Category: China

The weather remained obstinately hot, muggy, overcast, humid and generally unpleasant. We were herded off the boat along a floating causeway. Then up some steps and loaded into small, electric buses that whisked us off to Xianguanshan. This is billed as an Ancient Folk Culture Park near Fengdu, a county in Chongqing. The park reproduces historic ancient residential buildings, courtyards, temples, wood carvings and city gates in the Fengdu region. I am not quite sure whether these have been built in the style of the old building or if they were rescued from the gorges before they were flooded. Whatever, they are now part of a popular tourist stop by the Yangtze.

In many ways, it was the usual thing. Uncomfortably sweaty and packed in with hundreds of tourists. Not really my ideal way to spend a morning. Indeed, I had started to wonder just what I was doing there. The buildings were moderately interesting but it felt a bit like wandering around a museum without any exhibits. We are not too keen on museums at the best of times.

The one redeeming feature was the garden. Very few people lingered here. They were too busy getting to the next old house. There was lush vegetation and even some wildlife. We have seen precious little wildlife in China. I suspect they have eaten it all. After a few moments waiting quietly under a tree with dense foliage, it was delightful to spot a couple of birds. A Collared Finchbill and a Light-vented Bulbul is all it took to make me happy. I may be turning into a birder. There was also an interesting and magnificently coloured butterfly. Google tells me it is a Chinese peacock swallowtail.

Back to the boat and the last bit of cruising. In the afternoon, the sun finally made an appearance. It was a bit shy and did nothing to dispel the uncomfortable humidity. However, it did improve the light for photography. Sitting on the front deck with my telephoto lens, I was content to watch the world of the banks of the Yangtze River drift by.  

On the hills overlooking the river, I spotted many things that I would have like to have asked our guide about. He was nowhere around. Whenever he was not actively guiding us, he tended to slope off. I often caught sight of him smoking cigarettes and looking a bit miserable. Well, I thought he looked rather depressed, he was maybe just being oriental and inscrutable. There was a massive golden statue of a woman looking away from us. There was a tall, white pagoda catching the sun. There was a cenotaph looking strangely Egyptian. All these things remain a mystery to me. More comprehensible were the farming activities. Rice fields where it was flat enough. Cows in the water. There was the occasional person fishing on the banks and there were several boat yards. They looked a little ramshackle in some ways but they were obviously turning out some large working ships and appeared to be making a good job of it.

We arrived at Chongqing. This place is massive. A great, sprawling municipality the size of Austria but with three times the population. At 30 million residents, including rural areas. the municipality of Chongqing is the largest city proper in the world by population. The United Nations uses three definitions for what constitutes a city. A city proper is the geographical area contained within city limits. However you want to think about this, it is an awful lot of people and as far as I can work out, everyone lives in apartment blocks. There are thousands, possibly millions of these. Everywhere. All the places we have travelled there are apartment blocks. All remarkably similar. Some in great estates of identical towers. There are a few other types of accommodation but, anecdotally, it seems to me that just about everybody lives in the same size and type of apartment.

90% of homes are owned by their residents. Home ownership is remarkably high but at the same time urban land ownership is exclusive to the state. In a typical apartment block, the individual units can be bought and sold however the land on which the block is built is leased from the state on a renewable, fixed term contract.

This was the end of our cruise. We had another night on board and then in the morning we would head to Guilin.

We were going for a four-day cruise along the Yangtze River. This sounded great. I had visions of lounging around on deck with my camera, capturing river life as we drifted past. First, however, was another bullet train. The routine was familiar. Early start. Security to get into the station. Wait an hour. Queue to get onto the platform. Passport check. Find seat. Find somewhere for the luggage. Settle into small uncomfortable seat as best you can. Nearly seven hours this trip. I would have slowly crawled out when we arrived except that we were told the train would only be stopping for four minutes. As the train pulled into the station, we were ready. The luggage was ready. The doors opened and everyone in our group helped getting luggage and people off the train. This did not stop people on the platform from trying to get on. They are like that in China. Absolute experts at being crowds, pushing and shoving. They were working to the same four-minute deadline and did not care much about anything else. For a few minutes there was a glorious chaos. I suspect some bags may have been lifted off, then back on and finally off again, or visa-versa. We prevailed. They prevailed. The train doors shut and the Japanese looking Chinese bullet train slid away. Rather remarkably, everyone and everything was in its correct place.

We made our way to a coach. The coach made its way to the docks. We began our cruise, in the manner of most cruises, by queuing for ages to get onto the boat. There was a steep drop down to the river. We rode a strange funicular type of carriage to get there. After the obligatory introductory safety talk, we found our cabin. It was rather nice. A decent size with a balcony and a big, comfy bed. Our home for four nights. Lovely.

The Yangtze River is one of the world’s great waterways. This 6,300 km river has its origins high up in the snow-covered mountain of Tanggula, Tibet. It empties into the East China Sea near Shanghai. Known as China’s “lifeline,” its basin supports roughly one-third of the country’s population. The river produces a massive share of China’s rice and freshwater fish. In this way it drives nearly half of the national economy. The Yangtze is also home to the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station. This was to be our first excursion of the cruise.

