the hapless traveller

china 9

2007-12-17T18:54:11+01:00

T-minus thirteen hours and counting… or - Not everyone who wanders is lost………………….

I woke up in the sunny Beijing morning, and went to the breakfast I had been dreaming of the entire trip. And there it was, noodle soup, egg fried rice and a million and one other things that had been offered to us on our very first day, the buffet was massive and fresh but this morning, I was unable to eat it. I was well and truly in the grip of Chinese food overkill, and was only able to stomach a couple of paper cups worth of orange squash and the tiniest slurp of noodle soup before feeling ill. I had gotten up at my usual time of six thirty, and gone to the restaurant for breakfast, realised I was the only white face in there, and all the Chinese people were gawping at me like I had three heads, turned around embarrassed and went back to my room where Deidre informed me that we didn’t have to get up and meet till eleven. I was stunned - I had missed this vital piece of information and had gone to bed at three thirty, thinking - ‘oh my god I only have three hours to sleep’, when I could have carried on for much longer than that! But I was awake, so I faffed around with my bag for a bit, and returned to the breakfast room later on where I ate the meal I mentioned before (it would have filled a two year old - but I couldn’t manage any more) after breakfast I had the option of catching the bus early and going back to the silk factory or going back to bed, I don’t even need to tell you what I did.

Just after eleven, I got on Eddie bus for one of the last times. Today, we had been promised Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City, and I thought we would be going straight there. But no! we went to what would have been quite a nice restaurant for lunch. There was beer and sprite on the tables and soon the waitresses started bringing out the food, which had I not been in the grips of overkill, would surely have been nice.

As I sat down at the table the smell hit me. Chinese food. I think I must have turned a slight shade of jade, before sitting as politely as I could without having to rush to the toilets, from the now hideous (to me) smell.

After the food had been delivered, I sat abstaining, before realising I was ravenously hungry and couldn’t even bring myself to raise a chopstick to my mouth (I had become quite adept by this point). So as quietly as I could I got up and left the restaurant in search of (cringe) Macdonalds!

After half an hour of looking up and down the road for maccas (but not really wanting to leave the road for fear of being too long, and missing the group) I returned empty handed and stomached, and sat while the group finished their lunch.

After lunch we walked the short distance to Tian’anmen Square, and looked around. Tian’anmen Square is the largest city square in the world, at one end is a massive ornamental gate, which used to be part of the grounds of the forbidden city. To the left of us, the gigantic mausoleum of chairman Mao, which I would have loved to go in but, like so many things in Beijing this year it was closed for refurbishment for the Olympics, opposite were the governmental buildings, and at the far end of the square The forbidden city.

We kept a fairly tight group, but attracted the attention of every shadow going, who kept bugging the people on the outside of the group. By the time we reached the part of the square in front of the forbidden city we had attracted quite a crowd of people who all wanted their picture taken in front of a big group of white people. Some were trying to be sneaky and pretend they were taking pictures of something else, but most were lining up to have their pictures taken whilst smiling and pointing! It was weird but we had been doing the same thing all along our trek, so I guess this was karma.

We went through the underpass and into the first set of gates into the forbidden city, once through these gates we thought the shadows were behind us but no, they were here as well hiding their tourist crap in their coats, so as not to attract the attention of the police. On the left hand side of the first section that you enter is a large modern basketball court, which looks out of place to say the least. At the side of the path someone had left a makeshift bed with wheels and on top of this bed lay a little girl with leprosy, I guess she had been taken there to beg, and she obviously had no choice in the matter as she couldn’t walk, she just lay there, immobile, with people staring at her like some kind of sideshow, I felt so sorry for her.

At the end of this courtyard we went through a gateway into another courtyard with a massive gate, and this was the actual main gate of the city, the one where you have to pay, and that is where we lost the shadows. We walked through the tunnel of the gateway and out into yet another courtyard that had an ornamental moat running through it and crossed one of the seven carved stone bridges to the other side, where you go through another large gateway into the central part of the city where you come to a huge paved area in front of the first palace, this we were told, is where all the diplomats would congregate every day and kneel, rain or shine, waiting for an audience with the Emperor. The majesty of the place was almost intimidating with its gold tiled rooftops, that once upon a time would have been gilded, to shine in the sunlight. This palace sat on top of a plinth that was made up of five tiers of walkways where, we were told, they would set fires and burn incense so that when the emperor emerged it would give the impression that he was walking through the clouds from heaven to meet his diplomats, all this was created to inspire awe and fear and to reassure the people that he was, truly a deity. Dotted around the edges of the courtyard, were huge metal urns that a man could easily fitted inside, Eddie told us that these were fire urns that would have been lit every day to keep the soldiers warm. Kind of like massive radiators. On all sides of the courtyard were other buildings, a few housing the last few remaining treasures from the forbidden city, there was not much left. When Pu Yi was overthrown and expelled from the Forbidden City in 1925 some kind soul stole everything that wasn’t nailed down (and I mean everything) and had the whole lot shipped to Taiwan. So it is said, that the Forbidden City is the palace without treasures and that Taiwan has the treasures without the palace. I sincerely hope that one day the treasures are restored to the palace but like the Elgin marbles, ‘like that’s ever going to happen’.

Trough yet another gate into the living quarters the throne room still has its furniture and you can look through the doors at it - if you fancy fighting your way through a seething crowd to get to them, and there are huge intricately carved marbles of dragons writhing about, and large beautiful, sculptures of animals, the ever present lions, although gilded bronze rather than marble, the male with the world under his paw to indicate power and the female with a cub under her paw to indicate motherhood and nurturing.

Further on is the imperial bedroom that I think is a recreation and is behind treated glass so that you cant touch or take pictures, the bedroom is a fabulous creation of richly decorated red silk, a bit o.t.t. and definitely not IKEA, but hell, he was the Emperor so why not.

In the business end of the Forbidden City, there are no trees or plant life whatsoever, as the emperors liked to make people think that they could control nature - you can, weed and don’t plant stuff, but people were made to believe that plants were too lowly, and wouldn’t dare to grow in the presence of such a divine being. Out the back of the city however, where the diplomats did not go is a really pleasant tea garden where the emperor could enjoy his family and his wives and concubines could hang out and have cups of tea. This all sounds very nicey, nicey, but they were a cunning lot and would do anything, to get their son to inherit, or be chosen to inherit the throne including murder, so when the emperor was getting on a bit, he would find a good portion of his children, kicking the bucket before him, but when you have so many, you probably wouldn’t miss the odd one here and there.

After leaving the Forbidden city we got on the busses and went to the massage house, where we had all been booked in for a foot massage, I chose to opt out of this, as I don’t like people I don’t know touching me, and so soon I was sitting in a very plush waiting room for the others to come out. As I was sitting there, you could hear the slapping noise of people getting their massages and see little Chinese guys running about with buckets of hot water. After an hour of waiting and finishing my book, the others came out and we went to the busses to go off for our evening the first option was to go for a Chinese meal and go to see the acrobats, or the hard rock café. Feeling weak from hunger at this point I chose the Hard Rock, I figured I can see the Chinese state circus any old time, and this was the same thing. So although I would have liked to see the acrobats, my stomach won the debate and before long I was sitting with a huge, juicy, blue cheese burger and fries with mayonnaise, in front of me, and oh it was good. The burger was cooked medium and tasted divine, the blue cheese was piquant and not at all socky, the fries were crisp and delicious dipped in the creamy mayonnaise, I hate to say it but it was by far and away the most welcome, tasty meal I had in china, it was heavenly.

After dinner the group stayed and watched the band for a while, but I had had enough so decided to get a cab back to the hotel, just as I was about to get in this cab, a couple of the other girls joined me and I’m so glad they did, because we got horribly, horribly lost. We had all been given cards written in Chinese with a map on it to give to any cab drivers, giving directions to the hotel, which wasn’t easy to find as it was tucked away in the back of a complex somewhere. After about twenty minutes of driving round and round Beijing it became obvious that the driver didn’t have a clue where he was going, and we ended up in a rough part of town, if I had been on my own I would have been scared witless and having kittens by now, luckily I was with the other two girls and after switching off the meter, so that we didn’t have to pay any more money (we had started making we’re not going to pay for him being lost, noises) the driver started asking other drivers if they knew where the hotel was, three drivers and a cop later we started to see places we recognised and got out of the cab and walked the last stretch to the hotel.

We had to leave the hotel at 1.30am so there wasn’t really any point going to bed, so I just went up collected my bag, and had a kip underneath my hoodie sitting on the sofa.

The trip home was uneventful I mostly read and slept, but oh boy! Was I looking forward to being home, you know what it is like when you are tired, and have a long flight in front of you, you just want it to be over, the minute I got home, unshowered I rounded up my friends and went to the pub. China seemed like a distant memory, almost unreal, but here were my friends sitting around our usual table in our usual haunt, and they were real, and I was grateful to have them. Travelling has taught me a lot over the years, for instance, if you go to Africa you will get the runs, if you go to Spain they do not all speak English, they speak Spanish. If you go to Aussie and buy a crappy old van it WILL blow up on you the first day you are on your own. If you go to Thailand you will share a bed with humongous cockroaches (although you may not know it)! The thing that China taught me was to value my friends.

It is over a month now since I left China and writing my diaries has been a labour of love. They have brought back so many memories and from the good to the bad, the wall was a constant. I loved it and at times hated it, but it will always remain in my heart as one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

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china 8

2007-12-17T18:53:32+01:00

Juyongguan - the Final Countdown!

This was not my final day in china, but it was our last day walking the wall. And on the way to our last stop, Eddie explained the strange formation of the wall at that point.

Juyongguan is known as the circle wall, and that is exactly what it is. The wall was built in a circle to surround a massive garrison, that anybody going in, or out of Beijing, used to have to pass through. As a major gateway into Beijing it follows, that this was the part of the wall that we visited that was closest to Beijing, and therefore the most touristy. As we stood in the freezing carpark, and it was FREEZING - we had raced the first snows of winter to get there. We could see two distinct parts of the wall, the first semi-circle going high up the mountains and almost black with tourists. The second semi-circle lower and tourist free (pretty much). The high wall was as high and steep as any we had seen and as we looked at it we all groaned ‘don’t make us go up that!’, so you can imagine the sheer joy when we were told we were going to do the lower side! I don’t think anybody wanted to do tourists or high that day.

Now let me make this perfectly clear this is The Great Wall of China, and nothing is EVER easy. Had I done this section on the first day, it would have been hard. But this wasn’t the first day it was the last, and a week of slogging your guts out on the wall can only make you fitter. So really the only part that was hardish was the first ascent. They were the high, high steep steps that make you curse your mother (sorry mum). Each one five housebricks high and one across, I ended up doing a lot of them on hands and knees. Once up the initial section, however, the wall was a series of gentle slopes and smallish rises of easy stairs (exactly how I had imagined the wall would be before I got there, it didn’t take us long to get to the summit where we all donned our Alzheimers t-shirts for a group photo. That done, the leaders said to us, ‘stay here for a while, look around, this will be your last chance to see the wall, soak it up, enjoy it. We are going off for a little while, we will see you at the end.’

Looking at the wall that day was amazing, it was cold, but bright, with none of the haze that we had encountered before, you could see the elongated semi-circle of the other side of the garrison on the mountains across the ravine, falling sharply to the road below, there were a few tourists here, but they were soaking up the late autumn sunshine and marvelling as much as the rest of us, at the amazing feat of architecture and wonderful work of art, that had cost the lives of so many, to build.

I gave it fifteen minutes or so, and saw at least ten people leave before I did, so I figured this was a good time to set off. The steps were steep going down and I said hello to several members of the group as I passed them on the way. By this time I was a girl on a mission, I zoomed down those stairs and reached the bottom quickly.

At the bottom was a long flat stretch, and I was on top of the world. I had conquered the wall! And this was the home straight. One of the tour leaders had mentioned along the way, that I walk like a pub manager, which from years of experience - I know I do, and I did my best pub manager strut, larger than life, chest puffed out (more than it is naturally) I owned that wall! It was mine!

Half way across the flat stretch I saw that there was a huge rise of stairs, and at the top the tour leaders had set up a finishing line. Competitive Chatfield head screwed on tight, I decided I was going to go out in a personal blaze of glory, (after all I wasn’t the first to finish) and I decided to sprint the last couple of flat steps and ALL of the stairs, the thought crossed my mind for a second that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but competitive to the last (not a nice personality trait, but one that I cant denigh) I set of running. By the time I passed that line, I was out of breath but jubilant! What an achievement, I had faced my demons and won! I was the comeback queen, from being the biggest, sickest, grouchiest, baby, I had passed that line blazing! My personal best!

It was only after I reached the top of the stairs and passed the line that I realised that I was the first of the group to get up there, by quite a long chalk, it had not been a running race but I had finished the marathon first.

