Tashi delay.

Forever a source of amusement to us (and because we have a secret admirer that is also very interested :) - we bring you more food photos :)

A typical Chinese breakfast - sloppy rice porridge (this one has a few mung beans added for extra flavour), pickles (pickled radish with chilli in this case) and deep fried twists of bread. We had 2 orders of the fried bread and the whole meal - for both of us - was only 4 Yuan! That is about 35p UK or just over 50 cents US!


One of our dishes in the Muslim area of Xi'an. This is thick hand cut noodles with green pepper, green beans, spring onion, chilli oil and a few token pieces of beef (already devoured by K at this point). Then we selected 2 plates from their selection of vegetables - green beans and snap peas (with a bit of seaweed on top)on one plate and cucumbers and cabbage on the other. We also had some bread that was reheated over the fire with some spices on the ouside, it was very similar to Cajun spices. This meal was amazingly delicious, it was the second time we had been there, the first time Julia took us :)




Now for the amazing variety of meat available at the grocery store :) They have an entire asile of packaged meat and then a section in the cold case and then the occasional end of aisle display of meat products!

The meat aisle, with some of the available "meat candies"




From the end of aisle display you had a choice of meat sticks (we see people eating these all the time!!! On the buses and trains especially)

...and this sausage "meats" every mountainbikers needs :-)


And from the cold case...some chocolate cheese (not meat, but still very strange :), some chicken feet and one of those flattened duck :)




Again, we laughed ourselves silly in the store, but it was all in good fun :)

Later!

Tashi delay!

I had a terrible nights sleep last night, it was very lively as I rolled over again and again often suffering from a few aches here and there. I awoke with a puffy face this morning and look like I have been crying. I am not sure if this is an effect of altitude or whether it is allergies. Anyhow, we are still taking it easy and ensuring that we acclimatise properly.

I really want to get on and talk to you about Lhasa but I still have unfinished business with the rest of the trip in China and really need to blurt this out. Besides we really have not been doing much here - although there is never a dull moment because everything is so new...

Random thoughts regarding China...

It is not uncommon to see people excitedly playing Mahjong or Chinese chess in the street. Normally the two players will be surrounded by an onlooking crowd that will shout out instruction or react energetically when an intelligent move has been made or when someone is facing certain defeat. It is great to watch the crouching people often dressed in suits, sliding the circular flat game pieces around a makeshift board. It also seems that a pack of cards in ones pocket is as invaluable as carrying a hanky. We regularly see people of all ages playing cards, sometimes they will be sitting around a table on the street or in the entrance to a business as time is passed whilst awaiting custom. Game playing was apparent in India too and adults would not be ashamed to get together in the fresh air and challenge one another to strategy games. I do not see this in the UK.

Happy grandmothers at dusk - in the cities and towns, as the sun sets, grandmothers and their grandchildren flock onto the streets. Amongst the hustle and bustle of migrant workers, consumers, motorbike taxis, tourists and street vendors there would be a grandmother trying to relax the child for it's nights rest. I found it interesting to watch them searching for peace and relaxation amongst the crowds on a busy street. The grandmother would often hold the child in her arms and would walk around in circles, pacing up and down in the street, in a one way conversation trying to make the little one sleepy with her soft words. Occasionally she would point at something in response to the child who would suddenly, in a moment of resistance try to fight heavy eyelids. Sometimes the child may be in a buggy and grandma would trot back and forth pushing patiently awaiting the movement to entice the toddlers sleep. I like this scene that I have seen many times. It makes me think of how close the ties are amongst the family members. That grandma lives with or near the parents and is able to be so involved with the family. We do not have the time or there is too much distance for many families to be like this in the west. I remember when I was young, my grandparents were always around. Now I think that times are changing but I could be wrong.

There are things that you see when you travel that make you think about your own life and your memories become more vivid than ever. I love this reflection.

I saw a police chase outside of the train station in Xi'an. It made me think of British bobbies. I heard a whistle blowing and some shouting, followed by some more whistle. Around the side of the van in front of me I saw a man being chased by a police officer who was trying to hold his cap on his head. It made me chuckle to myself but also made me become further aware of my own belongings, we had been told many times to keep our eyes sharp at the station due to the threat of thievery. The man was caught judging by the sounds that I could hear but the event was out of my sight and I could not wander away from our luggage. The train station was an interesting place to watch the police. We saw police monitoring the area by driving around in "golf buggies" with the police logo on the side. We saw police women wearing neat navy uniforms complete with jacket, shirt and tie and donning a bright white military style bowl helmet, oddly they wore black high heel shoes and heavy make up too. It was very strange to see and I thought that the whole scene would not be out of place in a movie about a fictional future.

We saw security guards on power trips on a number of occasions. When we were queuing for our Lhasa tickets we were entertained by the following scene...
There is a ticket booth that is reserved for refunds, the queue that accompanies it is the longest in the whole station. Tickets for travel are in high demand and as a result it is very easy to sell them on again should they not be required or you wish to make a little extra cash as a tout. As a result, potential travellers who cannot purchase a ticket due to lack of availability or those who are looking for a cheaper price, will walk up and down the refund queue in order to try and find a ticket for their destination. There is a security guard in place who has the role of preventing this from happening. We watched one guard with sharp, squinting eyes, carefully and meticulously watching the line of people before him. He kept the queue in single file by blasting loudly on his whistle when anyone stepped out of line. Should anyone be brave enough to walk down the side of the queue, either hoping to jump it or to purchase a second hand ticket, they would be blasted with his whistle and then abruptly shouted at. We saw the guard do this over and over again. I watched him chase people away from the queue, he would run behind them literally blasting his whistle in their ear with as much breath as he could muster. I watched him shout at someone, he made them stand to attention as he shouted in their face and blasted more whistle in their ear, the person was then given permission to leave and quickly ran off. I was gobsmacked by this behaviour, I could not believe that somebody had the authority to behave in this manner over such a menial issue. It was such a cultural difference, security guards would never do that in the UK and if they did people would certainly not accept it. It made me think about an ingrained acceptance for authority in the Chinese mentality and how much lack of respect for it that we have in the UK.

A final train station memory whilst queuing for tickets... Regular official sounding announcements over the tannoy sounded more like orders than information for customers. People looked as though they were listening attentively (not that you had a choice due to the high decibels) to words that even in another language made you feel as though you were in year eight at school. I even witnessed K take her hands out of her pockets and hold her head straight and lose any sign of slovenliness :-)

I have seen large groups of school children wearing tracksuits (which is the uniform style), marching in the school grounds at the orders of their mentor. I have seen uniformed employees standing in neat rows outside of their place of employment early in the morning before work as if they were changing watch. They would go through a synchronised range of motions as though stretching each of their limbs and then as if they were greeting a customer with hand gestures. I have even seen groups of employees marching back and forth outside of a shop front. I don't understand it, maybe I suffer from a lack of respect for such orderly behaviour. I just find such militaristic manners to be so out of place in a nonmilitary environment. Another case of cultural differences. They could be team bonding exercises, they could be exercises to awaken employees and to get their blood moving so that they work better, whatever it is, I find it very strange. Maybe people are proud to be part of the group.

Flower displays in public areas or at tourist attractions are orderly like this too, slightly militaristic (if that can be said of plants!). Something that looks like a beautiful flowerbed will upon closer inspection turn out to be carefully positioned rows of potted plants. Hundreds of them, placed on concrete or tiles, the petals still beautiful nonetheless.

Sometimes there is no room for individuality or an allowance for it.

But then...

I see a distinct range of youth subculture amongst the young in the cities. A generation that has been able to reach fashions from other shores. There are kids with big gelled hairstyles cut at wacky angles, donning fashionable jeans that would cost a fair amount of quids in the UK. Skateboarder fashion, American sports fashion, new romantics, boarding babes - it is all there. Guitar wielding young men busking in the streets, rave music blasting out from shops and heartthrobs singing about love over the radio. There as many mobile phones to match your style too.

People in the countryside still use carrying poles balanced over their shoulders which are in turn shadowed by woven bamboo brimmed hats. At each end of the pole hangs a bucket of sloshing water or large baskets of vegetables.

Fast vehicles of authority shoot other road users out of the way with a short siren that sounds like a code for "contender eliminated" like the Wipeout game on the Playstation.

There is a China that I am isolated from. I have read about it in many books - I often think they have made me closer to this far eastern land than actually travelling here. A lack of language means that I am out of touch with an essential part of understanding this other culture. It frustrates me because I know that it is there, it is before my eyes and I see the clues but I am only a partially sighted observer who has cloth for ears. I sometimes feel completely clueless. We know that there is an ancient culture here, China is famous for it, a history that is not only seen in architecture and art etc but is also ingrained in the language and customs. It is also in the everyday classical serialisations that we see on TV, stories and legends that are part of this culture. Formalities are swamped by it too. I am just so distant from it. There are times that something will slip through the net though. Meeting Chinese people that speak English is key to this. Spending a few hours with someone can bring the culture that much closer to you. Maybe if K and I had chosen guides at every opportunity we would have learned so much more but then we would have forfeited the experiences that we have had. Thankfully meeting Julia and the Lama for example has given us both some invaluable insight that we would not have gotten from any guidebook... I wonder though, has the learning of English and interaction with western culture changed the way that they view China... To get the understanding that I want of this culture would require years of study, some of which I have already done but without the language I am always relying on somebody else's interpretation.

I think that it is very easy to misinterpret China especially as a foreigner. It is has an amazingly diverse and rich culture, one that I cannot judge but one that still remains as curious to me now as it was before I had even arrived here.

Thanks for reading :-)

Xi'an...

I will apologize in advance, as I am not going to say much about Xi'an because I am too excited about Tibet, but I will give you the highlights and A will have some things to say for sure. It's not because it wasn't great!!!! We had some amazing experiences in Xi'an.

We arrived in Xi'an on a bus and it wasn't much different than our other bus journeys except that it was over an hour later than we expected. The bus guy tried to stick us for some extra cash and make us pay for extra luggage, but we weren't having it (we are seasoned travellers and we know better :) - and he tried as we loaded them and as we unloaded them, the cheeky boy! :) We put the bikes together and a very helpful drunk fellow tried to take my bike for a spin as we moved on to putting A's bike together, but he couldn't get his leg over....

We loaded the bikes and rode into town. First, we were impressed by the modernity of the city - it was very fresh! Secondly, we were very much thinking of D&B back in MK and thinking about them having been in this very same town not all that long ago :) We found the first hotel that we liked the look of in the Rough Guide and went in to see if they had anything in our price range - the book lists them in our price range, but it was looking very posh! We sorted a room and my decision was made not on the price (which was not cheap! but it wouldn't break the bank) but that it was rapidly getting dark and that there was some fabulous food in the downstairs restaurant :) They had no bicycle parking but they immediately agreed to let us keep the bikes in the room....yes, it was a nice place and we had to walk them in through the restaurant in ground floor (hilarious! :)

The food was excellent - one whole wall of the place was food on display and there was immense variety - one whole section of steamed buns and dumplings in both meat and veg varieties (can you see A smiling? She was in heaven! :) Then we went out on the town! We walked towards the center of town and stumbled upon a youth hostel. We went in and asked about Tibet permits (the first thing on our mind!) and ended up having a beer in the bar and booking in for the rest of our stay in Xi'an (we didn't want to stay in the posh and uninspiring hotel).

Ok, enough about all that, the rest is highlights! Let's see...the first night in the youth hostel we were woken by some rustling in the room (well A was, I sleep like the dead but she woke me up to listen :) and after a few bouts of turning the lights on and having a look around I spotted the cause with a quick flick of the light switch - there was a rat eating some biscuits on the desk!!! We were both rally unnerved and went downstairs to ask to change our room...it was 4am. They had no other rooms!!! So we went back upstairs and lay there with the light on until the morning. We then went down and got our room changed. Wow, that was an experience!!! Now, this is not a bad thing to say about the place at all, the youth hostel was very clean and the people were very friendly and helpful....I have no idea how it got there and we did leave the biscuits out.

We got our act together to get the Tibet permits quite late on the Saturday and since the one place to get a photocopy was shut we were led to another hotel to meet a travel agent that would sort it all out for us. Everything was going smoothly, the guy was really helpful and he faxed off the permit applications for us, but when we went to leave we couldn't get out - the area of the hotel is locked that late at night. The travel guy called the front desk and we waited...no one showed up, he called again...no one showed up. Twenty minutes passed and we were running out of conversational topics :) The lights were on motion sensor so we spent most of the time in the dark...what if there had been a fire???? Finally someone showed up and the travel guy gave her a piece of his mind (rightly so, I thought) and we were on our way back to the hotel...it was nearly 10pm!

On the way back to the hotel we were approached by two women, one spoke English. She was a teacher of English and it seemed that she wanted to demonstrate to her student that she could in fact speak English to foreigners. But we were having such a good conversation and the student went on her way....we had just met Julia :) We were both really tired and we arranged to meet up with her the next evening for more conversation and dinner....which we did.

Then we went out to see the Terracotta Warriors....we wanted to ride, but the route finding was more troublesome than we expected and we had done 20kms and still had at least another 30 to go and we were running out of time (and I was feeling the effects of a potential cold) so we turned around and headed back to the bus station where we parked the bike in the bike barn and hopped a bus :) The warrior experience you will see in photos - we took a ton :) Suffice it to say that it was tourist hell - that mass market scene that the Chinese have chosen - of a huge mall shopping area, very channeled routing of the masses to see the sight, followed by another trip to the shops. Ugh. That said, the Terracotta Warriors are indeed an amazing sight - they have done a really wonderful job of protecting them from the huge crowds and also letting you see them, which is a huge task. There are three big buildings covering the three very different groupings. You can see that this is still very much a work in progress - there is a lot (the vast majority) that they have not started uncovering. In building number 2 they have also put several of the different warriors and some of the artifacts recovered in the pits behind glass - museum style so you can really see them up close. I was totally impressed by the high-tech crossbow mechanism that was so well preserved and the warriors are truly amazing up close - so close you could touch him if the glass wasn't there. It was well worth being fodder for the tourist machine :)

Once we got the Tibet permit - which was a fax with 4 names on it, 2 of them ours (of course :) for which we paid 500 Yuan each! We went to the train station, as we were told to do, to buy the tickets. We queued at window 1, as we were told to do by the guy at the hostel, for 10 minutes when upon reaching the window we were sent to window 4. Great. We then waited about 15 minutes at window 4 when the window closed and we all had to find a new queue. We are no dummies, windows 4 was the foreigner window so we looked around and found that window 10 was also the foreigner window, so we queued there. Twenty minutes later we reached the front of that queue and were told that they only had tickets for travel to Tibet today (all the trains leave in the morning, so they probably didn't have any :) and tomorrow...we wanted the day after! So we left empty handed after an hour's queueing. The next day we came back and the queues were enormous! We queued for nearly a half hour at window 4 and we finally got our tickets - 2 middle bunks in a hard sleeper cabin, woohoo! We were going to Tibet :) Now to arrange for the bikes to go with us.

We found the cargo area and tried to find out what we needed to do. No one would give us a form so we could take it away and fill it out - they told us we needed to have the bikes. It was frustrating, but my handy dandy Rough Guide dictionary provides a translation for "can you get someone that speaks English?" :) So they took us went next door and chased someone up for us. We spoke to a very helpful woman whom we eventually convinced to give us a form but we promised not to fill it out - we would let the professional next door fill it out when we arrived with the bikes the following morning....at 4:30 am!!!!! She said we had to be there 4 hours before the train departed to put the bikes in for shipping and the train left at 8:48 am.

We then hooked up with our new friend Julia and went off to see the Great Goose Pagoda - we have both been reading Monkey, about Tripitaka's journey from China to India to return with Buddhist scriptures and this is where the scriptures were stored on their return. A Chinese reader/speaker is great thing to have on hand when all the information is in Chinese! :) She read some of the information panels to us and even conversed with the monks in the library :) While A went up into the pagoda Julia helped me with the translation of the shipping document that we had picked up at the train station. That was a great help, too. Then we headed over to find the bike shop that has Trek bikes, which just happens to be near the pagoda. Again, we were very thankful for Julia's presence as she did all the translation for us.

