Chinese English Courses

Most of us have heard the news about the massive English language efforts in China prior to the Olympics, how chinese taxi drivers had to go undergo and English course and the chinese government is even sponsoring the every day nation wide TV English lessons. In my mind, this is wonderful and I hope it is working as English is THE language to know (not French how it was perceived a few decades ago), but what I am about to show you are some examples, captured about a year prior to the ignition of the 2008 Olympic flame in the Bird's nest, of how neccessary the English courses are for the chinese population. Following are some signs we have had the pleasure to take pictures of during our wandering around the People's Republic of China.

To start you off nice an easy, here is an example of a pretty big and visible advertisement for an international arts school which was hanging in Xi'an on the train station (at least I think this is where it was - It was so long ago:).

The next item is one of a kind and the title of the following example is, I quote now "Touris Guide to Mingshan Scenic Area of Ghost City". Note the omission of a letter in the first word already. And under item 6 in the guide we find the following :).

Now we are getting to a bit more heavy stuff with a big poster advertising a tour to a wide audience (which is probably not English speaking to their benefit). See for yourselves.

The next sign, we saw in ChongQing, is even more prominent, but in this case, I might incline to a weathered condition where the connecting line might have just disappeared, but one never knows.

And finally, the most beautiful pearl at the end. Let's see if you can spot the real crab. Perhaps the Russian confused them :). We actually orded it and it was very very good.

The Russian Hainan

After our stint in Hongkong where English is the standard, we had to return back to the mainland, however, not for long as our destination happened to be city Sanya in Hainan, the most southern island in China. After 14 hour ride in a train (from a couple of hours is spent on a ferry locked in the train) we arrived to the sunny Sanya full of beaches and of course stalking taxi drivers who want you to catch a ride with them no matter what :).

To our surprise, it is tough to imagine that Sanya is part of China as all the shops and restaurants have signs in Russian. After a bit of investigation we found out that there is a direct flight from Moscow to Sanya and one major Russian travel agency has their office in Sanya. If you ask me, this is a hell of a marketing campaign to turn a Chinese city into Russian holiday destination. In any way, it was advantageous to us as Libor can read some Russian, so we knew what was around us. However, as it turned out, perhaps it is good there are majority of Russian tourists there as the English is not up to par yet :).

The idea here was to take it easy and rest up on the beach before we head to Vietnam. We did just that, so nothing much exciting going on. Just the usual skinny Russian wives and their chubby husbands :).

The trip to Vietnam had turned out to be a bit more hassle than we have bargained for, but on the other hand it went quite smoothly.

First, bus to Haikou (4 hrs), then overnight ferry to Beihai (12 hrs), after that bus to Nanning (4 hrs), after a night in a hotel, bus to Hanoi, Vietnam (10 hrs) with about 1.5 hrs at the border. Overall, it took us about 48 hrs to make it to Hanoi from Sanya, so if you are ever there and don't have this time, you should fly :). However, if you have time, the journey was not bad as far as the connections, so it is doable without major hassles.

Canton and Hong Kong

It was time to say goodbye to long underwear so we started to head down south to Canton. After another night on the train we said hello to brilliant sunshine and English signs in Canton.

It's actually quite funny how we have stopped assuming that people around us would speak English. Most of the time they don't so we have just stopped asking. This means that when we need to get something sorted with locals, we both start waving around like idiots using all the body language we can think of (and occasionally, the phrasebook). However, in Canton people watched our monkey-waving for a while and then asked in perfect English whether we need help. So life in Canton was nice and easy, we chilled out for a few days and forgot about the disappointment in Yangtze River.

From Canton (or Guangzhou, as it should be properly referred to) we also did a 2-day trip to Hong Kong. After almost 100 years of Great Britain rule, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. And one can really see this historical effect - Hong Kong is a completely different world from the China we have seen, a fascinating mixture of West and East. Mix Wallstreet, Earl Grey and traditional chinese culture and there you have it! A very good place to chill out for a day or two. We climbed to Victoria Peak, ate in Soho and wandered around in the streets of Kowloon. And suprisingly, there is quite a bit of trekking one can do in the surrounding islands of Hong Kong. Overall this place was more diverse than I expected, previously I had seen it as a business center, the promised land of suits, ties and stress medicine. Pleasantly surprised.

Next stop: Beach-life in Hainan island.

Cruising the Yangtze River

Despite all the magnificent stories we had heard about Yunnan county in South-West China, we decided to head to River Yangtze. We paid a handsome sum to the hostel for arranging a luxurious cruise in first class and I started to dream about a nice massage on the boat. I was all ready to be treated like a queen.

