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A small city by Chinese standards, Xian is home to 8 million people. It’s on the map because of its Terracotta warriors. 2000 years ago, Emperor Qin Shi Huang decried that several thousand life size Terracotta warriors be created and buried near his tomb to protect him and his treasures in the afterlife. Some years after his death, the tomb was raided and the crypts where the soldiers were buried were burned and destroyed. The soldiers were destroyed and buried for centuries. In the 70s, a farmer was digging a well and struck oil and wealth in the form of some bits of Terracotta. The People’s Government took control of the land and his discovery and started unearthing and piecing together the bits and pieces. (The farmer now signs books for a living, earning hundreds of yuan a day). Today it’s a HUGE tourist site, with restaurants and shopping plazas. There are even government-sponsored Terracotta warrior factories where one can buy life-size warriors and have them shipped home.

More interesting to me, Xian is also the only city in China to still have intact its original surrounding wall and moat (though original in China is a bit misleading, since rebuilding and repairing happen often, while still retaining the original tag). The wall stretches for 14km around the city and can be walked or cycled. The gate-houses and sentry towers are also intact and quite beautiful. Indeed the whole thing is lit up at night and is spectacular.

“The wall is only as strong as the weakest man”, said Genghis Khan about the wall. Indeed, the great wall, planned to defend China from the Mongols, never really worked. Guards along the wall were easily bribed and passage was granted. The wall did function well as a line of communication, where messages could be sent from east to west, over the 5000km length of the wall at great speed, considering the distance. Today much of the wall is in disrepair, given to time and the harsh elements.

There are several spans of the wall which are open to tourists (and have been repaired to nearly their original conditions). I saw the wall at Mutianyu, the name of the small town nearby. It’s about 90km Northeast of Beijing.

From the bus park, you need to climb to reach the wall. It’s a 45 minute climb up some steep steps, so naturally the Chinese have built a cable-car, which for 35Y whisks you effortlessly up the mountain. Not bad!

Once on the wall you easily spend half a day on this span. There are a dozen or so sentry towers to explore, and loads of postcard-photo ops with vistas of the wall snaking up and down over the mountain-top. It’s huge.

Now that you’re at the top, how should you get down? Why not try the toboggan? 45Y will get you a ticket for the 2 minute toboggan ride to the bottom!

Like a flashy, sparkly, technicolor dream, the skyline of Shanghai’s Pudong neighborhood comes to life at dusk and commands notice. Currently home to 2 of the 5 tallest structures in the world, when the World Insurance building is complete later this year, the skyline will hold the tallest, the 4th and 5th tallest buildings — The World Financial Center at over 550m, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower at 468m and the Jinmao Building at 421m, respectively.

Shanghai, one of China’s 4 municipalities (along with Beijing, Chongqing & Tianjin; municipalities are an administrative division on the same level as a province) stretches nearly 100km east to west and 60km north to south. It’s home to 17 million Shanghainese.

Its central area is situated on both sides of the Huang Pu river. The western side is the older section, and contains the area known as the Bund. The Bund is a stretch of riverfront where the French, British and American businesses set up their East-Asian operations (after the 2nd opium war). The buildings are all sort of 1920’s style neoclassic buildings and look remarkably like the buildings in downtown New York City. Today they house China’s biggest banks.

Pudong, the Eastern side of the Huang Pu River was all farmland and undeveloped until the early 1990s when the People’s Government decided it would be a good idea to put some buildings there. Seeing it today, it is simply amazing to see how much development has happened in less than 20 years. Today it has the tallest buildings (see above), a huge international airport, huge shopping malls and millions of residential units.

I’ve been in China for one month now. I arrived on 27 March and went straight into training with Phil, another tour leader. Training was great and despite all the drinking I could not get over my cold brought on by the sudden change in weather (hot in Vietnam and COLD in Beijing). I was sick for 2 weeks.

On 8 April I started my own tour. My pax were OK… take ‘em or leave ‘em kind of pax. Like… I wouldn’t be too upset if they missed the flight… and the rest of the tour. They were OK, but not my favorite bunch of people in the world to spend 17 days with.

I was trained on about 2/3 of the places I’d visit on my first tour. And indeed in those places where I’d been trained the touring was relatively easy. However I didn’t have time for training in Shanghai, a huge city of 14 million or something. Shanghai was the hardest bit of touring for me. Of course, I didn’t tell the pax it was my first time — that’s a tour leading no-no. Instead I answered most of their questions with “I don’t remember” and “I don’t know”! It was a hard final 4 days of the tour.

My first tour is complete now, and I did get tipped though not extremely well. Still it is enough for me to spend it on some flight tickets to get out of the city and take a holiday on my 10 days off before my next tour.

Now I’m still in Shanghai where I’ve been for 2 days without pax, and 4 days previously on tour. Yesterday I went to the train station to get a ticket to Yangshuo for holiday, and after an hour in-line, the ticket attendant told me the ticket I wanted wasn’t available. I know it was, but I couldn’t communicate in Chinese well enough to get it. Frustrated, I had a cigarette and sulked outside the station. Then I left, not willing to spend another hour of my life in line. Today I convinced myself my time was worth more and went to a travel agent and booked a flight instead. Ah having money is good.

There are lots of new pics in my Flickr China category. Stay tuned for 7 more articles on China, coming in the next 7 days.

Love and miss everyone,
Rob

(me too)

Thanks for the message. I miss you, too…