The people at the bike shop were beyond helpful!!! They did not have any spare mech hangers in stock, but they offered to remove one from one of their bikes for sale so that we could have it (that is above and beyond - it would take them 3 days to get a replacement and the bike is not usable/sale-able until it has a mech hanger). We declined their generosity, but they provided us with a few more water bottles and a cage (my bike has 2 cage mounts but we only put one on in Beijing and I was carrying water in my pack - better to put the weight on the bike). They also gave us some t-shirts, which we will wear in a forthcoming photo :) then, to be even more generous, the manager of the shop invited us out to eat! He took us to one of the famous eateries in Xi'an where we had some fabulous noodles (cold, hand cut noodles with chili oil and a little broth that you have to mix all together) and I had the most amazing pork sandwich, which is their speciality. Then we went off to a small place near the southern wall (Xi'an still has it's ancient walls) and drank Corona and talked about foreign tourism to the US. It was a wonderful evening and it would have been impossible without Julia translating for us, so we are indebted to her and we are very glad that w made some friends in Xi'an.

Ok, my little "problem" with the US as it deals with foreigners. Ugh. People have to prove that they have ties outside - whether to their own country or somewhere else - before they can get a tourist visa to enter. In China they have to have an interview with the US Embassy. It takes 3 months, so apply well before you go. Getting into a US University - be it Harvard or Podunk U - is not the challenge, even if you have been accepted you have to show that you have ties outside and that you will come to the US, get educated and then get the heck out. Being the only male son (in China there is a one child policy, so you are the only child) and have to come back and care for your parents is not enough. What sort of ties do you have when you are 18 years old? You don't have a job that you have to return to, or a business that you own....the family dog? Hardly! We even met a very educated Chinese man that owns his own business, drives a very (very very) nice vehicle and he is afraid that if he applies for a tourist visa to the US that he will be denied because he doesn't have enough ties. It is scary. We checked the UK and it doesn't seem to be as harsh. Here is a scary thought...if A wasn't a Brit and able to come to the US as a tourist via the visa waiver program then she would not be able to visit as a tourist....

Anyway...we have had a spectacular train ride across the rooftop of the world and we are spending our days acclimatizing and grinning like idiots in awe of our surroundings. Catch you later!

Hey all...I have a lot to say, so bear with me :) It's just general commentary to get out of the way before I tell you about Tibet!

The drivers - they are a little better than India, but not much :) We have been in some taxis and on a few buses now and it is, at times, a scary experience. They drive in the middle of the road, in the passing lane when there is no other traffic, they take a right turn on red as if it's a green for them :) In the UK there is no right (or more appropriately left) turn on red and in the US it's a right turn on red AFTER STOP...that last bit obviously hasn't made it through the translation here :) It's the thing we have to watch for most when crossing the street on foot or on the bicycles. They also like to drive and talk on their mobile, or if they think that is a bit dangerous, they just pull into the cycle lane and drive really slowly while talking on the phone. They drive in the bike lanes which are often separate from the main road by a median strip, sometimes even the wrong way down the bike lane! Ah, it keeps us on our toes :)

Let's talk toilets (obviously my favorite subject:) They are everywhere!!!! They are not always pleasant, but there is no shortage of them. We occasionally see the men using a wall, but it's rare compared to India. In Louyang they have signs on the streets about every 100 meters telling you there is a toilet up ahead, just on your right or behind you, so pull a u-turn. We used toilets in petrol stations or rest stops while we were on the bus (the driver would pull over every couple of hours) but we could also see tons of roadside toilets where drivers could pull in and relieve themselves - always a boys and girls room, but most were very basic, roofless latrines, often with a weird fake rock motif as if the loo was carved out of a big boulder :) You have to bring your own paper, too. And you have to put the used paper in a bin provided for this purpose, or risk blocking the pipes (when the toilet has pipes, which is only in the nicer places). A is quite talented at clogging the toilet up - she forgets to put the paper in the bin as it's not our habit...but we no longer have a problem communicating what assistance we need to the hotel staff :)

Tree planting. Wow, someone has put a bee in their bonnet here!!! On the ride down the length of Shanxi we saw that, literally, millions of new trees have been planted in the last year, many of them within a month of our passing by. They are planted quite close together, only feet apart in many cases, and many rows deep lining the edges of the roads. The rows of trees encroached on planted fields in many cases as well. We also saw many hillsides planted with trees. Many of the trees were what looked like poplars - their tops were cut off and they looked like staffs had been planted, but we could see some of the older ones had new branches coming out of the tops. As we got further south they were planting evergreens - small pine trees. As as we got further south it got a lot greener! Everything wasn't so brown and things were really growing. Xi'an amazed us with it's greenness and beautiful flowers everywhere - it was definitely Spring!

Hot water! This is the drinking kind and the bathing kind. Everyone in China - local and visitor alike - knows that they have to boil the water to drink it. This is excellent, as it means that we are not the only ones concerned about the health of our insides and we don't have to worry so much in restaurants. In India the locals would drink anything (and wash dishes in anything) so we were always vigilant. We still buy bottled water in China but we also have water in the hotel rooms. Sometimes it's a kettle and I boil water to put in our water bottles. Sometimes it's a flask of hot water that they provide and we have to ask for it to be refilled. The last method is a like a mini water machine - similar to what you get in a lot of offices - a water bottle upside down into the machine and water taps out. The machine boils the water and it comes out a hot water tap. We use this only for making coffee in the morning as it's very small - it would take forever to fill a water bottle, it can barely do 2 cups of coffee at a time! :) We don't know what water has gone into it - if the cold is safe to drink - so we don't drink it. As for the hot water....we don't have to do a hot bucket wash, we always have a shower, but the quality of the shower hardware varies greatly! That said we have had some great showers and the water is usually hot. Just as in India, though, the consistency as to whether hot is to the right or the left is trial and error :) Many places have had 24 hour hot water and some places only have night time hot water. We are keeping clean :)

As a continuation of the water concept...there is a serious drain smell problem here, as in India. I think a bit of bleach would go a long way to solving this problem :) As in India, it's the bathroom floor drain but also the open drains in the streets. It's an easily recognizable smell, but I don't remember ever smelling it in the US or the UK. A says she has smelled it in Spain once, but not in the UK. It's pretty foul, and one of our hotel rooms had a pretty vicious case of it and we had to keep the bathroom door shut the entire time. Yikes!

Living where you work. We saw this a lot in India, but we have seen it quite a bit in China, too. In the hotels there are floor women (they were all women, we didn't see any men...more on that thread in a minute :) and they had a room to live in so they were available to the guests all the time. As did the person that watched over the back of the hotel and the bike barn - we could see a little room at the back. We also could see that people were living in their shops - in Beijing, in Wutai Shan, in Louyang.

On to the roles of women :) In India we thought that women, for the most part, were hidden from the public view - this was not just the Muslim women but *all* women, except, of course, the westernized/urban women. I know I found this a bit depressing, and I think A did, too. Women in China are more visible, which we think is great :) but for some reason I was surprised to see women as part of the Chinese ruling class on the news on TV last night...hmmm for some reason I have picked up that weird idea (if was great to see that India had a lot of women in power....am I contradicting myself????). Chinese politics has always seemed to me to be very much and "old boys club", a bit stuffy and conservative. Anyway! The roles of women. Like on co-ed softball teams where women play certain positions and men play certain positions and it's rare to see it differently, women hold certain jobs and they don't hold other jobs. For example, all waitstaff are women. We have yet to see a male waiter. All the floor staff in a hotel are women. There are crossover jobs - we have see bus boys and bus girls and both male and female bus drivers. In India we saw many women working construction and doing road building and we have seen the same here although the women here seem to be treated equally unlike India where there were obvious inequalities amongst the workforce.

The last bit of commentary I want to share is about the vehicles. We have done our share of riding behind vehicles and breathing the fumes :) and sometimes we are pleasantly surprised....mmmm, that smells like wood :) They have solid fuel combustion engines! We have smelt wood and coal exhaust in addition to the standard diesel, petrol and 2 stroke exhaust smells. Many of the vehicles are not so much air polluting as they are noise polluting - the engine noise of some of the three wheeler pickup trucks and tractors is enough to knock me off my bike! They are incredibly loud...as are the horns of some of the trucks as they honk at us while passing, causing me to shout back at them "UNNECESSARY!!!!!" but I am sure they don't care :)

Later!

Tashi delay from Lhasa :-)

Firstly - we are both well and are acclimatising gradually, we have not had any need to buy any oxygen either. We have both had the odd headache or two and certainly some breathlessness but we are taking it easy and allowing our bodies to adapt to the environment.

Now, I could write a post about how absolutely amazing it is here in Lhasa but I am not going to - this is because I have not yet finished with the rest of China and I have some more photos to share...

I am going to rewind back to Louyang and our bus tour to the Shaolin Si - this is the infamous temple from which the Shaolin kung fu style originates from. I have to say that having been a martial arts fanatic in the past, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. We had planned to take a normal public bus (and all the complications that go with it due to our lack of Mandarin) out to the site but when we asked the receptionist at our hotel she told us that there was a tour there for thirty yuan and that it would take in some other sites too. At such a fair price we could not refuse - we also had a free breakfast thrown into the equation. We had expected to be on a tour bus packed with foreigners but much to our amusement we were escorted at 8am the next day to another hotel to board a coach that was full of Chinese tourists. We were the only English speakers.

We found our seats on the back row of the coach which was now full. To our left sat a pair of middle aged women who were dressed very smartly and to our right sat an old cadre who donned a flat navy blue cap and wool coat. We assumed that he was an old cadre because he had a special ID card that was in a red wallet with the communist insignia on the front (similar to the Red Book covers of Mao's sayings that we have seen), there was a photo of him as a young man inside too and with this he could get a discount into all of the attractions en route. In front of us to the left sat a pair of incredibly happy grandparents who were in their fifties and to their right on the opposite side of the aisle sat their daughter and baby grandchild. It was an interesting journey for us. Firstly before the coach even left the child needed to pee. The mother sat the child on her lap and spread it's legs apart, with the ease of the spilt pants the child could then pee all over the floor of the coach. The encouraging mother and happy grandparents then moved the lino on the floor over the wet patch that had been made and the matter was over and done with. This happened on several occasions. Later on in the journey we would watch the happy family suck on vacuum packed chickens feet and peeled apples. Occasionally the grandmother would spit out the window and I would think of the cyclists that may have been in it's path. The pair of seats that the grandparents sat on was not bolted to the floor of the coach and when we went up and down the switchbacks in the mountains later their chair would tilt left and right and take them by surprise every time. The grandparents were so proud and loving, the mother was gentle and entirely focused on her baby, they were obviously having a special day out together. The old cadre to our right had a kind and sincere face with soft lines from age, he would stare out of the window peacefully looking content, he had a wonderful smile. Other people on the coach - there was a twenties something couple who were very much in love and hugged the whole time, they would also return to the coach later than everyone else and nearly got left behind on one occasion. There was another couple with their young toddler son who was highly energised due to the amount of sweet things his parents kept giving him, he was double trouble as a result and after acts of mischievousness he would be reprimanded and would bawl his eyes out. This couple did not seem to give their son much affection which is quite unusual to see here. There were other people who ate vacuum packed sausages and spat seed shells on the floor, hacked up a lung or two, spat out the window or talked animatedly.

When we thought that no more people could get onto the coach seats were flipped out into the aisle and thus created another row of seats which were soon filled. There was so much going on in this coach that would contravene any number of health and safety regulations in the UK, it would be a risk assessors nightmare. With a packed coach we eventually got on our way. The young female tour guide was full of information and talked constantly and loudly into a microphone in Chinese, there was a lot of response from the people on board, unfortunately we were not part of the fun. In fact, although the tour guide could speak a little English, she would often forget about us and we would not know where we were or how long we had to wonder around the sites. K was great and chased her up for information every time, she would beeline it through the thicket of camera wielding tourists in order to talk to the tour guide, with her mission accomplished we were free to abandon the group.

Onto the photos...

Our budget tour coach :-)


A view from the back row - you can just make out the seats in the aisle.


Our first stop was at a temple, we chose to not go inside because we did not know anything about it, we were also told by the guide that it was a minor site. So we sat outside in the sun and enjoyed the fresh air and freedom from the cramped coach and enjoyed our surroundings...

The temple was adjacent to a small hamlet and was surrounded by fields. Most agricultural land is terraced as is shown in this photo.


In a field there was a man crouching whilst attending to his crops, surprisingly he was wearing a suit. This is a typical sight in the countryside where people meticulously grow vegetables and crops.


Villagers were sitting around gossiping and watching the tourists.



It seems that many villages or residential areas have a blackboard near to their entrance. I assume that this shows the latest pricing or yields for crops although I am not entirely sure and can only go by what I have read in the past.


The village comprised of two very narrow lanes.


Some of the doorways to the houses... I wondered what histories belong to the families that have lived behind them.




Next it was onto the Songyang academy on the mountain of Songshan. If you have time it is worth having a read of this link on Songyang Academy -- The Highest Seat of Learning in Ancient China

The steps leading to the entrance of the academy - we love those steps :-)


The Tang tablet (774 AD) which stands at the entrance is about 8 metres tall.


The gardens at the temple were pretty despite them not yet being in bloom. There was bamboo...


... a rockery that was almost as big as any of the masterpieces that my own dad has created in the gardens of my childhood :-)


...and a peaceful pond with bridge.


The "Two General" Cypress trees are over 2000 years old!




Songyang was a centre of learning for many different doctrines, but especially Taoist.


Next we went to a Sakyamuni Buddha temple, unfortunately we do not have the name for it or any information regarding it's history. It was not in our travel guide and the tour guide did not have time to try and explain in pigeon English any information about it. Nonetheless it was still interesting to see.



There was an abundance of incense burning, it is possible to purchase huge spirals of incense which burn for hours.


The temple was set against a backdrop of mountain cliffs.


Devotees were prostrating and focused on silent prayer in front of the Buddha figure.


An image from one of the temples walls. It shows Sakyamunia and Bodhisattvas.


When we entered the temple we were given a small yellow sticker to wear, upon exit we were to place it inside the outline of a big character. We could not find out what the big character read though.


Eventually we got to the Shaolin Si. It was not quite what I had expected but I was still enthralled to be there.

Firstly we were greeted by this huge statue of a martial artist. I don't think that it was lifesize though...


As we made our way towards the temple we were quite tickled by the decorative phoneboxes :-)


...and this interesting way of separating your recycling :-)


Our first sighting of any martial arts was this group of young monks practising for their showcase. They would take it in turns to run across a row of backs.


Next on approach to the theatre where there were live kung fu performances we encountered more statues sporting different stances and poses. I was getting really excited at this point and was lost in a kung fu nostalgia. If I had come here a few years ago I would have prayed that I would be left here for all eternity!




The Shaolin Si is also the birthplace of Chan (Zen) Buddhism which differs to much of the Buddhism that we had seen in China so far which had mostly been of the Mahayana sect.

The fierce looking Lokapalas guarding the temples of Shaolin.



Some scenes from the temple grounds.




The temple has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, in fact the temple that now stands is a recent rebuild based on information about the original. There were some old steles and one old building at the back where the floor (see below) and some very old paintings have been preserved.



This is pretty amazing - the floor in the old building at the back of the temple grounds has sunken in places due to monks practising their kicks on the same spots. Over time this has created many indentations. WOW!


At the Shaolin academy there are still many thousands of students, some of which are residents, we saw many of them practicing and training as we left the grounds. There were sparring matches, people kicking kickbags, syncronised stretching, punching and going through forms. It was incredible to see.



Overall the Shaolin Si was not what I expected it to be. I did not know that the temple had been rebuilt and I did not know that the whole area had been redesigned to cater for the high volume of tourists which visit each year. I was disappointed by the commercialisation of this great art form and it did not have the spiritualism that I thought it would entail. Perhaps it can be found if you are a student there (or at least I would like to think so) and that the true spirit of Shaolin Kung Fu continues despite the thousands of prying eyes. Still I will always remember my visit to have been a Shaolin adventure park so I will prefer to think of the surrounding mountains and what it may have been like many years ago.

All was not lost.


Our final stop for the day was the Baima, or White Horse Temple which has the claim to fame of being the first Buddhist temple in China. For a temple that is on the tourist trail I was amazed by it's peacefulness and serenity. Perhaps it was because we visited a little before it was due to close that day and as a result the monks were tidying the grounds and winding down for the day which may have added to it's atmosphere. The monks would also say "nia hao" and smile which was very welcoming as well as unusual because at many of the temples I have not experienced this.