China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1950–1951 to secure its strategic southwestern borders, claim vital natural resources, and assert historical claims of sovereignty. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), led by Mao Zedong, maintained that Tibet had been an integral part of China since the Qing dynasty and viewed the military action as a “peaceful liberation” to restore internal order and reclaim lost territory. Beijing framed Tibet’s traditional theocratic system as a backward feudal society that needed to be modernized and freed from elite rule. China presented themselves as the good guys liberating a repressed Tibet.

Of course, there were a few other considerations. Securing the high-altitude Himalayan frontier gave China a dominant military and geographical buffer against South Asia, particularly India. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) feared an independent Tibet might align with Western powers or India during the Cold War. Most importantly, Tibet contains the headwaters of major Asian rivers (such as the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers), which are vital for irrigating and sustaining eastern China’s population centres. Which is why the Three Gorges Dam started me thinking about this. Finally, control of the region offered access to abundant mineral wealth, raw materials, and vast land reserves.

Following the military defeat of the Tibetan army at Chamdo in October 1950, the Tibetan government was pressured into signing the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951. Tensions eventually erupted into the 1959 Tibetan uprising, forcing the 14th Dalai Lama into exile in India and leading to direct Chinese rule. This whole period was rather nasty. Many Tibetans were imprisoned and tortured. Others fled to neighbouring countries. Temples and important historic and religious artifacts across the country were wrecked. The people suffered, the culture was destroyed and Chinese rule was enforced. Unfortunately for Tibet, it is not connected with the west, it has no resources of interest to the west and so nobody was there to help. In 1960, the International Court of Justice received a report accusing the Chinese government of genocide against Tibetans as a religious group. Other Tibetans have offered accounts of massacres, tortures and killings, bombardment of monasteries, extermination of whole nomad camps, and the use of military equipment provided by the Soviet Union for Chinese punitive operations. Over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet were destroyed.

The Cultural Revolution launched in 1966 (that gave rise to the Tiananmen Square massacre) was a catastrophe for Tibet. Large numbers of Tibetans died violent deaths and the number of intact monasteries in Tibet was reduced from thousands to less than ten. The Central Tibetan Administration claimed that the number that have died of starvation, violence, or other indirect causes since 1950 is approximately 1.2 million. The situation is still far from being resolved. The Dali Lama is still in exile, Tibet is still mostly closed off, Tibetan culture is suppressed. Since the 2000s, China has invested heavily in the region but generated controversies due to the sinicization of Tibet. Human rights abuses remain a concern especially where it comes to freedom of religion and political prisoners.

Since we were moored in sight of the dam, it was not a long drive to the viewing area. We did however need to pass through several security checks to get there. The weather was still very warm but it was overcast and raining. China is enormously proud of its dam and it appears to be a big tourist attraction. At one side of the dam is a large lock system so that river boats can pass. The Yangtze plays a very important role as a transport corridor. The locks are impressive. Up there on the Panama scale. We drove across the locks so I could only take photographs through the window of the coach – never very satisfactory.

From the car park we needed to queue (obviously) and then pass through security and the usual checks. After this came a series of long elevators up the hillside. Outside elevators, packed with people, in the drizzle. This felt rather strange, riding on an elevator in the rain. Eventually, we arrived at the top where the large, crowded viewing area was. Unfortunately, there was not a lot to be seen because of the rain and the mist. We walked back down a different way. Took us past some food stalls where you could buy shrimps and little crabs. The crabs were sufficiently small that, I think, the only way you could eat them would be to crunch them whole. Never saw anyone do this though so my views are just conjecture. Eventually, we walked through a small park area right next to the dam. Despite the rathe gloomy day, the dam was resplendent with Chinese flags.

Back at the boat, we settled down for our second night of the cruise. The food was reasonable. Certainly better, for us, than the previous few days. There was also plenty of red wine. In the bar there was a cabaret. We watched it for a few minutes and then opted for the TV in our cabin. Second night of the cruise and the boat had not left its moorings yet.

In the morning, the weather had not improved at all. The scenery however, had changed. During the night, the ship had moved a short way up stream. We are above the Three Gorges Dam. That is to say, we are in the reservoir part. It does not feel much like a reservoir because of the way it is formed out of steep sided mountains. The water underneath us is deep. The dam wall is 185 m high so the water here is up to 175 m deeper than it used to be. 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages were flooded by the reservoir. 1.4 million people needed to move. These people were moved to new homes by the Chinese government, which considered the displacement justified by the flood protection provided for the communities downstream of the dam. Many of the displaced people struggled to find work and their living standards declined. Older people were especially badly affected. Younger generations benefited from the educational and career opportunities afforded by moving to large cities.

I was a bit disappointed that we had moved during the night when I could not see anything. After breakfast, we did go on a cruise but not in our big river boat. We were scheduled to go on a much smaller boat to have a look up some of the smaller gorges off to the side of the main river. I imagined a relaxing couple of hours, sitting comfortably, enjoying the sights of the river. The reality was loads of people crowded onto a small boat. Inside, all the seats were rapidly snapped up. That was ok because I could not take good photographs through a grubby window. Up on the top deck there was fresh air and, again, a great mass of people manoeuvring for a good position near the railings.

The trip was a couple of hours but it was far from relaxing. Food and drink were being sold. Obviously, it was at extra cost but the bigger problem was that food appeared to universally involve meat or fish. I wanted a cheese sandwich not a bowl of noodles with squid tentacles and the offal of unspecified animals. On the top deck, I braced myself against the railings as best I could and tried to ignore the drizzle. We steamed up a gorge along with a small flotilla of similar ships. It was moderately interesting. Announcements were made very loudly and in Chinese. This might have been a commentary on where we were or it could have been advertising for the noodle pots. We passed a few interesting rock formations, a small temple and eventually arrived underneath a suspension bridge. I tried to take a few photographs although it was not always easy to get an image that did not include somebody’s head.

