended up at the right place. The road the cab took had nicer views than from the bus actually. Anyway, we got there and found the Korean place Tracey had recommended. We had sea slug, a big pancakey type thing, some fried meat and possibly something else, I forget. Oh, and Kimchee of course. Problem is, by this point, my cold was at its peak, and I could nothing. But I still tried it all, and I think it was all nice, although sea slug is a small quantities food. The texture was not what I expected either - crunchy and stringy.

Anyway, having eaten, we went back to town to collect our bags and wait for the train.

DAY 16 - JINAN => QUFU

So, at 5:45am we were woken by the conductor, our train getting in at 6:15. At Jinan, we went straight to the bus station and bought our tickets to Qufu. Jinan is a total dump, as we had been told and as we had seen in our short time there, so we were on the 7:30am bus out of there.

On arrival in Qufu, we got in a taxi with a woman who couldn't be bothered. She said her meter was broken, but then only asked for 5, which is the flagfall, so maybe it was. En route, she asked where we were going to go, and then pulled over, saying we were next to the Confucius Mansion, which I had said in response. I explained that we had wanted to go to the place that I had told her (the hostel) first, and she drove on.

After another short stretch of road, she pulled over and informed us it was down the road to the left, which had a big sign in the middle of the road, which I took to be a no-car sign. We walked right down the road without finding it. So we walked right back up. Back where we started, we discovered that the sign actually said no parking. We both instinctively veered left, and it was about 40 yards ahead. Lazy taxi driver clearly just couldn't be bothered.

We checked in and went to do laundry - life on the edge! But we couldn't find the machine. So we asked at reception, and she said to go to the second floor. We found it! We only had handwashing soap, so we soaped everything up, put them in the machine (this makes more sense than it sounds, Chinese ashing machines are both strange and look like they were made by Mattell). But we had no hot water. So I tried the shower 9in the same room), but it ran cold. So I went down to the bit labelled "hot water," but the boiler was turned off. SO we washed with cold water.

Clothes clean and drying, we set off. First, the Confucius Temple where we saw lots of nice things. Having seen that, we decided to go for lunch. We found a nearby restaurant and had Confucius style Chicken and Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple. Confucius style Chicken is actually just a whole roast chicken in gravy, and by whole I mean that quite literally - head, feet, the works. Nummy :D

Having eaten, it was off to the Confucius Mansions, where we didn't meet the 75th descendant of Confucius. That was at the Temple, and we were ripped off by him. One scroll was 180, the other was 100, so I offered around 200. He said no, he would go no lower than what he'd said: 300. So I said no, that was higher than the price, I decided to buy them because it was 280. He said: okay, 280's okay. I think that was his way of stopping me bartering. But then, instead of my change, they gave me a picture. Then kept trying to sell us stuff. The whole place (both the Temple and the Mansion) really annoyed me, because you couldn't move for people selling you things, and a good third of the rooms were shops selling tourist tat.

We took a walk down to Queli Arch, as the emperors once did, then took our first rickshaw in China to the Confucius Cemetery. It was rather an anti-climax, it was one mound in the middle of a (really quite nice) forest.

We walked from the cemetery to a road where we could get a taxi back to the hostel, and ended up back at the hostel. We decided to mail our scrolls and some other bits back home, so I took 3 books I had read and didn't want to carry any more. On arrival at the post office, I was informed one of my scrolls was too big and I couldn't send it. However, there were some very inventive and clever ladies in this post office (unlike the one at Hongshan in Urumqi (the one from where you can send parcels)), who managed to stick two boxes together and fit it. So my parcel (contents: 500; postage: 200) should arrive around the end of March.

By this point it was 6pm, and we didn't really know what to do. So we went to check out our plans to Wuhan to our trip, to see if it was feasible. Nikki needed more notebooks for her diary and I wanted postcards. Did you know there are no postcards in Qufu? Giving up on our quest for postcards (notebooks had been acquired successfully earlier), we went to eat two recommended Qufu foods - 阳关山叠 and 诗礼银杏. The first was alright, it was sort of a pancakey folded up thing. But the other one? Good GOD it was horrible. Little yellow balls (whose identity was revealed later) in a weird silvery translucent goop. I was eating the wraps while Nikki ate the goop, and she didn't like the wraps and I didn't like the goop. When she first tried the yellow things, she swore she tasted aniseed, but I didn't. But as I was eating the wrap-esque things, I suddenly got it rather strong. Fortunately I was already full, because aniseed is one of the worst anti-foods ever.

We went home and had I showered before getting into bed. Our room was cold so we'd had the a/c on heat all day, but it suddenly made a very strange noise and just stopped it, so we turned it off and went to sleep in the coldest room in the history of time.

Day 167: Episode 4

2008-02-22T09:06:00.001Z

DAY 11 - TIANJIN

Bright and early we got up and took the train to Tianjin, after picking up laundry and our flight tickets to Harbin. On arrival, we got a taxi to the hostel I had written down, with a driver who had the worst retroflex I have ever heard in my life (the retroflex is where they pronounce a word as if it ends in 'r' instead of whatever it should end in, or sometimes they drop the second syllable of a two syllable word and just pronounce the first syllable, but ending in an 'r.' Completely incomprehensible. Hate it). Neither of us had any idea what he was saying most of the time. He kept suggesting we go to places other than where we wanted to go, we think, but I told him I had a reservation at the hostel (a lie), and that shut him up.

We checked in and went pretty much straight back out, to explore the main delights of Tianjin, starting with the Old Cultural Street. It's essentially a tourist trap of shops trying to look like old China. We had candy floss, and went to a jade shop. I wanted a jade rabbit on a red string (2011-2012 is the year of the rabbit, and as I'm a rabbit, that will be an unlucky year for me. So if you wear something red at all times, you're safe. And why not have something tacky like a jade rabbit on it? (And by the way, jade I always expected to be expensive, but it's really not.), and they had a really nice one here. The lady kept going on about how we were friends, and then told me 300 kuai for the rabbit. My haggling skills clearly need some work, I offered 200 (still slightly more than I'd like to pay, but I didn't want to start too low), and pulled a face, then whispered '220, we're friends.' Then immediately shook her head and whispered '200, we're friends.' Should have started at 150, the price I was hoping for. She kept on about us being friends, and told us to come back and see her - we're friends after all. After some more wandering and tour group dodging, we decided to head to 南市食品街, the food street.

Which is not so much a food street as more of a mall that's made only of food places. We went into one little place and tried the recommended local delicacies - 狗不理包子. The guidebook translates that as the son of a restauranteur baozi (steamed bun type things, there's no decent translation), but I don't buy it, as the Chinese character for character means dog not pay attention baozi. But anyway. They were not unlike regular baozi to be honest. In fact, I have no idea what makes them special.

Having eaten our fill and seen the bits of Tianjin we wanted to see (we also saw the Bell Tower on our walk, but if I'm honest, all bell towers look the same, and I no longer care if I see the, I've probably seen about 20 now). We decided to go and sample some slightly less local delicacies at 星巴克. By this point, we were absolutely knackered, so went home to go to bed. At 8pm. Life on the edge. But when we turned off the light in the hostel room, we had the opposite problem to in Shijiazhuang - it was bright enough to read.

DAY 12 - TIANJIN => HARBIN

At ridiculous o'clock (about 4), we got up, got ready and checked out to get a taxi to the airport for our 7am flight. Not much fun. There were other white people on the plane, which was WEIRD, but what disconcerted me more was that the airline was called OK Air! Wonderful. Just sounds like the plane is going to drop out of the sky, doesn't it?

Having landed in one piece, we got the shuttle bus to the train station, where we were greeted in the standard Chinese way: shouts of "Hello! Taxi!" (although taxi is more often pronounced like taxes, which I don't want, or tackus, which just sounds funny.) Difference is, this was entirely in Russian. Harbin is in Heilongjiang province, on the border with Russia in the far north east of the country, and there's a large Russian population there. I refuse to get in taxis where the driver runs up and starts hitting my arm and shouting at me, trying to rip me off, (and regularly whistling and making other dog-calling noises - I realise I'm white, so look different, but I am in fact still a human) so we walked around the corner and got in the taxi of a guy who was just sitting quietly in his car. At the hostel, we dumped our bags and went straight out.

We started with buying our tickets to Changchun, then tried to get a bus to Central Avenue. Not as easy at it sounds. At the bus stops were people telling you which bus to get, as the signs were apparently all wrong. After a small road crossing hiccup (we managed to end up further from where we wanted to be), we were offered assistance by a young Chinese girl. She took us on the bus which stoped a short distance away and walked us to the street.

We were very grateful, then she went on our merry way and decided to check the book to see if there was anywhere good to eat there. At which point the girl came back and led us to the restaurant we had chosen, although we knew that it was around 20 yards away. We went in, and there was some confusion over how many were in our party - was she with us? Grateful though we were, we hoped not. We sat down, the two of us, and ordered. While we were perusing the menu, she pointed out chips, which I assumed meant "you're white, you eat these." Then she went and sat by the door, moving between there and right behind our table for quite some time. The Russian food was nice, although I was quite confused to be told they had no hot water, so we couldn't have the tea we ordered.

When we finished eating we sat for a while, as most of the things we wanted to do were better after dark. We also didn't know what to do about the girl. But after around 20 minutes of us sitting doing nothing, she just left. We walked the streets for a while, then went to look at the river, to se if there was anything interesting there. There was.

First, a 10 kuai ice slide which was really rather good fun. From the bottom, which was the river, we saw small seat trpe contraptions which you used two big sticks to propel on the ice. The guys renting them out were incapable of speech, which got a sarcastic comment from me and an angry shout from Nikki. Eventually, we worked out that they wanted 50 kuai as a deposit, and went for a whirl. After a few minutes though, we were well and truly frozen. Cue ten minutes of trying to get back to the 'desk,' as it was up a very slight slope. Nikki even crashed into a stall in the process, which amused me a lot. On our return, we tried to get our 30 kuai each back. He gave us ten. Together. So we shouted at him, and we got ten each. I asked if it was 20 for Chinese people and 40 for foreigners. He laughed, and then told the Chinese people nearby that it was indeed 20 for Chinese people, 40 for foreigners. So Nikki shouted a lot. Then grabbed our money, which he accepted. Nikki then promptly slipped and fell on the ice, and couldn't get up.

We walked along the river a little and came to another slide, which we decided to try. It was 30 kuai, but instead of 1 go, you got 30 minutes of goes. And it was way more fun than the first one. It was on a <strike>tyre</strike> <strike>dingy</strike> round-thing, and the horrible horrible man kicked us down the slope, so we love him. Toward the end, the evil balacavaed (is that a word?) man starting spinning us too, which was terrifying for the first few seconds, but immense fun.

After that, we were quite cold so walked towards the cable car across the river, stopping to buy a warm drink (of Sprite...only in China) on the way. We could have walked over the river, and as we both hate cable cars, it would have been a much better idea. But we're not very wise. It was at this point I realised I had forgotten my Student Card, so I paid double what Nikki did.

In the cab;e car, after much fearful giggling and kchchkchkkchchhhkchh which was smoother than normal, some random Chinese people in one going t'other way waved, so we waved back. Then waved at the solitary passenger in the next one. From the cable car, we saw something that looked rather fun - driving on the solid ice. They had a load of cars and a race track for you to drive round.

Eventually we landed, and went to go and see the snow sculpture competition, where again I was thrilled to be privileged to pay double what Nikki paid. The sculptures were stupidly good, and in 30 minutes we'd seen practucakky akk if them, so we got the free bus to the thing we wanted to see most - the world famous ice festival. Which was so good I could just wee. But after having seen just over half the sculptures, the -30 was getting to me, so we went for a 20 kuai instant hot chocolate. Which helped, but didn't fully thaw me. But still, we managed to see the rest of the sculptures, and Nikki bought some tat. Then we began the walk to the city centre, as the Cathedral of St Sophia was at the end of the road, but as we've noticed on rather a few occasions, the guidebook is wrong. At the end of the huge bridge, we got a taxi (they weren't allowed to stop on the bridge you see), but the driver didn't know where he was going. We got there in the end though, only for Nikki's last batteries to die. Cut to a length (10 minute) search for bateries. Photos taken and some oohing and aahing at the pretty church done, we had dinner and went home to bed.

But the taxi driver didn't take us to where we wanted to be (Xuefu lu 4 dao, for those in the know), but rather, dropped us at Heilongjiang Daxue, about a 15 minute walk away. But it wasn't so bad, as we'd thawed over dinner and in the taxi.

Day 165: Episode 3

2008-02-04T03:19:00.001Z

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).

Day 155: Episode 2

2008-01-29T09:32:00.001Z

Time for another installment in the Spring Festival extravaganza!

DAY 4 - HOHHOT

We had decided to get up around 7 to have our first shower since Yinchuan (icky) and head out early to see everything we wanted to see. I didn't even hear Nikki's alarm, which she had turned off. So at 10:20 or so I dragged myself out of bed to discover we had no hot water. So no shower. Icky.

We got ready and went to get a cab to 昭君墓, the mausoleum of a once imperial concubine. She wasn't actually a concubine, she was a candidate who was left waiting and never got picked. So when a decision was made to send one of the candidates to the Huns as a peace-making marriage, the emperor sent her. He had never seen her, and at the wedding he was less than pleased, as she was actually very beautiful, and he thought her ugly, as the painter intentionally painted her ugly in return for her not bribing him. Still, the marriage worked and they all lived happily ever after. Anyway, as I was saying, the taxi cost 60 kuai as it was at the other side of a toll gate. We saw the tomb and stuff, and that was nice, then tried to find the bus stop back. But an unlicensed cab appeared and offered to take us to our hotel for 50 kuai. But we weren't going to a hotel, we were going to eat 稍麦, a local specialty (which are essentially dumplings (although I have to say, dumplings is a bad translation)). They were nice, but not as amazing as the guidebook had made out.

The restaurant was conveniently right next to the temples we wanted to visit - 席力图, 大召 and 五塔寺. The first two were nice and all, but there's not much to say about Buddhist temples Photos were forbidden inside the halls, so I have very few, and I think even if they were allowed, I would have felt rude taking them, as it was an active place of worship with people praying in almost every hall.

After the first two, we tried to find the last one, the 5 Pagoda Temple. They made a good job of hiding it. When we eventually found it, we went to the south end to find the entrance, as the entrance is always on the south. We went to the ticket office, but there was nobody there. The door into the temple was also locked. So, disappointed, we wandered around the building trying to find a decent place to take photos over the wall. I got some bad ones, then we walked to the main road that runs past the north of the temple to get a taxi, and found a ticket office with people in it and an open door! We bought a ticket and went in, saw the five pagoda pagoda (originally there were five pagodas, each with 5 pagodas on top of them, but only one remains), and then tried to look in all the rooms. But they were all padlocked shut. So we tried to find the astronomical map which is entirely in Mongolian, and is the only one of its kind. After much searching, particularly of the south wall where it was supposed to be, I wandered around the back of the pagoda (at the north end) out of curiosity, and found it, as well as two other things (although I have no idea what they were). It was a bit of an anti-climax if I'm honest.

One weird thing about the temples - all the mopnks have mobile phones and we saw a group of youngish monks messing around with a ball in trainers. I realise they are people too, but it did strike me as somewhat strange.

We went back to the hostel and sat under the covers to thaw for a while, before going for dinner. The guidebook recommended a place for good roast lamb (another local speciality), so we tried to walk there. We had walked quite a distance before we realised we had been walking the wrong direction. So we jumped in a taxi. On arrival, we were seated in a yurt and then tried to order a thing of sheep ribs. The conversation went like this:

Stupid Waitress: This is ship, this is beef (pointing at the menu)

Us: The sheep.

SW: This is sheep, this is beef.

Us: The sheep.

SW: This is sheep, this is sheep, and this is beef (she had been pointing at more sheep and saying beef the whole time)

Us: The sheep.

SW: You want the sheep?

Us: Uhm...yes?

Then she tried to force booze on us, but as I would rather drink stale pee than 白酒 and our train the next morning left at 8am, there was not a chance. But she kept pushing it. Even when we told her several times that we don't drink, she still wasn't having any of it. Eventually, she took the hint. The milk tea was revolting, and the weird milk things Nikki got were 'unusual.' The cabbage and sheep were really good though. Like, really really good. I don't know how they do it, but fat on meat here is really really nice, better than the meat sometimes. As was proved when I rejected meaty bits for fatty bits. How the times have changed.

When we got back, we showered and packed, and while Nikki was in the shower, we got a phone call that went a little like this:

Me: Hello?

Mysterious Woman: Hello

Me: Hello.

MW: I'm a masseuse, do you need a massage?

At this point, I was tempted to say no I didn't, but that my girlfriend had been complaining of a sore back, and I would ask her (for the record, Nikki is not my girlfriend, but I figured the prostitute on the end of the phone didn't need to know that.). I decided not to though, and just told her no. I had heard before about prostitutes calling round hotel rooms looking for clients, but this was my first one.

