Our first week in China

Now I'm hearing about demonstrations and a train and dead people in China, but I'm uninformed not because of the The Great Firewall but because of the the slow connections of the hostels. I'll post what happened more than a month ago, and I'll try to understand what's going on now...

So Beijing woke up

So Beijing woke up. At 6am the streets started to pack with people, cars, bikes, motorbikes. It took us a while to understand where, in this huge city, we were, but we managed to find the hostel some people in U.B. recommended us. It resulted to be a very nice place in Xicheng district, near the Houhai lake and Nanluoguxiang alley, one of the most young chic streets.

It was one of the nicest areas we saw, there were a few parks around the lakes where Chinese people were doing exercise or playing some sort of badminton, children were running around, women were dancing Chinese folk songs, and a bunch of middle age to old guys were jumping into the lake and swimming.

The post Olympic Beijing is a much modern city than the city I knew 7 years ago. Part of the city has been completely rebuilt. And now you see toilets everywhere, I guess to prevent hordes of tourists from peeing in the alleys during the Olympic Games.

When I was in the city last time -it was one of my last destinations, I remember to be craving for coffee and ice-cream, and having a hard time to find them. Now there are international brands and chains everywhere, and to find coffee and ice-cream is as hard as finding rice. In general lines, the city is meant to be easy to navigate, there are big signs everywhere also in English with street names or pointing tourist spots and the cardinal directions, and the main streets are designed following the exact cardinal points (but this we have to thank to the Ming dynasty, I think).

I heard people complaining that Beijing is not what it was, that it’s now a Chinese Disneyland. I don’t agree, I liked the old Beijing, and I like the new Beijing.

On the downside, many hutongs, the small alleys in the traditional neighborhoods, were replaced by modern buildings, malls, banks. Most of those neighborhoods lacked plumbing, and most people were happy to get compensation and move the hell out of there, but many of those alleys had hundreds of years, and they could also improve the plumbing without demolishing the whole place.  I’m reading a fantastic book about China called Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler. The author is a journalist from US, who lives in Beijing since 1999 and recounts his experiences, as an English teacher and as a journalist. I recommend this book to whoever wants to try to understand something so vast and huge as the Chinese culture. Anyway, the book has a chapter about the hutongs, and tells about the order of demolition of a hutong in 2000 even though the hutong supposed to be an historic relic even  “older than the United States of America”. If the pace of demolition was fast at that time, I can’t imagine what China did with Beijing towards the 2008 to “deserve” the Games, a real plastic surgery.

It’s really a shame that old buildings were destroyed, but at least I think that maybe now, maybe a late though, the city is understanding a little more what makes Beijing special. We saw a lot of construction sites where they were building traditional Chinese buildings, for example, and we were in an area which had the traditional hutongs with a lot of signs that asked to protect the old Beijing.

Anyway, we spent 3 days just waling and biking around. We put certain places as objectives to ourselves, just to ignore them when we found something more interesting on the way. We were like moths distracted by any bright light, but we enjoyed more the distractions than the actual objectives.

Postcards!

 We spend a lot of time just eating, we wanted to try everything everywhere, and we found out that we could split food in three categories: amazing, tasteless and awful. So we fought to get as many of the dishes from the first category, but no matter what the taste is, food almost always surprises you: what seems sweet is salty, what seems hot is cold, what seems strange is something known.

The best soup ever!

Stinking tofu! puahh

By that time, China was warming up for the summer break vacations and many of the tourist spots were already packed with thousands and thousands of Chinese. So we avoided the more or less closed sights, but we did enjoy the classic food market (I guess you’ve seen pictures from any person who traveled to Beijing) and the even more classic Beijing duck, we walked through the silent hutongs and we visited the average 798 art district, but basically we just enjoyed the city. We had the chance to meet our friends from Mongolia for beers in Nanluoguxiang alley and to meet up with our Israeli friend atthe shining Sanlitun bar street in Chaoyang  district.

Biking on the hutongs

And after 4 days in the civilization we decided to make an adventurous side trip.

Great Wall

Just FYI, there isn’t such thing as The Great Wall, there are a lot of Walls built by different dynasties with different materials to protect themselves against different invaders. Now many of the Walls are invaded with tourists and vendors of sweets and Coca Cola and women that chase you while they yell postcards and put them inside your face. So many hostels sell you trips to go to less accessible parts of the Walls, which means less people and less vendors.

We went far with the part of less accessibility, we read in a forum about a part of the Wall called Jiankou Wall which is unexploited and not far from Beijing, but there’s no public transport to that place, and parts of the Wall are literally falling apart, I mean pieces of rock fall while you walk.

We took a bus from Beijing to Huairo, an ugly city which seems as the continuation of the furthest and ugliest part of Beijing. From there we couldn’t find buses that would drive us closer to our destination and we had to take a taxi. So after 1/2 hour bargaining we got to a convenient price and we started going.

