The Great Wall

The Great Wall, Beijing
China
June 2018

We met some other travellers back on the hike at Tiger Leaping Gorge who told us about a family outside Beijing who were helping people visit a more remote and unrestored section of the Wall. Wanting very much to avoid the crowds that we knew would be thronging the restored parts of the Wall that are easily accessible from Beijing, we jumped at this chance. We arranged to meet the father of the family at a bus stop outside Beijing, and he drove us to his farm where his family gave us an incredible vegetarian home cooked lunch. The father then dropped us off at the start of a trail that led up to the Wall. He equipped us with a tent, sleeping bags and sleeping mats, and we carried our own snacks and water. We hiked up to the crest of a hill with panoramic views and set up our tent directly next to a stretch of the Wall. The Wall follows the tops of hills in this area as far as the eye can see. We had a beautiful evening there enjoying the views and the company of some South African teachers who were also overnighting there. The next day we walked for three or four hours along the Wall until we found the path down that led us back to the family farm. The views of the layers of mountains in all directions were so beautiful, and the Wall itself is an incredible structure and engineering feat.

The Forbidden City, Beijing

The Forbidden City, Beijing
China
June 2018

Before we arrived in Beijing I read a biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, “a Chinese empress dowager and regent who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908.” (Wikipedia). I can strongly recommend reading about Cixi.

Xi'an

Xi’an
Shaanxi Province, China
June 2018

Xi’an city wall is one of the oldest and largest city fortifications in China. It dates from the 14th century but has been restored over the centuries. Along the top of the wall is a walkway that would take about four hours to walk in a complete circuit, but we hired bikes and rode the 14 kilometres in a couple hours. It was harder than we expected, because despite being flat, it’s made from cobblestones, so it’s a pretty tiring, bumpy ride. Doing the ride at dusk was a good idea as we got to see the city from all angles as the sun set.

Another day we visited the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang and his Terracotta Army where the excavations are still ongoing to uncover literally thousands of life-size sculptures of soldiers, chariots and horses.

Ani Gompa nunnery, Tagong

 Ani Gompa nunnery, Tagong
Sichuan, China
June 2018

We walked to this small village on a hill crowned by the Ani Gompa nunnery and its large stupa. It was about two or three hours by foot from the small town of Tagong. It was a beautiful walk through fields of grazing yaks. Unfortunately the clouds were very low on our days in Tagong so we didn’t see the mountain peaks that we knew were all around us. As we left Tagong by minivan in the direction of Kanding, we drove through a high mountain pass that was covered in snow despite it being summer.

The edge of the Himalayas

Somewhere on the edge of the Himalayas
Sichuan Province, China
June 2018

Right now the name of these mountains and lakes escapes me. Three Sisters? Four Sisters? Our guide dropped us here to eat the lunch of bread, momos and fruit that we’d bought at the market in the morning. A storm rolled in as we finished eating and we returned to the car across wet fields, leaping small streams, drenched in our rain coats.

Litang

Litang
Sichuan Province, China
June 2018

The air and the light here at +4,000 metres felt so different to anywhere I’ve ever been. It’s cold and bright and sunny and open. Litang is magic. People are dressed so beautifully, both the nomads in town for the market and the locals who live there. I just walked around in a daze. The nomad men wear big hats, cream coloured belted robes over their shirts and trousers and tall black boots and sit astride their motorcycles, some offering baskets of caterpillar fungus for sale. Everyone is gorgeous, with cheeks worn red from the wind and sun. There are yaks walking the streets and being grazed in the hills around the monastery. The city is situated in grasslands surrounded by mountains. We met some school kids who were learning English in school, and they invited us to come to their school graduation the next day. They photographed us like we were celebrities and we added them all on WeChat to share photos and emojis. The last photo here is a sky burial site, a funeral practice where the body is placed on a mountaintop, exposed to the elements to decompose and to be eaten by vultures.

Xiangcheng to Litang

Xiangcheng to Litang
Sichuan Province, China
June 2018

The drive between Xiangcheng and Litang went through high mountain peaks, so despite it being summertime there was snow on the ground. We were certainly over 4,000 metres at times. There was a monk dressed in burgundy robes sitting next to me on the bus and we leaned together excitedly over the Compass app on my iphone, which has a barometer that shows elevation.

Bsampeling Monastery

Bsampeling Monastery
Xiangcheng
Sichuan Province, China
June 2018

Despite all these signs of habitation, my memory of this monastery is of extreme quiet and barely another soul to be seen. The monks must have been inside or in other structures. (There were certainly no other tourists on this day). The joyful colours and patterns of the decorations made my heart so full.

Xiangcheng

Xiangcheng
Sichuan Province, China
June 2018

Tibetans have really cool motorcycles, no? Xiangcheng, elevation 3,200 metres, is a small and necessary overnight stop on the bus route between Litang and Shangri-La. I’m so glad it is, because it’s a special, quiet, beautiful place in the mountains, overlooking grassy fields, not really a destination in itself so it has a strange frontier feeling. We didn’t have any accommodation booked and we spent a very long time walking up and down steep streets trying to find a place to stay. The elevation made my backpack feel twice as heavy and I had to stop to rest a few times.

