Xian

An ancient walled city with a pulsating modern heart, Xian is most famous as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. The subterranean army silently guarded the tomb of China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang since 210 BC until they were discovered by a farmer digging a well in 1974.

Sleepy from our night train we checked in to the Bell Tower Hostel housed in the old post office building right in the middle of the city. Opposite stood the eponymous Tower itself, built in 1384 during the early Ming Dynasty. Much of our first day was wasted in recovering from the unforgiving train berths. Fortunately our hostel had a convivial common area with a wide screen TV showing the ubiquitous Olympics, but unfortunately served terrible food.

We did find some wonderful eats in the Muslim district, a vibrant area with oodles of food stalls and restaurants cooking up such delights as lamb xiao long bao (can’t get enough of those steamy dumplings!), noodle soup, some kind of Chinese crepe filled with yummy spicy minced beef and vegetables, shish kebabs and rou jia mo - the closest thing China has to a hamburger, which surely predates McDonald’s by a few hundred years.


Every day at regular intervals the performers of the Bell and Drum Towers revive the ancient traditions for tourists, which seem to be in constant supply - predominantly domestic, but a few foreign during the Games due to the proximity of Xian to Beijing.

We saw the biggest/oldest? bell/drum... erm, perhaps I've spent so long in China now I'm getting my superlatives confused. Well anyway, whatever we saw was very big and old, and the shows were admirably enthusiastic considering they have to repeat them over and again about 12 times daily.

Walking alongside the South wall just before sunset, we came across a recreational park full of people enjoying the clement weather. There were clusters of elderly folk huddled around miniature tables on tiny stools playing mah jong,

mournfully singing birds in cages at the foot of and hanging from the trees,

people played badminton and ping pong or stretched on the extensive jungle gym. I had a go on the parallel bars, to get into the Olympic spirit,

and we stopped for a green tea from a vendor and listened to some rather screechy traditional musicians with an audience of three sleepy old men and us. It was a very peaceful stroll and fascinating insight into the leisuretime of the usually frenetic Chinese.

That evening saw the whole British backpacker community cringing at the handover ceremony in Beijing, and in particular Boris Johnson. I overheard one Brit attempt to explain the strange reaction of the audience to our mayor thus: “Well he’s just Boris… we’re embarrassed he’s our mayor… he’s a bumbling fool who lurches from one massive gaffe to another… but he’s just Boris and used to be on telly so we sort of laugh and go ‘aw, bless ‘im’."

The next day we took the bus to the Terracotta Army excavation site with the lovely Kevin, a fluent English-speaking student who worked for the British Council in Guangzhou, who we’d accosted with a barrage of Chinese language and culture questions in the hostel the night before.

To those who have not visited this incredible, almost incomprehensible sight before, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you watch the film in the “cinema” before rushing headlong into the warrior pits. Without that contextual grounding you might not be able to feel the intense history or appreciate the phenomenal amount of work involved in creating the estimated 8,000 life-sized figures and in painstakingly excavating them.

On the way back to town we stopped off at a restaurant recommended by our Lonely Planet as the best place to sample Xian’s signature yang rou pao muo, an interactive noodle soup wherein the diner shreds flatbread into their bowl before the meaty broth is poured on top. Honestly, what will people think of next in attempts to differentiate their region’s cuisine?! It was all rather tedious and frustrating for this hungry diner and I’m afraid I made the rookie mistake of shredding my pieces of bread too big. Although I think the soup would be bland no matter what size the bloody croutons.

We wished farewell and good luck to Kevin, who was off to Edinburgh University next month, and scampered off to nearly miss our next night-train, this time to our final Chinese destination: Beijing.

Wudang Shan

Shrouded in ethereal mist and ancient mystery, the mountains of Wudang are among the most sacred Taoist sites in China.

After another epic bus journey across this mammoth country, this time involving a horrific ghost-bus of the nocturnally chain-smoking undead from Shanghai to Wuhan that left us feeling jaded and like we didn’t need to smoke ourselves for at least a week.

Another five hour bus ride took us to Wudang, but not quite the Shan we were seeking. The entrance to the mountain was a sweaty 20 minute walk away and would have been impossible to locate without the help of a honeymooning Chinese couple who kindly led the way for the bumbling foreigners. Our stumbling passage through China has been sporadically lit along the way by a series of wonderful, smiling and helpful locals who, often without words, have provided crucial assistance in times of need and without whom we would surely have been lost in this land of mass confusion.

Another shining example of the kindness of Chinese strangers is the shy bespectacled daughter at what became our regular restaurant in Wudang Shan, who with her tentative schoolgirl English saved us no end of frustration at the neighbouring hotel, securing us first a room and later, train tickets. Her mother, a round and jovial woman, cooked up the most fabulous mushrooms we’d ever tasted – meaty and juicy and laced with fiery chilli - whilst chuckling at our doomed attempts at communication.

