Day 39 - Xi'an

30.08.09

Today I leave my Xi'an home and make the journey to Shanghai, I could only get soft sleeper tickets, so it should be a relatively luxurious journey across to the cost. My body is punishing me for my mountain exploits and walking is painful, going up or down steps is just amusing. I pack out train food at the super market, leave my bags in the luggage room and then head out to the south of the city outside the walls with Mike, my Dane hostel friend. He's studying in Beijing for a few months and is visiting some places in China before he heads back to start studying. He climbed Hua Shan a couple of days before me, using the sensible day time method and was lucky enough to have clear weather. The City sprawls out past the walls much like other Chinese cities and doesn't really have any interesting points of note, but it's a good walk none the less and gets me stretching my legs out. I end buying one of those indestructible plastic water bottles for tea and drinking water and a SIGG flask to store hot water in.

In the evening when I board the train to Shanghai my 4 berth compartment is shared with an Aussie and a Chinese couple. It's a nice compartment with TVs, soft beds, individual lights and is very clean, what more can you ask for? The Aussie guy has some interesting stories to tell and as ever the Chinese couple offer us their food and are hospitable and friendly.

Day 38 - Hua Shan, Xian

29.08.09

Mountain climbing and it's a 6am wake up and we start the ascent at 7.30 when they reopen the gates. It's not raining too heavily anymore, but the drizzle is persistent. Some parts of the path are literally like waterfalls and the steps have water cascading over them that means I have to totally immerse my shoes to move on.

The climb is very hard work in places and quite steep, with small steps and foot holes cut into the rock with just chains bolted into the rock to hold onto.
My companions are all wearing disposable ponchos which keep them dry from the rain, but inside they are soaking as the sweat has no way to escape and every time we stop they get freezing cold. I on the other hand am embracing the west's finest in waterproof breathable rain jacket, flexible trekking shoes with a proper grip and a water proof dry bag fitted into my rucksack. I wondered for a while if spending a lot of money on good equipment was needed, but it has consistently made life so much easier on the journey.


We reach the first summit around midday and unfortunately so does the mist. At the brief times when the mist does clear, the mountain looks marvelous and the scenery is breath taking, unfortunately, it doesn't clear all that often. We hike around the summit area and visit the main peak areas, some of the old routes are actually just stupid and you can see why it has a bad reputation, luckily most of them have newer safe alternatives. As it nears the afternoon I realise I need to make it down the mountain fast to catch my bus home and so say good bye to my friends who are staying in the village another night and speed on ahead. I take the shorter route back down, which is also a lot more extreme with what can only be described as ladders carved out of the rock in sections of 40m or so, you can easily see why it has been called the 'soldiers path'. I make the descent from the peak in lightning fast speed an hit the bottom in about 45 mins as opposed to the 4 hours on the way up.

A 3 hour bus journey back to Xi'an a brilliant hot shower and some needed sleep.

Day 37 - Xian, Hua Shan

28.08.09

Today's idea is either very very very stupid, or perfectly safe and will result in a fantastic morning view. Just outside of Xi'an is a 2160m mountain called Hua Shan, in all the literature it is know as a very dangerous mountain and has resulted in deaths from climbers falling off it's steep sides or venturing off the path and falling down a sheer cliff face. To put some scale into it, Scafell Pike is 977m, Snowdon is 1085m and Ben Nevis, Britain's tallest mountain is 1344m high. The interesting twist to the story is that I want to do a night climb to make it to the peak for sunrise, which is supposed to be an amazing sight. I've done my research and know it's possible and many people do it and I have all the right equipment with me as I think I might not be the most technological traveler I've met, but I am definitely the best equipped and have the essentials (torches, first aid kits, thermals, water purification tablets, etc.)

I get on my train at about 3pm and get to the train station, which is a 20 minute taxi drive from the mountain's base at just after 5pm and considering I want to start climbing at about 11pm I've got some serious time to kill. In an interesting note the taxi drivers think I'm crazy when I say I want to climb Hua Shan tonight and because of the rain tell me it's very dangerous and one even said I'll be swept off the mountain (a nice touch). It's about 7pm, far too early to climb, so I kill some time at the base listening to music and mandarin tapes. Interestingly, the wind picks up and the rain starts coming and it actually gets quite nasty, so I have a walk up to the mountain gates and buy my ticket and then toy with the idea of starting the climb early, but decide against it as I don't want to be on the summit waiting for ages for sunrise. Lucky I didn't as about an hour later, they shut the gates and don't allow anyone else to climb up as the conditions are too dangerous. There are around 15 of us waiting and at around 12.30am we have to leave the gates and I end up with 4 Chinese students who decide to sleep it out in the village over night. Once again I manage to bump into some lovely people who help me out.

Day 36 - Xi'an

27.08.09

Another visit to the Muslim Quarter and a walk around the Great Mosque. It's an interesting mix of Islamic and Chinese architecture and art and is set out like a Chinese temple, but with an Islamic prayer hall and spires decorated using pagoda style architecture.