DAY 5 - HOHHOT => DATONG

On the 8am train, Nikki and I were not seated together, which meant creating my own entertainment. So I stared out of the window, ate some cookies, stared out of the window some more, tried unsuccessfully to sleep a little, and stared out the window some more. Then loads of people suddenly got off, so I moved next to Nikki, where we were next to Chatty McChatterson, who kept trying his really bad English (which he had studied for 10 years). He took a photo of us, then one of him with each of us. He took my email and said he would send me the photos, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that, it's been 10 days now. Nikki started feeling unwell, so when we got to the hotel (not the one I had found on the internet, whose prices were hugely greater than the ones online), we just lazed about for a while. Which turned into all day. End of Day 5.

DAY 6 - DATONG => TAIYUAN

In the morning, Nikki was feeling much better, so we went to the Yungang Caves 云冈石窟. We got a taxi to the bus station with a really friendly driver, and took the number 3 bus (for 1.5 kuai - really quite glad we didn't book the 100 kuai tour). The caves were cool, lots of big impressive stone carvings, but there's not much to say about them really. After a scout about there and an unsuccessful search for the Zhou Enlai memorial hall, we got the bus back to town.

We got a taxi to the Huayan Monastery 华严寺 with a really nice driver, who informed us there were two right next to each other, and gave us directions to the 9 Dragon Screen 九龙壁. The first part of the monastery was a con, there was nothing there. So we went to the second part, not hoping for much, and it was much much better. And half the price.

After exploring there for a bit, we did the 9 Dragon Screen and Drum Tower (which was disappointing, it was surrounded by a big fence).

Frozen to the core, we headed back to the train station, several hours early. We sat in an internet placey for 4 hours or so, then went to get some noodles for dinner. Then came our first sleeper train.

When you get on, you go to your assigned bed and the staff swap your ticket for a small credit card sized thing saying which bed you're in. Then when you get off, they give you your ticket back, because without a ticket you can't get out of the train station. We were on the top bunks, which is about 18 inches below the ceiling, but surprisingly comfortable. I lay reading my book for a while, when they suddenly (and without warning) turned out the lights, so I went to sleep. And slept surprisingly well.

And that's all for this installment. Tune in some time, next week, for more.

Day 152: The Spring Festival Travels Begin

2008-01-21T04:13:00.001Z

So, we're stuck in Taiyuan waiting for a train that leaves in 5 hours, so I thought I'd post the first part of my travels. Photos will either be added to this post later, or added as one big post at the end, I'll let you know.

DAY 1 - URUMQI乌鲁木齐=>YINCHUAN银川 (also known as the day I wrote the least detail)

At 6:30am, my alarm went off. So of course, I hit snooze, but then I remembered that Catherine was elaving around 7am for her flight to Shenzhen, and I wouldn't see her for over a month, and we had to leave around 8:30, so I figured I should just get up. I finished packing and skipped breakfast (too early in the day for food) and we got a taxi to the airport, for a rather uneventful flight to Yinchuan. After getting the shuttle bus to town, we walked for about three minutes before finding a 招待所 (A hostelly guesthousey type of thing. Really cheap, not too bothered about the legal paperwork (the government like to track our movements by making us register our presence in every hotel, using our passport).). We dumped the bags and headed to Tourist Site Number 1 - 承天寺 (Chengtian Temple). Which was quite the waste of time and money. One out of the three exhibits was open, and you couldn't climb the pagoda. So we went to Tourist Site Number 2 - 海宝塔 (Haibao Pagoda), which was cheaper and more worth it, although the steps in the pagoda were horribly small, making the climb and the descent quite uncomfortable. Tourist Site Number 3 was the 南关清真寺 (Nanguan Mosque), which was alright. We weren't allowed in the prayer hall (fair enough really), so we saw a fairly rubbish museum which was essentially a lot of photos of famous people I'd never heard of visiting the mosque.

We decided to go for food, so we searched out the 老毛手抓美食楼, a restaurant recommended in the guidebook. We headed in the really vague direction the book gave us, and when we realised we weren't going to find it, we tried to ask a lady on the street. But as soon as we approached her, she shook her head and ran off. Even though Nikki spoke to her in Chinese. A nice man then came over, and walked us to the place, which was quite far, and then walked past shortly after to check we got in okay. We ordered an Yinchuan speciality, 手抓羊肉 (Hand grabbed mutton). It came by the kilo, and as neither of us have any idea what a kilogram looks like, we ordered one kilo. Turns out, that's quite a lot. We also ordered 韭菜炒香干, which was Chinese Chives fried with some kind of tofu. Quite nice really. We did try to order a 羊肉小炒, although that never came (and having seen the quantity of food we had ordered already, that's probably a good thing). The food was really, really good, although the tea was weird. When we sat down, there were cups of what looked a lot like dates, sultanas etc. in old crusty sugar. They added hot water, and it turned out there were tea leaves underneath, but it was so sickly sweet I couldn't drink it.

After eating, we got a cab home to dump some things and go out for a walk. But we ended up discussing our route for this trip again, and changing little bits, and adding Chongqing and Chengdu to the route, which means I might get to hold a baby panda for my 21st birthday :D:D:D

DAY 2 - YINCHUAN银川 => <strike>YANAN 延安</strike> BAOTOU 包头 (Also known as the day I wrote too much)

At 7:30, we woke up, showered in the most mafan (Chinese: 麻烦, meaning troublesome. But who says that?) way known to man (it was a shower head directly over a western toilet.), and headed to 南门 (South Gate) from where we heard we could get a bus to the Western Xia Imperial Tombs (西夏王陵). First, we bought our bus tickets to Yan'an, for the 5:30pm bus (the latest one we could get, and as it's a looooong way, we decided to do it overnight), and asked about buses to the tombs, but they said they didn't do buses there from the bus station itself. So we wandered around 南门 (which looked a LOT like a mini Tian'anmen 天安门广场 square) looking for a bus. Realising there wasn't one, we asked a bus driver who was playing with the side of his bus, and he said to go to 'xinye square.' So we walked in the direction he pointed, and realising we couldn't find it, decided to ask someone. He said there was no such square. So we decided to get in a taxi, and ask the driver to take us to the stop where the bus to the tombs went from. She suggested we take her taxi, for 100 kuai. We realised it was more convenient (no waiting for buses, warmth, probably not hugely more expensive), so we did the 32km in her taxi. The tombs really are in the middle of nowhere. We bought our cheap tickets (yay for student cards) and started walking up the road. It was so cold, so when the little bus thing pulled up by us, we were rather relieved. Only thing is, it was colder in the bus, as the sides were open, and it was windy. We finally arrived at a big building, outside which was a giant stone wall, carved with both Chinese and Xia characters. We took some photos with the Xia characters and then went into what turned out to be a museum. We ran around looking at a lot of old bowls and avoiding tour groups (more on how I hate them at a later date). We wanted to see a tomb, so we went a little along from the museum to what looked like a tomb, judging by the models we'd just seen inside. It turned out not to be. But it had guard towers, which we climbed, from where we could see how to get to a tomb. Once we were on the path up to the tomb, it became stupidly obvious how to get there. We walked around the tomb a little, trying to take photos, but the weather and the weird light made that really difficult. We found the entrance to the tomb itself, but you couldn't go in. Just before, we'd been saying that if you could go in, would we? I decided I would, scary though it would be, but then we couldn't, so no fear required. We went back to the taxi, but only after taking photos with the Kalavinkas (if anyone has any idea what they are, please let me know).

At this point, the taxi driver asked if we wanted to go to another place, the name of which I had never heard, and which was apparently a film studio. So we went. And it was exactly that. There were two and a bit parts - Ming city, Qing city and a really little bit about the cultural revolution. It was interesting enough, but I was cold and stopped caring after a while - not having seen any of the films didn't help matters much. When we got back to the taxi, she asked us for an extra 100 kuai, because we're students. On our return to the bus station, she explained it should have been 260, but because we were students, she would give us it for 200. Her daughter was also a student, so she understood we weren't rich apparently. We tried haggling, but she was having none of it.

We had a while before our bus, so we went for food at a little place near the bus station. It was alright, but the staf were rude. As soon as we went in, the waitress came over, then without saying anything to us, turned to the other staff members and shouted: 他们听不懂 (they don't understand). We proved her wrong. After waiting for a while in the bus station, we went out to the stand for our bus, where were told to wait a minute, as it hadn't come in yet. Around 5:15, we were told it wasn't coming at all, and we were to refund our tickets. We took a taxi to the train station, and joined the slowest queue in the history of time. Well, only after SEARCHING the timetable for Yan'an, and not being able to find it. So we looked at the map to see if there was a line, but we couldn't even find Yinchuan. Turns out, the map was not geographical. How logical.

There was a train to Baotou, stop number three on our route, at 6:43pm. It was currently 6pm. We could make it. But the line was the slowest in the history of time, so by the time we got to the front, it was 6:40pm, and they stopped selling tickets 15 minutes before departure. To say I was unimpressed does't even come close - people kept pushing in at the front, and the woman at the front was going really slowly. So we got tickets for the next train to Baotou - 00:40. With no seats. Then, to kill six hours.

We sat in the quieter of the two waiting rooms (unsure of which was ours) and starting wrinting our travel journals (which, to be honest), is the only way I could possibly remember all of this). Trips to the shop, toilet and reading my book helped pass the time, but it was so COLD in the waiting room. Nikki had seen a warmer room, which was 8 to get into, so we went in and got a free cup of tea. We huddled by the heater and played cards for a bit, ate some noodles, tried (without much success) to sleep. At around 10:30, they suddenly switched off all the lights without warning. We were let into the soft seat waiting room though, which was nice. We played some more cards, and I was too scared to sleep, because anyone that tried around me had "GET UP!" screamed in their ear.

Eventually, we got on the train and made seats out of our bags at one end of the carriage. Only problem was a) it was freezing with the door open; 2) no one shut the door and iii) it was seriously uncomfortable. I tried sleeping a little, but really couldn't. Nikki found two seats around 4am, but no sooner had I sat down when the guy who had been sitting there 20-30 minutes before came back and ordered me to get up. The nice guy across the aisle let me sit in his seat for a while.

At just after 7am, we got into Baotou. Straight to the ticket office to book our tickets to Hohhot (book early or no seats/trains), where for some unknown reason we were pushed to the front of the queue by staff. Not complaining, we got tickets and went to get a taxi to the bus station to get a bus to Genghis Khan's mausoleum (成吉思汗陵). En route, the taxi driver informed us that there may not be any buses, on account of the snow. When we got there, a load of people crowded round the taxi informing us that there were. On getting out of the taxi however, it was a different story. There were no buses, we had to get a taxi. One guy offered to take us to Dongsheng, a nearby city, for 100 kuai each. One way. So that was 200 round trip, then we had to get from Dongsheng to the mausoleum and back. Somebody else offered to take us to the mausoleum, wait for us, then take us back, for 1000 kuai. Never going to happen. He would go no lower than 800, and for 800 we had to take another passenger. There were no buses and nothing to do in Baotou, so we didn't really have much choice.

We got in the taxi, and a really obnoxious woman got in the taxi as well, and we got on our way. Although I needed the toilet, and I discovered later that Nikki did too. We figured it wouldn't be far, so it was okay. We were getting there pretty rapidly when the police pulled the taxi over. They looked at our passports, asked a load of questions, such as "Why are you in China?" "How long have you been here?" "What is the relationship between you and the girl?" Fun fun fun. Eventually, we were allowed to go on our way, and as we left, one of the policemen said: "欢迎再来" (Welcome to come again). I wished I knew how to say "fat chance" in Chinese.

Eventually, we dropped the obnoxious woman off and went on our way to the mausoleum. After buying our tickets, we made a beeline for the restroom, before seeing the mausoleum properly. We took a lot of photos, and say a museum which was built in the shape of the Mongolian word 'hehan' (emperor). We tried to go to the old site of the mausoleum, but it turneds out to be a different site, and the mausoleum isn't even there, so we went back, as we had to be on a train at 7:55pm. We got back around 4:30, around two hours earlier than I expected going by what the taxi driver had said before we got on in the morning. We ate some not very good food, and then waited for much shorter than 6 hours in a considerably warmer waiting room.

Eventually, we arrived and bought our tickets to Datong immediately, then went to find the Anda Guesthouse, which came highly recommended. It's traditional Mongolian style, and in a convenient location, and reasonable priced. But it doesn't exist. Number 78 on that road does not exist. We went to a hotel on Train Station Road instead, which was really quite alright, and not that much more expensive.

And I'm leaving it here, because I am getting some serious cramp in my hand. More later at the next stop where there is internet access and lots of time to kill.

As promised...

2008-01-14T03:31:00.000Z

One map...

(I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that when the Chinese say their country looks like a rooster, they're really not kidding. It really does look like a rooster)

Day 144: The last part of Christmas/New Year

2008-01-12T09:30:00.000Z

Apologies for the delay, thinks have been quite hectic here at Urumqi Towers, what with preparing to go away in 36 hours.

DAY 9: HANGZHOU

So, the day after we went to Tangkou, we decided to make the most of our day, which unfortunately fell flat on its face. We first went to book flights back to Urumqi, and the choices were either that day for 2100 or the next day (Hogmanay) for 1600. So we took the Hogmanay ones. After going to the bank to get cash to pay for them (well, Nikki getting cash to pay for both, see lost credit card), we paid for them, with Nikki convinced we were going to miss New Year. We were due back into Urumqi at 22:20, which gave us time to get a taxi home and quickly change, then get a taxi to the pub. These details are important, remember them.

So, after booking flights, I had to go to the bank to change my reserve Traveller's Cheques, as it was the only money I could get at that time. We waited a much shorter time than we had waited in Beijing, which was nice. But then the woman took what felt like hours to process it, and talking about how ~~mafan~~ much hassle it was. Charming.

Armed with my newly aquired 1000 kuai (600 of which went straight to Nikki for part of the flight, so I owed her 1000 exactly), we walked down to a main road to get a taxi to a shopping street Nikki wanted to visit. After an hour, we gave up and went back to the hostel, to see if we could find a bus route on the internet. But someone was using the only computer. So we decided to go and try another taxi. Waited a long time, decided to give up, but just then, a taxi pulled up next to us and some people got out. Two girls that were trying to steal our taxi before (had we had one) ran towards it, and we dithered at the door slightly, before jumping in and laughing at them. To be fair, we largely got the taxi so they couldn't. Anyway, we went to this shopping street, and it turned out to be around 50 feet from where we had been waiting previously, and it also turned out to be a total bust. We walked for a bit and saw some fountains, of which I took a lot of photos, although I have no idea why.

We were tired at this point, so decided to head home and sleep, and use the next morning before our flight back to explore around the West Lake, for which Hangzhou is famous (the West Lake appears on the one kuai note).

DAY 10: HANGZHOU -> URUMQI

The morning was not hugely interesting really, we walked around the lake a bit (to walk around the entire lake would take easily a couple of hours, which we didn't have as we had to be at the airport for 2pm). We had our last Starbucks for months, and toddled off to the shuttle bus. The taxi driver taking us to the shuttle bus offered to take us to the airport for 100 kuai, but the 10 in a taxi and 15 each for the bus seemed like a better deal, and we were really early anyway.

At the airport, our check-in desk hadn't opened yet, so we discovered the joy of those massage chairs. In the past, I always assumed they were a) rubbish 2) a waste of money and iii) completely pointless. They are possibly my favourite thing in the entire universe. So next Christmas, don't ask what I want, because it's the chair :D

After spending rather a lot of time on the chairs, we checked in and went through security where we didn't have to wait long at all before boarding. After boarding, we taxied a little, before waiting in the middle of the tarmac with the door open while some guy finished his phone call. We ended up leaving 20 minutes late. Making our arrival 2240. Not good.

But we got on our way, and the stop in Xi'An went smoothly. But then we were told we would be 20 minutes late into Urumqi, meaning 2300. Not good. We didn't want to miss New Year, so we decided to go out with our bags in our travelling clothes. Classy. The hour between 2300 and 2400 went as follows:

2300: Touchdown.
2303: Arrive at gate.
2303"30: disembark.
2304: Board bus to terminal.
2305: Impatiently clock watch.
2306: Impatiently clock watch.
2307: Impatiently clock watch.
2308: Arrive at terminal, run for the doors.
2310: Arrive at baggage claim, scope out the best point to stand, and use elbows to avoid other people stealing prime spot.
2312: Collect bags.
2313-2315: Argue with stupid man that the stickers on our bags might be the wrong way round, but we have the stickers on our boarding passes to match the stickers on the bags.
2318: Jump in a taxi. Tell him destination, and firmly to run meter. Cab driver (surprisingly) doesn't argue.
2320: Panic.
2325: Taxi driver asks which route to take. Tell him I don't care, just get us there fast.
2340: Think we're coming down a road that leads onto a road about 10 minutes from where we need to be. Consider offering to double the taxi fare if he gets us there within 5 minutes.
2341: Turn corner, realise we're much closer than expected, feel glad to have kept mouth shut.
2342: Taxi driver takes strange exit from roundabout, panic. Realise it's okay, this is just a slightly longer way but that avoids an annoying set of traffic lights.
2344: Tell taxi driver to stop, pay.
2345: Enter Fubar.
2346: Dump bags, go to bar.
2350: Sit down, breathe.
2400: Sing Auld Lang Syne
0200: Celebrate Uyghur New Year :D

I'm not going to blog about what happened between then and my impending travels, as it's really quite dull, but here's a summary if you're interested.