Songzanlin Monastery

Songzanlin Monastery
Shangri-La
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018

Shangri-la

Shangri-La
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018

Shangri-La was our last stop in Yunnan province, and the beginning of our travels through the culturally Tibetan part of China. It was also the beginning of traveling at high elevations (3,160 m). (We would be getting to a higher elevation with every stop on our way to Litang and Tagong in Sichuan and we were making our way slowly and in steps, to avoid high altitude headaches and such). Shangri-La is where Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet meet. The drive into Shangri-La was through green grasslands surrounded by grey mountains on a cloudy day. We saw yaks for the first time on that drive, and the distinctive and colourful architecture of Tibetan farmhouses. That landscape is incredibly beautiful but I didn’t get any pictures. There are no trains in this part of China so we were on long distance buses and as we got closer to Shangri-La I really began to feel far from the world I knew and so so happy about it.

At dusk in Shangri-La, and in many of the towns in this part of China that we visited, people dance choreographed dances in a large circle in the public squares to extremely loud music blasted out of portable speakers. As a foreigner it’s a very joyful thing to watch. Everyone knows all the moves, knows the songs.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018

At a maximum depth of nearly 4,000 metres this is one of the deepest canyons in the world. We came here because there’s a two-day hike along the top of the canyon which we read about in our guidebook. I was really scared of doing this hike, and I spent hours leading up to the arrival in Qiaotou reading the few English-language blog posts I could find when I used my VPN on my phone to google things. I read them over and over, trying to judge how scary it would be. It’s famously steep and slippery in the rain, and there’s a section that is called the 28 bends that is just uphill switchbacks for hours. I kind of pretended to myself in the lead up to arriving in the town where the hike begins, that I was game to do this hike, because I knew how much Nico wanted to do it. But over breakfast on the day of the hike I cried into my oatmeal (not joking) and said I really didn’t want to do it. My toes and heels were covered in blisters from walking in the rain in Dali and I was scared. I hate heights, a lot a lot. So Nico set off to do the hike, and I agreed to find my way to the endpoint of the hike. I walked the low road for a while, I hitchhiked the next part, and then I got picked up by the son of the people who ran the guest house at the end of the hiking trail. I got to enjoy a glorious two days in that guest house eating delicious home cooked meals and drinking beer and reading and meeting other travelers and looking at the mountains and the canyon and the Jinsha river and drawing. Knowing I wasn’t hiking just made it even sweeter.

Dali

Dali
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018

It rained the entire time we were in pretty Dali, which I think was maybe three or four days but it’s all blurred together in my mind into one endless, soggy experience of clothes never drying, sitting inside steaming buses, walking walking walking in the rain and getting blisters from wet socks inside my only pair of very wet shoes. Dali is a big backpacker chill destination for domestic tourists, and it’s full of teens and twenty-somethings with (fake) flowers in their hair and lots of shops selling drums and rose petal cakes and rose yogurt (both of these are really delicious). The old town is beautiful, but there is a commercial-hippie vibe that feels very manufactured. I think I’d have liked it about a hundred times more if it wasn’t endlessly raining, so I don’t want to be unfair.

Yuanyang market

Morning market, Yuanyang
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018

The embroidered clothing worn by the local women from the Hani and Yi ethnic minorities in Yuanyang is so incredible. I spent a long time at this market watching and admiring how gorgeously dressed the women were.

Yuanyang

Yuanyang Rice Terraces
Hunnan Province, China
June 2018

Magic place. Pure magic place. We stayed an extra day because it was magic. I have a purple flower pressed inside my diary that was given to me by a young girl here.

Jinghong

Jinghong, China
May 2018

We crossed into Jinghong, China from Laos on Nico’s bithday. It was an extraordinarily complex journey, involving many bus rides and lots of waiting and not a few moments of confusion. By luck there was an American man who spoke Mandarin on our bus as we crossed the border, and he was heading the same direction as us, and helped us out with exchanging money, buying tickets and ordering lunch. It wasn’t until we said goodbye to him in Jinghong that we really began to realise how different it was going to be travelling in China, compared to the Southeast Asian countries we had come from. No more Google maps (or Google anything), no more Latin alphabet, no English words written or spoken anywhere, no common language. With more luck and the kindness of strangers, we found our booked accommodation, checked in and went out looking for food and a place to have a drink to mark Nico’s birthday. We learned that even ordering food will become quite an adventure. Again, when we looked lost, kind strangers were happy to help us find our way and make telephone calls for us. All this with pointing, gesturing and laughing. How wonderful it is to be able to be lost like that.

The next day in our hotel room, we started trying to devise ways to recognise the Chinese characters, for example, this one looks like an alien with many legs, that one looks like a person kicking a leg out to the side. We used translation apps to find the characters for certain phrases for food and types of meat and drew them in notebooks so we could try to read menus. We learned how to say some simple phrases about ourselves, the usual greetings and how to count to ten.