Xiamen

Xiamen (used to be known by Amoy in the West) is a town in a Special Economic Zone by the sea in the Southeast of China. Xiamen is on an island close to the coast. It has a sub tropical weather, a University with a beautiful campus, beach and one of the best quality of life in China. It wasone Of the five treaty ports imposed be the Western powers during the 19th century after the Opium wars, as a consequence the city has several European colonial-style houses, specially on the smaller island of Gulangyu. In Xiamen live 3.5 million people. So much information about it and most of us probably never heard about it.

Xiamen is indeed an very nice town. I went to the beach for the first time since Vietnam! The hostel (Koala's hostel) was fantastic, but a bit far from everything, except the beach, and it had the best cat of the trip so far.

I was there with my Israeli and English travel friends for three days, but I had to leave to Hong Kong to renew my visa, otherwise I would have spent there almost a week, like the other two did.

The end of the China Seas journey

Although I have a good mental image of where I've been so far I was surprised to see it in the map. I've been all the time, until now, by the coastline of the China Seas:

The stars indicate the places I've been so far.

Today I arrived from Macau to Yangshuo (yes, there are a few blog posts pending about the last places I've been), I'll be heading more and more inland for the next month.

Onde estou? / Where am I?

Sera que já voltei a casa? Será isto o fim da viagem?
/
Did I arrive home already? Is this the end of the trip?

Hangszhou

Hangzhou is the smallest town I've been so far in China... A mere 8 million people live there. It surrounds a beautiful lake with gardens and pagodas around it. It is a really beautiful and clean city completely packed with Chinese tourists. Around the lake you can find stands for every single supercar brand you can imagine (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, etc.)

I met a sweet Chinese couple that a travel buddy from Israel met before in Suzhou. They study here and showed us the lake area. We talked about each others countries and about our languages. Apparently I have a good Chinese accent! I told them that us in Putaoya (that's how they say Portugal) are good with languages, better than in Xibanya (Spain in Chinese)... They laughed, but they believed. I really should learn Chinese, but doing it while travelling is a bit complicated... too much information to assimilate.

I ended up staying there four nights and a small group of three travellers that met in Beijing and Shanghai got together again: me, an Israelly and an English. We have the same plan for the next days (Yellow Mountains and Xiamen, on the coast), so we will tag along a bit longer.

A pagoda and a bridge... This image could not be more Chinese...

Sunset in the lake

My fellow travellers watching the sunset

Huangshan

Imagine if a landscape from a Dali or a Monet painting actually existed exactly as they are in the painting. Imagine that you could look at it with your own eyes, be in it, look around and feel immersed in it....

Surely you've seen before the 'typical' Chinese (and Japanese, and Korean) paintings that depict landscapes with rocky mountains, mist in the air and pine trees on top of the cliffs. You probably have seen the Chinese gardens (if not for sure you've seen the Japanese ones, which are similar) with miniatures of mountains and trees. Well, these paintings and gardens actually exist in real size! They are inspired in the landscape of the mighty Huangshan, the Yellow Mountains. There, in the top, after hours of climbing thousands and thousands of steps carved in the rock, I had that rare feeling that I could not believe in what I was looking at, but this time I felt it more than ever. And more than anywhere else where I've been photographs cannot convey the feeling of being there, of looking around, but they probably will give you an idea of what that place looks like, better than my words can do. I'll shut up now... Behold:

Mood swings

Some days I'm happy, some days I'm less happy. Never unhappy, never sad, at least for more than a few moments!!! Sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I have lots of energy. These things can change from one day to another! From one hour to the next... Sometimes a meal is enough to make me feel better. Moving from one place to another is always good, even though leaving a good place behind can be nostalgic. Spending hours in a transport sucks! But arriving to a new place is exciting. Walking kilometres up a mountain for hours, drenched in sweat and rain, hurts! But reaching the summit, or simply stopping from time to time to look at the landscape will make it worth it. Sometimes I feel alone on a certain moment, an hour later I'm having dinner with a big group of people that I just met and with I'm going to spend the next days with. Sometimes I'm tired of someone's company, after a few beers I'm already enjoying those people's company again. Sometimes you'll feel frustrated because five taxi drivers refuse to take you where you want to go for some reason that you don't understand, or someone is trying to scam you after a nice conversation, but later someone will stop whatever they were doing to walk you all the way to that hostel that you would never be able to find by yourself.

 This is what you will live while travelling, ten times more mood swings that in your every day's life. You will not feel sad or unhappy for long enough for it to be bad, trust me!

Photos with Chinese people

The number of Chinese people that ask you to take a photo with them or to take a photo of you is inversely proportional to the size of your beard, but no matter how long the beard is the number of Chinese asking that will never converge to zero....

Opinions from other travellers and where to go

When travelling one meets lots of other travellers. Some have been there longer, some just have some vague information about the place. When deciding where to go next there are many information sources, like guidebooks, the internet, local people and the travellers. The amount of lack of accuracy, myths, out of date information or information based on personal opinions from the other fellow travellers is huge.