The concrete and the buildings gave place gradually to more and more rivers and green and cultivated lands. Suddenly the road started to go up and down on the mountains and we continued going and going for more than 2 hours. And it already seemed too much and the driver started to call and ask people around until he turned around and we drove back one hour to take the right turn. He was so ashamed that he stopped in kiosk to buy as mineral water.

We finally arrived to Zhao's guesthouse at Xizhazi village, the closest village to Jiankou Wall. It was a small village surrounded by mountains and corn fields. The guesthouse was managed by a young family and besides us only a young Chinese couple was staying there.

We only took small backpacks to the village and our plan was roughly to start walking from the nearest part of the Wall on the next morning until we get to a more transited area and take a bus to Beijing from there.

The woman of the family, Zhao's wife, seemed to be in charge of talking with the foreigners and I tried to explain her our plan and ask for a map using simple English words and our magical Chinese phrase book. She answered us back using the translator of her mobile phone; we got a schematic map of the Wall written in Chinese and of the size of a credit card, and we understood that it will take around 7 hours walking until the point where we could take a bus, the part of the wall called Mutianyu. The afternoon we got there we just explored the surroundings and we prepared boiled water for the following day.

We woke up around 6:30 and there was a drizzle which made us start to doubt our plan of 7 hours walking. When we finished breakfast, the day was still very cloudy and humid but the rain stopped and we understood from the Zhao’s wife that there won’t be heavy raining and that it’ll be ok.

So we walked half an hour between the thick vegetation until we got to the Wall. In order to only start our trek, we had to climb a part of the wall which consisted of destroyed stairs (I guess) which become with time a 70 degree floor of rocks sticking out of the surface. I said to Iohi, “Don’t worry this should be the ruined part we heard about”.

 This came out to be one of the easiest parts of the trek along the wall. For 6 hours we walked completely alone, up and down, up and down, we had to climb with legs and hands in many parts, we walked over falling stones, we crawled into holes/doors and we jump from roofs, we walked down on surfaces so stepped that we had to grab from the sides.

Then suddenly we found ourselves in a refurbished area: all the tiles are in their place, there are signs, and refreshment stalls! We got to Mutianyu Wall! We started to see tourists everywhere; we were completely worn out and covered in sweat and around us many Europeans with leather shoes and their new clothes. Around one hour more, we found a cable car –yes, we deserved it. And we went down to an area full of shops, restaurants, and the bus stop to Beijing!

And back to Beijing –some successful negotiations

So we returned to the same hostel and Iohi found out that she forgot her Shoresh (Source) new sandals in the village’s guesthouse. For the next two days she conducted diplomatic negotiations to get her sandals back. She made the hostel workers to call the woman from the village’s guesthouse several times and discussed options that included making a whole day bus trip just to take them. She finally acceded to ship the sandals after a money bank transference, and shortly before we left, we won back the sandals!

Those days we were fed up with the lack of usb in the internet café, we walked around with the camera from internet café to internet café trying to download the pictures without success until we made the drastic decision of just buying a computer. So we went to the famous Zhongguancun District, which has several buildings full of computer and telephone shops. I did the proper research and we decided to buy an Asus so we had to look only for an official Asus vendor. Once we found it and found the computer, we started a new round of successful negotiations this time through Google translator, which ended in the computer I’m using now.

 From Beijing, with the new computer and the Shoresh sandals, we took a sleeper train to Pingyao, a rather touristy place but, anyway, a cute and small old city, in Shanxi province.

From Mongolia Countryside to Beijing

We’re already a month in China. Now we’re in Kanding, Sichuan, and we've been for a looong time without internet connection. But for now, I’ll just tell about the last days in Mongolia and how we got to Beijing.

From Hot Springs to White Lake – and a heart attack?

So we quickly flew from the scene of the crime (see the previous post) and we headed to the Hot Springs, where we had a small dose of civilization and we even took a shower (after 8 days!). We only stopped to see the completely dry falls of Orkhon, to push the van when it got stuck in the mud (twice), to wait for petrol provided by the other group’s van and to wait the driver called his wife (several times).

So we arrived at the Hot Springs, we had a relaxed time with beers and hot thermal water and we got drunk playing cards till late.

On the morning we left the ger guesthouse complex and we had some more hours of the only Mongolian tape we had (and of course many stops to call the driver’s wife). Around midday we entered into a small town to buy food -a chance to find another tape!

So we entered to a closed market with no electricity where our guide chose in the almost complete darkness not so rotten vegetables.

And then on the open market that was in the back, she helped us to pick some two new tapes!

We continued our journey by van and when we played the tape, we discovered that the new tapes sounded almost the same as the previous one!

On the afternoon we arrived to the White Lake National Park, which wasn’t nearly as beautiful as the previous places. The national park title only provided a guard at the entrance of the valley, electricity, more rubbish, a couple of restaurants and a sense of fakeness which we didn’t in the previous places we were.

We slept there and next day on the morning we see our cheerful driver with the face contorted with pain. Our guide translates to us that he has pains in the chest but that his friends are coming with some “medicine”.

