Resurfacing

Bwahahahahaha, just when you thought I'd gone for good! Can't get rid of me that easily!

We touched down in the sunny north Wednesday morning, in a torrential downpour (welcome to sunny Queensland!) and are staying at Matt's aunt's and uncle's place, a divine Queenslander. Only potential problem is 1) nobody bothered to tell us that this suburb is Dengue Fever Central during the wet season (just coming out of it) and has been for the past 3 years (the Japanese paranoid in me got some airing at that news) and 2) the neighbours are not above popping into the house and pinching stuff. Weird stuff though - our cameras and laptops were untouched, instead they took some coins, a lighter, a bottle of half-drunk champagne and some Pepsi Max. Hmmmmmmm.

It is nice to be back. Just catching up on the little aussie things that we missed, like steak, Villis sausage rolls, BBQs, trashy magazines in English, Coopers Pale Ale, thunderstorms and the Beach. Oh yeah, bring 'em home to mama!

I think my apartment's trying to kill me

Here I was, barfing up a few lung cells but genki and looking forward to our Sayonara Party, when, just as we are leaving... I go arse over tit down the stairs of our apartment (steep fuckers). Actually, my right leg slipped down a few steps but Dicky Knee decided to stay, getting twisted back under me. Memories of torn ligaments and 4 months on my back (not even in an interesting way) got to me. A nice "See you the fuck later" parting gift from my apartment. Thanks.

I bawled. I decided I was too upset to go to the party. Matt pleaded. I bawled some more. I relented. I cried a few more times on the way to the Hub. I got the knee on ice, sat down, had a beer and suddenly I was sane. Oh the healing power of the amber brew. My knee seemed OK, just a little bruised and grazed.

The Sayonara Party was great, but I realised at the end that Sayonara parties in general are a bad idea. Nearly 40 people showed up, so that's 40 people we had to say goodbye to. I hate goodbyes. They suck. I was OK til Tama-chan began crying and that was it.... We've made so many top-shelf pals in Japan, and although I'm usually really pragmatic about goodbyes, once someone starts with the waterworks, that's it. It's all on.

The Attack of the Lady Bloggers - Marty, Kat, moi, Jenn and Schoolgirl

Our ADSL gets cut-off tomorrow, so no updates for awhile. We move out tonight (a big thank you to our buddy, let's call him "Albert", who is letting us stay with him for a couple of nights).

Let's hope I don't have to rename my domain www.ochokochoii.com (aka www.clumsydumbfucks.com).

Sayonara Party Photo Gallery

Spewin'

...well not exactly. Not yet anyway.

Those NSSOMBs (non-specific sons-of-motherlovin'-bitches) have dealt me an ear infection on top of the three bucketloads of mucus I've already got lurking in my lungs. Ergo, I've been given antibiotics, ergo I won't be able to go to town on pickling my liver come Saturday night's Sayonara Party.

The good news is that the antibiotics the (lovely) ENT gave me supposedly don't react with alcohol. But I need some support on the ground. Please help me justify my intake of a pissy couple of glasses of champers. I promise. Only a couple.

Just keep Pinku away from my drinks. Don't let her innocent prattling about knitting fool you.

Packer elves

Holy Shit, Batman, less than 4 weeks and I'm gonna be Mrs. McG!

We have an insane amount of crap to pack and send away, so it's just as well we make a good team - I love putting stuff into boxes (Matt hates it) and he likes taking the boxes to the post office and settling all the last minute bills (I'm far too lazy for such administrivia).

We have been procrastinating a bit, but we did have an entire season of "24" to get through, so don't be too hard on us.

6 days and counting before we fly fly away. It will be hard to leave, so just as well we have nuptials to look forward to...

happy. birthday.

to. me.

And my buddy Jeremy. And my blogger friend Gunnella. And let's not forget Hitler, may he roll over in his grave.

We survived China...

...we think. 14 days, 1400 kilometres, 600 photos and a decent tan later, we are finally home. I am presently delirious with a nasty bug but stoked about how fucking marvelous (and yet how singularly frustrating) China was. So pass me another
Codral and let's begin our adventure...

Big Stories in Little China:
Day 12&13: Last Stand in Beijing
Day 10&11: Shanxi Province
Day 9: Great Wall at Mutianyu
Day 8: Rest. Rest. Rest.
Day 7: Back in Beijing
Day 5&6: Qingdao and the Misinformation Centre
Day 4: Beijing's Hutongs
Day 3: Great Wall at Huanghua
Day 2: Beijing - The Continuing Story
Day 1: Beijing

Photo Galleries:
Beijing - Street scenes
Beijing - Markets
Beijing - Hutongs
Beijing - Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square
Beijing - Summer Palace
Great Wall of China
Shandong - Qingdao
Shanxi - Cloud Ridge Caves
Shanxi - Hanging Monastery

Day 12-14: Last Stand in Beijing

If you're gonna be sick in Beijing, the best place to be sick is Haoyuan Binguan. It is seriously comfy (the hands-down best bed I've slept on in 3 years), the courtyard is a tranquil haven of blossoms and wind chimes and the hospitality is superb. We encountered the sweetest, most helpful people at Haoyuan.

