Qufu - photos

Qufu - boy

I was drawn to Qufu by the guidebook's description of a temple in a neighbouring town being 'otherworldly'. If otherworldly means dull then it saw certainly that. The Confucian attractions in Qufu itself were good (as far as old temples can be) and it was nice to see a variation on the type of temple and park we had been seeing thus far.

 

But mainly, it was very relaxing to stay in a town of less than a million people, this one has only 88 000, practically a hamlet in Chinese terms. Here we could organise the rest of our trip, book flights home via an interesting stop-over and be frustrated by web sites that shouldn't be blocked (like a Kiev travel company) but are somehow caught in China's algorithmic web engines that decides which sites to allow and forbid.

Qufu - girl

Confucius was born here. Other people were born here. It's a sweet little place with some not very interesting sites to visit. We watched An Officer and a Gentleman, which I hadn't seen before. Very good and possibly more interesting that the temple and mansion we visited that had very few English signs. 

SuZhou - photos

SuZhou - boy

This was our first town en route to Beijing and it's barely outside Shanghai, but it was quiet and extremely pleasant to walk around in. From our curt hoteliers in Shanghai we went to pleasant friendly service with a smile. From streets inundated with out of towners we went to peaceful walks by the canals. But there was a price to pay; and that was buying train tickets short notice so close to a busy Expo city with only basic Chinese language skills.

 

More complications arise because China's ticketing system only allows tickets to be bought from the point of departure and changing trains also seems to complicate the issue since even a recommended train booking agency tied themselves in knots with our request. Outside of Shanghai the ticketing areas are either outside or in huge rundown buildings and contain 30-60 tellers all with a permanent queue of never less than 50 people (yes, actually queuing, well apart from ... anyway). Add to this, a sprinkling of extremely impatient and angry clerks who throw change and tickets at their customers (with us they just throw their hands up and scream a lot and we move to the next teller) and you have the most disorganised part of China Rail. Everything else is fine; they are comfortable and most importantly, on time. If you only ever travel on off peak direct trains, from point A to point B, then chances are you'll never see an issue, though you will be shouted at.

 

We explored a number of walled ancient parks from whatever dynasty whose theme was pools and sculpted rocks on stone path next to small amounts of plants and grass that are for viewing not sitting. In olden days the park's ambiance allowed reflection and contemplation, these days it allows dozens of guides to bellow historical facts through a megaphone at the same time as every other guide. Most unharmonious.

 

The one park that opened at night was a pleasant experience for its lack of bellowing guides and people in general but since the edict of 'no silence' must be upheld at all times, Chinese opera artists were brought in to screech and twang in various parts of the park, but also to play haunting flute melodies across the pool.

 

The canal town Tongli nearby was very pretty. I expect it looks amazing when there are no crowds. Is that possible I wonder? The main reason for choosing this touristy canal town over other touristy canal towns was the Sex Culture Museum. It's actually a park with a small museum which charges extra so there's practically no one in it. So very calm and peaceful (and interesting). Some information may be suspect (as unbelievable as that sounds in Chinese museums) but I suspect the uncontroversial facts are correct. Some points are blatantly untrue such as their claim that homosexuals have never been discriminated against in the history of China; a brief Google on the subject reveals that only ten years ago central government regarded homosexuality as a mental disease, though good for them for not blocking websites that contain contradictory information in some museums at least.

SuZhou - girl

A lot of our time here revolved around a fabulous bar/coffee shop/book shop called Bookworm. We whiled away a few happy hours drinking, playing scrabble and chatting in the sun. When we weren't hanging out though we were being diligent tourists, checking out the gardens for which SuZhou is famous, the canals and Tongli, a waterside village full of Chinese tourists. In fact, everywhere was packed to the rafters with Chinese tourists; there was no respite from the tour guides with microphones or the snapping of the tourists with new cameras. No respite until we found the Twin Pagodas garden, which wasn't particularly interesting but was almost empty. As we were sitting and breathing in the silence, a French girl came in and exclaimed 'mais, il y'a personne ici!' and we knew just what she meant.

