niniane | Entries tagged with china

10/28 – Beijing

After the delayed flight/eyeball incident, we all wanted to sleep in. So we got up around 10 am the next morning and made it to the Forbidden City. The last time I was there, there was literally no one (well, maybe 10 other people, but...you could wander almost alone...) there. This time there were fewer people than Golden Week, but still enough that it was crazy. So we spent an hour or so to climb the entirely unexciting gate that overlooks Tian'An Men, then spent another hour getting tickets to the city.

( Beijing is Amazing - You WANT to See the Pictures )

10/25 – Tashkorgan to Kashgar

Anyway, before I went to sleep yesterday, I tried out milk beer which was...interesting. The first sip was revolting (as I got mostly the yeast mat, ugh!) But after that it was...okay. It was slightly alcoholic, buttery, yougurty, very sweet stuff. I may have to try a recipe and see if I can market it as it's a lot better than kambucha and can extol many of the same properties. Huh.

( Many Exciting Adventures After the Cut )

10/23 – Kashgar

Got up bright and early in Kashgar and went hunting for a travel agent that would take us along the Karakorum highway. It took us a bit to find him, but he was in a lovely hotel that used to be the Russian embassy in Kashgar dating back from the 1950s. We arranged the tour and managed to get by without a guide since I speak a sufficient amount of Mandarin that he thought it safe to leave us with a Mandarin only speaking driver. (He could not go as only ethnic Han Chinese are allowed permits to leave Kashgar.) He arranged all the visas for our trip (...why do we need a visa? We're not leaving the country...but such is the deal with travel in Xinjiang) and made some remarks about security being tighter, supposedly because of ISIS, etc.

( So many adventures! )

10/20 – Turpan to Aksu

Got on the taxi bright and early and made it to the train station with time to spare. We went through security five times to get in. (I mean, I guess it's not really all that surprising that somewhere where you have to go through security twice to get into a grocery store also requires five security checks for a train, but it did feel a bit silly, especially after tickets had been checked against passports for the third time, luggage x-rayed for a third time, being patted down a third time, etc.)

( As the adventures get more adventurous... )

10/17 – Turpan

Woke up at a nice, reasonable time and started roaming the city. We started off by walking towards the museum, finding police officers literally everywhere. Going into a hotel involved showing your passport, putting your belongings through an x-ray machine, and walking through a metal detector. So did walking through stores. Police officers were literally everywhere. There weren't just the ubiquitous scans (in one store, we had to walk through two – one at the entrance of the building, another to get into the store), there were also groups of police officers walking around together with shields and batons.

( And Turpan After Cut )

10/14 – Dunhuang

Got to the train station rather early and got in line for the train to Dunhuang (which was delayed...yargh, but luckily only by about a half hour). We ran into a British couple that had been traveling for about a month and a half now (and will be traveling for a year in total) who we chatted with for a bit.

( And my adventures in a great Buddhist monastery, behind cut )

10/12 – Jiayuguan

Got on the bullet train after boarding the bus from hell. (It was super crowded and clearly not at all designed for people carrying stuff. WHICH I GET. But we had to carry stuff, so it sucked.) It did eventually lurch into the train station, which has very few shops, but is otherwise quite nice. (It has a lovely reading room, children's play room, mother and baby room, a very fancy business class room, etc I couldn't find the foreigner room that ws advertised online as having lots of foreign language books, but didn't care all that much anyway...) then got into my fancy first class seat. (See last post for love of train station stuff.)

( Jiayuguan pics! )

10/8 – Lanzhou

We arrived in Lanzhou almost perfectly on time (Chinese trains are awesome) and found a cab driver somehow. (I was amazed at how literally every cab had someone booked. How does this happen?) As we drove over to the hotel, he was quite fascinated in where we were from, what we were doing (in Mandarin, of course), etc. I think this was in large part as Lanzhou isn't exactly a tourist mecca, so it was exceedingly peculiar for a bunch of white people to be there. (Especially, I think, a white woman who speaks any Chinese at all – although to be fair, I can more easily find white people who speak Chinese than white people who don't speak Chinese off in the hinterlands. The farther out you go in China, the more likely it is that foreign tourists speak at least *some* Mandarin as it becomes increasingly necessary.)

( More after cut )

We woke up around 6 the next morning so that we could get to the wall ahead of everyone else and ride bikes on it. Dad accidentally led us to the north wall, and we bought a double ticket to the city wall and the Beilin Museum (Forest of Steles) then rented bikes and rode around. I can see why it's a popular adventure! The full circuit of the wall is 14 km, so easily doable in two hours on a bike, even getting on and off frequently, and it's well sign posted with interesting things to see about the city. A few of these were various points where ancient courts and markets had existed, a lama temple (complete with a gold leaf roof and a Bodhi tree that had its own house complete with curtains), and all kinds of defense ramparts and guard towers. We cycled only to the south gate, then got out to go to the Forest of Steles.

Anyway, the whole plan was to spend one jet lagged day in Beijing then return later. So today was off to Xi'An! Anyway, we got to Beijing West to pick up our tickets to Xi'An. Unfortunately the lady at the ticket counter couldn't find our tickets and spoke no English. I freaked out a bit, as previously all I'd needed to do to claim my tickets was to present our passports and pick up tickets...so it seemed weird that she was having so much trouble. She told me to follow her, so I did to a fluent English speaking desk worker...who had no problem whatsoever in locating our tickets without even taking to us. So...?

Anyway, with that minor crisis solved, we got loaded onto the bullet train. (Always a destination in and of itself!)

( Read more... )

I got into Beijing late in the night and taxied into the hostel with my parents. It was a standard hostel – clean enough, quiet enough, and central enough. Yay! (Probably the amenities were less than with many hostels – no real restaurant that I could find. But it was near restaurants, so whatever.)

By our hostel was a book store with a bunch of students passed out inside. I found this vaguely hilarious for some reason.