The morning started with a 5-hour bus-journey with smoking, spitting, farting and burping chinese men. During the break I went to pee in a hole in the ground. In our destination in Chongquing we waited for our turn at the ticket office and the woman in front of us exercised for a while, did some interesting stretching movements and then started to fart very loudly. After we got our tickets we came out in the street and a bunch of rats were running around in the street. This was the moment I started to realise that this cruise will probably not be what we thought it would be...

Ok, so no male servants feeding me grapes. Our cabin was a cold storage room underneath the Chinese karaoke-bar (wow these ladies can sing high!) and it was raining pretty much the whole time. But the biggest problem was the language barrier since nobody in the staff spoke English, unlike what was promised when the trip was booked. So we missed announcements such as "we are now passing the 3rd gorge, might be a good idea to come outside and take a look" and "this stop is NOT the famous temple, please don't leave the boat".

Luckily the scenery during our 4 day cruise was amazing, luckily we found other westerners to share a beer and a laugh about the whole ordeal, luckily we had packed long underwear with us!

Giant Panda's outdoor city

Already at first site, Chengdu seemed like a much better city than Xi'an. People here seemed very friendly and were not that surprised when they see foreigners. This capital city of Sichuan is the main hub for many travellers who are planning a trip to Tibet. Either they are waiting for their permits, train tickets or just recovering from the trip to Lhasa, which takes about 40 hrs on the local train.

Our hostel was a true backpacker's paradise with everything geared toward the needs of someone on the road. Also, Chengdu is full of outdoor stores with every possible piece of equipment. We have taken advantage of this and bought a pair of hiking boots for about 40 euro. (so when people tell you, don't worry about buying some stuff before you leave, you can get it there. They are mostly correct :)). Furthermore, if you like spicy food, this is the place to be. The local delicacy is called the hotpot and we of course had to try it (with the help of arms and legs we ordered one). It was a pot full of spicy pepers and one 5kg fish with all of its fins, even the head. To ease the burning pain of the spice, we were sipping a peanut butter milk which was quite tastey. It was only 100 snot filled napkins later we realised, we could have gotten half the pot non-spicy and half spicy :). Very good food though.

What is here to do? Well, there are a couple of mountains to hike on where temperatures go down to -1 degrees in October, so we decided against this as we weren't equipped for this. However, the main attraction seems to be the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center. Even though it sound a lot more natural than it actually is, the research there offers some good insights into pandas' lives. The facilities are pretty large and very zoo like which was quite disappointing. Everything is mainly geared towards tourists, so do not expect any tropical rain forests. On Sunday we have opted to take a local bus about 2 hrs to a nearby small village Leshan where the supposedly largest sitting buddha can be found. And what do you know, there he was overlooking the river and the city. Quite interesting to see a statue so large, but the weather was quite foggy, so the pictures are not great.

Chengdu was great, now onto our next destination, Chongquing and then river Yang Tze cruise through the Three Gorges.

Xi'an, city of warriors

It is hard to imagine that someone would tell you which sites on internet you can visit and which ones you cannot. Well, what do you know? :). Blogger is blocked in most internet cafes in China, so we had to wait until we found one that worked and this was in Guangzhou. I'll try to do my best to summarize our experience of the last two weeks in the next posts.
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After 11 hour ride in a sleeper train, we have arrived to the city of Xi'an. Before I tell you a bit more about it, let's summarize Beijing a bit.

Required dose of polution is on everyone's agenda on daily basis :) in this city. I can hardly imagine running a marathon here in the 2008 Olympics. I guess we shall see if the city officials will make some changes (they are planned, but my guess would be, it is a bit late). On the other hand, Beijing has mastered the symbiosis of the new with the old architecture with a magnificent perfection. At one point, one can find himself walking in the biggest slums (with brand new Audi/Mercedes driving out of the tiny streets) and at the next corner a brand new shopping center with full western sortiment overlooks the Forbidden City (with old rikshas zipping by).

Back to Xi'an though. The train ride was quite ok since we really slept the whole time and the train was new. The hostel was unfortunately a bit further from the train station, so we have decided to get a local three wheeler taxi (riksha). The driver, sad looking old man, was showing us two fingers as far as the fare goes, so we have assumed it was going to cost 2 RMB and were happy it was cheap and were giving business to a local non-car taxi community. After arrival to our hostel the driver pulled out his Siemens cell phone and typed in 18 RMB as our charge. We were surprised, but could not really argue with him, so started to put together the money. Suddenly, some gentleman walking by started to talk to the driver in a raised voice and after a little bit, we have realized, he just caught this guy trying to stiff us on the fare. After a short shouting match between the driver and the guy, we ended up paying 10 RMB and were taken by one younger man to our hostel. So, there are nice people out there after all, but still not a good start to the Xi'an experience.