 

Thanks to the expo, rail travel is not easy at the moment as everyone is either getting to, or leaving Shanghai. We tried to get train tickets back to Shanghai when we arrived in SuZhou (four days before we wanted to travel) but were very firmly told we couldn't. So, two days later we tried again, having been promised it would be no problem. We queued with the million others wanting train tickets and when we got to the front we handed over our little note explaining, in Mandarin, exactly what we needed...and we got yelled at. First we were told, in a shouty kind of way, that there were no tickets so we handed over another note asking for something different and got properly yelled at. We can only assume the woman didn't much like Sundays, or trains, or people. We joined another queue and showed our notes to another woman who only yelled at us a little bit but did at least, eventually, decide we were human and that she should help us. Phew.

 

SuZhou is a lovely town and it would definitely be even better with fewer people but we had a good time, ate well and met some lovely people even if none of them were at the train station. I would recommend that the Head Communist Comrade of SuZhou does something about the drains though. There are select patches where the smell is so bad I almost vomited, no hyperbole. 

Shanghai - photos

Shanghai -boy

Confucius say "queue of a thousand people begin anywhere you like". Here at the Expo in Shanghai are some of the finest examples of queue jumping you will ever see. We witnessed a woman not only ignore the queue for a portable toilet but harass and nearly throw out the occupants, a mother and child who had the door open; they won't be doing that again.

 

Another fine example was a guy that seemed to think that nudging and grunting every time the queue moved forward would improve his position. Possibly, he thought the space between each person could be reduced thus making the queue shorter and his journey to the front quicker. Of course if there are spaces they must be filled (by the jumper no doubt) and nature does abhor a vacuum. But, our pusher thinks [and please read with an appalling accent bordering on racist] "Why do these western pigs in front not move when I push? They prevent me from claiming space in front of them and I cannot pass because of plastic barriers. Why did central government put plastic barriers here?...... l push people in front out of way, then I fill space and make queue shorter for everybody...........Ah wait, here is corner where barrier is wide, I run around female. Success - past two, two thousand more to go.......... I know western pigs talk about me, voices are raised in my direction - but to more important matters; there is family in front, do I push child?..... What the...?!? Why is tall westerner tapping me on shoulder? What does he indicate? Why does he motion me to jump over plastic barrier? Stupid western capitalist dog. Just ignore him...tsk...grumble.... What! Holy chairman Mao! Now western female has stepped in front of me. What is going on - why is world so confusing - I go back to farm." *

 

*I recorded the grumblings of our queue jumper and these are his exact thoughts translated using a combination of online translators and guess work based on well known stereotypes.

 

And just to complete my own stereotype of the Brit whinging on about queues I'll give one more example: Chinese people seem not to be fazed by anybody who pushes in so it was extraordinary to hear consternation in the crowd when a whole tour group barged in the middle of a queue bound for the 88^th floor (observation deck) of the Jin Mao tower. This was Olympic standard pushing in and they did China proud. We were stupid enough to join this queue when we could have skipped it entirely in favour of (a) an ultra relaxed bar on the 87^th floor or (b) fewer people at the world's highest observation deck in the neighbouring Japanese building. Of course, now that we had done the most unpleasant of the three 'high rise' options we just had to do the other two too.

 

To be fair I could be misinterpreting people's actions. Some folks from outside the city may never have seen a queue in their lives and think that a long straight line of people are nothing more than a freak of nature; simply people hanging around who have organised by chance into this linear configuration. After all, no one has a sign on their back saying "I'm waiting for the loo with a hundred other people, please don't push past me". And who really knows if the people (apparently) waiting to get off the train in the metro actually want to get off; they may harbour a secret wish to be forced back a metre or two by a stampeding mass.