-Booked return flights to UK and flight to Inverness. I'll be back in Scotland on the 15th of August.
-Met a Latvian friend of Catherine's friend.
-Met a Uyghur girl, a friend of Catherine.
-Frantically prepare for impending trip.
-Get exam results, average of 93 (which Newcastle change to 79). Chuffed :)

Right, next post will be in a very long time, our route (for those who are interested) is as follows:

Yinchuan -> Yan'an -> Baotou -> Hohhot -> Datong -> Taiyuan -> Pingyao -> Shijiazhuang -> Beijing -> Tianjin -> Harbin -> Changchun -> Jilin -> Shenyang -> Xingcheng -> Dalian -> Yantai -> Jinan -> Qufu -> Zhengzhou -> Luoyang -> Xi'an -> Lanzhou -> Xining. I'll stick a map up with dots and lines on it later on tonight (hopefully).

Completely irrelevant

2008-01-08T18:24:00.001Z

That has to be one of the funniest things of all time. I laughed 'til I cried. And stopped breathing. For quite a long time.

Day 135: More still about Christmas

2008-01-03T18:07:00.000Z

DAY 8: SHANGHAI

Today, we decided that as we had seen so much good shopping, we were going to do it. So we did. We toddled off to Huaihai Lu (淮海路) and hit the shops. Hard. Well, I did. I spent far too much money in H&M (but then, it's Christmas, and I got money for Christmas, and I figure it's better to spend that money on stuff for me rather than bills and other such uninteresting things). So I went to H&M and bought a lot of things. It was good. Not much else to say about that really, although I'm trying to think of interesting things.

After shopping, we went to get our hair cut. We had been waiting since we got to China, as we were scared of what they might do to our hair. See, there are two types of hairdressers in Urumqi (three really, but I figure brothels shouldn't count in this): Han hairdressers, where they only know how to cut Han hair into Han styles; and Uyghur hairdressers, where they can cut caucasian hair, but only into Uyghur styles (which are basically a short back & sides with a side parting, ALL of them). So they did our hair, which was weird. When they washed mine, they didn't do it the way one would expect (you know, a sink and water and stuff). No, rather I sat there in my chair, and he started washing my hair right there. With a little squeezy bottle of water and a rather large amount of shampoo. Apparently, it's called 干洗 (Dry wash), and it was actually quite nice, as you get a full head massage while they're doing it. Western hairdressers should start it.

Here is the result (in the style of Hello Kitty):

After that, we met Vanessa (Nikki's Chinese friend) and we went for dinner, before heading back to base to go to bed, as it was quite late, and we were leaving for Hangzhou the next day.

DAY 9: SHANGHAI -> HANGZHOU

In the morning, we wanted to go for a massage and to the foreign language bookstore, so we toddled off to find them. We got to where a recommended massage place was, but couldn't find it (we figure it closed down, that happens a lot in China). So we decided to head to the foreign languages bookstore, buy a guideboko (and some other books) and find one from that. But by the time we had finished in both the bookstores, there was no time to go for a massage, as we had to get back in time to see Francesca before she went off to work and we left for Hangzhou. So we went to Mister Donut instead, which was AMAZING. They should have that in the west.

We went back to pick up our belongings, at which point I discovered my credit card had gone walkies. Alas. I had another card with me, and Nikki had access to money too, so it was okay. We went off to Hangzhou on the train, and after arriving at our hostel, we decided to take a little walk and find some food. After a while, we stumbled across 西湖天地, a little bitty on the edge of the lake with restaurants etc. We saw an Italian, so decided to try it. After looking at the menu (and its 150 kuai dishes), we decided not to eat there. But downstairs, they had a different, cheaper menu. And live music. So we ate, and cringed at the music. One girl tried to sing "La Camisa Negra," a Spanish song, but she clearly spoke absolutely no Spanish and had never actually heard the song. It was truely awful.

DAY 10: HANGZHOU -> TANGKOU

While in Hangzhou, we decided to make an excursion to Yellow Mountain (黄山). So we got up bright and early, and toddled off to the bus. After paying far too much for the bus (90+ kuai) and eating some "bread" that tasted like vomit (probably because it had 肉松 (A weird way of treating meat) in it), we got to see some lovely Zhejiang(浙江) and Anhui(安徽) scenery. We played the game where you hold your breath when you go through a tunnel, to see if you can make it. And then the bus arrived in 汤口 (Tangkou). Outside a hotel. Which is where the fun and games began.

A little man who was really quite obnoxious immediately approached us, asked if we were staying in this hotel, and when we said we weren't, offered to take us to the bus station from where we could get the bus to the Mountain. Now, I was confused, as I thought the bus we had just got off was supposed to take us to the mountain. So we followed him, and he kept telling us that if we went to his restaurant, we could look at a map, and his wife/mother/sister kept telling us we should be cold. I informed them I was in fact, not cold, as it was really quite warm there. But no, I was cold! I should buy a coat. This carried on for the 10-15 minute walk to near his restaurant (although it felt like an eternity, because the woman said literally nothing else except that I was cold).

At this point, we had figured out that it was too late to go up the mountain, and we hadn't taken things or money to stay overnight (and everywhere was a complete rip off), so we went to the bus station to see when we could go back to Hangzhou. The next bus was in two hours, so we bought tickets, and wandered around a little in Tangkou. Which was horrible. It is a run down little dump where everyone devotes ALL their energy to trying to sell tourists crap they don't want. If half the people selling maps went into something else, ANYTHING else, the town would already be a lot better. I haven't seen the film "The Hills Have Eyes," but apparently this village was like that.

So eventually we got back, after spending considerably longer than we would have liked in ~~Hell~~ Tangkou, and had a look at night time Hangzhou.

This concludes another installment of our trip (one more remains (hopefully))

Day 134: Yet more Christmas.

2008-01-03T17:53:00.000Z

DAY 5: SUZHOU -> SHANGHAI

So, I got up early in Suzhou, and looked at the map, and worked out what the suggested route I had written down looked like. Nikki wasn't well though (just a cold, but she still felt rubbish), so we did the walk slowly (it wasn't that great, but we did see a lot of Suzhou), then we sat in Starbucks for a while to let Nikki rest (shh), then went to the train station to get the train to Shanghai.

One of our classmates who lives in Shanghai said we could stay with her, so we toddled off to her house on the subway, and when we got there some of their friends were over. They were having a Christmas Eve party before going out on the town. However, nobody made it out as people had to leave early as they were working on Tuesday etc., so by the end there were only a few of us left. Another classmate who was supposed to be going to Singapore on Christmas Eve had changed her flight to Christmas Day(!), but she couldn't come over so we didn't get to see her.

DAY 6: SHANGHAI

Christmas! We dragged ourselves out of bed around 11am, and lazed around a bit. It was nice to just sit and do nothing, and Francesca (our classmate) and Justin (her flatmate) opened their presents. Around 5pm, we finally made it out to go and get Christmas Dinner at O'Malley's, an Irish pub. But when we got there, we discovered it was reservations only and they stopped serving at 6pm. And it was 6:10pm when we got there. So we went around the corner to British Bulldog (on Urumqi Road!), where we were met by Nikki's tandem partner from Newcastle, Vanessa. After the starter (a salad with the smallest piece of salmon I've ever seen), we got the traditional dinner, turkey, potatoes, sprouts (which I still don't like), stuffing, gravy, cranberry etc.:

Then it was apple crumble pie for desert, which was really good. The meal came with a free glass of wine (but then, the whole meal was 228 kuai, so I expected something really). I phoned my mum (and spoke to everyone, including my grandparents), then we went off to a pub called Windows Scoreboard, where we had a few drinks and some games, which were highly amusing:

After sitting there for a while, we went off to a club called Babyface, and danced the night away until 4am. The taxi home cost 50 kuai (Urumqi taxi drivers make around 500 a month, so that is phenomenally expensive). All in all, a good Christmas.

DAY 7: SHANGHAI

Boxing day, we decided to see some of the touristy things in Shanghai (of which there aren't many). So we jumped on the metro to the old town, which I like to call Tourist Trap Town. People by the BILLION came up to us with little leaflets overing us "shoes, bag, watches" in a variety of brands: "Adidas, Nike, qreyhqoeiguioj" (I never did work out what the last one was). We found an old teahouse, which is quite famous. It's in the middle of a little pondy thing, and has a zig-zag path to it for protection. Evil spirits can't turn corners, you see.

We then paid 60 kuai for a cup of what was essentially wet grass. I have never seen so many tea leaves in one cup of tea in my life, it was horrible. Nikki removed around half from hers, and it was still too much, but now she had a pocketful of soggy leaves. After forcing a couple of cups down (they add hot water as many times as you want for free), we toddled off to see the French Concession, but not before taking some photos of the pretty lit up buildings:

The French concession was cool, all big buildings and lights and western things. We walked around there for a while, and headed to the bund. The bund is essentially the bit along the river, with lots of big old colonial buildings, which you will undoubtedly have seen in pictures of Shanghai (although probably not realised that's what it was).

The sightseeing tunnel under the river was...an experience. It's worth doing once, but for the love of God don't get a return. It's awful. It's tacky, cheesy and naff. All at once. At the other side, we climbed the Jinmao tower (once the tallest building in Shanghai, possibly China, I forget now):

The view from the top was quite good, but the windows were dirty, so I couldn't really get good photos. Here's two anyway:

(I just like this one because it mentions both Urumqi and London)

At the top of the Jinmao Tower, they have what is officially the tallest post office in the world, 88 floors up. As I couldn't resist, I bought some postcards and posted them from the tallest postbox in the world:

Back on the floor, my legs were too shaky to do much, so we searched for a restaurant. Not fun. We went to one recommended in the Lonely Planet, and it was closed. So we went to another recommended restaurant, also closed. So then a third, which was also closed. Eventually, we found a stupidly expensive restaurant which was still open, after which we returned home and flopped into bed.

Day 133: More tales of the Christmas Trip

2008-01-02T04:06:00.000Z

Episode 2

DAY 2: NANJING (continued, 'cause I missed a bit by mistake)

So after Hunan Lu, we wanted to get a taxi home so we could sleeeeeep. So we waited at the crossroads. We waited at corner number one for a short while. As this wasn't working for us, we moved to corner number two. Then three. Then four. Then back to one, then three, then four, before finally getting a taxi. The whole process took around an hour.

DAY 3: NANJING

This day, we decided to be good tourists, so we got up at stupid o'clock in the morning, and spent 27 kuai on a taxi 7,000,000 miles across town to get on a bus which left from really near our hostel. The bus took us to 紫金山 (Purple Mountain), where we saw many sites. First, we went to see 宋美龄(Song Meiling)'s villa, which was done in both Chinese and Western style. It was a nice house, but not much to say about it really. But here's a photo of me in the doorway anyway:

After that, we got on another bus to 钟山风景名胜区 (Zhongshan Mountain National Park, another name for Purple Mountain) which had many sites. First of these was the Linggu Scenic Area (灵谷景区), named for the Linggu Pagoda (灵谷塔). Below are some photos, and I'll just summarise what we did. We saw the 灵谷寺 (Linggu Temple), a really important temple. Going in the door, you saw a courtyard where people were burning yellow paper in two drums at either side of a giant incense holder. There were loads of people praying, and it felt kind of wrong to be intruding, but people didn't seem to mind. Still, we didn't hang around long. The 灵谷塔 was terrifying, 9 floors (which doesn't sound much, but when you think about the high ceilings and the fact that there's basically nothing under you), but I climbed it anyway. But the weather wasn't great, so the photos aren't great.

After we finished there, we tried to get one on of those little tourist bus things made to look like trains to Sun Yat-Sen(孙中山)'s mausoleum (for the record, his name in Chinese is not Sun Yat-Sen, it's Sun ZhongShan). But we got on the wrong one, and went to the Ming Tombs instead. Which was okay, because we wanted to go there anyway. So we walked along the Sacred Path, which is in a curved line so as to avoid an old king's tomb (The emperor's advisors suggested destroying the tomb so that the Sacred Path could be in a straight line, but he didn't want to do that). We posed next to all of the animals as the animals, for example:

The animals they had were Elephants, Lions, Camels, Horses, Qilin (麒麟) (which is not a unicorn (which is the usual English translation), but rather a mixture of a lion, a tiger, an ox and a dragon, and it appears only in the reign of a benevolent and wise emperor, which is why only emperors have it in front of their tombs) and a Xiezhi (獬豸)(which is also a type of Chinese unicorn, which had a horn which it used to gore the guilty but it would never touch the innocent, so the Xiezhi appeared in courtrooms).

Then we saw the tomb itself, which wasn't particularly interesting, as it's just a big rectangular brick building in front of the hill, and his actual tomb is somewhere inside the hill. But out of respect, people don't look for it.

Then after a sit down (we were getting tired by this point) and some Starbucks chocolate covered coffee beans, we went to the mausoleum of 孙中山. They say communism never really reached Nanjing, and the way they are about the people from the Republic of China (1911-1949) makes that clear. His mausoleum is huge, they still have Song Meiling's house the way it was when she lived there etc., despite them being not too popular in China (as they were capitalists after all). The mausoleum is HUGE, and quite impressive, but 392 steps when you're already tired is not much fun. Still, we saw it, and it was good. We then got the bus back into town, and went to get some coffee. Not done being western, we went to Haagen-Dazs, which was half awesome, half not. I had Chocolate Cookie Dough ice cream, which was amazing, and a "Chocolate Stir," which was supposed to be rich hot chocolate served with a dark chocolate spoon. What I got was watery horribly hot chocolate with a sickly milk chocolate spoon. Unimpressed.

DAY 4: NANJING -> SUZHOU

Sunday, our last day in Nanjing, we got up kind of early, and checked out. We visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum, which was really quite grim. We went in, and a man came up to me, and gestured writing on his hand. I had no idea what he meant. He refused to speak though, as a lot of people did in South East China (they probably assume we're just like all the other white tourists who don't speak Chinese, which is fair enough, but still frustrating). Turned out, he wanted us to write our nationality and how many were in our party. Anyway, we then went on and saw the mass grave (which had around 10,000 bodies in it), then an exhibition which had loads of artefacts and stories from people who survived it, which were really horrible. The ways the Japanese killed people, the raping and burning...they were generally really horrible, and refused to admit it. They set up Comfort Centres, which were basically little buildings with Chinese women whom the Japanese could go and rape at will. The exhibition was slightly ruined by the schoolchildren running around screaming and laughing, and apparently finding the whole thing quite amusing. Although I do think they were two young to appreciate what it was all about.

After that, we got some street food (a big pancakey type thing with egg and mixed green bits with a spicey sauce, very nummy):

Then it was off to the train station to head to Suzhou. When we got to Suzhou, we went straight to the taxi rank where the guy immediately ran the meter (nice change) and took us to where we were going. Where they told us they weren't actually open for business, despite taking bookings online (I hadn't made one, I just looked and saw that they were). They sent us to another one, where they did have a room. But the walk was pretty:

We walked, got some street food (I got what in the UK would be called Chow Mein (炒面 - chao mian), and Nikki got some fried potato thing), and went to bed. And this concludes the second part of our trip to the South East.

Day 132: Christmas Trip!

2008-01-01T12:12:00.000Z

This Christmas Trip will be broken into several parts, as there's a lot to say, and I can't be bothered writing it all out now.

So, without further ado...

DAY 1: URUMQI -> NANJING(ish)

At 4am Xinjiang time (GMT+6), my alarm went off, and I nearly cried. I hit snooze, then got up at 4:10am. I packed quickly (I'm getting really good at packing light, it was quite easy), then we toddled off to get a taxi to the airport. After checking in, we looked at the sign and discovered that our plane has a stop at Yinchuan. At this point, I didn't think it should count as going to Ningxia (The Autonomous Region of which Yinchuan is the capital). So we landed at Yinchuan, and we got off the plane to stretch our legs for a bit. After a wait of 45 minutes or so, I noticed a sign saying that due to weather conditions, our plane would be delayed, and more information would follow. The weather in Yinchuan was fine, so I assumed it was weather in Nanjing - great. A while later, another flight was also delayed, but this one was to Tianjin (next to Beijing) so I figured it was the weather in central China. Then an announcement came: "Passengers for the flight to Nanjing: Your new departure time is 11:30pm." An angry mob formed at the gate, and the woman repeatedly said it was nor her fault, it was the weather, and if they wanted to complain, they should go to the information desk. So the angry mob moved there. There was much shouting, then it was revealed that the problem was not the weather, it was a fault with the plane. More shouting.

After a while, we were given "refreshments" (a choice of Coke, Sprite, Fanta or Water), then bussed to a hotel in Yinchuan. This definitely counted as Ningxia now. We got to the hotel, and Nikki slept for a bit, as she was somewhat fatigued. I wandered around for a bit, read my entire book that was to keep me entertained for the entire trip, had dinner, wandered around some more. Then at 9:15, I was told we would be picked up at 9:30, and to get my bags and wait in the lobby. I went upstairs, to rouse Nikki from her slumber, and was informed she had (fairly minor) food poisoning (again). Excellent start to our trip.