At the hotel we have booked a tour to go see the Terra-cotta warriors with English guide(as that is really the only reason we have came here). This sounds cheesy, but it is really the only way to get somewhere fast and hassle free. Other possibilities would be to organize some bus tickets ourselves, but that could take a while to do and no English subtitles would be present :). In the evening we have decided to go visit the muslim quarters of Xi'an, supposedly well known for their food. We got some courage and entered one of the local restaurants where obviously nobody spoke English, so with the help of pointing and our guide book, we have managed to order some rice, lamb, beer (yay) and noodles. No comments on Chinese cuisine, it is just plain delicious :).

Terra-cotta warriors were the highlight of our day on Wednesday, but it is still not what it is made out to be. Before you enter, guides will tell you there are over 6000 warriors in one of the tombs, however they fail to expand on the fact that 5500 of them are still burried, so you can't see them :) (so sort of a rip off in a way). Our tour also took us into so called "factory for terracotta warriors" (this was not on our itinerary). After about 5 min introduction about how they make them out of terra-cotta, then burn them etc, we were horded (with 100s of other tourists on similar tours) into a huge warehouse of antique furniture and statues which were of course for sale. The Chinese enterprenourship does not know boundaries :).

After 2 days in Xi'an, I'd have to say, we were guite happy to leave for our next destination in Chengdu, Sichuan. Unless, one is an archeological enthusiast, I'd not recommend to make it all the way to Xi'an just for the soldiers (looks better on TV :)).

Beijing Duck and city dust

So we arrived in sunny Beijing on the 16th and started the trip in a jetlag-haze. The original plan was to sleep like a baby and wake up refreshed in the Beijing morning, ready for first adventure. But instead we fell onto our hostel beds and slept until afternoon. The jetlag-haze probably also explains the decision to have bugs of an unknown origin as dessert the same evening. Flavor? Crunchy with a weird after taste, but then again everything tastes like chicken, right?

Once our brain started to work again we headed for the main sights. This being the Forbidden City and the Tian'anmen Square. It was very impressive and astonishing, as all the books had promised. Oh and btw, beware of the english speaking "arts students" around the entrance - do not follow them to see their artwork, knowing that you are not going to buy any. We made our first enemy by the second day!

By this day it was also evident that blond hair will make some people stop and point at you, even take pictures (one pathetic scarf will not cover a thing!). One lady at Tiananmen square even brought her husband to me and asked us to pose for her familyalbum. I am hoping that they might mix me with some famous athlete, since I am constantly wearing sports clothes!

Yesterday we had arranged a trip to the Great Wall of China. There are many different ways to go to the wall and we picked the route from Jin Shan Lin to Si Ma Tai which is about a 10km stretch of a treaturous wall climbing. Hardcore step-up aerobics I tell ya, but absolutely worth it. The hike is further away, but with less tourists and gorgeous breathtaking views. It is also common to be accompanied by some souvenir sellers from Mongolia which will try to help hikers in more dangerous spots hoping for a sale at the end. Some people (the other one :)) get really annoyed by this, however, I figured that a stack of post cards for 70 cents was a small price to pay for 5km and a helping hand.

Today we went to a couple of local parks with temples and pagodas. The most famous being the Beihai park with the majestic White Pagoda overlooking the city. At the top of the pagoda, there is a beautiful view of the entire Forbidden City. However, the view gets even more magnificent from the neighboring park called Jingshan - you can really see the size of the Forbidden city and the contrast between history and the modern buildings around it! After all this walking we ended the day with the classic Beijing Duck meal at a local joint. I have to say, the Lonely Planet phrase book has saved us from several tricky situations - everything we have eaten so far has been recognisable:)

Since the language problems are tricky, our hostel helped us to arrange train tickets to Xi'an on Monday. Before that we still have a few more days in Beijing, hoping to see the Summer palace and The Temple of Heaven before we go. It's definitely not a problem trying to find things to see in this huge metropolis!

Chinese Visa

We have applied for Chinese double-entry visa in Dublin, Ireland. It took about 1 week to get it, which was quite surprising. However, the date of issue is the same date we have filed the application, so we probably could have picked it up earlier. It took just one application and 50 euro. We had bunch of paperwork ready such as flight tickets, hostel address, but the Chinese officer did not want it at all. So, I guess the Chinese government doesn't mind tourists too much :).