 

All gripes about queuing aside, I was glad to see, finally, what an Expo has to offer after having only fuzzy ideas of what the various pavilions may contain. Half of China seemed to be there along with half of China's cameras, all with one mission; to photograph every inch of the Expo area several times. And when they're done with the Expo there's The Bund (the main promenade next to the river) in the centre to photograph and there I didn't mind joining the masses, especially at night where the building nightscape is even more impressive than Hong Kong.

 

One of our 'must sees' in Shanghai was the Propaganda Art Museum. A great collection of public persuasion posters where proletariat babies bayonet Uncle Sam, "liberated" Tibetans welcome their new masters with white smiles and Chairman Mao is depicted with the sun shining out of his, head I think. All very interesting.

 

Other 'must sees' and 'must dos' turned out to be 'shouldn't have dones' like a tourist tunnel under the river that lights up with weird and wonderful patterns and the longest magnetic levitation train in operation. Both sound cool (for a male at least) and I for sure needed to do them in order to know I shouldn't have done them or never need to do them again. (It makes sense in my head anyway)

Shanghai - girl

In Shanghai's defence, it is currently hosting the World Expo. The regular population of almost 20 million seemed to have grown exponentially during our few days in the mammoth metropolis that is China's fourth largest urban sprawl. It felt as if there was barely enough room to exhale without hitting a Chinese country mouse with my stomach (and I do not have a big tummy). Both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. I now feel like I'm closer to understanding what 1.4 billion people in one country means.

 

We awarded ourselves a real baptism of fire upon arrival in Shanghai. Day 1: the expo. Not sure why. My curiosity definitely got the better of me here. Such was my interest to discover the point of the expo that I was proactive in seeking out the largest mass of people I've ever seen. I still have no real idea what the point of an expo is; it's not as if any country is going out of business if it doesn't have an exhibit (except, perhaps, Kosovo). We checked out a few country pavilions, the only ones that stand out in my memory are: Iran, for being cheese-tastic and not mentioning nuclear power once but instead demonstrating how they plan to take over the world with bad music and hilariously bad carpet pictures (The Last Supper or gambolling kittens in a carpet, anyone?); North Korea for teaching me that the DPRK is actually a people's paradise; and the UK for not playing by the dull rules and creating a 'seed cathedral' in the shape of a giant dandelion. Brilliant. I'm guessing a genius smoked a lot of weed before that idea came to fruition. Truly it was inspired.

 

However, the pavilions were hardly the main attraction for C or me, that award goes to the people themselves and their incredible audacity and sheer enjoyment at pushing in (or just pushing) at every possible turn. As one who also likes a good push-in every now and again, my respect for their skills is marred only by my distaste of seeing a useful skill abused so frequently. The 'push-in' should only be used when truly necessary, not constantly, by everyone, it takes the beauty away when everyone's at it. We started the day by marking people out of ten but that soon grew stale. C then suggested that we join 'em at their own game and see it as just that: a game. This kept us occupied for most of the day but the star of the show appeared only at dusk.

 

We were in an enormously long queue for the UK pavilion when we began to hear little grunts behind us. The grunts got louder and closer until I was being shoved to move out of the way by a little country mouse clearly desperate to get to the seed cathedral before the rest of us. He had not bargained with meeting me in the queue. Oh no. Try as he might he simply could not get around me - he moved left, I moved left, he tried right but I was there too, blocking his way. After a while I got cocky, too sure I had won and let my guard down, just for an instant, on a corner, and bam, he was in front of me, leaving me cursing my rookie error. C then came into his own and tapped the mouse on the shoulder and suggested he simply hop over the barrier rather than continue barging through an extremely long queue. The mouse understood not one word but it seems sarcasm transcends language barriers for the guy quickly turned around and tried to pretend we weren't there. As he considered his options for pushing through the family ahead of us, I considered my options too. Not learning from my rookie error, he left a space for a split second, just long enough for me to insert myself ahead of him once again. Williams, 1, Chinese country mouse, 0.