We watched monks who whilst chanting walked single file into a main temple.




Keeping the grounds immaculate...


A white horse statue.


In the temple grounds there were some beautiful gardens which were full of Peonies in bloom as well as blossoming trees.






It was a great place to end our day of touring...


Phew, that was good to clear that backlog. There is much more to write and photos to post but heads are pounding and tummies are grumbling - until next time :-)

Nia Hao!

Just a quick post.

We have our tickets for Lhasa and we leave our hostel in five hours. We are both very excited :-) :-) Much has happened over the last 48 hours and there is much to share (besides more photos) however due to events over the last few days we have not had time to get the blog up to date. We have had a great time here in Xi'an visting some wonderful sights and riding our bikes. We have also met some fantastic people, especially Julia who has not only helped us immensely but has become a great friend, we will both miss her company.

We will write from Lhasa when we can, it is going to take a few days to acclimatise, so please bear with us whilst we learn to breathe again :-) :-)

Until then, please send us thoughts of oxygen.

I need to go and pack so zaijian from Xi'an :-)

Our daytrip to Pingyao....

We hopped an 8:30 train...with the wild child (seen on the right climbing on her mother :). Her indulgent grandpa is seated on the left.


We arrived hungry and decided to get some noodles before our walk to the Shuanglin Si. We told them we didn't want meat and she gave us three choices...we picked 2 and let them surprise us with whatever we got :) We could tell one had tofu and one was spicy by looking at the characters, but there was no way to tell they would both come with the essence of mutton :)



Then it was the long walk out to the temple. We saw these new apartment blocks going up and lots of trucks hauling various loads of coal, coal soot, gravel, etc.






A short walk up the tree lined road to the temple for the last 500 meters....


Then we reached a busy little town outside the temple gates...


We then paid our entry fee and were greeted by this many armed statue...


...before we hung a left into the temple proper and met head on with the protectors!


In these photos they come across more as "I'm a disco dancer..." but they were pretty scary up close :)





As I mentioned in my post, we couldn't get photos of the amazing sculptures in the buildings, so this is all exterior stuff. I have put some links to sculpture photos at the bottom of the post for you, because I know you are interested :)

one of the small entryways...


view of the rootops....



there are some old trees around, and monks....


the front of one of the buildings....


We went up to walk on the walls....


...and up into the drum tower (sans drum)


Here are some of the finer details on the buildings and steles around the temple...









We did not use this loo (one of the nicer ones, with dividers :), we used the modern one elsewhere in the temple, but I expect you all are interested to know what the loos look like (just a guess :). Enjoy, as my nose had to brave the strong scent as I snapped this shot! :)


Then it was the long walk back...until we hitched a ride in a passing rickshaw with some other tourists :)


photos that I found elsewhere on the web of some of the inside sculptures...click on them to go to a bigger image.

The road out of Wutai Shan to Wutai County...

It was a beautiful and sunny morning! This was excellent, as it had been raining the day before :) This is what the road looked like as we left town - we could see our route out up there on the hillside.


And when we got up there we looked back on where we started...


The climb was a lot easier than we expected, it doesn't look too bad, eh? :)


More views from the climb up....



We stopped for a break when we got to the top, after this it was riding the rolling hills on top of the pass, it didn't go down for another 10kms or so.


Some of the sights from the hills on top of the pass...




Views of the surrounding peaks - beautiful and snow covered!!!!



it's hard to see, but this is the way we came in when we arrived a few days before. We were dropped at the low point to the left of the peak on the right - you can just see the traverse down to the left (look closely :)


We just passed the toll booth here and are ready to begin the descent - this is about 2000 meters, you can see the mountains go up a lot higher!


This is what the descent off the pass looked like....lots of lovely, curvy downhill - woohoo!!! :)


A loves this shot, sorry the small format doesn't do it any justice :(


After all the kms of downhill, when we had the option to take a dirt road or the paved highway - of course we opted for dirt :)

This was the entrance to a village...


the road was in decent shape...


lots of erosion was evident on the hillsides....


there was a bit of climbing on the dirt, but the loaded bikes handled spectacularly well...


the scenery was really beautiful and it was a great end to our favorite day on the bicycles


We only got one shot of the next days riding to Xinzhou...it was a flat ride and not all that scenic. You could tell we were in an area that specialized in forging, even without the sign :)

Nia Hao!

More photos - this time of Wutai Shan.

After leaving Yingxian we headed for Wutai Shan. We knew that it was not going to be an easy day riding but little did we know about the challenges that lay ahead of us.

It was not long before we were climbing up into the hills again. We rode them slowly and steadily. We are unable to stand up on the bikes to crank the pedals due to the weight of the panniers, it is far better to go down a gear or two (or ten!) and to spin up the climbs whilst seated in the saddle. Besides this method builds better muscles and I need it :-)



Once again we were rewarded with some spectacular views.


We climbed 600 metres over a distance of 30 kilometres or so. It was slightly undulating in places but mostly it just headed upwards :-)


The landscape was really awesome and it inspired us, we really wanted to make it to Wutai Shan, the holiest of places for Chinese Buddhists.


We eventually came to the top of the first set of hills with 50 kilometres in our legs. Some of the colours in the rock were amazing.


...and then we headed down.


We descended back down onto the plain, we crossed it then headed up into the next set of hills. We did not realise that we would need to climb up to 2600 metres and that we would run out of time. Please see previous posts for the whole story.

On top of the north pass at Wutai Shan. It was absolutely freezing - literally. There was snow everywhere and ice on the road.


The guys that I negotiated a lift with to the top of the mountain.


Now that is not a scuba diver shivering in the background, it is K wearing everything that she had in order to keep warm. Luckily there were no young children around lest she should scare the wits out of them :-) Next we had a very cold descent into Taihuai and arrived just before dark.


The next day we had our breakfast in one of the squares in the centre of the town. This is the Laughing Buddha statue near to where we sat. The Laughing Buddha is an incarnation of Maitreya or the Buddha of the Future.



There were many monks walking by.


Some people wore face masks here even though it was no longer dusty and the air was far cleaner than anywhere else that we had experienced in China so far.


There were many pilgrims in town.


We had a walk around to see what we came across and to get an idea of the layout of the town. There were lanes that led to temples and temples that lead to lanes :-)




More monks. There was even a shop where monks could shop for robes :-)


We climbed up more steps (we love climbing steps if we are not climbing hills on our bikes :-) to one of the temples high up on the hill.


We took some time to observe the town below and take in the surrounding hills.




There were many prayer flags tied to nearby trees.


It was really good fun to explore the pathways.


We encountered more Lokapalas - the Kings of the four heavens. The one with the sword is the guardian of the south and the one with the musical instrument is the guardian of the east.


There was the strong smell of burning incense everywhere that we went.


The Sakyamuni stupa is the main stupa in the town and always seemed to be visible no matter where you were.


Spinning the prayer wheels at one of the temples.



It is said of Taihuai that it is hard to distinguish where one temple ends and another begins. This is very true.



The temples were beautifully decorated having been painted in bright colours.



Many visitors were praying and making offerings as well as lighting incense.


Outside one of the temples there was a large selection of armoury!


Brightly coloured rooftops.


There were tiles painted with beautiful images of landscapes adorning many of the temples entrances.


We found this great little restaurant in town which gave us a warm welcome and some relief from the cold outside. The staff were sorting out dried mushrooms and fungus on one of the tables.


On our second morning in Taihuai we awoke to discover that it had snowed overnight, the surrounding peaks now had a fresh cover of snow :-)


This is the temple where we met the Lama for the first time.


This is the Lama Hi Fun.


This is the temple that Hi Fun reveres the most, inside there was a picture of the living Buddha who's teachings the Lama follows. The temple is located out of town and we had to take a taxi ride to get there.


A view from the Lama's temple.


The stupa at the temple - inside there are relics of one of the previous incarnations of the Living Buddha.


Trees that were planted by the Living Buddha in one of his previous incarnations


The next day we were on the road again.. :-)

...the next day we were back on the loaded bikes - our next destination was Yingxian to see the Wooden Pagoda.

Another day of riding into the wind. We had to take frequent breaks - I was obviously not riding hard enough and enjoying myself far too much because, I could still manage to smile :-)


After checking into the hotel and a little rest we went back out to see the sight. This is the street that the pagoda is located on.


The pagoda devoted to Sakyamuni Buddha was built in the eleventh century and got it's name because it is entirely built of timber.


Lokpalas are guardians of the temple and are the first thing that you encounter when you enter the complex.


They look pretty menacing and have the potential to ward off visitors as well as evil spirits! Luckily we were fast enough to not get trampled... :-)



I loved the rounded entrances to other courtyards.

There was also a drum tower and bell tower.


Inside the pagoda there are nine tiers although only five are visible from outside.


The statue of Sakyamuni on the ground floor is about ten metres tall!


We climbed the dark stairs to some of the other tiers.


The temple is so well built that it has survived many earthquakes.



There are more statues of Buddha and his disciples on the floors higher up.


I felt as though I was onboard a creaky wooden ship, it was absolutely amazing :-)


Looking out to Yingxian from the pagoda's balconies.


We are off to meet an English teacher for dinner now - hopefully we shall get some more photos up later. So until next time... :-)

Nia Hao!

Now that twowheelswhirled has found a spot to base ourselves for a few days we can finally bring you some photos from our journeying over the last few weeks - just in case any of you doubted that we were still in China :-)

We had not left Datong for long when we bumped into these cyclists on the road who were as keen to meet us as we were them :-)


The road had been flat riding away from Datong (the wind made up for it though!) but would eventually become a little hillier.


Ah, a much needed break from the wind for a moment. Note the designer Burberry's rack trunk on K's bike...just one of those designer copies available in Hong Kong :-)


Along the roadside we saw more villages that looked as though they had been abandoned but when we looked further we noticed that there were a few people around. The colour of the abodes was exactly the same as the landscape and sometimes it was easy to confuse the rubble with natural rock.



Next to these villages we also saw much land that was cultivated and was being prepared for new crops.


On our first climb into the first set of hills we saw these 'doorways' which had been carved into the rocky hillsides to make a manmade cave. We have seen these throughout our travels over the last few weeks and are not sure if people used to live in them or whether they are used for storage.


Taking in the view on our first climb.


So, the first day on the road with all of the luggage and yours truly manages to get a puncture just after our first big climb and just as I started a very fast descent. I managed to bring the bike to a steady stop without any blunders and then had to wait for my accomplice who had sped off downhill to come back (more character building for her to climb back up again). My hands were too cold from the sleet and wind, thankfully K was keen to carry out the repair.


Looking out towards our destination after the climb with Hunyuan somewhere in the distance.


The air around Hunyuan was not exactly the cleanest...

...further demonstrated again in the morning.


The next day we took a ride out to the Hanging Temple and monastery.

We passed this marker next to the turn off for the temple....the sky gets blue when you get up above the smog!


It was spectacular to see it suspended from the rock face.



We had not expected the temple to be so amazing when we climbed up to see it close up and found ourselves equally overwhelmedby it's magnificance.


It was very narrow.


..and there were lots of steps and steep slopes to climb up and down.




Posts hold up the structure solidly despite their humble appearance. It is suspended at least fifty metres above the floor of the gorge.



The roof tiles and decoration of the eaves were also beautiful.


The temple contained images that represented Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.







Many shrines have a soft cushion for devotees to kneel at and pray as well as a donation box.


Amongst the many halls and rooms which contained religious images we came across a small room which had this traditional style bed, you can see whereby underneath a fire would be lit to keep the sleeper warm.


There was a lot of decorative painting on panels - surprisingly it had lasted so well.




Chinese characters were carved into steles. It is very frustrating to be ignorant of what they say.


The nearby dam across the gorge which keeps the river at bay from flooding the nearby area and threatening the very temple itself.


There was still a lot of frozen snow on the hillsides.


Next it was a climb up to Heng Shan one of the holiest hills for Taoists.

We really enjoyed climbing up the winding road and eventual switchbacks without the weight of the luggage.



Amongst the beautiful hillsides there was another coal mine with accompanying resident blocks.


A lot of the land had been used in some way, whether it was quarrying or growing crops. Interstingly the steep slopes were not always terraced and we could see steps carved into the mud.



As we climbed higher up the views became more and more spectacular.


Looking up at the Taoist temples above us - we had to lock the bikes and proceed on foot.


The statue of Lao Tse in the parking lot where we locked our bikes. There were many people who had come up in cars and tour buses and were surprised to see us on two wheels each - we felt especially happy to have climbed so far with the use of our own legs.


The first of many temples located high up on the mountainside of Heng Shan.


Some of the temples were built into the rock.

We both lit incense that we had carried up with us.


More steps to climb! To get to the top temple we had climbed about 500 meters on the bicyles and then another 500 meters on foot!


This temple was decorated with a lot of painted panels.


Some examples of the detailing adorning the temple.





It was very atmospheric when we approached this temple (after having climbed more steps) we could hear chanting, we were also met by a Taoist holyman.


There were temples everywhere...



...and when we were done walking up and down the mountainside steps to see the temples we decided to head back to town to eat having used all of our energy up. We were rewarded with a great descent in order to get back to our hotel in Hunyuan :-)


Thanks for looking :-)

Food photos and some funny signs (be warned, they will have you laughing :)

We have been eating very well. These are some of the dishes that we have been enjoying...mostly vegetarian (and without meat!)

The token meat dish - double cooked pork. It was nice, but a bit fatty. There was a lot of it and when I was finished with it there was still quite a bit left but the waitress must have thought I needed some help or something because she brought over a roll and filled it with pork for me to eat...:)


Some of the stir-fried veggie dishes (both were fabulous, and even better when you ate them together in the same bite :):

garlic and cabbage


shredded potato with green pepper


Some noodle dishes:

egg and tomato noodles...with mushroom and veg


veg noodles...with essense of mutton :) The black is a tofu that looks like it has been near the coal dust (it's not my favorite, but A likes it)


We eat lots of jiaozi (dumplings) and they are usually veg, though I eat pork ones, too. We had some amazing ones in Hunyuan. These (from Louyang) have some sort of egg coating, usually they are just a pile of wet looking lumps :)


Here are some "different" items - a bean ice lolly and some malt flavored iced tea :



These signs from Longmen Caves had us rolling on the floor :)

this one is all about your ticket and who pays how much...


These were some signs above a couple of shops telling you what they sell...



This one really had us laughing out loud :)


neither have felt this type of violation so we don't know what happens when you call the number :)

The road to Xi'an...

We left you guys in Xinzhou, if I remember...the wind was blowing something fierce and it started to rain. Well it rained the next day, too and we decided that it was too cold, combined with the wet, for us to ride and maintain our good health....and we definitely didn't want to be riding in the spray from the trucks (lord knows what's in the dust on the road!). The road to Taiyuan was a red road on my map and we have been riding green roads, which are smaller, and they are plenty big enough! The smallest roads are white roads and the one that we took was dirt, so that tells you about the hierarchy of roads in China (the highest level is the expressways and no bicycles are allowed).

So we walked down to the bus station, not even 250 meters from the hotel, and asked about a bus to Taiyuan and it's ability to carry big luggage, namely a couple of bicycles :) We got the message across but all we got was a lot of head shaking. At this point we had no experience with bikes on buses, so we just had to accept it, luckily one guy piped in that he is a taxi driver and he would take us and the bicycles in his van for a fee (this was not a setup, he was just being helpful - it was a Sunday and he just happened to be standing with the group of uniformed people that we were asking). That sounded good....so we did our bit of negotiating - where, when and how much - with a young guy popping in to help with some translation right at the end and we were soon packed up and heading out of town in the pouring rain.