The skipper did an excellent job with a three-point turn under the bridge. Then we set off back. This, predictably, was terribly similar to the trip out. Meanwhile below decks, many of the locals had polished off their noodles with offal and were falling asleep. I guess they had seen everything they needed to on the outward leg. Coming back was faster. We were going downstream. Before long we were back on our ship and, at long last, we got to do some river cruising on it. Sneaking around in the dark does not count.

The next section of the Yangtze River is narrow and steep. Two gorges in quick succession. The 40 km Wu Gorge is known for its quiet beauty, forest-covered mountains and cliffs so sheer that the sun barely penetrates the precipices. That is what the brochure states. If the clouds cleared then you still would not be able to see the sun. Then comes the more dramatic Qutang Gorge. 8 km long and 150 m high. There is no problem with the water depth. No danger of shallows. After the dam was built, the water level rose by over a hundred metres. The walls of the canyon are steep. There are no shallows. It was fun to sit out on deck watching the boat navigate the narrow passage. I imagine the gorge must have been truly spectacular before they were filled with water. Some ships were coming the other way, so I amused myself by waving at them.

We passed a temple and a town and a pagoda and many, many cliffs. Some of the rock faces had writing on them. I could not understand the Chinese characters but imagined them to be state approved words of inspiration and encouragement.

An hour or so before sunset we arrived at Wanzhou. Here we moored up for the night along with many other tourist boats. One particularly caught my attention in that it was dressed up as a dragon. A gold tourist ship dragon. Looked great from a distance but when we got closer, we could see that it was a bit tatty. Good effort though.

Another bullet train. This time for four hours. It was the normal procedure. Get up way too early so that we can wait for an hour at the station. Then start queuing and eventually get us and our bags onto the train. The rest of the trip is about staving off boredom and hoping the small, uncomfortable seats do not give me haemorrhoids. Main excitement of the trip was getting a packed lunch delivered. They do not serve much food on the train. However, you can ring ahead and get someone to bring a packed meal to the train. Our meals were waiting on the platform as the train pulled into the station. They were handed into the correct coach and then distributed by our guide. Each meal was elaborately packaged in an insulated bag. The main part of the meal was in a second insulated container. Accompanying it were disposable utensils and a hygienic wipe. Unfortunately, the food was rubbish. For us, the vegetarians, it was just a pile of plain vegetables. I wondered a little about the amount of waste. An awful lot of single use plastic. That seems to be normal in China. Single use water bottles are ubiquitous. We did not see any attempts at ecologically friendly packaging at all.

We eventually arrived at Chengdu, checked into our hotel and then went out to see the face changers. The Chinese art of face-changing, known as Bian lian, is a 400-year-old dramatic technique from Sichuan opera where performers switch vividly coloured masks in the blink of an eye. I found it simultaneously entertaining and rather alarming. You cannot see the masks changing. The performers wear up to 15 ultra-thin silk masks stacked on top of one another.  Fine threads of silk connect each mask to different parts of the costume. A fast head turn, a sweep of a fan, or a wave of a hand pulls the top mask away into the costume instantly. Expert performers can swap several masks in just a few seconds. Unfortunately, once you have seen a few face changes the novelty wears off and the rest of the show was fairly mediocre.

In the morning, we were up early to see the pandas. As far as I was concerned, this was the real reason we were in Chengdu. Giant pandas once roamed across Southeast Asia from Myanmar to northern Vietnam. Their range in China spanned much of the southeast region. In 2001, it was estimated that the range of the giant panda had declined by about 99% of its extent in earlier millenniums. Today, they just inhabit a few mountainous regions in China. Deforestation and poaching drove panda numbers down to around 1,000. They are now strongly protected and have several dedicate reserves. Even so there are only maybe 2,000 in the wild and some 700 in captivity.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is a government-funded non-profit breeding and research institute for giant pandas, red pandas, and other rare animals, located in Chengdu, Sichuan. 124 pandas have been born there since it was established in 1987. The declared mission is to “be a world-class research facility, conservation education centre and international educational tourism destination.” It is also a massive tourist attraction. When we arrived, the whole place was absolutely packed with people. There were enormous queues for everything. We needed to be scanned by security and then have our passports scanned. Then, after some more queuing, we were driven by golf cart up to where the animals are. We had to pay extra for the buggy ride. Presumably, we could have walked but it was several kilometres and the weather was scorching sweaty. Even if you made there and back without heatstroke then there would not have been enough time to see anything. There were a lot of little extras like this on the tour. Meals are provided but not drinks. Any drinks. Water, for goodness sake. It is an extra that you have to pay for.

We arrived at the zoo. What is the difference between a zoo and a research base? I don’t know but here were animals in cages, cafes, souvenir shops, ice cream shops, panda statues, panda memorabilia and crowds and crowds of people. The walkways were six deep with tourists trying to spot a panda. Fortunately, I am taller than many of the people here so I could take photographs over the top of them with my telephoto lens. The temptation to rest it on somebody’s head was almost irresistible. If you are small and want to come here then be prepared to fight. We wandered around for a couple of hours and managed to see a few pandas. They are remarkably cute and fascinating to watch. Unfortunately, standing there in the baking sun and pressing crowds it was not a very relaxing experience. The pandas were in large open compounds. Some singly and others in small groups. The compounds looked to be seriously escape proof and even featured electric fences. The bears had trees and smaller plants to make the place seem a bit more natural but not really a lot of space. The viewing walkways overlooked the compounds and just the noise from all those people must have been a big disturbance to the animals.

