Well. I know, I know, English teachers say never to begin with “well”, but I will. “Well” has a nice feeling to it, like you’re about to begin a tale of sorts.

Before I start my story/semi-rant, I’d like to point out that I do speak in generalisations. Not all of what I say will be applicable everywhere in mainland China. Really, you will be pleasantly surprised sometimes. :-)

Travel in China: The Bad

Most (mainland) Chinese tourists are very unpleasant, but sometimes quite amusing. For instance, every large tourist attraction has a rock (with the name of the place carved into it, usually in red letters) or a “traditional” style gate out the front. Generally you see people (usually groups with their uniform hats, who are led around by a guide with a flag and a megaphone) posing (and I really mean that in a “poser” sort of way) with the usual V-signs and strained cheesy expressions in front of the aforementioned edifice. Next, is the actual antics of these amusing people… The bus drives into carpark. Disembark. Pose in front of rock. Hop on minibus/chairlift/etc to “main viewing point”. Take photos. More posing. Get back on minibus. Go home. All of the aforementioned happens in the space of about half an hour. It’s really quite scary. And really common.

Most (mainland) Chinese men are chain smoking (you can smoke anywhere — smokers paradise, really!), constantly spitting (quite vocally), cocky (to an extent) and unfit. Really. It was really suprising to me, in a country with few overweight people (though it’s increasing), that people are actually very unfit (or just lazy when it comes to travel?). I’ve walked up quite a few Chinese mountains (Huang Shan, Lu shan, Jiuhua Shan, Kongtong Shan, Song Shan, and Wudang Shan… all… with… steps!) and observed. Usually they need to stop every 5-10 minutes for a rest. And then a smoke every 30 or so. All of the aforementioned mountains had chairlifts, too. The tourist mobs use the lifts.

Most (mainland) Chinese know next to nothing about the outside world (esp. Geography — they’re like the America of Asia). While this is in part to due to the nature of the government (ie: totalitarian fascist state — it’s definitely not Communist anymore) and the nature of the schools, it also extends to the national psyche. Curiosity and creativity is repressed (or at least there is limited opportunity in the education system) and perhaps because of this, suppressed by the individual. Time and time again, I’ve had to re-iterate that not everyone from overseas (the view is literally you are “Han Chinese” or “foreign”) has lots of money and a great job, and the reason why it’s easy for us (ie: “foreigners”) to travel in China is due to the very good exchange rate for us (not for Chinese who wish to travel overseas though). Also student backpackers have to be frugal. Despite being very fiscally responsible normally, when it comes to travel, (most) Chinese forget all that (and assume we are the same — ie: we are “rich Americans”).

The ticketing systems for many areas are very convoluted and incredibly mean. First a ticket to get into the area (usually between 30Y and 150Y). Then another to see place X (+10 to 20Y). Another for place Y. Then another to cross a bridge (+5 to 10Y), etc. This really leaves one with a bad taste in the mouth… and all these prices add up. I won’t go on about the toilets.

All (mainland) Chinese yell. Almost all of China is noisy. There isn’t much of a thought about noise pollution. People yell into phones. Yell at each other (and they’re not angry — it’s just the norm). Play their music openly, and loudly (really Chinese pop music is utter crap, eclipsing Western pop in idiocy… There are 10 [really terrible] mixes of the Numa-Numa song… I heard the same pop songs all year…). Cars, busses honk by default. It all accumulates into a sometimes unbearable white-noise, for those used to something different.

Travel in China: The Good

It’s not all bad however. If you can accept the fact that most parts of China are 2nd world, the odd place 3rd world, and a few otherworldly expensive places are 1st world, then it’s actually okay. It’s actually more than okay. China is an interesting and vibrant place, teeming with life and that constant rapid pace of “development”. There are even places to be found which offer moments of solitude. It also has excellent food (especially since different places have interesting local cuisine and your standard bowl of noodles is never the same wherever you go). The people really are friendly and helpful (when they don’t want your money), even if their habits/manners do sometimes seem a little lacking, different, strange, antisocial or just plain disgusting. I’ve had people offer me a bed/couch at their home, shout/cook me meals, and take me to meet their family and friends. Granted, if you know at least some Mandarin (beyond “Hello”, “Thank you” and “Good-bye”), this makes things so incredibly easy for getting along with people, and people’s respect for you will increase greatly!

Eating in China is very uncomplicated and easy affair (food is very important, and I agree!). Scraps are put on the table. You can slurp your soup, your tea and your noodles, and bring the bowl to your mouth to eat. Just remember to always bring your bowl to the serving bowls/plates/etc and not the other way around. The other big faux pas is to leave you chopsticks stuck vertically into your food (it looks like incense sticks, which are used to remember the dead).

