February 2, 2011

China number one! (the southwest)

China. I didn't really know what to expect. I had met some Chinese students in Delhi, with whom I got along really well. Some people had told me China was a great country to travel in. Others complained about language barriers and other cultural differences. I was reading Jung Chang's 'Wild Swans', which gives a rather grim image of the country and its people just a few decades ago. Surely the Chinese must somehow still be affected by the atrocities of Mao's Cultural Revolution?

My train trip from Lhasa to Chengdu, 43 hours, was my first real encounter with Chinese people. I found friendly, smiling, helpful people. Of course, the language barrier was huge. One young man spoke a little bit of English, and with the help of my Mandarin phrasebook, we managed to have a modest conversation. On that first train ride I also realized that the time of challenging culture differences wasn't over yet. The Chinese are known for spitting on the floor - and yes they do, and in the same loud manner as the South-Asians. To be fair, I think they do it much less then, say, a decade ago, and most of them do spit in the sink or in the dustbin. Also well-known is that Chinese eat very noisily, slurping and smacking to express their enjoyment. It sounds harmless and funny, and it really is, but I challenge anyone to try and calmly enjoy a book when your surrounded by all kinds of salivary sounds. The inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom also share with the South-Asians the habit of talking loudly; when you hear two men having a fierce argument, they may well be just discussing the weather. Last but not least, while in China they don't seem to have the horrible habit of chewing tobacco - and thank God for that -, they do tend to smoke a lot, and everywhere, and all the time. The second night on the train I woke up at three o'clock in the morning because the person in the bunk below me was smoking the old middle-of-the-night ciggy in bed, someone on the opposite bed was noisily enjoying his dried meat, a third person did hes best to get rid of all his mucus by snorting and spitting continuously, and some other people were debating loudly about the advantages and disadvantages of instant noodles (that's my best guess). Yes, it was three o'clock in the morning. Fortunately, India and Nepal had given me ample training in in this kind of situations, and I somehow managed to fall asleep again.

Since I had come through Tibet, I had a one-person group visa ("1 persons", it said) that couldn't be extended. My visa was valid for 26 days, from which I had just over two weeks left by the time I reached mainland China. In these two weeks I wanted to visit the south-west of China, before going to Hong Kong to get a new visa. I had received quite a few tips from other travelers in Nepal, and you know me: I wanted to do it all. So it was with a very heavy schedule that I arrived in Chengdu. I got of the train in the morning and went straight to Chengdu's main attraction: the giant panda park. I was a bit tired and I didn't have high expectations, but the second I laid eye on these wonderful creatures, I started walking around smiling like a little boy. How can anything possibly be so cute? They are lucky to be so, because other than that they are utterly hopeless. They only take in a fraction of the 9 to 14 kilos of bamboo they eat, because they have the digestive system of carnivores. So they permanently overeat - we all know how tempting it is to take a nap on such moments. They are too lazy even to reproduce; and even if they do, it's kind of hard because the poor guys have hopelessly small penises (Asian anatomy?). And even if they do get a baby, the newborn are so small (they weigh about 800 times less than their mom!), that the mother doesn't really know how to treat it and oftentimes starts playing around with it like it's some kind of cheap Chinese toy. Hopeless. But so, so cute.

Panda's!

I started to understand why people like traveling in China when I checked into my first hostel. It was clean, with excellent dormitories, hot showers, friendly and helpful staff, a great common area and a nice atmosphere. Almost all the hotels I went to in China were exquisite, undoubtedly among the best you can find anywhere in the world, certainly for that price. The contrast with South-Asia, where I spent many nights in shabby single rooms, couldn't be bigger.

