Tibet to Beijing

Hi everyone, I apologize for my absence of posts, but now that I have some free time I am catching up on my journey starting with my time in China. It's difficult to know where to start in recounting my time in China. It is a place of extremes, amazing scenery and wild areas compared to monstrous cities filled with the haze. Soaring skylines consisting of crane after crane versus ancient temples, fort walls and buildings. Communist statues, posters and signs surrounded by bustling free market enterprise. There are things I love about China and things I hate, but it is like no other place I have traveled to thus far.

I'll start off with government control in China. Upon entering Tibet and all through China all access to Facebook and any Google product was blocked. Fortunately I could still access my gmail, but receiving and sending emails was painstakingly slow (an average of 30 minutes to send a simple text email). It also took a long time to get out of the habit of using Google as a search engine. It was pretty funny the first time a group of us realized that we couldn't "Google it" and were at a loss as to how to search info on the web without Google. We finally remembered that Yahoo still exists and that became the preferred search engine. A lot of news articles and sights were also blocked. The CBC must be in China's bad books since the website wouldn't even load. Any article about the Tiannamen square massacre anniversary was blocked. There still seems to be a deep respect for Mao and other communist leaders. His picture is plastered everywhere and the line up in Tiannamen square to view his body was massive. All throughout China we would go to restaurants that had board displaying pictures of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and some other Chinese communist leaders.

Which brings me to the massive police presence at all of the big sights in Beijing. To get into Tiannamen square we had to have our bags scanned like at the airport. The same holds true for every single subway station where you have to scan your bag and go through security after purchasing your ticket.

Everywhere we went felt extremely safe and the people were always welcoming and friendly. My dislike of crowds however was put to the ultimate test during this leg of the trip because almost everywhere we went was absolutely packed with people. We met very few non-Chinese tourists along the way which meant we were often the source of a lot of curiosity and photos.

I have been to a lot of famous tourist sites over the past few weeks of driving from Tibet to Beijing, but the things I will remember most are the trial and error experiences of surviving in China. Since there wasn't a lot of English around there were a few key lessons:

1. How to count on your fingers. The Chinese system for counting numbers 1 through 10 is done on one hand. This skill was extremely important for ordering and determining prices.

2. Always take the hotel card with you. Since very few people speak English it is vital to always have a card with the hotel address written on it in Chinese with you. If you get lost and need to get back that little card is invaluable. Most hotels had a card with "Please drive me to ..." written in both Chinese and English. It may make you feel like a 5 year old carrying it around, but it only takes one experience of not quite knowing the name of your hotel to never forget the card again.

3. The female symbol. You occasionally come across washrooms that have no English or pictures depicting which is male and which is female. After one incident of just picking one and thankfully picking correctly, I made sure to memorize the Chinese character for female.

4. Ordering food. Restaurants that have pictures of food on the wall or picture menus are invaluable. You may not always get what is shown in the picture, but it is still better than guessing. Other ordering options involve pointing to other people's food or using a cell phone translator. Results may vary, but you at least get a good story out of it when it all goes wrong.

Speaking of food, one of the best parts of travel in China is the food. All I can say is the Chinese food I am familiar with at home does not compare with the amazing variety of delicious fresh dishes I have eaten over the past month here. The greasy deep fried Chinese food we get in North America doesn't do justice to the real thing. It doesn't matter if you are eating on the side of a street sitting on a tiny stool or in a fancy restaurant the food is incredible. Every region has its own specialties and I ate an amazing variety of food along the way.

The worst part of traveling in China has to go to the toilets. Granted there are a lot of very clean and nice toilets, but the ones that are bad are really bad. Gas station toilets are notoriously disgusting and I have some images etched into my brain that I really wish I could erase.

The biggest highlight of all for me in China was visiting the Great Wall. It is a place I have long dreamed about visiting so to actually be standing on the wall and watching it snake across rugged mountain peaks as far as the eye can see was surreal. I hiked for around 4 hours and shockingly for the most part had the wall completely to myself. It was tough going in the over 30 °C weather climbing up and down steep staircases, but worth every drop of sweat.

One of the other memorable moments for me was visiting a "hanging" monastery. Essentially a very narrow set of walkways suspended on the side of a cliff to view some ancient Buddha statues. I was quite unnerved as once we got onto the walkways we were trapped in a single file lineup with no escape and railings that were less than waist high with nothing, but a drop off the cliff to look at. Combining my two greatest fears, heights and crowded places, made for some tense moments until I was able to get back to the safety of solid ground.

The rest of the time in China was spent exploring temples, cities, museums and some of the other major tourist attractions such as the Terracotta warriors. The cities were especially fascinating as almost every city we entered had massive sky rise projects in work with crane after crane dotting the skyline. We couldn't figure out what all the buildings are for since many buildings that are completed since to be less than half full. Mix in these massive modern buildings with old walled fortress areas in the middle of some cities and it makes for a confusing mix of old and new.

My final stop I'm China was in Beijing which much to my surprise I enjoyed quite a bit. We were extremely lucky and had two days of beautiful blue smog free skies. We stayed in an old part of the city and the atmosphere was great. One of the main highlights in Beijing, besides all of the famous sights, was finding a tiny little restaurant that served burgers and poutine. It is nice to find some food from home every once in awhile, but you normally walk away disappointed when the local take on western food isn't quite what you were expecting. This place however didn't disappoint. The burgers tasted like they came off a backyard grill complete with ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise and I introduced some British friends to the joys of poutine.

I really enjoyed my time in China, but I was extremely excited to escape the cities and the crowds by leaving one of the most populated countries I'm the world and traveling to one of the least populated.

If you want to see more of my China travels my photos are uploaded at the usual location:

https://plus.google.com/112392129776163836192