If a place is more off the beaten path, then it will be even more victim of all this misinformation. Same thing if the place has been covered by some kind of mistery. A great example is Tibet. I've heard that it is open to tourists, closed to tourists, open to only groups of 4 tourists of a given nationality, that one has to pay 600 dollars to get there, that it is for free, a so on. I haven't checked better that, partially because it is not in my travel plan, but it is interesting to see how much contradictory information there is about it. I've heard also that Shanghai is the best place in China for various different reasons, stared by different types of people. I didn't like it. Then there is also the show-off traveller that likes to show more than he/she knows, they are a great source of myths about places! And, of course, there is the tolerance of each traveller. I heard scary things about China that I confirmed here, but that didn't scare nor annoy me at all! Sometimes I actually enjoy those 'terrível' things when experienced in its context. That context can only be seen by yourself while being at the place.

In what should one trust when deciding where to go? I have no single answer, but everyone seems to find that out pretty easily. Some places will be great, some not so great. One thing is for sure, one cannot be everywhere, so choices will be made. Personally, I prefer not to plan anything completely until one day before. Some milestones will be in my head, but still I'll miss some of them. So far it has worked for me (like any other approach would also have worked, I guess). I'll be always aware that information about a place will never be correct (what is correct information anyway?), but the inaccurate information, plus my dreams, plus what I need at that time will show me the way.

My opinion about a place is influenced by my mindset at that time, the weather, the time of the year, the people I met there, the contrast with the places I've been before, my vision of the world, my taste buds, etc. So, my fellow traveller, never trust me! (... but make sure that you go to Beijing and avoid Shanghai...)

Traveller's body

When travelling one gets more in touch with one's body. For most people, in every day's life, the body is something to be shown to the others (adorned with clothes, makeup, jewellery) and also the main vehicle for the brain. When travelling the body is what makes travelling possible. The body hurts of so much walking, gets bitten by mosquitoes and gets attacked by some nasty and exotic food. 

The traveller, like the rest of the human beings has to eat, sleep and shit, but never in a total comfort zone. Eats strange food in strange restaurants served by strange people, sleeps in dormitories with strangers and shits in strange and most of the times dirty toilets.

But from all the parts of the body, the one that all the traveller is aware every day are the feet. The feet hurt almost all the time, get blisters and get swollen. They suddenly exist! How many times does one feels one's feet during every day's life?

When travelling one's body becomes more real.

Shanghai

I was a few nights in Shanghai with my brother and cousin. Being with them was the best thing there.

Shanghai skyline: Pudong seen from the Bund.

Some say that Shanghai is a glimpse into what China is heading towards. Sad fate waits China, then. Shanghai is a city of show-off, where money is everything. Barely no arts nor culture, just shopping malls, expensive restaurants, cheesy pseudo-posh clubs, vain people (both Chinese and foreigners) and expensive cars (Lamborghinis, Bentleys, etc.). The skyscrapers are fantastic, but I felt the city sterile and vain.

Anyway, the weather was cold and rainy and I was tired... One's opinion of a place when travelling depends on many external and internal factors. Probably I was not in Shanghai in the right moment of my trip.

My tired (and hungover) brother and cousin in the bullet train between Beijing and Shanghai, moving at 300km/h

The centre of the world

Chinese say that China is the nation in the centre, that's actually what 'Zhōngguó' ('China' in Chinese) mean. At the centre of the centre of the world is Beijing.

Twenty minutes in Beijing were enough to realise that this was going to be one of my favourite places in the trip. It is old, grey, polluted and majestic. People spit on the floor, push each others to enter a train or a bus, shout in the street when talking to each other, smoke and throw the cigarette butts to the floor in restaurants. After the almost clinical cleanliness of Tokyo and the modernity of Seoul this was a 180 degrees turn.

Chinese are way less shy than I thought! People come and talk to you, smile at you, want to take pictures with you. I was in Beijing during the national holiday of the 1st of May, because of that the city was full of tourists! Thousands and thousands of them! A few foreigners, but the vast majority Chines from all over the country, that probably never saw a white person before. Chinese are warm, passionate people! They are curious, funny, smiley, loud and friendly. Their temperament is unpredictable, but never aggressive! All of this makes them some of the most charming people I've came across.

Funny guy dancing with a bottle on his head

Weird instrument that sounds like a mix between an harmonica and a bagpipe

The monuments in Beijing are gigantic! For example, from all the monuments I've seen so far, the Forbidden City might be only second to Angkor in Cambodia in terms of size. There is also the Temple of Heavens, the Summer Palace (where the emperors used to retreat during the scorching temperatures in the Forbidden City) and many more. One could easily spend a month without repeating a single monument.