Teresa, a nurse, assumed that our overweighted heavy drinker driver is having a heart attack. She explained to our guide that he should take a small dose of aspirin and if it helps it means that he’s having a heart attack and he must run to the hospital. But by the time we asked around and managed to find aspirins, the driver’s friends already gave him the “medicine” and he felt better.

Teresa assumed that he was feeling better because he relaxed and moved less. So after explaining again to our guide what to do if he feels bad again, we went for a walk. When we returned, we heard from our guide that he was really thankful for our help and that he took “our medicine” and he OK now

Teresa tried to explain her again that he must go to the hospital, while our guide explained to her that Mongolian people are tough and they don’t need to go to the hospital. Anyway he was back to normality and to drinking for the rest of the trip.

A couple of raining days later, we left the place stopping in an unimpressive crater of a volcano.

Karakorum and Semi Gobi – the way back to the city

After the white lake we started our way back to UB (Ulan Bator), spending one night near Karakorum and the last one in a family ger in the Semi Gobi desert.

We politely refused to sleep near a very artificial ger guesthouse that surrounded a Big Rock (that I forgot the name, but there you should throw stones over it to get rich or something like that). And we passed through very nice small valleys where we tried to persuade the driver to stop. He made up some excuses and we drove until he had reception for the phone. Even though it was near the city, the place was very nice and clean and we found a nice spot between two hills. There were no trees around and we lit a fire the Mongolian way, with shit! While some of us set the tents up, others pick dried yak dung until we had a huge pile of shit. It really worked and we made a huge fire that inspired entrepreneur ideas to some of the guys, namely, start selling shit!

On the morning we entered to Karakorum, the old capital of Mongolia founded by Genghis Khan himself. However, it’s dirty and ugly as most Mongolian cities and the only things remaining from ancient times are some stone turtles at the corners of the city. Besides that, the only sight around is a penis statue and a temple complex.

So after visiting the sights we headed to the north part of the Gobi desert, called the Semi Gobi. The Semi Gobi is the area in Mongolia where steppes and desert are mixed; and grass gives place to sand dunes.

The view was astounding but since it was midday and around 40^o C, I decided to take a nap and by the time I woke up, there was a storm!

We rode camels on the evening when the sky was clear again and the twilight sun faced the moon for a couple of hours. We rode the camels until we got to wet sand dunes that popped in the middle of the grass and then we came back to the gers.

Taken by Duncan

Next morning we took “the group picture” and we headed back to UB, exhausted, dirty and extremely happy.

Crossing the border China– a stupid way

After spending a night in UB, we took a 12 hour night train to Zamyin Uud, a town in the Mongolian side of the Chinese-Mongolian border. I guess there are two ways to cross the border: the wise way and the stupid way. The advantage of the stupid way is that it gave material to write.

There are international trains that go straight from UB to Beijing three times a week and they are all either 2^nd class, 2^nd class plus, or 1^st class. With these trains, you arrive to border in 12 hours, you wait in your comfortable cabin for like 5 hours and then 12 hours later (or so) you get to Beijing, China.

So we did it the stupid way, which supposed to be cheaper and faster. This way, instead taking an international train - which is more expensive only because it crosses the border - you can take a 3^rd class train that brings you to the Mongolian side of the border. Then you cross the border by jeep and take either a bus or another train in the Chinese side.

So we took our train to Zamyin Uud, which was fine at all, and we arrived on the morning to a dusty train station in an area of desert, which resembled to the stations in American westerns (but without the romanticism). We got outside by walking between the rails and passing through a broken part of the fence where we looked for a taxi, that is a jeep.

The actual border is really close, but the entrance is only allowed to vehicles. After bargaining the relatively high price, which remained pretty high for one kilometer, we jumped in.

He drove us near the border and started to call by phone and drive around and back and forward and stops and calls until one hour later we finally returned to the place where we started and he left the jeep again. The doors didn’t open and we went out of the car from the front seat, and started to look for another jeep. We walked around for 15 minutes not knowing what to do. The same driver saw us and point to another jeep that had already other two passengers, two Mongolian women. This time we headed straight to the end of the queue.

It took hours to move a meter! Then we got the first control where we stand for half and hour and then again to the jeep, to a jam as terrible as the previous one and then the second control. It took around 7 hours under the heat of the desert.

When we finally crossed to Erlian in China, we found out that we would have to wait until 1am to take a train in the direction of Beijing. We checked in the bus station and we found an overpriced “sleeper bus” to Beijing. A sleeper bus, is like regular bus, just that the seats are removed and replaced by two-berth beds.

The bus left us somewhere in Beijing at 4am. Beijing is a very lively city, and shops and cafes open early and close late, but in the middle of the week at 4am, at least on that area, everything was closed. Luckily, a 24 hours McDonalds received us, and we drank bad coffee until the amazing city of Beijing woke up.

Blocked in China

So here we are in post-Olympics Beijing, China. But, I can't access to the blog, and I still have a lot to say about Mongolia. If this works, I'll post through emails... Let's see...