Along with the giant pandas there were also some red pandas. These don’t look anything like the big pandas but they are still extremely cute. In the wild, there are an estimate 10,000 animals and they are spread over a much larger. Unlike the giant pandas they are still being hunted and driven from their habitat so their numbers are reducing. In Nepal, 121 red panda skins were confiscated between 2008 and 2018. There was also a cage with a golden snub-nosed monkey. He was behind particularly strong wire netting. Shortly before we left, I spotted a small bird in a tree. Not part of the zoo but one of the very few wild animals that I have seen in China. Turned out to be a Yellow-vented bulbul.

Diane bought herself a green giant panda ice cream as we headed back to the meeting place. Then we were done. Another cart ride. A bus ride and we back in Chengdu heading for the park. I was feeling quite sorry for the animals in the panda zoo and quite exhausted from the crowds and the heat.

People’s Park is described in our itinerary as a pleasant respite from urban Chengdu. It is not. It is just as hot and crowded as anywhere else. There are some nice flower beds, bonsai and fishponds. However, you will need to push and shove through the crowds to see them. We were here to drink camomile tea and get our ears cleaned. First, we needed to visit the matchmaker’s corner. Here lonely people hang sheets of paper with their romantic details for others to peruse. You might think that one of the many lonely-hearts sites on the internet would serve better – but that would only be because you do not know the Chinese internet. Next stop was the tables where tea is served. Apparently, this is the local tradition and popular pastime. Meet up with your friends for a cup of tea, a cosy chat and to get the wax extracted from your ear canal. We sat at some tables and ordered tea. Then the ear cleaning men arrived. Each armed with a set of tools and a headtorch. I declined the offer but others were up for it. In fact, if you looked hard in any direction, you could see someone bent over a tea drinker sticking various brushes and other tools into their ear.

The day began with a lesson in calligraphy – the ancient, revered art of stylised writing using brush and ink. Considered a supreme visual art form in traditional China. The significance runs far deeper than just making some nice-looking characters. Calligraphy is viewed as a discipline for cultivating moral character, inner peace, and self-expression. Great works reflect the artist’s personal integrity and vitality through the speed, pressure, and rhythm of each brushstroke. It was inscribed on everything from imperial scrolls and fans to massive cliff walls, and mastery was required for civil service exams. I was quite pleased with my attempt to write the Chinese character for “man” 男 and our teacher, a university professor of calligraphy, gave me a little red stamp of approval. After that it all went downhill a bit and my paper started to look as if the ink bottle had been knocked over onto it. We ended up watching our tutor draw a picture of some bamboo. Then we were invited into the showroom just in case we wanted to buy any of the many pictures displayed there. This was a well disguised carpet shop but still ended up being essentially a sales pitch.

Next, we were taken to a market area in the Muslim Quarter. Described as the hub of Xian’s Islamic community this is a small but busy area packed with food shops. On our way there, we were given a talk about how well China treats it minority communities and how everybody gets on with each other. There are about 25 million Muslims in China. This sounds a lot but is still less than 2% of the population. Many of the traders who used the Silk Road were Muslim. Apart from goods, they carried with them their culture and beliefs. Islam was one of the religions that spread this way in the 7th to the 10th centuries through war, trade and diplomatic exchanges. The Muslim quarter that we saw seemed to be mostly about food. All types of food in hot, busy, colourful stalls. The scene did not strike me as very Islamic. Dress mostly looked Chinese. There were no burkas. Very few women even wore head scarfs. We did not spot any mosques or hear a call to prayer. There was no obvious Islamic art. If the area was Islamic then it was in a lightweight, easy sort of Chinese way.

Although Muslims have been in China for a long time it has not always been an easy relationship. There are around 12 million Uyghur Muslims. They live mostly in the far-west Xinjiang region, are ethnically Turkic and speak their own language. According to Amnesty International the Chinese government has placed over one million Uyghurs into detention camps and prisons. Human rights groups claim that these people face severe surveillance, forced labour and limits on religious practices like fasting or praying. The Chinese government states that these camps are vocational “re-education” centres and counter-terrorism measures designed to stop separatism and religious extremism. Hui Muslims make up around 11 million people living across the central and eastern regions. The authorities have also placed pressures on these communities. Overall, the state policies appear to be aimed at creating a sanitised Chinese version of Islam. I think this is what we were shown.

Lunch was, yet again, a bit of a disappointment but then we got taken to a pub. A real ale pub at that. Part of the premises were given over to a micro-brewery where several types of beers were being made. Many people like the mildly flavoured wheat beer. Personally, I struggle with a beer that is cloudy and preferred the strongly flavoured IPA. There was also a pilsner type lager and fairly conventional bitter. We each got a free beer. This surprised me because generally on this trip they do not miss a chance to charge us for an optional extra. We also got a couple of hours lounging around in the pub buying our own beer and chatting. This was very pleasant and also made a nice break from all the rushing around.