I stayed in bed. For two days. On the afternoon of our last day (Thursday) I put my aching lungs to the test and dragged myself to the Summer Palace. If we'd been to the Summer Palace on the first day of our travels then no doubt we would have been rendered dumbstruck. As it stood, we'd already seen so many awe-inspiring sites, it was all a bit ho-hum. Although the artwork on the roof of the corridor encircling the palace was damn cool...

I love that there is no such thing as hands-off branding in China...

McJade

McHome

Finger Lickin' dim sum

Everything is up for grabs. Chaos. I love it.

Friday morning we left Beijing. I was sorry to bid it farewell but half relieved that soon I'd be in nice, clean, efficient Tokyo. The two cities may be Far East bastions but they couldn't be more different in so many ways.

And we left without succumbing to the dreaded "squits" that our charmingly paranoid Japanese friends told us was a dead cert. We didn't drink any of the water (bottled water is available everywhere) and all the food was great. We had a bit of an "episode" with the Beijing Duck but it wasn't the bird's fault. Eating a kilogram of duck fat would do that to anybody.

Tokyo from the air

Kinki's Daily Dose... Transport

OK, so it's no Shinkansen. Trains in China are fairly reliable (at least out of Beijing) and damn they're cheap! They rarely run on time, the toilets inevitably flow over and the beverage cart-lady doesn't bow as she leaves the carriage, but my god. It's s.o c.h.e.a.p.

For a sleeper train to Datong you pay 90 yuan for a hard sleeper (140 for a soft), equal to A$15. You can also save a lot by taking sleeper trains so you save on accommodation. They do take it out of you, though. Although we slept, we were inevitably buggered the next day.

And you never want for a taxi, rickshaw or cycle to take you anywhere you want to go for next to nix. There are people clamouring to lighten you of your yuan.

Kinki's Tip for the Vacation

Do yourself a favour and go to China! Not only are the sights breathtaking, the people and culture are an extraordinary pot of kindness, eccentricity, candour, curiosity and earthiness. Blend that with some eye of the opportunist, and top with a cocktail olive. It's cheap. With a westerner's wallet, it's too cheap not to take advantage of this varied and peculiar country.

Days 10-11: Shanxi Province

There were no soft sleepers left to Datong, so we took the hard sleeper option which was not too damn shabby. The only real difference is that there is no air conditioning (crap if it's cold or really hot, but it was a mild night), no closeable door, and there are 6 berths to a comparment rather than 4. The top bunk was so not an option - I would have dislocated my other knee getting to it. But we had a bottom and middle berth and it was comfy, although the pillows were crap.

Datong is a miniature Beijing covered by a layer of coal dust. As a town, it's not particulary interesting, but it is the gateway to two amazing sights - the Cloud Ridge Caves (Yungang Shiku) and the Hanging Monastery (Xuankong Si).

Little Matt in Big China

Matt and I took a CITS tour to the caves and temple. OK. We sold out. It couldn't have worked out better. Our fellow tourists, 4 Belgians, an American and a Japanese, were great value. Our loyal CITS guide was a treasure trove of information (perhaps too much) with all kinds of snippets, for example, did you know that 1 gram of coal from Datong releases 8 kjs of energy, compared with other coal which only releases 4 kjs (not a physicist so figures may be crumbly)? No, we didn't either. Do you care? No, we didn't either.

But it was good to get an insider's take (albeit one with verbal diarrhea) on the Caves. The formation of them is quite mind-blowing. They date back to 460 AD, the architects first digging a hole from the top of the caves, which let in light and carving the sculptures from the top using ropes. I can't even imagine this feat today with all our technology, let alone 1500 years ago. Bugger me stunned.

Second stop was the Hanging Monastery. Same crazy-arsed feat, built around the same time as the caves - the builders used ropes from the top of the cliff, to carve out the foundations from the rock and build the temple from there. It looks precarious but it's solid. At least that's what we were told, although you do have the option of paying 1 yuan "insurance" when you go in. Hmmm.

It's safe! (maybe)

In one of the chambers was a big boddhavista with about 20 small bodhisattvas surrounding it, all of them with their heads missing. Apparently during the Cultural Revolution, the communists, in their frenzied attempt to purge non-Mao related religions from China, chopped all their heads off. They were too scared to take the head off the big buddha though. What that says about the perpetrators, doesn't need to be said here.

The terrain of northern China is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's basically desert (apparently the area used to be covered with forests but fires from all the wars, turned it into wasteland) broken up by deep canyons and villages of cave-dwellings.

Back in Datong around 6 p.m, Matt and I, not to put too fine a point on it, stank. Datong's main (read, only) industry is coal and as it's located next to the pass leading to Inner Mongolia, it's dry, dusty and sooty. Ergo, so were we. After a day of touring, we were desperate for a shower. Some of the guys from the tour, Ian, Maria and Sebastien were staying at a hostel near the station so we tried to convince the staff there to let us have a shower before we got on our sleeper train.