We were cruising on the expressway - our first experience with one (not counting the quick trip to the Trek office in Beijing) and it was a nice road - big and modern and fast. Taiyuan is about 70kms from Xinzhou so A made the best of it and practiced some of her Mandarin on the driver :). We had told the driver we wanted to go to the center of town to a particular hotel that was listed in the Rough Guide....well, the hotel was in the midst of major renovation and was not open, that was a bit of a bummer. So we were looking for alternatives and A told him, in Mandarin, that we were looking for a binguan (nice hotel) but inexpensive and he was really helpful in making suggestions as he could read the signs (there are many levels of hotel and they are indicated by name, not unlike the way they do it in the US with hotel, motel, inn, B&B, etc.). We ended up at the Railway Hotel and the driver helped us unload and then he was off, a nice bit of work on a Sunday for him :)

They hotel was decent enough...one of those where you don't get your own key, you have to ask the floor lady to open your door and also ask for a flask of boiling water (some places we get our own electric kettle). The doorman took one of the bikes and led me around back to a bike barn where we could safely store the bikes for 1 yuan a day. Then we went in search of the CTS to see if we could arrange a day trip to Pingyao (an ancient walled city with a temple outside town) and see about a bus to Louyang. It was still raining but that was no problem. We walked what seemed like miles looking for the office and then after not finding it, we went into what looked like the closest option. We were told to wait, asked about 3 times about a tour to Pingyao :) and then the English speaker arrived to help us out.

The young woman was very helpful and though she didn't book any tickets for us we didn't book a tour with her either (we found out just at the end that she was a tour guide). She took us across the way to another travel office and had the other women there calling and finding out schedules for the buses and trains and she told us that we would need to get the train in the morning but a bus back in the afternoon, as there were no trains back, and how much they would cost and she even wrote out in Mandarin a message to the ticket seller at the train station exactly what we wanted (2 tickets to Pingyao on this date at this time, etc.). Then she looked into the information about the buses to Louyang and helped us with that and told us to call her the next day and she would be able to tell us when the buses were leaving. This may not sound like much, but this is incredibly helpful - the queues at the train ticket windows are very busy and there are 3 bus stations in Taiyuan and she told us where we needed to be, where we would arrive, where we needed to leave from, etc. And she did it for free, including calling us that evening to make sure that we got the train tickets without a problem and to let us know the weather for the next day!

This was our day of incredibly helpful people - not only did the guy offer us his door to door taxi service for us and all our stuff, he did so at a reasonable price (we know how much it is to get the 15kms in from the airport in Taiyuan and we came 5 times that distance for considerably less than 5 times the price) and the travel agent woman was really helpful, but on top of that we also had some help at the train station when we bought our ticket to Pingyao. When we got to the train station later that evening it was not clear which window we needed to go to for our ticket, so I asked one of the police officers that were standing around (this is China....police officers are never far away :) which window for this and I handed her the slip of paper that the travel agent had written the instructions on. The police woman smiled and said she can help and walked right up to the window (cutting in the front) and held the paper up to the window for the ticket agent to read. She came back and asked us what class we wanted to travel in (soft seat) and went back. She then came back and sit it was 13 yuan a ticket so I gave her 26 yuan and she went off and returned with our train tickets in minutes - we spent less than 5 minutes at the train station! We are still amazed at the helpfulness of people!

Ok, so the rest of the journey is not so exciting...the next morning we caught the train to Pingyao. We shared our seating area with a pair of grandparents, a mother and about a 5 or 6 year old wild child :) The kid ate constantly - meat sticks (more on this later :), chocolate, chips/crisps, soda, etc. and she was buzzing and yet they continued to let her eat. It was entertaining to watch...and a bit painful, too :)

We arrived on schedule and since we needed the loo we used the one on the station...our mistake, it was pretty foul, the worst we have used in India or China! Oh well. We made our way into town and discovered, much to my dismay, that they had changed the entry requirements and you had to pay a huge entry fee just to get into town and not just for the tourist sights. No surprise, it is an incredibly steep fee (120 yuan) and people were probably just walking around town and not paying to see the individual sights (which I wasn't rating anyway - the first bank in China, circa 1860, is not a must see). We painfully decided to give it a miss as what I really wanted to see was the Shuanglin Si, the Buddhist temple about 5kms out of town, which houses some pretty spectacular sculpture from the Ming Dynasty. The only problem with the town being accessed on a fee basis was that the bike rental place was in town!!!! We were going to rent bikes and ride out to the temple. We decided to hoof it and that was a bit of an adventure on it's own :)

The Shuanglin Si was definitely worth the trip! It's a pretty small temple and we practically had the place to ourselves. You will have to imagine it, as there were no photos allowed of the beautiful sculptures and when we had a camera out in the first building of the temple the guy came over the loud speaker and told us "no photos, ok?" :) It was a bit creepy, but funny, too. We have photos...just not of the best that there was to see - the sculptures themselves! We have a book, so if I can't find any on the web then we will have to take pictures of the book :) It is supposedly part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that is Pingyao, but the Rough Guide didn't even mention it was a WHS and it was made one in 1997....go figure. More news as I find it, but we are busy sorting pictures at the moment so I don't have time to look. The bus trip back was uneventful and the next day we got a bus to Louyang and we got the bikes bagged and under the bus without a problem and without extra cost.

The ride to Louyang was interesting to say the least....even the bathroom breaks were amusing - roadside toilets are efficient and not entirely unpleasant....taken in the context that it could be a lot worse :) As for how the bus system operates? We have no idea what goes on, but it appears to us that the bus drivers load up at the bus station and depart with the ticketed passengers and then they pick up passengers that flag the bus down and make a bit of cash on the side. There are checks along the way, but just a count of passengers, no one checked tickets. There is a driver and a second employee on the bus and it's the second guy that comes back through the bus and asks the new arrivals for cash - he does not give them a ticket or receipt in return. The ride was long - 8 hours - and only the first half was on the expressway, the second half was on the secondary roads where they really started trolling for extra passengers/cash.

The best thing about the entire bus ride (besides that A's travel bands work a treat and she doesn't get motion sickness :) was descending the final gorge before hitting Louyang - wow! It was so tight and twisty and we dropped really fast - 1000 meters total. There was just a trickle of water in the river (the Chinese are building dams everywhere), but you could see how the water had carved out this huge canyon - the walls rose at least 500 meters above the road and we couldn't see the afternoon sun until we got out because it didn't reach the bottom of the canyon! We would have taken some photos, but the bus windows were not exactly clean... :)

We came to Louyang to see the Longmen Caves - this is where the Buddhist carvers moved when they left the Yungang caves in Datong in 450 AD. It's not to say that we were disappointed....but the Yungang caves were much more impressive. Besides a few really wonderful sculptures that are left, Longmen is basically a bunch of carved niches that used to have sculptures in them - most of them have been stolen, damaged or destroyed over the years. It's pretty amazing to see the holes from across the river - the hillside is like Swiss cheese - but that is about it. I personally think they should hype Yungang a bit more and Longmen a bit less....and Longmen is so overdeveloped tourism wise it's pretty scary - it's on steroids! We shared Yungang with *maybe* 50 other tourists, we shared Longmen with over 1000 other tourists. We were definitely thinking Disney when we were there. That said, the ride out was lovely and the ride back was a zoomer with the tailwind :) We again stayed in the Railway Hotel and ate some delicious vegetarian food that miraculously didn't have any meat in it (imagine that! :). The next day we had an even more Disney-esque experience when we joined a Chinese tour bus to see Song Shan, the Shaolin Si and a few other temples.

I need to run, but I will tell you about our visit to the even more touristy Shaolin Si and the bus ride to Xi'an....Later!!!!

A quick note form Xi'an...

We are in Xi'an :) We arrived on the bus from Louyang this evening and we have found internet access! Not at our hotel, but we are moving to this youth hostel tomorrow, so we will have lots of news for you then!

We have mostly been taking the bus, but we did ride one day. The air quality is pants when you leave the mountains, but we are doing our best to stay healthy for the ride across Tibet. Don't worry, we are very happy campers :)

More tomorrow, we need to get some sleep!!!

Nia Hao.

Today we had our worst day for riding scenery.

We started with a great descent from Wutai County, we dropped 250 metres in total from 1150 metres and eventually left the largest of the hills behind us. Thereafter we rode along incredibly flat straight roads amongst heavy traffic most of which was tourist buses and fast cars. We passed through a metal forging county which proudly displayed a banner to tell us such, as well as an area rich with stone carvers such as those that we saw in India. We heard quite a few blasts in nearby quarries too. Really though there is not much to report. There was the usual farmland and an unusually unnatural flourescent green river as well as some pretty grotty towns. Also, I did not feel as though I had an abundance of energy, I don't think that I had eaten enough carbohydrate in the meal last night so I could not power up those legs. It would have been an easy day if I had gotten my food balance right, K also felt it too. A snickers bar helped a little and we powered into Xinzhou where we now reside. We rode around the city proper (as a sign stated) looking for a hotel and managed to track one down. Again we had no idea of where we were going to stay. The hotel or binguan is not too bad considering that it is only 88 yuan but it really is grotty compared to the luxury that we have had of late. It is quite hilarious that the staff all wear military camouflage fatigues as their uniform. As I went up to our room I was greeted with a line of 4 people outside the room door who all greeted me in Mandarin, then one rushed into the room and turned on all the lights, TV and water heater. We had to get the toilet plunged in the room before we could use it (nothing to do with me this time :-). Oh well.

We have just been out for some food. We decided to eat early (4pm our time) and headed out into the main street. We found a KFC but could not find any other restaurants - this is a large city and the main strip is very modern. We went into a nice hotel (hmm maybe we should not have taken the first one that we found) and asked for their restaurant but they said that it was closed until 6pm but they pointed us down the road. We found a great little junjia (big restaurant) that was quite small and we were welcomed in. There was no English menu and again we had to try and explain what we wanted. The poor waitress was frustrated because we kept asking for dishes that they did not have. Eventually the manageress came out and with the help of our book we ordered food. She also sat with us for our entire time there and we had a great time talking in pigeon Chinese and her talking in pigeon English whilst we were surrounded by the workers. There was a really funny moment when she offered us some tea after we had eaten. I said that I did not want any but asked what type of tea it was, to which she replied green tea. I then told her that I liked Iron Buddha tea, she pointed at her stomach and said hen hao (very good) and laughed. I got the wrong end of the stick and thought that she meant that it was good as a laxative and I started laughing and said to her that I did not know that (this is all in Mandarin by the way so it is open to misunderstandings on my part). Then she laughed more and I laughed more then everybody joined in with K and I in hysterics. K being the smart one pointed out that she probably meant that it was good for digestion but there was no way that we could reverse the misunderstanding because our book did not contain the vocabulary. They probably think that I am crazy.

So here we are in an Internet cafe in the basement of a building. It is pouring with rain outside and we still have a long walk back to the hotel. Before the rain came this evening the sky turned brown and grey, it was from all of the dust being whirled up by the incoming winds. I am surrounded by lots of young Chinese who are mostly playing online games or watching reruns of television programmes which includes American wrestling. People are quite affluent here in this city, it is evident too by the shops that we can see in the "High Street". Enterprise is thriving, people are making money.

I am feeling tired again and a little bit peckish, so I am signing off.

Tomorrow we move on to Taiyuan where we shall get our laundry up to date and take a day trip out to Pingyao the ancient city.

Hao!

We had a great day of riding yesterday to a small town called Wutai County. It was only been a short 72 km day but we did climb 600 metres as well as ride 16 kilometres on dirt road. In fact, it was one of our most amazing days of riding yet. We had to climb out of the valley that houses Wutai Shan and we were rewarded with breathtaking views of sharp mountain tops dusted with snow. The slopes were covered in stripey layers of snow as well as pine trees which were still awaiting their spring colour. We cycled passed a few villages on our ascent and very little traffic passed us en route. The road was quiet, it was fantastic. At first we climbed slowly on an easy gradient but soon the road turned into a series of hairpin bends. This enabled changes in pace instead of one long slog like we had a few days previously. At the top of the climb we looked out across Wutai Shan, I listened to the wind blowing through the trees and it could be heard from each of the cardinal points as it swooshed all around us. The road from there went up and down for a while but never really dropped too heinously, it was a gentle roll up to the highest point of 2100 metres. We both felt on form after having had a few days of rest from the bikes as well as indulging in high carbohydrate and protein rich meals.

We stood atop the highest point and looked down the valley below and looked at all of the switchbacks that we had to look forward to on our descent - the road snaked down and down. We had the most awesome downhill. We descended to a height of 1100 metres over a distance of at least 20 kilometres, starting with tight hairpin bends and a nice long gentle slope to keep us rolling along. We passed more villages and much agricultural land. There were farmers standing on the back of ploughs which were in turn pulled by very hairy light brown and white bovines. Soon we came to a crossroads where we had to make a decision. We could either take a left and continue to our destination on a main road or we could head straight on along a road that was not even worthy of being colour coded on our road atlas. We decided to take the latter due to the idea that there may be less traffic and less climbing. Yes there was a lot less traffic but this was because there was much less road. Within 1 kilometre we found that our road had lost all of it's cement covering and was no nothing more than a two lane width dirt road. After a little discussion we decided to go with it anyway. What a great choice! We were rewarded with some spectacular views on a very isolated route that took a windy course through small villages and around and up some smaller hillsides. The road was very dusty but sometimes there would be some great hard pack whereby we could rip it up as long as the bumps did not become too much for the racks and panniers. It was absolutely fantastic.

Much of the landscape that we passed was incredibly eroded, K's theory was that it had all been turned into flat or terraced agricultural land over the last fifty years or so and that all the trees had been taken down to create the farmland or they were used for their timber. The soil was very soft and without anything to hold it together the erosion was quite extreme. There were deep channels and ravines carved into earth and hillsides, some were as deep as 8 metres or so and joined up with other gullies. The landscape was a mess. Occasionally there would be 2 or 3 trees holding together a pillar of dirt, the pillar would raise up 4 metres or so above the rest of the ground. It was very strange to see.

We rode on the dirt track for quite some time, it was the first time that we had taken the 4500 WSDs on a surface that was rough and we were really happy with the way our equipment performed, we had no problems at all. Eventually we came back onto another road and we ripped it up to our destination.

When we arrived in Wutai County we had no hotel booked and we had no map of the town. We road through the main 'High Street' and had no problems finding something that resembled a hotel. It is quite confusing trying to learn the characters for hotel because there are so many different ways of writing it depending upon the classification of hotel. We stood outside the building and became confused when the only English sign said something about industrial contract services. I asked the nearest person where there was a hotel and he laughed and pointed at the building that we stood outside of. Hilarious! I managed to get us a room for one night with my terrible Mandarin and we were also given somewhere to lock up our bikes nice and safely.

We headed out for some food and as always we ordered what we wanted rather than try to order from a menu that we found incomprehensible. We ordered some Home Style Tofu which came with pork fat (mmmmm mmmm) and some plain rice and stir fried vegetables :-)

We really did have a great time, the riding was awesome and we had succeeded in our first day of entirely independent travel in China (Nobody had booked our hotel in advance for us) :-) :-)

We are happy!

Thanks for reading.

Our time in Wutai Shan....

I will admit up front that I was a bit of a grumpy bunny when we got to Wutai Shan - but it all started trying to get there. I really wanted to ride all the way there and deep down I was very disappointed. A was really good and put up with me when I started moaning (just after the start of the second climb when I was realizing that we weren't going to make it) about how monotonous the climb was and how it was all up all day and how the maps weren't telling me it was going to be like this and how not very pretty it was and how no one seems to care about the environment here....you get the picture :) She told me (nicely :) that she would flag down the next vehicle that came by us and organize a ride if I didn't shut up... and she gave me something to eat (which was part of the problem, along with not sleeping very well the night before) so I shut up :)

Later on we both decided it was a good idea to get a lift to our destination, so A got her book out and we found people to ask and we sorted it...but me being a grumpy bunny and worried about the bikes getting damaged, I stressed the whole way up! They were very nice, but they don't know about bikes and they just jammed everything in the van mish-mash, and the old guy was so concerned about the bike resting on my leg he was grabbing the bike out of my hand and A was saying "meiwenti" (it's not a problem/don't worry about it) at the old guy....he even took his gloves off so I could use them as a cushion! I tell you, these guys were so nice!!! (I didn't need the cushion, I have plenty of meat on my legs :):):) We piled out of the van with the guys rapidly unloading all our stuff onto the tarmac/dirt of the parking area and they were trying to be helpful and get us on our way, but we were going to be riding 15kms down hill and we were very cold and very tired and I wanted to make sure that we got the bikes put together correctly so we would get there in one piece - I was feeling hurried on all fronts. And I was starving! And I was freezing, even wearing bibshorts, thermal tights and my jeans on the bottom and my long john shirt, my Nike thermal hooded jersey (hood up, under my helmet) AND the Nike thermal windproof jacket that we got in Beijing (thanks Trek guys!!!!! :) plus TWO pairs of windbloc fleece gloves. My mental state was not the best....