The mountain is traversed by a convenient stream of eco-friendly electric buses, carting all the tourists who have paid the entrance fee up and down to all the different sights free of charge. On our first evening we attended a martial arts performance on a pavilion overlooking a lake, by one of the many monasteries. These young monks demonstrated the famous Wudang kung fu (often the martial art practiced by the baddies in old Shaolin kung fu films).

The mountain was crying out to be climbed, so the next day we rose blearily with the sun to get a head start on the marauding hordes. The path wound steadily upwards, with ornate temples and pavilions providing respite along the way for the weary pilgrim. With no crowds, just us and nature with the odd prayer song or incense floating on the breeze, we felt quite serene as we slowly ascended into the misty heights.

Eventually we reached the Golden Hall, at the top of Tianzhu Peak (the highest in Wudang Shan at 1612m), a glorious multi-layered wedding cake of a temple complex, built in 1416 during the Ming Dynasty, entirely from gilded copper.

Taoist monks in their crisp blue cassocks, white stockings, soft felt shoes and tasselled black hats milled about the place looking serene.

We could understand why, in such a beautiful place with the entire mountain range spread out below like a rumpled green duvet. We too felt we had attained, if not spiritual enlightenment, at least a small amount of inner calm during our short time at mystic Wu Tang Shan, and felt ready for whatever fresh madness China had to throw at us next.

Shanghai

Shanghai at night in the pouring rain is a glistening wedding cake of pink neon, skyscrapers and street-hawkers. It feels buzzing and alive, with a distinct air of excitement - like something's just about to happen.

With the price of city hotels blowing our backpacker budget, we tried our first (and last, said Gill afterwards) hostel, on the Bund. Captain's was efficient, cold and sterile, with a baffling nautical themed dorm, and bathrooms 3 floors away from the rooms, and a stratospheric view of Pudong from the accordingly priced rooftop bar.

The next day we moved to a plain, clean little unassuming hotel, which worked out cheaper than 2 beds in a so-called "youth" hostel, and conveniently located around the corner from Ming Hiker, a friendly, cosy backpacker hostel with cheap beer and free wifi.

I instantly liked Shanghai, with its mix of grand colonial architecture on one side of the Huangpu River brazenly challenged by wonderfully tacky monuments to capitalism on the other, and amazing cheap food. I think I ate xiao long bao (steamed dumplings filled with pork and delicious soup that you have to pierce very carefully or be scalded, as I’d already learnt the hard way in Singapore) almost every day, for breakfast and lunch!

We met up with some friends of mine from Singapore, Mavis and Sebastian, who took us to dinner at a palatial new restaurant that, in the Chinese ostentatious style, was nowhere near as expensive as it looked. We sampled a veritable feast of I have no idea what, but everything was delicious.

Unfortunately, apart from the historic Bund promenade, French Concession (where Seb lives) and Xin Tain Din (a bar district popular with ex-pats, similar to Singapore's Clarke Quay), we didn’t really explore Shanghai as much as we should have. Gill was actually quite poorly for the first few days, from the arctic air-con that first night in the hostel, and then it was just too damn hot or rainy to walk the streets as we are accustomed to. I don’t recommend Shanghai in August, unless you thrive in a sauna.

Of course no visit to China would be complete without the essential advance train-ticket debacle. Firstly, these trains notoriously sell out weeks, if not months in advance what with the rise in domestic tourism and the sheer volume of human traffic in this country. Then, we were trying to get about during the peak holiday period, and during the Olympics. Add to this the fact that you may only purchase tickets from railway stations – mythical places that no taxi driver seems to have heard of, where you queue for an hour and then delight in the confusion and frustration when the ticket seller does not speak English and turns out to be the only person in China who is genuinely rude and unhelpful, only to discover, once half your day is gone, that the train is fully booked.

After the train station spat us out we walked to the bus station to request tickets to our intended destination, Wudang Shan, the mystical mountain birthplace of tai chi. This it appeared was not possible for some reason, so we bought tickets to some random city that (we hoped) was close enough and figured we’d wing it from there.

Wuyuan

Wuyuan is really just the name of the town that provides a jumping-off point for exploring the many beautifully preserved traditional villages of Jianxi province.

Having once taken a brilliant moto-tour in Vietnam, we knew this was the best way to take in the sights. We were immediately won over by the first motorbike driver who greeted us, with the biggest smile ever across his honest, friendly face. A second approached and then, once a spark of interest was sniffed we were suddenly surrounded by eager helmeted faces.