Back in the days of the Tang Dynasty, Xian was known as Chang’an and was an important cultural and historical centre. In the evening we went off to see an optional show that was billed as an exciting exponent of this prosperous society that keeps alive the splendour of this period. Optional meant we had to pay for it. The other option was to sit in your hotel room.

The show however was excellent. We had good seats and we had beer from the pub. The Sheffield City Hall will throw you straight out if you walk in carrying a couple of beers. Here, however, it is fine. I have no idea what the show was about. There was a lot of solid drumming. Even a couple of drum solos. Some dramatic music, colourful lighting and pretty girls dancing. What was not to like?

Xian is not only famous for the Terracotta Army but also for its walls and numerous temples and towers. We started our day with a visit to the walls. This was quite fun. Early in the morning before too many people were around. A steep ramp of steps took us to the top of the walls. From here we could peer down on the city waking up underneath us. Some keen early morning joggers were running around the top of the walls. Down below a group of less energetic locals were doing their tai chi and a young girl was posing for photographs. We saw an awful lot of this in China. One or more pretty girls dressed to the nines looking their best for the camera. If you want to get the best effect, you can hire a frock and a photographer.

The day was already starting to get hot as we came down off the walls and clambered into the coach. 40 km east from the city is where the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang and his Terracotta Army are located. From the car park we had to walk. Then we had to queue and get through security. Then we had to walk quite a long way before queuing again to go through a passport check. In the normal run of things, a passport is not needed to gain entry to a museum. This is China. You need your passport to catch a train, visit a museum, go on a river cruise, enter a theatre or even visit a garden. I am not just talking about a simple glance at passport type check either. This is a full-on electronic scan. Insert your passport and wait for the light to turn green. Identity, location and time verified with the central database. Somebody is keeping very close tabs on exactly where you are. This is not just for tourists. Everyone needs to carry an electronically scannable identity card.

We still could not get to see the Terracotta Army. First, we needed to run the gauntlet of the Terracotta Army carpet shop. This began with a little workshop where they were making a little Terracotta Army. Souvenir army figurines made with the local clay so they looked a lot like the real thing. After the talk about artisan craftsmen, authenticity and the other usual stuff, we got shown into the Terracotta Army showroom. This contained hundreds, possibly thousands, of Terracotta Army themed souvenirs plus a lot of other stuff that was just touristy and Chinese. Took a while just to find the way out of here and then we were taken off for lunch.

Lunch turned out to be terrible and the day was turning out to be horribly hot and sweaty. So, I was feeling quite grumpy when we finally got to stand in a queue that would get us, at last, to see the Terracotta Army. The sculptures depict the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. They were buried with him to in his mausoleum with the purpose of protecting him in his afterlife. The figures vary in height according to their rank. Obviously the tallest are the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Estimates are of more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. Other, non-military terracotta figures have since been found in other pits, including those of officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. The figures were discovered in 1974 by seven farmers digging a well. Shortly after the significance of the find was recognised the site became an archaeological dig, a UNESCO heritage site and a massively lucrative tourist attraction described as the eight wonder of the world.

Our wonderfully politically correct guide, Johnson, explained that the farmers were compensated and re-housed. However, the truth is that their farmland was seized and their houses demolished. The discoverers received almost no financial compensation—initially just one yuan—and many slipped into extreme destitution while the tourism generated immense wealth for officials and businessmen. One of the farmers, Wang Puzhi, committed suicide in 1997 after suffering from extreme poverty and untreated heart disease. Yang Wenhai and Yang Yanxin both died penniless in their 50s from severe illnesses. A few surviving members, such as Yang Zhifa, were later employed at the Emperor Qin’s Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum gift shop to sit and sign books for tourists for a tiny daily wage.

The army is in three pits. Pit 1 is the largest and holds the greater part of the army. We had to fight to get in. Chinese, we have learned, spend a lot of times in crowds and queuing. They are not only exceptionally good at it but also completely ruthless. We joked that if you stood with your feet apart then someone would slip through between your legs. Sneaking under your arms is commonplace. Pit 1 is a massive, covered area with a walkway down the sides. You enter at one end and exit at the other. Inside, you need to fight to see over the railings as you get carried along towards the exit. It was all very hot, smelly and uncomfortable. Guards are posted everywhere and I was rather startled by the tools on display for managing unruly tourists. A sign proclaimed “No crossing. Violators must be punished”. You have been warned. Punishment is not optional.

Despite all this, the army is quite interesting. Several thousand life-sized figures all facing the same direction. Apparently, when they were first buried, they would have been dressed in standard armour and carrying real weapons. The sheer amount of work needed to create the army gives you an idea of the power that the emperor must have wielded. Right up there on the list of most powerful along with the Pharos of ancient Egypt. In a similar fashion to my first encounter with the pyramids, I was left with a wondering question about who came up with the idea of doing this and why they thought it was the way to go in the afterlife.

After Pit 1 comes Pit 3. A lesser pit with fewer figures in it. Then comes Pit 2 which appears mostly empty but does have some horses.  Dotted around all three pits were some indicators that this is still an active archaeological site. However, I did strongly suspect this was more for display than anything else.

Back out in the late afternoon sun we had to find our way back to the coach. This is no easy feat. The route back is long, a kilometre or more, and takes you through an entire village of souvenir shops, food shops and a myriad of other ways of trying to separate money from the tourists.