At first they were obliging. They said we could have a shower on the 4th floor. We went to the 4th floor. At the end of a long corridor were pink lights and a row of girls lined up along the wall. It looked, ahem, rather dodgy. A man came to greet us and said Matt could have a shower, but no women were allowed. Now, why don't you tell me what kind of shower Matt could have had?

We went back to the first floor, explained our dilemma and they said, "Yes. Man can have shower. Woman, no." Bloody Hell. Of course, we'd forgotten our manners and the universal palm-greaser, so we offered them money. 8 yuan for a shower. Please? No problem! was the response. You can have a shower on the 8th floor. But no women. Huh? We explained that I didn't care having a shower in the men's shower room. I was so frikkin' desperate I'd have had a shower in the street. OK. You can lock the door to the showers. No problem! Mission accomplished.

After our shower, we hung out in Ian, Mari and Sebastien's room. Sebastien went down for a "massage", and when he came back, had stories of having a reasonably crap massage, with the hard sell afterward. The lovely filly finished the massage, presented him with a porn mag and pointed to a body part not previously massaged. He demurred, saying, "No, that's not what I asked for."...

Kinki's Daily Dose... Mao

Mao for sale

How much can you criticise the Cult of Mao without being censored in China?

Matt asked who we thought was a reasonably enlightened Chinese person what she thought of Mao. She said, "Chinese people love Mao". She then went on to say that nobody is perfect, and he made some mistakes, like the Cultural Revolution.

I don't know about you, but I reckon a Revolution that directly or indirectly killed 30 million Chinese is a bit bloody more than simply a "mistake".

That's not to say everyone feels the same way. But after our visit to Mao's mausoleum and from the interactions we had with Chinese people (for example, one of the hawkers at Huanghua tried to sell us "Mao's Red Book", putting the book to her heart and looking toward Heaven. Enough said.) adoration of Mao, the "Saviour of China", seems to be the status quo. Blame for the Cultural Revolution was, of course, officially handballed to the Gang of Four after Mao's death, so he has managed to remain sanctified in the people's eyes.

Big Brother is alive and living in China. People hear what the government wants them to hear. Of course, that's true to some extent in most countries, but China has cut itself off from the rest of the world. You can't access any internet sites from China with a free domain, such as .blogspot, or .typepad, assumedly because it's too difficult to police what amounts to a massive source of free, potentially damaging (in China's eyes) information.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Even if you only take a few overnight trips, take a small towel (like the ones you get in an onsen). You can usually persuade cheaper hotels (that have a shared dorm section and therefore common showers) to give you a shower, but towels are not provided.

Cloud Ridge Caves Photo Gallery
Hanging Monastery Photo Gallery

Day 9: Great Wall at Mutianyu

The Devil made me do it. He strapped me down, forced me into a mini-bus at gun-point and cried to the driver, "Dammit, take me to the Great Wall...". I was a woman possessed. I needed more Wall.

We decided to go to Mutianyu along the same route as last time (the Mutianyu section branching off from Huairou), but as we approached the bus station, a man accosted us with his little cardboard sign - "Great Wall - Mutianyu". We hesitated (almost certain death when dealing with a hawker). He was in. The thought of the #916 to Huairou again made us cave in. We negotiated a return price.

We had begun our tour de force of Mutianyu. Mr. Jack, our esteemed mini-van driver, was. a. maniac. He insisted on driving at break-neck speed, even in traffic jams. He weaved through traffic (OK, he used the sidewalk a couple of times) like a rabid rabbit on heat.

The Great Wall at Mutianyu is not quite the ascetic experience of Huanghua. There is a serious hawker's route up to the cable car and a few busloads of tourists (we assumed they were Japanese by the orderly lines they were forming outside the bus) near the carpark. But the wall itself was surprisingly deserted. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom (very pleased, me), I was feeling chipper, I remembered my camera battery and I could walk for miles with Dicky Knee shutting the hell up. Part of the wall was crumbling and unrenovated but it was still navigable.

It was divine. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

Mr. Jack delivered us safely back to Beijing. We were dishevelled. But alive.

The Great Wall of China Photo Gallery

Day 8: Rest. Rest. Rest.

Must. send. demon. throat. infection. back. to. hell.

Day 7: Back in Beijing

Enjoying the peace and quiet ($%!@!)

It was inevitable. After a week of eating mostly meat (albeit delicious meat), and dim-sum, wandering around northern China with the sandy winds coming off the plains, jostling with the funk of 14 million people (half of whom smoke) and the stress of travelling with little more than a few key phrases under our belt, I got meself a little ol' throat infection.

The sleeper train back to Beijing didn't help. I slept only a few frightful hours, the (apprentice?) train driver jerking the train every 100 metres or so. The sleep I did get was shattered by the 6.30 a.m "Ni Hao! It's Kenny G o'clock!" music piercing my brain.