We got to the airport, and at 11:35pm we took off, flying to Nanjing. But only after we were given 20 kuai for the inconvenience :D We landed around 2am, then got on a shuttle bus to the city centre(ish, we think), and got a taxi to a hotel. Hotels in China have an annoying habit of being empty, but telling us they have no rooms. I think it's because filling out the paper work and making the report to the police (they track your every move here) is too troublesome, so it's easier to turn people away. And also, our taxi driver was really quite stupid. The conversation went something like this:
Stupid Taxi Driver: Where to?
Me: Zhongshan Bei Lu.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Number 550.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Number 550.
STD: What place on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: It's a hotel.
STD: Which hotel?
Me: Jinjiang something
STD: Call and find out.
Me: It's number 550, go there.
Waiting at a green traffic light for me to phone, until a car came)
STD: Is it Jinjiang Inn?
Me: Yes!
STD: Okay.
Two minutes later...
STD: Is it the Jinjiang Inn?
Me: Yes.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Jinjiang Inn, number 550

So we walked down Zhongshan Bei Lu, and stumbled upon a little hotel, where they were willing to take us (although she was adamant we were allowed to get a Chinese ID card, despite not being citizens). The bed was essentially a board with sheets, but it was cheap, and it was 4am, so we didn't care.

DAY 2 - NANJING

At 11am, we got up, showered, dressed, booked another night in the hotel, then headed off for a day of exploration. I thought the Blossom Rain Platform (or something like that, not sure how to translate it into English) was near our hotel, but it turned out to just be a park. So we wandered through the park for a bit, then down a street where we felt famous. One boy saw us and did the stereotypical Chinese "oooooooo" when he saw us. One girl literally jumped when she saw us, and even a woman in her 30s tried her best English 'hello' on us. It was brilliant.

We then decided to jump on a bus, and went to the end of the line. We switched to another bus because a brown tourist sign was pointing in the direction that the bus was going, but it turned out to go nowhere near it. We realised we were going nowhere near anything, so we got off and went to a Wang Bar (from the chinese 网吧 (wang ba), which is basically a giant room with lots of computers, kind of like an internet cafe, but full of Chinese students playing games online), and researched places to go in Nanjing. Turns out, there's a LOT to do. So we headed back for the city centre to go to the Confucious Temple. The bus only went as far as a metro, so we hopped on that and got off a little along, where lots of taxi drivers wanted to take us to the airport. We realised we couldn't get to the Confucious Temple from where we were, so we got on the metro again to the very centre of the city. The metro was confusing: our tickets were small blue plastic tokens, and it took watching a couple of people go through to work out that it was a swipe thing.

Anyway, we got off the metro in the city centre, and then were too tired and it was so late that we didn't care, so we were very bad tourists.

It was brilliant. But then we became good tourists again! We had heard that Hunan Lu was good to see at night, as it used to have a night market (which was closed down), but it's meant to be nice at night, so we went.

This concludes the first two days of my time in the east of China.

Day 119: Exams are over!

2007-12-19T02:47:00.000Z

Okay, so people keep asking me how exams were, and the word I use most often to describe them is "funny." How can exams be funny? I don't hear you ask. Well, it's like this:

Monday morning we had our exam for our all-round Chinese class (which focuses mostly on grammar). Last week, she told us specifically what the questions would be on, to the point of saying, "Paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of this text will be in the exam." So it was really quite simple. The questions were also really quite easy. Fill in the blank in this sentence, using one of the words in brackets: I would love to go, [BLANK] I can't afford it (but, and, therefore, yesterday). I mean really. And the CHEATING that was going on was unbelievable. I mean to the point that both Nikki and I at one point had to put our head on the desks to keep from laughing too much. A girl sitting near Nikki kept looking at Nikki's answers. In spite of the fact that Nikki and this girl were doing different papers. People were texting each other answers, shouting across the room in Russian to get answers, passing notes, talking etc. It was mental. One girl had her textbook and notes under her desk. And what did the teachers do? Oh yes, nothing. I was too stunned to do anything other than laugh. Best bit - I had finished, and my teacher took my paper, looked through it, gave it back and asked if I wanted to check it again. I said no, I have already checked it, as it's unfair if I get told there are errors and given the chance to correct them, it was my decision to hand my paper in early. She looked at me and asked me if I wanted to check again. I said no again. She asked me again. I said no again. She said, "Right, okay, you can go home then."

Next up was listening, so we went to the listening room, sat down spaced out (this is just my class mind, the Kazakhs sat playing music loudly, sitting next to each other and talking about us in Russian. Then the teachers got there, and we sat around for a while. Then they handed out the topics for the oral exam. My first one was something about which I could deinitely not have spoken. But we're allowed to switch once, and the second one wasn't great, although I could have spoken about it. But we were all sat in a big group discussing the upcoming exam (which seemed to be encouraged almost), and discussing what our topics were, so I switched with Tobin as he didn't like his, so mine was "What do you normally do on Sundays? Decribe step by step your day." The exams started. During the exams, other teachers would go over and interrupt, the Kazakhs were still playing music and talking seriously loudly, and during my exam, the teacher got up and left when I was mid-sentence, without excusing herself or telling whoever needed her that it had to wait two minutes (as I wasn' even going to talk that long). But whatever.

Then it was listening, which was a joke. We answered a lot of the questions before they were read out - it was all stuff we'd heard before, or common sense. For example, "Which is not true: The north is cold, the south is hot, the north-east is hot." Hmm, let's see. The north-east, sharing a border with Siberia, is probably not that warm. Again, there was rampant cheating, to the extent that once the exam was over, one girl had three other people's papers around her, comparing answers and writing in her answers. This was pointed out to a teacher who said, "You shouldn't do that" then let her finish copying. But it was quite nice when people shouted answers, as they were getting them wrong, and it made me feel much better :)

We were finished for the day, so we all headed home, to get ready for a big event that I will tell you more about in the next post.

Then yesterday we had our reading exam. As a test, Nikki kept her textbook on her table to see if the teacher would say anything. She didn't. But the book got in Nikki's way, so she got rid of it anyway. This paper was even easier, and there's one section I swear the majority of readers of this could get pass-marks in. It was supposed to be work out the meaning of the character from the radical. But it was actually, write which of these pictures is part of the character. And I trust most of you could find the 心 in 想 or 木 in 机. I mean really, we're intermediate now. Again, cheating, people coming in late, people we're allowed to leave to go to the toilet etc. A joke.

But hey, I'm confident I got over 90 overall, which converts to a 76.5+ in Newcastle, which replaces a 56 from second year, which would make my average to 76.4, up from 73, which is nice. And means that in 4th year, if I get 67 or more, I get a first for my degree :D Of course, it's possible I get higher next semester here, or in fact got higher than 90. And of course, my average will be 67 in my 4th year, so I think a 1st is definitely achievable :D Especially as I'm sure I'm dropping French now - while I would like to keep it on, it's just too much work. If I can keep my Spanish at a 70 (or higher), Chinese at an 87 (or higher), it means my other three modules need to average 51. Woohoo!

And while we're on the topic, modules I'm thinking of taking next year:

Level C Chinese
Screen Translation: Language, Culture and Subtitling (Chinese)
Level D Spanish
Either Inter-American Relations since the Spanish-American War or Culturas de la Juventad en Latinamerica, Espana y Portugal (Youth cultures in Latin America, Spain and Portugal)
then either Syntax and History of Spanish or Recent Spanish and Mexican Cinema

But of course, I don't have the list of modules available next year, they may add some, or stop some. So we'll see. That's just provisional thoughts.

2007-12-15T02:57:00.000Z

The sign says "祝大家圣诞快乐" (Merry Christmas)

***LATER THAT DAY***

URUMQI - Police have confirmed reports that the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Mr S. Man (1 day old) are being regarded as suspicious, and are currently searching for the main suspect. His imaged was captured by local CCTV, and police are asking anyone with any information to contact their local police station immediately.

Day 113: Christmas Plans

2007-12-13T06:34:00.000Z

So, our plans for Christmas are now sorted, and here's the deal:

December 20th, fly to Nanjing, spend a day there.
December 21st, train/bus to Hefei, spend a day there.
December 22nd, train/bus to Suzhou, spend a day there.
December 24th, head for Shanghai, which means the previous bits will be done slightly slower.
December 25th, eat western food in Shanghai.
December 26th, hang out in Shanghai.
December 27th, head to Hangzhou
December 28th, go to Huangshan for the day (Huangshan is one of the five most famous mountains in China, although they say this one is the most of the most.)
December 30th, fly back to Urumqi from Hangzhou, meaning Hangzhou can be done slower, or we can stgay an extra day in Shanghai.

You might get postcards, if I remember.

Day 105: Boredom

2007-12-05T03:33:00.000Z

Slightly old, I just realise I forgot to actually post this:

我是中国苹果 (I am a Chinese apple)

I bangededed my head (with an arrow pointing to a huge bruise on the left)

你好！我是一个苹果！(Hi! I'm an apple!)

Day 102: Christmas is coming

2007-12-02T05:08:00.000Z

As Christmas is coming rapidly, we decided we would taken on a little art project. Here is the result:

Nikki's

Catherine's

Mine

Catherine's one, Nikki and I worked on together, although to be fair, Nikki did more of it than I did. Nikki's one I worked on, Catherine helped me at the very end with decorating the boxes. My one, Nikki did alone. It was very exciting to get to open an advent calendar, I have to say. I haven't yet eaten the contents, but that will happen in about 5 minutes I reckon.

We also have a selection of Christmas cards on our fridge too, to try and make it feel a bit more Christmassy.

And Catherine also bought this:

It sings the tune of I Saw Three Ships, but the words are...not. I'm not entirely sure what it is saying to be honest.

Day 97: The Bank Are a Bunch Of Performing Monkeys...

2007-11-27T13:07:00.000Z

...who don't have any good tricks.

I got two very frantic emails today saying that Stacey from the Bank of Scotland had been on the phone because people were hacking into my online banking. So they shut it down.

I know who was accessing my account.

Me.

That's who.

But due to the Data Protection Act, they can't talk to anyone in the UK about it. So I have to phone from China, which is 8 hours ahead. And stupidly expensive (not by UK standards, but to phone for 2 minutes costs the same as dinner). So I have to phone after 5pm. No big deal, you'd think, but on Wednesday and Thursday I have classes 'til 6pm. Then tomorrow night we're going out because Rachel's visiting boyfriend is returning to the UK on Friday morning. Thursday night I'll be tired and forget, so it'll be Friday before I can phone.

So I email my mum to this effect, and she tries to phone and explain the situation.

And lo, the stop on my online account was removed! And Liam was pleased. Fools. And also, if they can't speak to her about it, why di they let her speak to them about it? Pffft. I don't care, I can see my online account now :D

Day 94: Weather

2007-11-24T02:40:00.001Z

Okay, so today's post was going to be about this:

But the pollution is way less interesting than this:

YAY. SNOW. YAY.

That is all.

Day 91: Hungry anyone?

2007-11-21T11:08:00.000Z

So, every day when we finish class at 2, we go for lunch (with occasional exceptions, but for the most part). So today, we went to a restaurant that is quite classy and expensive, for a change really, because we always eat at the same places.

So we get there, and we order a weird yoghurt-fruit salad type thing, some Japanese style tofu (which is apparently nothing like tofu in Japan, and is not nice), strips of meat that come with the world's smallest steamed buns to make sandwiches and a beef steak in sauce thing. And rice, obviously.

So the food arrives, and we begin eating. The first three dishes were good, the beef steak thing was weird. For one, it wasn't beef, the meat was paler and didn't taste like beef. But we ate it anyway. The place is also Halal, so it can't be anything to bad.

Then I look over by the big floor standing air conditioning unit, and see a rat. Literally. A huge rat, about 8 inches long. How horrible. We tell a waitress, who laughs and says '不好意思' (sorry) and walks away. And does nothing. Then I see another rat. "Isn't it the same one?" I was asked. Nope, it was shorter, and the tail was grey, where on the first one it was pink. Horrible.

We'd all stopped eating by this point, and were just watching now. I reckon there must have been at least 6-8 rats living there, if not more. And absolutely nobody in the restaurant did anything about it. And other customers that had seen the rats didn't seem to care. Alas, I won't be going there again to find out if they do anything about it.

For those in/going to Urumqi, it's the big one that's part of a hotel on 新医路 with the green sign that specialises in fish, I have no idea what it's called. But avoid it.

Day 84: Observations

2007-11-14T03:01:00.000Z

Today's post is mainly observations and amusing things (or at least, things I consider amusing) about China.

Firstly, food. Food here is incredible. Before coming, I was convinced I would be eating the same couple of dishes every day, and get so sick of Chinese food, because the only Chinese food I've been exposed to in the west has, quite frankly, been very same-y. And while there are dishes I eat fairly often here, they aren't many, and I eat them because they're seriously good. For example, 抓饭 (Uyghur: polo, I think that's what it's called in English too, but I'd never heard that before coming here). It sits in big dishes outside restaurants, and is really quite amazingly good. I will learn to make it before coming back to the West, and will make it for people regularly :D

Also, rice. It doesn't get as boring as you think, and in the North, they eat more noodles than rice anyway. I've become less fussy since being here too, it's quite good. I now cannot get through the day without tea, and things that I didn't eat before, I tried again here, and now eat (so there's a chance I won't like the western version, but still). Examples include Brocolli, Aubergine (eggplant), Fatty meat (yum), various vegetables I don't know the name for etc. This came largely from one of the games we like to play at dinner: Me: "What's this?" Dinner Parter: "I don't know." Me: (after eating it) "Huh, me neither." Happens a lot.

Another change I've noticed I no longer care about a lot of the things I used to care about. For example, for lunch yesterday, we went to a little Hui restaurant which was, to put it nicely, somewhat dirty. But we still ate there with no issue. And at lunch today, there was a dog running around the restaurant, and nobody batted an eyelid. The only thing I can't get used to is the spitting. It's constant, and it's everywhere. Although it is now quite amusing, as it's much colder, so now the spit on the streets freezes. I realise that's quite disgusting, but it amuses me nonetheless. My attitude to public toilets is also considerably different. Before coming here, I was like, squats I cannot cope with, nor dirty toilets. But since getting here, I no longer care, and in a lot of cases, I prefer the squat. And toilets that I once would have considered completely ferral I now consider really quite nice. If there's soap and doors, it's luxury. Bodily substances everywhere, a smell so bad you can taste it and flies are 可以 (not bad, okay, passable).

I had heard that there is quite a lot of racism and discrimination in this part of China, but I have to say, it is exaggerated. I mean, it does tend to be Han people in the 'better' jobs, but on the streets, you don't notice it. And it's not just Han people being anti-Uyghur, Uyghur's are also quite anti-Han and make racist comments too (although it's only around people they know, or at least people I don't know don't tend to make anti Han comments around me).

Also, the employment issue here is very noticeable. Almost every restaurant and shop is overstaffed ridiculously, meaning every time you walk in anywhere, you get a chorus of 欢迎光临 (welcome to shine your light), and some people are employed purely to open a door. In department stores, you have to take a little slip of paper from the bit from which you want to purchase something to a cashier, then take a slip back. Which makes sense in the big department stores in a way, but then when they do it in the very small stationery shop opposite the university, you know there's an issue. But in this stationery shop, if they're all standing next to each other and someone wants to buy something, they move so they are further apart. Literally. Also, street sweeping is different here. There are no machines, it is people with little brushes doing it. Loads of them. It's very strange.

The attitude to personal space is also very different here. In that, they just don't care. On buses for example, it's perfectly normal to have people pressing against you on all sides. When I first got here, I found it weird, but now it's actually somewhat comforting, especially with the way the buses drive here - if it crashes, there are 143695 people between you and the windscreen, even if you're near the front. When people walk down the street, it's not uncommon for friends to walk with their arms around each other and things, regardless of age/gender, which is quite nice. I have now realised that western people are way too prudish and precious, so now we talk about "having a western concept" which loosely translates to requiring personal space.

Day 81: How time flies

2007-11-11T02:04:00.000Z

Long time no post, but not many hugely important things going on anyway. On Thursday morning, Michele (one of our neighbours) went back the US, leaving her partner here to still be our neighbour. So on Wednesday night, we all went out for Sichuan food, then a nightcap as a goodbye thing.

When we first met Michele, I wasn't sure if I liked her, as she seemed to not like us very much. But the more we saw her, the more we realised she was actually just really shy, and was a really nice person. This realisation came a few weeks before she left. But at least we realised, and weren't celebrating her leaving.

On Friday night, we went out (not uncommon) to Fubar (福巴，公园北街), where we played Absolute Balderdash, had a few drinks and chatted away. Then a guy we know came over, Will, and he met Paul and Tobin, who he hadn't met before (he had met Tobin very very briefly outside a class, but that doesn't count). Within a matter of minutes, Will and Tobin were in the middle of a very heated argument about International Relations, and the world's view on Jewish people. We saw Will's true colours at this point, he was constantly, "We Jewish people think this" or "We Americans believe that" etc. He also refused to listen to anyone else's point of view, and if someone proved him wrong, he wouldn't accept it, and would just keep repeating his argument (which was invariable flawed). It gets worse.