I was really pleased with myself, but it soon became apparent, that that was not the thought of the leaders. Repeatedly they asked me to go and join the group, but at the time I was so pleased that I had done so well, and so glad to have finished my challenge, I replied with ’are you joking - I’M DONE WITH STAIRS!’.

When the rest of the group arrived, they were all treated to a champagne shower from one of the four large bottles of Chinese champagne, that was waiting for us when we arrived. Within a short time, we all had a paper cup of champagne to toast the end of our journey. You would think that Chinese champagne would be horrid but it wasn’t, it was lovely. We all stood at the top of those stairs in the shelter of a rebuilt garrison building, and hugged, cried, and congratulated one another (nobody saw me cry - never forget I’m Yorkshire and I’m hard) I spent half an hour trying to gulp away a lump in my throat that a ladyboy would have been proud of! I ended up wearing my sunnies to stop the sly tear that was trying very hard to form (it didn’t work very well).

I am quite often distant at any emotional outpouring, and maybe people found me prickly, but I was quickly left alone to my thoughts and soon we were walking back through one of the huge garrison gates to the bus.

These gates were made of white stone covered in Buddhist carvings of demons being vanquished. We had walked through the most spectacular one on the way into the wall, that had deep grooves on the floor made by the cartwheels. These had been covered in plexiglass, but Eddie assured us that only the week before they had been open and that this was one of the improvements the Chinese government had implicated to protect the wall from the tourists they would get during and after the Olympics.

Just further on from the busses, was another market with aggressive sellers, although this time they didn’t come out from behind their stalls, but the yells of t-shirt! you buy! you buy! followed us continuously down the line, and you couldn’t look without being hassled, it was too much for me, so I turned round and headed for the safety of Eddie bus, where I sat and waited for the others.

Once we were all on the busses, we headed off to Beijing, where our first stop was the Jade factory, after a brief talk from one of the reps, we set off into the factory.

Jade comes in two types. Soft and hard and is known as the living Jade, because it changes colour over time and with warmth, for example if you have a solid bracelet (bloody expensive) and it is of the palest green, over time the colour will change, not necessarily all in one spot, but in patches, to vibrant green or dark green. The hard jade is mostly made into jewellery and the soft into ornaments like family balls, that are made from a solid lump but carved into free floating balls one inside the other, until you have about five, all hollow except for the central one, all rolling about, one inside the other the outer one being carved into a phoenix and dragon that are rolling together as if in love with one another. They are truly lovely, and such a skill to create.

Inside the factory was set up a market place, but with no pushy sellers this time, dotted around this, was works of jade that were so huge that they were both fabulous and vulgar at the same time. In one part of the room was a sailing ship, with all the ropes and chains carved from jade, this thing was hideous but must have been a real labour of love, it was six to seven feet tall built from what appeared to be a solid lump of jade and no detail had been forgotten - including the price tag which set it at forty five grand (ninety if you are in the U.S.)

After wandering round and making a few purchases (you can only make sure you are getting kosher stuff, if you get it from the factory) we were going to go back to our hotel. We had also been told, that we would go to one of Beijing’s silk factories, and so many people were disappointed that we did not have time to buy our outfits for that night’s celebration meal that we set of for the silk place hoping for the best.

We got there with hardly any time to spare, and so the management cut our tour short, even so, it was really interesting, we saw the machines that unravelled the cocoons one by one, twisting each minute thread into a thread of eight (Chinese lucky number) which make up the threads that are woven to make silk fabric of the finest quality. We were also treated to a demonstration of how they make silk duvets, They take one cocoon and stretch it, unbroken over a thing like half a coat hanger to open it up, then another, and another, one on top of the other until they have done eight, and they look like a funny felt hat. This is then taken over to what is basically a bed shaped square and four ladies grab the sides of the felt hat, and pull like billy’o until it spreads out to the size of a kingsize bed (they made it look easy I’m sure it wasn’t , and they do this fifty or more times, and make up fifty or more (cant quite remember how many, but I think it was fifty) layers of downy white silky fluff that sits one on top of the other, until they have a thin duvet, these duvets are super lightweight, but are warm in the Chinese winters, and cool in the roasting Chinese summers. They are, (we were shown) completely waterproof and hardly ever need washing (good job in China), they will also last, with care, a lifetime and you can pass them on to your children (if they want to sleep in the same bedding you slept in) I must admit to wanting one, but I had my heart set on a silk shirt/blouse thing for that nights dinner. I found one, of the most beautiful glossy black with flowers of an almost electric red woven in and they had it in my size!! I thought they would only have Chinese women petite, but no, they had MY size!!!! And the price was a snip! Pleased as punch, I got on the bus and we went back to the first hotel that we had been to - the (now) fancy pancy, lovely, four star Beijing hotel, with the huge bathtub, and hot water whenever you wanted it, clean, brightly lit bathroom, with soft, white, duvet clad, pillowy cloud beds and clean towels. Did I mention (once or twice) more hot water than you can shake a stick at. We didn’t know how good we had it before but OH. MY. GOD! We did now aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

That night we got dressed up in all our finery and met up in the bar where we complimented each other, and reminisced over a beer or two before being taken to what we were told was the best duck restaurant in Beijing, and they weren’t wrong!

We entered a private room that had been set aside for us, took our tables, where lovely cold beers and wines awaited our arrival, and bit by bit out came the spread, although by this time I was over Chinese food, I tasted a few of the things that came out, all wonderfully delicious! veggies galore, chicken, beef all in beautiful sauces, and what seemed like hundreds of scallops cooked on the half shell, with garlic and chilli, just amazing! After that, came the main event, Crispy Duck, cooked to perfection, with hoi-sin, cucumber, spring onions and pancakes, and they kept on bringing it out until we could eat no more. (I polished off more than my fair share - some of the other girls didn’t like duck!).

Stuffed to the point of loosening our belts, the dvd of our trip was shown, before Ama and Johno, our Alzheimers reps started a presentation. T-shirts to everyone and silk slippers to those who had proved themselves exceptional.

After a big pat yourself on the back session, (we had raised over 150 grand for Alzheimers) the lights went down for a massive birthday cake for one of the members of our group, who’s birthday it was that day and after a big round of happy birthday! we settled down to a couple more beers, before being booted out of the restaurant, as they were closing.

A beer or five at the hotel finished my night and I sunk into my lovely soft bed, with the thoughts of the day to come in Beijing running round my head as beautiful dreams.

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china 7

2007-12-17T18:52:56+01:00

To Simatei and beyond - or, Nice wall shame about the Tourists

When we woke up the morning after my Shirley Bassey tribute, I was up, as normal half an hour before the other girls and I got my stuff together in the dark, trying (unsuccessfully) to be quiet. So as usual by the time they got up I was almost ready. Once ready, I had thought about going outside for a morning cancer stick. When horror of horrors, the rain was coming down in sheets outside the window. It was so heavy the raindrops were bouncing a foot off the floor, I just groaned with dismay. As I had mentioned in my last e-mail, I was amazed that they had got horses up the wall in bad weather, but this day it would be us, and I could imagine terrain that had been hard in dry weather would be treacherously slippy in wet weather, and I was not the only one. One by one our group came out of their rooms to stand under the covered walkway that skirted the courtyard, to look in dismay at the rain that was coming down like bullets before us, there were cries of ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ and ‘Oh shit’.

We ran across the courtyard to breakfast, which, again, was the usual suspects, so I helped myself to an egg and avoided the spam, today again there was cheese slices and after about five of those and a delicious (no sarcasm) cup or six (they are small cups) of green tea, I was ready to face the wall.

Today however, and luckily for us, we had been told that the section of wall we were to walk was a three hour bus journey away, and I sincerely hoped that it wasn’t raining where we were going. After breakfast the few of us that had finished eating went to wait outside the hotel, and we saw the most amazing sight.

To any Chinese person this wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary, but to us it was great. The Tofu delivery guy had come. This man was dressed in a yellow plastic poncho and had a motorbike helmet with a big visor that was pushed up to reveal a wonderful, smiling, wrinkly face with typically rural Chinese bad teeth and a dodgy tache. He had arrived on a clapped out motorbike pick-up, with a large slab of steaming Tofu in the back, wrapped up in a truly filthy piece of wet muslin. We watched in awe as he took his filthy old knife and started to cut blocks of Tofu off the steaming slab and weigh each block on scales that consisted of an ancient stick with a small tray on one end and a weight on the other. As he cut each block, he picked it up with his hands, that I’m sure he must have been digging the garden with the day before, judging by his nails, and ran it in to the hotel kitchen before coming out and repeating the process again. It was really interesting and before long we were clicking away like the paparazzi, which the Tofu guy was loving - he must have felt like a minor celebrity, unfortunately only one of my pics came out. The one I had taken of his pick up. This picture shows that on the bike handles was sewn a really fetid pair of home made bike muffs. They were so dirty that there is no way any westerner would ever put their hands near them, let alone IN them, but this guy did happily and then proceeded to cut up the Tofu without washing his hands! After saying goodbye to the hotel owner who cut himself a massive slab of Tofu and started scoffing it, still steaming off the back of the truck, the Tofu guy rode off with his hands (unwashed again) warmly in the stinking (probably Tofu filled) muffs. He did, I’m glad to say, take one out, to cheerfully wave to us as he left.

By the time the bus arrived to pick us up, the rain had started to stop a little but we were still glad of the comfortable, warm bus, and I promptly started to snooze off any traces of Shirley Bassey that might have been left.

I awoke just before we got to our destination, to Eddie telling us that we must be careful getting off the bus, because there wasn’t really a good place for it to stop. And so, before long we did. We alighted in the ditch at the side of the road, again I found myself pleased to be on ‘Eddie bus’ not ‘Jordan bus’ because ‘Jordan bus’ decided to stop and let people off whilst going round a busy roundabout. Just stopped dead in the middle, and said ‘everyone off!’ I will assume the tour leaders on that bus weren’t having any of it, (the tour leaders on our bus were certainly gob smacked). Because a couple of minutes after we got off into the ditch, the next bus followed us and dropped the other half of the group there too, I think there must have been words, and thank god, it wasn’t raining here.

To get to the wall today, we had to walk through another small village. This one was a little more modern than the others we had visited, but still pretty basic, we walked past a place that had what looked like charcoal logs stacked up in front of it, and there were more people going about their daily business than there had been in the other villages, as we walked we noticed the local butcher, trading out the back of a scabby old van with no refrigeration, the meat was just heaped up on a piece of old carpet in the back, there were no flys but I can only imagine that stinky old van in summer, ‘mmmm, one maggot or two with your pork’, and what must that carpet have been like, with smelly meaty juices soaking into it and I guarantee it wouldn’t have been changed very often - if ever!

As we walked, the road got steeper and steeper. Over the gardens and what I will assume were smallholdings, loudspeakers on poles played Chinese music to the workers. At the side of the road, grew the most unusual flowers I have ever seen. About two to three feet high with long dark green stalks and two inch long pointed dark green leaves, they were topped with a large flower of the most violent Cerice, so bright it was almost hot pink. The flowers were made up of large fleshy, wavy fins, packed tightly together almost like a coral, and instead of having petals these flowers were furry, the fur being about half a centimetre long, you could stroke them, I have never seen anything like them in my life I was told they were a form of Hosta but I have checked the net and cant find any hosta even remotely like them.

Soon we reached what seemed to be the local community centre, where we all stopped in front to do our excersizes. By this point we had picked up an entourage of small boys, and nosy locals who took delight in our bending and stretching, the boys joined in, and were more than pleased to have their pictures taken, so long as they could see themselves in the screen at the back of our cameras, which they thought was hilarious!

Excercizing done, we carried off up the road with a local guide rather than just Eddie or Jordan and within minutes, I found myself at the back of the pack and realised that I am extremely good at ’flat’ or ’down’ but absolutely rubbish at ’up’. The road got steeper and steeper, a couple of times I walked backwards to see if that helped, but no, I had to accept the fact that ’up’ is not my fort’e. The back section finally caught up with the front section where they were waiting and then the guide turned around to what looked like solid bushes, and started to pick her way up a tiny mountain track, that if you had not known it was there, you would never have seen, we followed her up, and my god it was hard, so steep you had to walk on tippie toes for a good part of it, because it was so steep you literally couldn’t walk flat footed. It was also rocky and crumbly and thank god there hadn’t been any rain to speak of or it would have been game over for some of us.

The bush was thick on either side of the path, and on my frequent rest/breathing/cursing stops I was able to look at some of the plants growing on either side of the track.