 

Also worth noting that to the bulk of the Chinese the expo meant one thing only: a chance to get their 'passports' stamped. The expo offers a chance to buy a 'passport' that can then be stamped at every pavilion. The queues were longer for stamps than to get into the pavilions in the first place. I spent much of the day wondering what use adults have for these 'passports' but since most of the visitors seemed to be from the countryside, I guess they're never going to get the chance to visit the real countries so their stands are the next best thing.

 

This wonderful pushing experience left us a little bruised but ready for anything Shanghai might throw at us and we didn't have to wait long. An ill-informed decision had us queuing with half of China to ascent the Jin-mao Tower late one night. Actually, 'queuing' might be too English. We were in the middle of a scrum-cum-riot of people desperate to get in to one of the two lifts to head up those 88 floors. I thought the police might "kettle" us at one point. We eventually got to the 88^th floor only to find that there was no respite from the scrum-cum-riot. Now the fight was for the opportunity to look out of the window, or more accurately, to have photos taken by the window (everyone here seems to love a good flash reflection picture). After a short while we gave up and took ourselves to the far more sophisticated and exclusive bar on the 87^th floor for delicious cocktails and exactly the same view.

 

The other noteworthy mention for Shanghai has to be the wonderful but well hidden Propaganda Museum. This is not located where Lonely Planet claims it is, rather it's on the other side of town, which was fine, we enjoyed the wasted hours, honest. This tiny basement collection of propaganda posters was just captivating. We spent some time chatting with the owner/curator who is passionate about these posters and who believes they represent a specific period in Chinese art history and should be considered as real art. I learned a lot from him, from the posters and from a loud American girl showing off to her father.

 

I have particularly enjoyed watching the Chinese (yes, all of them) with their latest toys: big cameras and tripods. The vast majority seem to have no idea how to take a good picture, what makes a good picture or when to use a tripod. Most of the time it's extremely amusing to try and work out just what people are taking pictures of, sometimes it's incredibly annoying as they pose, fingers in the V sign in front of a door, the sky, a dog etc. etc. I'd like to suggest that people shouldn't be allowed cameras until they prove they know how to use them but then I'd sound like a big fat Tory so I won't.  

Osaka / Nara - photos

Osaka / Nara - boy

Osaka was the perfect large modern city in which to end our stay in Japan. We spent a few relaxing hours at the large aquarium watching a variety of aquatic morsels glide around their tanks. We then went back to the centre of town where we could watch similar beasts glide around on conveyor-belts and play our part in the food chain.

 

We felt like a bit of "ancient" again so squeezed in a day trip walking around Nara seeing more temples, shrines and the unusual sight of deer harassing people for food. I remember visiting one of the shrines in Nara years ago with I and B during the summer festivals. It was evening and after a BBQ on a nearby hill we walked through the wood where lanterns lit a path towards the shrine. In broad daylight on an ordinary day not during a festival the effect is less enchanting but Nara still oozes charm.

 

Our last moments were spent at the Sky Tower looking at superb views over Osaka's brightly lit buildings. We said our goodbyes to heated space-age loo seats; immaculate shared bathrooms; overly friendly people in every corner of the service industry; bucket loads of high quality sushi; sumptuous delicatessens; sensible rules; sensible populace; working vending machines; the list goes on.

 

The Shanghai ferry was supremely comfortable with a perfect mix of politeness and rudeness kindly thrown together by the Chinese staff to ensure we were adequately prepared for what lay ahead.

Osaka / Nara - girl

Our final destination in Japan, sadly. What a wonderful country.

 

With just one day left on our rail passes, we spent our first day in Osaka actually in Nara, another city renowned for its beauty. It rained. The temples were interesting and I'm glad we went but it wasn't a highlight of my trip (although watching an extremely tame deer steal a map from a tourist's hand was quite amusing).

