Spring Festival Break: Pt 14. Heading Home Again

Finally drawing to the end of my travels I found myself with a little time spare in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province. I took a real liking to this place, despite only getting one day to look around. I didn't visit anywhere major, or see anything flash, but once I'd sorted out tickets for the next leg of my journey, James and I just explored and chilled in this cool city. We caught one of the ferry-boats which cross the wide Yangtze here to get over to the city centre and spent some time walking around. The architecture was really familiar to me and the whole place reminded me of home, the UK, which I guess is why I found it so appealing. It was a cool place to end my travels - or so I thought. I must say that I'd had a great time travelling over the past three weeks and really could have gone on quite happily. At the same time though, I was pretty keen to get back to my apartment and get settled again.

The next day I bid farewell to James, my travelling buddy of over two weeks, and got on a bus for Changsha and home. Like all these things, it wasn't going to be quite that simple. Some problems on the expressways meant we took small roads all the way and ended up arriving 2 hours later than I had expected. I then had to transfer from that bus station to the south bus station to catch my bus back home to Lanshan. This was an hour in itself.

Once I finally arrived I then queued for my ticket, only to be told the bus today was sold out. Looked like my holiday would be prolonged a little after all.

Fortunately Changsha is a pretty convenient place to get marooned, so I got out my phone and called my friends in a nearby city. They were kind enough to let me come visit and stay with them, so it was back to the city centre and off in another random taxi service to Liuyang.


It was great to see Jess, Sarah and Nick again and of course, any time spent with these guys has to involve some kind of drunken revelry. My girls didn't let me down.

After some quick food and a couple of beers we went to A8, one of their bars that I'm oh so jealous of. We ordered a bottle of red wine mixed up with sprite (really the best way to drink Great Wall), downed it and hit the dancefloor.

The action soon moved onto a podium in the centre of a bar, complete with pole. I am so glad I
took my camera out with me. So many funny shots but the one with the spotlight on the girl watching the dancers may be the best photo I've ever taken.

It was a fun fun evening, and the girls certainly enjoyed themselves. By the end of the night Jess had bagged a man and Sarah had given up walking. She sat down outside the bar and refused to move. We needed to get a taxi though, so I rolled her down to the kerb and left her lying there while we tried to hail one.

We weren't too successful. Don't blame 'em
myself! These girls' reputation precedes them. (PS. my blog is currently blocked in China again so I'm able to post this pic of Sarah cos she'll never find out. Love it.). Luckily Sarah rediscovered her legs after Jess went home with mystery man so we went to celebrate with a fried banana.

Next day was for chilling and eating spaghetti. Then it was home time. I caught a taxi service to the south bus station and was really proud of the fact that we discussed the price together fully in Chinese, but less proud of the fact that I still got charged too much. Obviously a long way to go...
Then I was on my bus home to Lanshan, and somehow it felt like the longest trip of all. The bus was packed to bursting. There were about 20 people sat on small plastic stools in the aisle and at every stop more and more got on. Thank God I'd booked the day before and actually had a seat. At around 11pm we drew into Lanshan and that was it. I was home.

In total I estimate that I'd travelled over 6050km (that's around 3760 miles) - a few hundred more than the distance from London to New York or four times the length of the UK. I'd passed through six Chinese provinces and municipalities (Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei), visiting the capital of each and making use of all modes of transport bar plane and subway. I was on the road for 25 days, and it has taken me as long again just to write it up.

I'd write a list of highlights, save for the fact that there were no real lowlights, but if I had to choose one, it would be Lijiang. Craziest part has to be our epic 2 day taxi ride and the most take-your-breath-away beautiful, the little three gorges. Coolest city would be Wuhan and most 'what the f**k?' has to be the ghost city at Fengdu, or any of those river cruise stops.

Can't wait til the next trip. 8 provinces down, 26 to go...

