Written on the 18th of July.
Hope you don't find it too stultifying.
So let's see what I can remember.
So, I left off at the end of the previous email saying that I was going to the Temple of Heaven the day after. Well, I can't remember much of the experience in the Temple of Heaven, so I won't bore you with it since it clearly bored me. Probably got some pretty photos, but to be honest I don't particularly enjoy sightseeing. Not to mention, you're tethered to your camera, and seemingly honour bound to not actually experience what you're supposedly seeing through your own eyes, but through the viewfinder of your camera. Which is rubbish. The cities in China are so alive and so utterly unlike those in England, that to spend your time walking slowly around something someone else has designated SOMETHING TO SEE seems a total waste. I've bought lots of lovely souvenirs, not sure who they're for at the moment. Wasted quite a bit of cash in all.
As you know, I have a laptop now! It's a decision I knew I'd both regret if I actually bought one, and regret it if I didn't buy one, and yep, I regret buying it. It's still amazing having it though, even if Windows is in Chinese. Never mind. In any case, Beijing is done with. It's a fantastic city, and one I think I want to come back to on my own, or with another person that hasn't experienced it. It's quite regimented, which is a good thing for tourists, but the language barrier is still immense; you've basically noone to talk to but the people you've brought with you, which is perhaps the reason I'm hesitant to go on my own. Utterly insane amounts of things to see and do. Course, I only spent four days there, so you never know.
The laptop, by the way, wasn't bought in Beijing; it was bought in Chongqing, but I'll get to that in due course. First, I spent Monday trying - with Smurf - to get to the electronics place that I told you about, in the utterly appalling heat that typifies all of China - and especially the South, where I'm going eventually, which is nice! But! Couldn't find it, so it was a total waste of time. Monday evening was taken up with getting to Beijing West railway station, which was miles away. And I tell you, it's not fun toting around a backpack, even if it is mine, which is horribly light, according to my friend. In any case, the trip from Beijing West to Xi'an was the first undertaken, and it was fairly uneventful; about twelve hours, overnight, so mostly it was spent sleeping, albeit with a bit of frantic writing on my part when the mood took me. Xi'an was a fucking awesome city, but because of the variegations of the trains, we were only there about twelve hours. We left our backpacks at the station - a transaction that was massively complicated, far more than necessary, but that's another thing that typifies China - way too many complications. The only thing we were in Xi'an for, really, was the Terrocotta Warriors, but the city itself was utterly different to Beijing. More informal, more dusty, more hot, more friendly. The Terrocotta Warriors themselves were pretty shit. Another example of my dislike for sightseeing, really, since I can sort of appreciate the cold beauty of the thousands of warriors and the endless wreckage of the Warriors that didn't survive the millennia. In Xi'an, as everywhere, the food was awesome; something that China beats the UK hands down in is food. Really. That's proper Chinese food, of course, not "English Chinese" food. It's a pity we didn't get to see more of the city, really, but that's just the way things turned out. The next step! CHONGQING! To get there, of course, we had to go back to the station, get all our bags - my friend's girlfriend has a suitcase type thing that's massive (a hundred litres) so going up stairs is an appallingly difficult endeavour that thankfully said friend and girlfriend generally deal with. And, of course, lots of steps to get into train stations, and not often any escalators. This train journey was another twelve hour one, and this time we were on "hard sleeper" rather than "soft sleeper." The main difference was a really fucking annoying difference: it's about nine o clock, and I'm reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, and bam, the lights go out. Fair enough, thinks Kurt, I'll turn on the bed light that every train I've been on ever has had. Have a bit of a search behind me, to discover the only thing on the wall is an oxygen supply, which suggests a certain fragility of the train itself that is a tad worrying. So no reading for me. Fucking hell, this is a long paragraph.
We had some fairly basic food on the train, as you'd expect, but it was quite nice; nothing to the amazingness of genuine Chinese food though. I may have said this before, but bause are just to die for. Dumplings with meat in them should not be so transcendentally delicious. We get to Chongqing with no problems, although my friends seem to get very stressed about getting on and off trains, rather unnecessarily I feel. We had to trail around Chongqing for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages because a) the taxis are FUCKING BASTARDS in Chongqing, b) the first hostel we went to no longer existed, c) the second hostel we went to politely gave us a sheet of paper declaiming their special affiliation to the army and how this meant they could no longer take in foreigners and d) the third one was quite expensive so my friends dithered over it for a while. Chongqing itself, though... man, it's insane. So huge. If you thought the skyline of, say, Manhattan, was impressive, Chongqing beats it and then jumps up and down on it repeatedly, laughing. I have a short panoramic video of it that I'm likely not ever going to get the opportunity to upload, but basically half the damned buildings have at least twenty storeys. Most have forty. We were on the eighteenth floor of our seriously snazzy hotel - it had a revolving restaurant on the 29th floor! - and the view was just gobsmacking. ESPECIALLY from the revolving restaurant. When leaving the hotel - we'd always have to walk, because, as I may have said, the taxis were FUCKING BASTARDS - you'd walk down the shopping street and it was enough to give a man an inferiority complex. Towering, shining buildings everywhere. But then, the municipality of Chongqing has thirty one million people, so it's pretty damned big. In Chongqing, we mainly spent our time going around street markets, buying stuff - in my case - or trailing me - in the case of my friends. I've bought some quite nice gear - the laptop wasn't bought from a street seller, honest - and I tell you, my sunglasses are fucking awesome. Bought a nice bag, souvenirs, sunglasses, a little painting, all lovely stuff. The laptop, however, I bought from a shop directly opposite the hotel for 4800 yuan - I'll let you work out how much that is if you're bothered - and it's a pretty good machine. But I just really enjoyed the experience of walking down the murky streets with street stalls lining each side, selling pretty much everything under the sun. I can haggle now, too, since I know the numbers all the way up to 999, and how to say "too high!" and bu yao, "don't want", and so on and so forth. My Mandarin is coming along nicely, as it happens, and I've only been here two weeks. So Chongqing was amazing. The view from the aforesaid revolving restaurant was phenomenal, just the most ludicrous skyline you can imagine. Now, from Chongqing, we got a river cruise up to Yichang; three days and two nights, a little shorter than I was expecting. My friends worrying about finding the boat did detract from Chongqing a little bit, but in the end we found it no trouble.