Most of the foliage had died, but the autumn colours glowed through the brown dead bits at either side of the track, and there was several trees that had the most peculiar berries hanging from them, Pillar box red berries, with the most vivid yellow cases split to reveal the berry within, the bushes had no leaves on them which made them catch your eye even more. They were really weird but all the more beautiful for it. Unfortunately the most predominant foliage at the side of the track seemed to be made of plastic carrier bags, they festooned so many of the bushes and underneath were the remnants of the plastic coated penis sausage wrappers, I didn’t see any of them growing from the trees, so I will assume that they had harvested them already and that they had been offered to us for our packed lunches! who knew processed meat grew on trees!! couldn’t possibly be litter could it?

After about two hours ascent, I reached the wall where most of the group were having their lunch, and I sat down to my boiled egg, the whole group had gotten so egg bound by this point that there was no chance of any unfortunate accidents (natures own Imodium)

As we were having lunch small groups of tourists kept walking by, all smiling and laughing, we knew that we would be going to more touristy areas but the reality of it cut like a knife. This was our wall and again they weren’t giving it the respect it deserved. Once again, because I had had a small lunch I set off at the front of the pack and was really enjoying it and today I stayed at the front, once on the wall.

This was easy wall, gentle ups and downs, there were quite a few female Chinese tourists walking in heels, so we must have looked quite a sight in full walking regalia with poles and backpacks. I walked past one Chinese lady who was carrying her pet with her (god only knows why) a tiny, pure white, baby rabbit was nestled into her arms, nobody else seemed to see it, but there it was. Quite possibly the most weird sight of the whole trip.

By this time we were swamped with tourists all of whom seemed to be American Uni students on some sort of jolly that was surposed to be a cultural jaunt of some kind.

Now, I have American family, and American friends so I do not wish to tar all Americans with the same brush, but why is it, that Americans in America are lovely, friendly people that can’t do enough for you, polite at all times, and considerate off all. But when you get large groups, outside of America, they seem to turn into AMERICANS, loud, obnoxious, pushy and rude.

There seemed to be a couple of distinct groups that were there, I only got that because of the things that they were yelling off the side of the wall - ‘GO CHEETAHS!’ or whatever their college football team happened to be called. You could hear them yelling for miles, it was so loud and harsh, it completely clashed with the beauty around them. Why couldn’t they just look at it and appreciate it, soak it up for what it was.

Ok I know that Brits abroad have a bad reputation, but the people that give us that rep only go to places like Benidorm, Faliraki, Aiga Napa, and Ibiza, to drink English beer and eat English food. Those people wouldn’t know a cultural experience if it bit them on the arse, and they don’t care. But here, you had beauty and culture served up on silver plates. Did they see it - NO.

Ok rant over.

At the end of that days trek you had the choice of a walk down to the bottom or the toboggan, no guessing what I did. I got in my toboggan and down the mountain I flew, only hampered a few times by some Japanese tourists that weren’t going nearly fast enough (I am a speed demon) I nearly bumper-carred them a few times on the way down.

At the bottom of the hill on the way to the bus park, was set up on either side of the path a market with very aggressive sales people who would try and bodily drag you to their stalls, I found it so oppressive that I didn’t look at anything and soon found it you said ’no money’ they soon left you alone, but it was like running the gauntlet.

At the bottom I met one of the tour leaders, and he showed me his purchase of possibly the tackiest thing I think I have ever seen. So myself and a friend (who, to save his blushes will remain nameless) set back off up the gauntlet in search of said item. I cant tell you what it was until after Christmas, or it will spoil the surprise for my sister and my friend Deryck!

After running the gauntlet back up to the top of the hill we found the item and after paying I stuffed them into my pockets. Just before we set off I had to get something out of my pocket and I managed to drop one of these items on the floor. As I bent to pick it up, the guy from the next stall, quick as you like bent down and picked it up, so I said ‘hang on a minute that was mine’

No is mine, came the answer
No that is mine I just paid this man for it, it is mine
To cut a long story a bit shorter, myself and my friend ended up having a screaming match in the middle of the street with this guy. He started to get threatening, and I could see Eddie, so yelled at the top of my lungs for him to come and explain in Chinese that this guy had made a mistake. The stall holder then started to scream blue murder at Eddie, who yelled back at him in Chinese. By this point there was a huge crowd of maybe sixty or seventy people had crowded around us for a better view, all gawping whilst I am trying to explain madly what had happened, by this stage Eddie has gotten his mobile phone out and is dialling the police. Then I say O.K. I’m going to turn my pockets out in front of these people to prove I haven’t stolen anything, I open my pocket to start taking things out, and there, sitting in my pocket is the item in question (CRINGE) The stall guy was right, the one on the ground had been his. I think all the blood drained from my face and also my friend’s as we had both been arguing vehemently with this guy and had caused this scene. My friend said O.K. lets go NOW, I think Eddie thought that was the best course of action for us both too because he waved us away down the hill, while he and Jordan stayed in the yelling, outraged, throng calming them down. We slunk away pretty fast with our proverbial tails completely, well and truly between our legs, shaming, as much as anyone can shame! (cringe, cringe and cringe again)

Once on the busses we had to wait for Eddie and Jordan to come back down and after about half an hour of yelling, they did. I saw Eddie walking across the car park and immediately went to apologise. He was so great, he said, it wasn’t my fault, but the vendors, for being so aggressive - I know he was lying, but I was grateful for it - I truly believe he should be Saint Eddie!!

Before we could set of from Simatei, however ‘Eddie bus’ broke down, it must have been pretty bad, because there were flames coming from the engine so Eddie - with many complaints from the tour leaders of, ‘in England you cant put so many people on one coach’ retorted with, ‘In china you can,’ and sent us on our way the short distance to the hotel.

Before we arrived at the hotel Eddie said ‘tomorrow morning you will be served with a traditional Chinese breakfast, (which we had been asking for all along) and he followed that up with ‘ if you don’t like it, please don’t complain!’

The hotel rooms were clean and modern and as we were getting ready for dinner Diedre and I could hear the rain starting. While she texted her family, I went down for dinner, by which time the rain was lashing down outside and what we thought was fireworks turned out to be thunder and lightning.

I told you in the last e-mail that I had started to do Chinese food overkill, well it was no more apparent than tonight, I picked at the spread although now it wasn’t the food but the smell of the food that put me off, there was nothing wrong with the spread that was put on but I just couldn’t stomach it any more and I was not the only one.

After dinner, Eddie and Jordan had a long talk to the group about the origins of the Chinese language, and were going to translate our names into Chinese, which we could have made into traditional Chinese jade ink stampers for people to buy if they wanted, with their birth year animal carved onto the top in jade. Apparently in China, when you sign something a signature is not enough, you have a stamp (like an old fashioned seal) which you have to use as well, and we were going to have these made up. Unfortunately I found myself falling asleep, I’m not sure if it was the warmth, or the fact that I had trekked so far, but I was dog tired. So I was left with the decision. Pretend to go to the toilet and don’t come back, or fall asleep at the table. Which would be more polite? I chose the former, and was soon asleep to the sounds of a huge thunder storm, cosy, in a lovely warm bed. I missed having my name translated, but I didn’t mind that too much.

We had noticed all too clearly the night before, that the restaurant was over-run with cats, easily twenty of them had roamed around whilst we were eating, and it was really, really noticeable in the morning as we picked through our breakfast (which was horrid) because one of them was playing with a fairly large dead rat. The kitties were cute though and I picked one up (ginger with big blue eyes - like my mitten had been) for a cuddle, which it didn’t mind

After picking up our packed lunch, we got back onto our busses again. ‘Eddie bus’ had been fixed, and set off for our final days trek. A couple of minutes into the bus journey Eddie told us to look at the mountains, we looked up at the wall we had trekked the day before, to see that over night, it had snowed, and where we had walked yesterday was veiled in a thick blanket of the white stuff and now, would be impossible to trek until the spring.

And that is the end of another chapter. There is more to come!

Comments

china 6

2007-12-17T18:52:20+01:00

Gubeiko to Simatei or The Hissy Fit DIVA and The comeback Queen

After breakfast on the fifth day of the trek and after doing our morning stretches, we set off out of the back of the hotel and headed up a steepish road where we picked up the wall almost straight away. This morning the Doc decided to walk with me for a bit, it turns out that she had heard about my coughy, throaty, chesty thing and was concerned. I had questions like is there any phlegm? And other embarrassing things like that. To the point where I had to show her some eeeeyyoooo! And she decided I had a chest infection (I thought it was bronchitis - turns out I was right) Half way up the road the hacking painful cough had returned and I was feeling rough and just a bit sorry for myself in the way only I can. We hit the wall and by the time we got half way up the first rise, I was in a bad way, so the Doc said to me ‘do you want to go back’ and I said yes. The front of the group had got to the first landing by this point, and were waiting for us, the Doc said to the tour leader ok, can we get one of the guys to radio the baggage truck and see if they will come back (to pick up another baggage! - she didn’t say that bit) so they started radioing through and the tour leader said ‘don’t you think you can do it’ and in the biggest loudest voice I could muster I had a Sian Chatfield DIVA HISSY-FIT as only I can do it. It went along the lines of:

‘I cant do it any more, this wall is NOT fun any more it is a chore and I HAAAATE IT!!!!!!!!!’ It was said with more venom than a sack full of snakes and the conviction of a religious zealot. All it lacked was the tears the purple face and the stamping feet (well ok I had the red face but that was from climbing a whole heap of stairs not from my hissy-fit) I performed this in front of an audience of fifty people and funnily enough, I didn’t get a standing ovation, but I probably did get (although I was in such a lather I didn’t notice) a whole lot of rolling eyes and sighs, I can laugh now but at the time I vehemently DID NOT want to walk that bloody wall.

After watching my hissy-fit (which only a three year old could have pulled off better) the tour leader said to me, ‘come on Sian you can do this, yesterday was much harder, and I don’t want you being all down on yourself and calling yourself a wuss again like you did the other day. You can do this and besides, there is quite a bit of flat and down today’. That did it, hissy-fit almost forgotten, I said I would try and I’m so glad I did.

The wall was steep, but soon the air warmed up and I found I was having to stop and catch my breath a lot less than I had the day before and I was still coughing, but not as much. It still hurt to breathe but it was becoming almost bearable, and so I set my own pace which was slow but steady, I was still cursing, but the swear words went down a notch in severity and soon I began enjoying myself once more, at this point I wasn’t really looking at the scenery too much I was just trying to concentrate on my walking and climbing. The wall was in much better repair here than it had been in other places but was still very broken down. Here rather than stairs, the wall was mostly amazingly steep slopes, as steep as the stairs had been and I found that these were actually harder to climb than the stairs. On a lot of the slopes the paving bricks were non existent and you had to really carefully pick your way up the rises. If you were to fall on this you wouldn’t die but it wouldn’t be pretty. Broken legs and ankles galore! In some places you almost had to do it on your hands and knees it was so steep, the steps were killers too, three housebricks on their ends high and one across, you couldn’t climb more than one at a time and some of them were really crumbly you had to watch your step. We were told that in this area accidents were actually less frequent than in a well repaired section because you have to think about what you are doing and you manoeuvre yourself really carefully. The thought that really struck me here, because it was so high, was how the hell did they ever get horses up here. They used to have to have supply horses and messenger horses running up and down this wall as much as the soldiers and although Mongolia has a reputation for breeding sturdy hard arse horses that can go over pretty much any terrain, I would think in winter, when the slopes and steps were icy they would slip and fall easily and most horses, I’m sure would baulk at going up such a slippy, hard, steep surface. If in fact they could even make it (maybe they had horse snow chains!)

The shadows were ever present along this stage of the wall, although not as aggressive or in as many numbers as they had been the day before. I found rather than ‘no’ the phrase ‘Go away’ worked really well, I had used it several times but as we were approaching a watchtower you could see them looking out of the windows. This watchtower was situated at the top of an extremely hard section of ‘up’ and I noticed that one of the women was staring intently at me, because I was having a bit of trouble, I also recognised her as one of the shadows that had been really hard to shift the day before. I reached the watchtower, and as I knew she would, she pounced, ‘I carry your bag’ she said trying to grab it, ‘I help you’, ‘I don’t want help’ I retorted, ‘ no, I help you’. On paper this sounds ok, but it was said in almost an aggressive threatening way, so I yelled ‘GO AWAY’ which she did, but as soon as my back was turned I got a sarcastic ‘woooo!’ - fair comment I surpose.

I carried up the wall and just as I was wondering where all these surposed ‘flats’ and ‘downs’ were, we stopped for lunch.

We sat on the ground on either side of the wall, the shadows were with us the whole time, trying to sell tourist crap. Some of our group had got really into the art of haggling by this point and were getting great deals on the things that they wanted, I however sat quietly, eating my boiled egg - the same thing that I had eaten for breakfast - now unable to stomach anything else, and as you would imagine finished that pretty quickly.

