As mentioned in a previous post, I recently took a much-needed break from work to travel through China, Tibet (for the purposes of this blog, I’m considering it as separate), and overland into Nepal. This was my first time to China, a country I never really had any desire to visit as yet, and one I honestly expected to hate. Questionable politics, human rights issues, grime, spitting, rudeness…none of these things I knew about China were particularly enticing to say the least. But hey, you don’t know til you go right?
A friend of mine lived in China for awhile and was often back and forth to Japan. I was surprised when he told me that he actually really enjoyed living there, particularly his feelings that, compared with the constant social structure of Japan, it felt really free living there and people could just do as they please and no one cared. Now having been, I’d say that’s a pretty fair statement. I liked China so much more than I expected to. It took a few days to get used to the fact that I didn’t have to follow so many rules of etiquette when talking to people and could actually just act normal again. Super refreshing. Yeah, it’s a bit dirty. Yeah, people are spitting everywhere and babies just do their business in the streets through some handy slitted trousers. It’s smoggy so sometimes you have to wear a mask. But damn if it isn’t also vibrant and lively and full of a lot more sensory experiences than you get in Japan on a daily basis.
And the food. Oh man, the food! How good was it to actually get spice and a variety of flavours in my diet again! And dumplings/steamed buns galore, it was like a paradise. We could eat well for $5 a day if we wanted, which is essentially what it cost to get a good cup of coffee. For $5 you could also get a taxi a good half hour across the city. This country knows how to do value for money in some areas for sure.
I managed to hit up 3 cities in my whirlwind first visit: Beijing, Xian, and Xining. Quite a mix I have to say, so I’ll give you a quick summary.
Beijing: Coming into Beijing felt a bit like arriving in an Asian Toronto-LasVegas hybrid. It’s a pretty massive city so it’s great that taxis are so cheap. I had a whopping 24 hours here, so I decided to forgo the Forbidden City despite staying at a hostel right next to the east gate and instead headed to 798, an old warehouse district turned arts district. Full of tiny galleries and random art in the street, I highly recommend it. A quick stop through Tiananmen Square (it’s impressively big, weird and full of scammers) and the night market for some street dumplings, and I was off to the insanely crowded train station. China for the most part was much less crowded than I expected. This train station was not. Be prepared. Overall, Beijing seemed full of great food and highly liveable. Would definitely go back.
Xian: I got a bit more time in Xian, about 36 hours this time, and this is where I met up with my friend Caroline that I was travelling with. The terracotta warriors are slightly overrated but worth a visit (even more worth it if you bring something approximating a student card; driver’s licences and alien registration cards work great), but high season there would be hell on Earth. Really makes you wonder what ridiculousness you would command if you were named Emperor as a small child. Street food and the muslim quarter in Xian are tops and it’s a pretty manageable size city. The bird market has very few birds, and dodgy-looking massage places are probably actually ok (it may be dark just because they’re blind). Didn’t get a chance to ride a bike on the city walls but another time. Recommended stop.
Xining: Goddamn Xining. What a shithole this was. It seriously felt like the wild west most of the time. Rough, polluted, and full of hundreds of new empty apartment blocks just waiting for who knows what people to decide they want to live here. Gives people jobs sure, and maybe some false ideas of prosperity, but what a ridiculous waste. Xining is a good stop if you’re heading to Tibet to acclimatize yourself to altitude a few days before going to Lhasa, and the train is also only 24 hours vs 48 from Chengdu so that’s why we chose it. If you do make the trek up there, day trips are a must. There are some great sights nearby if you have a bit of time, including some Tibetan regions outside of the autonomous area. It actually seems like a really beautiful and interesting area on the whole, one I would definitely go back to, Xining itself is just a bit of a low spot. It did have a great nightclub though, and probably the best (and cheapest) steamed buns I had all trip. Top notch muslim food, cheap massages, weird government-mandated (we can only assume) morning exercise for old people, and store inaugurations of fireworks in the middle of the sidewalk round out our time there. Oh, did I mention the late-night military parade of tanks, trucks of farm animals and propaganda floats? Yeah. Xining.
Despite all this though, China really surprised me and I’m really looking forward to going back. I didn’t have enough time there this trip to get much of a sense of the daily reality of the politics and the experience of the Chinese people in any of these places, but don’t let the stories and the politics scare you. It’s well worth experiencing for yourself.
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