Finally we find the tourist zone

I'm loving the internet cafes (网吧 or Wangba to those in the know) in China. They are invariably enormous with around 100 - 200 pcs, dark, equipped with sofas, widescreens and fast connections. All have headphones and video cameras, and typically cost around 20p an hour. Best of all though, there's at-computer food. While sitting browsing, someone came around shouting something random. As he passed I mimed eating, he nodded and two minutes later I had a bowl of tasty noodles, for about 30p.





Most places we'd been in China to date had not been on the tourist trail but Wulingyuan is a world heritage site and we were expecting the full tourist paraphernalia. It was still excrutiatingly difficult to make ourselves understood. No-one seemed to understand our request to find the bus to the park, and when we got there we found the hotels available were sterile and expensive. We arrived and were trailed by an English speaking Chinese guy who was a wannabe guide. He followed us around the village as I looked for a place I'd found listed on the internet advising us that he could get us a good rate in his hotel. After half an hour of this we caved and followed him into a hotel where he promised us the rate was 180 Yuan per night (about 12 stlg). We paid up and went to the room thinking we'd escape him that way. But no. After 20 minutes we had a call to the room asking if we needed a guide. We said no. Then we went to the park. He intercepted us en route and trailed us into the park asking if we needed a guide. We said no, again. Eventually we shook him off and enjoyed a fabulous walk through the kind of scenery you only see in films, only spoilt by innumerable Chinese tour groups toting megaphones. Fortunately all they seem to do is go to the nearest beauty spot, take their posed shots and leave. We soon shook them off, which is more than we could say for our friend who was waiting for us on the exit to the park and offered us massages, dinner, tours, you name it while regaling us with a guilt trip about his lack of work and money that day.

In the end we caved (again) and asked him to organise a rafting trip we had been unable to organise ourselves due to the supreme lack of tourist infrastructure and english speakers in the village. China just doesn't do international tourism - why would you when the domestic tourism market is probably the biggest industry in the country? As foreigners we were sufficiently unusual in this major tourist attraction that one chinese guy took photos of us on his mobile phone.

We warmed towards the guide slightly and even let him profit from a vastly overpriced dinner at his commission restaurant. That was until we discovered the price of the hotel he'd led us to was not 180Y per night, but per person, which made it very costly indeed for China. Clearly he was getting the cut of the profits here and our rafting trip was tainted by resentment as a result.

The trip the next day was booked through an agent in the city and we joined two Chinese couples in a minivan. Together we toured the biggest cave in Asia (Jiuntian) (commentary in Chinese only), a Ming dynasty village where an old lady allowed us to see her house and was so delighted to see some foreigners she could hardly wipe the grin off her face. We were ordered into another (we can only assume) commission restaurant to eat horrendously overpriced lunch at 11am. The waitress was very upset with us when we told her we wanted what the Chinese couples were having, presumably because it wasn't the most expensive thing on the menu!

Then came the rafting. We had thought we were going whitewater rafting. In fact it was more like bananaboating down a river on a motorboat. The full force of the China tourist machine became evident. We thought it was just the six of us doing the rafting waiting on the river bank, when swarming over the brow of the hill came 50 (mostly male) chinese who'd arrived on a tour coach. We jumped on the banana boats and headed downstream through dramatic limestone cliffs towering about 600 metres vertically above us. At the half way point we were unceremoniously dumped along with the 50 other tourists onto a tiny rock where entrepreneurial chinese hawked photos of drenched tourists on their boats from their digital printers which were miraculously powered on the isolated outcrop.

The lack of women everywhere in China is noticeable. To a limited extent this may be to do with the one child policy and the notorious selective abortions. But not to the extent we notice. On the rafting trip, for example, I counted 7 women and 40 men, and this from a tour bus. On the buses and trains the ratio of men to women is roughly 2:1 and on beaches more like 8:1. Just what are all those women doing while their menfolk are merrily lapping up sunshine and floundering down rivers? Answers on a postcard please.

