All the Tea in China

We're really beginning to settle into our time here in China and have begun to enjoy many of the customs of ordinary people here immensely:

Tea drinking.
Coming from Ireland, where we drink a lot of tea anyway, the adaption to Chinese style tea drinking wasn't a problem for me. Also the fact that at home I prefer my tea black as opposed to the standard "tea in your milk" preference of most of my compatriots further made the adaption to Chinese tea drinking a little easier for me. The ritual behind having a pot of tea in a Chinese tea shop is really beautiful and relaxing. The varieties of tea available is incredible and so far I haven't tried one that I haven't liked, whether that be green, jasmine or oolong. It's all so very good. We've also tried Mongolian and Tibetan yak butter tea on our travels. The Mongolian option was palatable enough it's green tea made with milk and flavoured with salt, I liked it. Yak butter tea is also made with milk and is much more pungent and not as palatable in my opinion, but then I was pretty ill at the time I tried it, so I wouldn't take my word for it!

Duck eating:
I cannot praise the Peking Duck eating experience enough. They really know how to cook the skin of animals in this country. That includes pigs as well as ducks by the way. When you have a Peking Duck dinner there isn't a scrap of the bird that isn't used. From the head to the bones all are included in the meal at some stage, and are served in different and interesting ways.

Interneting:
As travellers we constantly have our eyes peeled for the one chinese character that we can definately recognise - wang ba! The Internet cafe's here are generally massive, futuristic, smoky and dark. They also don't provide USB connections as a rule so unfortunately we've had big problems uploading photos which is disappointing for us. Maybe Hong Kong will be better!

Sleeping:
Ok so maybe we're not indulging in this national past time as enthuasically as the Chinese do but we do get some sleep from time to time. The Chinese however are allowed in their constitution to sleep at work providing that the sleeping doesn't interfere with the work of others. The places where you find people asleep can be very strange. So far in the middle of a busy road is the top of my list of weird and wacky.

Avoiding death:
That sounds dramatic doesn't it? But every time you try to cross the road here and do so successfully is a major victory. The green man may mean pedestrians can walk safely in most of the world (except in Greece and Italy maybe) but here it means that the oncoming traffic should speed up, swerve to make contact, or swing into the right turn lane which for some reason never stops for the lights. They're the ones that'll get you if you're not watching out for it. Riding in a taxi is a lot of fun too if you don't mind lots of lane jumping and horn blowing as opposed to brake using. I will never complain about Irish drivers again.

That's the round up for the mo. Sorry again for the lack of colour. I can't view the pages myself at the moment so I'm just guessing about the blandness! It's only slightly frustrating at least I can post and retrieve mails, so forgive me if I don't reply to comments.

Update from Manchuria

We're currenlty in Dalian in a city in the north east of China near to the Korean border. We're quite proud of ourselves for getting here successfully and for booking our return to Beijing for later in the week. I think we're aclimatising to the Chinese way of doing things, though the queue jumping and spitting won't be habits that I'll be taking home with me!

However on the positive side of things I love the tea here. I love wandering the markets even if it means being harassed a little and I love the game of bargaining (when I have the energy to engage!). I also really enjoy meeting the people here in China. It's so funny to be busy doing my own thing only to look up and find a small crowd has gathered to watch me or just to have a look at one or either of us. It's not intrusive it's just curiousity and it's not surreptitious it's bold and open and I appreciate that. I also find the kindness of strangers to be incredible. My faith in human nature is returning and being restored and it's a wonderful feeling.

Dalian seems to be a fairly typical Chinese city. It's definately not as polluted as Beijing and the annoying cough I've been cultivating has abated since we landed here a day ago. We were out at the Summer palace in Beijing before catching the night train to Dalian, the day was very hot about 38c and sticky. I can honestly say I have never felt as dirty after a day of wandering around. I had to make do with wet-wipes as we didn't have time for a shower before leaving Beijing andthey were filthy after running them over my sticky skin! No wonder my poor lungs are beginning to give out.

