China

Well, it’s been quite a while since we’ve posted here on the blog, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing anything exciting.  Our last blog post was about our time in Hong Kong, and since then we’ve travelled all around China and have seen and done a lot of cool stuff. We’ve actually just finished our tour of China and we’re now sitting comfortably in Hanoi Vietnam, and we expect to spend the next month or so here exploring Vietnam.

To sum up our time in China is really difficult.  China is huge. There are billions of people, many different cultures, languages, foods, styles, and landscapes.  I’ve heard it said that saying you’ve visited China is like saying you’ve visited planet earth.  You can never see it all, and it is incredibly diverse and impossible to sum up in just a few sentences.  That being said, here is a bit of a recap of our time here in China:

We basically travelled in a loop. First we went north from Hong Kong, to Shanghai, then further up the coast to Beijing, and then back down through the middle visiting Xi’an and Lijiang, before finally exiting the country at the Vietnam border.  All of our travelling has been done by train.  They have a very effective train system here in China.  We spent a total of 108 hours on these trains. They all were sleeper trains so it wasn’t too bad. We could lie around  and relax, read, and sleep the time away. We both managed to get through a lot of books over the past month. Some of the trains were better than others.  The beds we had comfortable enough, but anytime you’re stuck together with 100’s of other people in a confined space for 15 hours, it’s going to get a bit smelly and dirty by the end of the trip. 

Shanghai

Our first stop after Hong Kong was Shanghai.  Shanghai is the most populated city in China and it is very modern and easy to get around and see the city.  We did a lot of walking around, taking the subway from one end of the city to the other, checking out a bunch of different neighborhoods, visited the giant aquarium, walked along the river in the Bund district, through the French Concession, through walking streets, and temples.  We also spent a day in a city two away called Hangzhou. Hangzhou was really cool. It has a lake in the middle of the city with a lot of temples and gardens and everything around, so it was a really nice place to spend the day walking around exploring.  Another great thing about our time in Shanghai was the hostel we stayed at.  It was probably the nicest hostel we’ve ever stayed in, and it was very welcome after the dump we stayed at in Hong Kong.

Shanghai

Beijing

Beijing was really cool.  We walked around the city, saw Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Olympic buildings (although there was an event going on at the time, so we couldn’t get near them), and we went for a day to the Great Wall of China and walked along the wall for a few hours.

Beijing

Xi’an

After Beijing we took a train to Xi’an. Xi’an is the old capital of China, and not nearly as modern as Shanghai or Beijing.  The city was pretty nice, but our main reason for being there was to see the Terra-cotta warriors.  Years ago, archeologists found some terra-cotta statues of warriors underground, and started digging further and found a huge army of them.  There were thousands of statues buried under the ground along with horses, chariots, and other artifacts.  We visited the site for a day and visited a bunch of museums in the area. It was really cool, but they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them still to finish excavating the area. There are still massive amounts of other artifacts to be dug up still.  I think that this place will be even better to visit 10 or 20 years from now when they’ve unearthed even more.

Xi'an

Lijiang

Lijiang was our favorite city in China.  The old section of Lijiang has been transformed into a beautiful walking area full of old buildings, cobble stone roads, small shops and restaurants, and all in all an amazingly beautiful place to walk around.  The city was always busy and full of life and lights and colors and flowers.  We spent around a week here strolling around the streets and checking out all the nearby sights.

Lijiang

Tiger Leaping Gorge

While we were in Lijiang, we went on a 2 day trip to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  The gorge is a beutifull area around 3 hours away from Lijiang. Mountains, valleys, and the river made for beautiful scenery. We hiked the first day around 6 or 7 hours up into the mountains and along the cliffs through breathtaking scenery. We stayed at a lodge overnight and then the next morning we hiked another 5 hours or so down into the gorge and back up out again.  It was quite a treacherous hike down and up steep cliffs, and rebar ladders set into the stone walls.  The river at the bottom was fast and full of large rapids and was a really cool pay-off after hiking for two days straight.

2 day Trek - Tiger Leaping Gorge

After a few days of recuperation in Lijiang, we made our way out of China via 2 days of trains and train station waiting rooms.  We had a great time in China and saw quite a lot, but now we’re excited for the next part of our journey:  Vietnam.  Now that we’ve got full internet access again, we’ll hopefully be able to blog a little more frequently.