 

Osaka is famed for its neon lights, supposed to out-neon Tokyo. They were pretty cool and we soon found the lights pulling us in to a couple of bars upon arrival. Rain, bar, beers, plum wine, umbrellas: somehow this combination led to a small row between C and me. Yup, right there in the middle of Osaka in the rain at 11pm we managed to have a row. Good stuff. No idea what it was about now but I know it wasn't much fun. Thankfully everything's back to normal now.

 

Having eaten almost nothing but raw fish for three weeks we felt it might be polite to go and check out the aquarium, or as I now call it, 'the sushi farm'. We went straight from peering at delicious fishies to eating them, right off a conveyor belt. Yummy.

 

Our final destination was the 'floating garden', an observation deck 43 stories up with incredible views over a beautiful city. So much better than Tokyo's effort at observation decks. We braved the bitterly cold winds to spend quite a long time outside watching dusk fall before heading home for our last supermarket meal in Japan.

 

And then it was time to leave this incredible place where every corner yields something new and delicious, where every open door seems to reveal another slot machine house and where everything feels accessible and inaccessible at the same time. I definitely leave wanting more. 

Kyoto - photos

Kyoto - boy

Rain rain rain. Kyoto is a beautiful city, even in torrential rain and since we were here only a couple of days we decided to force ourselves to brave the elements and see sites even though we felt a strong desire to stay indoors watching telly. The following day's forecast predicted some thunder to go with our rain so we decided to take a train out of Kyoto to see a couple of traditional hamlets and ramble in the countryside. One of these hamlets has even been given an edict to not to show any evidence of modern infrastructure in order for it to retain its Edo period look. Thankfully the six hour round trip plus the hike in the drizzle was absolutely worth it. When we were due to leave Kyoto the sun came out in full force so we altered our plans slightly to stay more time and see what Kyoto looked like under clear skies.

 

It is undoubtedly the most beautiful city we visited. Much of the city has a residential suburban feel to it and the shrines and temples embedded in large areas of woodland, the parks and a number of traditional streets are all perfect spots in which to wander. When the sun finally came out to play we finished with a mountain hike under a thousand torii which turned out to be dedicated to our favourite type of sushi (inari). And as unwitting pilgrims we though it appropriate to stuff our faces with said sushi after the visit. So we did.

 

As with every day in Japan, we ate well. When the rain doesn't let you stay outside for long the only other places to go are indoor food areas: Restaurants, food courts at the stations, covered markets and the last and best; basements of department stores which display such a variety of well presented food items they make Selfridges look like a Seven Eleven. And nearly all of these items taste as good as they look; we've done our research.

Kyoto - girl

My abiding memory of Kyoto will always be of walking through the streets in the pouring rain. With only two days to see one of Japan's most beautiful and traditional cities it would have been a travesty to allow a bit of water to keep us inside. So we went out. C very sensibly wore his waterproof walking boots. I not very sensibly, wore trainers. It rained for about 36 hours without letting up once. By the end of our day walking my shoes felt like small swimming pools on my feet. The worst was that to enter a wonderful Zen temple we had to take off our shoes. My socks, by this point, looked as if I had picked them out of the washing machine and put them straight on. So uncomfortable.

 

Given that the rain just would not abate, we left Kyoto city on day two and headed for the countryside. Two small villages a 10km walk apart are renowned for their traditional beauty - they have been kept in the Edo-style in which they were built. Definitely worth the three hour train ride to stroll in the (only slightly damp) countryside and see a different side of Japan.

 

Particularly interesting in Kyoto, is that the tradition of geisha has not abated. I think it's one of the few places left in Japan where one can still see them in the streets. Geisha are not to be confused with traditional kimono wearing women who are also abundant in Kyoto. They can be distinguished by the geisha's heavy white make up, long obi (sash) and her hairstyle. On our first night in the city we saw a few women who were either trainee geisha or tourists dressed as geisha. We don't know. On our last night we were lucky enough to see the genu-ine article - geisha going from tea house to tea house with corpulent businessmen in the famed geisha area of town.