The cruise itself was good fun; it's always nice to spend time in a good room, with food you don't have to pay for (except at a remove, of course), and with people actually serving you and occasionally speaking English too, usually with excessive pride in said ability. The little tours, however, were a bit rubbish. An extension of my dislike of regimented sightseeing, really. On the first day we went up to Fengdu, the Ghost City, and it was so phenomenally hot I have quite literally never sweated as much in my life. Not altogether pleasant, but the temple was nice. Spending quiet days on the cruise playing cards, eating, drinking, talking, watching films; it was a nice counterpart to the "we must go and see stuff" attitude in the cities, although said attitude is excellent, don't get me wrong. The second day's stopoff was a bit more rubbish, mind, but still qute fun. We took little "rustic" boats up Shennong Stream, for an hour, and while it was moderately interesting it was sort of a weird choice for a stopoff. Still, unsurpassed beauty from the Yangtze river, of course. And the tour guide singing us a love song was appreciated. Third day's stopoff? Not so much. We stopped off at the Three Gorges Dam project, and if that sounds interesting, you've not been there. We had forty minutes at the first bit of it - a viewing platform with the dam receding into the ever-present haze, and that was it - and we spent thirty minutes sitting in the nicely air-conditioned coach. Second bit was half an hour on a viewing bit between the industrial wasteland surrounding the ship lock part of the project, and the industrial wasteland surrounding the ship lift part of the project. Impressive, of course, and the dam was beautiful in a terrible, industrial kind of way, but utterly, crucifyingly boring once you've seen the dam. Still, with people you like it's not boring, of course, since there's that newfangled talking to do. Then, back on the boat and we arrived in Yichang! Which doesn't merit its own paragraph, trust me, we were there for an hour. Its only claim to fame is that it's the endpoint for the river cruises - every single of the taxis preying on the newly arrived tourists went "Airport? Airport?" so presumably most people don't spend much time there either. Eventually we made it to the station, bought tickets fortuitously for a train an hour later, went an had some excellent - of course! - and surprisingly cheap food right near the station, and buggered off to Shanghai.
This train journey was a bit longer - twenty three hours, fifty minutes. We spent most of it either playing horrifyingly long-winded and complicated card games, or watching DVDs that we couldn't hear because my laptop's speakers are, y'know, laptop speakers and the train was quite loud. Still, it's a train journey, it's not supposed to be fascinating. Now, of course, we were bloody miles away from Beijing; more and more people speak Cantonese in Shanghai, or, in fact, Shanghaiese, as opposed to Mandarin. Makes communication that bit more interesting, as I'm sure you'll appreciate. Of course, Shanghai is where I am at the moment, and it is as a matter of course bloody amazing. It has a metro system that, while rubbish compared to Beijing's, is within walking range from the hostel so no taxis for us. However, there's surprisingly little stuff to see in Shanghai - the city itself is impressive, but there's not many standalone sights. But we live near East Nanjing Road, which is enormous and very crowded and really fascinating. Apart from the ever-present hawkers going "Watch? Bag? T-Shirt? DVD?" which is really rather annoying. There's less restaurant streets, which makes getting that excellent real Chinese food a little more difficult, but happily there's a wonderful place just near the hostel which does the most insanely amazing fried egg and tomato you could ever hope for, as well as fried beef and onions, and noodles, and pork and peppers, and... man, it's amazing. We've gone on a little river sightseeing trip here, which thanks to the vibration of the boat, has yielded a shitload of eversoslightly blurred and thus totally useless photos, but it does bring me onto the skyline. It looks seriously fucking futuristic. There's the TV Tower, two random globes, sharp pinnacles and triangles and lots of straight lines and some seriously beautiful, if austere, architecture. The two sides of the river are like two cities, too; there's the Bund, which is all faux-Old Town, and bars, and resturants and whatnot, and then you have Pudong, which is the aforesaid futuristic, austere architectecture - a business centre to rival any other. Utterly fascinating city. We've been to a few parks, played lots of frisbee. Holy shit, I nearly forgot the crazy old Chinese woman. It was amazing though, and our first night in Shanghai so just a great way to be introduced to the city. Today we played frisbee in a park and once again lots of small children joined in, and Chinese small children are like normal small children for cuteness, times one hundred. They were quite good, too. Basically I love this country for its verve and vigour and utterly amazing exploding LIFE. Censorship and communism, not so much. But there you go, you can't have everything, and it's basically not Communist now anyway.
So. That's more or less it. Long, isn't it? I did tell you. Sorry. I don't expect you to read all of it, it's basically the raw contents of my brain poured down into digital form through the medium of my fingers. It's pretty fucking boring, I imagine. But the country has made a bit of an impact on me, or rather the people have, because they're just so utterly real and lifelike; not like the clones and the drudges of London, for instance. I think Austria will make an excellent juxtaposition to this, although I suspect I shall be quite cold in Austria after being in China all this time. Oh yes, and I've lost my passport, which is a massive bastard, because it will totally fuck me over. If I don't find it, of course. It's likely I will.
Yours faithfully,
Kurt
