Nia Hao!

I am finally in China after all of these years! :-)

The train ride was really interesting...

Due to the weather being so grey outside (lots of rain) it made everything seem so grim and miserable. There were lots of concrete buildings decorated entirely with small glossy tiles, they rose up high and the residential ones were big enough to house a whole town. The sprawl followed us from Hong Kong, although as soon as we left the New Territories the Pinyin and English terminated. We saw much industry, the complexes larger than anything that I have seen before (including Gujarat). Between the industrial complexes lay a blanket of agriculture - neatly manicured stretches of fields, mostly lush and green. Workers were busy kneeling at the crops or splashing water over them using a bucket and their hand to distribute the water out. Amongst the crops we saw grave markers atop small mounds, topped with what looked like white paper. We also viewed some residential areas that were single story and were mazes within compounds decorated with strips of gold coloured Chinese characters on a red background. The land for the most part was flat however we soon saw the odd hill rise up sharply in the distance which eventually took the train through plenty of tunnels. We never saw any wilderness as such, there was always a sign of human habitation or interaction with the landscape. There was a lot of deep quarrying and open mining, some of which seemed to be just dirt rather than any rock. We wondered if it was being removed so that it could be used as new topsoil elsewhere.

We have to get going so will have to share more with you later.