We had a months holiday for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and went travelling around southern China where it's warm! I tried to keep a travel journal and it worked for the first 9 days or so, so parts of this is taken from that and parts of it is me trying to remember what we actually did. We first went to Kunming, capital of Yunnan priovince which borders Laos and Burma.
30/01
It's half past 10 in the evening and it has so far been 7 and a half hours into our 32 hour journey to Kunming. It doesn't take much more than that to get a good insight into low budget travelling, that is, hard seating! We have both managed to get window seats which would mean relatively easy sleeping if it weren't for the fact that the window won't shut properly so cold air is coming in and blowing in my face. The noise is also tremendous whenever we pass another train. I have attempted to stuff the gap with my jumper but it's uncomfortable to have to constantly lean your arm on the window ledge. There's also no space to move or even stretch your legs a little because so many people are crammed onto the bench. As for the rest of the carriage, I guess we are pretty well off. Everywhere is cluttered with people, people standing in the aisle, peering over the seats to get a look at us. There are people crowded and squashed in the gaps between the carriages, and squatting on the filthy floor. Your not supposed to smoke in the carriages so they all smoke in these compartments instead, but as there are so many of them the smoke accumulates and drifts into the carriage, making the air thick with it. One upside to having a window that wont close! According to the man sitting next to Katherine who speaks really good English we are in Hunan province, but it's dark out so I can't see much, and don't know how much the landscape has changed. I desperately need the loo but can't be bothered to get up as it takes a good ten minutes squeezing through the crowds and past the numerous trolley women, and then a long wait before a disgusting hole in the ground. Quite a good start to the trip but I suppose inevitable, at this point am just glad to get out of teaching and finally be on holiday!
31/01
Morning has finally arrived, it seemed to take it's time coming, and is greatly welocomed as we only fell asleep around 5 in the morning. One of those sleeps you're grateful about getting out of, even if your still tired! Judging by the time I'm guessing we are in Guizhou province. I'm quite fascinated by the diversity of the vegetation, although it's quite hard to judge, because as everywhere in rural China, most of it's covered in paddy fields. On the one hand you have the subtropical lush green shrubs and palm trees, though not quite so green this time of year, and the soft green pine trees covering the hills much like that of the landscape back in Jiangxi. Then, at seemingly random intervals, there are wide hilly pastures from which jagged pieces of rock jut out, and coarse, burnt brown vegetation grows sparsely over the dull earth, much like the shrubs you would find in high altitudes. The mountains are truly peculiar - many of them stand completely isolated and are better described as big lumps sticking randomly out of the ground than mountains or even hills, as if a giant had lumbered through and shovelled large mounds of earth into piles with a giant shovel. Then in other areas they stand packed closely together and form true ranges. Many of them, althouh smooth and rounded in all other aspects, sport sheer cliffs of bare white rock, as though a massive hammer and chisel had hacked parts of it away.
Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in southern China, and looking out from the train this becomes evident. The few areas which aren't either paddy fields or vast wilderness are made up of clusters of shabby houses seperated from one another by narrow dirt tracks. Further outside of the villages peasents trudging through muddy fields and yanking at reluctant buffalos is a common sight. Common also to the landscape now are the numerous tombs of ancestors, as well-kempt and trimmed as children. They are stuck in between rice the rice paddies, surrounding the base of the hills and sometimes placed high up in the mountains, the flat slabs white flecks in the sea of of green and brown.
We arrived in Kunming that evening and because we only stayed there a night I won't say too much about it as I can't really judge. The Hostel was awesome, the barbeque amazing, the nightlife dodgy and the city as a whole quite western. But thats very superficial. As we couldn't get tickets directly from Kunming to Yuanyang, our next planned destination, we decided to do a stop over in Jianshui. Once again, as we only stayed there a night, I don't feel I can really judge it, but I guess this was my impression of it.
02/02
Jianshui is located in good view of distant mountains. It has a definite subtropical feel, with dusty roads and palm trees growing from odd corners, and scooters cluttering every street. The centre of town, where we are staying, is made up of hundreds upon hundreds of old traditional houses, aligned along a messy net of wide and narrow cobbled streets. It felt like it was truly an old town, and the beautiful structures gave it a definite charm, but as in Kunming, nobody seemed particularly surprised to see us, showing that they probably get a lot of tourists during the high season. But what I liked best about it was the biggr sense of chaos that Kunming so lacked, but altogether not overwhelming. It was a lot of fun sitting on the wall of the Chaoyang Gate that we had climbed up of, and watching the busy life below us pass by. We wandered down a random little street in search of a lake we could see from the gate, but when we found it discovered that it was impossible to walk round. This street seemed quite a bit more out of the way, and less touristic, but it's possible that it's just because it's the wrong time of year for tourist-spotting. Had a very good lunch at another random little restaurant, trying to make sure that the bill didn't amount to anything too high. We tried this strange tofu thing that they grill and dip in a spicy sauce and which was surprisingly good; I think tofu is growing on me finally! Definetely also had the best barbeque so far in China last night, and I know that Xinjiang is famous for the best, in which case I'm seriously looking forward to it cos if thats second best Xinjiang must truly be amazing!