 

We woke up, on our last day in Kyoto, to blue skies and decided not to go straight to Osaka but to spend a few hours seeing the Inari shrine. We didn't know it was the inari shrine when we were tempted by tales of beautiful walks around the complex. Inari are the delicious fried sweet bean curd pockets filled with rice with which C and I have a slightly unhealthy obsession. Obviously it was fated. I was less than impressed with the amount of uphill walking C expected of me but managed it with only a little grumbling and him bribing me with promises of lunch after.

 

Despite the rain, I think we got a glimpse of the Japan we were supposed to see - traditional, cultural and delicious. The day out in the country added to this but I certainly don't feel that I'm any closer to understanding Japan or its citizens. To a traveller or holiday maker the culture seems enticingly out of reach. I know the food is delicious, I know the system works, I know the country is wealthy but that's it. I wouldn't even know how to scratch the surface. And, like any developed nation, the people aren't interested in tourists so there's relatively little interaction possible outside of transactions and hotels. Without spending time living in the place, there is not much hope of understanding Japan. Sadly.

Hiroshima - photos

Hiroshima - boy

It's a shame to say that I didn't have a 'peace pilgrimage' in mind when we decided to include a brief stopover in Hiroshima. It was information about the A-bomb, imprints of people close to the hypocentre or anything similarly sensational that I was keen to see. This might be why the plaques that litter the Peace Memorial Park, informing us in various ways that we should all strive for world peace, started to grate after a while. Self-proclaimed champions of world peace probably need more credentials than having an A-bomb dropped on them and also should probably acknowledge other victims of war more comprehensively.

 

Gripes and cynicism aside the information in the museum about the A-bomb and events leading up to 6/8/45 was fascinating, comprehensive and as fairly frank. The remains of one of the buildings, left as a reminder of the tragedy, was remarkable too; I thought an A-bomb exploding at a distance of 621m would have razed it to the ground.

 

There is a reason to come again though. We didn't know it at the time, but we had the best Okonomiyaki of our trip, Hiroshima style; a combination of noodles, omelette, pancake, cabbage and other ingredients and sauces smooshed together into one glorious mound of stomach fodder.

Hiroshima - girl

I started out by writing a few tasteless jokes about bombs but, actually, I don't think I can do it. A-bombs are probably never funny, like the holocaust. Except sometimes one needs to joke to relieve the enormity of it.

 

On the face of it Hiroshima has recovered amazingly. The city is neat, ordered and new but underneath there are scars. I have no idea if the scars are worn lightly or deeply, if the scars affect the city but not its inhabitants: nothing was obvious from two days in the place. However, the public facade chosen by the city in relation to the bomb is one of defender of peace, which I'm not really sure can ring true. Who isn't for peace (apart from a few crazies)? And who doesn't want fewer a-bombs in the world (again, apart from the crazies)? I think Hiroshima is pretty much preaching to the converted.

 

The a-bomb museum is fantastic, I learned an awful lot and it was only once or twice that I felt facts had been omitted to make Japan look better; the memorial park is both beautiful and peaceful but over 60 memorials to different groups of people who died? A weird shrine to a kid who died of leukaemia whilst trying to make 10,000 origami birds? Weird Christian women wandering around and accosting tourists asking if they're against peace? Isn't it all a little over the top?

 

And then I take off my cynical hat and doff my bleeding heart hat and I remember the pictures and the harrowing personal stories and I feel horrible for ever having been so cynical. Of course the city has a right to grieve, who am I to comment? Jews still grieve, every day, Rwandans still grieve, everyone grieves for their tragedies and if we choose to visit memorials we should accept them as they are, even if a city hit by a nuclear bomb then translates this into trite calls for world peace as well as an end to nuclear proliferation.