Saturday, we went to Nolan's house, as he is organising a Speaker Series (getting people to talk about their specialist subjects because we don't know anything about it) and yesterday, Eric talked about Language Planning Policy in Xinjiang in the 30s and 40s, which was really interesting. I didn't understand everything, as it was a paper he wrote for his masters, and I'm not a linguist nor do I know huge amounts about Xinjiang in the 30s and 40s. But it was interesting, and I learned something. Afterwards, he said that comments and questions would be gratefully received. The questions I expected were things like, "Could you give me some background about this one thing? I'm still slightly unclear" or "So what was the role of this person in this area?" And from Tobin and Nolan, that's what the questions were (I felt too uneducated to ask questions, as did Nikki and Catherine). But from Will, he basically critiqued the presentation (saying it was waffly, unfocussed etc. And to be fair, had it been a proper presentation at a conference, he would have been 100% correct. But for sitting in someone's living room talking to your friends about something you know and they don't, I don't see the problem), then he mentioned certain sources that Eric should have used (at which point Eric butted in, saying he had read the sources and thought they were crap) and then started basically trying to be his tutor. The best line was: "I wrote a paper on this I think you should read."

So we don't like him. But Eric's presentation really did spark my interest - I never even knew that was a possible field of research (possibly because no one has actually done any work on the topic of his presentation except Eric). So I might do some more research into it myself (not like academic research, just finding out what more there is on the topic), and consider going down the linguistics route as opposed to T&I. But then, we were told by the head of our school that we should look for cohesion in our degrees, and I did a literature module and an extra language last year. But the literature module was basically a culture and society module, but with the information coming from novels, and the language one included history of the language, so I suppose if I did a culture or a linguistics module(s) next year, there is still cohesion. And it works with the linguistics and history (including political history) modules I did in first year. Huh, I think I'm on to something.

Day 67: Tales of Birthdays and Hallowe'en

2007-10-28T07:40:00.000Z

So, it's been far too long since I've written in here, I do apologise. I kept meaning to, and then realising I had no time etc.

So anyway, a week ago Friday/Saturday (I forget which day exactly) Nikki and I got a text from Eric who said, "We're going to a Mongolian Bar, wanna come?" So we did. And it was BRILLIANT. Easily the best place to go out. There was a nice mix of quiet background music so you could chat, then live Mongolian music, then a random bit where the lights went out, the strobes came on and they placed some really cheesy Europop dance music. Brilliant fun. We ended up staying 'til about 5am, but it was totally worth it, and it was really cheap. Because I drank...wait for it...BEER. Yes, I, Liam, drank beer. Partly because there was no other choice, and partly because it's actually okay. And it was Wusu (乌苏）, which was described to me as "probably the worst beer [he'd] ever tasted." But at 10 kuai a bottle, you can't really complain (okay, so it's 2.50 in the shops, but still).

Not much else of note happened really until Wednesday, when it was Nolan's birthday. His do was on Thursday, so I didn't know it was his birthday until we bumped into him at lunch and 戴熙涵 said, "Happy Birthday!" So then on Thursday we went to a restaurant quite near our house and had a big dinner, and I drank 白酒(Baijiu) and beer again. Then we went off to the Mongolian bar, and partied until the wee small hours (read:5am). Nolan had to leave early, as he had been toasting too many people. We also befriended a Mongolian guy called 巴音达拉(Bayindala), and one of the singers who works there whose name completely escapes me right now (this will be relevant in a bit).

So, as Tuesday is Hallowe'en, but that's a bad day for a party, we had a Hallowe'en party last night. Well, our friends upstairs hosted it. Loads of people we knew were there, absolutely none in costume, and Eric and Michele (the hosts) had made paper ghosts, little signs explaining Hallowe'en in Chinese and Uyghur, and loads of snacks and things. We bought the drinks, and we were scared they wouldn't be enough, as we had been told up to 40 people would be there, but it turned out there was plenty to go around, and it was all fun and games. Although one guy and his girlfriend kept fighting (which has apparently been going on for ages, as she might be carrying someone else's baby). Oh, and I was told I look like Prince Charles by a Chinese girl, which I think is probably the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me.

That kind of takes me up to date I think, so here's some photos from the birthday do on Thursday:

LTR:Me, 巴音耷拉,戴熙涵

LTR:Me, Nolan, Eric

LTR:Catherine, Tobin, Paul

Still day 52: Just a quick question really

2007-10-13T05:03:00.001+01:00

Google is being most unhelpful, so those who have been to China and posted things home, how long did it take on average? It's been around six weeks since I first sent postcards, and I know about the UK postal strike, but still...

Also, I was planning posting some parcels (see previous post) and I have no idea how soon I need to send them.

Day 52: Back to the madness

2007-10-13T03:32:00.000+01:00

I can't remember if I've talked about my classes much on here, so I'm going to now, and if I've already told you, sorry.

Okay, so every week, we have 18 hours of class. These are split into 汉语中级 (comprehensive), 听说 (speaking and listening), 阅读 (reading) and 文化 (culture, which is an elective for intermediate students, but it's interesting, and it's helping my Chinese (it's entirely in Chinese (as is the textbook))).

Our teachers are of varying qualities. 张雪梅老师 (Zhang Xuemei) teaches us the comprehensive class, and she is a brilliant teacher. She's from Shandong, so has an accent that I'm not used to hearing in these parts, but I still understand. She's big on discipline (which is good, see below) and is very fair, and can be a good laugh. We went out for lunch at Mid Autumn Festival with her, which was nice, and she only has a few words of English, so it had to be Chinese the whole time. In fact, that's kind of normal for this part of China.

Anyway, then for listening and speaking we have 易红老师 (Yi Hong). She's absolutely lovely, although her accent is a little strange (for example, 问 (wen) she pronounces with a 'v'). Not too good on discipline though, and not big on correcting mistakes either. Non Chinese-speakers may move on to the next paragraph now. Say if someone reads the sentence 还有什么？对了，有空儿的话，欢迎来我家玩儿！ as "hei yao shi ma, yao kong de hui, huan yin lei wo zha wanr", she'll still say, "非常好！" Which is annoying.

For reading, we normally have a teacher called 周册老师, but she's currently on leave. And for this, we are grateful. Our temporary teacher is called 阎(I think)新艳老师. She's a much better teacher, although her characters are not fun to try and decipher. The first teacher tries to get us to read at 100 characters a minute, when we know about 50 of them, and bans dictionary use. After we got the book changed to one that wasn't ridiculously hard (aimed at people who had had over 250 hours, we've had about 150, if that), she calmed down a little and explained things better, although still using more complex vocabulary than is needed. But oh well. When we changed book though, the bookstore from where the university buys the textbooks didn't send them for ages, so we had no books. Then, when 周册老师 suddenly 有事 (we think a nervous breakdown, in all seriousness. She was the most tightly wound person I have ever encountered. And she was 30 and Chinese, yet still gave herself a Croydon Facelift)
the new teacher wasn't told we had no books, so we spent one two hour reading class telling stories. It was actually a really good class - everyone got to speak (and the Kazakhs weren't there, more below), and it turns out that Korea, China and the UK all have the same stories they tell their kids.

Okay, so that's my classes. Now for the people. There are five westerners in my class, the four of us from Newcastle (Rachel, Catherine, Nikki and myself) and a guy who is doing postgrad (possibly PhD, apologies for forgetting) at Manchester, and has to do a year in China learning Chinese as part of it. Then there are three Koreans, a couple in their early forties and a guy of about 18. Then Galina, a Russian girl whose name is probably not spelt like that. Then there are the Stanleys. The Stanleys is the name we use to refer to all those people from the countries which end in -stan. Now, I am not a racist person as I'm sure you all know, but these people have put me off Kazakhs, Tajiks etc. for life. In class, they are noisy, disruptive and disrespectful, and spend the entire time chatting very loudly in Russian, making phone calls etc. There are one or two who do work, and I feel very sorry for them being tarred with the same brush, and I'm sure that outside of my class, there are some really nice Kazakh people. But these people are so bad that Tobin (the guy from Manchester uni (but he's Glaswegian, I forgot to say)) wrote a letter of complaint to the head of our college demanding that they be moved from our class or that he be refunded his tuition and he would move to Beijing and study there. The next day, she came into our class and shouted at everyone saying that this was a place of study, and those who weren't here to study would be expelled, because 师范大学 (my university) does not want that type of student. Which worked for the rest of that class. Then yesterday, the good news.

(English is below)"这个班的学生太多了，所以下星期二分开了。英国人，韩国人和Galina在其他的班，别的都在这个班。"(There are too many students in this class, so from Tuesday, you will be split. The British and Korean students and Galina will be in a different class, everyone else stays in this class." Our timetable is the same and we have the same teachers, so I don't know on whom they're inflicting the Kazakhs.

This was great news, but I was confused. Why Tuesday? Then I remembered, this uni gives all the Muslim holidays (no Christian ones, so no Christmas :(), and today is the last day of Ramadan in China (elsewhere, it was yesterday), so Monday is a one day holiday for Eid ul-Fitr. Yay! It's also the day Frankie goes back to Shanghai, after travelling with us then a stay in the infirmary here (Nikki and Catherine were both ill, both better now).

Today I shall go shopping, and some of you might get packages from China in the post. If so, please don't open them until the 25th of December. They're not Christmas presents like, but just wait 'til that day :P

Oh, and only Ross has sent me his address, any more postcard requests?

Day 48: Back in Urumqi

2007-10-09T05:10:00.002+01:00

Okay, so I'm back, so I'll pick up where I left off with the tales of my voyages. So, we got off the train at Kashgar at around 11am, and were harassed by hundreds of taxi drivers wanting to charge us extortionate amounts to get to the centre, so we got the bus instead, then found the hotel we had heard of (the Seman Hotel), because we had heard it's next to John's Café, which does travel advice and things. The hotel ended up being cheap and really really nice, so we stayed there.

That day, Catherine wasn't feeling well, so she stayed in the room while Frankie, Nikki and I went to a Uyghur restaurant across the road for lunch, then went back to see how Catherine was. I think it was most likely a minor illness (I got a slight cold on our travels) and the exhaustion from the travelling made her feel much worse. But anyway, she still wasn't well, so she stayed at the hotel, and we got a taxi to 东湖/東湖 (west lake) park. Which is in fact just a giant lake. But our taxi driver wasn't too clever. We told him where we were going, and he headed off. Then part way, pulled over and ran out, to somewhere across the road, then came back. We assume he went to ask directions. Then, he took us to the International Bazaar. Not quite right. We told him the new place, and again he stopped, and asked someone, who spoke to us in Chinese and translated into Uyghur for him. Eventually we got there, paid to get in, and discovered there was nothing there of any interest.

So we left, and went to People's Park, opposite which is the biggest statue of Mao in China/the west of China (delete as appropriate). Once inside, we discovered a mini theme park. Which was fun. We also stopped and had some whippy ice cream on the way, because we could, and because it was 2 kuai for a big tub :D At the park, after the theme park, we went into the zoo. Big mistake. I had heard Chinese zoos were bad, but nothing prepared me for this. It was worse than the RSPCA adverts (for the Americans out there, the RSPCA is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a UK charity who show you horrible pictures of mistreated animals to get money from you so they can try and stop animal cruelty). There was a lion in a cage about fifteen foot by fifteen foot (around 5 metres). It was so skinny you could see the bones, and when it tried to roar, it was the most depressing, pathetic crying-like noise I've ever heard. There was a tiger in a cage the same size, who just lay on his side in the shade, and didn't move once. The bears, in ten foot by ten foot cages just paced side to side constantly, and the eagles were in a cage so small they couldn't even stretch their wings at all, never mind fly. All of the animals were mangy and underfed, and the few that did have water, had really scummy old water. And the people at the gate were quite happy to take your five kuai to see that.

So, shellshocked, we left the park and headed up one of the main streets, arriving (without our knowledge) at the Idkah Mosque, famous for its size (on festival days, it can hold up to 100,000 worshippers), and the old town.

We wandered up the old town, and bought some comical hats (see below), then walked right up the old town, coming out at the city walls. However, we were oblivious to any of this, and just walked on home. It was only when we looked at a map and tried to go back there that we realised we'd been there. But we hadn't gone into the mosque or taken photos, and Catherine hadn't seen it, so we went back anyway. The city walls were an anti-climax, in that we couldn't decide for a few minutes if what we were looking at was indeed a city wall, but the rest was good.

The following day, we went to the tombs at Apak Hoja (sometimes spelt Abak Hoja) where we wore traditional Uyghur dress and had photos taken:

We say the big Mausoleum (just behind us in that photo), which has a really big dome, and it's the biggest in China I think, but then these claims I never believe anyway. After checking out the mosque and museum, we went to the orchard, where we were given free fruit grown there and there was a traditional Uyghur dance show. They did a few dances, then they invited people from the audience. Nikki and Frankie went up, and did their best:

After the tombs, we headed back into town and got our bus tickets for Tashkurgan. Then we wandered again up to the mosque, and this time went in, where we saw some hilarious propaganda, which I will post at some point. Then through the old town again, and to the city walls, which were a huge let down. We went back to the hotel and met a friend of a friend, who is a tour guide here, but I don't know how much I trust him, as everything he said turned out to be false (of the things I remember).

On Friday morning, we got on the bus to Tashkurgan, and five hours later, arrived. Now, Lake Karakul, according to China, is in China, but according to all maps, is in Tajikistan. Furthermore, we stopped at a place where they checked our passports, but didn't stamp anything. No matter, we got to Tashkurgan, which is really near the Pakistani and Afghani border, had lunch, wandered around the town and the Stone City and marvelled at how the cows and goats just wander around the streets and no one bats an eyelid. Then at 6:15, we boarded a bus to Karakul Lake, which then left at 7:30. We arrived and were greeted by a Kirgiz family who had a yurt we could stay in. We had dinner with them (rice and lamb, really nice) but not until after they sold the three girls some jewellery. Then we slept in the freezing cold in a yurt, which I'm sorry, but is a glorified tent. The inside looked like this:

It was amusing though that the man was so creepy. We were lying there going to sleep, and he suddenly came in, lit the candle, poked the fire, then went back out. We wondered if he was going to come back, so we waited, but no. Then, in the middle of the night, Frankie heard someone moving around, and had a blanket thrown on her. It was warm, so she didn't care, then she realised the man was next to her. She grabbed her bag and he just said, "sleep" in a very strange manner, and left. I wasn't aware of any of this happening.

The next morning, after a breakfast of bread and tea, we got on some camels to ride around the lake. Although just before this, we went to find a shop, and while over at the main bit at the lake, we were told we had to buy tickets, 50 kuai, 25 for students. So we bought tickets, and then went to head back to the yurt to wait for our camels. The creepy Kirgiz man then spent fifteen minutes basically shouting at us for buying tickets. He was like a broken record, and I was so close to shouting at him. He seems to hate the Chinese though, he was being very racist. Fair enough if they're claiming that part of Tajikistan as part of China.

That over, we got on the camels. Two hours later, my legs were so sore and I was cold, so I got off and walked for the next hour and a half. They tried to make me pay for three hours, but the distance around the lake is doable in two hours, they just took their time, and I got off after two, so I refused. Hired car back to Kashgar, and back to the hotel. And a very early night - the lake is spectacular, and the stars at night are absolutely breathtaking (there's absolutely no ambient light, and there are literally tens of thousands of really bright stars), but it was nice to be indoors where there was a toilet, a shower, and a real bed.

On Sunday, the day we were going to the famous livestock market, sunday market and the old Uyghur housing museum, Nikki was ill. She had food poisoning, so she stayed behind. It was raining a lot, and was really cold, and because it's still Ramadan, the livestock market wasn't on. So we went to the Sunday market. Dead. Only half the stalls open. So we went to the museum, which was interesting, but there purely for tourists. When you leave though, you get a ticket with a prize on it, so I won a can of Sprite.

This was supposed to take all day, and it was now around lunchtime. So I dossed about, read Gulliver's Travels (abridged) and three Shakespeare plays (VERY abridged), then dinner. Nikki was still really unwell, so we booked flights to Urumqi for the next day (yesterday, Monday). As we'd done everything we wanted to do, on Monday I went to the bookstore and bought several maps and books on China, and we started planning our plan - to visit every province in China. Harder than it sounds. There are 34 (including Taiwan, Tibet etc.) and by Christmas we'll have covered 6 (for Christmas, we're going to Shanghai, then a two day trip to Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, followed by a trip to Suzhou and Nanjing in Jiangsu province then on to Hefei in Anhui province to fly back to Urumqi), and at Spring Festival we hope to cover another ten at least.

So we flew back, and that's it. Catherine and Frankie have gone on to Hotan, to then take the bus across the Taklamakan desert (Taklamakan means once you go in, you can't come back out), and should arrive tomorrow or the day after.

So today I'm doing all my laundry, homework etc. and relaxing before classes again tomorrow. I'll leave you with a photo of myself and Nikki on the bus on the way to Karakul Lake from Tashkurgan:

Day 46: Korla and Aksu

2007-10-07T10:14:00.001+01:00

So, I'm still on my travels, so this will be a short update.