In the evening, we got the dressing up box out. After dinner everyone was handed robes and we all got dressed up before heading out onto the streets of Xian. This is really not my thing. I tried to go along with it and took a few photographs. Others were much more enthusiastic and set about engaging with some of the locals. At one point we came across a few people dancing on the pavement and everyone joined in. Nearly everyone. I felt my talents were better employed behind the camera.

The streets were crowded with people and well lit. It all made for quite a nice scene although I am not sure what the public thought about our pseudo-Chinese robes. I would like to imagine that they enjoyed us adding some colour and vibrancy to the evening. However, I suspect that some of them just sighed and muttered something about the nature of tourists. It all made for a long day. I was very happy to crawl into my bed.

Our first morning stop was to visit some old hutongs. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Once upon a time there were many of these. Now they are mostly demolished in the cause of progress. A few remain and are designated as protected.

We arrived in a large, open square where the locals were playing with shuttlecocks and banners. The shuttlecock game involves kicking a large shuttlecock between people. The banners were whirled around to make bright and colourful patterns. I am not really sure why the people were doing this. It seemed to make them very happy.

We were marched to a particular siheyuan where a friendly woman welcomed us and served tea. All 25 of us were packed into the tiny courtyard. Squished up on little stools while our guide explained to us about life in the hutongs. One of the things that got mentioned several times was how expensive a siheyuan was. Apparently, they are mostly privately owned and passed down the generations. I was puzzled at why a small accommodation in a rather scruffy area could be worth so much. Communist economics – what has happened to collective ownership? Much later, I got to thinking that the answer is that this is one of the very few opportunities to actually own a piece of land.

The woman played a tune on guzheng, a traditional Chinese plucked zither musical instrument. We all got the chance to look at an old door and some ornaments in a small side room. Then we were off and walking down the hutongs again. I imagine the woman was paid well for showing us the siheyuan. She had a bit smile as she waved us goodbye. The hutongs are incredibly narrow in places. I read the smallest is a mere 40cm. Unfortunately, we were not introduced to this one but even so, we discovered that trying to fit our group and car down the little streets was a bit tricky. Eventually we emerged by a Macdonalds burger place. I am reluctant to echo their claim to be a restaurant so I will just call it a place. This was slightly interesting however in the way that it had absorbed the local culture so as to fit in with the look and feel of the street.

That was it for Beijing culture. The next part of our journey was a bullet train to Xian. The Chinese bullet train network is remarkable. In the space of about 15 years, China has constructed the largest high speed train network in the world. 50,000 km of track with trains running at up to 300 km/h. For several reasons, this could probably only happen in China.

The technology has its origins in Japan and some other countries. In classic China fashion, this was initially bought in and then copied. An approach known as technology transfer whereby China uses its raw buying power to adopt foreign engineering, copy it and then bring it in house. The Japanese company, Kawasaki experience with CSR (China’s national rail company) is a typical example. Initially there was a contract to provide 60 complete locomotive and coach sets. Three were delivered from Japan. Six more were delivered as kits to be built in China with help from Kawasaki. The contract was then cancelled and China went on to fulfil its requirement for hundreds of trains without any external help. Kawasaki sued for breach of patent but failed because in China copyright is not really understood or recognised in law.

The second big advantage is that the state owns most of the land. The route of a high-speed rail track becomes essentially an engineering problem. Social, political or environmental issues can be virtually ignored. People may need to be moved and the government claim that they are fairly compensated for this. However, the investigations, planning and permissions needed in many other countries are superfluous. This is a powerful reduction is cost and time.

Finally, in such a large country, the manpower and funding are readily available. This is how, in the time that the UK has mostly talked about a single, short, high-speed trainline, China has built an entire network. The Chinese approach has not been without its problems though. The system currently has an accumulated debt of around $800 billion. It struggles to reduce this because tickets, although cheap by world standards, are prohibitively expensive compared to what locals can afford. The rapid expansion means that some areas are over-served and uneconomic. Widespread corruption during the construction phase has caused delays and safety concerns. Several senior officials have been dismissed over charges of bribery amounting to millions of dollars. In July 2011 two trains collided with serious loss of life. The collision exposed poor management by the railway company. This fatal accident, which happened in the midst of corruption investigations into railway officials, led to greater scrutiny in the Chinese press and the populace.

We arrived at Beijing train station with over an hour to spare. The station is immense and packed with people. We needed to queue to get in through the security scanners. They confiscated Diane’s hair cutting scissors which were 4 mm over the regulation 60 mm. After a long time waiting, we got into the queue to get to the platform. We needed our passports for this. Then we had to queue to get on the train and finally we had to find somewhere for our luggage on the packed train. Although Diane and I had reserved seats, we did not get to sit next to each other. The trains are fast and smooth but people are squashed in there like sardines. My seat was defiantly designed for someone much smaller than me. After six hours it was getting extremely uncomfortable.

But we made it and next day we were going to see the Terracotta Warriors.

Back in the day, if you were an Emperor in the Ming or Qing dynasty and you wanted to ask for prosperity, longevity and good harvest for the people, then you would go to the Temple of Heaven. The temple is set in a 267 ha park, surrounded by a long wall which has gates at its cardinal points. Listed as a World Heritage site in 1998 it has been described as “a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations.  The symbolic layout and design of the Temple of Heaven had a profound influence on architecture and planning in the Far East over many centuries.” This all sounds wonderful and lovely for our first stop of the day. The reality is a hot, sweaty day and more crowds than you can shake a stick at. Thousands of them. We needed to queue for ages to get in and then we could barely move for people. The central temple is spectacular and quite interesting. However, before long, the hot sun and the pressing mass of humanity started to overwhelm the grandeur of the location.