Even worse was the infernally long and disturbing whistled version of "Auld Lang Syne" and a medley of classic favourites, played at top pitch throughout the compartments before "lights out" at 11 p.m. I've never been so grateful to have a deaf ear.

A riddle - if it's a sleeper train, and it doesn't arrive in Beijing until 11 a.m (2 hours after it was supposed to), why play "piped' (read "drilled") music through all the compartments from 6.30 a.m? Some of the C-pop was OK, rather tuneful in fact, but then they started with hacked versions of English classics (if I never hear "The Power of Love" again it won't be too soon), Chinese opera (oh god, shoot me) and shrill whistled elevator music. When I book a sleeper berth, it means I want to sleep, not listen to crap music.

Getting accommodation in Beijing straight off the train was not so easy. We called around a slew of places until we got a room at the Far East Hotel, located in central Beijing amongst the hutongs.

The Far East was built in the 1940's as a traditional courtyard hotel. It's not flash, but it's comfy and one section of it has been turned into a hostel, meaning plenty of traveller's services, including cheap internet, a luxury in Beijing. Actually staying in the hutongs was an experience. I loved wandering around the narrow streets at night (the evening sky was always ablaze like a late sunset) where people congregated to chat, knit, play pool, play cards, eat kebabs. It felt like a summer Sunday evening every night we were there.

I met with my first hole-in-the-floor Ni-Hao toilet in the hutongs this evening. As I mentioned before, each hutong shares a common toilet. In this one, there were 4 narrow stalls separated by a short concrete wall, no doors and no lighting, almost certainly a blessing, although I pity the poor bitch who loses her footing and slips into the fiery pit of faecal hell. There was another lovely filly using the amenities, her head poking out. I couldn't resist. I mumbled "Ni hao" because, well, it seemed like the polite thing to do. You know, you're sharing an intimate bodily function and you can see their head - doesn't seem right to be rude about it. She returned the greeting. I finished my business and got the fuck outta there.

"I'm not sure, but I think I'm supposed to wave..."

Kinki's Daily Dose - People

While tramping the tourist trail is fine and dandy, it was the everyday street-life and people watching that fascinated us the most.

China is a massive country and it's impossible to generalise, but we found that the people were, for the most part, cheerful campers, particularly the taxi-drivers. We had some classic taxi-drivers. I'd like to say they couldn't drive for shit, but in fact, we're still alive so they must have been doing something right. We had a cabbie ask Matt (through gesture) whether I was a "hot chilli"; we had a cabbie spurt out every single english phrase he knew (took about 10 seconds) consecutively, as if it were a meaningful sentence and when we started to laugh, he started to laugh and the three of us were in fits for a good 5 minutes. Stuff like that made me feel good about China.

One morning we needed to go to the train station but we couldn't remember the word for "station" so we mimed "choo-choo train" complete with steam whistle (OK, so we were desperate). The cabbie liked it so much he started doing it. In fact, a flock of the cabbie's mates chewing the fat around their own taxis liked it so much they started doing it, too. We had 6 grown-men (+me) doing the "choo-choo train" dance on the street. No surprises that the cabbie took us exactly where we needed to go.

The service industry is not a finely-tuned machine, like that of Japan. There is no "irrashaimase!" when you enter a shop. People are more likely to bark at you in China, not pussyfoot around you because you are a paying customer, like in Japan. I both enjoyed the earthy candour (almost vulgarity) of the Chinese and missed the deferential politeness of the Japanese.

At least you knew (mostly) what the score was in China. They want your money. Clear and simple. It seems that although money is the oil that greases everyone's rickshaws in China, the attitude is out and proud, baby. In Japan, money is a covert means to an end. Not so explicit.

Although there is undoubtedly a rigid set of laws that the people have to adhere to, as an outsider I found Beijing to be an anarchic city where anything and everything goes. There are few airs and graces in Beijing. People are wandering about in there pajamas eating dinner in their local restaurant. One man we saw was burning a fire in the middle of the road (politely drawing a wide circle around his campfire so the cars could go around him), people are blowing their nose in public, everyone jaywalks (traffic light? did anyone see a traffic light?), no-one seems to give a shit about manners. There are bucketloads of police around, making sure everyone "behaves" I guess, but there was still low-level anarchy abounding.

I wore my shoes inside the hotel room, just because I could. My god. It was awesome.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Drink lots of Tsingtao Beer. It's good shit.

Day 5 & 6: Qingdao and the Misinformation Centre

Day 5
My threshhold for inconvenience and discomfort is reasonably high. Except if I'm hungry, dirty, tired, need to pee or any combination of the above, then the threshhold is compromised and the dirty little tanty-warriors storm the palace.

We had originally arranged to stay with Matt's cousin's wife's family (yes one of those) in Qingdao, but a few days before our arrival, Mama-san rather inconsiderately slipped a disc in her back and was confined to hospital. So we had nowhere to stay. Armed with a few suggestions in the Lonely Planet, I approached the "Information Centre" next to the station.