Spring Festival Break: Pt 13. The Three Gorges Proper

Our second full day on the boat began with a lie-in as another early morning sightseeing trip took away most of the other passengers leaving us with some peace and relative quiet. Then the real good stuff began. Soon after setting off we entered the first of the famous three gorges - Qutang Gorge. The weather had cleared and, as we stood on the back deck overshadowed by the massive cliffs, we had a great view. It was impressive, even now with tens of metres already flooded and the cliff bases completely submerged.

We moored up in the town on Wushan where we
all transferred onto two smaller boats for our third paid up excursion - a tour of the 'little three gorges'.

By now it was a beautiful day and we soon had the scenery to match. Words don't exist in my vocabulary to describe the little three gorges. Just look at the pictures.

In the shot below, you can just see the tops of trees poking out from flooded farmland. There was a little tourist stop here with a small propaganda exhibition accompanying the usual tourist tat showing the 'villagers' being moved out wearing little more than loincloths to find a 'better life' in one of the new towns. Yeah, right.




























Sailing up the little three gorges we came to a small platform dock where we transfered onto yet smaller barges to tour the 'mini three gorges'. Once a small stream, the flooding has created yet another set of gorges to cruise through, and they just kept getting better and better. Even better was the fight which broke out when someone sat in another man's wife's seat...and among 1st class too...disgraceful. A little worse was the singing that accompanied the whole thing. Even worse still was the commentary that some tour guide was giving throughout the entire trip. We're talking about 4 hours here. Non-stop commentary. On the way out we thought it was
bad enough, but when she carried on talking all the way back too it was just too much. What could she possibly have been saying?! What was there left to say?! Of course it was all in Chinese so we hadn't got a clue, but I don't know if that was a good thing or not. Probably. Either way, we escaped outside by climbing through a window. The attendants had all ushered us inside for some reason but had disappeared in the meantime so we made our escape. It was well timed too. Just afterwards someone upstairs took to the mike and starting singing. Cue an exodus of passengers from the cabin, all climbing out the windows and shutting them firmly behind them
to drown out the awful sound. Take a hint!

In the evening the boat stayed in Wushan and we decided to stretch our legs a bit and go into town. I think I've said something about town squares doubling up as dancefloors and open-air karaoke bars, well, anyway, with the music playing and the food still cooking, Ursula and Julia took to the dancefloor for a little boogie. In no time at all they'd both gained partners and a massive crowd of spectators. When they were finished the crowd gathered round us all to...look, I guess, and after a few photos we made our escape to a nearby bar. Just before we went in some kids came running up to me and Julia and presented us each with a small goldfish! Random.

A loud bar is no place for 2 goldfish in plastic water glasses. It was only a matter of time before one of them got drunk so, not being fans of bars either, the girls went home on a mercy mission to free the fish while we ordered a drink. We should have gone home too. Chinese bars can be iffy places, and this one was decidedly iffy. As we looked around it became apparent that there were whole families inside, including kids from about 3 years old. They were mostly sat around crying or asleep but one or two were living it up on the dancefloor. The whole thing left a bad taste in your mouth though. There's something very wrong about a group of middle-aged men in suits dancing around an 8-year old on a podium. We left quickly.

We decided to take motorbike taxis back down to the boat. It was fun. Mine was driven by a young kid and I had to share with Duncan, one of the Irish guys. When we reached the bottom we all leant to one side to get off, but I guess we all leant a bit far and the whole bike fell over. The kid jumped clear, I stepped off and over it, but Duncan rolled over backwards into the mud. We all found it pretty funny, until we noticed Duncan lying on the ground covered in mud. Then it was bloody hilarious. I love the picture above, you can just see the kid going bright red with hysterics in the background. It was a classic moment.

The next day we set off so early that most of my photos of the next gorges didn't really come out so well. We'd seen the best though already, so no matter. We made a quick stop at another temple or something, but we just got off to walk around while all the Chinese tourists went to a song and dance show. You can see our boat in one of the views above moored to a floating platform. You
can also see a roadway leading down into the water and the tops of two gateposts just poking out. I've seen pictures of how the river used to look before flooding and it is dramatically different now - with a further episode of flooding still to come. The water level will be raised 175m in total. Although I couldn't see it in its original state, at least I got to see a lot that won't be there in another 2 years time.

