My slow travelogue crawl through my past adventures reaches it's final destination in China as our train pulled into Beijing West Railway Station a couple of hours earlier than planned. We were welcomed by a voice-over onboard in English, sounding a little like Donald Sutherland, extolling the virtues of the station building with its 'waiting lounges' and 'shop'. To kill time, walking around was the only way to keep us warm on a chilly morning, despite having all our baggage on tow. We tried calling Rob with our phone card from Shanghai, but now it had stopped working all together, so we ended up in a little phone shop that worked out cheaper and easier than a payphone anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, Rob arrived, and we taxi'd it to his rather grand apartment near his university. There we met an assorted bunch of his friends and flat-mates studying in Beijing with him, who were all incredibly nice and friendly - although Lucy apparently had a dark side, having tripped up her mum, who was on a visit, the night before. We had a nice conversation over breakfast, but it was not long before we popped around another friend's flat as it was the birthday of fellow student Barney. And the plan was: GO-KARTS! Unfortunately, getting there was another problem, as the taxi convoy we took were a little clueless about where it was. We had to get out, walk around, call the karting centre number and get a new batch of taxis before we finally headed in the right direction.
It had been a long time since I'd been karting, but it was easy getting back into the swing of things thanks to my recent Mario Kart GP Arcade sessions. My first race was with just myself and a couple of Chinese guys not part of our group, who were so bad they had to quit, leaving me to just scoot round the track on my own time-trial style. The next contest was a full grid, and I did pretty well, crashing just the once, but I was delayed when none of the staff came to help me out, so I had to wriggle my way out myself. Nevertheless, I still leapt three places, so I was happy with my performance. While others continued to kart ahead, Baptiste, Rob, Sabrina and I opted for a game of tag-team pool which must have featured a record-breaking number of jammy pots and flukey shots. This was all followed by a meal at a Japanese restaurant, giving us the opportunity to try out our language skills, but they were completely lost on the evidently Chinese staff. At least we could make some recommendations on what to order (but the potato salad seemed to garner the most praise). However, we couldn't stay long as we had arranged to meet Ilan for dinner.
We made it to Tiannamen Square a little later than planned, but couldn't find her at all. Turned out she was wearing a wig both to try out a new style and to fool us completely. She had been shopping with her friend Wan all day, and the two of them were ready to eat, so we took the subway (which included a very angry argument between two groups of strangers) to a place they recommended. It turned out to be all the way to the station we had just come from with Rob's friends! Never mind - it was a big restaurant with lots of spicy food and strange desserts ('fruit ice' turned out to literally be 'fruit' and 'ice'). We called it a night after making arrangements for heading to the airport, and as we left, we walked past some amazing late-night construction work going on for The Tube, a new building supposed to be ready for the Olympics, but looking increasingly unlikely to be. However, in it's current state, it looked like the crashed spaceship from Alien, and mighty impressive indeed. With the last train already departed, it was yet another taxi back to Rob's apartment, and as the previous partygoers returned one by one, we were soon ready for bed. Well, in this case, it was inside Dracula's sleeping bag on their massive comfortable pink sofa, which was a damn sight better than the hellish train ride from Xi'an.
ALL APOLOGIES
The next day was a chance to visit the last of our Beijing big-hitter tourist attractions - the Summer Palace. Rob joined Baptiste and myself for the day out, and were stunned at just how vast the grounds were. Rob had been before, but hadn't seen any of the buildings we went to at first, having arrived at a different entrance to the one he'd been through previously. We made our way up the hill and along winding steps and rocky paths to reach the main area of the palace, looking across the expanse of Kunming Lake. It wasn't pedalo season, but that probably gave us a better view.
However, pretty much every sign to every beautiful building would helpfully remind us that it was ransacked, destroyed and/or burned down by the Anglo-French Allied Forces during the Second Opium War in 1860. We figured that our party consisting of two Englishmen and a Frenchman would help redress the balance as we were paying to get in this time. Other interesting sights were the Buddhist Incense Tower, the Imperial phone line, the Marble Boat (not as impressive when the water around it had dried up) and a guy doing calligraphy on the ground with a big water brush. We were a little pushed for time, but it was a nice place to spend the afternoon. Once we'd returned to Derby's, we pretty much had to grab our stuff and go to meet Ilan to catch the airport shuttle bus.
Once we were on board the coach, we sat at the back with our massive sacks eating weird sweets (corn on the cob flavour, anyone?) and explaining the concept of "not for toffee/the world/all the tea in China". We arrived at the aiport, checked in our luggage, and headed to the passport check...only for everything to go tits-up. Ilan was refused entry. Apparently, the travel agency in Japan had said that she didn't need a visa if the stay in Thailand was less than fifteen days, but the Chinese officials weren't having any of it. For one and a half hours, Baptiste and I were stuck behind the checking gates hoping it could be sorted, maybe getting a different flight or if it was possible to get a temporary visa - but to no avail. And it got even worse. Because all our luggage had been checked in Ilan's name, when her flight ticket was cancelled, all our luggage (not just her suitcase) was removed from the flight, with no time to have them re-checked. So not only was Ilan now stuck in Beijing, so were our backpacks! Marvellous...With our flight about to leave, we had rush to the gate, leaving Ilan behind, but a promise that we'd get in touch with her and Wan, who she'd stay with until the matter was resolved, once we were in Thailand. We boarded in time, but secretly hoped that there'd be some problem with the flight so we could stick around and help Ilan. Although there was a little delay, we were sadly soon in the air. Bye-bye China...
So my final thoughts on China? Well, I think we experienced the full gamut of emotions during our time there, so overall feelings are decidedly mixed. There were nice people and nasty people, nice places and nasty places; some days were wonderful, others we'd rather forget. I guess a lot of our experiences can be drawn from the fact that China is not readily geared towards foreign tourism. Some people would happily stop for a chat or give us a passing smile and "Hello!", while others would just stop in their tracks and stare at us as if we were hideously deformed. There is little understanding or use of English, but then again, when you have a billion potential Chinese customers, who cares if a couple of poxy Europeans don't come and bother your business? And even when they do, it'd be nice if their sales techniques could be improved, as I'm sure they'd see the benefits.
The current world image of China is that of the new super-power, undergoing the kind of industrial change other parts in the world took centuries to accomplish in a matter of months. And while this is true, it's very clear that China is struggling to catch up with itself at the same time as tackling the problems lying underneath. When the Olympics arrive in Beijing next year, a lot of people coming from across the globe to visit are going to be very surprised to see such poor infrastructure, pollution and anti-social behaviour. I'd still consider returning to China, but I doubt it'll be in search of the hustle-bustle of another city; a countryside trek would be a far more tantalising prospect indeed. But why not check out my entire collection of China snaps on Flickr?
Well, that's it for China. Sorry it's taking so long, but perhaps I'll have more time to finish this journey write-up during Golden Week. And then I can finally write about actual stuff happening to me right now this very minute!
Next time: Thailand! Sun, sea, sand, spicy food and snorkelling!
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