At 7am we were met at our hotel by our perma-grinning bikers, who knowlingly “ah”-ed their way through the itinerary we somehow managed to sketch out by pointing at a map, and eagerly set off into the gorgeous countryside.


Our first stop was a bustling street market where we ate the best ever breakfast of some kind of dumpling-like scones stuffed with silken tofu and fresh greenery, deftly rolled and fried in front of us by a delighted mother and daughter team. All of 10p and we were stuffed!


Our first village was the perfectly untouched Cixi (not in the Lonely Planet). We parked up and were led by my driver down narrow cobbled lanes where children played, chickens strutted and old women crouched on low stools in the wooden doorways of ancient whitewashed brick houses.

The roofs are the most striking feature of these clustered traditional Huizhou homes, with their peaked ends jutting skywards (originally for the practical purpose of preventing fire from leaping from one building to another, and then later decoratively elaborated with mythical animals, birds and Ming dynasty flourishes).


Our guide brazenly marched us into people’s homes where the two of us alone would have hesitated, and we were welcomed by kindly old couples who proudly showed us the stunning wood-carvings within. Dragons curling around cryptic symbols and incredibly detailed scenes of imperial life with various Emperors holding court had us enthralled. Again we lamented our lack of Chinese comprehension as the meaning of each piece was animatedly explained to us by our gentle hosts.


The architecture was all very similarly styled, just varying in levels of opulence according to the status of the owners' ancestors. A huge stone archway, often overgrown with moss and clambering vines, would open into a welcoming courtyard, usually enclosing a centrepiece of a huge iron vase of water for good feng shui - sometimes inhabited by a golden koi carp.


The house itself would be entered through a heavy wooden door, featuring lion’s head brass knockers, and usually hung with red banners painted with with auspicious characters signifying “luck”, “happiness”, "wealth" etc. Once inside your eyes would immediately turn to the open roof pierced by a shaft of light, magically illuminating the surrounding wooden carvings and hanging red lanterns.


One kindly old man, with a white beard and pale, rheumy eyes, drew our attention to the coloured glass over the door. Obviously a rather more recent addition, a little out of synch with the traditional Chinese setting, we managed to gather that it was from France in the 1930s. Observing our interest, he then excitedly pointed to a rather obscure-looking doorknob that was also French art deco in appearance.


We noticed that some of the faces of the carved figures were roughly hacked off – a cruel reminder of the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards deemed such decorations imperialist decadence. We felt solemn at this moment, regarding this old man in his simple peasant clothing, with his meagre belongings gathering dust and cobwebs and wondering how richly his family had once lived.




We’ve read how those branded “intellectuals” had their entire libraries of precious scrolls burned in these raids, not to mention the forced labour camps for the “capitalist roaders” – who would just be seen as middle-class by today’s standards (and in that sense rather aspirational to the now wealth-oriented Chinese). Paradoxically, a faded portrait of Chairman Mao would invariably dominate one room in many of the homes we visited.

The Jiangxi villages were occupied by wealthy merchants during the Tang Dynasty. Judging by the faded memorabilia and rusty buckets, cobwebbed baskets and straw hats forlornly hanging from hooks, the current residents now seem to be simply farmers.


And what rich abundant farmland! The rural beauty of this part of China is truly remarkable with its vibrant green rice fields and all manner of crops, sparkling rivers and forestland under a clear blue sky - unmarred by the factories we'd heard blot the landscape of most other provinces.


Our lunch in an unassuming roadside restaurant was a veritable feast of pork, spicy tofu and a huge array of locally grown vegetables, including tonnes of green stuff and the most divine mushrooms we'd ever tasted. Real home country cooking in China seems to be far healthier than its slick city equivalent.

We spent the night in a charming little town, curled around a bend in a river where children bathed amongst the weeds, called Xiao Likeng. The guidebook and internet had suggested that this was a touristy stop but we arrived at dusk, just in time to see the tail end of a snaking line of Korean camera-snappers, and had the whole place to ourselves for one perfect balmy, lantern-lit evening.


The family owners of our guesthouse almost fell over backwards to make our stay comfortable. Even piling multiple duvets onto the traditional solid wood bed to serve as a makeshift mattress. We were entertained by their adorable young daughters and fed yet more amazing local food on the restaurant terrace, facing the original village stage (used for traditional performances), as we watched them fish a carp from the river below.


Aside from the utterly idyllic rural life we had experienced, I must also mention the boundless enthusiasm and gregarious nature of our indefatigable guides - even in spite of the scorching summer heat. They had barely a word of English between them, yet somehow managed to orchestrate a brilliant trip, affording us a truly fascinating and unforgettable glimpse into a rapidly disappearing way of life that was indubitably the highlight of our travels through China.