So you know we arrived safely (you better have read my last post :) and we got food and we got sleep - just what we needed. The sun was out in the morning and it was warmer and we had our coffee...but the shower was cold :( Oh well, the woman at the hotel said it would be on in the evening so we decided to be stinky (after 5 months...this is not the first time we have given a shower a miss :). I was stressing about the next section of the trip - the maps had not been giving me the information I needed to plan very well and I was unsure what lay ahead on the road. We were so worn out that we knew we needed to stay another day in town before moving on, and the mountain is big! could we even ride out, would we need to get a bus...etc. We need to stay on schedule so that we get to Xi'an in good time to get the Tibet permits and train tickets and get to Lhasa with enough time to acclimatize to the altitude and the time we needed to get across Tibet. Ah, it's all very complex....or I make it all very complex :) A and I worked out something we were happy with and then we hit the town...we were hungry again :)

We found a bakery (my favorite kind of shop when I am hungry :) and bought some yummy things - a sweet bread roll, a donut twist and something akin to a Chinese Eccles cake but with light colored sweet filling - and sat in the sun at a very scenic spot (the Laughing Buddha statue) and ate. I felt much better, but I was still not happy that we hadn't ridden all the way and even though my legs were toast after the last 4 days of riding I was thinking that the next day I was going to go ride up and down that hill just to know I could do it - it looked formidable and I wanted to have done it. (Have I mentioned that A was her angelic self in putting up with me and my grumpiness???? :)

Well, we were in Wutai Shan and it is home to a ton of Buddhist temples and we have been doing a lot of Buddhist history and sights while travelling in India and China, so I put everything out of my mind and got out the Rough Guide and we started thinking about where we were and enjoying where we had worked so hard to get to. There are some really special things about this area - it's been a Buddhist center since something like 50AD. There are relics of very important Buddhists in many of the stupas in the area (that is what a stupa is for - burying relics under/inside them - you can't go *into* a stupa) and some very famous Buddhas came to the area a long time ago so many people come for that reason. There are also some cool things in some of the temples and a huge stupa in one of the temples...so we set off for the huge stupa, but we got distracted by another temple and went in there.

As you enter each temple you walk through a special entryway that has a statue of a Buddha (there are many and it will be a statue of the Buddha that the temple is for) and behind the statue is a statue of a protector (about the same size as the Buddha statue) and in the room with the statue are four HUGE statues of Lopalas, more protectors. The Lopalas are big scary monster men with colored faces, bulging eyes and lots of teeth showing - sometimes they are even stepping on little people! - one has a snake in his hand, one a rat, one a big sword and the last one has a musical instrument. They are recognizable and yet a little different for each temple. We got inside, past the Lopalas, and we looking around wondering where the special moving lotus leaves Buddha that this particular temple is famous for when...we were approached by a Lama who spoke English.

We got to chatting with this Lama and he said he was from a different temple (many of the temples also have monks and lamas living there) and would we like to go see his temple? So, always up for adventure :):):) we said "sure" and followed him up the hill to his temple. We spent more time talking about all sorts of things - things we can't or shouldn't talk about on the blog (because we know these links are monitored and because some of them are secrets :) so that we don't get anyone in trouble. But we had a Buddhist teaching and we learned a whole lot about a lot of different things (history and religion covers it in a general sense :). Then we said our goodbyes with a promise tom come back the next day and went off to see some other temples.

We took our tired legs to the temple at the top of the hill in town (way lower than any of the surrounding hills but plenty high enough for tired legs :) and had a look around there. Then we came back down and went back into the original temple that we had started to look at (when we had met the Lama) and found the moving lotus blossom Buddha, which is pretty cool, but we were the only ones there so they didn't make it move for us :(. They were closing up shop and we were hungry so we went off to find some food. We had another one of our amazing experiences at a restaurant - the waitress and a bunch of other gigglers :) gather round us and we communicate with maximum use of the book and we tell them that we don't eat meat, we don't want MSG and then we tell them what we do want (soup or vegetables or dumplings, etc.) and they bring out their interpretation of whatever we asked for...and it's always delicious!!!! We don't even have to try to navigate the menu :)

Then it was off to the iNet cafe and then back to the hotel for a hot shower and more sleep! The next morning we of course had lots of coffee and I was so wonderful that I also went off to the bakery and brought back more yummy things to eat - A said I had to bring back different things so we had red bean paste horns, one of the donut twists and a muffin. By now I was feeling much better about Wutai Shan - my mood was better and I know that the ride in was too big of a ride to do on the loaded bike, but it would have been great fun on my road bike :) We were going to ride out of there and then on to Taiyuan, so we planned our escape. We decided to chase the CITS (tourist information) people to see if we could get them to book our next round of hotels. The guy in Datong had done such a great job that we wanted to try again. That was a mistake!

First we had to find the CITS office and we knew there were 2 in town. We asked directions 3 times and didn't get the same directions twice! In fact, the last guy we asked was almost right in front and he sent us down the road, if I hadn't spotted the sign from the parking lot we would have missed it. We went in and tried to speak to the lady that seemed to be in charge. Her English was ok, but not great. I wrote everything down for her (dates, locations and that our max price was 150 per night) but she said we had to come back after 11:30 to see her manager. Well it was only 10:30, so we went off to chase the temple with the big stupa :) That was pretty amazing and I spun a ton of prayer wheels and then we came back to the CITS. The manager still wasn't there. So the CITS lady walked us down to the other CITS office and she and another woman started calling on the phone and arranging the hotels. She gave us a list of hotels on a piece of paper (not the CITS form that the Datong guy had used, just a plain piece of paper) and then gave us a receipt for 600 yuan - that is all 4 nights at our max price...hmmm. And the receipt was for "hotels", nothing specific about which hotel and when. When we asked (and we asked a ton of questions) they hadn't even booked the hotels in our name, just for 2 foreigners (um, that's specific :). The manager finally arrived and he spoke no English at all (the Rough Guide says that the CITS guy may be the only English speaker in some towns...maybe we assumed too much in thinking that they all spoke English?) and frankly, he looked slippery - like an obvious mafia guy in a movie. They told us to come back at night...not evening. Hmmm. We decided they were not at all professional and we were going to do the hotel thing on our own - A and her magic book :) And then it was time to eat lunch! (yes, we are hungry all the time :)

We went back to that restaurant from the night before and ordered the noodle soup again :) And then we went to seek out the Lama so he could take us to one of the temples outside of the main town....it was raining. No problem - we are not made of sugar, we will not melt :) We collected the Lama and we walked down to arrange a taxi and to buy some offerings (this is an important part of it) and then we were on our way. The temple was situated in a beautiful location, on a hillside surrounded by trees. The bonus was that we passed the road out of town that we would take the next day, so we knew what the start of the route looked like :). We walked around, made the offering, took some photos and asked the Lama lots of questions about who was this and what was that and he also exlained about the Lopalas :) They are kings of various heavens and they are in their scary incarnations. Ah, it was really good and we learned a ton! Then the Lama invited us to dinner - he is from Inner Mongolia and he invited us to a Mongolian restaurant that he knows well.

He knows it VERY well, he is from the same village as the people that run it! When A told him that she was a vegetarian he gave her that same look that my uncle has for vegetarians (ooo, sorry that you have to suffer from such a terrible disease...better you than me :):):). He ordered some food and some beers and we continued our discussions of...history and religon :) The food was great! And it kept coming!!!!! There was so much of it we were stuffed! The first to arrive was a bowl of pickled vegetables, it was potato or turnip (hard to tell) that has been soaked for a long time in salt water - we immediately thought of our friend the pickle fiend :) Then there was a plain omlette, a mutton stew with vegetables, some mixed greens in a light sauce, then a similar dish to the mutton stew, but made with tofu and then the most fabulous "cakes"!!!! They were similar to a stuffed paratha, sort of, a thin layer of dough on the outsides and filled with bits of lamb and onion and then fried...wow, they were so good. I was already pretty full and I ate 2 of them (they were the last to arrive) and if I had eaten another thing I would have exploded! We had definitely done a great job of carbo-loading for the ride out the next day :) Then it was getting dark and we had to fix A's puncture and get packed, so we walked the Lama up the hill to the door of his temple and we went off to get our stuff sorted out and then get to bed, ready for the ride out the next day.

Nia hao

Now, the things that we have seen...

It is all very well to talk about the riding aspect - I mean the physical challenge is the same as anywhere else that you may happen to ride but the things that we have seen I have been amazed by. I have read much about the history of China, about the Cultural Revolution, I have seen serene water colour paintings of beautiful landscapes and skillful calligraphy. I have seen photographs of peasants in the fields, of barren landscapes or terraced hillsides and villages of grey terraced flats and I am overwhelmed to say that I have seen these things for real now.

Take the north of Shanxi province for example where we find ourselves. The landscape has been chewed up by coal mines and quarrying, much to our dismay. I have felt like I have been in a time machine and taken back to the pits in Wales or Yorkshire in the late 19th century. It is not unusual to see many men walking around with coal dust on their faces and their clothes. We saw many motorised carts as well as carts pulled by donkeys or mules hauling around coal and distributing it in the towns. Railway lines snake across the landscape - wherever there is rail you are guaranteed to see a long slow moving coal train very soon, such is their frequency. Along with this goes the trucks which deliver the coal between towns, sometimes the odd lump will fall from the back and will lie on the road and we have frequently found ourselves riding around them. The road surface is often covered with coal dust, it gets between your teeth somehow when you ride and even finds it's way into your ears. In Hunyuan on our last night, the air was thick and visibility was low because of smog, the smell of coal was heavy in the air, I felt like I had been cast back to a time in London (that my father told me about) when the smog used to hit the streets terribly. I never thought that I would experience this first hand. Coal is everywhere and people are very dependent upon it.

The people that we see are a real eclectic mix. There are women who dress in that young/hip 80s style (tight hiphugger jeans), there are guys that wear black leather jackets and jeans, some people look modern and fashionable maybe they have a little more money. There are also peasants, or what I imagine to be cadres, dressed alike and as though they have just stepped out from a Cultural Revolution production. Fatigues can also be regularly seen on people as well as huge khaki Chinese military insulated coats with a double row of buttons and a fake fur collar. We have seen guys wearing these coats complete with old style aviator goggles and dark leather hats with fake fur lining and flapped down ear covers - they really look like something from a war front and they appear even stranger when they have coal dust on their faces.

We see many people riding by very slowly on bikes (no surprise there). We see peasants sitting on flat bedded carts pulled by slow moving mules or donkeys - they are even slower than the cyclists. There are three wheeled motorbikes with a wooden flatbed at the rear, these are often driven by the aforementioned guys in the insulated coats and strange goggles. Black cars are really popular. There are black cars everywhere, often they have no number plates and black tinted windows - we assume that these are official cars in some way, they speed by with an element of mystery to them. Some cars are fitted with a horn that is more like a warning siren, everybody gets out of their way as quickly as possible, these are the kings of the road and also seem to be on official business of sorts. There are police cars everywhere, they pass us all the time and they raise no doubt that you are in a police state.

People like to talk to us. People are intrigued by us. As in India they will stop and stare. We have had some of the strangest conversations without any words being shared - sometimes just a connection is enough. People are always willing to help us though and we do gain some respect due to our method of transport. We are also more exposed to our surroundings as a result. We are both constantly saying nia hao or answering the lilting "hello" that rings out from the strangest places - the guy working on a truck, a child shouting out the window of a parked car or an open window above the street. People in rural areas will just look at us with a look of bewilderment on their faces, on others you can see some of the biggest toothless smiles spread across their faces because we have acknowledged them, it is a real pleasure to see this. I also feel just as happy for having seen them.

We have often seen team bonding events whereby we have seen uniformed people gather outside a business, such as a hotel. They all do similar synchronised movements with their limbs followed by shouts and cheers. Sometimes it looks as though it is a roll call before the start of the working day, nonetheless, whatever it is, it is strange to our western eyes. Maybe it is to develop camaraderie amongst the workers.

We have seen derelict villages made of the same tan colour as the earth that surrounds them. Paper or plastic windowed single storied buildings, some half torn down and looking as though their days of daily use have long passed. There are signs though that they are not altogether lost in time - there are often red paper banners with chinese characters written in black or gold hanging vertically on either side of doorframes, they must be recently placed. In fact, many people live in these villages, I am sure of it because we see a lot of people bending over in nearby fields, working everything over by hand and in a very labour intensive manner.

Everything is so different here, it really is amazing.

Thanks for reading.

On to the ride to Wutai Shan...

We left our nice cushy hotel in Yingxian and headed back towards Heng Shan, but only for a few kms before we took the right turn south towards Wutai Shan. We had ridden into a headwind the whole ride the day before so we expected a bit of tailwind (ok, a lot, if the wind was blowing the same way :) for the start of our ride and we were sadly disappointed - we had a bit of a headwind AGAIN! Oh, well....we are gluttons for punishment :)

This is the day when the lack of good route information and decent maps was going to slap us in the face. We bought 2 maps - a small one that had some geographical feature into and the road map that had no geographical information - only the small one had both English and Chinese, the big map is all in Chinese, which helps with the road signs :). When the road follows a river it does make you think you are riding in a valley, right? Well we rode the road next to the river and soon we were quite a ways up above the river that was running down the valley - the up started a lot sooner than we expected! So much for an easy start to our day. But the scenery was good and though we were tired from the two previous days of riding (and A kept teasing me about my "easy days" that turned into hard days :) we were happy campers. It did level off after a while and gave us some rolling terrain for nearly 10 kms (which we enjoyed just for the change in the relentless climbing :). When we finally made it to the top of the climb we were grinning like idiots and snapping photos. We did stop pretty frequently to eat (once an hour) and to take the occasional photo or to rest our tired legs, so we were not pushing it. The ride down the far side was a ripper and we had to stay on the brakes to keep it under control - the bags are a drag when climbing, but they give some amazing gravity assist on the descents!!!! We even passed a few trucks and three wheeler cars :)

When we got into the town we stopped for a Coke (which was a coffee cola) and a pointer to Wutai Shan. Again it was up from the first pedal stroke (this was not supposed to happen!!!!). My mood was not pretty - we had just done 65kms and we had 50 more to do and there was nothing but up! We slogged another 15kms and realized that we were not going to make it to Wutai Shan by out own leg power - it was 4:30 and we were running out of daylight and my my reckoning we had 30kms and another 500-600 meters climbing to do (we had already done nearly 1200 so far that day). So we pulled over and asked someone about getting a bus and we were told "mei you" - no buses to Wutai Shan. Hmmm. A got a brilliant spark of an idea and looked up taxi in the dictionary and the guy directed us just down the road to the next town back - excellent! :) We headed back down (woohoo!!!! we were going downhill!!! :) and we saw a group of people we had passed just a few minutes earlier...and there was a van parked there. We decided to ask them about a taxi and A's question prompted a huge discussion among the 6 people there. We got the impression that they might be the ones willing to give us a ride, so A asked who the driver was (her Chinese is getting really good :) and then we determined that the guy only wanted to go to the top, not all the way down into the town...A and I quickly discussed it and that was fine with us, we don't mind riding down hill. So we agreed to that and then A had to ask the magic question about cost....and we bargained as best we could (they were holding out and we needed to get a move on as it was getting late) and we struck a deal. We quickly took the bikes apart and loaded them, the luggage and us into the van and headed up the hill.

Wow. Yes, we had been riding up hill for 15kms, but now we were REALLY going up hill - the road was all the sudden really steep and really twisty! We suddenly realized that this was no pussy cat of a ride this was a tigress!!!!! We would never have made it. We started to see snow at the roadside, then snow on the road and then we hit a huge patch of ice, with wheel channels cut into it, and went sliding around a bit and then we were at the top. We quickly unloaded and then even more quickly dug out some warmer clothes to put on before we froze to death! The guys in the van were amazingly helpful with loading and unloading and making sure the bikes were put together and packed up so we could be on our way as soon as possible. Again, the people we met were so nice and so helpful it was a bit unreal. We headed down one way as the van headed down the other and we soon realized why they didn't want to head down into the valley...it was a long way down and very steep. We stopped quickly so I could pull on my jeans over my tights and put on a second pair of gloves (it was FRIGID!!!! probably about 20 degrees F) and then we headed down down down. We dropped about 600 meters to the toll booth where we bought our tickets into the mountain area and then headed down another couple of hundred meters to find our hotel. It was 14kms down from where we were dropped off, so it was a 93km ride plus about 25 kms in the van - 130kms, just like the sign said when we left Yingxian and about 20kms farther than the little numbers on my map added up to!