As I was waiting for the others to finish, I looked out at the scenery and soaked it up like a dry sponge, you can lose yourself looking at the beauty but soon I found, that where my backpack had been, I was sweaty and therefore getting pretty cold, as I was pulling my hoodie on, some other walkers came past us and this was surprising, because apart from some Chinese tourists on the day of the heavenly ladder (they didn’t go up the ladder) and a few of the shadows along today’s walk we had been completely alone.

As the rest of the group were getting their things together I slowly started to walk, my horrible competitive streak was starting to kick in and I didn’t want to be at the back feeling like I was holding people up (which in fact I wasn’t, it just felt like it) Before long Jordan, our other Chinese guide was walking beside me and we walked together for a little way. The rest of the group were up and at’em now and some of the faster ones were over-taking, but I was surprised to see they weren’t streaking ahead, and for the first time in the trip, I was keeping up! I still had the cough but the pain had gone and now rather than an all consuming hindrance it was merely an inconvenience, and I was able to crack on the way I had wanted to the entire trip.

Whereas the wall before lunch had been unrepaired and rough the wall after lunch was in a state of good repair, the steps did not seem so steep (and for the most part weren’t ) and the slopes were smooth and pleasant to walk on. I found that I was clogging along and really enjoying myself.

For anybody that knows me well, this will be old news. But I am hideously competitive. If I do something, be it fancy dress, or a game of pool, I’m in it to win it. I try really hard not to be so competitive and although I try to hide it, I am a sore loser, and that is why being unable to be at the front and be fit and up to this walk had really hit me hard - even though I was arrogant enough and stupid enough, not to train enough. This afternoon however, I got my second wind, I was steaming along and although it wasn’t a running race, I soon found myself coming to the end stretch, where we had a massive ‘down’. But I had learned that I was good at down or flat, just not ‘up’.

The ‘down’ that we faced, was a sheer ravine at the bottom of which was basically a long rope bridge, that went across a river, I could see some of the group waiting for us at the other side and I shot down those stairs as if I had skates on. There were a lot of other tourists descending as well and I resented their presence. How could they be here, they didn’t respect the wall, they hadn’t given their life to it for days on end, they weren’t even looking at the architecture, or appreciating the landscape or marvelling at the wonder that is the wall - how dare they. They didn’t know the wall, but they would go back home as if they had known it as intimately as we had.

I virtually jogged the rope bridge to join my fellows on the other side, and I was easily and comfortably within the first ten to get there.

I wanted to crack on, because the next part was higher and steeper than any parts of the wall that we had encountered before, reaching further up than the heavenly ladder part and I didn’t want to find myself at the back of the pack once more. But to leave the bridge and carry on you had to pay a toll, which our group had paid in advance so they wouldn’t let us go until at least half of the group was ready, so the toll guy knew who we were. When it came time to leave I was in the first ten, that quickly became the first twenty, after the fitter more competent walker/climbers shot ahead of me, soon I reached the second watchtower up and I nearly wet myself with delight to find I had reached the summit of my day’s climb. As I walked through that watchtower a fat American man came puffing down the hill complaining that there was so many down steps and that he hadn’t done any up at all, and that he would have liked to have done some. The answer he got from us was, ‘try doing the wall for a week straight mate‘, ‘then you will know all about ’ups’, It turns out that at the summit of this massive high, was a cable car, and he had caught this, walked down the steps to our height and then took the short cut around the mountain back to the bus park. We however, got off the wall at this point and took THE ZIP LINE!!! Down a huge mountain and over a massive reservoir.

The zip line cost thirty five Yuan to go down (about a fiver, or $10) but it was worth it, you were strapped into a parachute harness and suddenly you were off! Fast as lightening down a wire I twirled around so I was going down backwards, and spent most of my flight trying to right myself, but it was thrilling!!

At the end there was an angry Chinese lady who put a set of stairs next to you and shouted ‘get up, get up get up!’ I was trying to walk up the stairs but my harness was going faster than I was and I couldn’t - she didn’t smack me on the legs like she did others, but she seemed very cross that I didn’t get it right first time!!!! Once out of the harness, myself and a few of the others waited for the next few people to come down before going down a short path to the ferry which took us over the reservoir to the short path that led to that nights hotel.

This hotel was again set round a central courtyard but this time, there were picnic tables in the courtyard and a lady selling the big beers that we had grown to love. My little group got ourselves established pretty quickly at a table and when they said ‘who wants to go three in a room’ again I piped up that myself and Diedre would share again with Shirley, (without asking her - ooops) I don’t think she minded too much, but I should have asked. So I was waiting for them, two beers down, with a room that to me, was LUXURY!

When I had gone in, hoorah! There were three beds!!! I bagsy’d my bed and sat on it. It was as downy as a pillow, the bathroom was clean and there was an easy to use heater that I started straight away. When they arrived, in a state of euphoria, I showed them our room, and asked them to bounce on the beds, you don’t know how good your bed at home is until you sleep on a Chinese bed! It was lovely to have a comfortable bed!

I went out for another beer with the guys that I had been sitting with, and was happy. After a while I noticed the tour leader who had made me go, standing outside and I went and thanked him wholeheartedly, I had gotten my stride and confidence back, and that truly was a gift.

After a shower we were ready for dinner which was the usual fare but by this point I had started to do Chinese food overkill, I just couldn’t eat much so I joined another table of my friends and treated them to a rendition of the song that had been going over and over in my head all day.

Whenever you walk in the joint! (dah, dah!)
I could see you were a man of distinction, a real big spender!
Good looking, so refined,
Now wouldn’t you want to know what’s going on in my mind
So let me get right to the point, (dah, dah!)
I won’t pop my cork for every man I seee!

Hey big spender, (hey big spender) speeeend!, a little time with me!
(da da da dah)
wouldn’t you like to have fun! Fun! Fun!
Like to have a few laughs, laughs, laughs,
Let me show you a (dah, dah!) good time!
I can show you a (dah, dah!) good time!

Yep you got it. Nissed as a Pewt!

After a few more renditions of Shirley, my version of the sesame street theme tune and the muppet show theme tune (yes I am a muppet) I gracefully retired, without tripping over too many things on the way, I hasten to add.

And that is where tonight’s story ends, I will write some more tomorrow.

Comments

china 5

2007-12-17T18:51:29+01:00

Sweet Water mountain village to Gubeiko via Jinshanlin - or Attack of the Shadows

You will remember in my last e-mail I was waiting for the group to arrive back to the house, which after about three hours they did. A couple of them came up to use the loo, and myself and the other lady who had stayed behind because she had hurt her knee, rejoined them to walk down the road for a few miles to pick up the bus. I was still so upset with myself that I put up my hood and hid from them all, I think most people thought I had got a monk on (lovely Yorkshire expression for sulking) but I was just embarrassed with myself, I walked by myself pretty much all the way, which in a way, was a good thing, because I could soak up the scenery undisturbed.

We walked out of the spiral of the part of the village that we had been in and it struck me that although the houses were fairly new, the village felt distinctly medaeval, an almost self-sufficient tight knit community using whatever was around them to survive. These people have nothing to speak of, in the western point of view but obviously live rich and fulfilling lives. All the people we saw on the roads whether stooped underneath a heavy basket of fruit, or driving along in one of their clapped out motorbike pick ups were smiling and having lively conversations and each and every one of them waved as they passed, and said nee hau! (hello) which we responded to with delight, they have such a simple, natural way of life it is not hard to understand why they stay in the villages, the only place I can think on that the people are so happy with their lot in life, is Tully in far north Queensland where I spent (for the most part) such a happy time in Australia (if you didn’t get my Aussie diaries - you missed out!)

You must be assuming by now because of the name that this village has a river flowing through it, you would be wrong, there are so many people living in Beijing and the surrounding areas that there is a severe water shortage, and the effects of global warming are no more apparent in the north pole than they are here. A couple of years ago, a beautiful mountain river flowed through this village, but now it is gone, the bed of the river is now farmed and will never get the water back, I will assume they have wells and sink holes for irrigation but I saw no evidence of either, they must have to grow crops that don’t require very much water or that must be the reason that the persimmons, that have long roots do so well.

Walking through the village, we soon came to what looked very much like a kiddies playground and school, this in fact turned out to be the local gym, yes, there were monkey-bars and swings but there were also sit-up machines (a bit like the ones they sell on t.v. that claim to be ’the easy way to rock yourself to better abs’ by sitting on your arse - yeah right!) and other hard arse ’toys.’ I was having a blue day, so I set off down the road a little bit and soon people were over-taking me. Coming out of the village the ravine/valley sloped steeply up from both sides of the road, and again I noticed the rubbish, it was everywhere, the slight ditches at the sides of the road were filled with it, at one point there were so many polystyrene (Styrofoam) food containers on the ground, that it truly looked like a Chinese take-away had blown up and this was the fall out zone!

A little further on we came across a huge brand new house, this was the house of dreams, for sale, it offered large spacious airy rooms, a magnificent mountain view, and wonderful walking opportunities (or at least, that must have been the sales pitch) not only that, but a village full of people just dying for a cushy domestic job (for little or no money) just down the road! It was explained, that now China is not quite so communist, the ‘have’s’ are buying up or building, large country estates and probably taking advantage of the ’have not’s’, but they are grateful for the work so why not? They get weekly pay and a uniform.

The weather had still not lifted, so the mountain tops were veiled in mist and the colours on the sides of the ravine were still muted but every so often the luminous red of a vine would pitch in, or a shiny peach coloured tree would catch your eye, so much that you would have to touch it, to make sure it was real, and soon enough the walk was over and we stood waiting for the busses, to take us to the next hotel at Jinshanlin.

Now, you will remember Eddie from my previous e-mails, Eddie talks a lot, and that is why I liked being on ’Eddie bus’ rather than ’Jordan bus’ because he will tell you anything you want to know and a few things you don’t. Eddie by his own admission has never been to England or the states and he learned his English in Beijing University, and because of this speaks what he terms ’Chinglish’ and although his ’Chinglish’ is extremely good, he sometimes gets things wrong.

Eddie had said to us that the hotel at Jinshangling was the most beautiful hotel we would stay at, and the nicest. Because we had stayed at a four star hotel in Beijing, this conjured up images of big warm baths, fluffy white towels, soft beds, and basically LUXURY - AHHHHH!

What we came to would have surely beautiful in the summer before the flowers died. A large pool of dead water lilies greeted us out front, which would have been truly magnificent when they were still alive, and we progressed through a large Chinese wooden gate which you had to step over the threshold that was at least six inches high (to stop the evil spirits from getting under the gate, you have to physically step over the threshold - it didn’t stop me. I wonder why?) Again this hotel was divided into courtyards with rooms all around, and the architecture, was, if you looked closely, beautiful, all the walkways around the rooms were covered, and all the upright timbers had been hand-painted with individual paintings, as in turn, had the cross timbers, with paintings of birds and animals, in turquoise, deep dirty golds, dusty pink and greys there was a little fish pond in our courtyard that had an ornamental bridge over it and coi carp - although little bigger than goldfish, swimming in it.

Even though we were surposed to be staying at the most lovely hotel along the route. We were surprised to be made into groups of three for this wonderful luxurious hotel, it became very apparent very quickly that Eddies ’Chinglish’ had been wrong and rather than the most beautiful hotel (and it was pretty) this was in fact, the most traditional hotel.

Soft beds, there were not, instead the traditional Chinese three in a bed system, although this was slightly padded rather than tiles, it was going to be a cozy night again, not only would we sleep on the bed, but all the furniture in the room sat on it as well. To the left sat a coffee table holding a lamp to the right was a large wardrobe, which I slept next to. The bathroom had a western toilet but only had about a twenty five watt bulb above the mirror to light it, and was a wet room (which in theory is good, but in practise means you get a wet bog seat and paper).

The water however was hot and welcoming, but before I went for a shower I made a Lemsip (which sadly, I love) and went outside for a gossip with one of the girls. It was only after a shower that I started to feel a bit funny, my eyes started watering uncontrollably (which if you have just applied liquid eyeliner is NOT cool) and I started getting sniffy. My normal quick fix for feeling a bit rubbish is to apply as much make-up as my face will take, in the hope that if I look good, I will feel good, most of the time that works, but not today, I picked through my dinner which would have been wonderful at any other time, and struggled through one beer (now you can tell I was sick) before, not just wanting to go to bed, but physically having to. I retired to the hard three in one bed with my clothes on, feeling like there was no better place in the world.

The next morning I found out that I had missed out on the best night of the whole trip, full on party, with karaoke, and drinks so late they had been turfed out of the bar! Bummer!!!!

