Beijing to Shanghai via some sacred peaks

Hello everyone!

We haven't given any news for a while so i'll try and get you up to date on our latest moves.

So we left Beijing on the 15th in the evening by the overnight train to Xi'an, to the East, where we visited the famous terracotta army, and climbed up one of the five sacred Chinese Taoist peaks. Then we got on another overnight train from Xi'an to Tai Shan, where the holiest mountain can be found, and we climbed it before getting on yet another sleeper train to Shanghai, where we arrived on Tuesday morning.

To sum up : many mountains and trains in these last few days. We are both knackered and our calves ache, but that'll teach us...!

The first train from Beijing to Xi'an was a "soft sleeper", which is the Chinese first class in sleeper trains, where you get a clean and modern cabin for four people, with little curtains, plastic flowers and soft music, and a temperature of about 30 degrees C, that is to say, all the elements of Chinese luxury. On the other hand the last two trips were "hard sleeper" ones, which weren't really any harder (all Chinese beds are hard anyway) but were definitely less luxurious : the carriage is separated into doorless compartments with three bunks on each side and a tiny table in the middle. During the day everyone sits on the bottom bunk, so no chance for those whose bed it is to have an afternoon nap! The train from Xi'an to Tai Shan was quite a shock : the carriage was creaky and rusty and dirty, and the toilets and sinks got blocked almost immediatly after the departure. However the temperature on this train was ideal (not too hot) and we slept quite well. From Tai Shan to Shanghai the carriage was much newer and cleaner, that is to say more luxurious, and one of the elements of Chinese luxury being (or so it seems) heating on maximum all the time, it was so hot in there that we hardly got any sleep.... washing or sleeping, one has to make a choice!
So our itinerary of these last few days covered a few of the highlights of Chinese culture and History. The Terracotta Army is incredible, you have to see it to believe it... mostly it is the scale of the site which baffles you : the main pitch fills a gigantic warehouse, but apparently that would only represent about 20% of the total of all the figures and chariots and other buried wonders. All this so that emperor Quin could carry on leading his people and going to war after his death....
Then we started on the sacred peaks of the Taoist faith (which is a Chinese version of Buddhism, a mixture of philosophy, superstition and religion), beginning with Hua Shan, the highest one. All these mountains being places of worship and pilgrimage they are set up to accomodate tourists, with steps going from the foot to the summit, and along the way you see many souvenir stalls, people selling diplomas and photos of you in front of the sunset (that you can then have printed onto a mug, a keyring or anything else), and little kiosks offering boiled eggs, water bottles and bowls of steaming noodles for sale. There is a quote from Paul Theroux's excellent book "Riding the Iron Rooster" which sums it up nicely :

"China has five holy mountains. It is the Chinese Buddhist's wish - and the wish of many foreign hikers - to climb them all. The trouble is that, being holy and being Chinese, these have been trampled for thousands of years. they have steps cut to the summit, and noodle stalls along the way, and kiosks selling postcards, monks selling strings of beads, hawkers, fruiterers and professional photographers who charge one yuan per pose, And along with the tough grannies toiling towards the top, there are the Americans in their Chinese T-shirts, the Chinese in their American T-shirts, the Germans wearing rucksacks, and the French clutching the guidebook that says "Chine". None of this makes the mountain less holy, but it makes the climb less fun."

He tells it better than I would, and even though this book was written in 1986, nothing seems to have changed, appart from maybe the price of the photo which would now be 10 or 20 yen.

Climbing these mountains we have been most impressed by some porters who go up the steps with such ease, when they are balancing on their shoulders long poles with at each end a big cloth bundle or even concrete bricks! We walked past a group of about 50 men who were trying to pull a massive engine up a very steep flight of steps, using ropes and thick bamboo poles.
Most of the people we met on those mountains were dressed for going to town : there were young girls in high heeled boots, business men in suits and shiny shoes, and little grandads and grandmas wearing cloth slippers. Saying that they were all climbing steadily and the old men with their bamboo walking sticks beat us to the top : they weren't going very fast but they never stopped, and they were very fit!
Sunday night we took the "hard sleeper" from Xi'an to Tai Shan, which got there at 9 am. We left our bags at the station, took the bus to the foot of the mountain, climbed the 6660 steps to the summit, then went back down the same 6660 steps, hopped on the bus back to the station, got our bags back and got onto another hard sleeper train at about 10 pm. We arrived in Shanghai at 6 am the next morning, took the metro to the hostel, where we had the first shower for 3 days (yes i know, disgusting : just consider yourselves happy that this blog doesn't transmit smell as well!) and went back to sleep till midday!
Something that we have noticed is the extreme kindness of Chinese people. Of course you get the odd stare or mocking glance but on the whole everyone is very smiley and pleasant and helpful. We took a taxi in Xi'an and the driver didn't speak a word of English (and unfortunetaly we still don't speak a lot of Mandarin...). We managed to agree on a destination and conversed a bit during the drive, using a lot of gestures. He told us that England was better than China, because here he has to work very hard to earn enough money to eat. And he taught us to say "station" in Chinese (Hua-Cha-Zan) for the next time we flag a taxi down. The man at the left luggage desk in Tai Shan laughed when we showed him the time on our tickets (10pm) : it was a laugh that meant : "you are taking the mickey, i am going to have to work till ten tonight, but i will do it for you". There are many Chinese laughs and they all mean something different, although you have to be an expert to understand them all... Anyway he explained to us using gestures which bus to take, and when we came back around 7pm he gave us our bags back and said he only charged us for two out of the three, that is 10 yen for the whole day (about 70p). Shortly after he shut up shop and disappeared, but i am certain that had we come at 9:30 pm he would have been there waiting for us. All the street vendors you meet are also incredibly friendly and patient when you try and explain to them what you want. Everyone is very understanding of our non-Mandarin speaking.
You can't go hungry for very long in China. Everywhere smells of food, and there are dumplings steaming and kebabs being cooked at every street corner. For a few yen you can eat a proper meal, and most of the things you get from the street are delicious. Of course there is also the "stinky tofu" that reaks for miles but we haven't dared try that yet. So at most meal times we just go out on the street and grab what we find, two or three portions of different things, and you get a meal for two for about 10 to 20 yen (60p to 1 pound 20).
This morning Pete went to try Shanghai's "Maglev", the fastest train in the world at 430km/h, and i went shopping, true to my good housewife values. I found an incredible market with great fruit and veg stalls but also plastic bathtubs full of live eels, fish, shrimps, crabs, turtles and toads, people selling quail's eggs and homemade pastries, meat stalls where you could buy half a goat or a live mallard duck, and there were also street shoe repairmen who were mending soleless boots on the pavement.
The centre of Shanghai is visibly modern, western and affluent. Not much interest there but the weather is beautiful and warm (about 15-20 degrees C) so it is nice just to wander outside. Tomorrow we are off on the train again on a 25 hour long hard sleeper journey to Guilin, South West, with the hope to find less urban and more remote places. See you next time!