Hello from Shanghai
A quick update
Bex left it to me to write up about Hangzhou. Sadly, there's not much to add to what's already been said. It's got a beautiful lake in the middle, West Lake, that's surrounded by gorgeous gardens and very picturesque pagodas. We managed to stay in a great hostel too, along a causeway on the lake - it's just been renovated from a period house, so everything's new and in good nick. Hostels seem to have gone up since what i've experienced in the past.
Judging by the shops, it's got quite a few very rich people there too, lording it over the rest of us: it's packed with these really posh hotels and restaurants with private rooms and huge balconies overlooking the lake. Bex and i felt rather unglamourous to say the least. We managed to pay for a very tasty and filling dinner in a cheap place across from the university for under £2, and then spent more than double that for a take-away ice cream in one of the posh shopping centres.
All in all though, I'd recommend Hangzhou as a great place to go to for it's own sake (i.e. rather than and afterthought after Shanghai; it's just 2 hours outside Shanghai.)
Right, now onto Shanghai: everything's Big in Shanghai! The buildings along the Bund (i.e. the north bank of the Huangpu river) and in the new town of Pudong are as big and impressive as the photos would have you believe - the Bund is an especially good gauge, as the front has a line of colonial era style buildings, and then rising up behind them are all the new sky-scrapers. Of course the Pudong area contains huge buildings too, including the oft-photographed Oriental Pearl Tower, that looks like a syringe standing on it's plunger.
The Luxury shopping centres are something else too. Every luxury European and American brand has got in here in a big way. Personally i got bored of walking into yet another shopping mall selling Gucci, Versace, Lacoste etc. etc. Of course, like everything else, they're huge too. It's all a bit vulgar if you ask me though - especially, as we all know, the wealth disparity between the people who shop in these places and those desperately pedling the rip-off Luis Vuitton bags in the street below is one of the highest in the world. I suppose this reminds me of Sandton City (in Johannesburg, ZA) enlarged in every way by a few orders of magnitude. As it happens, today's the 70th aniversary of the Long March too; Chairman Mao should be spinning in his mausoleum.
Basically we started missing homely little London :-). Though, it's not all bad the streets around the French Concession are very pretty with little boutiques, bohemian shops, and a preponderance of expats. We spent this afternoon in a park there, listening to music from a Jazz festival that happening to be going on at the time.
And tomorrow we're off on yet another train journey inland, of 20 hours. Followed by, hopefully another of 8 hours, and then a bus into the country side. Nothings booked in advance so we'll be making it up as we go along, and i don't think anyone speaks English out there. Should be a challenge.
And i shouldn't have had those "Volcano noodles" for dinner...
rgds
//richard
(Shanghai)
Nanjing
A history lesson
A day without English
My day out to Hua Shan
The Army Of Terracotta Warriors
Well, let me begin by stating that the Terracotta Warriors absolutely deserve their status as a World Heritage Site. The scale and complexity of the construction is incredible, from the sheer size numbers of artefacts, down to the individual features of the figures. It's a pity therefore that Bex and I saw a selection closer in Dusseldorf, when on a European tour (they were in Moscow too when we were there).
Brilliant Beijing
China at Last!
We've reached Beijing
We've completed our first and only pre-planned objective of our trip: London-Beijing by train. It has as expected gone from the banal Wimbledon-Waterloo commuter train, to the rather more exotic sounding Ulaan Bator-Beijing leg of the trans-Mongolian train.
Ulaan Baator
Last post from Outer Mongolia
Should've known it would end in tears. After my last post bex and i met up with Damien and Juliet for lunch in a nice-ish studenty cafe' in Irkutsk, for a bite and a beer or two. or three. or more.
Mongolia
Ulaanbaatar and (a little bit) beyond
Ten minutes later they took off their boots and my relief faded to horror as I realised they could not have washed their socks in a month,