Sailing on we soon came to the end of our journey - the dam itself. It looks a bit smaller than I'd expected, but it is wide, and the scale of the construction work that has gone on was overwhelming in itself.

This was where my surrogate family split up. The girls had to press on to Wuhan to get a flight early the next morning, while James and I had decided to take a closer look at the dam and then see about accommodation in nearby Yichang. We paid through the nose for the dam tour, and never really got up close to it at all, but it saved the time and effort of trying to return at some other point, so was just about worth it. You can't come this far and not take a look. Unfortunately the tour operators understand this very well...

After all that we were taken on to Yichang, where we had a last-minute change of heart and got the last two seats on a bus out to Wuhan, arriving very late that same night.

The journey so far...
Days: 22 Distance: 5090km

Spring Festival Break: Pt 12. Chongqing And Our Yangtze Cruise

After three days in Chendgu, it was time to move on. The girls were working to a deadline and had now decided to try and fit both Xi'an and Beijing in before they flew home, so we wanted to press on. But we wanted to press on via a scenic route.

And what could be more scenic than the famous Three Gorges of the Yangtze River.

Firstly we caught a bus from Chengdu to Chongqing. Our days had been beginning earlier and earlier throughout our stay in Chengdu and at a 5.30am start, this topped it. I thought we were supposed to be on holiday! The journey was
uneventful and a few hours later we arrived at Chongqing city.

I was really keen to see this city. It is massive, and polluted as all hell (the bushes beside the roads as we drove in were all coated thickly with dust and dirt), but extremely interesting too. We only had half a day to explore though, so it was tough to see anything at all. After an unsuccessful trip to see the ancient (but rammed) village of Ciqikou nearby, we came back and I headed off alone to do some exploring. The city is built on top of a hill and there were alleyways and flights of steps criss-crossing the city as well as cablecars across the docks to the opposite shores of the two rivers that converge here. There was a nice mix of old and new, and I just love that juxtaposition so was in my element as I wandered through old markets and from the remains of the old city wall down towards the docks.




But evening was drawing on and all to soon it was time to board our boat. The first part of our trip was to be overnight, and although we had to be on board by 8pm, we didn't leave til 11pm. So we sat on the deck at the back of the ship, with a beer and our bags of dried fruit and seeds (I've said it again and again - China does 'healthy' far too well) and watched the ships come and go as it became night and the city began to glow. Sat on board I felt really relaxed and at peace, yet at the same time excited and full of anticipation.

Having said all that though, I had anticipated a little more in the way of accommodation. We
had paid about 750 yuan each for three nights in
a 4-bed 2nd class room with meals, entry to three sights and the bus to Chongqing included. We could have paid much more, and that was apparent from the smell, the leaky roof, and the fact that manoeuvring 4 people round in that room when one person wanted to change position was as tricky as trying to solve a rubrix cube.

Still, it was better than 3rd class and for just over 50 quid all told, we couldn't really complain. Some did though, and with good reason. A later boat had been cancelled so some had been accommodated on this sailing, but just shoved in wherever there was space. People with previous bookings for 1st class were now in 3rd, some were sleeping on the floor in two random rooms and there was just an atmosphere of real confusion that thankfully we weren't a part of.

The next day we woke up as the ship was docking. It was 7am as we were pushed off the ship and escorted in the pouring rain to our first 'sight' - the Ghost City of Fengdu. I wish I could say the place lived up to the image that name
conjures up in your mind, but it really was utter bollocks. It was barely light and we found ourselves wandering round a deserted 'souvenir village' up to a modern 'Palace of the Ghost King' which looked partly abandoned from the piles of rubbish lying around and the shut up buildings. The one thing that was open turned out to be some kind of...well, I don't know what it was really, but it was damn funny. Just take a look at the pictures. Something to do with the afterlife, torture, sin and whatever. It would have been morbid, had it not been so hilariously pathetic. Just check
out the layers of dust on these things.


Once we escaped from this wax-dummy nightmare we got lost in an old abandoned part of the complex. It was raining, it smelt of wee, it was just not worth it. I don't know if we were just in the wrong place, but, wow. Mistake.

