Saturday, November 06, 2004
sweet and sour chicken
if ever there was a place where you were guaranteed to earn your Blue Peter badge then surely it must be the Terrocota Warriors. i almost expected simon groom (assuming he'd dragged himself away from the bloody farm in derbyshire) and sarah green to greet me at the door, gushing with excitment as they excavated yet another soldier from the earth.
many centuries ago, a leader of the rather unfortunately named ming dynasty, decided that he'd like to make his mark on the world. to this end, he employed 720,000 people to build ornate replica soldiers, horses and carriages. these were then supposed to guard his tomb once he was dead. you can tell i listened hard all those years ago during blue peter. quite what purpose this served is anyone's guess, but as the other half of the population were constructing a 20ft wall at the top of a mountain, it'd be churlish to questions further.
anyway, as luck would have it, the emperor was busy inspecting his prospective tomb and stone soldiers one day, when he fell over and died. there is no record of whether peter sissons wore a tie to announce this one. now dead, the mings busied themselves with covering up his tomb and all the soldiers they'd spent the last god knows how long making, with earth. and there they lay, undiscovered till Blue Peter came along on one of their summer adventures and found them. or something like that.
if creating these soldiers was a bit, in my eyes at least, of a waste of time, then 3,000 years later they are certainly serving a purpose. an entire tourist industry surrounds them with as many minature sovenirs as you (and even courtney) could possibly ever want to buy. maybe this was what drove those ancient mings on, the knowledge that they were creating a perfect revenue source in 3,000 years time. who knows.
anyway, blue peter and simon groom aside, you can't deny that there's a big 'wow' factor as you enter the main hall and see all the warriors stood there. certainly enjoyed that one. enjoyed it even more because we made the great decision to not go on the expensive guided tour (by all accounts absolute bobbins) and did it 'independently'. i read the rough guide out to courtney and she seemed happy with that.
other excursions in xi'an involve climbing the hua shan mountain. without boring everyone with the detail, it's a famous mountain if you're chinese. you can either climb the entire 2,000m (which is what all the westerners do) or get a cable car up to 1,700m and stand and take a few photos (which is what all the chinese do). so we dutifully conformed and climbed the whole way. very steep in parts, with hand rails etc. quite surreal indeed to get to almost the top (having seen almost noone all day) to then find the cable car has delievered literally millions of chinese to the top to buy sovenirs and get their photo taken.
tonight - well, while palace beat arsenal, we'll be on a train to guiyang in the south. a mere 28 hours. unfortunately first class train tickets in china sell out months in advance (or so it seems) and we're slumming it in second class - or hard sleeper as they call it here.
oh - and christmas shopping. all done and dusted and it's only 6th november. and they cost twice as much to send home as they did to buy. don't get too excited folks, we are on a budget remember...
thanks to nick for helping us beat the communist censorship and posting all the stuff to the site. only 17 days till we regain control again.
many centuries ago, a leader of the rather unfortunately named ming dynasty, decided that he'd like to make his mark on the world. to this end, he employed 720,000 people to build ornate replica soldiers, horses and carriages. these were then supposed to guard his tomb once he was dead. you can tell i listened hard all those years ago during blue peter. quite what purpose this served is anyone's guess, but as the other half of the population were constructing a 20ft wall at the top of a mountain, it'd be churlish to questions further.
anyway, as luck would have it, the emperor was busy inspecting his prospective tomb and stone soldiers one day, when he fell over and died. there is no record of whether peter sissons wore a tie to announce this one. now dead, the mings busied themselves with covering up his tomb and all the soldiers they'd spent the last god knows how long making, with earth. and there they lay, undiscovered till Blue Peter came along on one of their summer adventures and found them. or something like that.
if creating these soldiers was a bit, in my eyes at least, of a waste of time, then 3,000 years later they are certainly serving a purpose. an entire tourist industry surrounds them with as many minature sovenirs as you (and even courtney) could possibly ever want to buy. maybe this was what drove those ancient mings on, the knowledge that they were creating a perfect revenue source in 3,000 years time. who knows.
anyway, blue peter and simon groom aside, you can't deny that there's a big 'wow' factor as you enter the main hall and see all the warriors stood there. certainly enjoyed that one. enjoyed it even more because we made the great decision to not go on the expensive guided tour (by all accounts absolute bobbins) and did it 'independently'. i read the rough guide out to courtney and she seemed happy with that.
other excursions in xi'an involve climbing the hua shan mountain. without boring everyone with the detail, it's a famous mountain if you're chinese. you can either climb the entire 2,000m (which is what all the westerners do) or get a cable car up to 1,700m and stand and take a few photos (which is what all the chinese do). so we dutifully conformed and climbed the whole way. very steep in parts, with hand rails etc. quite surreal indeed to get to almost the top (having seen almost noone all day) to then find the cable car has delievered literally millions of chinese to the top to buy sovenirs and get their photo taken.
