As I wasn't able to access blogger whilst in China, I'm
posting this some time after writing (after coming home to Australia)
Greetings all from Guilin in southern China.
My last email took 2 days to send... the internet is challenging here... for a while I thought Optus was blocked as well as everything else previously mentioned. So we'll see how this goes.
Like my email, we took a while to depart Guangzhou ... flight was delayed(3 out of 4 domestic flights have been so far!!) then we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour... but on arrival into Beijing we successfully negotiated the subway to get ourselves to the hotel where we joined our tour group. There's 9 in our group which is very international with 4 Aussies 2 from UK 2 from USA and 1 from NZ.. We are two thirds through our tour now having disembarked from our Yangtze cruise this morning. Sadly one of our group was hospitalized last night - taken off the boat about 10pm. We await news and hope he and his wife can rejoin us.
So here's an update on our observations about China now....
First the obligatory weather report... We came expecting hot and wet - so far just hot. Mostly mid to high thirties but quite humid however no rain 😊 😊 .... until this morning! (steady rain all morning at Chongqing) It's hard to know what the temperature actually is. Apparently the govt has to pay a hot weather allowance if the temp is over 37 so funny enough it almost never reaches 37 according to the official weather report...... (or so the story goes)
Due to the expected "less than desirable" weather this is off-peak for tourists.... well foreign tourists that is..... turns out it's peak for the Chinese as its their summer school holidays.... so you can forget what I wrote before about it not being too crowded... now that we are in the major tourist destinations it feels like we've been joined by half the Chinese population!!! No chance of "personal space" - it's shoulder to shoulder. And we've had to quickly learn to be pushy or we'd just miss out. This applies not only to seeing the sights but also accessing food at buffets!!!!!
Along with the people we've also found the smog and pollution. Since arriving in Beijing there's been something like permanent fog - everything is hazy. It's the same even away from the cities although we have caught a glimpse of blue sky a couple of times. The streets have continued to be amazingly clean and free of rubbish - however there's plenty floating in the Yangtze River..
Traffic is a bit unique in every country. Our observations in Guangzhou were from a pedestrian viewpoint. Seeing traffic as a PASSENGER in Beijing and pretty cities was somewhat alarming - they drive very aggressively... and fast!!
Sightseeing has been quite amazing - highlights being The Great Wall (walked on a small section), Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, The Terracotta Warriors and the Yangtze River. It's a pretty spectacular waterway to cruise up and we enjoyed a couple of side excursions along the way. The Three Gorges dam was built across the river some years back - an absolutely huge undertaking. I won't bore you with facts and figures but the most interesting thing is that in order for boats to continue to go up and down the river they had to build a series of locks alongside the dam wall. Forget the little locks we have on the Murray in Australia. The water level difference here is over 100 metres so there's a series of five consecutive locks each with a rise/fall of 22 metres. It took about three hours to go through the five. Over one million people had to be relocated when the dam was built and the river valley filled up, covering thousands of villages towns and cities.... not too many governments could get away with that kind of decision!!!!
This morning we visited Chongqing zoo and saw the famous Pandas. Turns out the rain was a blessing as the pandas tend to hide away in the heat but this morning, with the rain cooling the place down, they were out eating breakfast in full view!
Of course we've seen our quota of temples, pagodas and old historical buildings etc.
One thing the Chinese do do very well is to put on a good stage show. We've seen a few quite spectacular ones including Kung Fu and acrobatics. They also love lights and we've seen some pretty spectacular effects on buildings walls fountains and boulevards. One shopping mall featured a 260 metre long digital video screen!!
Food of course is fabulous and plentiful but after more than three weeks of Asian cuisine a schnitzel and mashed potato is sounding very appealing!
Signing off for now.
Jenny and David
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