Nice places to visit

• Tibet — it’s not China (though nearly all mainlanders will disagree, the rest being under house arrest :-S). It’s amazing. And a little sad, because of the repression. But still truly amazing and beautiful…
• Xinjiang (”East Turkestan”) — again, not China (people aren’t Han and speak a completely unrelated language). It’s a central asian state. They really like foreigners (and really, really dislike the Chinese). Avoid “Kanas” and the tourist stuff close to Urumqi (just another Chinese city), as it’s overrun with mainland Chinese tourists. Visit Kashgar! Kashgar! Also, Karakul Lake (there’s a nice guy offering a yurt and a few meals with his family). Good stuff.
• Northern parts of Guangxi province and southern parts of Guizhou province — not too many people travel to these places… There are numerous small Dong/Miao/etc (they’re not Han Chinese) villages. I could only visit Zhaoxing [Guizhou] and Chengyang [Guangxi], but they were both great.
• Southern Gansu province — beautiful place generally (and not very touristy)… Maiji Shan Grottoes (near Tianshui) are good.
• Suzhou, Jiangsu — numerous beautiful gardens, and an great museum by China’s only decent modern architect, I.M. Pei.
• Shanghai — enough said. It’s the best big city on the mainland.

In general, try and avoid all medium-large sizes towns and cities as they all look the same. Really. And it’s not particularly pretty. Try and escape to the countryside, and a few villages/towns which are “undeveloped” (or “developed” only to a lesser extent)… It’s worth it.

So…

If you stay in any country long enough, you’ll definitely see both the good and the bad (of the country, the country’s people, and of people in general). This is a double edged sword — your preconceived ideas of the place will most definitely be shattered, but on the other hand, you actually know something about the place, it’s people and even possibly more about yourself (such as how you react to certain situations, different environments, customs, cultures, etc).

Lastly, in order to get the most of your experience backpacking, you need to be prepared to get your feet dirty and really go out on a limb! Try and have a conversation with your 100 words of mandarin, take up that offer to have dinner with someone’s grandma, let someone practice their English on you, etc, etc. :-)

Well this is the last week of teaching in Sheyang High School, so I thought I’d try and give a good overview of my experiences of the past four months in this place.

Sheyang itself

Sheyang is a small town (well technically Hede in Sheyang County) of around 100,000 people, an hour from Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province. Shanghai is 5 hours away, by often cramped and smoke filled bus (you can smoke almost anywhere in China). It’s not particularly famous, although a former general and national defence minister grew up in Sheyang.

Like most Chinese towns, you’ll probably see plenty of weathered concrete apartment blocks, or white-tiled structures, which do make for a most depressing sight were it not for the presence of some greenery. The local roads are haphazard in terms of repair, a stark contrast to the well maintained national highway system. There aren’t many cars around (they’re very expensive), and most are small taxis. More prevalent are bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, mopeds and rickshaws. There is small river which runs through the town, and it’s quite common to see low barges meandering their way along it.

The place has very few foreigners (who are apparently all Conversational English teachers), perhaps 8 in total, and I never actually saw any around. As a result, staying in Sheyang has introduced Joe, Eliet, Heather and myself to the phenomena of being minor celebrities. This is double edged sword, as we gained free lifetime entry into the only Disco in Sheyang (more on this later), but at the same time endured the now stale mutterings, comments and exclamations of “Lao Wai” and “Wai Guo Ren”.

There isn’t actually much to do in Sheyang, besides eat. On that note, there is a pretty good selection of restaurants, so long as you wish to eat various types of Chinese food. Feeling game, we sampled so called Western-style “Berfsteak” [sic] and “TF Coffee” — both overpriced and major let downs. I never tried the local KFC (they always seem to be next door to “TIMES” supermarkets). Actually, a word of advice: avoid “Western” food in China. It’s just not the same, and definitely not worth the expense.

Table manners are much simpler than in the West. It’s polite to fill someone’s drink before your own. Never remove the main dishes from the centre of the table — move your bowl to them. Remember to match people’s toasts (ie: if they go bottoms up [”gambei”] you must as well). And lastly, never point your chopsticks at anyone, or stick them vertically into rice. Aside from that, it’s no holds barred. You can make a mess, leave your bones and scraps on the table, and it’s not a problem. There is no obligation to eat what is in front of you. You can eat dishes in any order (although here in Sheyang, people usually eat rice last). You only have to worry about Chopsticks, as they are your only utensils.

Food aside, there is a local Disco, which had a bouncy floor and the usual terrible techno, and it was good fun after a few drinks and with a few fellow friends. The drinks are essential as you need the confidence to get the party started! (There seems to be a propensity to do outrageous things like this when you’re away from home for extended periods…) Surprisingly, the local supermarket (”TIMES”) offered some interesting things, including the famous snack food “Wang Wang” (Joe and I dedicated a short film to it) and really cheap alcohol, especially the infamous “Baijiu” (White rice wine).