tonight - well, while palace beat arsenal, we'll be on a train to guiyang in the south. a mere 28 hours. unfortunately first class train tickets in china sell out months in advance (or so it seems) and we're slumming it in second class - or hard sleeper as they call it here.
oh - and christmas shopping. all done and dusted and it's only 6th november. and they cost twice as much to send home as they did to buy. don't get too excited folks, we are on a budget remember...
thanks to nick for helping us beat the communist censorship and posting all the stuff to the site. only 17 days till we regain control again.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Pingyao
Pingyao is the halfway point in the journey from Beijing to Xi'an (home of
the terracotta army) ... and also makes it into the chapter highlights in
our bible - The Rough Guide... so we knew we HAD to visit. It is a walled
city in its original state from the Ming and Qing Dynasties (does anyone
know/care when they were? 1400 - 1911, I think). Anyway, it would take me
paragraphs to describe the city (think Indiana Jones meets The Last Emperor)
so you'll have to wait for the photos.
Basically after you've walked around the town and looked and the souvenir
hawkers the main activity in Pingyao is to walk the circuit on top of the
city walls (about 6km) - at least that's what the highlights section of the
Rough Guide told us to do! So off we went...
After a challenging conversation in mime with the 7 security guards manning
the entrance to the ramp up to the top of the wall we were directed to the
ticket booth around the corner. At the booth we discovered (shock horror)
that the admission price was 120 yuan each! That is roughly 8 pounds -
about double the cost of the Forbidden City! Pete (of course!) was FURIOUS
and treated everyone within earshot to his best Victor Meldrew impression
('I CAN'T BELIEVE IT').
Hearing the commotion we were approached by a wacky and very dirty
American woman who explained that the 120 bought entrance to not just the wall but 20 other tourist sites around the town as well... oh joy! The fact that we didn't want to see any of the other stuff didn't seem to matter. The 120
was non-negotiable. So we stormed off with the crazy American in tow, she
promised she would show us a place on the south-side of town where we could
climb the wall (20 feet high) and get up for free. It soon became apparent
that to scale the wall would be suicide so off we trotted to try Pete's next
idea... bribing the security guards. Unfortunately our offer of 100 yuan
(to share amongst 7 of them) didn't get very far (it was about 70 pence each
after all). So as a last ditch attempt we thought we might pass for
students (amazing but true) and get in for half price. Pete (he's in charge
of all the devious ripping off of chinese people that we do!) brazenly
marched up to the ticket window with 120 yuan, my Ontario driving license
and his Warner Music ID card. Can you believe it worked??!
the terracotta army) ... and also makes it into the chapter highlights in
our bible - The Rough Guide... so we knew we HAD to visit. It is a walled
city in its original state from the Ming and Qing Dynasties (does anyone
know/care when they were? 1400 - 1911, I think). Anyway, it would take me
paragraphs to describe the city (think Indiana Jones meets The Last Emperor)
so you'll have to wait for the photos.
Basically after you've walked around the town and looked and the souvenir
hawkers the main activity in Pingyao is to walk the circuit on top of the
city walls (about 6km) - at least that's what the highlights section of the
Rough Guide told us to do! So off we went...
After a challenging conversation in mime with the 7 security guards manning
the entrance to the ramp up to the top of the wall we were directed to the
ticket booth around the corner. At the booth we discovered (shock horror)
that the admission price was 120 yuan each! That is roughly 8 pounds -
about double the cost of the Forbidden City! Pete (of course!) was FURIOUS
and treated everyone within earshot to his best Victor Meldrew impression
('I CAN'T BELIEVE IT').
Hearing the commotion we were approached by a wacky and very dirty
American woman who explained that the 120 bought entrance to not just the wall but 20 other tourist sites around the town as well... oh joy! The fact that we didn't want to see any of the other stuff didn't seem to matter. The 120
was non-negotiable. So we stormed off with the crazy American in tow, she
promised she would show us a place on the south-side of town where we could
climb the wall (20 feet high) and get up for free. It soon became apparent
that to scale the wall would be suicide so off we trotted to try Pete's next
idea... bribing the security guards. Unfortunately our offer of 100 yuan
(to share amongst 7 of them) didn't get very far (it was about 70 pence each
after all). So as a last ditch attempt we thought we might pass for
students (amazing but true) and get in for half price. Pete (he's in charge
of all the devious ripping off of chinese people that we do!) brazenly
marched up to the ticket window with 120 yuan, my Ontario driving license
and his Warner Music ID card. Can you believe it worked??!