I asked if I could book accommodation. The girl (who spoke survival English although it proudly advertises that English is spoken) pointed to a hotel in one of her books. I asked if there was anything else? She said no. I then pointed to one of the places in the Lonely Planet (mental note to suggest to Lonely Planet to write the chinese characters for the addresses) and she nodded, made a couple of calls, then wrote what I thought was the address for the place I'd pointed out, on a piece of paper.

The creepy male manager in the background was barking orders to her in Chinese and I got a bit suspect, but I checked with her twice that the place I wanted (which was quite convenient and only about 4 kms away) was what she'd written, and she assured me in dodgy English that, yes, this was the case.

So we caught a cab, headed in the right direction, and kept heading. And heading. And heading. At about the 10 km mark, we tried to get the cabbie to go back into town, but he shook his head and doggedly took us to whatever the hell it said on that infernal piece of paper. We kept driving east, by this time we were trying to get him to let us out, but he wouldn't. He kept on driving. At the 20 km mark, after a few stops along the way to ask his fellow cabbies where the place on the paper was, we turned into a hotel in the middle of nowhere, on the coast, butt-humping the industrial port area of eastern Qingdao. Not happy Jan.

The cabbie then tried to shortchange Matt and kept shoving the receipt at me, even though I didn't want it. I snapped. The heinous threshhold warriors had arrived and I started to rant. I may have overreacted. It is very possible. I just hate being taken advantage of simply because we're tourists. From a hawker I'd just brush it off, but coming from a so-called english-speaking "Information Centre" I was pissed.

We finally got another cab back to the place I'd pointed out, which was full, so we admitted defeat and said to the cabbie, "take us wherever the hell is good", so he did. To the Oceanwide Elite Hotel on Taiping Lu.

We bargained a good rate (I didn't mind bargaining with the large hotels) for a 4 star place right on #6 beach. I had a shower. I slept. Life was suddenly good.

Qingdao is quite a nice seaside town, very popular for wedding photos on the beach (we saw about 10 couples posing for photos along #2 beach) and different from other Chinese cities because of the ocean (ergo fresh seafood which Matt was very happy to pick out of a tank for his dinner) and the german architecture sprinkled about the town. Its vibe seemed a bit lacklustre though.

Maybe we were disappointed that we couldn't catch up with Coco's family. We tried (the uber-helpful Mike from the hotel tried calling twice with no answer) but no pancake...

Day 6
The next day, we made the taoist pilgrimage (being, ahem, taoists and all) to Lao Shan, a famous Taoist mountain retreat 40 kms north-west of Qingdao. There is a cable car up to the top of the mountain from which you climb through caves to reach the summit.

Of course, just our luck, out-of-season it doesn't operate, so Matt and I walked half-way up the mountain. It was nice. It was a mountain. Not unlike the mountains you see down in Tassie, if you ignore the whopping chinese characters etched into the rocks. We didn't come by any caves. We left. Returned to Qingdao. Spent 3 hours killing time in KFC before our night train. It is what it is.

Kinki's Daily Dose... Travelling Companions

I had no idea why Matt and I made such good travelling companions. We have quite radically different personalities, and I snap at the most trivial of things when the threshhold warriors are in town.

But today, we had a revelation. We balance each other really well. I blow up at difficult things Matt deals with patiently, but I get over things just as quickly, so when the post-incident blues get to Matt, about an hour later, I'm back up again, which then brings him up. Like Yin and Yang. Rhett and Scarlett. Starsky and Hutch.

Kinki's Tip of the Day

Book ahead accommodation for Qingdao if you don't speak Chinese and were thinking of relying on the Information Centre outside the station.

Day 4: Beijing's Hutongs

Went in search of the legendary "Hutongs" today. Hutongs are essentially walled communities, with a front gate leading to a warren of paths and shacks.

Entrance wall to one of the hutongs

The photographer in me was placated. Culturally, the hutongs offer amazing insights into how Chinese city dwellers live. But the observer in me was in a quandary. There are some reputed "upper class" hutongs, but for the most part these streets are, by western standards, impoverished. Many of them don't have running water and each hutong has a common toilet which, let me assure you, stinks. Many of the walls are falling in. Word on the street is that not many of these hutongs will be around by the time the 2008 Olympics in Beijing rolls around.

But I was hesitant to impose my own western upbringing of hot showers and privacy onto the way the hutong dwellers live. Matt and I argued about this point a few times.

His side was that given the choice, they would live in a place with running water and air-conditioning. My side was that they probably didn't know any other way of living so would they miss what they didn't know existed? The other thing that struck me was that, in spite of (maybe because of?) the poverty of many of the communities, the people seemed happy. Kids were skipping in the street, old men were playing mahjong, sucking on their cigarettes and quaffing Chinese liquor, young men were playing pool on the tables set-up on the street. There was laughter.