I get chatting to a shop keeper outside who at first I think is just trying to sell me something, but it turns out he thought I was Muslim and just wanted to chat. It happens a second time round in the evening and a guy I buy some food from is convinced I am Muslim, after he probes and finds out I went to an Islamic school for a year, he latches on and keeps asking.

At night time the Quarter transforms into a circus of people selling food, artists offering to draw your portrait, people selling kites and other entrepreneurs wanting to cash in on tourist money. The kites are amazing, consisting of many small kites tied to one another in a long string, they must stretch at least 100m into the sky and you could buy 5m sections for around 50p. The best example of money making were the guys with full on telescopes mounted onto the back of motorcycles, who for just under a pound will let you look into the sky at the moon or Jupiter. When I say telescope I don't mean a small hand held thing, but massive white industrial telescopes that have supporting frames and are turned using wheels and gears. I'm not sure how good it is for the optics, being driven around on the back of a motorcycle and being bashed around going up curbs over bumps and I'm sure if any astronomer saw it, they would have a heart attack.

Day 35 - Xi'an

26.08.09

With man flu in tow, I have an activity rate of about -5 for the morning and so do practically nothing, the afternoon however is very interesting. Me and Jenny decide to take a walk around the Muslim Quarter in Xian, which just breaks all stereotypical images you have of religions and how people should look. Compared to the other markets in China it's selling so many different things and is like a toned down version of the market in Marakech, really bizarre for the middle of a massive Chinese city. The women wear hijabs and burkas and the men head caps, with their clothes having a distinctive Arab flair. There is Arabic calligraphy as opposed to Chinese characters on the shops and around the quarter and occasionally people will talk in Arabic.
A walk around the city walls and the parkland that surrounds it, has us land in a traditional Chinese dance performance and singing, which is 'interesting'. Also in the park are the communal exercise bikes and machines which seem to feature in much of China. It's such a good idea and there is the usual collection the older Chinese generation on the machines doing their afternoon routines. We really should adopt this idea in the UK.

Jenny also solves the conundrum of how so many Chinese people can afford to go to the tourist sites today. She says that there is only a small percentage of people in China who are actually rich and can afford to spend money on cameras and gadgets and travel around, while the majority of the country is extremely poor. This very small percentage is smaller than in other countries, but when you have 1.3 billion people it equates to around 97 million people, more than the whole population of the UK, who have enough money to buy what they want, travel around the country and support a huge (and expensive, even by UK standards) domestic tourism industry.

That solves that one then.

Day 34 - Xi'an

25.08.09

Getting off the train at Xi'an feels like breaking out of prison. The station is just outside the north city walls and I decide to walk to the hostel which is at the south gate, once again the Lonely Planet map is way off and an hour and a half later I rock up at Shuyuan Hostel. It's set over three lovely courtyards with a cafe at the back courtyard and a lively bar in the basement underneath it all. It is a lovely place and I'm glad I'm booked in for 5 nights as it will give me time to get over my cold and see the surrounding sights.

After I check in, they tell me my bed isn't ready yet, so give me a free coffee voucher and let me store my luggage, after my first coffee in a month I decide to get the terracotta warriors done as it's still early and make my way to the site about an hour out of town. It's blistering heat and the sun has decided to just be offensive, so the air conditioned air craft hangers the warrior pits are set in are a god send. It's a massive complex and is really impressive, especially inspecting some of the warriors up close and seeing the details on the life size models. I decided to take an audio guide to get some more information, in the pits it's quite interesting, but in the exhibition halls the masses of Chinese tour groups push past you and you can't see anything, also the audio guide gets a bit boring here. I am determined to listen to all 74 tracks, which means I end up sitting down on a bench for about 20 mins just playing them one after the other. I didn't actually listen to them and day dreamed for most of it, but I had to get my monies worth.

Once back at the hostel I crash in a pile of exhaustion through illness, and the sun's barrage of burning rays. I later meet my room mates, Jenny from Germany, Javier from Chile and Alex from the UK who lived in Hong Kong, it's an eclectic bunch and we ending up discussing life, the universe and the Chinese until about 3.30 in the morning.

Day 33 - Pingyao

24.08.09

I really have nothing to do today, I've seen the sights and walked around the walls, been outside the city gates and explored and now am just killing time until my train leaves at 11pm. The only option is to sit back outside the hostel and attempt to learn some more Chinese with my Mandarin recordings and bask in the sun. When that gets boring I break out the Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, which was given to me in Novosibirsk by Sasha. I guess she
knew I would need it at some point.

I'm starting to feel a bit ill today and my throat hurts and I think I have a cold coming along, which is seriously bad timing considering I have an eight hour hard seat journey ahead. It's nothing more than a small cold, but when you're perched on an uncomfortable, reasonably hard seat designed to hold 3, with 4 people on it; the gangways packed with people standing; no air conditioning; it smells and people spit and throw their rubbish onto the floor. It turns out to be a horrific journey and I get about 2 hours intermittent sleep, hugging my rucksack trying to use it as a pillow.
Chinese hard seat trains are definitely for day journeys and not long night ones, but when there are no tickets left it becomes the only option (although it is considerably cheaper, for a reason).