We were quite relieved to leave Wulingyuan after all the guiding stress, though it is truly fabulous and the photo I have here doesn't do it justice at all (my battery failed at the crucial moment). Wannabe guides are fine if you want the help but when all we wanted to do was walk around the park it was very unwelcome.

Next stop Fenghuang, reached via a two hour winding road through a patchwork of rice terraces, with naked boys swimming in rivers, butterflies flitting around, melons for sale by the side of the road. If we hadn't been bouncing around on a suspensionless smoky minibus it would have been a fabulous journey.

Fenghuang is a gorgeous riverside town mostly built of wood, some houses stilted and swarming with (mostly Chinese) tourists. I counted 7 westerners, including ourselves, but that's quite a lot for a place two hours from the nearest rail line. After dark we bought a heart shaped paper candle boat for our 6 year anniversary, and floated it downstream. It promptly caught fire and eventually sank in flames. I wonder what that means!


We're currently in Huaihua. We were just discussing how you might pronounce it to ask for the right bus in the station in Fenghuang when a guy bowled up to us and seemed to know where we were headed. Within a moment we were hustled onto the bus. LP reliably informed us the bus departed every 20 minutes. It was 10am so we could expect to leave by 10.20 at the latest. However, the fullness of the bus is far more important than the timetable in China and the powers that be won't let it leave until each corner is equipped with a pot noodle toting customer, and it took an hour for our bus to depart.


We agreed after attempting to buy train tickets in Huaihua that bus travel is infinitely preferable to train travel. We queued for about 40 hot, sweaty minutes just to get to the counter to buy our tickets to Sanjiang. When we got there, 50 impatient Chinese clamoured behind us eager to purchase their tickets and getting increasingly agitated at our inability to understand the frenzied Chinese of the lady in the ticket booth. Steve stood his ground though and miraculously an English speaker was procured. Again we couldn't get a ticket the same day and have an enforced stopover in a nondescript place, having curtailed our time in gorgeous Fenghuang unnecessarily. Ah well. Internet here is virtually free so I'm not complaining... Over and out...

That's Chang SHA!

From Shanghai we took a bus to Hangzhou. It's a short hop and the bus is much less stressful than trains, as you can just buy and get on. In railway stations you face a ticket buying scrum every time. Here's an example of the scrum at the ticket office in Changsha - they're all like this. It takes at least 20 minutes to get to the front of the counter, and you can rarely get the train time you want (every ticket is specific to a train in China - there is no online booking and you can only buy from the town you are in, not from a future destination, so as travellers, trying to buy a ticket on the day you want to go often means all seats are booked out. As soon as you arrive somewhere, you buy your onward ticket.)

We wanted to get a train from Hangzhou to Changsha and so on the Lonely Planet's advice, asked the hostel to book the next ticket for us. They said they couldn't due to "government regulations" in Zhejiang province. So we went to the tourist office, which the LP informed us would book tickets for us. They wouldn't, and told us to go to the train booking office. We searched for hours, even getting further instructions, and couldn't find it. Eventually found one and with the aid of the LP's language section tried to work out when we could get a sleeper to Changsha. "Tomorrow hard sleeper?" we asked. "Mei You" (not have) was the reply. "Monday?" We asked, "Mei You". "Tuesday?" "Mei You", Wednesday? "Mei You". At this point our language skills failed us and the word "When" - meaning "When can we get a sodding train to Changsha then?" got a shrug. We established there were hard seats available tomorrow but Steve put his foot down and said "I am NOT taking a hard seat overnight". Much argument ensued but in the end we went to the railway station to try our luck in the scrum. Luckily for us, our language failure came to our aid. By mistake Steve said "today" instead of "tomorrow" and miraculously a soft sleeper berth was available (this is the best and most expensive sleeper available). So our time in Hangzhou was curtailed. In all we spent about 18 hours in Hangzhou, around 8 sleeping, 6 trying to get a rail ticket and 4 sightseeing!

