China: Beijing

Sunday 24th September

6am and Idre presented us with our Beijing tickets, but the only places he could get meant that we are not in the same carriage. In fact we were 7 carriages apart!! A bit awkward when we are sharing snacks, drinks and utensils. Idre was great tho', saying he'd take us to the statin and attempted to do some compartment swopping, in Mongolian, for us! However, this wasn't to be, so I went off to carriage 14 and David down to number 7! Total opposite ends of the train with the restaurant car inbetween. During the trip we met up at station stops where we could climb off or else took the ling, clumsy walk up and down the train corridors! At 7.30pm we arrived at the Mongolian border. The 2 and a half hour border procedures was pretty straight forward but oh so many forms to fill out! That done, we continued on through to the China border post which was an exceptionally clean-cut, fast and no nonsense procedure. What took the time here was the changing of the bogies on the train, to fit the Chinese gauge railway. A very interesting rigmarole! After many, many shuntings and crashing of coaches, the whole train was moved into a covered workshop. In here, the train was literally pulled apart like a jigsaw puzzle, each uncoupled carriage was attached to a pneumatic lifting device and suddenly all us curious passengers realised that we were hanging suspended high above the tracks!! The sstrangest part was that whilst I hung out the window watching, I heard David calling mn name but couldn't see him. I looked around and realized that the train on the next track, which I thought was another train, was in fact David's carriage!! Somehow he'd been shunted off my track to the next one. the whole train really was scattered around the place. We watched each other being levitated to the roof of the workshop whilst the wheels of the train were separated totally from the carriage!! A weird feeling. To do every carriage of our long train was an endless procedure, or so it seemed. It was the middle of the night so after the bogies were adjusted the train then had to re-assembled again. Loads more hard crashes as the couplings were joined up again. Not much sleep for anyone tonight. Eventually we were on our way again but more rolling stock fun and games to come. This time to remove the Russian dining car and replaced with a Chinese one. More crashing and bumping in the night. By about 2am peace was restored with the gentle, hypnotic, rhythmic motion of the train returned. Aaaaa.... sleep at last.

Tianenmen Square, Forbidden Cities, Great Walls and Heavy Metal

Monday 25th September

A late wake up due to last nights train antics and new scenary. The Mongolian Gobi desert scenes changed to stunningly picturesque mountains, hills and tea plantations. China at last. A country that until fairly recently, I'd never had the desire to visit, but am now so glad the curiosity got me here. About 75km outside Beijing, the trains route took us through the very steep mountain pass that gave us our first views of The Great Wall of China. Wow, wow and wow again. We passed Badaling section, the most touristly and fully restored part and what an amazing sight it was. Traversing the mountains via the train one can really see the massive feat of engineering tht the building of the wall must have been. The mountains are rugged and steep and finding a way through here is daunting to imagine. What an inspiring welcome to Beijing. Climbing off the train with some fellow travellers, we followed them to a hostel they'd been to before. Saved us from having to search around with a totally incomprehensible language! A really great place, an official YHA establishment, in a character filled side street [hutong].

Tuesday 26th September

Beijing, a huge sprawling, modern city with one of the world's oldest civilizations. We left the hostel to explore a nd to seek out Tiananmen Square, the worlds largest public place. As huge as it is intially, we couldn't find it!! Can you believe it?? Strolling along the traditional alleyways, called 'hutongs', we spied the huge portrait of Mao Ze Dong above The Gate of Heavenly Peace. the enormity of the square hits you as you wander along the vast, wide boulevards that approach the square. the square itself, in which Mao reviewed military parades of up to a million people, is considered to be the symbolic centre of the Chinese universe. On one side is the ornate and impressive Gate of Heavenly Peac, with an enormous portrait of Mao overlooking you as you enter Also in the square is The Great Hall of The People, now home to The National Peoples Congress, the Front Gate, The Chairman Mao Mausoleum and in the middle is the gigantic Monument To The People's Heroes - a 37.9m obelisk made of granite. We drifted around the hugeness for a while and saw a horrific event taking place, In the entrance of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, a man was set alight and a whole bunch of Chinese youths rushed forwards. David saw the event happening but all I saw was the palls of smoke after the police had put him out the the extinguishers. We're not at all sure exactly what this was all about but very obviously it was a politically motivated thing. Time for lunch. When in China do as the Chines do. We had Peking duck. Walking past one of the many eateries, we were beckoned inside this hidden-from-view place down an alleyway. It was a real local restaurant filled with only Chinese and was local prices too!! The duck was delicious and nothing of it is wasted. The soft meat comes separate on a plate whilst the carcass is all dished up in a huge bowl as a kind of stock-based soup. In the evening we ate again, this time at another local place in our hutong. I think when we return home we will have gained back all the weight we've lost in the past months!! Food in China is so dirt cheap - and good - and a 600ml beer costs ZAR3!!!

