Dali

I apologise to Yunnan for the lateness of this blog; it really doesn’t deserve such neglect.  But the new term here in Xiamen is a busy one and somewhere in the midst of writing characters, memorising vocabulary and breaking my nose walking into a Starbucks door after a study session the blog got a little waylaid…

However, as is warranted, here follows extensive praise of the marvellous province that is Yunnan.  A province so marvellous, in fact, that I was willing to travel it alone...

Yunnan is situated in the south-west corner of China and it is amazing.  For a start, it's kind of a red colour.  See picture as viewed from the air.  I wanted to go last year but it needs a fair bit of time, which I ran out of last Spring Festival what with all the being robbed I had to do down in Sanya.  Anyway, I had a couple of weeks spare so I decided to take a leisurely trip, booking flights in and out of Kunming (the capital) but nothing much in between so I could take it as it came.

I spent the first night at a hostel in Kunming where my tourism just about stretched to a nearby park, after which I returned to the hostel and spent the remainder of the day with fellow hostelers sitting on the roof terrace with a few beers and getting alarmingly sunburnt for early February.  I think the weather was probably the main thing that sold Yunnan to me; there was not a day without sunshine and although the nights were a little cold all the hostel dorm beds had electric blankets!  What a thoughtful province.

The next day I jumped on a bus up to Dali then shared a motorbike taxi with some Greek guys to get to Dali Old Town, which looked every bit as beautiful as I’d been hoping.

The town lies in the south-west corner of a huge lake (Er Hai, which means ‘ear-shaped sea’) and at the base of mountains; all round the lake are villages where the Bai ethnic minority Chinese still live.  Though now rather touristy, much of the ancient town has been preserved and the blue skies and fresh air from the lake give Dali a wonderful atmosphere.

Of course, I’d only been there about an hour and a half when I got food poisoning.  I maintain that it was something I ate on the road or earlier that morning because I don’t think Dali is spiteful enough to give anybody food poisioning but nevertheless, I spent a good couple of days eating plain rice with soy sauce, tentatively sipping warm water and lamenting my misfortune. 

Fortunately, it was a misfortune that seemed to be doing the rounds of the Yunnan hostels.  I met 2 British girls, Kav and Harriette, who were also sick.  Misery loves company, so that was nice.  And we weren’t really that miserable.  We were staying in a really comfortable hostel called the Jade Emu.

It’s sister hostel, the Jade Roo, had a roof terrace.  So I was sold.

One day Kav and I wandered around the old city.  It was very pretty - ancient rooftops...

Set against a mountain backdrop.

Part of the old town wall still exists; from it you can see the lake.

And there was this amazingly beautiful church.

Another day we managed to drag ourselves out for an organised tour round the lake, which was stunning.   

We visited a very old village…

A temple of sorts on the lakeside…

A market town (you can see the women still wearing traditional headdress)…

And various beauty spots.

Other amazing things of note in Dali were…

The Y5 (about 50p) Tibetan vegetarian buffet where the only catch was you had to eat every single grain of rice on your plate.

The bakeries and sandwich shops (‘Sweet-tooth’s chocolate cheesecake muffin may be the best baked good I have ever tasted).

And Rice, a hostel worker who was always on hand to get me my warm water and who entered a pool tournament never having played before.  And his English name was Rice.

So that was about it in the charming old town of Dali; I didn't do an awful lot but it was just the sort of place I (and my food poisoning) needed.  After about 5 days in Dali I was recovered, relaxed and ready for Lijiang, a stepping stone to the Tiger Leaping Gorge and more roof terraces than I could dream of...

Harbin!

Harbin gets an exclamation mark because it was something else.  I like to call it a once in a lifetime experience, because it’s well worth a visit but I most likely will not be going back.  No one should be that cold out of choice…

Alex and I had acclimatised somewhat in Beijing but nothing could really prepare us for temperatures around -25°C on arrival.  We were ridiculously excited though (and our toes hadn’t started to freeze yet).

Fortunately the hostel was warm (if somewhat unwashed), and inside an old synagogue, which was pretty interesting.

Harbin as a city didn’t seem so exciting, but there were ice and snow sculptures everywhere.  Just everywhere.

On the first night we walked down the main pedestrian street, Zhongyang Dajie (lined with ice and snow sculptures) to Zhaolin park to look at all the pretty ice lanterns.   

And of course some ice and snow sculptures.

Here we are at an ice table.

The next day we went to a Siberian tiger park.  We were driven around in a van safari-style looking at many tigers, lions and even a couple of ligers.  We were also treated to a bunch of tigers being fed a live goat.  

We then walked around the enclosures observing the sweet tigers and feeding them strips of beef (didn’t have the money to splurge on a chicken).

There were even a couple of white tigers, which were beautiful but not terribly happy.

In the afternoon we went to the main ice and snow festival.  There were a lot of ice and snow sculptures.

We went at the perfect time, about 3.30 pm, so we saw ice and snow sculptures in the light…

And we saw ice and snow sculptures lit up at night…

We also avoided the hoards of Chinese tourists who descended after nightfall.

And rode in a horse-drawn carriage, possibly the most exciting thing ever.   

Apart from all the ice and snow sculptures.

To keep warm we went on ice slides…

Cuddled snow foxes…

And jumped around a lot.