Around the area are several buildings being used as museums. These are so full of people that you can barely see the display boards. When you do get a glimpse of them, everything is written in Chinese so we do not have a clue what it is about. There are four of these large museum rooms. We managed a couple of minutes in the first one before deciding to abandon the project. At this stage a cool, quiet corner for a cup of tea would have been ideal. The shade from a wall and an ice cream was the best we could do while fending off people trying to cuddle up to us in the shade.

Next stop was the Tiananmen Square. In the West, this square is often associated with the massacre of 1989. In a response to student protests, the government declared martial law. Soldiers entered Beijing with tanks and troops carrying live ammunition and firing on unarmed demonstrators and civilians. The Chinese government claimed about 241 people died (including soldiers), while independent estimates from the Red Cross, student groups, and foreign journalists range from several hundred to thousands. An unidentified civilian carrying shopping bags was filmed standing directly in front of a column of tanks leaving the square. This image became a global symbol of peaceful resistance. The Chinese government labels the event the “June Fourth Incident” and heavily censors all mentions of it online, in textbooks, and in public media. Public remembrance of the victims is strictly outlawed in mainland China. Recent political changes in Hong Kong have effectively ended the large annual vigils that used to take place there. The extensive censorship means that most young people in China are generally unaware of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

We needed to show our passports and have our bags inspected before we could enter the square. There is a permanent and significant permanent police presence. Our guide warned us not to discuss or even mention any of the events. He also pointed out that attempting to make any sort of public political statement, wearing the wrong t-shirt, waving a banner or writing graffiti would lead to our arrest. So, best neutral faces on and with lips firmly zipped shut, we walked out across the square. Of course, it was all a bit of an anti-climax. Nothing happened. There were quite a few military types marching around being very military and trying to look scary. Do not photograph them. Do not laugh or even smile at them.

The square is extremely big. So big that the extent of the crowds was only really apparent when we were queuing to get in a later to get out again. In all, it took the best part of an hour to cross the square. Scorching hot and devoid of shade. There is nowhere to hide. Every single lamppost is dripping with surveillance cameras. My rough estimate was of several thousand in the square. A whole, massive networking and data routing system managing humungous quantities of video information. I could not help but wonder what they did with it all.

At the far side of the square is the entrance to The Forbidden City. This is the imperial palace which has been the residence of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty Emperors. The centre of political power in China for over 500 years from 1420 to 1924. The palace is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the largest preserved royal palace complex still standing in the world. It may also be one of the most crowded palaces in the world. My legs were stiff and sore from our wall climb the day before. It was hot. I was thirsty and was getting worn down by the press of so many people. Is everywhere in China packed solid with crowds of people? I was struggling to engage my enthusiasm. I was even struggling to engage any interest in taking photographs. For me, this was a bad sign.

After a quick group photograph, we got shown around a few buildings. Then we were left to ourselves to wander around some more buildings. The palace is large and grandiose and spectacular. Inevitably, like a clockwork mechanism running down, we ground to a halt. We took a terribly slow walk to the next meeting place and then looked around for shade and ice cream. I should mention that I don’t like ice cream and very rarely eat any. Diane is the ice cream person. I am typically happy with some shade and a bottle of water. We found a stall selling imperial palace themed ice cream and then found a lovely place to sit. A shaded low wall without a crowd of people. Here we sat and waited for the rest of the group. Just as I was starting to regain a tiny modicum of internal balance and cooling down, a guard appeared and shooed me away from the low wall. Either it was of historical significance or I am not imperial enough to sit on it.

The evening ended with Peking Duck. Peking is the old name for Beijing but that is not because the city was renamed. The shift from Peking to Beijing is a change in spelling and transliteration systems. Peking came from older European spellings and the Chinese Postal Map Romanization system used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beijing uses the modern Pinyin romanization system adopted officially by China in 1958 and widely embraced internationally by the late 20th century. Peking Duck then – the Chinese do not appear to be able to get enough of this. Whole, cooked ducks are served and sold everywhere in Beijing. In the train station there are entire shops that just sell cooked, whole ducks in bags. Peking Duck should not be confused with Peeking Duck which is a duck having a surreptitious look around a corner. Obviously, I was not too keen in joining in with the duck mutilation and was even considering going off to see if we could find somewhere more suitable to us for eating. However, we went along with the macabre process. A poor duck was rolled out and a chef demonstrated how to cut it into little pieces. Why anyone would enjoy watching this is a little beyond me. Diane and I ended up with leftovers again. Some rice, some cabbage leaves and not much else. The company had promised they catered for vegetarians but this was not actually happening.

We had arranged a driver to collect us from Beijing airport. This seemed like a good idea at the time but unfortunately, she had a cold. For an hour we were trapped in the car with a sniffing, coughing and snotting driver. It was not pleasant. The noises were stomach churning but worse was the feeling that I was actively contracting a cold, influenza or even covid. None of these things happened. She did not crash the car. We arrived safely at our hotel.