So, on Sunday midday we got on a train headed for Kashgar, and 11 hours later got off the train at Korla. After finding a really cheap hotel (20 yuan per night), we went to bed on a board (literally) and slept not very well on account of the train station being next to us and the trains using their horns (are they called that on trains?) as much as possible. The train journey wasn't that bad, we had seats and a really nice Chinese couple opposite us. That evening though, outside Korla train station, a homeless woman ran up, snatched my bottle of Sprite and necked it. I wasn't bothered, it was mostly empty and flat, but still not much fun. So on Monday, we jumped in a bus to the city centre, and explored. What we didn't know is Korla is a very new city, set up by the Chinese government purely for the sake of economic growth, so everything was big, shiny, new and nice. Then the fun part - we went to what we thought was a park, and it turned out to be a theme park. Many exciting rides later, we were tired and hungry, so a cheap lunch followed by a wander around. Frankie had a bumbag on under her t-shirt, which made her look pregnant, so we decided to go into a baby shop for a browse, which amused us all greatly.

Then, back to the train station to board the train to Aksu. We were told our tickets were absolutely fine, but around ten minutes before the train arrived (and the train waits ten minutes at the station), we decided to double check. Turns out, we had to get the back of our ticket stamped and signed, so Catherine had to take all four tickets and run downstairs. While she was away, the train arrived. But we made it onto the train, and as we had no booked seats for this train, sat on some of the steps in a carriage. Two things about the Chinese train system: stations are like airports, with security checks and specific waiting rooms for specific trains. The trains are also two story, and have free hot water, for instant noodles (which are really good in China). On the train, Nikki and Catherine played card games with some Uyghur men (including one which couldn't possibly every work, mathematically) and Frankie and I sat and taught English to a Chinese girl and her friend(?). At Aksu, we got off the train, got ripped off in a taxi and tried almost every hotel in the city, but none had beds (read: it was 5am and the sleeping hotel staff couldn't be bothered). Eventually we found one, and it turned out to be crawling with bugs. But it wasn't bad for the price. Word of advice: don't go to Aksu. There's NOTHING to do. Seriously. What a wasted journey. We got back on the train at 5am the next day, but only after sitting in the waiting room opposite two Chinese people who were talking about us in Chinese. It was amusing that sometimes, if I stressed a word, he would repeat it in my accent. Then at one point, when they were talking about us, she said, "They might understand." He said, "No, they don't." Then a woman standing next to them said, "Of course they understand" and then we laughed. He was embarassed, but it was funny for us. We managed to get seats on the train (it was now the middle of the holiday week, so the train was quieter). We sat next to a Chinese couple who we chatted to for a few hours, with a break to eat the blandest noodle-soup-breakfast-thing I've ever not-tasted. The guy made me taste Baijiu (for those who don't know, it's Chinese rice wine, about 50%), which wasn't as bad as expected, but not what you want at 8am after 4 hours sleep.

I'll stop there because this keyboard is a nightmare and my arms are sore from typing, and also I must go and book flights to Urumqi (Nikki is ill, so I'm flying back with her (to her family if you read this - not serious, but in a "I want my own bed and a western toilet" kind of way)). Postcards are on their way to Mum, Dad, Alice, Nicki, Fran, Lady Faye, Franck, Zona, John, Carole and David, God and Gogd, Starbucks (Newcastle and Inverness) and Rachel. If anyone else wants one, I need your address :D

Day 37: I'm online!

2007-09-28T14:19:00.001+01:00

Long time no post, sorry! But the reason for not posting last week was my illness. I was ill for an entire week, it was awful, I could eat, and it stayed down, but it worked through me rather quickly. But that's all fine now.

I'll just discuss the main things: Last night, we were invited to some party for foreign students. So we turn up at the scheduled time, and are told by the guy that invited us that in fact, we're not invited. Then he disappears, and tells the one student from our group that was invited to make excuses to us. But then the lady that was organising the whole thing said of course we could go, so we did. It turns out, it was the National Day Reception for Foreign Experts, with awards and all sorts, really really posh. And the dress code was formal. So of course, Nikki and I were in dark jeans and t-shirts. Because we didn't realise what we were going to. But it was fun, and then of course we went for a drink afterwards, which was fun.

Then on Saturday (coming), Frankie (a girl studying in Shanghai) is coming to Urumqi, and on Sunday we're all taking the train to Kashkar, a city in south Urumqi, which should be amazing. We're not sure how long we're staying there, and to be honest, I don't actually know what our plans are, Nikki and Catherine are arranging it and I'm following.

Wow, so long without blogging and I've run out of things to say. Oh well. I'll start updating more regularly now that we have internet in our apartment :D

Day 24: Finally registered!

2007-09-15T08:47:00.001+01:00

Okay, regular blogs should return soon, but at the moment we have no internet in our apartment, so it means fniding time to come to an internet cafe (or wangbar as we now call them, as the chinese is pronounced wang ba).

So last weekend we didn't really do much of interest, so I'll skip over that. Monday was more classes and then Nikki and I ate at a restaurant we call "Sore tummy." We have nicknames for all the restaurants, such as gobby waiter (who came out into the street, cleared his throat very noisily and messily onto the pavement then went straight back to serving), australian daughter (where a couple tried to get us to teach their daughter english before her move to australia), lunch place (which does an AMAZING dish called basa pingguo, and is like toffee apple, but not as you know it in the west). Anyway, we knew it as sore tummy because Tracey and Tobin had eaten there the week before and felt unwell afterwards, but not food poisoning. They also said it possibly wasn't, as they did eat other places that week, so we gave it the benefit of the doubt. The rice was really horribly, like when you overcook rice, leave it then reheat it to serve to westerners, saving the good rice for the Chinese people. So Nikki got food poisoning, as her rice wasn't as horrible as mine so she ate it (mine was too bad, I didn't eat it). Fun.

On Tuesday, we sat an exam to check our Chinese level as we complained our reading class was too hard (I forget if I posted about this already), the texts were about China's achievements before the 13th century, or the time the American equivalent of the Royal Mint printed loads of bank notes wrong, something about the watermark or something. So we sat this exam which places you in the correct class. If you're a beginner. But at least they're changing the books now.

Speaking of books, the other day I went to the Xinhua book store to find a dictionary, and stumbled across a section with English books (but the type with Chinese on one page and then the English on the other) so I bought Little Women, Les Miserables and a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stuff, total: 20 kuai. About 1.30GBP. I also bought the textbook that comes before the reading book we'll be using, for extra study material. And one big dictionary and two small dictionaries. All of my purchases came to about 120, so about 8 pounds/16 dollars. I love China.

Last night we went out again, I think it may become a regular Friday night thing. We went to this amazing restaurant and ate so much, and it came to around 90p each. However, I didn't have to pay, as Nikki and I are having a pool tournament, and one game we decided to make interesting, by betting dinner on it. That one didn't count for the tournament (which I'm currently winnig 7-4 btw).

Not much else to say really, we've just been really busy with classes and homework, but there's a national holiday at the start of October when we get a week off, so we might go to Kashkar for a couple of days. Or actually explore this city.

Oh, one last update, my residence permit will be ready for collection on the 20th, at which point I can leave and enter China as much as I like, and go absolutely anywhere in China, including places not open to foreigners. Hurrah! But I don't plan on returning to the UK, 500 pounds return is a bit much for how little time I'd get to be there. But if any of you want to come to China...

I'll put my address on here when I remember what it is. It's really long and I forget which order it goes in (we're like the third floor in building three on street two in a complex on such and such road etc.).

Day 17: Urumqi so far

2007-09-08T08:47:00.001+01:00

Okay, apologies for not blogging, I've been mentally busy and now for some reason Blogger doesn't seem to be working. Oh well. This update will be seriously long, so now is the time to go to the toilet and make yourself a cup of your beverage of choice.

Okay, so we arrived in Urumqi on Friday, and had planned to wing it. We had the names and addresses of a couple of cheap hotels, and were going to jump on a shuttle bus and head to one. Slight issue. Urumqi airport is not unlike Inverness airport (in terms of size and helpful staff). So we were looking at a map, when a friendly man approached us and tried to help us find out destination. He even gave us a paper map and pointed out the locations we were looking for. "Okay, thanks" we say. Then we decide to take a taxi. So he takes us to his taxi, and charges us 100元 to get to a hotel. Ripped off. Another girl paid 60, and another paid 50 (and she went even further, more about her later).

So we get to the hotel, and with our fairly limited Chinese tell them we want a room for the night, cheap please. We are told 320元, okay. Plus a 500 deposit. Right. Then we hand over our passports (the police track your every move in this country). Our visa says it is valid for 000 days because it's a student visa and we get a residence permit within 30 days (the minimum validity for a visa) anyway. They didn't understand this, and the girl behind the counter was so rude, every time we tried to explain, she just giggled and starting talking to her friend behind her hand about us. Not impressed. We got to the room which wasn't even that nice, where the little book thing informed us our room should have been 288. So clearly the taxi driver got a cut (he was hanging around for ages after we got there) and they were fleecing us. So far, our impression of Urumqi was not good. We both missed Beijing (which we absolutely fell in love with) and we were in a not very nice part of town, and were generally not happy. So we did what any westerner would do in that situation. We went to KFC, where we met the only sensible person we had seen in this city until that point. The girl behind the counter. She gave us a pointy menu, spoke slowly and pointed at things when she had to ask something. We liked her. The next morning, we got in a taxi to the university where things went from bad to worse (don't worry, this post isn't entirely miserable)

So we got there, went to the office and were taken to meet the man in charge of international students, who spoke English! Hurrah! He welcomed us, chatted to us for a bit, then got a bilingual (apparently) girl to take us to the dorms. Wow, the dorms. In a word, slums. Each room had two beds with mattresses around 2 inches thick and made of straw. And a desk. Well, two of these as we shared rooms. The toilets were holes in the floor that...well, to put it politely, some people had some bad food and couldn't aim. There were no showers. There was no hot water. There were no laundry facilities. It was horrendous. Nikki cried, I was too stunned to. We went back to Anniwar (the guy in charge of international students) and spoke to him about moving off campus, that was too awful. He told us to think about it. We then went and saw him again saying we refused to live there. So he put us in touch with a Uyghur lady who owns a flat near the campus. So we went to see it. He kept telling us it was so expensive, and it was better for our learning to live on campus. Not quite, I would have been sharing with a Russian, and this landlady speaks only Uyghur and Chinese. Anyway, the apartment is 600USD per month for everyone living there, and there are now three of us. And we had to pay up front. So to the ATM every day to get out money so we had enough to pay her. But then we read the contract, realised instead of 27000元 each, which would be for a year, we needed 11 months, minus the difference between the deposit we gave her and the amount we should have given her (less), so it was 24250元. The apartment has three decent sized bedrooms, large living room, kitchen, western style bathroom with a washing machine, DVD player (soon), internet and phone (soon, because it's a new build, we haven't been wired up yet, hence my sporadic internet access), TV, everything really. And no curfew (you'll see why this is good soon)

Hurrah! We moved in, all was well. We just had to finish our forms for registration and then start classes. Three copies of this form, passport, get a medical (again (but this one was only 322 元)), done! NOT. You need four copies. Oh. No wait, five. Oh. We finally get everything together (including copies of our landlady's ID and things, and a temporary residence permit), when they suddenly inform us it's actually six. So we've still not registered.

Classes: On Wednesday we had our listening/speaking class. It was kind of hard, but not so hard I couldn't cope. There were bits I just sat with a blank look on my face, but I got the general meaning. Then on Thursday we had a "Comprehension" class (which seems to be more just general Chinese, with a little extra grammar). The teacher was SO nice, and I understood a good 90-95% of what was going on. Like that class. Then we had reading. Wow. In the texts we read, between us we new around 50% of the characters, at most. She won't teach us new words, and she wants us to skim read the texts. Can't do. We sat and basically cried for two hours because it was so difficult, then toddled off home. We have since confronted our BanJuRen (the woman in charge of our class) about the reading class being far, far too difficult, and they're putting on an exam on Tuesday afternoon to check our level, so we can change book (hopefully). The head of the school was not happy about this, but she never seems to be happy about anything, ever. She looks like a Chinese wicked witch of the west. And acts like one. But anyway, she was saying a couple of people could cope - that was because they spent a good day or two days preparing the texts, and they had Pinyin (romanization of Chinese) and translations into Korean (they're Korean, not mental) on almost every character. Then we had a culture class, which is aimed at the top level of students here. But we went anyway, and while we didn't understand everything, we understood enough to now know the complete history of Chinese characters, despite it being taught in Chinese. Which makes me feel incredibly proud.

The one thing that really annoys me about my classes though, are certain students. Now, as you all know, I'm not racist in the slightest (hence studying foreign languages and living in the back of beyond in China where the Han Chinese make up something like 55% of the population, compared to 97% nationally). But those students from Khazakstan so far have been an absolute nightmare. They sit on their phone in class, chatter away in their own language really loudly, and in the culture class, two boys (I swear they're about 12, one of them has definitely not hit puberty yet, but is apparently 16 - forged documents much?) sat throwing pens at each other, making phone calls and generally acting like 12 year old boys in a class they don't want to be in.

More positive now - our landlady took us out for traditional Uyghur food the other day, which was amazing. We had what I gather is Uyghur naan bread, which has bits of meat and things through it, and is AMAZING (although have you ever tried to eat a piece of naan with chopsticks? And I'm taking like, quarter of a pizza size pieces). Then there was strange white jelly like things in a spicy sauce, nice, although after five or six pieces, I just couldn't stomach any more of it. Oh, and a strange little glass bowl of what looked like yoghurt and tasted really sour, not nice. But Uyghur tea is nicer than Chinese tea in my opinion.

Now I'm going to totally throw the chronology.

Restaurants in China are amazing. Seriously good. The food always looks incredibly, and tastes brilliant. Your rice to go with your dish is 1元, and the tea is free, all you can drink. Which led to a rather unfortunate incident on Wednesday night. Our boiler had never worked, and on Wednesday they came to replace it as it couldn't be fixed. After they had fitted the new boiler, they scarpered, leaving a huge mess, and the mains water turned off. Now, we thought, do we turn the water back on because they forgot, or do we leave it because they turned it off for a reason? No idea. When Nikki and I went out for dinner, we decided hey, let's finish the pot of tea (around 3 litres). So we did. Then the very helpful waitress brought another pot. We decided we should at least drink one cup, so her work was not in vain. So around 1.6-1.7 litres of tea later, we toddled of home, realising we had no working toilet. Hmm. This was probably the funniest thing ever at the time (you probably had to be there). We weren't the only stupid ones, Catherine (our flatmate) had had three bottles of water. So we all sat and cried with laughter at how stupid we were.

I lied, chronology is back, I just jumped backwards a few days. So on Thursday, the three of us went out to dinner together, and decided to have a tea challenge. One pot each. We succeeded, and again nearly cried with laughter. But this time, we had a working toilet, hurrah! Earlier that day, we had gone for lunch with Tobin and Tracey, a couple from Scotland who are also students here, he in our class, she in the top class. Then a random Chinese guy approached us with his Tajik friend, and a Korean guy from our class, so we all went for lunch together. At this lunch, Tracey had said we will be batting off people asking us to help them or their daughters with their English, in exchange for help with Chinese, which won't actually happen, nor will any form of payment. She was right, immediately the Chinese guy offered to help us with Chinese in exchange for helping him with English, and at the restaurant, a large group at the next table as we finished our meal starting talking to us and one woman asked if we could help her daughter. This was hilarious, as we always assume that in this part of China (where no one speaks English really) no one can understand us, so we talk freely. We had been discussing our tea challenge and various other hilarious-to-us subjects. Then this man (from the large group) suddenly says "So where are you from?" in a perfect accent. CRINGE.

Another cringeworthy situation, when we were in Beijing at the Summer Palace, we were in one museum pretending to be from California, talking about how quaint everything was, how cute the British are and things. For a good half hour minimum. Then the Chinese man behind us is approached by a member of staff who blabs at him in Chinese, and his response? "(American accent) I'm not Chinese." Haha.

Anyway, moving on. Last night (nearly done, promise) we met up with Tobin and Tracey to go for dinner and then a drink at an Irish bar they knew (see? They DO get everywhere). They invited along an American couple and an American guy we spoke to briefly on Tuesday. We had an absolute blast. Dinner was really good, and then Nolan (the American guy) called his Chinese friend who came with us to the bar, where we sat for a couple of hours, before checking out some other bars (which were all dead or rubbish, so we didn't actually get anything there). Then Tracey said she knew of a Uyghur disco next to the night market, we should go. So we did. Well, we went to the night market and had Uyghur ice cream (really, there are no words to describe how good it is. It's kind of sweet in a tablet-y way, but not so sickly, and really soft and just generally amazing). Then Nolan, Catherine, Nikki, the Chinese guy (Andy I think his name was) and I went to the Uyghur disco. It's amazing. You get a table, then it's table service, and they have various live acts when everyone dances and the bits in between everyone sits back down. We stayed there 'til four and then headed home. Had we been in the dorms, we would have had to be back in our rooms before midnight. So yes, Uyghur discos, definitely worth a visit.