As for the climbing, we did a bit over 600 meters of climbing on the first pass and then dropped back down that same amount and then climbed nearly up to that level again (about 1900 meters on my altimeter watch) - that's a lot of climbing with loaded bikes! When we reached the top of the pass in the van we were looking at 2800 meters and where we are at the hotel has been showing 2000 on my watch since we arrived down. We know now (I just bought a new map today - with contour lines!!!! :):):) that the height of the pass is just over 2600 meters, so my watch is off by a couple of hundred meters (no surprise there :) and that the southern pass out of the valley (we came in from the north) is only about 2000 meters, so we only have about 500 meters to climb to get out of here on our way out of town (the valley drops another hundred from our hotel to the point where we start to climb out) so we know that is no problem for the old legs, especially with 2 days of rest in them :) It's going to be rolling, too, and there are hairpins, so it's not going to be a relentless climb, and I can also tell from the contour map that we have quite a few kms of pure downhill...ah, bliss, I love maps :):):)

Anyway, when we arrived - frozen to the core and tired, but alive and starving :) We checked in to the hotel and then went right into the hotel restaurant, neither of us taking off our jackets until the food arrived :) We were too tired for a shower and we spent a little while talking about the ride and then we were sound asleep - A gave me orders I was not to wake her up the next morning, even if I had made coffee :)

Next update will be our 2 days in Wutai Shan learning about Buddhism from a local Lama....

Nia Hao!

So much to tell...

We left Hunyuan later than we had expected on Monday. We started the day with a puncture on my rear wheel and had to do a tube swap, this was no bother though because we were still just outside the hotel.

We knew which road we had to take out of town and that it was going to be an easy morning of riding just following that one road all the way to our destination of Xingyuan just 50 kms away. We knew that there were not going to be any climbs because we were following the base of the mountain range, so in theory this was going to be an easy 'rest day' of cycling despite the fact that we had our luggage. As soon as we took our first turn though onto the road we were to follow we were hit by a ferocious headwind. Hmm, that wind again. The wind was so kind it accompanied us for the whole of the 50 kms! (We do have this theory though that what does not kill us will make us stronger :-) Sometimes it would become a cross wind that would hit us with harsh gusts and cause us to wobble because it would hit our panniers and backpacks. We would sometimes ride at a slight angle, this would eventually give us inevitable muscle strain down one side of the body - it always hit us from the right hand side. Mostly though the wind sang at us from the front with more gusto than a tenner. So it was a longer ride than expected with K and I drafting one another and swapping position at every kilometre. Now being two people who have ridden lightweight roadbikes (or racers :-) at decent speeds over long distances, it is quite disheartening when you find yourself slogging it out at 11kph on the flat, it kind of makes you feel as though you are heading nowhere fast. I kept getting the Talking Heads song "We're On The Road To Nowhere" in my head, the rhythm of the song matched the pace that we were doing quite well :-) It was however a great ride despite the hardwork, we worked together really well by swapping the front postion and knuckling down into the wind - it did not break our spirits :-) There were some great sections where we had a break from the wind and we could crank it up to 20 kph but these were a rarity. Anyhow we managed to finish the ride with a total of 3.5 hours in the saddle. We did have the occasional break so that we could rest our butts, legs and ears from the wind (um, that is not our butts from wind OK :-) and also so that we could converse with one another, it is hard work to talk with the wind whistling in your ears. We ate a snack of salted horse beans which is a little like a broad bean version of roasted peanuts, they supply wonderful riding energy. We also ate soft puffy sqaures of wheat, oil and sugary biscuit.

The road was flat, mostly straight with the occasional long slow curve that just made it seem straight at a slightly different angle. We passed mostly agricultural land with hills looming to our right and some further in the distance to our left. We were blasted at regular intervals by dust whirling up from nearby fields, it is incredibly arid here. When we arrived at our destination we were greeted by a temporary dust storm.

We cycled into town along the main strip. We had no map of this town and as is often the case, we had to communicate with people in Mandarin to get to our pre booked hotel. In fact, it was no problem, we were given good directions on two occasions and found our way there quite quickly. It is always quite time consuming though to flick through the pages of the English - Chinese book in the hope of stringing together a very economical sentance but thankfully people are very patient with us.

The hotel was great, it was the Holiday Inn but not of that common chain that we are all so familiar with. The hotel was huge and it took some work to haul in the luggage. I was pretty beat from not having slept well plus the ride had taken a lot out of me so I had a nap for a while. Very soon after we went out to see the Wooden Pagoda - the reason why we came here, luckily for my tired state it was only across the road.

It was amazing, I was as equally impressed by this building as I was with the hanging temple, perhaps a little more. It is the oldest standing wooden building in China, it is a little over a thousand years old and looks so strong that it is easy to believe that it will keep standing for much more time. Originally it was built with no nails but now there are many hammered in to keep the building solid. It is complete with creaky floorboards and mud straw walls. Inside it was dimly lit which added to the atmosphere, we also had the dark wood building to ourselves which allowed us to enjoy it so much more than how it must be when full of pushy tourists. The eaves were beautifully carved and wooden brackets slotted planks into one another to create walls, ceilings and staircases. Inside was a very impressive Buddha and his guardians. When we climbed up to the second story we got a great view of the town too. K took some great photos and we shall get these up on the site soon, I really cannot do it any justice. I could have stayed there for some time because I found it to be very relaxing and a plesant place to be. Unfortunatley tiredness and more wind whirling around my head forced me away. K bought me a little souvenir because I was besotted with the place :-)

It really was a great reward for a tough day of riding.

We are in Wutai Shan!

We have not had a chance to get online these past few days - the place in Hunyaun was only open until 8pm and we never got out of dinner on time and we didn't see any internet in Yingxian at all. But now we are back :)

It has been a bit of hard riding these past few days. We left Datong and headed for Hunyuan and Heng Shan. We got a bit lost trying to get on the right road to Heng Shan - it was signposted right outside the hotel but there weren't any more signs to direct us until much later. We, of course, got out the handy dandy Mandarin dictionary and the map and asked directions and were on our way soon enough :). It was a decently flat ride and we were happy to be doing our first real day of cycle touring. We passed one group of riders (obviously recreational riders and not a group of commuters) and said our Nia Haos and a few kilometers later we came upon another group of recreational riders. These guys were on some serious kit! There were 2 mountain bikes and a road bike and both mountain bikes were top spec off road machines (a Specialized S-Works and a Giant XTC) and the road bike was not a brand we recognized but it wasn't a cheap bike. They were even using clipless pedals! Their English was about as good as our Chinese but we had some good (if limited conversation :) and we all took some photos and went our separate ways.

We successfully rode our first climb with loaded panniers (woohoo!!!!) and bombed down the other side to find the hotel we had booked. It wasn't a simple affair but again, we asked and we found it. A 74 kilometer ride and we were feeling good, but tired and hungry. We were pleasantly surprised to find that 1) it was not a "mouldy double" as described in the Rough Guide and 2) it was actually quite nice - a business hotel, for sure. We unloaded, locked the bikes and got changed for dinner. We were directed into a private dining room (the main one was full) and we had a very nice waitress offer us her assistance in some very rudimentary English. She tried very hard, and we give her a lot of credit, but it probably would have been easier if she used Chinese and let us work it out - some of her English pronunciation had us so far off track it was laughable! For example, she came in to tell us the bill was 19 yuan (cheap at the price! :) but she said, with no preamble, what we heard as "one night". Hmmm...one night. What did she mean? So we replied..."no, we are staying for two nights" :) She was so very confused. We figured it out in the end.

Anyway, they didn't give us a menu they just asked us what we wanted, so we started with "we don't eat meat" because telling the waitress that we are vegetarians does not always yield food without meat for some reason. And then we said we don't want any MSG. That done, we just asked for what we felt like eating - vegetable soup, some steamed dumplings and some white rice. The dumplings were the most amazing that either of us had eaten - egg and spinach. Everything else was really good, too and not just because we were starving :) The lovely waitress tried to get us to eat more - did we want potatoes? and a few other things, but we got it across that we didn't want anything more - where would we have put it? The bowl of soup was enormous and there were at least 20 dumplings! We finished and went upstairs to collapse into our beds :)

The next day we were up and ready to ride to the Hanging Temple and Heng Shan. The book said it was just a few kms up the road....and it was, but it was all up hill :) We arrived at the Hanging Temple at about 11....just in time for all the tour buses to have moved on - we had the place to ourselves! They have put a dam in the valley so the river that used to regularly flood and wipe out the temple (which was rebuilt higher each time) was now just a small pond of water and a trickling stream. We paid our entry fee (60 yuan - 4GBPs or $6) and went across the bridge and climbed up to the temple. Wow. It was very very cool. And we were very very glad there were not huge crowds to share the place with - the walkways are wide enough for one and there is only one route through the place. Narrow staircases up and down have you feeling like you are crawling around the place. They have crammed in loads of tiny temples into even the barest open space. It was really amazing.

We hopped on the bikes and rode up the very steep hill back to the road and then it was up up up a couple of more kms to Heng Shan...but first we rode through the tunnel! It was quite dark (no lights), but the cars and trucks could see us (me with my very reflective cycling top on riding at the back :) and that was pretty cool. So we climbed the next 5 kms and reached Heng Shan...or the gate to Heng Shan where they make you pay to enter the mountain area (20 yuan and 2 yuan for insurance). Then it was more up up up!!!! Another 5 kms to the actual Heng Shan (they didn't tell us this in the guidebook). And the road wasn't the nice easy truck usable gradient, this was steeper with hairpins - excellent fun! We didn't have the panniers on so we were having a great time :) We had climbed about 400 meters from the hotel (my Nike altimeter watch isn't all that accurate, even just doing changes, but it's good enough :) and then we asked our legs to climb up the stairs to the temples on the mountain (yes, they complained, but we are only here once :) - when we got to the top we were 800 meters higher than the hotel and the views were spectacular! We were having a fabulous day! We wanted to get to the very top of the mountain but the legs were saying "you have got to be kidding" :) and we were running out of time, so we headed down....and then hopped on the bikes and rode down down down! Through the tunnel where some cars were passing the trucks!!! (they are almost as bad as the drivers in India! :) but I pulled in front and my super reflective jacket was seen by the drivers and they pulled back in :) Soon we were back in the hotel, locking the bikes and heading to dinner where it was a similar affair, except the place was empty and we ate in the main dining room. It was again an early night and we woke to head off on our next day's riding.

Nia hao!

Finally some more photos. I really wanted to get some of these into our posts but have not been able to, therefore I hope you can enjoy this photo gallery of Cyclists in Beijing :-)

But first - here are the guys at Trek China who were so amazingly helpful, James stands next to K, the other two guys worked on our bikes to get them ready for the trip (thanks to you all).


I spent a few hours of the last evening in Beijing taking some photos whilst K raged downtown to collect the silk sleeping bag liner.

She was surprised to see me on the side of the street snapping a shot of her as she whizzed by on her return to the hotel (I had stayed back because I had not been feeling well).


So to give you an idea of what it was like to ride in Beijing...

Sometimes traffic came at you in all directions, it was best to get across roads at the first opportunity.


Another techinque that worked was to wait for the build up of cycles and then as one big mass to take control of the road by crossing together in the slow moving traffic.


Not quite BMX bandits but close. Dodging traffic during rush hour is something that every cyclist does in any major city across the world.


Waiting at the traffic lights - ready steady...

Go!!!!!!!


As I said in my previous post there were many different types of people riding bikes in Beijing, here are just a few of them and their human powered steeds...

We have seen a lot of folding bikes (mostly Dahons) some had incredibly small wheels and packed down quite small. In fact we also saw a giant man (he must have been 7' tall) on a bike that had been adapted for him and it looked something like this too!


We saw many people riding these pick up style tricycles. Some would be selling their wares from them, others would be carrying their shopping... Oh and talking on your mobile seemed to be a prerequsite - we did see many people wobbling along whilst talking and completely oblivious to the world around them :-)


I hope that I am still riding at this guys age.


Hooligan!


This is not the biggest load that we saw being peddled through the streets but it is a good indication.


I am not sure that every mother would be so confident in crossing the intersection with their child onboard as well as carrying the groceries and all whilst wearing high heeled shoes. Now that takes some skill :-)


I watched this woman for a while and almost went and helped her cross the intersection. I did not think that she was going to make it because she looked too nervous to ride across (she walked it in the end).


Now this is the way to travel - not in some silly little child seat but a throne built for a princess :-)


Here is an example of one of the electric bikes that K and I would draft behind when we had a headwind. When there was no headwind we would whizz past them :-)


The bikes do not look like much but some riders get some great speeds out of them. Full respect to all singlespeeders! (and most Chinese bikes are).



People would often cycle together in groups (safety in numbers?) :-)


Recycling :-)


The cycle paths were always busy, you had to watch out for cyclists coming at you from all directions. Taxis and other cars also used the cycle lanes (I am not sure whether they were supposed to or not). The cycle paths were a great way to see Beijing though and should you ever have the chance to come here then I recommend hiring a bike to see the city :-)

Datong Photos!!!!

We arrived safely in Datong and found our hotel (easy, you can see it from the station exit - all lit up in neon :)


Photos in the hotel lobby....recognize anyone???


The view from our hotel window...this is a coal town and it was very chilly out there!!!!


The next day we rode out to the Yungang Grottoes (caves...whatever :) On the way we passed through some serious coal towns and saw a couple of more scenic things, too :)

We saw this dragon screen in front of a temple - this is a three dragon variety, but there is a big Nine Dragon Screen in Datong near the Drum Tower (we didn't get a chance to see it, but we had seen this one and a photo of the big one so we don't feel like we missed too much)


We also saw this monument on the side of the road. We don't know what it is or what it's for, but the sign letting you know it was there was just as big as the one for the temple that had that dragon screen, so we thought it must be important :)


We spotted this cool bridge and I just had to have a little stroll on it to check stability and get a closeup of the black river water....scary!


We saw tons of donkey carts pulling loads of coal.


This is the coal mine and it's surrounding town, presumably for the mine workers - it's only 1km from the caves!!!!



You know what A's like, she likes to take pictures of the housing we see on the roadsides to get a feel for how people live...here is more of her handiwork :) These are some of the dwellings that we saw as we rode out. A lot of what we saw was so uniform in color that only the red Chinese New Year banners (we presume they are) give the place any color. These places looked really grim - like they were abandonded, but we saw some people going into the villages, so they probably aren't.









We arrived at the Yungang Caves and it looked a bit familiar (having been to Ajanta and Ellora you get a feel for these things :). One thing we noticed right off is that there were some wooden facades in front of some of the caves.


The caves are not numbered in the order that they were built, but there was a bit of a theme to them. We started on the right and saw the largest of the caves.


Then we moved to the caves with the facades. The facades have done a great job of preserving the paintings and the colors and surfaces of the sculptures. Also keep in mind that these caves have been maintained throughout the dynasties, not just abandonded (which is what happened when Buddhism was no longer thriving in India)

The facades close up....



One of the paintings...


Many of the colors on the sculptures....






This is truly a beautiful place with some amazing sculpture....





There were several large Buddha sculptures, this one is in the open and is the most photographed at Yungang.


There were quite a few others. There are holes in the sculptures because they were covered with another layer (a mud and hay combo we saw on some of the others) and then painted. Still, the carving underneath is something special :)





There was a lot of work being done prior to the busy season (about half of the caves were closed, but luckily not the best ones :).


The ride back into town was a ripper - we had a tailwind! It was a nice change from the slog out in the morning. By the time we got back to town, though it was 5pm and it was getting quite chilly, so we bee-lined it back to the hotel to warm up.

