I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but there are a lot of people in China. Whether they be farming tea for the world or farming gold for the world of Warcraft they will sooner or later need to travel from A to B. When they do they will form your competition for any mode of cheap transport, this makes getting tickets for anywhere a real challenge all the time. Buses are generally the easiest tickets to get hold of, and for good reason; they have a certifiably horrendous safety record. It’s not difficult to imagine why either having now travelled on them several times; the drivers weave roads the size of runways like they are driving a rally car, not a 20 tonne bus. The sheer amount of good luck charms hanging off the mirror also don’t do much for your confidence and in reality simply end up interfering with the driver’s vision and hitting him in the head. On top of all of this, you’ll have to mentally deal with the fact that there is a “spit bucket” on the bus sitting beside you so that folk can carry on coughin' up phlegm during the trip.
If you don’t like the bus idea, you can try the train however these are typically impossible to get tickets for unless you book days or sometimes weeks in advance. When you book you can choose from several types of tickets: there is the legendary “Soft Sleeper” which is akin to a golden Wonka bar. I have never seen anyone acquire this ticket; it represents a level of comfort most westerners might recognise, but ticket scalpers clean those out the moment the train tickets become available and then charge like a wounded bull for them. Next up is the “Hard Sleeper” ticket, which is a bed that is in an open hallway, this is probably the best way to travel you can get though you will have to deal with a complete lack of storage for luggage and strangers deciding they will sit on the end of you bed “for just a little while”. Next you have “Hard Seat” which means you have a seat to sit in. This sounds OK but again you’ll be crammed into a tiny room with a lot of people and luggage for typically over twelve hours. Lastly you have “Standing” which is exactly as it says on the tin, you are allowed to board the train and then it’s up to you to find a nice place to stand for the entire trip.
Naturally you will want to sit down at some point though, for this you have three options; sit on a little stool that you bring with you, sit on the ground in a sea of used hot pot noodle packets and other garbage, or weasel your way onto the end of a bed and pretend to be deaf. In any case you’ll be guaranteed to block a through-way and have to shuffle yourself around constantly to let people through for twelve hours.
If you are extremely lucky (and in a big city), you can catch one of China’s sleek, high speed trains which are springing up throughout the country everywhere. These are amazing though don’t get too comfortable; you see they seem to like everyone to face forwards on the train and that means when the train pulls into a station and then heads back out in reverse you will need to spin your entire seat row around on it’s base to face forwards again. There is no warning for this in English either, so that means all of your food, books and other stuff you have connected to the seat in front of you is about to go bye-bye unless you can pile it all into your lap fast.
There is also the fancy-schmancy maglev train that hits 450+kph. In what is probably the greatest example of ironic, economic contrast, these things glide effortlessly over impoverished rural countryside via monstrous rail viaducts with velodrome-like corners. The experience is definitely one of a kind, seriously scary when you pass another train and probably the nearest I will get to driving a Bugatti Veyron at top speed. Oh and if you ever ride one and want to take a photo of it, take a photo BEFORE the train leaves the station fresh, not AFTER it has arrived and is now covered in bird blood.
At the complete other end of the speed spectrum, if you are in the city and have a carefree view on your personal safety, you can opt to hire a rickshaw transport. This is typically a ramshackle bike come wheelbarrow driven by a man or woman with disproportionately thick legs and an arse of steel. The rickshaw adventure is always guaranteed to excite as you ply traffic resembling more of an asteroid field then a flowing river. Don’t forget your ear plugs too, truck and bus horns are at your ear level and it’s pretty much guaranteed you will be in their way all the time.
The other thing you will notice at ground level in the rickshaw is just how many bikes there are on the roads in China, it even puts Amsterdam to shame. It’s absolutely nuts to see what people carry on their bikes with them too, everything from a one year old baby on their lap to a box or bag that is three times wider than the bike. Personal protection is pretty much optional and, even if present, usually a whimsical façade. I saw one guy on a motorbike wearing a toy plastic “Bob the Builder” helmet for protection as a great example.
Now, imagine all this transport (bikes, cars, trucks, whatever) kicking it across China every day. Add to this the fact that China, by being the ‘workshop of the world’ has massive amounts of industrial by products being pumped into the air. Add more smoke for crop and garbage burning. Chuck in seemingly endless burning of incense and napkins in temples, firecrackers for any event and cigarette smoking as a national sport for good measure and you have a level of air pollution that figuratively and literally takes your breath away.
