Daily Archives: 6th September 2018

Wyles Walkabout

Cycling, Warriors and Kung Fu

Posted on by

I caught another bullet train to Xi’an, this time it only took 4 hours so not too bad. On all the trains and metros in China, bags have to be scanned like at the airport and usually any flammable deodorant or anti-bug sprays are confiscated. Here I lost my Jungle Formula deet spray but I wan’t overly fussed as have not really needed it yet, but will need to get some more before I head to India in a couple of weeks.

Here I got to cycle on top of the 13 km long city walls which date back to the Ming Dynasty in 14th Century. The wall is about 10 m wide and is the start of the Silk Route. In places the wall had been repaired so it was smooth, flat cycling, but in other places it was quite bumpy.

I started cycling at about 17.30 from the East Gate and cycled in an anti clockwise direction. It took about an hour and half to reach the South Gate which has one of the best views over Xi’an at sunset. Even though it was busy, it wasn’t overly crowded.

After the sun had set, the group headed to the Muslim quarter and wondered through the markets, that were very similar in style to the medinas in Morocco but without the smell or harassment from the stall holders. It was a pleasure to walk through at leisure and browse. Once through the market we went to a restaurant for a group meal which was really nice. However having had a large breakfast at the hostel and a big lunch earlier in the day, I really wasn’t that hungry which was a great shame as the food was absolutely fantastic. On the way back to the hostel, we stopped by the bell tower which is in a roundabout all lit up beautifully, certainly more impressive than the Arc de Triumph.

Next morning was a massive China highlight, visiting the Terracotta Warriors. A bonus was meeting Yang Xi An, the farmer who discovered them back in 1974 when he was digging a well. Our guide told us that the farmer actually found them originally in 1968 but being superstitious, buried them once again before notifying officials.

There are large 3 pits you can walk around and a museum, but perhaps the most impressive is Pit 1. The warriors are representing the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Each warrior has individual features, colours, clothes, weapons etc., and no two are the same. It’s estimated there are more than 7000 warriors here, but most remain buried still. The pits are about 7 m deep and the warriors are approx. 8 ft tall. Similar to the pandas, people are jostling for position to take photos but it’s difficult to get close due to the barriers in place.

We leave Xi’an the next day by public bus and head to Shaolin, famed for Kung Fu, and get to visit the Shaolin Temple. The journey felt really long, with locals noisily playing on their phones and trying to capture photos of us. It was a relief to finally arrive. The temple itself was a little disappointing, maybe I had built up a different mental picture through the movies, but still enjoyable. The first evening by the hostel, there was a show put on by the ‘Kung Fu Kids’, local children aged from 3 – 17 who practice Kung fu 6 hours per day and then English, Maths and Science.

It was very impressive and hurt just watching it. At the Shaolin Temple there was another more professional show put on and the auditorium felt like it was a hidden thing, as if we shouldn’t have been there. But highly impressive and with audience participation, much to the amusement of everyone.

Following the show, we hiked up to the Dharma Cave, about 2 miles from the temple, but this is the small cave where the creator of Kung Fu stayed for 9 years before being allowed into the temple. Saw plenty of golden orb spiders on the way up and the view from the top would have been really impressive but it was little cloudy, but that didn’t prevent the heat.

It was back to the hostel after a long, hot day for a shower and change of clothes before heading to the train station to board the night sleeper train to Beijing. The cost of the ticket was about 164 Yuans, that’s about £15-£18 and you get a flat bed. The journey wasn’t too bad and arrived in Beijing at about 06.20hrs…

Wyles Walkabout

Pandas !

Posted on by

Had a free day on Yangshuo, waiting for laundry, before we had to catch the train to Chengdu. I didn’t want to venture out too far, simply to avoid getting hot and sweaty before a train journey, so I stayed reasonably local and wandered about the town. It was a shame to leave Yangshuo as it felt familiar somehow, not dissimilar to Sharm, but – there are other things to see and do in China.