So we're returning to the final time to Beijing towards the end of the week and then we embark on a three week tour of the rest of the country ending in Hong Kong. I'm not too sure what the internet accessibility will be like as we travel so I may have to store up the next instalment until Hong Kong in July...

From the Rooftop of the World

We're currently in Lhasa, Tibet in the roof of the world and it's amazing to be here.

We took the Trans Tibetan train from Beijing on the 2nd of June and arrived here on the evening of the 4th. Getting here was as much of an adventure as actually being here and I will treasure the memories from that trip forever.

We travelled hard sleeper class which was an education in itself, believe me. We were due to travel soft sleeper which is slightly more salubrious in that there are only 4 berths per room and they have the luxury of a western style toilet. However hard sleeper it was for us due to the railway company overbooking the train. So we quickly adapted to the 6 berth rooms, no doors for privacy and the joys of a squat toilet on a train. Like I said it was an educational experience. We had a ball on the train despite the initial inconvenience. There were over 100 middle school children returning to Tibet after being in school in China for the past four years who decided to adopt us for the journey. There were times I was glad of the oxygen being pumped into our room as there were so many people gathered around us asking questions or simply just smiling at us. It was amazing.

On reaching Lhasa, I'm afraid I succumbed to a fairly serious bout of altitude sickness but thanks to a Tibetan drug called Gao Yuan Ning Jiao Nang I have rallied successfully. I would recommend this drug to anyone if you come here and suffer from the hell that is Accute Mountain Sickness.

Lhasa is an incredible city. The Tibetan people have the most beautiful faces I have ever seen. When the smile they light up all around them. Their language sounds like music and when they work together they sing. It's an amazing sound and one that makes you want to join them in their joy. I feel so lucky to be here and my only wish is that I could stay longer here.

The East is Red

We've been in Beijing for a week now and we're settling in nicely here! It's a cool and crazy town with lots of positive things going for it, as well as the inevitable negative ones as well.

If you're arriving into the city from the railway station watch out for taxi touts and make sure you have the phone number of your hotel so that even if you don't have the name of the place you're staying in Chinese script at least a phone call can be made to get directions!

We stayed pretty quiet for the first few days, we were lucky enough to have chosen a hotel right in the middle of the Chinese, not tourist, shopping district so there was plenty to keep us occupied for the first few days without us having to travel too far! Once we ventured into Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden city we were glad we had gathered our energy first! Unfortunately most of the buildings around Tiananmen are closed for renovations before the Olympics next year. So we weren't able to gaze on the face of Mao this time round! But we did encounter a very persuasive scam operation whilst just hanging out!

As westerners we are attracting a lot of attention where-ever we go. This came as a surprise to me to be honest and everytime we get our photos taken or just stared out of it I have to laugh! We're like mini celebrities! But the biggest surprise I've had is when a lovely looking Chinese girl approached me to stroke my arm and to tell me that my skin was beautiful! I didn't know where to put myself! But apparantly that's the reason for all the attention... She also invited us to view some paintings in the Forbidden City which in turn became a hard sell routine to get us to pay massively inflated prices for student art! Be warned flattery is a weapon too!


The Forbidden City

We did meet a real artist whilst wandering along minding our own business who was great fun and filled us in on loads of info about Chinese paintings etc. It made me glad we hadn't shelled out in the Forbidden City.



For now we can't upload any of our photos from the Trans Siberian trip or any of the ones we got here in Beijing as the facilities just aren't available here, which is a pity. As soon as we have any I'll post some to the relevant posts, promise!

We're heading off to Tibet tomorrow night on the train! I'm really looking forward to it. The train at it's highest point goes up to 5000m. We'll be provided with oxygen and will be on the train for 2 nights. One of the apparant slogans for the staff on the train is "Lack of oxygen is no excuse for not working". I'll leave you with that one and will hopefully report back after our foray into Tibet...