Western Days

Whilst practically every backpacker we have met on the trip so far has craved a series of authentic local experiences, there is no doubting that most need a regular reminder of home comforts and lifestyles. I suspect that the frequency of these reminders - often dubbed "Western days" - is roughly proportional to the time spent away from home - so towards the end of the travels we spent increasing amounts of time treating ourselves to Pizza and cinemas! This was mostly my fault to be honest - Ursh has always been more open to the local cuisine and entertainment than I, although neither of us could deal with the local karaoke....

Sadly cinema is China is of course state controlled - so only selected western movies are allowed. Unfortunately one of these was "Battle Los Angeles", which we decided to see as it was the only film in English available. I'm not sure what the Chinese censors deemed to be acceptable about this film, but if I was being cynical (and I am) I would say that it must be an attempt to promote local cinema by way of comparison. At least the seats were comfy and we got free popcorn!

Our trip across China looks like a giant zig-zag which is attempting to tick off as many touristy sites as possible (although we missed Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai as we had so far overdosed on large Asian cities). Leaving the Yangtze river for Xi'an, we headed straight for the Terracotta warriors, found by accident in the seventies.

In the way that only tyrannical despots can really manage, the warriors creation was ordered by  the Emporer Qin, as well as enormous mausoleums and other treasures that cost countless lives in their creation. The warriors themselves were incredible, with amazing detailing and the quantity present giving the area a powerful feel. The only issue was the venue, as to protect the exceptionally fragile clay figures it is of course impossible to get close to them, and the ever present crowds as found at any of China's major tourist attractions makes getting photographs tricky. Fortunately there are warriors that are on display at the Xian museum which are much more accessible.

Xi'an is not just famous for the warriors, but there are also other historical features including a 14km long city wall (Murphys law states that we chose the coldest, windiest day for a partial lap....) and also many pagodas and the like. To further increase the tourist appeal, there are many manicured parks, including one by the "big goose pagoda" which had a nightly fountain to music display, which like many new Chinese attractions managed to be both impressive and just a bit cheesy.

Big Goose pagoda

Despite the tourist bias of many of the parks, its good to see that much of their usage is from locals having fun and exercising. At almost any time their will be a large group of people doing tai chi, line dancing, aerobics or even practising with their swords.

Sword Practice in Xian Park

We booked ourselves onto our final train journey when leaving Xi'an for Beijing, and whilst the train was again punctual, clean and tidy, the overnight journey felt longer than we hoped due to sharing the cabin with a man whose clothes managed to stink out the cabin with stale cigarette smoke, and he also had a grim smokers snoring habit. We were of course very keen to get to the Beijing hostel we had booked, and managed to get a very early night to compensate for the lack of sleep on the train.

After our stay in Chongqing we were apprehensive about Beijing, as we had heard stories about shocking air pollution and dust problems, as well as expected cold temperatures in March. Whilst these are certainly issues that Beijing residents have to face, we found that the temperatures were chilly but ok, we had sunny sky's almost all the time, and the slight breeze that was present seemed to blow the pollution largely away. Beijing has an incredible number of tourist attractions, so unless you stayed for a year its important to pick out the favourite sites for any visit.

We visited the wall at two locations (the hoped for long distance walk along the wall didn't happen due to access issues):

Badaling is perhaps the best restored section (some say over restored), and was amazing, not least due to the crowds everywhere. Much of the wall is located on hills, and as such exploring the wall involves walking up and down thousands of steps, some of which are so steep that a single stumble could result in a massive fall, most likely taking hundreds of other tourists with you.

The other section we visited was at Mutianyu, where the wall has also been restored, but for reasons unknown there are far smaller crowds present. This was much the preferred site for us, simply because of the extra space there is to move around and get photos.

The Olympic stadium is also well worth a visit, and I found that the scale of the birds nest stadium quite surprising. The area outside of the stadiums is quite busy with roller blader's and kite flyer's, but unfortunately the stadiums don't get to host many events, and some locals have suggested that perhaps the amazing cost of the games wasn't money that well spent. It is however certainly a site that seems to inspire pride in the local visitors, which is perhaps reason enough in itself.

The centre of town is dominated by the sites of the Forbidden city, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Tianamen Square. Whilst these are amazing sites which we did visit, we were by this stage well in need of another western day, and Pizza hut beckoned!

Forbidden City from Jinshaling Park

Inside the Forbidden City

Gate of Heavenly Peace from Tiananmen Square - with the omnipresent Chairman Mao

Six months after setting off from Heathrow, we are now back in the UK following a lengthy flight (with fantastic views over the Gobi desert, Ulan Bator (Mongolia), Lake Baikal, The Ural mountains and St Petersburg). It has of course been an amazing trip, and its impossible not to feel privileged and very lucky to have been able to undertake it.