China

Cities

We traveled through a few big Chinese cities on this trip: Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Guangzhou. It seems that the right and left parts of my brain have formed two completely different impressions after seeing them. Even several weeks after returning to Australia I am not able to reconcile them, so I am putting them both down on paper.

The rational impression is similar to the views you can read in the newspapers - there are many interesting cultural sites to see; the cities are growing at an amazing pace; the level of personal prosperity seems to be growing too (it is not a very scientific measure, but the number of big expensive SLR cameras per tourist is much higher in China than in the Western countries). As an objective observer, I was happy to see that the country is getting more developed and more prosperous.

Subjectively, I did not like any of the big cities and could not wait to get out of them. I found the Chinese cities to be too big, too crowded, and too polluted. The pollution in particular is horrendous; I have never seen anything like it (I thought LA was bad, but LA is a nature reserve compared to what they have in China). I felt like I was put inside a 200 metre bubble and as I was walking around the bubble was moving with me. Pick your favorite analogy - a computer game which allows one to see a only few corridors ahead, a sci-fi story about a planet with atmosphere so dense the inhabitants have never seen the stars and do not believe that other worlds exist (I am thinking of "The Inhabited Island" by Strugatski) - while I was in the big cities I felt that I was in the world totally different from the reality I am familiar with.

As a general note, in all my years of traveling China was the first country where I could not speak or understand a single word. Intellectually I was well aware of it, but I did not realise just how much it detracts from the experience of being in a foreign country. I felt that I have stayed in some western "cultural demarcation zone", staying in places where staff could speak at least a bit of English, counting on calculators, and pointing to things I wanted with my fingers. I was left with a distinct impression that while I enjoyed the tourist sites and national parks we visited, I missed out on the human side of China.



Yunnan province

After the crowds and pollution of the big cities, Lijiang was a breath of fresh air (both literally and figuratively). It is a small city with a wonderfully preserved historic centre. It is very touristy, but so cute that one just has to ignore the crowds and enjoy getting lost in the maze of narrow cobble-stoned streets. Lijiang is also close to the mountains and a good base for hiking.

I did a two-day hike in Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is a very scenic journey through stunning mountain landscapes and small local villages. It is also one of the most comfortable hikes I have ever done - food, water, and accommodation is available in every village (spaced about 2 hours apart), so one does not need to carry anything apart from a toothbrush and a camera.

The rest of our time in the mountains was cut short by the weather. The rain had set in, so after looking at the weather forecast promising at least another five days of rain we decided to move on to our next stop - Guangxi province.



Guangxi province

Most scenery we saw in Guangxi province had very distinct Chinese flavour.

We took a two day side trip to Dragon's Backbone rice terraces, carved in the steep sides of the valleys over hundreds of years. Judjing by the postcards, we visited them at the wrong time of year, as the brilliant green colour of rice was gone. Nevertheless, it is a very quiet and beautiful place and is well worth a visit.

The last five days we spent around Yangshuo, an area full of limestone peaks and scenic rivers. Unfortunately, the visibility was very poor so we only saw a fraction of this region's beauty - I can only imagine what it looks like when the sky is blue and the air is clear.