And that brings us up to speed I think. So now I'm going to go and find something interesting in this city to do (not difficult). Oh, and apologies for not commenting on blogs/emailing and things, as I've said, the internet here is restricted, but if your blog is down the right hand side, I do read it (with google reader), and would like to comment, but just can't :(

Day 9, I promise blogging will get more regular

2007-08-31T01:49:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I was waiting until I could get my photos onto my computer before blogging, because there was a really quite funny story to go with our trip to the Forbidden City. I didn't bring my camera wire however, so until I can get a replacement, I have no way of getting my photos on here. So instead, have someone else's photo:

That is '午门, (middle gate)' the gate into the Forbidden City, which is just behind the big one we've all seen with Mao's portrait hanging on it. So, we got there, and I was thinking, "Is this it? What a disappointment." So some guy approached us and asked if we wanted to see his art exhibition, and I figured, why not? There's nothing else to do here. So we bought some art at half it's original price (bartering is fun). Then, we got talking to some con artists (I think) who were chatting to us and then asked if we wanted to go and have some tea with them. We had been warned about them, so we went to the ticket office they had pointed out. Then we went through the gate, and discovered the forbidden city. I think we spent around four hours there, and didn't see it all, by a long way. It's HUGE. Later that evening, 熙涵 and I discussed our day, and realised we had both thought "Is this it?" Which at the time, was pant-wettingly funny. You had to be there.

On Sunday, we went shopping. Very unsuccessful. And it was raining. Not much to say about that day really.

Monday, we went to the Summer Palace. Word of warning: only go there when you feel completely rested, and have good sturdy walking shoes, and it's the depths of winter. We both nearly died from the heat, and my muscles are still aching. It was really nice and all, but by the end of the day we were both so completely exhausted we had reached hysteria and no longer cared. So 熙涵 bought a pea flavoured ice lolly (yes, it was as revolting as it sounds), and we got the bus home. We had booked tickets to the Beijing Opera, and were due to be collected around six. However, the bus took over an hour to do the journey (something we're more than used to now) so we were late back to our hostel and therefore to the opera. Oops.

We also had to move hostel on Monday, because their booking system is quite useless. Anyway, the opera. Have you seen the film "Farewell my concubine?" Well, they did that one. I didn't realise how short each one was. So they did two. On big LCD displays at the sides of the stage, it subtitled what they were saying in Chinese and Chinglish. Apparently they sing in dialect, so the Chinese is necessary, and the Chinglish was hilarious. Good though, with some (what we considered) impressive acrobatics.

On Tuesday, after moving back to the first hostel we were in (although a different room), we went to Beihai park. Or at least, that was the plan. We then realised we had forgotten to book our trip to the Great Wall for Wednesday, and the acrobatics for that night. So we got the bus back, booked, then realised we had almost no time to get to a bank to change our Traveller's Cheques. So off to the bank we toddled. We took a number, filled out an "Exchange Memo" and sat down. For two hours. Then paced for a bit. After two and a half hours (HOURS), we left the bank, with our money changed. So, the moral of the story, if you're in Beijing and looking for a bank, avoid the branch on 西四路口北. When we left though, there was a lot of shouting going on and the atmosphere was very tense, I wouldn't be surprised if they had rioted.

So yes, by this point, it was half past one, and we had arranged to meet some people from our Chinese class at two, around an hour's journey away if the traffic is bad. Fortunately, the traffic wasn't, so we made it just about in time. We wandered about together, and got our photo taken by and with loads of Chinese people. We wandered to the Temple of Heaven (after having walked completely the wrong direction first, going right around it), which was really impressive. The smog was worse that day than any other, I wouldn't believe what the media is saying about it, it's not even noticeable most days. We did some China Poses (Chinese people always have bizarre poses when having their photos taken, we now copy this) and then 熙涵 and I had to go. We toddled back to the hostel, and went to the acrobatics. My God. If I had pearls, I would have been clutching them. Those children are terrifying. The things they do, that were referred to as "kids playing" by the woman in our hostel. Incredible, but tense. The oldest ones were around 14 as well, which makes it worse. However, they did fit 12 people on a bike, which was impressive.

On Wednesday, the Great Wall. We were picked up at 7am by a woman on crack who took us to another few hotels to pick more people up, then we went to the Ming Tombs. This woman was seriously scary. We RAN around the tombs, and if you wanted to stop for a photo, you basically got shouted at. And left behind. It was interesting to learn more about the things there than if we had gone on our own, including the gate to the tombs (when you leave, you have to pat your shoulders and stamp your feet to make sure no bad spirits are attached to you, then cross with your left or right leg (men/women) first while saying "我回来了" (I came back). Then we went to a jade factory. Some of the things these people can make from stone is incredible. Oh, and extortionate. They had a giant screen, 2.2m RMB (to be fair, that only about 145,000 GBP or 291,000 USD) We both bought jade chopsticks and stamps with our name on. Then lunch - she had told us we were going to get dog, cat and all sorts, and to be honest, I was looking forward to that, I want to try them all. But alas, we got pork and chicken.

The Great Wall next, which was not what I expected, I have to say. It was huge, and a wall, but it's not like in the movies. It has some seriously steep slopes with no steps, and is built on MOUNTAINS, so it's a lot of climbing. But we did learn that in the guard towers, if they saw the enemies coming, they would burn wolf droppings because it makes a lot of smoke, and alert the others. We got what looked a lot like a roller coaster around half way up the mountain, which was nice. And on the way back down, it could have been really fun, but the guy kept using the brakes. Rude. Then we went to a silk place (did you know that silkworm poo smells like tea leaves? And the Chinese put it in pillows to help them sleep), and nearly bought things. But it was completely impractical to buy what I wanted (a duvet and duvet cover (cheaper than you'd think, only around fifteen pounds for the duvet)) but realised my case was already heavy and full. Alas. So we booked tickets to see the Shaolin monks. Seriously, why would you ever want to be able to break three steel bars over your head? It's a bizarre thing to do. But impressive, nonetheless.

Because we had caught the early show, we decided to go to a 全聚得栲鸭店 (Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant). Wow. We got half a duck between us, as that's what the guide from the tour had said was a good amount. I could have eaten a whole one myself. I don't normally eat skin, but it was so good. So now, we're not allowed to saw the words, "crunch," "goo," "crispy" or "duck." Because our mouths start automatically watering. It was brilliant. I will never eat it in the UK again. The two have absolutely nothing in common (except maybe pancakes).

Which takes us to yesterday (Thursday). I will write more once we get to our uni though, this post is already very long. Just wanted to say I'm not dead and all.

Day 2: I'm in China and awake!

2007-08-24T08:33:00.000+01:00

Okay, I'm now more awake, so I shall write all about my journey here.

On Tuesday, I flew from Inverness to London Gatwick with easyJet (why they insist on that capitalisation is beyond me). Not much fun really, but not too dull. The seatbelt sign was only off for about 5 minutes. Short flights. I like. After landing and resisting the urge to stab people in the face at Baggage Reclaim, I got the bus to the Travelodge, which could do with a refurb. After about three minutes sleep and eight hours staring at the ceiling, I　got up, breakfast, airport. Checking in three hours early for a long haul flight is okay, except for the bit once you're through security. But by the time we ate (Garfunkel's, very nice, 熙涵 could only have toast though, still suffering from food poisoning) and got things for the plane, it was time to board :D

First flight (to Dubai) was quite good. Really nice food, and the entertainment was amazing. We babbled nonsense and played Yahtzee and Trivia Challenge on the back of the seat in front for a while, then I watched Shrek 3 (Really Quite Good). Then we landed. Dubai airport was nice, although I had a heart-stopping moment where I　couldn't find the boarding passes. They were in my travel wallet (where they should be), but I had neglected to look there. Through security (I didn't set off the metal detector in London, but did in Dubai, go figure) and a "pat down" (Let's just say he now knows me rather better than I should like) we wandered for a while, buying some things with English money purely so we could have some Dubai money.

Flight to Beijing rather less fun. I watched the plane's route on the monitor for a while, and wondered why we took a massive detour at one point across Asia. Ah, to avoid Afghanistan, I see. Bored bored bored bored bored (that lasted around seven hours. I tried sleeping, with a little success, but not enough to feel rested) then landing. It was so surreal getting off the plane. Border control was easy, she looked at my passport, stamped, away I went. They have a quarantine bit though, so as long as you don't have AIDS, Leprosy or Tuberculosis, and you say so on the landing slip, they basically ignore you. Baggage claim was brilliant, we walked up to the conveyor and my bag appeared. By bag I mean trunk. Think going to Hogwarts. Actually, put it next to 熙涵's and it's basically a toilet bag size.

We found a shop to break our obscenely large notes (Note to Bank of Scotland: 100, not a small note. 100 is a big note. Just 100s is not "mixed denomination."), where the woman pulled a face at me handing over a 100元 note for Coke, which was 5元 (about 34p, AND it's 600ml, instead of 500 like in Britain). We got our bus, which took HOURS but took us right past 天安门(Tiananmen) square. Then on a public bus. How easy it should be, how easy it wasn't.

So, the bus arrived, we got on, and tried to pay. 1元 each. I have a five. I am told again, by two passengers, 1元 each. I try to hand over the five. Suddenly, it's 3元 altogether. So I　try to hand over the five. 3元！ I know, I have a five! Is it three each maybe, and their English is bad? Then I look at the note. What I have is not a 5元, it's a 5角, which is 0.5元. Oops. Get off, walk, arrive at hostel VERY sweaty and disgusting (having been in the same clothes for around 28 hours). Shower, relax. Dinnertime. Wow, what to have, do I go for "Hot sweat meet slim slice with seafood taste" or maybe something more exotic, like "Long brewed vinegar jelly fish head (cold)," "Stir fried donkey meat," "Stir fried bullfrogs," or "Sour and spicy fried edible tree fungus (cold)." In the end, I had "Fried mushroom with chicken fillet" with rice and water. 30元 and really nice, shame the portions are so HUGE that I couldn't eat it all.

Cut to this morning, got up, showered and ready, 熙涵 not enjoying jet lag. So we've had a lazy day. I go outside to read my book, but the 7000 (30) degree heat is too much, so back in to the air conditioning. Then I become determined to get a tan again, so suffer for another short while. Can't do it, back inside. And now I'm here, telling you my tales of excitement and joy and boredom and tiredness. Fin.

Day 1: I am in China

2007-08-23T15:24:00.000+01:00

So, after far too little sleep and far too much time on planes, I am in China! I am tired, so this is just a short note, just to say I'm here and all. And because of internet censorship, I cannot access my own blog posts to reply to comments, as expected. And the software I got doesn't work. Poo.

~~Today's Fearometer Rating:~~ Do not need this any more. I'm here now.

t...that's it, just 't'

2007-08-21T10:05:00.000+01:00

Today, I fly to London. Tomorrow, to China. No idea when I'll next have internet, so don't expect updates in the next week or two (although it may happen).

Today's Fearometer Rating: 8

t-1 day: Packing

2007-08-20T11:55:00.000+01:00

Packing. One of the least fun things in the world. But it has to be done.

I sat, looking at my suitcase, thinking, "Why is this nowhere near full? SURELY I need more things?" Sod it, I think, I'll weight it. 19.9584kg. I'm allowed 20kg. I still have to put in toothbrush, razor, straighteners and hairbrush. So I might be SLIGHTLY over, but they'll let me off with like, 500g surely. Hurrah

I can't believe I fly tomorrow. I'm swinging rapidly between YAY and CRAP. YAY I'M GOING TO CHINA and OH CRAP I'M LEAVING THE COUNTRY.

I was GOING to stay in the Generator in central London, but thought about it a bit. Fly into Gatwick, pay £15 for the Gatwick Express to Victoria, trek across London with my cases etc. The next morning, leave earlier than I'd like to trek across London, and pay £15 for the Gatwick Express. OR stay in a hotel at the airport. So I'm now doing that. I looked at Travel Inn. Oh, hai, ten millyin pounds per night. So not going there. I miss my Whitbread discount sometimes. Nothing else about working for Pizza Hut (although waiting tables is a job I like, I wouldn't do it there), just the 25% off. Ah well. Must go procrastinate some more.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 2-8 (variable)

t-3 (aka not enough) days: My itinerary

2007-08-18T14:24:00.000+01:00

For those who didn't know, this is how the next two weeks(ish) will go:

Tuesday 21st: Fly from Inverness to London, stay overnight in a hostel.

Wednesday 22nd: Fly from London to Dubai, then Dubai to Beijing.

Thursday 23rd: Arrive in Beijing, go to hostel.

Friday 24th - Thursday 30th: Party it up, Beijing stylee. I'm down wif da yoof, doncha know.

Thursday 30th: Fly to Urumqi from Beijing, find a hostel to stay in.

Friday 31st: Register with the university, and move into student accommodation.

Saturday 1st onwards: Party it up, Urumqi stylee (See above re: yoof).

I have discovered this morning that blogger blogs and various other websites are definitely blocked in China. However, blogger.com is NOT, nor is the google.com reader, so while I will still read your blogs, I will be unable to comment on them, but will email when it's an important comment (aka almost never). Also, to join my mailing list (haha) to read things which I probably shouldn't mention on here for fear of the Chinese authorities beating me, send me an email to Xinjiang diaries (no space) at google mail (again, no space) dot com.

I also bought some books today, which I may not be allowed to take into the country. It doesn't appear on any "Banned books" lists I can find, but that might be because it's available in all the world, and it hasn't been published in China. I might try to read it before getting on the plane to China then post it back to my Inverness address just to make sure. Or maybe I'll take it, and if they confiscate it, I can always buy another copy when I get back to HeroLand or PerillaLineOrchid (England/Britain and Scotland, respectively). For those who were too scared to ask, a perilla is a herb used in Japanese cooking, related to basil and mint.

Today's Fearometer Rating:9

t-5 days: A suddenly huge to-do list

2007-08-16T11:42:00.001+01:00

Remember that to-do list? Well, I was WAY out. My current to-do list looks like this:

Dot mobile - I have to write to them to cancel my contract. Quite important, as I won't be using this phone in China.

Hotel Chocolat - I'm in the chocolate tasting club, and have to cancel my monthly deliveries of absolutely amazing chocolates (quite heartbreaking, I'm sure you'll agree). DONE

Portland Residential - My landlord in Newcastle. I have to send them various bits and bobs (if Talktalk and nPower would get their act together) to get my deposit back (£200, so quite urgent)

Topman - I have a storecard (I know, I know, but I wanted the goody bag). Just to let them know I'm leaving the country, and could they not send me things. No, there isn't a balance.

Travel money - Yes, more. I need a lot. And I had to buy in installments. So this is the final installment, I have to pick it up from the bank today. (熙涵，你要带多少钱？我带六千五百块）

Hostels in China - Booked (as much as possible) and all that, but I need to get directions to them, to save us being ripped off in taxis (yes, we're white, no, we're not rich)

Packing - No longer can this be left. I have just weighed the two suitcases I was debating about taking, they both way they say, one has more capacity but is much harder to carry, the other also has more pockets which could be useful for overnight things. Depends on how much junk I want to take. The advantage of the smaller one is it holds less, so I'd be less likely to go over the weight limit for the FlyMachine.

Inland Revenue - I'm leaving the country, so will not be earning any more, so would like some tax back. Problem is, I just looked at my most recent payslip, and I haven't actually paid any tax. So I don't need to speak to them.

NHS - I read somewhere that if you're leaving the country, you have to un-register with the NHS. But if I can't find anyone to speak to about this, then there's nothing I can do. Sorry, struggling healthcare system.

Toiletry shopping - I have all the things I need for China, except toiletries. I'm going to take the bare minimum (people who have seen my toiletries bag before, stop laughing now). One shower gel, one deodorant, one shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste, and that's about it. (Obviously, I already have a toothbrush, razor and shaving oil which lasts about ten years).

熙涵's book - She posted me a book, so I must finish reading it and posting it back (Unless you want to take it to China? I doubt the authorities will be too happy, it talks about tee-en-an-men, which is apparently not talked about in China, and a reason for blocking a website from China. I may have just got this blog blocked. Hmm.

Starbucks - Having just left my job (woohoo!), I need to sell my shares (you can't say they're bad to the staff, I've got loads of shares), and get a P45. Problem - I'm still listed as working in Newcastle (I was never transferred), and (as of Friday) we couldn't get hold of the manager to transfer me. And my address is still listed as Newcastle. So I can't get my P45. At least I changed my address with the YBS, who deal with my shares for me.

So, panicking slightly now. Some bits will take no time at all, others are more just hassle than anything, but some are very time-sensitive, and there's no way it'll be done (like Portland Residential). I also wanted to get my laptop fixed up and sold, but I doubt there's time for that. Fortunately, Nicki offered to sell it for me, if I send it for repair and put the return address as hers.

Dear Lord. Five days.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 9

t-12 days: My visa!

2007-08-09T12:02:00.000+01:00

I have my visa! I got up at 5am to get the Megabus to Edinburgh, got off the bus at 10:50am and was back in the centre of Edinburgh before noon. But at least I have my visa! I had minor heart failure when I looked at it and it said 000 under "Days after entry." Then realised it means how long the VISA is valid for, but because it's a single entry, it won't have any validity after the first entry. Phew!

So soon 'til I go! On Monday I'm off to Manchester to see Nicki and Tegan & Sara(h?), (Nicki: I arrive into Picadilly and leave from Victoria) then when I get back on Wednesday, it's just packing and a dinner out with the famille. J'ai peur. Mucho.