Also, we looked at the ice and snow sculptures.  All the looking at the ice and snow sculptures was exhausting.  I think we went to bed around 8.

On our final day we went to the Harbin snow world.  There were a lot of impressive snow sculptures.   

No surprises there.  Sadly no ice sculptures...but a pretty cool snowman army.

After lunch we visited St. Sofia’s church, a beautiful building in the city centre that is unfortunately a museum now.

And that was that.  We were only in Harbin 2 days and 2 nights but it was enough.  Undeniably beautiful and spectacularly unique.  But absolutely freezing.

Did I mention we saw ice and snow sculptures?

We then flew back to Xiamen, a temperature difference of close to 40°C, and I remembered why I chose this magical winterless city.  But my building was empty and the campus was full of tourists so after a day of drying laundry with a hairdryer I jumped on a plane to Kunming…

Beijing with Brett...and the year of the Dragon!

So about a month ago I set off to Beijing with a recently traumatised-from-the-Xiamen-night-clubs Brett.  We headed to the Happy Dragon Hostel, which now comes highly recommended by Tan tours.  There we met Liz, Pete and Will who are studying down in Hong Kong, and spent many a happy hour in the bar/Beijing haze with them.  Here we are in the hostel with Betty, the sweetest manager in the world.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t fantastic but that didn’t stop us climbing (*cough* taking a ski lift) up the Great Wall…

Visiting the Lama Temple…

Seeing the Temple of Heaven…

And pointing at Mao.

We also visited the Pearl Market (where I bargained for some arguably real-ish Ugg boots and Brett got some jade), went to an acrobatics show (featuring cage biking) and had Beijing roast duck (amidst such classic puns as 'duck in', 'ducked out' and something involving the bill).

Later in the week some very lovely, mostly Dutch, people from Xiamen came up.  Here we are in their hostel.

And in a cat-filled reggae bar.

Now you might be fearing that with all the bars and white people Brett’s Chinese experience lacked sufficient culture, but here’s a tiny dragon riding a camel to prove otherwise.

And he made dumplings.

At least 2 of them.

All in all, it was a jolly good week.  By the end of it Brett could even take the subway on his own.  China will make a man out of you.

I was still in Beijing for Chinese New Year, when the city went crazy...

The fireworks/firecrackers started going off around 2pm and walking through the streets was like picking your way through a war zone.  For midnight, a few of us climbed up onto a hostel roof overlooking the Bell and Drum towers, Hou Hai and the whole city.  At 12 the city erupted.  The fireworks were everywhere and they continued for hours, literally.  It was incredible.  And, of course, impossible to capture on camera, so I took about a hundred photos.

So that was Beijing.  A rather more in-depth experience to my whistle-stop tour last April and it was good to properly familiarise myself with the city.  And practice the Beijing dialect that they force us to learn down south, where nobody can understand it.  Happy New Year of the Dragon to all!

Into 2012

Happy Belated New Year everyone!  In 2 days I’m off travelling for the best part of a month, so I thought it would be nice to leave a little update of what’s been going on in Xiamen.  Not a lot of time for detail but a picture says a thousand words.  And the camera adds 10 pounds.

Towards the end of the year it got a little colder but nothing spectacular.  So we went ice skating.

Xiamen knows what we need.  Though, as it is with every aspect of Chinese life, we were swiftly shown up by 4-year old skating prodigies whizzing around on the ice dressed like Robin Hood.

The same weekend there was a Taiwanese (I think) food market out on Zhongshan Lu.   

We went along for such delightful delicacies as fried scorpion…

Chou doufu, the worst smelling food in the world…

And a sort of centipede bug thing.   

Paul had previously agreed to eat it in some kind of chou doufu deal but despite his “I’m going to be sick” protestations we knew he was loving it.

Here I am with some perfectly normal guys selling chicken kebab sticks dressed as a monkey and a half-naked person.

Another weekend we had a class trip to the Korean BBQ.  Here I am cooking far too much meat with 3 of my multicultural classmates - Thai, Swedish and Japanese.  I'll let you guess who's who...

And here's everyone else at KTV.

Most memorable was the bus ride home, where we hit a taxi, took some photos, got off and went to the bus stop to wait for the next bus.  As luck would have it, we got on the same one again.

 

Christmas this year, in comparison to last, was a little too normal to constitute extensive description.  There were many parties…

Men precariously set concrete…

And Santa crashed church.

New Year’s was a dumpling party…

A dinner party at my Russian classmate’s place and a job promoting Apple through the medium of Heineken.  Mostly we just drank a lot of tea and Alex played Plants vs. Zombies on iPads.

Most recently it has been my birthday which has involved several nights of birthday parties (both intended and unintended), some fantastic Chinese gifts and the arrival of my good friend Brett.  Here I am with poor jetlagged Brett, wearing a few of said gifts.

And here we are in Helen’s, where everybody knows your name.

Oh, and I was in the newspaper!

Somewhere in the midst of all this I also ‘ran’ a half-marathon (there were so many people it was difficult to get beyond a brisk walk at times) and took a few exams.  But there aren’t any photos of these events so they’re not interesting.

It’s taken me so long to upload this blog that it is now 2 hours until I leave for Beijing, not 2 days.  So it’s probably time to pack.  Stand by for Beijing with Brett, Harbin with hypothermia and hopefully a little trek round Yunnan…