We got to the station after a 90 minute private bus ride and checked in. The tickets are linked to your identification, whether you are a local or a foreigner, and the seat is assigned. It’s similar to booking an airline seat but for some reason, feel like all movements are somehow being monitored. All credit to the Chinese, their rail infrastructure is fantastic. It’s clean, prompt, comfortable, spacious and unlike the trains back home, it even smells clean. Just an observation I hadn’t really noticed before, but there is no graffiti anywhere, hardly any litter, no dog shit or any chewing gum marks on the pavements. Has to be said on the face of it, communism has a lot of plus points. At the station, they prevent passengers accessing the platform until the train is in there, I guess as these are bullet trains that travel in excess of 240 km per hour it may be a safety thing.

After the 7 hr train journey, we arrived in Chengdu and checked in to Mrs Panda’s hostel. I was expecting it to be excessively Panda themed and Chengdu to be quite a rural setting but I was wrong on both counts. Chengdu turns out to be about the 5th or 6th largest city in China; a heaving metropolis but it’s famed for the Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and to be honest, it was one of the things I wanted to see in China above anything else. The hostel wasn’t all that but it was clean-ish, served cold beer but had a nice feel to it. The food in Chengdu was a lot cheaper than we had been paying in Yangshuo so now it felt like we were being ripped off previously without knowing. There was a little roadside restaurant next to the hostel that served excellent, tasty Chinese meal with beer for next to nothing, say less than 30 Yuans (£3.40) . I am now becoming quite proficient with chopsticks having lost my Spork in Yangshuo…

Next day it was off to see the pandas 🙂 and lots of anticipation in seeing them. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like pandas, and if they don’t, probably don’t want to know them anyway. Sadly there are only about 1800 pandas left in the world due to poaching, hunting, loss of habitat and them not being able to successfully breed in the wild or even in captivity. This centre has about 180 pandas and has an almost 100% success rate in breeding the pandas. In Chinese, panda means bear (pan) and cat (da) and they had red pandas and giant pandas too. It was much larger than I was expecting and the grounds in between the enclosures were full of thick bamboo, used only as a reserve if the normal supply of bamboo runs out. In the first couple of enclosures there was not much to see, but you definitely knew you could see the pandas in the next one judging by the number of people crowding around, all with their cameras held in the air. I had to jostle for position to try to take photos. Decorum and etiquette go out of the window here as three or four pandas are play fighting with each other and knocking one off a tree stump who rolled around on the ground, making the crowd laugh and go ‘ahhhhh’.

I managed to get a few photos of the pandas without the back of peoples heads in the way and then moved on to the next enclosure for more of the same.

Later on was able to get into the nursery section where the pandas range from 3 weeks to 3 months old. There was one little panda, just 3 weeks old, in an incubator behind a glass screen to keep people away. It was virtually impossible to get a good photo through the glass.

Back at the hostel in Chengdu, we go for a walk around People’s Park which was really picturesque and where lots of older Chinese people come to dance in the evening. It had a bit old a school disco feel to it with some people standing around the edge waiting for a partner to ask them. There were all sorts of music playing form traditional Chinese to a sort of modern ministry of sound. There were also some tea houses here and monuments to fallen soldiers in the wars gone by.

Afterwards, our guide took us to a local restaurant to experience a traditional Szechwan Hot Pot. It was very similar to a fondu in style, with a big square pot of boiling spiced oil in the middle of the table into which various meats, vegetables and tofu were placed. The oil was kept boiling from a burner underneath. Trouble is that with excessively long chop sticks, it was impossible to fish out much to eat before it disintegrated. No wonder the Chinese are so slim.

Next day we visited the Tibetan district which was a really nice area to walk around, plenty of shops selling all sorts and lots of places to eat or drink. The park grounds were incredibly tranquil even though they were full of people. Here we suddenly became acutely aware that we had sort of become a tourist attraction ourselves, with lots of people taking our pictures – some discreetly whilst others were quite blatant and pushing their camera phones into your face.