Of course Matt and I looked at these people and believed (again, according to our own set of western ideologies) they deserved "better" living standards, but what is better - being poor, but part of a supportive community, or having all the mod-cons but no sense of community (I'm thinking a little of Tokyo here)? Who knows? The outsider's dilemma.

Beijing Station circa 2004

... took an overnight sleeper train to Qingdao. There are two classes of sleeper in China - soft sleeper and hard sleeper. We took the soft sleeper for the 10 hour journey. In each cabin is 2 bunk beds with 4 berths, pillows, duvets and a closeable door. It was surprisingly comfy and we slept well (in spite of the snorer above Matt. There's always one joker), although that may have been the copious amounts of Tsingtao beer we quaffed prior to bedding down.

Beijing Station and the train itself came straight from the celluloid of a 1940's Russian war-movie. The station platform was ablaze with yellow, dim lights, the train toilets were... like any other toilet in China, although you could lock the door (once you stepped over all the piss on the floor) and the dining car was full of Chinese guards quaffing Tsingtao, the room thick with cigarette smoke.

And the Chinese government really like to know where you are. At all times. Everywhere we stayed, including on the train, they recorded our passport details and the Chinese citizens handed over their ID cards for the same treatment.

Kinki's Daily Dose... Poverty

Although the hutongs were overrun with people, street stalls and compromised housing, this didn't compare with the begging we saw, particularly around the Qianmen area.

Now, begging doesn't really exist in Japan. It may, but I've never seen it. In Beijing you can't escape it, and inevitably it's the most pitiable of people with their can out - the ones with no legs, with apparent deformities and the children who cling to you and beg for money. Matt had to brush a few children off (with their expectant "carers" waiting in a nearby doorway), who would not let him go and he funked out afterward for ages.

At many of the "tourist" attractions we went to, there was a sign "People with deformities - free". It struck me as strange, but I can't quite put my finger on why. I'm guessing because we don't see those kind of signs in Japan or Australia.

While the hutongs breathed a desperate sort of life, the north Qianmen Dajie area reeked of death. I can't really explain that, but we tried to avoid that area as much as we could. As an outsider, there was a lot about China that I couldn't explain or understand (nor, I guess, was I supposed to) particularly in reference to the in-your-face poverty and the quiet desperation hovering over the locals. As outsiders in Japan, we don't get the exposure to that side of humanity here. I hated seeing it, but I think it was something I needed to see. To appreciate just how good I have it.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

When travelling sleeper class, bring stacks of tissues and plenty of bottled water. And earplugs. The 6.30 a.m wake-up Kenny G at 200 decibels is not worth trifling with.

I'm not finished quite yet - stick around for Day 5 - "Qingdao and the Misinformation Centre"

Hutongs Photo Gallery

Day 3: Great Wall at Huanghua

Matt and I tend not to go for organised tours. We like to take the local, infinitely less convenient, but more rewarding (we hope) route.

So getting to the Wall was an adventure. We decided to head to Huanghua, one of the more "authentic" pieces of wall. A few of the other pieces of wall have been renovated and bus-loads of tourists swamp them. We were hoping for a few solitary moments amongst the ruins, but having experienced Japanese tourist destinations firsthand, we figured our chances were fairly slim...

All tuckered out in Huairou

We left the hotel at 7.30 a.m, yes, peak hour, we know, so we got to the Bus station at 8.30 a.m. Our local #916 bus to Huairou was last tuned back in 'Nam and the gear box sounded like it was crunching the road with every change.

2 hours later we rolled into Huairou and were accosted by 10 "miandi" (tiny yellow fans with bucket sofa seats in the back) drivers. We negotiated a price for the return trip to the Wall, the miandi drivers being infinitely better at it than us, and we were set to go. But first I had to negotiate my first "Ni Hao" toilet in the Bus Station...

Now, I'm not shy about getting my kit off in front of strangers, but going to the toilet is another ball-game entirely. And the concept of having someone peeing across the wall from me, whilst not my preference, is also dealable. But the woman who was having a nice cup of tea and a sit down before me, decided to stand in front of me and stare at me the whole time I was peeing. The whole time. Until I pulled my panties up and flushed the toilet (which, may I add, she was unable to do herself). Maybe she was waiting for her friend in the next stall. Maybe she just wanted to watch me pee. Talk about performance anxiety. It was the singularly longest pee I've ever had in my life.

The drive to the wall was a maze of ramshackle houses, desolate rolling hills, cherry blossoms and winding, unpaved roads. Although our stomachs lurched into our mouths once too often, the miandi driver got us there safely (Kinki searches the heavens and gives thanks for a miracle).

As you know, being a photographile, I take my camera everywhere, and I faithfully dragged it to the Wall, looking forward to going crazy. It may have helped if I'd remembered to bring the battery. Just a hunch.