Wed 27th Sept and Thurs 28th Sept

Two totally frustrating, hot days of rushing around trying to book train tickets to Xi'an and our plane tickets home to SA. We hit brick walls at every turn and acheived nothing at all!! Next week is a national holiday in China so train travel is a nightmare to arrange. We stood in a nightmare queue amongst thousands of others at the station, only to be told that we can only buy tickets 4 days before departure. Result. We have to come back and queue all over again!! As for our air trip home!! We've been trying to book a flight on the internet for a few weeks now but have discovered that Russia, Mongolia and China appear to have some of 'block' when booking a departure from a city in a different country. Even phone calls to airline offices here in Beijing say: "you must go to such and such a city [in our case Kathmandu], ... you cannot do it here..."!! What to do?? the rest of the 2 days we spent searching the internet for flights again...

Friday 29th September

Today - The Forbidden City. The once off-limits palace of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. When you walk through the Gate of Heavenly Peace nto this ancient city, the sense of hugeness is immediately apparent and it's the largest and best preserved group of ancient buildings in China. A full day is needed to do this place justice as it's a maze of passages tht lead from one area to another. Getting lost isn't difficult in here but that's half the fun - to discover the endless courtyards, ornate gates, halls and gardens. The Imperial Garden must be one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on earth. It's a classical Chinese landscaped garden filled with rockersi, walkways and large sprawling cedar trees trained like bonsai into picturesque artistic designs. The Forbidden City is a place of history and wonder.

Saturday 30th September

The Great Wall, started well over 2000 years ago, is a masterpiece of human manual labour that never ever perfomed it's original purpose as a line of defense. Seeing the mountaineous terrain along which The Wall was bulit, defies explanation. Why anyone would want to add an etra few metres to an already high and treacherously steep mountain, is anyone's guess!! The Wall was more useful as a "highway in the sky" for transporting people and equipment across the mountains. We visited a more authentic and unrestored section at a place called Huanghua. We were a group of 5 from our hostel with 2 other Brits added to the group from another hostel. The "tour" we went with took us into and over a rugged mountain pass from where we turned off onto a dirt track, ending in a small carpark. From here we were on foot. A 20 minute walk through a forest took us to an unrestored but well preserved example of the Ming defense system. One side is very steep and crumbling and rises up towards a solitary watchtower. There are no guard rails and we were not allowed to venture up there. The other side, also steep, is safer as you walk behind one side of the actual wall which still stands. This section of wall stretches out over the mountain peaks for a very long way and it's possible to walk section by section to the intermittent watchtowers along the way. Four of our group traipsed along 3 sections but I only did the first part, opting rather to enjoy where I was and take a few pics. We spent a good few hours here soaking up the enormity of this engineering masterpiece before heading back to ur hostel for a well deserved dinner at a local Chinese place in our hutong. We took half the hostel with us as this eatery is excellent. We sat in a huge circle at plastic tables, right in the middle of the street, as the locals do. After many ZAR3 beers [!] and heaps of incredibly tasty food, eaten like pro's with chopsticks, we returned to spend the rest of the evening on our hostel rooftop and in the cosy garden.

Sunday 1st October

National Day - a huge holiday in China - and a week of festivities to follow. Us crazy people decided to join the literally millions of others at Tiananmen Square. Well!! What a throng and crush of humanity. To be here, on National Day, was an experience 2nd to none. Red Communist flags and 1000's of Chinese flocking here to do the patriotic thing. We were a huge centre of attraction, being foreigners, and we honestly had our hour of fame as every single local anywhere near us, wanted their photo taken with us!! In one pic we were holding a Chinese baby and the circle of people that surrounded us made us feel like Nelson Mandela or The Pope would feel!! Whew. Eventually we had to get out from there as things became quite ridiculous. We made a very slow way across the square to the impressive Front Gate, towards a real China Town shopping area. This is the China I'd imagined. Bustling and crazy with every shop owner beckoning you in, to buy just bout everything they could offer you! The food places tempt you with strange delicacies tht would keep every vegetarian sticking firmly to their vegie diets. We went into a small restaurant in which stood 3 huge jars filled with scorpions, bees, snakes and lizards resting in a liquid which is offered as a "wine" for their potent tonic effects or as an aphrodisiac! Yeuch!! In the evening we went to a club!! Something we haven't done on this trip and something we don't normally do at home. This club tho' was hosting a festival of - Heavy Metal Music!! Us, going to heavy metal!!!! But we did. About 12 of us took 3 taxies to the other side of town and ended up having a truly interesting night. These "metal men" are really strange and heaven only knows what drives or motivates these "musicians" to produce the noise they do. It was like watching a theatre production with all the bands dressed up in wierd gothic and punk regalia, complete with the painted faces and body piercings that go hand in hand with heavy metal! Neither of us go for this 'music' but all of us had a gret time experiencing what, for most the other clubbers, is normal. By 3am we thought it time to get back to the hostel.... so at 4am we all rolled in!!

Monday 2nd October

Needless to say, no-one emerged until quite late today! We wandered out in the afternoon to do a spot of shopping and spent the evening at our Chinese eatery with the snakes and lizards in jars! No, we didn't sample them but some tried the "tonic wine"!!