Back on board we sailed onwards into the mist. We could barely see anything, but that lent a quite cool kinda atmosphere to it all. At least at that point we hadn't reached the really scenic part so could afford a cloud-shrouded view.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We spent most of the time making new friends - with three young British teachers from Nanjing, a few guys from Ireland, a couple from Bolivia and a Chinese guy called Charlie who had studied business in Cardiff. Actually both he and his sister had studied in the UK and their English was amazing. The family invited a group of us for dinner in the evening and we had a really cool time.

That evening we spent the night moored at a
town called Qipan, next to the second of our three 'sights' - Zhangfei Temple. This temple, dedicated to a famous general who was murdered by his soldiers, was moved from further down the valley, where it was below the projected level of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir. I'm not a fan of reconstructions generally. This one seemed ok, with some original materials, but didn't really feel right. It didn't help that the whole place was lit up in red and white neon like some shopping mall. I thought the nearby bridge was much more of a sight, but then, thats me...

I think I just had temple overload at this time.
There's only so many temples you can visit without having a clue as to why they're there before they all become much of a muchness. Anyway, we browsed the antique stalls outside then went back onboard and to bed, ready for the Three Gorges proper the next day.

The journey so far...
Days: 20 Distance: 4400km (but who's counting..)

Spring Festival Break: Pt 11. The Embodiment Of Cute

Need I say anything more.

We went to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base and saw a lot of Pandas. I never got why so many people love them before, but now I do too. In one enclosure there were about 9 baby Pandas running around, climbing trees and play-fighting, while in an adjoining nursery, two more were happily playing together on a see-saw. Cutest thing I have ever seen. I could have stayed all day.

I'll let the pictures say the rest.

Spring Festival Break: Pt 10. BIG Buddha

Chengdu, and Sichuan in general, has some pretty amazing sights. I'm fairly sure I will have to come back at some point to make the most of them, but at least I know I saw the two most famous.

On New Years Day itself, we caught a bus to a small town two hours from Chengdu, called Leshan. This town's main attraction is a 70m high (can you see the people next to his head in the above pic?) seated Buddha carved out of the sandstone cliffs above the river. It is a really magnificent sight. The photos speak for themselves really. We came upon the Buddha

level with his head and, after queuing for about an hour, walked (slowly) down a congested staircase lined with further carved niches to get a fantastic view of this massive creation as we wound our way down to his feet.

It's quite a difficult sight to comprehend really. Bloody huge. And bloody old. Coming up to 1300 years old. Amazing.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We went to an awful restaurant and once back in Chengdu were unfortunate enough to get in a taxi driven by the world's worst taxi driver. We gave the woman the address of our hostel only to end up being dropped off at some random crossroads - not at the hostel as we wanted. We hadn't got a clue where we were but she was adamant we get out, so we stood around for a bit looking lost, and were about to get into another taxi to see if they could take us all the way to our destination when our original driver swung round in her car and pointed us down
the road. Okaaay. So we walked a bit further, tailed the whole time by this woman in her empty taxi, shouting out further directions as we came to each junction. Finally we came to a place we recognised, gave her a thumbs-up and she went off on her way. Ok so we got there, but I mean why?! Would it not have been easier to just take us to exactly where we wanted to go?! Sometimes I just don't get people.











































The journey so far...
Days: 17 Distance: 3860km (give or take the usual crap)

In The Meantime...

Taking a break from holiday stories and pictures, I need to recap what's been going on in the intervening two weeks since I came back to Lanshan. I was back roughly a week before school was due to begin, and seeing as the school canteen was not open, I was invited to eat with our foreign affairs officer, Susan.

Every day.

Twice a day.

For a week.

It was intense. When not eating at her house I was taken along to visit her family and eat with them. I think I must have met a good thirty different family members. One thing the Chinese do well is family. No matter how distant the relationship, they were still family and I met and drank with them all. I have no real idea who most of them were, as the Chinese also use terms like brother and sister pretty loosely and the words for aunts and uncles on the mother's side are different to those on the father's, but one fact I was certain of was that I would always have a good time as long as Susan's niece was invited.