Datong and our first day of cycle touring :)

First, you guys should know that we can't actually *see* the blog, but we are hoping you can :). We could see it from the internet in the hotel in Beijing, but not the internet cafe in Beijing. It was the same in Hong Kong (we could see it in the hotel, but not the inet cafe). We can't see the blog but we can use blogger....we think it's the filtering done by the ISPs in China to comply with "government regulations" :)

On to cycling!!! Yesterday after we got back to the hotel (from chatting with you guys on the blog :) we were so beat! There had been so much excitement and anexiety from the minute we woke up that we were crispy fried. It was all good stuff - there was so much that could have gone wrong and it didn't...but it could have :). I know I was asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow.

I was awake bright and early this morning, well rested and ready to ride! I even had coffee made for A before she was even awake! She was not amused by my wakefulness and she sent me off to the shower as she grabbed another half hour of sleep (and peace and quiet :) After a very strange breakfast - a variety of local specialties provided by the hotel (*) - we headed over to the CITS to see about picking up a great map of the area that I had read about in the book and to see about where we might see a bit of the Great Wall and also to ask about booking some of the hotels for the next few days.

We don't know what it's going to be like out on these roads, so it's best to know where we are staying and not have to try to communicate (difficult sometimes even when we are at our best :) when we are so knackered all we want to do is collapse :):):) Also, it's Easter weekend (Happy Easter!!!!). As it turned out, it was a good thing we did book as the guy had to call around to several places to find us something (anything! :) in Heng Shan - there are some weddings going on apparently. He has booked our first three stops, so we are sorted until Wutai Shan.....we just have to get there :) Oh...that 'great map' is no better than my maps, so I gave it a miss...and the Great Wall is fairly close by, but it's not as great as it is over near Beijing...so we are going to give it a miss :( I know!!! It was a hard decision to make. We should have done it from Beijing but we just didn't fit it in - there is so much to see there even when tons of stuff is closed for renovations. Oh well... we want to come back to China anyway (via the Trans Siberian train :) so we will just have to be patient. After CITS (that is the gov't travel service especially there to help foreign tourists), it was time to head for the caves at Yungang!

It was looking like a lovely sunny day, the wind was too bad...I consulted the map and we were heading out. Once we found our way through town, past the Drum Tower and Hongqi Square, things were well signposted for the caves...and, oh well, we had a headwind but we were still up for riding :) The scenery was interesting and depressing at the same time. A will have more in her descriptions, but basically I was feeling really ill about what we were seeing - black streams, a huge coal mine surrounded by the city of workers that make it operate (which made me think of the movie "The Matrix" where people are just fodder for the big machine...what would it be like to be a kid in that city???), the dust, the smell of burning coal and the clouds of diesel smoke from the bus traffic clogging our lungs...ugh. The houses on the sides of the roads looked abandonded...but they probably weren't.

The coal mine is only 1 km from the caves!!!! One nice thing we learned at the caves is that they re-routed the road that the coal trucks take because of the damage the coal dust was causing. That is a very good thing :) We saw the before pictures and the caves now and it is working quite well. On to the caves!

I was pretty excited about these caves because of their historical connection with India and I wasn't disappointed! The caves and sculptures are very different, but no less amazing. I was again wowed. Check them out here:
UNESCO World Heritage Site
China.com

Oh, and we have photos for you :)

Must go!!!! Time has run out! Later!

(*) breakfast consisted of:
-> a bowl of very thin rice porrige - which A liked and I found extremely tasteless and not worth eating.
-> steamed bread balls (like Tibetan Tingmo bread) and fried bread - I liked the steamed bread but the fried was too greasy for me, A ate some of both.
-> boiled eggs - neither of us had eggs as they did not look great (cracks with dried up yolk that had leaked out crusted on the side)
-> a selection of three kinds of pickled vegetables - we liked all of them! :) One was pickled onion with chili, another was pickled chopped celery and the third was pickled chopped greens with some light colored beans and a few other things (it was the saltiest of the three)

P.S. I have been drinking dark beer (something I haven't done since I left the UK!!!) I had 3 beers, one was a Japanese black beer and it was ok, but these 2 were way more interesting! TsingTao Dark and a Romanian one. Later!!!

Nia hao :-)

I would have to admit that yesterday morning I was nervous although also incredibly excited. With the bikes loaded up in our hotel room I looked at mine rather dauntingly and wondered whether I had bitten off more than I could chew. I tried to lift the back end and found my transverse abdominal tugging back and my shoulders dropping under the strain. I was now worried about getting the bike onto the ground floor and into the hotel lobby let alone pedalling it with all of it's weight amongst the rush hour traffic of Beijing. Then my thoughts followed that even if we did make it to Beijing station we had to carry all of our luggage to the platform (after deciphering which one to go to) AND hope that we could get the bikes onto the train. The only experience that I have had of riding a bike heavily loaded is when I was younger and used to ride home from the supermarket with the weekly shopping swinging in carrier bags from my handlebars and a heavy army surplus rucksack full of vegetables and tins hanging just above the rear wheel from my back. I have ridden the coast to coast (west - east) in the UK but that was light touring with a rack trunk and a small rucksack. I thought for a while and eventually I came up with this nice little formula from my experience in life so far to fill me with confidence:

Experienced cyclist + Experienced tourist = Experienced cycling tourist.

Hoorah, I had nothing to worry about, I am practically an expert :-)

As it turned out, it was easy to fit the fully laden bikes into the hotel lift and I had no problem maneuvering mine out of the lobby. Pedalling the bike was in fact easier than trying to walk and push it. Those first few moments riding the bike was exhilarating because I realised that we were going to be fine. I really did feel as though we were setting forth on the most challenging leg of the tour, not only because of the physical demands that we will put our bodies through but also the process of developing our language skills and trying to find our way.

The bikes loaded....



K and I worked really well as a team and got the bikes packed down quickly outside the station.

The bikes packed for the train....



I had already found which platform we needed and we made our into the station. The bikes had to go through an x-ray machine along with all of our other luggage which was fairly amusing. We drank some coffee to kill some time then went to the platform.

Waiting for the train... whilst we drank coffee

... this monk meditated.


People were interested in our luggage - we had a lot of it and it was mostly of a strange shape. We found our train carriage but the walkway was so narrow that K had to take everything in one by one whilst I stayed put and guarded our property. It was kind of obvious that we were taking bikes on the train, especially with our helmets swinging from our backpacks. Whilst K was inside with the first bike the train guard (there is one at the entrance of each carriage) started shouting at me "zixingche" and shaking his head. Eeek! I knew that this was the word for bicycle but decided to pretend that I did not know. He started pushing imaginary handlebars up and down, left and right and pedalling with his hands. I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders and animatedly drew the shape of a box with my hands over and over again. I did not know what else to do so decided to behave as though I was confused thus confusing him in the process. Luckily K came out and grabbed the other bike bag and ran in and I still motioning to the guard eventually snatched the rest of the luggage and clumsily made my way in. You are supposed to book your bikes into trains - we did have a sleeper seat (which gave us space) and we did theoretically have luggage and not bikes so I did not feel too bad. I saw other people with much more luggage than we had and it was in even odder shapes :-)

We got away with it but I don't think that luck will be on our side next time.

The train journey was great, although the train was incredibly slow - we were on the second fastest train type too.

K enjoying some relaxation on the hard sleeper.


I took some time to reminisce over our time in Beijing as a way of saying goodbye to it. K and I have spent much time in Beijing in fits of laughter and one of the funniest moments was when I managed to block the toilet in our hotel room. We had not realised that you could not dispose of the tissue in the bowl because the badly designed system had a really tight U bend and very soon when it was flushed it would take minutes for the water to subside. We went through the language book trying to find words to explain the situation to the receptionist. We found roadblock but not block, there was toilet and flush, so we worked out no flush and we also found the word plumber (maybe this was going a little bit too far), we were in hysterics as we strung these words together in different ways. I being British and particularly prudish about such things, eventually plucked up the courage to leave the room to find somebody to rectify the problem. Luckily for me the cleaner was in the hallway and all I had to do was say the word toilet in Mandarin and then went about making a plunging sound and action. It was hilarious because I did think for a moment that they may think of me as being slightly insane :-) Anyway, the cleaner understood immediately and soon returned with a young man complete with plunger in hand. The matter was over with in minutes and no further embarrassment on my part ensued :-)

Another funny moment was when we went to a Chinese tea house for dinner. As we walked through the entrance, all of the waiters shouted out our arrival in a chorus. Naturally all the other diners turned their heads towards us and we were greeted with unknown words and 10 staring faces. The waiters were dressed traditionally and upon their heads they wore a hat complete with a fake Que. They gave us a menu in Chinese and even with the help of our menu reading page of our translation book we still had difficulty deciphering it. As is the norm, we explained that I was a vegetarian and laid myself open to accepting any dish that they bought out for me. It turned out to be noodles with tomato and egg, K said that she wanted pork so she got noodles with pork :-) We were given as much tea as we could drink and every time our little cup was drank dry one of the waiters would spring out as if from the very walls themselves and would give us a refill. The cups were as big as eggcups so you can imagine how frequently this happened :-)

Oh, I better get back to the train....

It took a long time to leave the sprawl of Beijing and when we did we eventually found ourselves travelling in a landscape of large brown hills shaped liked giant tree roots. A book that we read said that the landscape was like a lunar landscape as it becomes more barren with single storied houses rising up with the same mud coloured walls, this was an accurate description.



As the train climbed higher we saw a light dusting of snow on the ground. Some of the slopes became terraced and I imagined them to be covered with crops later in the year. Much of the landscape had been quarried too, leaving ugly scars upon once beautiful terrain. We also passed small grey towns and villages which seemed empty of any residents although signs such as bicycles and smoke from chimneys proved that they were not entirely derelict, perhaps everybody was working laboriously somewhere.



I saw another train with a cargo of coal, it snaked it's way around a hill then dissapeared into a tunnel only to expose itself again and continue to entwine around the foot of another hill. We saw many of these trains as we made our way towards Datong - the coal city.

Just before we arrived in Datong we moved the luggage into the end of the carriage so that we could make a quick escape when the train made it's 6 minute scheduled stop. As we waited I ended up in another impromptu language lesson with a stranger as a result of my getting out the Mandarin - English phrasebook. He could read English very well and with the help of the Chinese characters he understood what he was reading. In fact we spent most of our time together with him teaching me how to pronounce my numbers in Mandarin. I learnt quickly that in order to say words correctly I had to be more of a contortionist with my mouth. He was pleased with my number 2 and 10 in particular - these are hard sounds to make but to my ears the I sounded aggressive and not at all how I would normally speak. It was great fun and since then I break out every now and then with these numbers quite suddenly when I feel a need to practice :-)

When we put the bikes back together in front of the station we again drew a crowd, we had another disjointed conversation with pigeon English, Mandarin and hand movements, explaining where we are from, what we are doing besides a little about the bikes. We found our hotel across from the train station no problem and easily booked us and the bikes in for two nights.

So here we are - Datong. Today we took our first ride out of town but that is another story.

Thanks for reading :-)

Greetings from Datong!!!!

I know you have all been waiting for "the plan" :) Get your maps out and I will tell you the route - it's changed, so be warned :)

Datong is the second largest and the most northern city in the Shanxi Province. If you find Beijing on the map and go directly west about 500 kms you will see it sitting there...smoking and smelling like coal :) This is where we are going to start our cycle touring adventure in China. We are going to head south from here and traverse the whole of Shanxi Province, pop out the bottom into Henan to visit a couple of places and then head to Xi'an in Shaanxi (one more 'a' :) Province to see the Terracotta Warriors and catch the train to Lhasa.

On the way we will see some sections of the Great Wall, 2 sets of Buddhist caves and loads of Buddhist sculptures, 3 holy mountains, at least 3 very old wooden pagodas/temples and a Ming era walled city....all with about 900kms of riding. Whew! That should keep us busy for then next few weeks :)

Around Datong we will see the Yungang Caves (450AD) and some Great Wall (Datong is between the old inner and outer walls on what was the Mongolian frontier). Then we head 75kms south east to Heng Shan and the Hanging Temple (Taoist holy mountain and temple), then 50kms east to Xingxian to see wooden pagoda built in 1056 and then it's about 100kms south to Wutai Shan (Buddhist holy mountain and temples). From there we will take a couple of days to do the 230kms to Taiyuan (the biggest town in Shanxi) and then 100kms to Pingyao, the Ming walled city that is in pretty decent shape. Then we will have 4 days of riding (or we may catch a bus if we are running off schedule) to do the ~400-450kms to Luoyang and the Longmen Caves - when the capital moved from Datong to Luoyang the Buddhists moved too and started building more caves (about 550AD). These Buddhist caves were being carved out at about the same time as the Ajanta and Bhaja caves were being carved out in India (what a way to connect our travels, eh? :). After the caves we head to Song Shan (it's only about 20kms from Louyang to Dengfeng) - another Taoist holy mountain and the home of Shaolin Kung Fu). Then we will catch the train to Xi'an, see the sights around Xi'an while getting our Tibet permits, and then we will be off to Lhasa!

I will keep you updated as we ride along...this is just a PLAN :)

Later!

Nia Hao!

Well twowheelswhirled have made it to the next destination in one piece - we reside in Datong near the Inner Mongolian border. We have had an eventful day and are both quite beat. Last night we wanted to get some posts out but the computers were down in the hotel so we spent the time in preparation for today's excitement.

So, what is it like to ride a bicycle in Beijing I hear you cry?

We cycled amongst people of different ages and abilities. Many people were ruddy cheeked from the chill in the air or from the wind burn and dust hitting their faces. Sensible people would cover their mouths with surgical masks for fear of increasing their respiratory problems or gaining an unwanted one. Most people rode bikes with one gear, their legs turning the cranks at 20 rpm. Some would turn their toes outwards on the pedals causing their knees to stick out at a 90 degree angle as they slowly ambled down the cycling lane causing people to swerve into the traffic in order to get round them. Others chatted on mobile phones unsteadily holding the handlebar with one hand and cycling far from a straight a line as a result.

Young men would fancy themselves as being the fastest and would tear through the crowds, quite often excited that they could race us foreigners even though they had a passenger sitting on the rack on the back - a no holds barred race to the end of the road. They would wobble, risk traffic dodging manoeuvres in order to maintain their lead only to look back and see K and I calmly and steadily following behind without the hint of a sweat or willingness to participate in their challenge as we closed the gap and would often overtake. Even old men would accelerate at the sight of us and hope to overtake us even though we had whizzed past them. Working bikes with heavy metal boxes welded on the back transport goods, we saw three in a row - somebody was moving house. The carts were loaded with beds, tv's, clothes, a chest of drawers, it was pretty amazing to see it manoeuvring through the traffic. Electric power assist bikes would overtake everybody, on board sat the frames of tiny women straight backed and confident. The electric bikes had the worst brakes, more often than not they would squeal and screech painfully in your ear. A chorus of bicycle bells at rush hour challenges the sound of blasting automobile horns as you approach the first ring road.

Nobody wears cycling specific clothing or helmets. Most people wore big heavy coats and jackets, some older men wore navy coloured woollen Mao type jackets with caps to match. There were uniforms of police and army as well as tracksuits which served as school uniforms. Construction workers wore hardhats camo fatigues (their uniform? they all wear them). The fashion conscious wore funky jeans, the business man wore his suit - only K and I wore day glow rain jackets with reflective piping purposefully designed for cyclists, our highly visible white helmets and our cool glasses.

The blend of people on bicycles is as numerous and varied as the people walking in the streets or bundled into buses. Quite often we were an object of interest, noticeable as being different by our equipment and a cause of much curiosity as a result. At intersections (the congregating point) we would all wait for minutes at a time, K and I would often be a topic of conversation, the brave would even try and converse with us in Mandarin - all that we could do in reply was 'hen hao' (very good) or 'nia hao' (hello). Today there was much thumbs up given to us as we rode to the train station with our loaded up bikes.

Ahh, I have loved to ride my bike in Beijing, passing old hutongs as well as futuristic constructions. Along wide avenues and tree lined streets, amongst the chaos of rush hour traffic and sometimes gleaming at being separate from it in the cycle lanes. Cycling takes you amongst people wherever you are in the world. You are not hidden behind a window as though watching TV but are rather in the thick of it, slightly vulnerable at the newness of your surroundings but confident in the familiarity that your mode of transport brings as well as it's accompanying freedom - if you are a fellow cyclist you will know exactly what I am talking about :-)

Thanks for reading :-) :-) :-)

The Bikes - Part 2

On Monday we headed back to the Trek Office in Beijing to complete the bike setup - we needed to fit the racks and panniers and deal with any other minor details that we wanted to fix/change before we started riding big distances.