Sunday, October 31, 2004
peking duck
now then, my turn. 7 days in beijing coming your way.
first things first.... bring on the arsenal, aj for england, there's only one ian dowie.. 11 points from 11 games. if we keep that up then it'll be a second premiership season for the first time ever.
believing our all important game away at the home of judas to be a 3pm kick off, i agreed to go and see some bobbins tourist opera to keep courtney happy - safe in the knowledge that i'd be on the internet by kick off to follow proceedings. then earlier in the day i realise that the game was a) an early kick off and b) likely to be on tv over here, china. anyway, never a man to go back on his word, i sat through the opera, which was even more bobbins than i had imagined - so bad it was almost good. this is where the story takes a turn for the better.
after the opera had ended we went up to our danish friend's (we've become quite international) hotel room. being the polite guy i am, i immediately turned the tv on without even asking. lo and behold, there was andy johnson running out for the second half - beijing tv was even showing the game on a 20 minute delay so that i wouldn't miss much. travelling doesn't get much better than this.
after some initial confusion as to which team was winning 1-0 (did the chinese show the away team score first?), we settled back to watch that w**ker bruce get his just deserts. even with my limited chinese i could tell the commentators hated him as well. knockout.
anyway, before those in canada really start to get confused i better get back to what a super time we are having in china. though i bet he wishes he'd done his usual walk out on birmingham to join newcastle now... give me dowie anyday.
okay, so beijing. well, we've been here 7 nights. our hotel isn't the friendliest place on earth. in behaviour of etchellesque proportions, we've managed to move rooms 3 times in a week till courtney found one she thought didn't have cockroaches in.
one evening, tired and weary, we tried the hotel restaurant. it was getting quite late by beijing standards and the staff seemed less than pleased to see us. still, they took our order of 4 dishes and rice. 10 minutes later they chose the waitress with the worst english to come to our table. eventually we managed to understand that despite apparently being capable of making our 4 meat and vegetable dishes, the restaurant had no rice and we couldn't have any. cue scenes straight out of fawlty towers and the waldorf salad...
'what do you mean you haven't got any rice?'
'this is china ffs. you must have some rice'
'sorry, no rice'
'get me the chef. if he's forgotten to reorder the rice than i want to see this imbecile for myself'
'sorry, no rice'
'but you're a restaurant in china, you can't run out of rice'
'sorry, no rice'
'tell him it's celery, apples, walnuts, grapes...'
at this we lost the waitress totally and settled for noodles. we didn't eat there again.
what else? well, yes jim, interest rates have risen here for the first time in 9 years. this managed to lead the news 3 days running - day 1 it was going to happen, day 2 it was happening and day 3 it had happened. there wasn't any indepth analysis either. still, at least it made top billing. bin laden's new video had to take 2nd place to the big news story of the day - a chinese interior minister was visiting kenya. for the first time since 2002 would you believe.. as for gauging local opinion on the interest rate hike - the only locals that can speak english are these supposed art students that hang around on street corners and want to take you to their special exhibitions to see, and inevitably buy, their great works of art.
we've hired bikes - blending in with the locals and all that. cycled around tiananmen square and out to the summer palace. the bike lanes are about 10 yards wide and everyone goes at about 2mph (though courtney still reckons she's exhausted after a mere couple of hours).
did a day out at the wall with our international friends. we chose the non-touristy part which meant driving almost back to moscow it took so long. non touristy meant good in that we had it almost to ourselves but bad in that what few souvenir sellers there were had noone else to badger but us. quite why they built the wall in the first place was beyond me. any army capable of getting up the mountain to the wall in the first place was hardly going to be held back by a 20 foot stone wall at the top.
beijing? well, it looks a lot like america and not much like you'd expect china to look like. the part that does look like china - the hutong area - is rapidly being knocked down in preparation for the 2008 olympics. talking of the olympics, anyone would think they are next week judging by the amount of coverage they get. item 2 on the news yesterday was the opening of the 3rd meeting of the olympic tv committee. you get the picture.
anyway, i always moan at courtney for writing too much (noone will bother reading it if it's too long etc etc) so i'd better wrap this up soon. we've been to most of the sites - your forbidden cities, temples of heaven and summer palaces etc. i went for a jog one morning which, with the pollution and getting lost halfway round, did rather more harm than good. if the opera wasn't much cop, then the acrobatics that we saw definitely was. one hour of the most amazing stunts and balancing acts.
thanks to bo, xenia, arthur, trudi and dave for making our stay here so good. we'll miss you guys and best of luck with the rest of your trips.
from here, it's off to some place pingyao, which looks about 50km south but is apparently taking 11 hours on the train.
oh, and in a city where you can eat dinner for $5, the laundrette wanted $40 to do our bag of washing. can you believe it? i couldn't. i insisted we went back to the hotel and handwashed it in the sink.
till next time.