A word on Chinese drinking culture: Alcohol generally is only drunk with meals. Beer is usually to be had at dinner, but I’ve seen people drinking it at breakfast! “Baijiu” is generally reserved for more formal occasions, though depending on who you know, any excuse will do! Women generally tend to avoid the drink, or only in small quantities. This does not apply for men, and the universal competitive spirit exists among guys (”man points”) in relation to drinking prowess! Although there is no legal drinking age, most people under 18 don’t drink (it seems the Chinese start having a life once they reach university).

Sheyang High School

School here is not fun for the students, by any stretch of the imagination. Classes of 60. Cramped classrooms. A school day starting at 6am and finishing at 10pm (with only a 2 hour break at midday). A 6 day school week (sometimes even 7!). Mountains of homework. School consumes their lives — there is little time for much else. Many of my students used to do extra curricular activities when they were younger, but these were dropped due to sheer necessity. It’s very, very sad.

The reason for this madness: gaining entrance into University. Competition is extremely fierce, more so outside the major cities.

The school’s built environment is also pretty depressing — white tiled concrete buildings. They do, however, make for some interesting urban exploration. What is bizarre, considering the lack of space in classrooms (and absence of lockers for school books), is how many rooms are under-utilised or just not used at all. The school library is an eerie place indeed, and a testament to the fact that the students pretty much only read their textbooks. I never actually saw any library books inside — only dusty taxidermy exhibits and a room full of awards and medals. The school has a proper domed telescope, but again, it seems to be never used. Heck, the school even has a gym and an oval (with a running track), but they’re not used much either. It’s actually a real shame.

It’s not all gloomy however. There are two places of interest on the school grounds: the basketball and table-tennis courts, and the so-called “teacher’s garden.” The former attests to the popularity of these two sports, and the garden is actually very pleasant (Joe and I held our English corners there). I personally have little interest in basketball, but many students have asked me about various NBA players and teams — it really shows the paradox of China’s relationship with the United States. The culture is quite popular (this extends to pop music, clothing, and food, too), even though most people express a dislike towards the US.

Chinese students are immature relative to their Western counterparts, work ethic being the major exception! At the subtlest hint of kissing (or even a mild romantic moment) in a film (even an animated one), many looked away or appeared embarrassed. This is more pronounced with girls. That said, my students were always curious about whether or not I had a girlfriend, and had no qualms about expressing their views of my sister (many cries of “so beautiful!”), and jokes involving love or marriage got an easy laugh. They don’t receive any form of sex education whatsoever, and again I think that their social world (relationships, sex, etc) really unfolds once they leave high school.

That said, I am speaking in generalisations. The female students are generally very shy, but there are notable exceptions. For example, one asked me whether I thought pre-marital sex was okay, much to my surprise! Another regularly turned up outside Joe’s or my apartment door, invited herself in, and proceeded to demand things, much to our chagrin. I relished in small acts of revenge against this recalcitrant (she was not a student of either Joe or I).

Memorable Quotes

Many students left me some rather amusing messages, so here are some golden ones:

• “I love you, but I’m just a boy.”
• “A good dream every night!”
• “I want to kill you, because you will go!”

You must visit this mountain before you die. Seriously.

As you can probably see, it was fairly cloudy and foggy. The result was an mysterious, ethereal and overall stunning atmosphere. Alas, it also made taking photos quite difficult with my fairly basic camera!

The ascent wasn’t too difficult — about two and a half hours of climbing steps. What was a hassle, was the many workers hauling goods up the side of the mountain with us (to supply the hotel and other commercial operations at the summit). This led to some tight and potentially dangerous situations. For the lazy, there was the option of a cable car, at the not-to-cheap price of around 85 yuan (to put things in perspective, a bus ticket from Yancheng to Nanjing is about 80 yuan).

It’s really hard to illustrate the sense of scale there was when climbing Huang Shan. In the photo above, you can make out people climbing a near-vertical staircase… Unfortunately, I could not fit both parts of that peak into the shot from my vantage point.

The fog was clearly visible and semi-fluid… It often seemed like an peculiar organism.

See all of the photos in the photo gallery.

Nanjing

Nanjing ( lit. ’south capital’ ) is certainly one of the more beautiful cities in China — trees line virtually every main road, and the city itself is bordered by mountains, the Yangtze river and the old city walls. There is a certain charm to the place which is not seen in Beijing, which supplanted it as national capital.

We (most of us GAPers from Jiangsu) all tried to visit the Nanjing Massacre War Memorial, but, alas, it was closed for renovations (until November!) Slightly peturbed, we visited the Xuanwu lake. The lake (and the couple of islands in the middle) were impressive, and much fun was had playing pirate with the electric boats. Had a good lunch, then some tandem bike shenanigans.

