China is probably the biggest language barrier we have faced on our trip. We joined our tour going from Hong kong to Beijing. Another interesting group of people, most of them are just finishing a stint of travelling and the comparisons with everyone's adventures around SE Asia have been funny. We headed for China by train (they're still treated as two seperate countries, big border crossing, etc.) which was much nicer than Indian travel although not quite as good as Thai. Our first port of call, Yangshuo.
This little town was our first imersion in Chinese culture. Lucky for us it was a big tourist draw and a lot of the locals speak a bit of English, even if they can't understand it that well. Chinese is one of those languages which apart from the fact they have litteraly thousands of dialects, they have over 50 languages. You can't guess what the signs say, except for the usual western brands such as coke or McDonalds it's a case of look at the pictures on a menu, make animal noises and hope they have signs outside the bathrooms for male and female.
Another cookery course started in the market. Lots of vegetables, fruit and animals. Not just pork, beef and chicken, we also saw dog, duck, frogs, snails and a rather interesting if not grotesque performance by a female fishmonger preparing the live fish for our shopping bag. (Only fish and beef in our recipies!)
Our next trip had us up the Yangtze River. 3 Gorges Dam is the largest Hydro Electric Power station producing over 100TWH of electricity ever year. That's 100, 000, 000, 000, 000 Watt/Hours - Lots of light bulbs ! The Tour was a bit poor being all in Chinese, we did get some help from our tour leader but his translations where a bt slow. Much better than our Chinese at any rate.
A cruise on the Yangtze river was an expereince. Not quite 5 star with the Damp mouldy carpet in the bedrooms, we survived and saw some beautiful views of the varous gorges and learnt to play Mahjong which is extremely popular in China. One aspect we probably could have managed without was the Karaoke. Chinese people can't sing. The high pitch squeeling noise they make does not really work on modern day speakers, their solution of turning the volume up as loud as possible didn't help either. The captain of the ship gave a reasonable rendition to the delight of the chinese audience (our group, the only foreigners clapped when the locals clapped). We were even treated to some dance moves from the crew in traditional costume, Saturday night fever it wasn't. The experience was enlightening and with Karaoke being extremely popular we at least will be ready for the next time.... with Ear Plugs !
We're now in Yichang, a nice hotel in another large city. Catching up on emails, paying bills and stable sleep we have the delightful thought of a 16 hour train journey tomorrow towards Xi'an to see the Terracota Warriors. Stock up on the noodles, crisp sandwhiches and fruit and we should be OK.
As we're in China we aren't able to access the actual blog site, so images will have to wait until hopefully Japan - if not sooner, well keep checking?
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