first things first.... bring on the arsenal, aj for england, there's only one ian dowie.. 11 points from 11 games. if we keep that up then it'll be a second premiership season for the first time ever.
believing our all important game away at the home of judas to be a 3pm kick off, i agreed to go and see some bobbins tourist opera to keep courtney happy - safe in the knowledge that i'd be on the internet by kick off to follow proceedings. then earlier in the day i realise that the game was a) an early kick off and b) likely to be on tv over here, china. anyway, never a man to go back on his word, i sat through the opera, which was even more bobbins than i had imagined - so bad it was almost good. this is where the story takes a turn for the better.
after the opera had ended we went up to our danish friend's (we've become quite international) hotel room. being the polite guy i am, i immediately turned the tv on without even asking. lo and behold, there was andy johnson running out for the second half - beijing tv was even showing the game on a 20 minute delay so that i wouldn't miss much. travelling doesn't get much better than this.
after some initial confusion as to which team was winning 1-0 (did the chinese show the away team score first?), we settled back to watch that w**ker bruce get his just deserts. even with my limited chinese i could tell the commentators hated him as well. knockout.
anyway, before those in canada really start to get confused i better get back to what a super time we are having in china. though i bet he wishes he'd done his usual walk out on birmingham to join newcastle now... give me dowie anyday.
okay, so beijing. well, we've been here 7 nights. our hotel isn't the friendliest place on earth. in behaviour of etchellesque proportions, we've managed to move rooms 3 times in a week till courtney found one she thought didn't have cockroaches in.
one evening, tired and weary, we tried the hotel restaurant. it was getting quite late by beijing standards and the staff seemed less than pleased to see us. still, they took our order of 4 dishes and rice. 10 minutes later they chose the waitress with the worst english to come to our table. eventually we managed to understand that despite apparently being capable of making our 4 meat and vegetable dishes, the restaurant had no rice and we couldn't have any. cue scenes straight out of fawlty towers and the waldorf salad...
'what do you mean you haven't got any rice?'
'this is china ffs. you must have some rice'
'sorry, no rice'
'get me the chef. if he's forgotten to reorder the rice than i want to see this imbecile for myself'
'sorry, no rice'
'but you're a restaurant in china, you can't run out of rice'
'sorry, no rice'
'tell him it's celery, apples, walnuts, grapes...'
at this we lost the waitress totally and settled for noodles. we didn't eat there again.
what else? well, yes jim, interest rates have risen here for the first time in 9 years. this managed to lead the news 3 days running - day 1 it was going to happen, day 2 it was happening and day 3 it had happened. there wasn't any indepth analysis either. still, at least it made top billing. bin laden's new video had to take 2nd place to the big news story of the day - a chinese interior minister was visiting kenya. for the first time since 2002 would you believe.. as for gauging local opinion on the interest rate hike - the only locals that can speak english are these supposed art students that hang around on street corners and want to take you to their special exhibitions to see, and inevitably buy, their great works of art.
we've hired bikes - blending in with the locals and all that. cycled around tiananmen square and out to the summer palace. the bike lanes are about 10 yards wide and everyone goes at about 2mph (though courtney still reckons she's exhausted after a mere couple of hours).
did a day out at the wall with our international friends. we chose the non-touristy part which meant driving almost back to moscow it took so long. non touristy meant good in that we had it almost to ourselves but bad in that what few souvenir sellers there were had noone else to badger but us. quite why they built the wall in the first place was beyond me. any army capable of getting up the mountain to the wall in the first place was hardly going to be held back by a 20 foot stone wall at the top.
beijing? well, it looks a lot like america and not much like you'd expect china to look like. the part that does look like china - the hutong area - is rapidly being knocked down in preparation for the 2008 olympics. talking of the olympics, anyone would think they are next week judging by the amount of coverage they get. item 2 on the news yesterday was the opening of the 3rd meeting of the olympic tv committee. you get the picture.
anyway, i always moan at courtney for writing too much (noone will bother reading it if it's too long etc etc) so i'd better wrap this up soon. we've been to most of the sites - your forbidden cities, temples of heaven and summer palaces etc. i went for a jog one morning which, with the pollution and getting lost halfway round, did rather more harm than good. if the opera wasn't much cop, then the acrobatics that we saw definitely was. one hour of the most amazing stunts and balancing acts.
thanks to bo, xenia, arthur, trudi and dave for making our stay here so good. we'll miss you guys and best of luck with the rest of your trips.
from here, it's off to some place pingyao, which looks about 50km south but is apparently taking 11 hours on the train.
oh, and in a city where you can eat dinner for $5, the laundrette wanted $40 to do our bag of washing. can you believe it? i couldn't. i insisted we went back to the hotel and handwashed it in the sink.
till next time.
the one with me looking very arty on the temple ramparts 