The Great Wall at Huanghua

So I endured one of the most photogenic structures in the world without it. Matt had the Sony Handycam, but it just. wasn't. the. same. Disappointment set in. The Huanghua piece of the wall, however, did not disappoint. It winds along the cliff-face, one of the watch towers looming over the entrance where the miandi driver let us off. The western stretch starts at the derelict watch tower and meanders for miles. The eastern stretch we didn't navigate. The two stretches are separated by the road. It is entirely unrenovated. Chunks of the battlement which had fallen away, were piled up in the middle of the wall's path. For an authentic experience, it can't be beat.

Unfortunately, at a certain point along the western stretch, the wall angles up at nearly 60 degrees, which Dicky Knee balked at, antsy cow. So Matt continued along while I sat and pondered the view - crumbling relics of wall stretching into misty oblivion with cherry blossoms dotting the side of the cliff. There are worse places to spend an hour in quiet contemplation. Save for the hard-sell one of the hawkers gave me as he followed me up the wall. I bought the Great Wall book just to get rid of him. Jeez, can't a girl just get some peace?

If this were Japan, and the Japanese got wind that there was a cherry blossom feast to be had at a famous relic, the place would be swamped. We saw 6 people (not including the hawkers). The whole time. It was bliss.

Half-way back to the bus, our miandi driver ran out of petrol. We waited for half an hour while his mate presumably siphoned some petrol out of his own car and brought it to us on his motorcycle. The driver was acutely sheepish. But it was at this point that I had a personal revelation of sorts, about bargaining and the droves of hawkers, which made it easier to deal with them...

Sunset over Beijing

Kinki's Daily Dose... Bargaining

Yes, they're annoying and you can't walk ten metres without being accosted by a herd of them, but you can't help but admire the hawker's/taxi driver's/rickshaw driver's enterpreneurial spirit.

It's not my place to give a diatribe about the gap between an ostensibly communist government and the reality of the commonpeople's economic survival, because I simply don't know enough about it (and I simply don't know when to stop), but the hawkers seem intent on survival in a country where they really don't own anything and have to get by somehow. And supply always seemed to outweigh demand so competition is fierce, but interestingly, friendly enough. A weird kind of supportive "us" vs "them" mentality.

So when we were bargaining with the miandi driver, I knew tourists before us had probably gotten the same deal for cheaper, but when the miandi ran out of petrol, I felt really sorry for the driver. He's doing his damnedest to survive, and probably couldn't afford to fill up his tank (we hoped he simply wasn't a flake, which is entirely possible). Maybe he just assumed when the day began that he would probably return home without a customer and didn't bother. I started thinking, "yeah, I could have bargained him down to 70 yuan for the return trip, but how much do I care about what amounts to $A3?" Answer - I didn't.

I stopped bargaining hard after that. I sucked at it anyway, and I managed to knock off a few yuan on most things, but I didn't try too hard.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Take your camera with you everywhere outside where you're staying 'cos you never know what you're gonna see in Beijing. Just remember to take your battery, film or memory stick. It's imperative.

Great Wall at Huanghua Photo Gallery

Day 2: Beijing - the Continuing Story...

Today we spent hours at the Panjiayuan Markets (aka Dirt Markets). We went, ahem, a little crazy buying gifts and bargaining. China is just so damn cheap. After a couple of hours, my head was thumping with the sensory overload, but I couldn't stop. just one more row just one more oh look at that over there no i've nearly finished i just want to see ONE MORE ROW OH MY GOD LOOK AT THOSE GORGEOUS RINGS JUST ONE MORE HELP ME OH. GOD. HELP. ME...

Jade seller

Outside the markets, we succumbed to the nagging of a rickshaw driver and with our exceptional communication skills, asked him with hand gestures and dodgy Chinese (damn those tones) that we wanted him to take us somewhere we could eat dim-sum for lunch. He nodded furiously and we were off! We travelled for about 15 minutes before he deposited us. Outside KFC.

Not exactly what we were after. We thanked the rickshaw driver, gave him his 30 yuan and started walking west, hoping to stumble upon something...

We stopped outside "The Steak House". Done the Chinese way. We were given a big paper checklist of different meats and grills (all in Chinese characters) and waiters came around with their skewers of roast beef, pork, chicken, liver and spicy mutton. On our table was a big wooden pepper-grinder-like thing with red at one end and green at the other. If we wanted the waiter to bring us meat, we flipped the grinder so green was up. If we wanted to stop, then red. We ate a shit load of meat. By the time we left, my stomach was but a chunk of mutton...

Kinki's Daily Dose... Food

When I was a girl... Chinese food was always that bland but satisfying local take-out that was healthier than Maccas. Sweet and Sour Pork, Lemon Chicken and Beef in Black Bean sauce were de rigeur. I never realised just how much variety there was in Chinese cooking (depending on the region) and how tasty the real thing is. Damn my plebian upbringing.

Last night we had a Sichuan dish, "Chicken Chilli" which was diced chicken fried in about 100 spicy chillies piled high on the plate. We were farting fire all night but couldn't have been happier about it.