The morning yielded the same sort of crap for breakfast but this time, the bread had been toasted, and they had marmalade (which I don’t do, but most of my table were thrilled with!) and there, tucked into a basket off the side were - CHEESE SLICES! I have never been so pleased to see a floppy, plastic wrapped, cheese slice in my whole life, I had four with my boiled egg, and snaffled a whole handful into my trouser pockets for later!! I still had nearly a whole packet of ritz crackers from the day before and I was imagining the tasty lunch I would have. After picking up a pear and my water for the day, I quickly ran back to the room to steal the English portion of the hotel ‘welcome book’ which had the do’s and don’t’s of the hotel listed very nicely in Chinglish in the back. I stole this, so I could copy it verbatim for you all, but I managed to lose it so here are the good bits (in Chinglish)

No dangerous articles in rooms such as guns and ammunition
No electrical items in rooms, such as electric furnaces
Do not hang washing from light fitting
Do not sub let room
Do not allow prostitute in room
No illicit sexual behavior
No fighting
Do not bring toxic, nuclear material or radioactive substance in room (I kid you not!)
No drunken behavior
No excessive drinking
No taking or selling of drugs from room

The list went on, And this wasn’t the half of it!

Where the hell were we staying? A place where gun toting, prostituting, drug dealing, nuclear arms making, people would drink, fight and turn on their electric furnaces to dry their washing whilst it was hanging from the light fittings!!!! All whilst they were committing illicit sexual acts!! OH. MY. GOD! I really hope this hotel was covering all possible bases!

Earlier on in the trip we had been warned about the people known as the Shadows. These were people that would follow you up the wall trying to ‘help’ you in return for money, they would ask to carry your bags we were told, and in return for a fee, would do so. We were also told that they would try to infiltrate the group by talking to you, and walking by your side and try to befriend you. After the general consensus was that we did not want them, we were told, not to look at, or speak to them, as this would encourage them, and if they spoke to you just to give a firm and resounding ‘NO!’ because they understood that and would go away.

We did our morning excersizes which our Chinese guides still found hilarious and then made our way to the gate of the hotel compound.

What greeted us was a yelling, Screaming, grabbing, rabble of what must have been well over fifty or sixty people. One lady grabbed hold of my arm so tightly that I had to grab her wrists and forcibly prize her off my arm with a loud ‘get OFF me!’ and even that didn’t stop her, I had to bat her away even after that. The only thing I can liken it to would be those pictures of the Beatles getting out of a car in 1960’s America, getting mobbed by all those fans. I now know why really famous people have minders because it is scary, truly, truly, scary. Even after we got them to let go, they walked with us down the road, constantly and aggressively trying to get us to hire them. When we reached the village where we would climb into the hills once more. We stopped in a bottleneck in the road, and all the men of the group (although there wasn’t many of them) stood shoulder to shoulder, as Eddie informed the rabble ‘if they did not leave us alone the police would be called’, this didn’t seem to make a lot of difference, but as the men from our group let the women through, nobody made a move to follow us, and soon we were away into a tiny rubbish strewn village where the chickens ran wild and the pigs rooted around in their tiny, dirty little sty’s, one of which was leaking an extremely smelly pool of slurry all over the track that we had to climb to get up into the foothills of the mountain.

The entire group seemed to have developed funky coughs by this point, and the quiet of the previous night had been punctuated by the sound of myself Diedre and Shirley (the girl that had bunked in with us) all coughing, but by this point mine seemed to be getting progressively worse, to the point where every so often, I would be doubled up coughing, but we carried on and before long hit the wall.

The portion of the wall we were walking that day is known as deconstructed wall, in other words it has broken down in places, or bricks have been removed and the farmers have lovely brick built terraces and very nice sturdy brick built houses even though it was deconstructed, it is still incredibly high on either side, at a guess, fifty to a hundred feet high at any point and the few people who found they had vertigo needed constant reassurance as there are no walls at the side of you to keep you in and the wall was rough underfoot, in some places the wall had only a couple of feet usable walking space and the drops on either side were sheer. Again, the two thoughts running through your head were ‘how the hell did they build this wall?’ and ‘ If I fall, I will die.’ there is no wonder that our guides from Discover Adventure (the English firm that works hand in hand with Alzheimers on these trips) carried climbing ropes with them at all times, because there would be no other way of getting to you, if you did fall.

The day that day was hazy, and because of this, NONE of my pictures turned out, which is a shame because I thought I had got some good ones, all you could see was the dragon stretching out in front of you and behind, snaking its way across the landscape up he mountains to impossible heights and dipping down into the valleys. The wall had a luminescence to it that I had not seen on the other parts and glowed an orangey yellow in the warm autumn sunshine and again I was struck by the awesome beauty of the Chinese countryside, cloaked in its beautiful firey colours, its pale blue sky embellished with a few filmy clouds, and the strength of an ancient wall that had stood the test of time. It had captured my imagination, I had lost my heart to it, but as we all know, hearts can be broken.

We climbed and climbed, by now my cough had gotten so bad that I could only walk a couple of steps without doubling over with a wracking cough, it became painful to breathe and soon I found I couldn’t, every breath was laboured, and so painful, my throat and chest were on fire, and I was cursing every step. One of the ladies walking with us became so concerned about me that she refused to leave my side and tried as much as she could to help, but me being a cantankerous old sod and the pain in the arse that unfortunately, I know I am, was refusing help, and making a show of myself by doing so, someone offered me a blast on their asthma inhaler but I have always been told that they are bad for you if they are not prescribed for you, so again, I refused help - I read this back now, and I realise what a horrid little person I truly am when I’m sick, (I’m probably ok when I’m tucked up in bed with a lemsip and the telly on, wallowing in self pity) but on the wall I was a massive GROUCH!

Anyway, after a drama queen sit on the floor for a bit, (I actually couldn’t have walked any more at that point) I got up off my arse and slowly, slowly between coughing fits, got up to the watchtower where the rest of the group was having lunch, there was a guy up there selling stuff, and I had a craving for a sprite, but all he had was FAT PEPSI I don’t like fat coke, but I really don’t like fat pepsi it tastes like cheap, sugary, supermarket coke - revolting. So I had what all half dead people should have after walking up a really steep wall - beer! I didn’t really enjoy it very much but it was cold and fizzy and almost a meal in a tin, - I didn’t eat any lunch I wasn’t feeling hungry.

After lunch we were told that we couldn’t walk any further along that stretch of wall because it looks over a military base and the Chinese military DO NOT like people looking at their military establishments so we came off the wall at that point and descended into the valley, there wasn’t much to see walking down, but there was a really cool abandoned house that was thatched and had an old well in the garden it looked really spooky and ancient and was probably one for those old buildings that all the local kids dare each other to go and touch the door and tell each other that it is haunted (there was a local barn where I grew up that was like that and I was absolutely terrified of it - it would probably still give me the willies now if I was to go inside).

At the bottom of the hill we all waited for the group to gather and were again surrounded by the shadows, although this time they kept their distance a little. After we had all gathered we were told that we could go back up to the wall which would take about two hours to reach or walk through the village to the place where the bus would pick us up, and we could take an early mark, I chose this option rather than go back up and about twelve others joined me, we watched the other group go and this time I was not sad to see them leave, I knew I had made the right choice. The walk back was pleasant, the afternoon was warm and the company was good, this village looked more modern than the others, with stacks of orange bricks piled up to make new houses, it still surprised me to see though, that Chinese houses do not seem to have interconnecting rooms, and to get to the living room for instance, you have to go outside and back in, I cant see the wisdom in this but there must be something to it because they were all built in this way.

After a forty five minute walk along a farm track with the ever present rubbish heaped up on either side of it we ended up at a Chinese truck stop, where we sat on the wall and waited for the bus, I was really glad I didn’t need the loo, as truck stop toilets are bad in this country, so I dread to think what these would have been like. All I know was they were housed in a blue breeze block, hovel with no windows. I think I would have rather gone in front of the busload of Chinese people that parked next to us, after all, they didn’t seem to have a problem doing it in front of us (not the women, I saw one quite smartly dressed lady gingerly picking her way down the stairs of the small blue hovel, poor cow!)

We got to the hotel a short while afterwards and were pleased to see that this looked like a really nice place, we were even more pleased when we saw our rooms each one had been built like a terraced house with its own little walled garden in front of it and inside were two separate softish beds with blue bedspreads over the top, a crappy but cleanish bathroom and a heater, which I did faff around with as soon as we got in - I was determined not to have a cold night, but eventually, I had to get the lady from reception to come and do it, and after a bit of scratting around, found the duvets in a cupboard so we were all set for the night.

In the morning over a breakfast of the usual suspects - I was only managing a hard boiled egg and a couple of cups of green tea at this point. The girls in the next room to ours, told Diedre and I about the horrible cold night they had had. They had not managed to get their heater on, or found the duvets and at one point had been so cold that they both got up and jogged on the spot to keep themselves warm they said it had been just like sleeping outside. It was only after they had left their room that they realised that the window had been wide open all night! You shouldn’t laugh but HAHAHAHAHAHA!

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china 4

2007-12-17T18:50:51+01:00

Huangyaguan to Sweet Water Mountain village - or Blood, Sweat and Tears

Day two, As you all know, I can be a massive numpty from time to time, and as a result of my numptyness Dierdre and I had a very cold night in Huangyaguan, the night was freezing and I didn’t realise that the lovely air conditioner on the wall of our wendy house, was actually a heater as well. So we froze. After what seemed like hours of shaking uncontrollably with cold - no namby pamby shivering for me - no, I do the job right!!! I decided to get up and put socks and a thick hoodie on, after which it was much better.

We woke in the morning, half an hour earlier than we had to (my fault, I like to faff about in the morning) and we both lay in our beds saying ‘I don’t want to get up, its too cold’ and ‘I don’t dare take my jumper off’ and other things to that effect. As we were procrastinating about getting up, we received a knock on the door. It was a lady travelling with us called Merridy (isn’t that a cute name?), who had come to see if she could borrow an adapter for her hair dryer and she managed to get the heat on - thank God, I think my clothes had frozen onto my body by that point and it made it heaps easier to prize them off once I had thawed out.

Once up, we went to breakfast in the hotel restaurant and were presented with a dinner plate with jam on it, and a pot of green tea, we were just wondering what to do with the jam, when they brought a stack of stale white bread out. Now what you have to understand, is the people at the hotel (and every hotel for that matter) are very hospitable people, and they want to make you feel at home, so they give you, what they think English people eat for breakfast every day, which starts with runny jam and thick slices of white bread, Chinese people don’t eat bread as we know it, so this is their approximation of it, and it is peculiar to say the least. Nine times out of ten it is stale, but you cant hold that against them - they aren’t going to eat it, and it is really, really sweet, someone likened it to brioche, but I’m sorry. I never want to eat the brioche from your supermarket if it tastes like that. Foul doesn’t even begin to cover it. Have you ever tried to spread runny jam on bread with chopsticks? It isn’t easy.
You spread more on yourself and the tablecloth (which in all cases was disposable plastic so it doesn’t really matter) than on the bread. Then out came a plate of sliced tomato, and a plate of sliced cucumber, and the pie’ce de resistance, a massive plate OF SPAM. I said in my last instalment that I would tell you about spam. Chinese people think that English people virtually LIVE off spam, we eat it for almost every meal, and find it a delicacy, not unlike fois gras or caviar, they think that if you have a large plate of spam in front of you, that you will be as happy as a pig in shit!!!! What they must also now think, is that it is such a delicacy that you don’t want to eat very much of it, or you might well do overkill, and that would spoil your enjoyment of this wonderful processed meaty delight for the rest of your life and that MUST be why they are chucking away most of it, as it has gone uneaten. I remain true to this,- I never let a single piece of spam touch my lips (or tongue, or stomach for that matter) in my entire time in China, and I was not the only one!

After all this was carted out, we sat there looking blankly at it, ‘what am I going to eat?’ was the general cry and ‘I cant eat that’, then they brought out fried eggs, BRILLIANT!!!! Something I can eat that will give me energy to walk! I took two, and made a fried egg butty, after two bites I had to take the bread off because it was so repulsive I couldn’t eat it, but eggs for breakfast was pretty good and I felt energised and ready to go, the green tea was a godsend as well, delicately flavoured, and really tasty (great anti-oxidant too - or is that a bit girly) and for someone who doesn’t like tea, I became a convert.

After breakfast, the horrid smelling squat loo, and a sneaky ciggie, we were ready for anything - so we thought.

Now, you will remember, that at the end of yesterday’s walk I could see a section of the wall that surely we weren’t going to climb, well, oh yes we were, we walked out of the back of the hotel and picked up the wall almost straight away, at the bottom of the valley. That day we had been told we would be tackling a section called the heavenly ladder. The stretch of wall in front of us went up and up and up with no downs in sight, it was reasonable to think that this was the stairway to heaven, with no Led Zep references at all - more like, by the time you get to the top, you will wish you were dead, or you will actually BE dead, St Peters gate ’I see you!!’,

So we started to climb, after ten minutes I was well and truly getting to the back of the pack, but not quite there, which was a good thing because just there, was a guy selling ice lollies (my treat for a good long training walk in London is an ice lolly) so I bought my lolly, unfortunately it was so sweet I couldn’t eat it (sugar syrup on a stick) and I had to chuck it, but I had my fix, and time to continue up the ladder, or so I thought.