Zhenjiang

The last stage of traveling to Zhenjiang was the spectacular — a huge suspension bridge spanning the Yangtze river. One could see the barges slowly ploughing the river, carrying all sorts of cargo.

This (I dare say) “junket” was financed by the local government — I suppose they figured it was in their interests to have lots of foreigners looking at the various things they chose to show us — a special school (for mainly the deaf), a bamboo screen factory (woven by hand, often taking several weeks for each piece), a clothes factory, the old administration complex (quite a few European buildings), a model farm, a new school (and became an instant celebrity. hah!) and a temple.

Two other GAPers were there with Joe and I — Andrew and Hugh. It was good to catch up again, and various amusing things transpired involving beer which I shall not go into much depth about.

The following is a recount of my experiences in Beijing:

Beijing… North capital…! One really huge city, with incredible traffic chaos — nobody really follows the traffic lights or signs (however a policeman in the center of a huge intersection wields a degree of authority)…. It’s every car, bike and pedestrian for them self (and somehow it works). The layout is essentially a grid, with wide concentric “ring roads” speeding up travel.

Our hotel was the “Holiday Inn” (downtown). Apparently it was 4 star. I would be reluctant to describe our particular room as meeting those standards — it was often noisy at night and the beds were hard (however some other people got more spacious and comfortable rooms), but it was more than adequate. After all, one does not go to another country to enjoy the hotels… :-P

And the toilet and basin swirled in the opposite direction! How strange!

I felt a little sorry for the lady hotel workers who would have to stand outside (but dressed in a really cool red coat and hat thingie) in the cold… seemingly all the time. So I tried to practice my Putonghua with varying degrees of success.

I wouldn’t recommend this hotel for it’s price.

After asking about 10 people along the way, I ended up finding an internet cafe ( “wangba” )… It was tucked into a lane, up a flight of stairs. Inside, it was dark and smoky (people can smoke just about anywhere in China) and generally almost full of people [For those from Melbourne, the cafe was somewhat like N2C in terms of atmosphere]… Most were playing internet games, in particular one which looked like Diablo but wasn’t.

It was a new experience walking alone around the streets at night, and actually feeling safe. There are always people around, and everyone is generally friendly. People seem surprised at my state of singledom. No marriage proposals as yet, however. :-o

The Hutongs

We also visited the house of the illustrious Mr Feng — once a widely renowned breeder of singing grasshoppers and fighting crickets (it’s true!). He showed us his instruments and devices for the upkeep of these critters, including a minute set of scales! I don’t think many others noticed, but Mr Feng was Muslim — he had a hanging of the Hadj on his wall, along with the more traditional Chinese trappings. Mr Feng had some rather cute puppies out the back of his house, as well as some strange birds…

The Great Wall

It’s hard to appreciate the scale and immense nature of the wall until you actually walk a section of it. It was actually really really hard work in places, with the steps being over a foot high, as the wall impressively climbed the mountains. To think such a thing went on for thousands of kilometers over such terrain is still mind-boggling. Anyhow, the view from the top of the section I walked provided a good view of the surrounding terrain — semi-barren, steep and breathtaking in it’s ruggedness. One could see the wall curling over and around the landscape on the other side of the valley. There was also a smaller track running somewhat parallel to the wall which led to two pagodas (pictured)….

Tienanmen Square & The Forbidden City

It’s really hard to actually appreciate the sheer scale of Tienanmen Square, let alone The Forbidden City. The square not only houses the “North Gate”, Mao’s mausoleum, a giant pillar — it is surrounded by imperious communist buildings and presided over by the giant face of Mao hanging on the Northern wall of The Forbidden City. Red flags were everywhere. As were tourists and stodgy vendors (never ever, ever pay their asking price). Nevertheless, the Square was exceptional with its atmosphere of scale.

The Forbidden City was even larger. One can look all the way through the consecutive inner gates for at least a kilometer… Buildings everywhere, but placed with a sense of deliberation — nothing felt “crowded” or haphazard. The architecture was exquisite, and I felt lucky that it was still preserved to be seen, given the track record of “preservation” in this country (quite literally a land of cranes). Indeed and unfortunately, the main part of the forbidden city was under wraps because of restoration. A pity, but that was only one part that was missed out of a overly fantastic wander.

Other Things

We also saw an Acrobatic show, which was fantastic and often jaw-dropping, as well as a Kung-Fu show, which was exhilarating too.

The “markets” as they are called, are indoors, and there are floors and floors of all matter of menagerie. The girls were in 7th heaven. At the top of floor of these buildings typically is a food hall — and the food is really good value and for the most part, really good.

All in all, Beijing was fantastic. I am eager to re-visit on my own (as opposed to being in a semi-tour) as I found Shanghai more liberating in that I was able to explore to my heart’s content.

See more photos in my photo gallery.