I still have to blog about my last two weeks in China. :)

The train to Xi'an

The city of Xi'an is about 2000km away from Hangzhou. We went there by train and it took 25 hours. We were lucky to get a sleep wagon, because those who buy their tickets too late have to sit on a very dirty floor full of spit and waste.

The beds in the wagon were not really comfortable. Basically it was a hard plank bed covered by a blanket. In every position I tried, some part of my body began to hurt after a few minutes. Additionally to that, it was loud in the wagon and we had 30 degrees centigrade in it. However, the service on train was good: they sold food, beverages, toys, they even had a VCD player for rent.

Xi'an

Xi'an was the first capital of China in the Qin-Dynasty and is a historic city with a still complete city wall. The city itself, however, was boring and ugly.

The site of the Terracotta-Army is located near the city and was flooded with many many tourists, of course. The salesmen of tourist crap (fake Rolex, Mao watches, mini terracottas, ...) were very aggressive here and even pulled people's arms to get their attention.

In the centre of Xi'an, there is a big bazaar of muslim people at the Great Mosque of Xi'an. You can buy almost everything there from Chinese paintings, fake brand clothes or back packs to red Mao Zedong alarm clocks where instead of the seconds hand, Mao is waiving his hand at you.

We could not really enjoy Xi'an, since rain was pouring every day (except for the day of our departure, of course).

You are tourists! Receive our special treatment.

Travel agencies have contracts with certain so-called "factories". The tourist guide has to drag the tourists in there in order to receive a required token. Such a "factory" is nothing more than a place made for tourists where they demonstrate how certain wares, e.g. jade items, are produced. After a few minutes of demonstration, they lead you into their sales rooms where they want to you to buy their stuff (credit cards accepted, shipping of large items to your house by airmail). They sometimes have a restaurant room with tourist food, too.

The historic museum of Xi'an (what a boring place!) has two entries: a normal one for visitors, and a special one for tourist groups. The one for tourist groups first leads you through a sales room filled with tourist crap, of coure.

Off to the capital

The last location of our journey through China was Beijing, the capital. It took 12 hours on the overnight train to get there from Xi'an. This time, the wagon was a bit more modern with softer plank beds. I could even sleep in there. We arrived in Beijing at 6.30 in the morning.

Our hotel is Beijing was OK, but not as great as the one which we had in Xi'an. This time the hotel personell was a bit unfriendly and even the breakfast tasted as if it was prepared by unfriendly people. The bathtub in the room of two girls looked like somebody was slaughtered in there. Luckily just across the road in front of our hotel, there were a big shopping mall, McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks Coffee.

We had fine weather in Beijing and Beijing is a really beautiful city, unlike ugly Xi'an. :)

The Great Wall

The Simatai section of the Great Wall is about 3 hours away from Beijing. The wall there is steep and has not been reconstructed. Because it's so steep, tourist groups (which often consist of elderly people) don't go there. We were almost alone on the wall. Wonderful!

The Simatai Wall lies beautifully in the mountains and you can watch the wall reaching to the horizon across the mountains. Every three or four people got a local guide with them because of safety reasons (the real reason was that they wanted to sell you books and T-shirts, of course). But those poor women didn't know that we have climbed the Yellow Mountain earlier. A steep Chinese Wall could not shock us anymore, so we were too fast for our guides, wo had problems following us. :D

Food Time

There was a street in Beijing with lots of food booths all selling different types of "Shashlik". For instance, you could eat chicken on a pole, beef on a pole, pork on a pole, chicks on a pole, fried rats on a pole, tentacles, silk worms, dog meat, grass hoppers, sea stars, sea horses, snake, snake skin, frogs, fruits, or the "goat soup of whole internal organs". Yummy! Too bad I already had dinner at Pizza Hut before, so I couldn't taste any "specialties". *g*

After having visited and photographed those boothes, I went went to Karaoke with three others. It was fun for 14 Yuan (1.40 EUR) per person per hour.

Back Home

I'm back in Germany now for already more than two weeks. It was damn cold when I came home, so I immediately caught a cold here. China was so comfortably warm.

Next time, I'll try to blog some photos.