After slogging my guts out, sweating like a truck driver, swearing, panting and red as a beet, I eventually reached what I thought was the top of the heavenly ladder, there was a flat bit, where I stopped and said to my friend ‘thank God that is over‘, and she replied ’I don’t think that was the ladder’ which was returned with a sharp ’what???’
‘no that had to be it’,
’no I don’t think it was’,
‘it must have been’,
‘it wasn’t’
‘OH. MY. GOOOOOODDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!
And she was right - it bloody wasn’t, after going up a short, but extremely sharp hike up a mountain track we got to the bottom of the heavenly ladder.

You would think from the sign at the bottom, that the heavenly ladder was a rollercoaster, (I did try to take a picture but it didn’t come out)
No women with pregnancy,
No person with heart condition,
No person with high blood pressure,
No mental people, (ok, that wasn’t a real one, but if it was true, no one would ever climb it, you have to be a bit mental to do that)
The only one they left off, was no people under 1.5m.

Trust me now, when I tell you, that the heavenly ladder is NOT a rollercoaster.

It is a staircase cut into the side of a cliff, which, we were told would take about ten minutes to climb (if you are a mountain goat, or a mega fit athlete, or a stairmaster junkie, or basically, NOT ME!!) this truly was the stairway to heaven, by the time I got quarter of the way up, I was - a - huffing, half way up, I was - a - huffing and a puffing three quarters of the way up I was saying my prayers (as well as swearing like a trooper and only doing three steps at a time before taking a breather) seven eighths of the way up the tour leader was shouting ‘encouraging’ things down the stairs like ‘come on! What are you, a tiger or a mouse!’ ‘get your arse up!’ ‘what are you doing!’ ‘come on! You can do it!’. Anyone who knows me will know I do not respond well to this sort of ‘encouragement’, in fact it gets right up my nose, and about ten steps from the top, exhausted, I stopped and with my last few breaths’ yelled ’BLOODY STOP YELLING AT ME! - I WILL DO IT IN MY OWN TIME!!!’, I don’t think that went down too well, but I didn’t care. Five minutes later, I had caught my breath and was up with the rest of the group, while we waited for the people at the back to catch up.

Now I was under the impression that the wall went completely unbroken from the dragon’s head to its tail. I was wrong, when the mountains become too steep the wall stops. But the track does not. You have to follow a very well worn but very thin track to the top of the mountain, where the wall starts again. It was at this point, that I found myself very comfortably with the back of the pack.

The track that we were walking, in places was no more than a foot wide and some of that was crumbling, to the left of me was virtual cliff, and to the right of me was a sheer drop, I have never been in the situation before where I thought ‘If I fall I will DIE.’ I was imagining the phone call to my mother, and that thought of that, scared the living daylights out of me, I also had not taken walking poles with me, which I’m sure would have reassured me a bit, so I was grabbing hold of every bit of plant life along the way, which might have slowed the descent a bit. (if I had actually fallen, I might have broken a finger on the plant I had wrapped round it, but I don’t think it would have stopped me, but it made me feel better) I came out of the woods eventually and the vista in front of me was amazing. Row after row after row of mountains stretching as far as the eye could see, all in relief against the ones behind them, getting feinter and feinter off into the distance. There are few things in life, that will bring you to tears from the sheer beauty of them, but this is one of them. (I blinked them away fast, so nobody could see them - I’m Yorkshire and I’m hard - right?)

After the ascent we began to slowly descend into a landscape that was obviously being farmed, so we thought ‘Yaay lunch!’ but no, the place where we had hoped to have lunch, the farmer had decided we couldn’t eat there (probably because he wouldn’t get paid for it - we were told) but that was ok, we could smell the toilets from the track above that we were walking, so on we went. It was at that point that I noticed a Chinese lady following us, in fact she had followed us from the part of the wall that I had thought was the ladder (where the bloke selling ice lollies had been) All along, she had trekked with us, and this woman was amazing, like superwoman, she had carried a pack that was bigger than she was, all through that challenging terrain, as if it was nothing. When we eventually stopped for lunch, she put down her pack, to start selling Pepsi, lemonade and beer which had been in a metal cage on her back, containing a polystyrene container full of ice, water and a million cans of drink, and a scabby old package (also huge) containing books, t-shirts and other tourist crap. This woman was the size of the average English twelve year old, and how she had managed to carry this was beyond me, let alone, that she had walked the path we had just walked, with it on her back. She was just amazing.

We sat in the shade of some trees and ate our packed lunch, that had been given to us at the hotel, which contained - you guessed it, SPAM sandwiches, made from the horrid Chinese bread, a piece of cake - which had the texture and probably the taste, of a boots baby sponge and a strange sausage which was in a tight orange plastic skin, which when you took the skin off looked rather like a penis, (well actually more like a cartoon penis, not a real one - which actually might have been preferable!) I don’t think anybody ate the penis sausage, they went back in our packs for the bin later, we also had the biggest, juiciest, tastiest pear in the world, although our packed lunches did not vary in horribleness almost the whole way along the trek, the fruit that we were given every day was like manna from heaven, it was crispy and juicy, beautiful to look at, and wonderful to sink your teeth into, and for somebody like me, who definitely does not do her five a day, awesome! - I also bought a beer from the pack lady which definitely helped!

After lunch and singing a song in the bushes, we were off again, the pack lady started off a couple of minutes before us, and was soon out of sight. The wall at this point was so broken down that we had to walk at the side of it rather than on it, which we did for a while, then we came to a piece of track that went sharply down, and down and down. At this point we can see the pack lady on the next set of hills before us - this woman can scoot - and you think ‘can she fly??’ that is the only way she could have got there, but before long we were there too, and heading for a watch tower where the front of the pack were sitting. At this point I was near the middle of the pack, but I could see the end. At the end of the pack, something was going on, but we couldn’t see clearly, so we carried on to the watch tower to wait.

As we were waiting, the tour leader at the front got a radio message, but it wasn’t clear to us, what had happened. After a while, he got the message, take the group down the mountain and wait there, ‘there is nothing you can do right now,‘ he was told.

We went down to the top of the village, where pack lady was waiting with her wears spread out for all to see, and we waited for the others to come down, by this time pack lady had new (BIIIIIGGGG) beers waiting for us which we all bought, and because she had walked all that way with us we all bought our tourist crap from her, she deserved it, she had walked and worked so hard for it - this woman had a bonanza day!!! And also we got great deals from her!

After a short while, a motorbike pick-up came chugging up the hill. It was only now that we realised what was going on at the back. Coming down the hill, one of the ladies had slipped and broken her leg, and the truck had come up to get her.

It gets dark in China early at that time of the year, and rather than call the helicopter to airlift her off the mountain, the decision had been made to carry her off the mountain. If the helicopter had been called, it would have had to come from Beijing (150km away) and by the time they would have got there it would have been dark, which would possibly mean they would turn around and go home, so there really was no option other than carrying her down. It is a good job that one of the alzheimers tour leaders was quite a big bloke, he piggy backed her down the mountain, with another of the tour leaders walking backwards down the mountain in front of him, pushing against his chest to stop him falling, (that is what we were told later) even so, the bravery of the lady who fell and the presence of mind of the tour leaders who got her down was second to none. I admire them all.

Whilst we were waiting for the others to come down off the mountain, we got our first glimpse of rural Chinese life. This end of the village was set in a sharp ravine, but every available space had been terraced and farmed on what could almost be described a Cliffside, and a flock of small goats roamed freely up and down the terraces. The husks of the corn were waiting to be dug out and the earth re-ploughed for the next planting. A lady and a toddler came out for a walk - or a look at the funny western people and I was amazed to see that the little kid had a huge split in the bum of his trousers where the seam should be, I was thinking that maybe they couldn’t afford new trousers, until someone told me that certainly rural Chinese people (not sure about city dwellers) do not use nappies they just let the kid go out of the hole in their pants, not sure how clean that would be but the kid looked clean enough.

Eddie took us walking through the village and explained that it was the harvest time, one of the busiest times of the year for the locals, stacks of corn and heaps of persimmons lay outside almost every house and racks of sliced pears and crab apples were laid out to dry in the autumn sunshine. I was surprised to see, that almost every house was fairly new and as modern as you could imagine rural china to be. Mostly built from bricks or breeze blocks (I’m not sure what I was expecting, not mud huts, but not built from breeze blocks that’s for sure) and most of them had some form of satelite dish attached to the roof. Most of the houses had a chicken coop and small, cute, blonde somehow Chinese looking dogs yapped in several yards. I do not have any pictures of the village because we had been asked not to take pictures of peoples houses, after all, how would you like two busloads of Chinese tourists gawping at your front garden and taking pictures.

We eventually got to the houses where we would stay, and again the man who owned them must have been of some importance to the village because he owned two very large houses, which I can only assume he rents the rooms out to farm workers during busy times as some sort of hostel, because these houses sleep a lot of people - I also know that when he hosts a load of English tourists, the entire family give up their rooms and sleep in the living room - and it is a big family, but for one night every so often they have a great sleepover party!!! As soon as we got there we were billeted out into rooms, four in this one five in this one, etc. etc. I was sent to the house just down the road, and myself and a few of the girls chose a room, I was first in, so I got first dibs on the only single bed in the place!!!! (jammy cow) but all the others were not so lucky, in my room was a bed that slept five people, and in the adjoining room was a bed that slept six and a double bed, there was a shower in the place but we were told that really we shouldn’t use it, the only shower was the hosts family shower and we were told that unless we absolutely could not go one day without washing, if we paid him ten yuan he might let us use it - so baby wipes it is then - the festival shower!!!!! The toilet again was a squat, but by this time we had all become fairly adept at using them and (thank heaven for small mercies) clean.

Now before I get distracted, I should explain a little about these beds, it is traditional in china to sleep in the same bed, these beds are very large and so there is no chance you would roll over in the night and cuddle your bedmate by mistake, they wont nick the covers because you all have your own, but Chinese people do not do soft beds, (although mine was) so these big beds are nothing more than a large, low table, that has been tiled with what can only be described as bathroom tiles and covered with a thin patchwork quilt - and that is it. Great for your back. But bloody uncomfortable. In the morning some people said that their bed had an inbuilt heating system on them that was activated by the pressure of people lying on them, but the girls in my room had no such luck, stone cold all night, after going to our rooms and wiping ourselves down, we got changed for the evening and while some of the girls wrote in their journals, I had a look round the garden. The family had begun their harvest and a huge pile of persimmons lay out on a sheet in the yard, they were so beautiful that I picked one up and found the owners wife and paid five yuan for one (about 3 ½ p or 7cents) you should have seen her face, her jaw hit the floor, that I would pay so much money for one persimmon, she was absolutely stunned. Next to the persimmons was a massive pile of corn, which was drying for maize and in the garden lush green cabbagey things grew, they were definitely not cabbages and were too big for pak choy, I think they might have been some form of kale but I’m really not sure. Around the cabbage patch was planted beautiful pink and red flowers - why have an ugly veggie patch? Across the yard was a pergola (not pergoda) that had gourds hanging from it, the vine had pretty much died but the gourds were huge and hourglass shaped and of the palest green. I thought they were tied there at first, but they were still attached to the vine, and across the yard was tied bunting, I didn’t understand why at first, but was told that these were Buddhist prayer flags, it was at this point I started to notice the rubbish.

I don’t know how often - if ever the dustmen come but it cant be that often we had been told that the roads were too thin for the busses to get up, although the baggage truck could make it, so a rubbish truck would probably have no chance. I think they do compost a lot, but there was plastic rubbish strewn everywhere, all the sides of the roads were covered in it - I thought London was bad, but it is positively shiny compared to rural china. As we walked up the road there was a bin/rubbish heap that was positively minging and all the local chickens were feasting on it like rats and I’m surprised I didn’t see any of them, (mmmm garbage marinated roast chicken yummy). When we got up to the main house for dinner, they had set up loads of plastic chairs in the yard for us to sit on, and laid dinner out in their living room, buffet style, after a long days trekking we were all hungry and the food was warm and comforting. We all took a bowl and helped ourselves to rice (out at the same time as the rest of the food- amazing) and a delicious selection of dishes, a few of the old favourites were there - elastic bands etc. but I had a large steaming bowl of rice pak choy in an amazing garlicy sauce and a beautiful chilli chicken dish, it is only as I write this that I have realised this might have contained a bit of the rubbish heap that I saw earlier, ‘whatever‘, it was tasty and oh so welcome, after dinner our host lit a bonfire for us and we all sat down for an evening of silly games, dirty jokes, and good stories. The toilets were public, but thankfully clean and the host hung out with us, and although he didn’t speak any English he was a brilliant laugh and through sign language and pantomime acting, we were able to have a laugh and a joke with him.