She's the little girl I'm holding in the picture above, with her mother on the right, Susan on the left and random relations inbetween. She is one of the sweetest little girls I've ever met, and we've become firm friends. She always runs out to hug me if I walk by her mother's shop. It's so cool. She doesn't make me drink rice wine, she cracks open seeds for me and I actually understand almost everything she says as she speaks so deliberately and simply.

So, I'm hanging out with a five year old, is that so strange?!?

I did find some friends my own age there though, with some of Susan's cousins, who took me up a nearby hill one day to visit a tiny temple (ie. wooden shack with a couple of incense holders and a picture of Chairman Mao) where we had an amazing view of Lanshan. The three pictures above are taken panning from left to right. It all looks bigger in the picture than it actually is in real life, but most of the peripheral areas are pretty spaced out. I found out that the whole county of Lanshan has just 350 000 inhabitants, so the town's population can't be huge. The tall building under construction is a new hotel and to it's left is the town square. So far there are only
buildings on one side of the square, but the town is expanding rapidly, so will soon catch up I'm sure. You can also see just how easy it is to get out into the surrounding countryside.

There were two shows put on over the past fortnight. One was in celebration of a new supermarket that just opened and featured some of my students dancing, while the other was in honour of Women's Day and featured us! Both were kinda strange. It seemed like everyone in the supermarket show had been made to walk through a glitter shower before coming onstage and had a massive advertising sketch with girls


dancing around carrying baskets and saying 'I bought meat!' while 6 men in make-up and high-waisted trousers marched around them in a circle out of time to the music. Bit odd. It did have some cool kung-fu kids and a dragon though.

For the Women's Day show it was originally planned for Anthony and Seven to read a Chinese love poem together onstage. I had no part to play. When we came back though, we were told that they'd had a better idea. Our roles as propaganda material for the school are starting to become more and more pronounced.

Anthony and I were to write two sentences in Chinese in gold paint on big red boards behind two of my students as they read out a poem. Anthony had to write 'I love great women', while I had to write 'I love Lanshan county No. 1 middle school'. After doing this we were interviewed onstage by two non-English speakers, which was a complete farce,
but everyone laughed so I think it went down well.


The rest of the show was pretty boring and consisted of many women reading poems dressed up either in flouncy dresses like princesses or butch suits like militant feminists. Chinese poems are something else. I don't think the words 'rhyme' or 'rhythm' are in modern poets' vocabularies. I can barely begin to describe how awful some of those poems were. They were just spoken prose, which is ok, except the speakers kept trying to add emotion so artificially that some lines were started with a big sighing 'aaaahhh' and ended with each word getting louder and louder and louder until they literally pierced your ears. You'd have to hear it to understand but I just wouldn't want to have to put anyone through that. By the end of the show the hall was almost empty and this was despite the organisers giving away holidays to people in lucky seats. The final draw had to be made a couple of times over before they picked a seat that was still occupied!



Last weekend our 'group' of teachers got together to go eat and celebrate women's day together at a restaurant nearby. By the time we ate there was only one woman present, but that didn't really seem to matter... We had taken it fairly easy with the rice wine and were quite pleased with ourselves, until Mr Li the principal and Mr Feng the communist party chairman walked in.

Suddenly 3 new kettles of wine appeared on the table. Bit of a worry, but karaoke had been cancelled for the night, so we had reason to celebrate and finished it all fairly easily. Now feeling pretty buzzed, we wanted to go out. So we headed over to Happy Tom for some ice-cream, managing to collect a random crazy girl on the way who now won't stop phoning us. After ice-cream we went to the bar. It was fairly dead. We ordered a beer, and then a bottle of red wine. I don't know why exactly, because it's bad stuff, but Anthony had just learnt the word for it and had it written on his hand so I guess it made sense at the time. We finished it off with a couple of young Chinese people stood by the bar. The girl had the wierdest hair. Perms are big here, and so was hers. All except the fringe that is, or most of it anyway. The edges of her fringe were permed but the middle section wasn't. This way it looked like she had two big tassels hanging either side of her forehead, which shook around every time she moved her head. We were chatting away and mentioned how Lanshan has no clubs or late-night places to go to, or so we believed, but our new friends told us they knew differently. Being pretty drunk now we demanded to be taken. The first place looked the part, but was completely empty, so we left to find somewhere else. We ended up in a karaoke bar. Typical.