After spending one night in Chengdu, I moved on to Emei Shan, a nearby mountain. On my way there, I felt extremely depressed. I was alone, I had moved an awful lot in the previous months, and I knew I was going to have to rush through everything if I carried out my plans. I felt like my traveling-bubble had burst. I had lost the urge to see everything, to meet knew people, to explore new territories. I just didn't care anymore. I wanted to take the next plane home. But I decided to carry on and see how I would feel in the following days, and take a plane home from Hong Kong if I still felt depressed by the time I got there.
Emei Shan, accessed through a cable car or thousands of steps, is supposed to offer spectacular views, including a "sea of clouds". Unfortunately, this phenomenon is a bit less interesting when you're inside the sea. When I reached the top of the mountain at around 3000 m it was freezing cold and the visibility wasn't more than a couple of meters. I was all alone, depressed and cold and I ruined my knees by rushing down the many steps - let's say it wasn't the best moment of my trip. Emei Shan was also my first encounter with Chinese tourists. I've talked about Indian tourists before - same same, but worse. Think big groups, megaphones, flags and matching caps, and of course, the cheesiest of pictures. They seemed very impressed with my wearing shorts, and all raised their thumb when they saw me rushing up the stairs: "Oooh! Vewy Stwong!".

From Emei I took a twenty-hour train to Kunming, in the southwestern province of Yunnan, and on to Lijang. Since, like often, I had no idea what to expect, I was completely surprised by the beauty of the Yunnan province. On the modest hills, the reddish earth matched the dark green trees perfectly. The valley was like a blanket of yellow-brown dried-out rice fields. The straw was arranged in small pyramidal bundles, on equal distances. It all looked so perfect that it made me wonder if someone had designed the whole thing. The houses looked lovely in their simplicity: white walls (sometimes with paintings) and gray tiled roofs with typical curved corners. Many people were working in the fields, wearing straw hats, mostly weeding, as far as I could tell. The plain was dotted with stacks of burning weeds, their thin plumes adding a finishing touch to a magnificent painting. It reminded me that China, although it's the world's second biggest economy, is still a country of peasants: more than half of its inhabitants are still farmers.

Lijang is supposed to be a picturesque town with cobblestone streets and traditional houses. And that's what it used to be, but it has been turned into some kind of Disneyland for Chinese tourists. Almost every traditional house has been turned into a a shop, a restaurant or a hotel. I had never expected o see so many Chinese tourists in one place. It's a bit like Venice in peak season but the more concentrated and seemingly without local inhabitants except for people who work there, and with a vast majority of Chinese. Another thing they have in common with Indian tourists is that they love spending money. They buy all sorts of tacky souvenirs from the shops, and at night they drink liters of expensive alcohol in bars. The bars are quite an experience, full of enthusiastic Chinese who knock on the tables with small wooden blocks to applaud cheap entertainment. I witnessed an auction over a cocktail, where some drunk man ended up paying the equivalent of five hundred euros. He gave the drink to a girl who didn't even touch it. That's when I realized some people in China are starting to have money, and lots of it. In general, I was surprised about the grade of development China has reached. The roads are impeccable, the buses nicer than ours, the trains more comfortable, everything seems well-organized. China and India are often linked because of their spectacular economic growth, but it's obvious that China stands much further already. This is confirmed by the numbers: China's GDP per capita (PPP) is more than twice that of India. That being said, the inequality is higher in China (for those who care: according to Wikipedia, India's Gini coefficient is 36.8, while China's is 46.9). Contrary to India, China is not a democracy. The middle and upper class of the biggest population on earth have a very comfortable life, with all the freedom and infrastructure they need. However, on the poor countryside, people still live medieval lives, and many are not allowed to move to cities. There are thousands of riots every year in rural areas, but the media barely talk about it. Unfortunately, as a tourist, one seems to see only the positive side of China. To be honest, I didn't have the courage just then to explore more authentic, rural areas - I'm going to have to go back.

The typical tourist photo in Lijiang


From Lijiang I went to Tiger Leaping Gorge to do a two-day hike, one of the most beautiful ones in China. Walking on a ledge above the deep canyon, facing a sheer rock face topped by snow capped mountains was pretty impressive, but I must say I was a bit blasé after my three-week Annapurna trek. The next stop was Dali, a traditional backpackers hangout. And that's exactly what I did there: hanging around with nice people for a few days. Sometimes you need a break from traveling, and I didn't have many opportunities to do so.

Tiger Leaping Gorge. The path is the small ledge on the right.

Dali was my last stop in Yunnan. After that, I started going east, on my way to the big cities: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing!

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