I was woken up in the morning with a really funky cough. Where the hell it had come from I wasn’t sure, but I decided to ignore it. Soon it turned out I wasn’t the only one, we were all coughing and hacking that morning, and that is where the trouble began.

When we arrived in the village, the lovely Eddie had said to us that if we wanted, the following morning we could skip the trek up the mountain, and hang out in the village and a few of the girls had said they would give it a miss - after all we would be walking back up the track we had just come down for two hours straight up have a bit of a walk along the wall and come back down, right past the front gate of the house where we could re-join the group, they said their legs were aching and they were tired from the gruelling day the day before, now I was in two minds as to whether to go or not, after all my legs weren’t aching and there was nothing wrong with me, but come the morning I had almost decided not to go. In the morning everyone had changed their minds and were going, so I saddled myself up ready to go, we went for breakfast at the main house, which consisted of really tasty pancakey bread stuff, a thick, beautiful, tasty, spring onion omelette and a thin milky porridge that I think might have been made from rice (I didn’t taste it - I cant eat milky stuff but I was assured it was delicious) we then got to go and pick up our lunch, the components of which, were laid out in boxes outside. Again there was a box of the penisie sausages that nobody took, but one of the local blonde doggies was really loving them (my friend saw him sneak up and whip about five out of the box, at least someone likes them) It was around that time that I had a ’moment’.

I don’t know whether I had told myself I didn’t have to go up the mountain, or whether the reality of the lady breaking her leg on the mountain had sunk in, or the fact that walking such high passes had really scared me shitless, but I wasn’t mentally prepared to go, I just thought two hours straight up, I cant do it, the thought of it made me feel physically sick, I just couldn’t, I started to cry, there was no physical reason that I couldn’t do it, after all my legs didn’t hurt, I just couldn’t do it, and after a short talk with Ama, one of the reps from Alzeimers, I decided not to go.

As I watched the group leave, the disappointment in myself was crushing. I had completely broken down, and there was no physical reason for it and I was angry and embarrassed at myself, I cried as I watched them walk up the hill, knowing that I should have been with them, I felt stupid. A pathetic nobody and I was so terribly ashamed of myself.

I allowed myself to wallow in self hatred and pity for a couple of minutes and then decided to look on the bright side, I could now take my time and look around the village properly.

The weather that day was really overcast, but eerily still, the type of day where you could hear a pin drop and all the sounds you do hear seem somehow magnified, I stood alone for a long while by the chicken coop just listening to nothing, numb, listening to the silence, then the noises of daily life began to chip in, at this point although the group had been gone a good twenty minutes I could hear English voices on the mountains above, and, as I pulled myself together, I could hear the chickens in the coop scratching around, far away roosters crowing their ’good mornings’, and conversations in Chinese at the other end of the village. Birdsong twittering in the trees and from far up the mountain, the now familiar sound of someone hawking up a good one. I started to notice my surroundings, at my feet was yet another rubbish pile, on top of which was a used condom - I moved pretty sharpish. The favoured mode of transport seemed to be dilapidated motorbike pick-up trucks that were so old and crappy you would be amazed that they would still go, I took a long hard look at the village which seemed to be laid out in almost a spiral formation with the road raised up a few feet from the gardens. I should imagine the houses have a few electrical problems because all the cables were old, crappy and mostly running on the outside of the houses, a risk assessor would have never have let that through. Frankly even I, with no electrical knowledge could see they were dangerous. All along the roadside there were bunches of sticks tied together to form sheaves and stacked up, I thought they were firewood until I saw some of the people going out to harvest persimmons with huge, home made baskets tied onto their backs, that seemed bigger than they were, to put the persimmons into which had obviously been made from the sticks. They also carried long sticks some with little hoops on the end with a cloth bag sewn on, to pick the persimmons, so that they wouldn’t fall to the ground and bruise, but just land in the bag, by the looks of things this village was pretty much self sufficient. Chickens and Goats for meat and milk, veggie and fruit crops in every available space, planted sometimes almost on top of each other, they must have travelled to the nearest town for petrol and all the stuff that comes in the plastic containers that lay everywhere, but other than that, I’m not sure. A pretty sheltered life I think.

The colours were more muted today, because of the weather, dusty reds, dark yellows, rich browns all contrasting with the dark bottle green of the pine trees. A few people had started to walk past me now, and I noticed they had frightened looks on their faces, then I realised, we had been told at the start of the trip, not to ask Eddie controversial questions about china, in tourist areas, because they send government spies into touristy areas like Tian’anmen Square to listen to the tour guides and listen to what they say. If they mention the students revolt in 1989,they have been known to go missing, or be arrested on a fairly regular basis, so people are naturally pretty wary of saying or doing the wrong thing around strangers, and here was I standing in the middle of a village looking around and writing in a note book, I twigged fairly quickly, put away my book and returned to the hosts house where I waited for the group to come back, and there lies another story, but not today!!

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china 3

2007-12-17T18:49:34+01:00

Beijing to Huangyaguan the culture shock begins!!

The trip to Beijing went fairly quietly apart from me managing to spill an ENTIRE beer over my shorts and that is a very cold experience especially when you happen to be the piggy in the middle, and to get up to sort yourself out you have to move the guy sitting on the right of you who is wetting himself laughing whilst you are going ‘its cold! Its cold! And all wet!’ by the time I managed to unbuckle/scoot out/start frantically patting myself down with the completely inadequate airline blanket (those things are just not designed for mopping up a beery crotch) I not only had wet shorts but wet knickers and a wet seat, which I had to go and sit back down on. A word of warning, those back of seat remote controls are dangerous, they appear to be on a never ending string - they aren’t - it ends, then when you have pulled out miles and miles of the string, it wont go back, you try pushing it back in, but it wont go back in and so you resign yourself to the fact you are going to have an 8 hour flight with the weird remote/telephone and a few miles of string sitting on your lap. As a last ditch effort and in exasperation, you give it one more little tug and zzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiip it starts shooting back into the back of the chair at a million miles an hour, the remote flies up into the air and knocks your beer over into your lap and I managed to do almost the same thing on the flight from Dubai to Beijing as well, either they are dangerous or I am a dumbarse, (couldn’t possibly be the latter could it?)

So we land in Beijing and the first thing you notice is the smog, I had heard it was bad, but we got in in mid afternoon and it looked like twilight, the next thing you notice about Beijing is the traffic, which causes the smog, eight lane highways criss cross the city, the main ones going from east to west and from north to south and are chocka at any given time of day, as well as the main two roads, loads of other major roads shoot off here there and everywhere there are big spiral bridges connecting the roads just like a sci-fi city, at the side of the roads are thousands and thousands of tower blocks and although nearer to the middle of the city they are glass and chrome creations, most of them are rough arse blocks of flats, it looks a lot like the South Acton estate, which for those of you lucky enough not to know about that estate (it is where the picture of ‘Nelson Mandela House’ was taken, so you get the picture). Beijing is the most populated city in the world, housing 10,839,000 people ‘there are nine million bicycles in Beijing’ - get your facts straight love, its more like twelve!!!
The one thing that most people picked up on as we drove through Beijing for the first time, was that we all felt that somehow it would feel more Chinese, you really could be in any major city in the world, until you start looking at the details, for example the road signs are written in Chinese as well as English and the people look a bit different, but apart from that initially you could be anywhere, and then the bus turns down a backstreet.

The first thing you see is a couple of motorised rickshaws and scruffy little shops and restaurants with people slurping noodles from bowls, plumbers shops with all the pipes and tubes stacked up in a massive pile just inside the door, the hairdressers where Chinese girls with funky spiky hairdo’s are gossiping and staring right back at the busload of gawking white people, it is scruffy but this is the China you expected, we then went around the corner again and into a compound with a uniformed security guard and the four star hotel in which we spent the first night, firmly and safely tucked away from any form of real China.

The dinner that night was o.k. there was some really weird lotus root stuff that was in a sticky, jammy, green sauce, that was so sweet it was inedible, most people were unable to eat the first meal, and went to bed hungry, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It is quite telling about western portion sizes the way that a lot of people came away from the tables saying ‘was that it? Where was the rest of it?’ none of the people I was with was overweight, but it does illustrate one of the reasons that obesity is such a problem in this country, I also found over the course of the time that if you eat with chopsticks out of small bowls and help yourself to as much as you want, you don’t eat nearly as much as when it arrives in front of you on a plate, and you feel obliged to clear your plate, not once, in China did I overeat or come away from the table pogged, although the opportunity was there if I had wanted to take it, I just felt full, off a surprisingly small amount of food each day - and as we all know I like my grub!!! After dinner a couple of us sat and had a few beers and polished off a whole bottle of aftershock before returning to our very nice, warm, soft bedded, clean, beautiful, comfortable, lovely, posh hotel room….. it would soon change.

We were met the following morning after a beautiful breakfast of noodle soup, egg fried rice, green tea and a million and one other things to choose from, by our Chinese guides for the trek Eddie and Jordan who put us onto the busses and we started the drive out of Beijing, I found myself on ‘Eddie bus’ which was great because Eddie talks a lot but he really knows his stuff and is passionate about his city and country, most of my facts and figures in these reports were provided by Eddie (cheers Eddie) as we were still driving through the city Eddie started to fill us in a little about what we were about to face, construction started on The Great Wall of China in the 7th century b.c., its total length is 3800miles long, it starts submerged in the ocean and it ends in the Gobi desert (the Chinese people say that the dragon has its head in the water and its tail in the desert). It has a watch tower or a beacon tower every 400m, on which soldiers used to burn wolf droppings to make signal fires, because apparently, ‘there is nothing that makes a good thick heavy smoke as a great big pile of shit’ (quote from Eddie who then laughed like a drain) The Chinese people do not regard the wall to be finished, it is a work in progress rather like the Golden Gate bridge (once you finish painting it, you have to start all over again) there is always maintenance and upgrades and although now they don’t have to keep the marauding Mongols out, they have hoards of marauding tourists (in parts) instead.

Whilst we were still in the city Eddie had the bus driver stop at the Bank of China for people to change money or use the A.T.M and he also told us if anybody needs to sing a song they can do it here, we sat there thinking why would anybody need to sing a song in the bank, and then Eddie told us that in China, instead of spending a penny or powdering your nose you would say ‘I’m going to sing a song’ or you could ask ‘where can I go to sing a song’ and you would be directed to the nearest toilet, apparently this phrase dates back to the time when the only toilets were the public loos in the middle of town and you would sing a song whilst you were using them to let others know you were there, no walk-ins! (especially if I was singing they would run away screaming)

Soon we left the city and started to get out into the peach growing district which is denoted by a really cool sculpture of a peach (imaginatively titled, the steel peach), the traffic slackened off and the sight of motorbike pick-up trucks and bicycle/tricycle trucks became the norm with cycle tracks along the sides of the roads peach plantations lined the sides of the roads and stretched flat, flat, out for miles. As with the land in the city, the farm land round Beijing is limited as well so people squeeze as many crops into their patch as they could, so if you have a peach plantation you would also grow corn underneath your peach trees, and other crops before the corn comes and after it has finished, in one place people were strip farming in exactly the same way it would have been done in medieval times, along the sides of the road people had piled up some of their produce to sell into little pyramids there was really beautiful corn, peaches, apples, grapes, persimmons and the most beautiful pumpkins, it was at that point when my friend leaned over and said ’look out that side’, the day was really hazy and that is probably why I hadn’t automatically noticed that we had reached the foothills of the mountains.

The mountains in China are nothing like you have ever seen in this country they are almost other worldly, they are staggeringly steep and high and sharp, think of any willow pattern plate or Chinese etching you have ever seen and what you thought was almost a cartoon of a mountain, is actually brilliant artwork, they really rise up from nothing, to razor sharp peaks, there is nothing remotely hilly, or wussy about these, they are MOUNTAINS. Big, hard, mansize, MOUNTAINS, and that is where we were going.

We drove further and further up into the mountains along winding roads that took us up past some of the most amazing autumn scenery, the leaves were russets and golds interspersed with violent red creepers that contrasted wonderfully with the rich dark greens of the alpine trees and the dusty green leaves of the persimmon trees that were heavy with bright orange fruit, persimmons seem to be the most prevalent crop in that area of China and are grown everywhere there is a space, the sharp little valleys were covered in pinpricks of bright orange, with leaves varying from dusty green to almost the same colour as the fruit its self, we began to come across small houses with corn cobs stacked up in the window sills and on the rooftops drying to be ground into maize, people were walking along the side of the roads with huge baskets on their backs full of persimmons and again some people had their crops stacked neatly up on blankets at the side of the road to sell, the few houses turned into a village and it was just past here that we turned into the car park of our first real hotel.

