Travel blog: Shanghai to the Great Wall
The Great Wall of China (photo: Hatty James)
Sunday, 21, Jun 2009 09:36
I started my whirlwind tour of China in Shanghai, an intense metropolis. As I have such a short time I have decided to take in all the 'tourist' sites along the way in China and began by taking a trip up the World Financial Tower.
Although not the most famous of all the skyscrapers in Shanghai, its impressive views and glass floor make up for its less popular position in the area.
The first night ended with a trip to the nightclub De La Coste, excellently situated on the Bund, thus ticking off another of the popular sites in Shanghai on my list whilst allowing me to unwind! The terrace offered amazing views across the river and the open bar price of 100 RMB (10 pounds) made it well worth a visit. The music wasn't bad either!
The next day was a lazy one on my part. A stroll around People's Park and Nanjing Road completed more of the essential sights, and then it was time to move on from Shanghai.
On the sixteen-hour overnight sleeper train to Xi'an, with hours to kill, my friend and I deliberated over the merits of Shanghai. Our view? At night the sparkling Nanjing Road could be any Western city, and so for a view of 'real' China, Shanghai was sadly disappointing. But nevertheless, as a city, Shanghai is vibrant and busy.
Downside? Everything is so far apart and so it's very easy to run up costly taxi and metro fees. Like any big city, this city was expensive.
Which made Xi'an a pleasant change. More in keeping with the China my friend and I had hoped to find, Xi'an offered an old style China with its city walls and Bell and Drum Towers. Even our hostel was in the old part of town - its name even bearing the word 'ancient'.
Our first port of call was the Terracotta Army, which did not disappoint. Bearing our tour book in mind, we began with the museum, and then moved on to Pit Two, Three and finally Pit One. Each Pit contains part of the unearthed army, and all are open to public display.
The sight is impossible to describe and the pictures do not do it any justice. Pit One is filled with soldiers, each with an individual face, and specific rank, shown by the intricate detail on the clothing and weaponry. We ended the day watching the Light and Water display at the Big Goose Pagoda.
The next day included a visit to the Muslim Quarter and Great Mosque. While impressive, we found ourselves confused. Were bare arms allowed? Could we take pictures? Unlike so many other religious places, no guidelines (at least in English) were given, but this was clearly a place of active religious worship.
We were offered an interesting view of a working Mosque but felt out of place, and embarrassed lest we did something out of keeping. The Muslim Quarter seemed to be little more than streets filled with vendors, selling as much tack as they could to weary tourists.
The best part of the Muslim Quarter was the food. Spicy kebab sticks, pita bread filled with meat and salad, and nan-bread; all reminded us nostalgically of home.
The next day included a fruitless search for a Taoist Temple and a long walk beside the east wall of the city trying to kill a few hours before our next train journey.
Aware of the need to buy food for the train journey, we found a large supermarket. Unfortunately, after an already bad day, we found ourselves lost in a huge supermarket, unable to find anyway of going up or down from the second storey! Embarrassingly, it took us a few circuits of the large floor to figure our way out and we quickly left, aware of the looks we were attracting from the normal Chinese shoppers.
Taking the plunge, and anxious to experience more of the 'real' China experience, we opted for the eleven-hour hard seater to Beijing. And got no sleep. We arrived at Beijing in the morning and spent our first day recuperating from the train journey.
The next day, we braved torrential rainstorms to visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Within minutes we were soaked to the skin despite our waterproofs. We had learnt that the Forbidden City had been invaded by western capitalism in the form of Starbucks and at the time we scoffed at such a hideous corruption of Chinese culture.
However, when confronted with the continuing rain we made our own, very embarrassing, search for this Starbucks, which ended in failure. So we made our way, meekly, into a Chinese coffee house instead. We gave up on the Forbidden City, knowing while we had only seen but a part of its splendor, we were not enjoying it as we had spent more effort looking for Starbucks in the torrential rain than enjoying the view.
We took off for the Great Wall the next morning, complete with a new camera. With very little Chinese on my part, and none for my companion, we decided Ba da ling was our best bet, being the closest and most tourist friendly part of the wall.
An hour-long bus ride later we found ourselves at the wall. Our wonder at the care, detail and time the creators had given to the Terracotta Army was blown away when confronted with this: one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
We walked for several hard hours, and the beauty and wonder of the wall never ceased to amaze us for all of this time. The only slight impediment to the perfect view was a large sign on the hillside advertising the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Only in China.
Our next day included a visit to the Summer Palace, touted by most of the other backpackers we had met as being better than the Forbidden City. The Summer Palace, built beside a lake, was certainly all that we had been promised and more. Again, as with the Forbidden City, we only saw a part of it, but this may have been more to do with the fact that we refused to pay full entry to all of the sights. We are but poor gap year students after all and money is sometimes better spent on nights out and good food!
Our next stop will be Hong Kong, and a twenty-four hour train journey awaits us.
Hatty James