We totally gatecrashed a private room but no-one bat an eyelid as we walked in. Wierd-hair-girl went straight away to go dance with the air conditioning unit and Anthony was sick on the floor. I don't think anyone noticed though so it was ok. Not long afterwards the guy took me outside and tried to explain that these people were not just drunk. He did a sniffing motion with his fingers over his nostrils and I knew he didn't mean poppers. We'd just crashed a coke party! Not the first and certainly not the last, but at that point it didn't matter whether these guys were shooting heroin or drinking herbal tea - we were in a ktv room dancing to bad bad music and I had to get out. As the four of us stood outside it became apparent that Anthony and wierd-hair-girl were getting a little close. Not wishing to be a third wheel I left them and went home. Besides, it was getting late. The time as I walked through the school gate? 11.30pm.

Next morning I was woken up at 7.30am by a knocking on my door. 'David...David...'. It was old Mr Li, the driver's father and ex-vice-principal. I turned over and pretended not to hear. Anthony had mentioned he wanted to take us for breakfast, but I was not in the mood for being sociable and was likely to be seeing any breakfast I would eat twice over, so decided to ignore him. 'David...David...'. This time he came round to my bedroom and was banging away on the window. F**k OFF!! I couldn't possibly ignore all this anymore so had to get up and see what he wanted. It was breakfast alright, with some teacher from some school or something. I couldn't really understand what was going on, so without a shower or even having brushed my teeth I was ushered out and into a waiting ma-ma-yo.

Anthony was with me and we recapped the previous night - or rather I recapped it for him. He couldn't remember anything. How he got home, when he got home, if he was alone...or where his coat was. I told him his coat was now most likely concealing a big pile of sick in a random ktv room and that he'd probably best be ready for some angry brothers coming to beat him up for defiling their sister. He had no idea what I was on about.

So we arrived at breakfast - a steaming bowl of mixed internal organs and a few plates of random foodstuffs. Not the toast I so badly needed. I miss toast... While picking through some noodles Mr Li explained to me that I had a new job. A woman who joined us at that point had just opened up an English-language school for children and had asked him to run it. He'd then decided to engage us as advisors, going there every weekend to watch over the classes and give the teachers some feedback and tips. We'd be getting 50 yuan each for our trouble.

What?

This was all a bit sudden. Where was the 'would you like to...'? Did I have a choice? Apparently not. He also revealed that after breakfast we would go to the school for a publicity photo-shoot. Great. Unwashed, unshaved, unable to see properly yet and about to have photos taken. Just perfect.

The school itself was nice though. Brand new and with about 30 kids there that morning. They were in classes of about 10 and their ages ranged from about 5 or 6 to 11 or 12. We had photos taken infront of the school, in the classes and with the students. We found out that we would only be expected to spend 2 hours there each weekend - Anthony on Saturdays and me on Sundays. It didn't sound bad at all. I had perked up by then and even managed a smile for the photos. The kids were nice and I thought, this could be fun. The picture above shows me with a few of the students. See the girl in red on the left? Very cute. Lovely red jacket. What brightened my day most was whenever she turned round and revealed what was written on the back. I didn't know 'Slipknot' merchandise extended to childrenswear?

We managed to stave off calls for us all to eat lunch together as Mr Li likes his rice wine a little too much, but we couldn't disappoint the old man so arranged another date for the next weekend. After all, he was already a little disappointed that Anthony couldn't bring him back the Viagra that he'd asked for. Apparently there's nothing he'd like more right now.

A little more than I needed to know. I can't help thinking that if he drank a little less wine he needn't be asking in the first place...