The smog here is so serious it actually makes it difficult to breathe on hot days, acid rain is a legitimate fear and it’s normally impossible to see the horizon. In the north it gets even worse as there are massive coal mines and refineries everywhere. In fact when we caught a bus from Beijing to Datong, we descended from the mountains into a yellow haze, into which the silhouettes of metal factories and steam stacks rose amid flames and columns of smoke. I thought for a moment this certainly had to be the exact same industrial inspiration Tolkien had found for Mordor.
At some point you just begin to accept that this pollution is everywhere and it’s not going away. It’s a sad moment when you make peace with the smog; when you realise that seeing more than a few hundred metres is a fantasy, when you realise that visions of splendid sunsets are folly and that you can look directly into the pinkish sun without fear for retina damage. On top of this, at some point you also make peace with the endless hordes of Asian tour groups at every possible interesting thing to see. Only once you have shed the shackles of unrealistic expectations of peace and tranquillity, are you free to appreciate what China has to offer in the sightseeing department. And trust me, that offering is plenty, China is so jam-packed full of absolutely stunning things to see that I could easily induce suicide in you if I described it all in detail, so I’ll just describe a little about the top highlights.
First up is China’s Mongolian Maginot; the Great Wall. It’s a must see when you come to China and deservedly so. Originally the goal was to venture to a remote and original section of the wall at Simitai, however it was closed so instead a more restored section at Mutianyu was the fallback. It was never-the-less exceptionally impressive, the way the wall hugs the contours of the mountain escarpment is beyond words and walking along it gives you the feeling you are in some sort of MC Escher painting with a weaving path and stairs at all sorts of weird angles. The “viewable from space” thing may have been revealed to be BS but the scale of this structure can only be seen to be believed. As icing on the cake, you can ride a slalom kart from the top of the wall to the bottom too: bizarre.
Second on the kick-ass list is Pingyao, a perfectly intact/restored ancient Chinese walled town. The cobbled streets are lined with intricately carved wooden houses, roofed with black tiles and lit by red lanterns. You can enter many of the houses too to see wonderful interiors sometimes three or four courtyards deep. Here is also China’s first bank and a superlative example of a traditional government house complete with an old style prison. Used in countless movies, I guarantee you that Pingyao is exactly the vision of a medieval Chinese town you probably have in your head and so much more.
Third is Huangshan. I can’t convey how spectacular this mountain is. It is comprised of an unfathomable complex of jagged granite massifs each covered in oriental pine trees and vines. Up in the mountain, otherworldly mist swirls in and around you from every direction, constantly revealing new summits and masking the ground far below in a rolling sea of cloud. From cable cars that span jaw-dropping chasms to paths that are little more than slabs of stone sticking out of a cliff, you’ll be clenching your rectum continuously in fear and astonishment. It’s absolutely ethereal, feels about as close to heaven on Earth as you can get and therefore no wonder that so much Chinese nature art is based on this mountain. It’s the most beautiful mountain I certainly have ever ascended and one thing you could never see enough times.
Fourth are the old traditional Huishui villages such as Hongcun, Xidi and Mukheng. The first is a stunning collection of stone homes laid out around a river in a quite odd way, the second is a maze of ancient homes and temples, the latter a farm village in the middle of a gently swaying bamboo forest. Actually the bamboo forest fighting scenes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed here though the closest you can come to jumping from treetop to treetop (as in the movie) is a super cool flying fox ride over the forest canopy.
Lastly is Shanghai. OK, It may be rammed with foreigners, the street food average, the traditional food sickly sweet, the prices the highest in China and it may not feel anything like the rest of China, but it is certainly an amazing city. Millions of people squeeze around a beautiful mix of architectural heritage from former colonial times to mind-blowing, state of the art skyscrapers built on a solid foundation of Starbucks cafes. You can go to the top of the highest building, the financial centre, via a super rapid 400 metre elevator ascent where due to a lack of loud music you’ll hear a symphony of twenty people swallowing constantly to pop their ears. From the top, perched upon the world’s highest viewing platform, one can see an overwhelming view of this bewildering, vertical city and, after sunset, watch the city come to life in a nebula of Bladerunner-esque neon screens and see the endless traffic on the roads transform into rivers of fire.
China is a noodle bowl full of culture shock, but it’s seriously extraordinary to be part of. It’s easy to see why the Mandarin name for China quite literally means ‘the centre of the world’, there really is so much history, so much to see, learn, eat and do. It’s eye-opening and unforgettable. It’s most certainly not easy travel; there is much population, gastronomic discomfort and pollution to overcome … but exploration and willingness to throw oneself in head first will be rewarded handsomely.
Ultimately though remember this, if everyone in China jumps at the same time they can knock the planet out of orbit. So show a bit of respect to the Chinese folk next time you visit your local China town. Once you get to know them, they’re cute, cuddly and eager to please.
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