Master craftsmen

Tonight we headed to Qianmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant for Beijing Duck - duckmeat, fat and skin, served with little pancakes, XO sauce, scallions and a mug of beer. It was. Divine. I never thought I'd be eating baked fat with such relish. Unfortunately it repeated on us that evening, coming out the same way it went in, but after half a duck' of lard, what did we expect?

One of the more unusual fare on offer we found at the Wangfujing Xiaochijie Market. Scorpion, cicada and bug (probably not cockroach?) kebabs. Yummmm. I'll have three, thanks.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

If you have even a slight shopaholic problem, don't go to the Panjiayuan Markets. It will kill you.

Stay tuned for the next installment, Day 3: "The Great Wall at Huahuang"

Beijing Markets Photo Gallery

Day 1: Beijing

The trip began easily. The flight was smooth, customs and immigration were a walk in the park, and there was a taxi waiting for us (actually more like 500 taxis) to take us to our hotel.

The next morning we ventured into central Beijing. It. is. awesome. Amazingly eccentric and pure madness.

Indicators are optional

Unwittingly ended up in the "queue" for Mao's mausoleum, where the indefatigable (even in death) Mao is supposedly on display. I won't say it's not Mao... but let's face it, the man looked like a wax effigy when he was alive anyway, so what the hell. It was the singularly most macabre thing I've ever seen. Even more macabre was the slew of Chinese fans, taking plastic flowers into the Mao altar before the main event. He is still a god here. But more on that later...

You can't take anything with you to see Mao - god help you if you even tried. One unfortunate character thought he'd sneak in his camera in his coat pocket and one of the guards went mental on his arse, screaming at him in Chinese. Guess evening primrose oil isn't available in China...

For the record though, most of the omnipresent guards are docile as lambs and look bored as hell most of the time. Matt befriended a few of them in Tiananmen Square, using kanji to forge a temporary friendship.

Next stop was The Forbidden City (aka Palace Museum), also amazing. It's a neverending maze of recesses and palaces and gardens and alleys.

Girl at the Forbidden City

I keep forgetting I'm not in Japan, so when we get hassled by the endless stream of hawkers, the obligatory "Bu yao" (Chinese trans: "no I really don't want what you're offering, so bugger off)" keeps coming out as "Bu yao desu yo". (hybrid Chinese/Japanese trans: "no I really don't want what you're offering, so bugger off, ya heard me!") But we learnt early on that Japanese was perhaps not the best language to use. When Matt went in to a local shack to buy some water, he struck up a conversation (or as much of one as you can manage when neither person speaks the same language) and he told the guy he was from Australia but that he lived in Japan. The old guy wrote on some paper "Australia" (in Kanji) and "Japan" (in Kanji). He put a big tick next to Australia, then scrawled a bigger cross through Japan, and shot the paper with his fingers. So, ahem, Japanese was out...

Kinki's Daily Dose... Traffic

There are no rules. It's all on. At any given moment, a flock of bikes are trying to cross in front of a rickshaw which is trying to cross in front of a taxi, which is driving on the kerb trying to overtake the bus which is butt-humping the rickshaw driver who is hassling a tourist trying to catch the taxi. It's chaos. Lanes are optional. Indicators, night lights and seat belts not required. How people don't die every other second of the day I have no idea. The taxi-drivers are veritable masters of the tight squeeze.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Book your first night in Beijing on the internet before you leave. You get super deals. We stayed at the Grand View Garden for the first 4 nights, usually 580 yuan a night. Through China Discounts we got it for 380 yuan.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 2: "Beijing, the Continuing Story..."

Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square Photo Gallery

So it begins

...yep, 2 months of official unemployment! Call Centrelink, people, I'm going loco! Not that we won't be busy - tomorrow we fly out to China, land of "Ni hao" toilets and, according to my Japanese students, "pushy people" (sic)...

Yes. It's a wall. You guessed right. Walls in this country are totally funky. Full of character. I love walls.

Talking about pushy people - yesterday, this impatient shit salaryman tried to push onto the subway and in the process, push over this obviously blind guy, so I grabbed his collar and yelled "Sumimasen" in his ear. Man, I love doing that. This guy was totally shamed and full-on bowed to the blind guy for about 3 minutes after we got onto the train, which was kind of weird, considering the guy was blind. But hey.

It's S.O G.O.O.D to finish work without a (figurative) black eye. Honestly, I thought I was pitching for one. The bureacratic CRAP that Japanese companies mistake for logic, drives me nuts. Unfortunately, it was one of those places where the office staff were nuggets of gold and trying to do a good job, but the upper management policies sucked onsen tamago. My girlie friend, Cath, and I have been discussing the eternal conundrum "If Japanese people are so honest, then why is everyone so frikkin' corrupt?" but I'll bore you with that some other time.

For now, if you're in Japan, do yourself a favour and check out Utada Hikaru's "I haven't written anything new for a year, so here's a collection of faves to shut y'alls up" excuse for a new release. Rock on, Hikki, give us the good word...