We got off the bus and turned around and that is when we got the first view of the wall its self, high up in the mountains, right on the ridgeline, we could trace it down the mountain and up the side of the next one, a thin white line on the mountainside.

We had our lunch in the hotel restaurant that day and it is then we got our first real taste of a Chinese restaurant, I don’t think this restaurant was used to 50 English tourists at once as it took an age to bring anything out, and as we would find out the staple (rice) is always the last thing to be brought which is fine but seeing as how you are surposed to pile your meat/veggies on top of your rice this invariably means that if you wait for the rice, the other stuff will be cold by the time it gets there so ‘dig in mate!’ slowly, slowly, they brought various different veggie dishes out, to the point we thought that they thought we were ALL vegetarians (they had been told to make sure they catered for veggies) but after a while, out came the most wonderful chicken and beef creations in chilli sauces and garlic sauces, enough to satisfy even me (the more chilli and garlic in something the better I like it!) there was the one dish though which looked great, smelled great but when you put it in your mouth Kit-E-Kat came to mind - I would never normally spit something out in a restaurant, but into the napkin it went!!!! Along with everyone else’s who had tried it - on every table was piles and piles of steaming cat food left untouched, after lunch we had a short time to look around the garden at the concrete fish pond with the lazy carp which seemed to be asleep in the bottom, have a quick ciggie (me and my partner in crime Penny) and use the loo, which was the first encounter with a Chinese public (almost) toilet, as you walk in the smell hits you - you don’t want to hang around in a Chinese loo, and it is the last place you would want to stand for a girly chat at any time of the day! The toilets are squat toilets and there is no paper, it is completely a B.Y.O. job, what also contributes to the smell is that Chinese plumbing is not set up for paper, so there is a charmingly fragrant waste paper basket next to the squat, toilet doors invariably don’t lock or at least they did, once upon a time but they haven’t been fixed yet and probably wont be any time soon, it is best just to sing a song and hope the door doesn’t swing open exposing a bare arse to the world!!!

By the time I came out of the loo I was in time to witness all three of the Chinese chefs from the restaurant all sitting outside on the kitchen wall chain smoking and hocking loogies as if it was going out of fashion, the hocking hacking sound is disgusting and very, very Chinese, I had been warned about it before I came out as you all know, but hearing about something and hearing it for real are two different things, and nobody is ashamed or bothered by it in the least, men do it, and more worryingly women and children, at one point I saw a very well dressed Chinese lady about the same age as my mum who started doing it as she walked down a street and didn’t seem to think anything of it - eeeeeeyyyyyyyeeeeeww!

After lunch back on the bus we piled and up into the mountains once again we drove, before long we, stopped at a car park and all get out to tackle the first section of the wall, before we started the English tour leader David lead some warm up excersizes, and we were introduced to Mr Lu who would be filming our trek for prosterity (and yes I have a 3 hour dvd if anyone wants to be bored) Mr Lu all along the trek seemed to film me a lot - I thought he fancied me until I saw the dvd and realised I was the comic lead (I looked bloody awful, red faced, fat and sweaty - dead sexy!)

After the warm up we headed for the wall, to get to it we had to climb some really hard, high stairs, it was at this point I realised that my 12 mile strolls down the themes tow path and 10 mile rambles through Bushey and Richmond parks might not have been enough - especially as for at least the month and a half preceeding the trip my training had consisted mostly of lying in my bed thinking ‘I really should go out walking - never mind’. I had got it into my head that 10 hours of walking up and down a bar every day would help me - after all it is a long bar! To be fair NOTHING I could have done would have been enough to tackle the wall, unless I had actually been able to walk something similar every day for most of my life, nothing prepares you for the enormity and grandure that is The Great Wall of China.

Once on the wall you can see it snaking off in front of you as far as the eye can see, the highs are very high and there doesn’t seem to be any lows (that is because there isn’t any) To begin with I made a fairly good pace, I was with the leaders of the pack but soon enough I was back in the middle which I felt comfortable with, the stairs on this section were endless both up and down. The stairs are all of varying heights ranging from 1 housebrick on its side to 2 and then the killers, which on this section, were 2 on their side and one upright, it took me a little longer on these ones but it was nice to stop every so often and take in the view and the wall at this point had little windows at knee level every so often which gave a nice breeze up your shorts!!!

The view from up there is like nothing you could ever imagine, the mountains are really jagged and when you look out there is just layer after layer of them going as far as you can see they reminded me very strongly of the misty mountains as described in Tolkein’s the Hobbit or the mountains in the Lord of the Rings, they don’t seem real, but yet they are and I was walking on them. before long I reached the welcome coolness of my first watchtower, the floors are dusty, but the light shines in and casts pools of warm light onto the floor, you can see for miles from each window, I would hate to be the enemy that tried to outsmart this system, you can see everything, the slightest movement, the air is so still you can hear the slightest noise, and at the slightest movement or noise they would have been up the stairs and onto the roof like a rat up a drainpipe lighting those smelly-arse fires to let the others know there was someone coming, it is no wonder it was impregnable for so long. The weather that day was warm and welcoming, like slipping into a warm bath after a hard days’ work, but the weather becomes bitterly cold in the winter with heavy snows, and roasting hot in the summer, with heat up to 60 degrees (thanks Eddie for that one) it is only in the spring and autumn when the weather is pleasant enough to do a trek, so all I can think is these soldiers who built the wall and were garrisoned along it were HARD, HARD, BASTARDS.

Up and up we climbed, but what goes up, must come down, and soon we found that down is just as hard as up. Even the people who had trained really hard, found their legs turning into jelly and the compulsion to fall (weirdly) became very strong, before long we got to a part where we left the main wall and walked through the woods down a very steep track, back to the road and the back of the hotel - we had only walked for three hours and strangely it didn’t seem enough, the wall however, carried on in front of us and went very, very sharply up into the mountains above us for what seemed like an eternity, but we had finished for the day and anyway we weren’t going to be walking that stretch were we?

So back we went to the hotel which had been built in the design of a Chinese maze/soldiers garrison (weird combination but it worked) and were given out room keys. The rooms were all built around a central courtyard and were basic but clean and nice (although they were all joined together, I likened them to wendy houses, and they had western toilets and bog roll, which I promptly stole, result!!!)

We showered and freshened up an then a little lady came around to sell bottles of beer - litre bottles of cold, crisp, fresh, beautiful tasting Chinese beer which cost the equivalent of 70p ($1.40 if you are stateside - don’t you just love the strong pound!) and we all sat around the courtyard for a while swigging beer out of the bottle and chilling out - life doesn’t get much better than that.

That evening we were informed that we would be going out to one of the locals houses for dinner - I will assume this guy was of some importance locally because his house was huge, so headlights on heads (it was pitch black with no streetlights) we walked the couple of hundred yards down the road to dinner, and then we witnessed the true horribleness of the Chinese dinner (sorry host, but it was dreadful) (and sorry to say, George it was bloody awful) Now having 50 people show up at your house for dinner and all want to eat, is no mean feat, and they did admirably well for that, we were put in the conservatory on plastic tables and chairs, and most of the food was already laid out on the tables and stone cold (im not sure if it was surposed to be or not) by the time we arrived there were several plates of veggies in some kind of cold garlic sauce, I recognised pak choy and green beans but not a lot else, there was a plate of something that resembled large brown elastic bands and tasted exactly like large brown elastic bands and the crowning glory was a plate of wobbly pink SPAM - you will hear more about spam, (that is what Chinese people think English people eat for every meal!) they did bring some meat dishes out (again Kit-e-Kat) and some chicken, and then they brought out a dish of pak choy with what appeared to be tiny strong smelling little fishy penises in a whitish translucent sauce dumped all over it, I tried it and the fishy bits were preserved shrimp, but it smelled so badly, again it was a discreet napkin job, the people at that house probably think English people are extremely rude (probably) or have very small appetites because most of the meal went untouched, they must think however that we are bigtime alkies, because we swilled a mountain of beer (which they must have made a tidy profit on) after dinner our host made a huge bonfire in the garden/carpark of his house and we all sat round drinking beer and generally having a whale of a time, all in all, apart from the food, really fabulous night.

I cant leave this subject until I have tackled the toilets. If I were to have a dinner party at my house, you would be able to eat your dinner off the bathroom floor, not so the Chinese house (or rather this Chinese house - I wont tar them all with the same brush) I was the first to go to the loo when we got there (the result of about 3 big Chinese beers before we left the hotel) and was horrified to find that a) it was a squat (half expected that anyway) but b) the floor was swimming in urine, to the point that I had to come out and roll up my trousers to above the knee, so that when I pulled them down to go, the rolled up bit wouldn’t go in, it stunk in there and not only that but the bathroom also housed the washing machine and dirty washing was festooned all around, apart from the toilet being wet and smelly it was also filthy, I’m sorry but even the poorest person in the world can have a clean toilet, but Chinese people seem to have different priority’s. My room- mate Deirdre, later in the trip said ’Chinese people are mingers’ and I’m afraid to say at this point, she was right. But they are very hospitable, and we did have a good evening, and slowly, slowly we made our way back to the hotel to sleep.

It was when we got back to the hotel that I decided to donate my entire pack of cold and flu tablets to one of the tour leaders who had got man flu, because after all, I had gotten over my flu 2 weeks ago and ’I wont need them’. FAMOUS LAST WORDS……………………………….......

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china 2

2007-12-17T18:47:24+01:00

First, a retraction.

Firstly (as promised) here is a retraction of my first e-mail, to my new friend Deidre who is not at all boring. And does not wear socks and sandles, and is definitely not a fuzzy old hippy!

Diedre is Irish - hense the name, is not much older than me, is a bloody good laugh, and has very nice hair (which she is a bit precious about - luckily - she brought a hairdryer and straighteners - lifesaver!!!!)

Deidre is also a saint, as you can imagine she would have to be to share a room with me for 10 days, she had to put up with my :-

Snoring
Farting in bed
Coughing like I belonged in a T.B. hospital
Hacking up crap (because of my cough)
Spitting crap down the toilet
Bitching
Moaning
Alarm clock going off every day 30 mins before we had to get up

I was much more of a pain in the arse than I normally am because I was sick, but she put up with it with a smile on her face, Cheers Deidre!!!!

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china 1

2007-12-17T18:40:57+01:00

Bags packed ready to go!!!!

So as the title would suggest my bags are packed and I think that I’m as ready as I will ever be, the taxi to Gatwick is booked, and I am trying to remember exactly what it is I have forgotten - there must be something, there is always something, but god alone knows what it is and I’m sure I will find out when I go to find it and it isn’t there!

I’m not really sure what to expect I know it will be really hard - am I fit enough, NO! but I’m sure I will be much fitter by the time I get back - here’s hoping!! I have heard so many different reports of china from various people all of which gave fantastic rave reviews but I have also been told to take pot noodles with me because apparently the food is really bad - it cant be as bad as a pot noodle so I think I will take my chances, I have heard that it is common practise in china for people to not only smoke in restaurants but whilst they are eating, I hope to god they are not sitting next to me when they do this, I know that must sound hypocritical as I am a smoker myself, but I hate smoking in restaurants, I cant bear for people to smoke over my food especially if I have paid good money for a meal. Something I think might put me off my food more than the smoking, is the reported spitting in restaurants, apparently it is not considered rude to ‘hock a loogie’ in a restaurant, or anywhere else for that matter, I DO NOT do spitting anywhere, but in a restaurant, how utterly disgusting.

The toilets will be interesting, squats only, I have never used a squat loo before, they had them in Thailand, but I couldn’t bring myself to go, to the point that I left the club to go in the bar down the road that I knew had western toilets I know that I will probably have the choice in Beijing, but once out of the city - no such luck, I will have to learn pretty quickly.

I think the night I am looking forward to most is the second night, where we will all stay in a really remote mountain village and everyone will be billeted out to stay with a Chinese family for the night which will be a real experience one of the houses has a bed that sleeps four people - bagsy not me!!!!

They have issued us with a list of the people who will share rooms, and they have paired me with a woman called DEIRDRE!!!!! I can almost imagine the of the amount of fun we will have, I have already bought Deirdre a gift - ear plugs!!!! And if anyone has ever heard my snoring you will know why and who knows she may even choose to wear them through the daytime to block out my talking!!!!!! I know I shouldn’t be judgemental, especially because I have never met Deirdre, but I have visions of socks and sandles, I will give great odds that she will not want to share with me within the first couple of days and try to swap out of the room, I will keep you posted on that one!

Now I will have to go and figure out what I have forgotten, I will write some more when I get back,

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