Oh, and I still have to order holiday money, but as yet I don't have enough pennies to buy enough. Not a priority though. I might just use my card over there to take money out - sure, there's a charge, but it also saves carrying around huge quantities of cash.

Today's Fearometer Rating:9

t-16 days: I ar teechir!

2007-08-05T01:06:00.000+01:00

I ar teechir!

I am now fully qualified to teach English as a foreign language. Haha! I know, I know. The thing that I'm most bothered about is actually my accent - there will be a bunch of Chinese people speaking with Scottish accents (assuming I teach in China). It could be quite amusing, given that I've had more than one Chinese person think I'm saying "expelience" or "daily" (for experience and dairy, respectively). Even English people think that sometimes. Ah well. I could teach them an American accent.

I'm off to get my visa soon. Only problem - I don't have my rota for next week. So I don't even know if I'm working Monday (kind of tomorrow, it's 1am and I haven't slept yet), so I don't actually know if I got the day off I booked to go and get it. Only 6 more shifts (maybe)!

Today's Fearometer Rating:6

t-notenough (19) days

2007-08-02T20:51:00.000+01:00

6am: BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP BEEPBEEP *crying noises can be heard*

7am: I board my Megabus to 爱丁堡 (Edinburgh).

10am:熙涵 reminds me by text that the consulate will not accept original documents, and I need photocopies. "Alas!" says I. "'tis fine, there will be somewhere I can get a photocopy in the centre of Edinburgh."

10:40am: I get off my megabus, and go in search of Pritt Stick and a photocopier.

11am: Pritt stick, but no photocopier.

11:15am: Still no photocopier. Text AQA to find out where to get copies.

TEN MINUTES(!) LATER

Try this place, or this other place. One has closed down, and the other is about a six day trek.

11:30am: Think "Sod it" and get in a taxi to the embassy. See a copy place two minutes before the embassy. Run back (it's now 11:40).

11：50am: Have copies, run back to embassy.

11:55am: Arrive at embassy. Hand in forms. Informed they will not be ready for Wednesday due to Monday being a holiday I didn't know about. I agree to pay an extra £15, so it will be ready tomorrow (although I can't pick it up 'til Wednesday)

12noon: The embassy closes. And I now have two hours and forty minutes to do the ten minute bus ride to the bus station, where I get my bus back to Inverness.

But I have applied for my visa!

Today's Fearometer Rating:9

t-22 days : Moneys and Medicals

2007-07-30T12:10:00.000+01:00

My to-do list is getting shorter and shorter, I like it. I have just spoken to the bank, and while I'm not the most impressed with what they've said, I now know how to send myself money in China. I have to phone the telephone banking service (which is fine, I'll be buying an international calling card ANYWAY), and they'll do it. Unlike 熙涵 who is supposed to go into the branch. And the bank couldn't see why that would be a problem.

Also, on Friday morning, at 8am, I went for my medical. I still have to get my results from the AIDS test and the Chest X-ray, and get the ECG done, and give him some pee (yum), but apart from that, it's all done. It sounds like a lot still to do, but considering how much was already done, it's nothing. So then it's just visa on Thursday and then ordering more money and packing. AAAAAAARGH! Scary. Really, really scary.

But also a little bit exciting.

Today's Fearometer Rating:8

t-27 days: Still No Medical

2007-07-25T10:10:00.001+01:00

So, 26 days 'til I leave Costa Del Inverness behind, and only 9 days 'til I'm in Edinburgh applying for my visa. For which I need a medical (which you should all know by now). Thing is, I haven't actually had this medical yet, and the GP STILL hasn't got back to me about it. We gave up and phoned a secret department of the hospital that noone is meant to know about, but they can't do anything for the next two to three weeks. Fat lot of good that is.

And despite the GP getting the form over a week ago, he STILL hasn't got back to me, so I phoned AGAIN this morning, and am now sitting waiting for the return phone call. If it hasn't come in the next few hours, I'll start phoning hourly. I'm seriously hacked off. He got the forms last Wednesday, although the first phone call was made on the Monday. And yet STILL nothing, even about cost, how many appointments I need, absolutely nothing. For all I know, he might not have even looked at the forms.

But something good did happen. I got a lovely letter from SAAS informing me that yes, I can have more money. Now I just need Dr Smith Finley to send on my travel expenses claim and I'm laughing.

Today's Fearometer Rating:8

t-32 days: ANGER.

2007-07-20T22:07:00.000+01:00

Oh, you know how we told you in that letter that you can register from the 25th-31st? We lied. You can only move in on the 31st. So those flights you paid for on the 30th means you now have to pay for a hotel in Urumqi, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh, and you have to pay for your rent upfront before we let you in. That's 3200元 please. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 8

t-32 days: To do list, revised

2007-07-20T14:36:00.000+01:00

Things I STILL have to do:

Get a medical. Do. Not. Want. You have to get an ECG, an AIDS test and all sorts. It better not be really expensive, because I have to get one in China as well (I was supposed to just get one there, but the consulate here won't accept that (see previous posts panicking about this).

Get my visa. Cannot be done without the medical. But still a stressful experience, as I have to go to Edinburgh which means getting a bus at 7:10 in the morning, and coming back a few hours later (and it's like, 3 and a half hours each way. So for those who think Inverness is right by Edinburgh, you're wrong. Really, really wrong). On two separate days.

Work out how to send money to China. This just requires a call to the bank or similar, but I also need to work out how much and when to send money there. I know there are charges, and I would like to avoid them, but without leaving myself skint. Gah.

Pack. This one can wait. Hurrah!

Things I HAVE done (to make my feel better):

Get travel insurance. Yes sirree, I'm all insured :D

Book flights from 北京 to 烏魯木齊/乌鲁木齐, 中国南方航空 (China Southern Airways) flight, here we come!

Get my documents from 新疆师范大学 See previous post.

Book accomodation in Beijing. Technically, this isn't done, but I have sent the email and am just waiting for a reply.

Get travel money. I have 200元 and 300 (about 2300元) American Dollars Travellers Cheques, which should do me until I get my first load of money sent over from here. If not, I always have credit cards/bank card.

But no, I'm STILL not ready, and I still might 哭, it's just a little less likely.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 6

t-34：I has dokumintz!

2007-07-18T18:49:00.000+01:00

(English is below - any bilinguals please do correct, it required a lot of dictionarying.)

利亚姆同学：

我们很高兴的通知您，经审核您的申请材料，我校己决定录取您作为语言生在我校汉语教育学院汉语专业学习，时间自2007年 9月 _ 日起至2008年07月_日止，授课语言为汉语。
请您持本录取通知书，外国留学人员来华签证申请表(JW202)原件和“外国人体格检记录”原件，前往中国使（领）馆办理来华学习(X) 签证，并于2007年08月25日至2007年08月31日期间，到我校国际合作与交流处（国际文化交流学院）报到。因故不能按时到校报到者，必须事先征得本校同意，否则将视为自动放弃入学资格。

注：入境后，请立即到学办理报到手续，并在30天内办理居留许可证逾期公安局将罚款。

Liam:

We are happy to inform you that having received your application, we have decided to accept you as a language student at our School of Chinese, from _/09/2007 until _/07/2008, for instruction in Chinese.
Please take your acceptance letter, Visa Application for International Students and Visa Application Form to the Chinese Embassy (Consulate) to get your Student (X) Visa, and then between 25/08/2007 and 31/08/2007 to our international office to register. If you are unable to register between those dates, you must first approve this with the school, otherwise you may lose your place.

Footnote: After entering China, and within 30 days of registering at the school, you should go to the Public Security Bureau and obtain a Residency Permit.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 5

t-39 days: To-do list

2007-07-13T18:07:00.000+01:00

So, people keep asking if I'm all organized and ready to go to The Middle Kingdom. In a word: no.

Things I still have to do:

Get a medical. Do. Not. Want. You have to get an ECG, an AIDS test and all sorts. It better not be really expensive, because I have to get one in China as well (I was supposed to just get one there, but the consulate here won't accept that (see previous posts panicking about this).

Get my documents from 新疆师范大学 (Xinjiang Normal University. Why 师范 is translated to Normal is beyond me, it means "teacher-training."). Nothing I can do to expedite that, but I am still sitting stressing about it.

Get my visa. Cannot be done without the previous two. But still a stressful experience, as I have to go to Edinburgh which means getting a bus at 7:10 in the morning, and coming back a few hours later (and it's like, 3 and a half hours each way. So for those who think Inverness is right by Edinburgh, you're wrong. Really, really wrong). On two separate days.

Book accomodation in Beijing. We're staying in Beijing for a week before going to 烏魯木齊/乌鲁木齐, so we need somewhere to stay. We have seen a place we both really like (we being 熙涵 and I), but until we know when we can move into our room in 新疆师范大学，we can't do anything about that.

Book flights from 北京 to 烏魯木齊/乌鲁木齐, but again, can't do that yet.

Work out how to send money to China. This just requires a call to the bank or similar, but I also need to work out how much and when to send money there. I know there are charges, and I would like to avoid them, but without leaving myself skint. Gah.

Pack. This one can wait. Hurrah!

So no, I'm not ready, please don't ask, because I might 哭.

Making this list has increased the Fearometer rating:

Today's Fearometer Rating:7

t-40 days: Money

2007-07-12T16:59:00.000+01:00

Here is the last two days in lolcats speak:

Wednesday:
Me: Oh hai, i are needz a money for the Chiyna.
Bank's Interweb: Oh hai, you are wants how many?
Me: I are not know, you are give me the amerkun dollaz travilerz checkz, 300 moneys please.
BI: Okai, you are come tomoro get, yes?
Me: Okai.

Thursday:
Me: I are go shops.
Me: I are bored shops. I are go home.
Me: I are get off publictogethersteamchariot. Oh noes! The moneys! I go tomoro.

This post was inspired by the text conversation had with 熙涵 which was entirely in lolcat speak. For those who don't know what lolcats are: click here (Warning: really quite funny)

Today's Fearometer Rating: 5

t-41 days: Stress gone.

2007-07-10T23:44:00.001+01:00

I want to go again.

t-41 days: STRESS (Part 2)

2007-07-10T23:11:00.000+01:00

So, further to earlier's post, I have since discovered that not only do I have to go to Edinburgh for my visa, they also won't accept my application without a medical. This is despite the fact that we have been told by the university not to get a medical here, as we will get a medical at the other end anyway, and will end up paying for two.

And so I look at the form. The usual medical things (blood type, have you ever had BadSpellingOfEnglishNameForHorrendousObscureDiseases). Then a few I hadn't expected. ECG. Chest X-Ray. AIDS test. STI test. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

Anyone offended by swearing, please look away now.

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.

As you were.

Today's Fearometer Rating:9

t-41 days: STRESS

2007-07-10T16:32:00.000+01:00

On Monday the 13th of August, I will travel to Manchester to stay with a friend for two nights, see a gig, and get my chinese visa. WRONG. I will still go to Manchester, but I won't be getting my visa. Because I have to get my visa at Edinburgh. Nowhere else will accept my application.

Problem: Edinburgh does not do a same day service. So it means either staying overnight and paying the £15 next day charge, or going down to apply, coming back, then going down 4 working days later to pick up, then coming back. Either way, quelle chore.

Also, the consulate's website says I have to take a medical certificate. But we were told not to get medicals done here, as they would be done in China. Zenmeban?! (What to do?)

Also, still no documents (although we've been told they're on route - faxed copies have arrived, but not hard copies). So no flights can be booked to Urumqi. However, I do have a travel agent friend who has said she can do flights for hopefully cheap (although she hasn't given me any actual figures). All this stress means that I am now also scared once more, The Fear has returned. If this is going wrong BEFORE I go, what might go wrong when I'm there? AAAAAARGH.

Today's Fearometer Rating:6

t-44 days: No More Fear(tm)

2007-07-07T19:20:00.000+01:00

Today is a completely fear free days in terms of going to the Middle Kingdom. I couldn't even tell you why.

Last night, I booked my train tickets to go to Manchester to get my Visa (if the bloody documents ever arrive), so that's one less thing to worry about. Until we have documents from the university telling us when we can move into our rooms there, we can't really book our flights from 北京（Beijing) to 乌鲁木齐（Urumchi). Although thinking about it, we could book the flights (they're already 2680元，about 175 english pounds*） and stay in a hotel in Urumchi (阿涵，what thinkest thou?)

Also, hotels for 北京, tai exciting le. I've found some AMAZING family run hostel type dealies for around ten to fifteen pounds per night right in the centre, private room and bathroom. They have great reviews as well (in varying degrees of english).

Which is a thing I don't like about China. With the Olympics coming up, the Chinese government are trying to stamp out chinglish, which is a shame. I mean, "Small Heart, Don't Walk On The Grass" is just cute, and I have no objections to standing at an Enjoy Stand (viewpoint). "To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty." Okay, so I'd fall on my ass, not realising that it meant the floor was slippery, but still, it's fun. We can't stand the sight of mattress fragrant grass. I could go on.

Obviously, "Deformed" or "Crippled" for "Disabled" (Or "differently abled" if we're to be PC in an American way) isn't too good, but when they're still using words like 'steek (to close, of a door)' and 'to blue (to blow in modern english),' who can blame them?

Today's Fearometer Rating:0

*correct at time of writing (exchange rate 1GBP=15.2852CNY)

t-53 days: Moving Out

2007-06-29T09:50:00.000+01:00

So it is my last day in Newcastle. At 5:40pm today, my train will leave Newcastle, heading to sunny Inverness, where I will spend the next six 57 days panicking and stressing (with some full time working thrown in for good measure).

It's really quite sad to be leaving this flat, my first year flat was awful and I was hardly ever there, but this flat has become an actual home. Even the things that are wrong with it, I no longer mind. I'm used to the sofa that has a big dip on the right hand side. That funny dip in the floor in the living room. The 'knack' required to flush the toilet. It wouldn't be home without them.

And so I'm going to back to my natal home (not quite true, that would be somewhere else in Inverness, and I'm fairly certain people I don't know live there now), never to see some Newcastle people again, some I'll see in a year. One I'll see for the entire year in between.

Some things I'll miss about Newcastle as a city: I know where everything is. Bagel Of The North. Regulars at work. And in the past two weeks I've discovered a whole bunch of new things (Red Box Gallery anyone? Didn't know that entire BUILDING existed until last night, and it's HUGE). My friend Mike's bar, Fusion. But some things I won't miss: The chavs. The weather (windiest city ever? I believe so). That horrifically ugly building at the bottom of Northumberland Street.

Then there's the things I'll miss about Britain: Starbucks (I know, I know), Spanish cinema, knowing the currency and the going rate for things, the shops where I buy all my clothes, Lindt chocolate, books and reading for pleasure (while I can do that in China, I'm restricted to one suitcase, and I imagine english language novels will not be overly common).

And of course, the things I won't miss: The music. Dear God, the music. The last three songs on the radio have made me want to impale myself on the aerial. The close-minded culture and the racial stereotyping. TV. Ridiculously expensive things that are only expensive because British people will pay that much. Bring on my rent which will be around £270 for the year.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 9

t-54 days: Still No Documents

2007-06-28T09:48:00.000+01:00

So, in order to go to China for a year and live and study, they require that you have a visa. Ugh. Why can't I be going to the EU?

Anyways, for this student visa, I have to pay £30, and take myself along with an application form and an admission notice from the university to an embassy in either Edinburgh, Manchester or London. If you are American, it costs £30 also ($60?). If you are of ANY OTHER nationality, it costs £20 (or equivalent). Huh.

Problem with that? I don't HAVE an admission notice, so I can't apply for my visa. In fact, I have no idea when I -will- have an admission notice.

But at least I have a phone I can use in China. In Newcastle, there's a little known shop in Newcastle where you can take your phone, and for a very small fee, they will add Chinese to your phone. Only what they don't tell you is that they simply replace ALL the software on the phone to that which is on a Chinese version of the same phone, so my icons are now different, and the buttons work differently. But I can text in Chinese! And my phone is unlocked! All for the bargainous price of fifteen english pounds. Although texting in Chinese is not like typing in Chinese. To those who know how to type Chinese using pinyin - it's like that, but with predictive text, and you obviously can't use numbers for tone or whatever to narrow down the options.

Today's Fearometer Rating: 8 (on account of moving out tomorrow)

t - 55 days: The inaugural posting

2007-06-28T07:35:00.000+01:00

Well howdy y'all! The purpose of this blog will be to document my year abroad next year in China, in Urumqi (烏魯木齊/乌鲁木齐）in XinJiang (新疆) province.

So, I'm leaving in 60 days. I'm currently still in Newcastle, where I go to University (Newcastle, not Northumbria). I've been here for two years, and this past year have lived with two of my best friends, one of whom is going to Brazil next year (and when she sets up a blog, I'll link it) and the other is moving to Bolton University to study art (and if she sets up a blog, I'll link that too). In two days, I leave for Inverness (my hometown) to live with my family to work until I leave.

My exam results come out on Monday, when I find out if I'm even allowed to go to China (although the flights are booked and everything, so I bloody better be), so I'll let you know how they go.

Not much more to say really, this was more just an introductory post. I'll post as we get closer to my departure and with regular "fear-o-meter" updates.

Today's Fearometer Rating:6.5 (out of a possible 10)