I had by mistake left my PJs in Shanghai and as we were in a dorm, it was imperative I got some more. I had up to this point avoided clothes shops in China as I had assumed that nothing at all would fit me in China, where the average size is probably a UK size 6. We located the nightwear area of town (shops in China are located by district: sportswear, antiques, shoes etc.) and went into a shop that didn't look too pricey. I found a simple short / vest top combo that I thought would do and asked the assistant (hovering over me like a bad smell as they all do the moment you enter a shop) what size it was. "No size" she said. I asked if it would fit me. She shook her head and led me to the elephant section, containing floral print matron outfits which I have seen elderly chinese ladies wandering the streets in at night. I burst out laughing in embarrassment.
"I can't wear that!" I said. In the end we compromised on a mickey / minnie mouse t shirt and white pantalons. Steve couldn't conceal his sniggering when I wore them...

I discovered what the Chinese have for brekky (thanks Jane!) - Congee. Here's a breakfast I had in Hangzhou. Steamed buns, congee and pickles. Congee is rice porridge. It was OK, the buns were nice, but the pickles made me feel physically sick. Some jam would have gone down nicely but the Chinese don't really do sweet things.

Hangzhou is very famous in China for West Lake, a landscaped lake with myriad footpaths, bridges, pagodas, stepping stones, and pools which looks a bit like the traditional willow pattern. A day can easily be passed wandering. After the ticket buying we now had less than a day but managed to see Red Carp pond and emulated many snap happy Chinese tourists on our walk. We saw some bridal couples having their photos taken against the beautiful backdrop (clearly not their wedding day, but their wedding photo day). We hired tiny bikes and tried to cycle around. They were so small I actually missed the seat and hit the back carry rack when I first tried to sit down. It was almost unbearably hot and humid. Just sitting still left us drenched with sweat yet the Chinese wander around in Lycra tops. There has to be some kind of different physiology there.

We've met two 3 year old boys over the past couple of days. The first was sharing our soft sleeper compartment with us and his parents. He was well behaved, smiled at us a lot, pointed at things often and said "La!" - haven't found out what this means yet. He also vehemently corrected my Chinese pronunciation of Changsha to ChangSHA (sound angry as you say it and you won't be far wrong. I am just too easy going (no sniggering at the back there!) to be able to pronounce Chinese correctly). Dad had the top bunk and messed around on the laptop the whole time, Mum had childminding duties and shared a bottom bunk with the little boy. There wasn't enough space for the two of them and she got very little sleep.

The second little boy was hanging around in a restaurant in Changsha. He seemed to be a fixture of the place. Supernanny would have had a field day with him. He pulled tablecloths, shouted a lot, ran around madly and was generally over-coddled by the legion of waitresses. He was so loud that I couldn't hear what the waitress was offering us to eat.

Changsha is definitely not on the tourist trail, ours or anyone else's. We only intended to stay a couple of hours on route to Zhangjiajie but the Chinese rail system failed us (no sleepers available on the same day) and so we've spent about 40 hours here. However, we've had quite a nice time. It was boiling when we arrived and sweat was literally pouring off us so we crumbled and went to a "5" star hotel. Not 5 by western standards but very nice nonetheless, complete with gloriously frigid air con, buffet breakfast, slightly camp but very friendly bellboy Dean who went out of his way to secure us a taxi, concierge service that managed to post Steve's excess baggage on to Australia, and, wonder of wonders, a swimming pool. All for only about 42 pounds for the room.... Bargain.

We managed to see a massive Mao statue while in Changsha and did a spot of shopping since my one pair of trousers are wearing out. I was a bit nervous after the pyjamas but found an army surplus store where I was able to go into men's sizes. Due to the lack of tourist traffic the people here seem genuinely interested in us, haven't even thought of trying to trick us and a few have come up to us to practise their English - and not in a scammy way as you would have in Shanghai or Beijing.

Next stop is the hard sleeper to Zhangjiajie. It's the gateway town for Wulingyuan, which is supposed to be fantastic. We'll see...