Beijing Holiday Inn. An easy start for new visitors to China. Chinese hotel but with a definite nod to the west. Knifes and forks in the restaurant, coffee in the foyer. We had a couple of days before the group tour took off. This gave us time to catch up on chores, like laundry, phone updates and this blog. Also to explore the local neighbourhood at our own pace, which is terribly slow. We made the mistake of going to the Thai restaurant in the hotel. Every single dish contained meat. Even the deep-fried tofu had crab eggs on it. This high degree of meatification was a bit disappointing. I have been to China before, on business, twenty years ago. Back then I had no trouble with the food at all. Quite the contrary, the food was particularly good, varied and interesting. I discovered many new things. We have also been to Thailand more recently and the food for vegetarians was fine there as well. So why the meat-creep at this restaurant? I think part of it is to do with a kind of showing off to tourists. In many cultures, meat has a background as a luxury item. The addition of meat to every menu item is an attempt to impress visitors and demonstrate opulence. Whatever the reason, it is a complete pain to those of us trying to reduce the amount of violence in our diets.

Next day Bruce and Anita turned up. Our friends from Australia. They had come on a long-haul flight that arrived in the early hours of the morning. We said hello but mostly they just wanted to sleep it off. Diane and I mooched around close to the hotel in a gentle, unhurried way. We surfed a shopping mall, perused some pathways and pottered in a park.

Two days later, all 25 of us were in a coach on our way to the Great Wall. The whole tour group had arrived in dribs and drabs. We had eaten an evening meal together and completely forgotten each other’s names by breakfast. There is a rumour that the Great Wall of China is visible from outer space. This is a nonsense. For a start, where does outer space begin? Back in Victorian times it was posited that the wall could be seen from the moon. Why was this opinion asserted when nobody had genuinely traversed the 400,000 km to the lunar surface? I have no idea but I have noticed that factual evidence does not always need to be present in support of a good story. In fact, even from low earth orbit, the closest distance to earth that satellites fly, the wall cannot be reliably discriminated by the human eye. Various astronauts have claimed to see it although China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, admitted that he could not. The European Space Agency issued a press release stating that the Great Wall could be seen from 160 km altitude. The accompanying photograph turned out to be a river near Beijing. Leroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took a photograph from the International Space Station that shows the wall. It was so indistinct that he was not entirely sure. Based on the photograph, the China Daily later reported that the Great Wall can be seen from ‘space’ with the naked eye, under favourable viewing conditions, if you know exactly where to look.

After an hour in a coach, we were definitely looking right at the wall. Close up it is thoroughly enormous. There was also a humungous car park with many, many coaches. Several sections of the remaining wall can be walked along from here. We were pointed at just one of these and told to be back by midday. The crowds were substantial. We needed to push and shove just to get close to the wall. Then it got steeper and more difficult as the crowds got worse.

The wall was never built as a single entity. Construction of some sections began as early as the 7^th century BC. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. Substantial parts were constructed during the Qin Dynasty and the best known sections were built during the Ming Dynasty. Despite its lack of visibility to aliens, it was voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007. It has been made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition that the defensive system of the Great Wall is one of the most impressive architectural feats in history.

We worked our way up the steep steps. Steps that were just a little too high for comfort and packed with people. It was hot and steep and arduous work. One section was particularly packed with slow-moving tourists. It reminded me of pictures I have seen of the Hillary Step on Everest when hundreds of climbers are trying to summit at the same time. Progress was desperately slow but we prevailed and eventually the crowds began to thin. More and more people dropped out as we got higher. We plodded on. Diane had gone beyond complaining and had become quiet. An extremely worrying sign. Also, we were running out of time. The final push to the summit fortress turned into a battle against ourselves and the clock. We prevailed. There was nothing much to do at the top other than take a couple of pictures and come down. The views were great. In the far distance we could see the wall zigzagging its way across distant hills. We made it back down in time but only just. Our only pause on the descent was to look at a Chinese mantis that someone was proudly showing off.

Straight after the exhausting epic of the Great Wall, we were led into the first “carpet shop” of the trip. The standard formula was there. A brief explanation, an assertion about genuine workmanship, some small demonstrations and an enormous showroom. This time it was jade but the real difference was that this time it was state sponsored. The Chinese tourist industry is remarkably good at taking tourists for all they are worth. The jade tourist shop was a fine example. It was absolutely enormous. A constant stream of coaches arriving and departing. Upstairs were numerous restaurants serving lunches to many groups. Downstairs was the biggest jewellery store I have ever seen and all dedicated to jade.

We did not want any jade so we twiddled our thumbs for a while and were happy to eventually be loaded back into the coach. The afternoon was spent at the Summer Palace. Billed as the former holiday retreat of the Qing emperors and a stunning example of Chinese garden style. Mostly what we saw there was people. Thousands of people. With the crush on the wall in the morning, we had our fill of people. Also, our legs were tired and it was too hot. We wandered round for a while to try and take some of it in and then searched for a quiet corner to sit and eat ice cream. The ice cream happened but the quiet corner was utterly impossible. There are so many people trying to be in the same place at the same time that I found it a little overwhelming.

Final part of the day was a show. It was interesting. The costumes were amazing. We were presented with half a dozen short story pieces. Some of these were classics of Chinese theatre and involved gymnastics and singing along with elaborate costumes and makeup. Fortunately, the show did not run on too late. Diane got a quick photo opportunity with one of the actors and then, back at the hotel, we were both very happy to take our tired legs to bed. I think only one other couple made it to the top of the wall so the pain was worth it.