The gate of the Forbidden City seen from the gigantic Tiananmen Square

The Forbidden City seen from above

Temple of Heaven

Summer Palace

The Great Wall, two hours away from Beijing

Forbidden City

The first meals in Beijing were enough to realise that I was entering a whole new gastronomical world! The food is de-li-ci-ous! Noodles, dumplings, fried rice, barbeque skewers, fish, meat, dry, wet, large, small, colourful, spicy and not so spicy. The menus are endless, specially in Beijing, where restaurants from all the regions of China can be found everywhere. As a local speciality: Peking Duck... Forget the crispy duck from London's China town! This is indeed the real thing! The whole duck is prepared in different ways in front of you: the skin is eaten with sugar (believe me, it is delicious), the meat is sliced and eaten inside a thin pancake with vegetables and a chocolaty sauce (this is similar to what we find in the Chinese restaurants in the West) and the bones with a bit of meat left are deep fried. An epic meal!

I ended up staying 12 days in Beijing and I loved every single one of them. My cousin and my brother joined me there too. The hostel where I stayed 365 Inn) was one of the best I've ever been! It had a fantastic bar where all the guests easily meet each others. A fantastic group of travellers from probably over 20 countries got together there that stayed all nights drinking and chatting until late hours every day, after a tiring sightseeing day. The hostel was close to a 'hutong', the typical old and grey neighbourhoods in Beijing, where usually older people live. The life in the hutongs is great! Everything happens in the streets... People eat in chairs and tables outside the cheap and delicious restaurants, old men play Chinese chess and cards before sunset, etc. At night you can see wild ferrets walking around, which was an excuse for our group to stroll a few times late at night in the hutongs to spot the ferrets. We always found some small restaurant still open at late hours serving cheap beer and skewers.

An hutong

Ferret-spotting at night in the hutong

I also had the chance to meet some westerners living in Beijing. They hang out a lot in there hutongs (yes, there are hunting hipsters), chatting until late, rather than clubbing and getting completely drunk, like the ones in Shanghai, for example.

I didn't want to leave Beijing, but the traveller has to move on! Beijing, the centre of the world, was the centre of my world during those days.

Korea

After Tokyo (the largest metropolis in the known world) I stopped for 4 days in Seoul (the second largest one). I didn't know much more about Korea than what we see in the news. Let me tell you something, those news are not news, those are a spectacularisation of what happens here. In reality nobody here is afraid of a war! Life goes on in Seoul, as it would go on in any megacity.

The statue of a national hero, a navy general that beat the Japanese in a major naval battle, with modern Seoul in the background

Korea was artificially divided by foreign superpowers, USA and Soviet Union and South Korea was (and still is) supported by the US. The impact on South Korea was a really quick economical development in the last decades. From war, misery and hunger in the 50's to one of the most modern countries in the world. The other side of the coin: complete and integral adoption of American culture (and I stress American, rather than general Western culture - a slight detail, but interesting), as opposed to what happens in Japan, where the Western culture was integrated in a quirky and even exotic way with the Japanese culture. Seoul is probably the most American city I've been outside the US... I know, it's a bold statement.... The music (K-pop, for example) sounds exactly like American music, cinema looks and feels like Hollywood cinema, as do the clothes, nightlife, etc. But, still, Korea is not the USA. It is definitely not Japan either! The social protocol between people is way less noticeable than in Japan... It is a more relaxed place in that sense.

Both North and South Korea have massive armies, some of the biggest in the world. It is not uncommon to see a Korean military in the metro or shopping. There are American military bases there as well (in Itawan, for example), so one can also see American GIs in the streets.

Seoul is a big party town! Clubs all over the place that go into the wee hours, people drinking in the street, lots of street artists and a massive cult of the image (specially women). In Gangnam, the super-rich neighbourhood that the stupid song 'Gangnam style' makes fun of, the most common advertisement is about plastic surgery clinics, and you can actually see the plastic faces all over the place. Psy is a national hero and appears on all the rest of advertisement.

Their language sounds very different and they have their own alphabet, the Hangul. The Hangul is phonetic (like our Latin one - in which each letter represents some sound) and it is quite recent - created in the 1400s. 

The food is generally very spicy, but probably less varied than in the surrounding neighbours (it is small country after all). Kimchi (fermented and pickled napa cabbage) is, like the alphabet, one of the symbols of national identity and served with almost everything as a side dish. 

Korean girls are very pretty, but one never knows if there was any plastic surgery or not.... most likely there was.

People don't know much about North Korea. For example a South Korean girl was amazed when she saw some pictures from an american guy who went there a few weeks ago. She didn't expect to see tall buildings there, and she was surprised with how colourless the clothes of the people there wear - something that usually we've seen at a certain point on TV or the internet.

Seoul ended up being more interesting than I thought but for reasons I was not expecting. That's why we travel, right?

The Gangnam district

Imperial palace

Crazy Korean biker

One of many memorials about the Korean war