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Guilin

Guilin was our fith stop in China. It’s probably the most picturesque too, with it’s high limestone peaks, lush greenery and rice paddies dotted around the landscape. This is how I imagined the Chinese countryside to be.

In the morning on our first day we went on a cruise down the Lee river. The scenery was beautiful, as you can see from the pictures below.

Then, later in the afternoon after the river cruise, we went for a drive around the countryside. We stopped to admire the view at one point, but got mobbed by a load of old women trying to sell us back scratchers. They were fairly persistent :-p

We also stopped off at a farmhouse to see how the locals live. It was surprisingly modern, they had gas, electricity, and a TV.

In the evening we went for a walk around Guilin. We went to see the cormorant fishermen. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any decent photos of that, but I did get a good one of the twin pagodas in the middle of one of the lakes in the city.

On our final day in Guilin we went to see the reed flute caves. On the way there we stopped off in a small town called Da-Xu.

Xi’an

The fourth stop on our tour was Xi’an, at the eastern end of the silk road, and the captital of China during 13 dynasties. The first stop on our tour was the city wall.

The next day we went to see the terracotta army. On the way we made a little detour to one of the parks in the the city, to see the locals doing Tai Chi, and to see the Little Wild Goose Pagoda.

Then on to the main event for the day. The excavation site is huge. It looked big in the pictures I had seen before, but I didn’t quite realise how big it was. This has to be the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle. When the pit was first unearthed not a single soldier was intact. All the ones you can see in the photos below have been put back together by archaeologists.

Beijing

The third stop on our trip was Beijing. This was probably the part of the trip I was looking forward to the most. Most of the main attactions are here (Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tian’an Men Square). As usual, our new local guide met us at the airport, and took us straight to the next bit of the tour. In this instance, the Temple of Heaven. It took a while to get there due to the really bad traffic in Beijing. Apparently 1,000 new cars join the road in Beijing every day.

The temple of heaven itself was quite pretty. Apparently it had just had some restoration work done on it. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to go inside, so I just had to poke my camera through one of the windows to take a picture.

On the first full day we headed north of Beijing to the Great Wall. It absolutely packed with people, as you can see from some of the photos below. We went up the bit that was harder to climb, so it was less busy. It got scarily steep at some points. Yet right at the top there were still a load of Chinese women waiting for us with the obligatory ‘I climbed the great wall’ t-shirts, ready to do a deal.

After visiting another restaurant/shop for lunch we headed to the Ming Tombs, the final resting place of 13 of the Ming dynasty emperors.

On the start of our second full day in Beijing we headed for Tian’an Men Square and the Forbidden City. It was already quite hot outside by the time we got there, and Tian’an Men Square is basically a giant slab of concrete, so we started cooking. Thankfully it wasn’t long before we headed for the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City was spectacular. It was absolutely massive. Unfortunately some of the larger buildings were being renovated in time for the 2008 olympics, so we didn’t get to see those. However, as you can see below, there was still plenty to see.

In the afternoon we went to see the summer palace. The emperor’s retreat from the stifling summers in the Forbidden City.

In the morning before heading off to the airport to catch a plane to Xi’an, we had just enough time for a couple of short excursions. First we went off to the zoo to see the pandas.

Then after the pandas we went for a rickshaw ride round the hutong.

Suzhou

The second stop on our tour of China was Suzhou, the silk capital of China since the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). As well as silk production, Suzhou is also famous for its stone bridges, pagodas, and beautiful formal gardens. The first stop we made in Suzhou was at the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the largest formal garden in Suzhou.

On the second day of our stay in Suzhou, we started off with a rickshaw ride around the city. It was fairly nerve recking at some points, darting through the traffic in a rickshaw. Especailly when you are narrowly missing cars and bikes coming at you when darting accross the traffic.

After the rickshaw ride we went to a silk factory. They had a small museum with some exhibits explaining the process, including some working silk spinning machines.

The exhibits were quite interesting, but then we were marched in to the huge shopping mall at the end of the tour, containing every silk product imaginable. While the rest of the tour group went shopping Andy and I just went and had a coffee.

After lunch we headed for Tiger Hill, famous for it’s leaning pagoda (which predates and is taller than the leaning tower of Pisa).

To end the day we stopped by at an art school where people were learning to make silk ‘paintings’. It was a pleasant end to our stay in Suzhou. The next day we headed back to Shanghai to catch the plane to Beijing.

China

Andy and I just got back from an absolutely wonderful holiday in China. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to post any entries on here during the holiday as I had no internet access. Anyway, I was too busy enjoying myself, so you will just have to make do with a summary of my trip here :)

As usual, I took loads of photos, which can be found here:-

Shanghai
Suzhou
Beijing
Xi’an
Guilin
Hong Kong

Because we packed so much in this holiday I will probably split this over a few posts. Starting with…

Shanghai

Shanghai was the first stop on the tour. We arrived on the first day, and the guide ferried us to our hotel in the centre of Shanghai. Shanghai was quite a strange mix of old and new. On the one hand you had all these massive blocks of apartments springing up all over the place, but on the other you had little clusters of traditional houses that had probably been there for a couple of hundred years dotted in-between all these apartment blocks. It all seemed quite chaotic. Our hotel was quite (s)wanky. The rooms were quite fancy, and the bathroom had a rather nice walk-in shower. Our room even had a cute little fish bowl with some tiny fish in.

On the second day we got to meet our national guide, Ann. She was lovely. She couldn’t do enough for us on the whole trip. She was even grabbing our luggage for us off of the carousel at the airports (and she was not a big lady).

We started to do some sight-seeing on the second day. First we headed off to the Shanghai museum, where we saw various things from ancient Jade carvings like the one pictured below, to the costumes worn by the various minority ethnic groups within China (Of which there are around 55. There are 56 nationalities in China, including the majority Han nationality, which makes up around 90% of the population).

While we were at the museum we made a quick trip accross the road to the city planning office, where they had a massive model of the city on display.

After the museum we headed for the bund to go for a walk along the waterfront. It was quite packed. Unfortunately we couldn’t see much because it was really misty. As you can see in the photos below.

After lunch we headed to the Yu Yuan Gardens and Bazaar. It was quite pretty in the gardens. Although rather packed with tourists.

In the evening we headed back to the Bund for a night-time cruise down the river.

On the third day we went to the Jade Buddha Temple in the morning. It was quite interesting, though again absolutely packed with tourists. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the Jade Buddha itself, though I got a few nice shots of the inside of the temple.

From here we went to catch the train to Suzhou to start the second part of our tour.