As I said in Part 1, we have fresh out of the box Trek 4500 WSD bikes. When we picked them up the guys at Trek put a couple of bottle cages on and gave us some bottles and we were off! We weren't ready to head out touring yet :)

The bikes came with flatties on them (flat pedals that are not clipless and have no toe clips...all you non-bikers are just going to have to deal with the jargon :). We knew that we were only going to have one set of shoes with us on this part of the trip so we decided against clipless pedals before we left the UK - that would have meant special pedals and special shoes. We asked the Trek guys for some toe clips and straps and they happily fitted them for us. The pedals will help us use the full pedal stroke to power the bike, not just the pushing down part of the pedal stroke - we need all the power we can get if we are going to pedal the bikes, with our not very tiny butts and all our gear, up 5000 meter passes! :)

To haul all our gear (clothes, food, tools/spare parts, camping equipment, etc.) we have Trek racks and Trek Basic Panniers and some bungee cords. The racks are rated for 50 pounds and the panniers will carry just under 30 liters - which is a decent amount of space (my daypack is a 20 liter and A's is 25 liters, so we should be just fine...or whatever doesn't fit is going into the bin or into a box heading home :)

We also got some computers for the bikes - we totally spaced that we would need them or I would have brought the spare Cateye that I have in my toolbox (DOH! :). We want to stay as simple as possible so we asked for a cable version rather than wireless. They work great! It's been pretty frustrating riding around town and not knowing how far we have ridden - it's 12kms to the Trek Office from the hotel and it's 12 kms into downtown Beijing from the hotel. Our guess at about 20 miles a day has been spot on.

The last thing we changed was the tires. We have been riding around town on the knobby tires that came on the bike and the rolling resistance is pretty high on the street (not to mention noisy at the speeds we go! :)...especially into that heinous headwind :) We have decided on our route in China (that is for another post!) and that will be about 1000 kms of road. We also know that a large part of the Friendship Highway in Tibet is paved and the rest is gravel (there may be some off road trails, but they will not be long and it should be dry)...so we asked for some smoother tires to ease our way as well. We didn't want pure road tires - there will be some bad pavement - so we went with the Bonty XR. It's still a mountain bike tire, but it's not a full knobby tire - it's really fast! We noticed immediately on our ride home from the Trek Office :)

That sums up the changes we have made to the stock bikes. We brought some spare parts and some tools and our riding kit with us and the Trek guys have also given us a very cool, limited edition Trek China dragon jersey (which you should watch for in the upcoming photos :), an adjustable wrench (which we were going to buy when we got here...but they saved us having to find a tool shop and then try to explain what we needed - I don't think my beginner's dictionary or the travel dictionary is going to be very helpful :) and another warm jacket to ride in (it is very cold and we have been riding in all our clothes...at the same time! :) The last thing James gave us as we were heading out the door was a pair of reflective leg bands each - so that people would see us and so we wouldn't catch our trousers in the water bottle cage and cause an accident (I nearly had that accident experience on our first day on the bikes!)

Hina was extremely hlpful as well - chasing down a place for us to buy some silk to have made into a sleeping bag liner - but even more importantly she gave me some great tips on bargaining and we did quite well buying the sheet - we are no longer totally pants at bargaining!!! Woohoo!!!! :)

The people at Trek China were so nice and so helpful, it was a bit unreal at times. The guys there worked on the bikes and helped us get everything set up just the way we wanted it and we got so many good wishes....we can't help but have a great trip :) THANKS!!!!!

We also had a visit to the Temple of Heaven on a beautiful, sunny (but very windy) day!

The temple itself was very photogenic and we spent a lot of time walking around it and taking lots of photos...we took a ton of artistic photos, so I will present a selection for your enjoyment :)

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests....entirely built without nails! It was rebuilt after the hall burnt down in 1889 due to a lightning strike (and it's why the whole place is rigged with lightning rods!)




Looking lovely as the sun was going down....


The whole temple group...


the gate to the building where they burn incense before prayer


the building where they burn incense before prayer...


And here are some of the finer details...

a pillar in the great hall...


the altar in the building where they burn incense


Some of the roof and paint details....



and a very photogenic looking A on one of the surrounding platforms :)

More Beijing Photos!!!!

We are having some problems with out internet access here. There was a crackdown a few years ago and there are not a lot of places around. The hotel has 2 computers, but one has not been working for 2 days and we have to share with everyone in the hotel, so right now we are at a very expensive internet cafe (apparently they charge locals 7 yuan per hour at the one next door - they told us it was 24 - and this one is 20 yuan per hour - yikes!)

We have been riding around town pretty much every day - seeing the sights and running errands for things that we will need for the trip (and deciding WHERE we are going to ride :)

These are some of the Olympic sights - lots of shops and signs for Beijing 2008 - and there is even a countdown to the number of days in front of the Museum of Chinese History/Museum of the Revolution (both closed for renovations!!!)

This is one of the new stadiums under construction at the Olympic Park...


and this is the other one (the famous one with the bendy metal) I think we were on the wrong side to see the new swimming hall next door, apparently that one is nearly finished as well.


One of the many signs we see of the cute mascots....



These are some of the sights we see around Beijing:

A hutong -this is what Beijing used to look like before the powers that be tore most of them out and built the new buildings....we see loads of rubble everywhere and they are disappearing fast!


They even have an Ikea here!


This is A getting a language lesson from a local woman. We talked with her for a good 15 minutes! We had a similar conversation at a shop earlier today - they love it when we bring out our little Rough Guide to Mandarin (it's just a dictionary :) and we help each other with pronunciation (which is VERY helpful for us and I hope for them as well)


A sign that A took a fancy to :)


This is our bus stop....good thing we can recognize it because we certainly can't say it!!!! :) The top line (in green) is the route (there is also a number that is off the photo) where the bus starts and ends. In red is the name of the stop and the green background with white characters at the bottom is all the stops that this bus stops at - they are listed vertically. We take the 915 bus from this stop to go north to the Trek office, but the 915 that you can catch near one of the teahouses we had dinner at does not stop at our stop - you have to be very careful what bus you take and it's hard when you only know a few characters! But we are smart girls and we have figured it out (woohoo!!!!) :) Luckily there's a 401 bus that stops near the teahouse and brings us to our stop :)


We did the tourist thing and went to the Drum Tower and Bell Tower. The area around there is VERY touristy....funny that the loos are not geared to all the western tourists that get taken there (see my previous post about the loos at the Drum Tower :).

The Drum Tower (from the Bell Tower across the way :)


View from the Drum Tower (you have to climb some steep stairs (see the Bell Tower photos below - the stairs are very similar)


This is one of the original drums (? certainly very old) and you can see the knife slash that tore the hide when the Drum Tower was not thought of as an important relic to be preserved....


I want to bang on my drum all day....


This is the Bell Tower (from the Drum Tower across the way :)


And this is the bell...


To get to the bell (and the drums in the Drum Tower) you have to climb a long and very steep staircase...


Here is some info about the timekeeping that the Drum and Bell Towers were used for...



We had to try the street food!

The interesting things they had available....


and the veggie selection that we chose from....


and our choices on a stick - smoked tofu (that we didn't like and binned), seaweed, broccoli, cauliflower, rape and mushrooms... all doused in a whole lot of chili that had our mouths burning! But is was for the most part very tasty :)

Even though it's all veg it was not at all cheap - there is definitely a difference in price between tourist food and food for the locals. We try to eat where the locals eat and we nearly always get away for about 25% of the cost of the touristy food (and it tastes better!!!!).


There are a few more photos in the pipeline....patience, patience :)

Nia Hao!

We have been having a great time over the last few days or so, not only planning for the next few months but also getting some more mileage into our legs as well as some great sight seeing :-) We returned to Tian'anmen Square in order to visit the Forbidden City or the Palace Museum as it is popularly known as here...

A view of Tian'anmen Gate during the daytime complete with traffic tearing by.


Another windy day in Beijing - great for flags though.


In front of Mao's mausoleum is positioned a pair of military sculptures, for me they are very reminiscent of the statues that I saw in Vietnam.


The monument to the people.


There is a lot of security in this area (no surprises there). It is not unusual to see guards marching through the subways, passed secular buildings as well as in front of the government buildings. We tried to get a look at the entrance to the Zhongnanhai (the Communist party headquarters), it is very spectacular to see from the road. Unfortunately plain clothes security guards (all dressed in leather jackets and white trainers) would not let anybody stop on the street anywhere near the perimeter.


We were hoping to go and see a preserved Mao in his memorial hall but unfortunately it is closed. Likewise the museum of the Revolution as well as the Chinese History Museum were also closed, both for renovation, obviously in time for the influx of people who will come to Beijing for the Olympics. There is a lot of preparation going on for 2008, there is building work everywhere!

We decided to go the Forbidden City, it was quite a cold and miserable day, there was rain and wind however it did keep the hordes away so we had a great time.

It was amazing to be inside the Forbidden city, the complex is much larger than I had thought and we spent four hours walking around the maze of buildings and passageways. There are 800 buildings in total - no we did not get around all of them but we did have a great time exploring.

The architecture was certainly worthy of the emperors (the Sons of Heaven) of the Ming and Qing dynasties, from here they would issue their commands over their millions of subjects. Everything was auspiciously positioned in accordance to geomancy. There were many buildings such as this one.


Brightly coloured tiles adorned the roofs and there was attention to detail on the gables too.

Beautiful entrances.



Above doorways were many signs written in Chinese characters (we did not have time to translate them with our Chinese - English dictionary, besides my hands were too busy keeping warm inside my jacket).



A close up of a glazed dragon decorating the walls.


Bright painting adorns ceilings as well as the eaves - dragons are a popular theme, as well as flowers...

... as well as peaceful scenes of flora and fauna.

A throne room.


One of the many passageways...


..and more beautifully decorated rooftops.



There is much controversy over Starbucks opening a coffee shop in the Forbidden City (I was shocked when I read about it some time ago) however I would be a liar if I said that I was unhappy to come across it. We were so cold and absolutely frozen that we found ourselves making a caffeine purchase... I felt like a hypocrit but a warmer one at least :-/


We loved the sculptures of mythical creatures.





There are many vats located throughout the complex, originally they would have contained water should a fire breakout. We were quite amused to see the modern day equivalent on display too :-)


We eventually came across the garden at the rear of the complex. Even though most of the flowers are not yet in bloom it was still wonderful to be there. Amongst the flowerbeds were twisted trees and "grotesque" (to use the official term) shaped rocks.

The paths were decorated with pretty mosaics too.




We quite enjoyed using this four star toilet...


K tried to look like a ninja but got too cold and had to put her dayglo jacket on :-)


We also went to Jingshan Park that is situated north of the Forbidden City, here you can climb a hill and looks out across Beijing. The hill was created when the moat was dug out for the Forbidden City.

At the entrance was a sign that told us how to behave properly.


Looking out at the Forbidden City below.

The huge dome that you can see in the background of this picture is an example of some of the very modern architecture sprouting up around the city. There is much controversy surrounding the cost of such projects.

One of the guards towers positioned at each corner of the perimeter walls (and a view of the modern city towering over the forbidden city).

Modern Beijing is growing upwards and outwards at an astonishing rate, along with skyscrapers huge cranes also dote the horizon.


When walking in the park we came across these Juniper trees named the Generals. They were planted in the ninth century and they still stand tall and healthy.



The park was a bustle of life. People were gathered together in different spots and were participating in various activities. Singing along accompanied by an accordian was the most popular - we asked and were told that the participants sang because they were tired but happy after a weeks work. People were also dancing together to popular instrumentals such as the Sound of Music. There were also groups of people playing flutes, recorders and traditional instruments. Also calligraphy masters using water and a large brush wrote poetry in characters upon the pavement. The writing would grow faint over time due to the wind and would eventually disappear altogether, it was very peaceful to watch.



Beijing is a remarkable city, there is so much going on here, hopefully I will have time to share some more stories of the the things that we have seen and what it feels like to be here - a city of transition and development for the better or worse.

Thanks for looking.

Nia Hao from Beijing (yes, we are still here :)

First I need to say a major congrats to the British Track Team at the Worlds - woohoo! You guys totally rock! Especially Mr Hoy! Gold in the Keirin AND the Kilo!!!! And the lady sprinters are also very speedy in Spain, Victoria Pendleton is burning up the track! Even the team pursuit guys kicked butt...it makes me warm and fuzzy all over :):):)

We are doing our own little bit of raging around Beijing on our bicycles, not quite as fast but we are not hanging around, either :) This would be a great town for a fixed gear bike as it's so flat. We have had a bit of weather here - we were off the bikes for 2 days because of rain (we don't mind riding in the rain, but the combo of wet and cold - and it is VERY cold - is not healthy and we need to stay healthy for Tibet) and when it's not raining, and the sun is out, it very windy. We enjoyed the tailwind whipping us on our way south yesterday but when it came time to ride home last night we had a big headwind, so we put our past cycling experience to good use and drafted off some of the electric bikes and motorpaced our way north in a two man paceline (not unlike that photo of Chris Hoy riding the Keirin on cyclingnews, but we were bundled up in our bright rain jackets and 2 layers of warm jerseys :) Ah, this is great :)

We have been eating some fabulous food! We found this litle place near the hotel that serves some delicious steamed dumplings, we've been there twice :) The other restaurants that we have found (on our own, without the guidebook!) have also had some really nice food. It's very hard to find pure veggie food - our "vegetable fried rice" last night had bits of ham in it and the chilli tofu dish from a few nights ago was really a chilli, *pork* and tofu dish. A is not complaining too much, but it does put her off the food occasionally. She has just popped out to this little grocery we discovered the other night (we rode home late at night and we were starving so we stopped at the only mini-market we could find) which is totally chocka block with foreign food and supplies!!!! They even have French Toast Poptarts!!!! (my favorite flavor :) A is picking up some bread, peanut butter and jelly and some fruit....though she may opt for cheese in the sandwiches - they have brie and all sorts of yummy cheeses, too (in India, cheese comes in a can :). In the small shop across the road we buy these blocks of rice puff and syrup - it's very much like a rice krispie treat :) and we also get packets of coffee mix to have coffee in the room, it's a lot cheaper than tea!

On to public loos :) There are TONS of them around - we are definitely not seeing any of what we saw all over India (people going wherever they liked). In the Forbidden City they have 4 star toilets (there is a sign to tell you so :). The loos vary from quite decent - with a choice of western and squat toilets - to pretty rudimentary - all squat toilets with no doors, just some short partitions between them to separate them. All toilets have a flush, there is no bucket flush like we had more often than not in India. It's definitely a bring your own paper affair, only one of the loos (in a mall) had a big toilet roll dispenser out near the sinks and you were supposed to take some and then take it in with you. They sell pocket tissue packs outside the loos, though we haven't actually seen very many of these shops manned by anyone. Then there is the issue of flushing the paper - they don't, as it causes the toilet to back up or it is too much for the sewage system to handle or something....they have a small trash bin in with the loo for the collection of used paper.

I had quite a humorous experience yesterday in the public loo at the Drum Tower. The loo there is one of the all squat, short partition variety (and this is a major tourist sight!). Hey, I'm always up for when in Rome type behavior and I need togo, so I'm going to use the loo even though it reminds me of the toilets in kindergarten when they don't trust you with having a door on your cubicle :). We are tearing around Beijing on our bikes so I am wearing my lycra bike shorts - they are bibs, so I have straps that go over my shoulders and I have to take my arms out of my shirt sleeves to get my pants down (and it's chilly!!! But the bibs keep me toasty warm under my jeans :). So I am stripping off to my sports bra (and the eyes tatoo is staring out from my belly :) and two young girls come into the loo, the smallest one just stares at me...and then giggles (this happens to me a lot :) and then goes over to use the toilet next to mine. As I am putting myself back together she is now standing in front of me (I'm only half dressed at this point) and asks me my name! This happens to us frequently, but rarely in the loo :) A was outside watching the kit, so when I came out she went in. Just as A went in the cleaning lady arrived on her bicycle and went in....she stood in front of A while she was relieving herself and just stared. Are westerners interesting while they are doing this sort of thing??? Are we not doing it right??? Who knows :)

Catch you all later....A has just arived back with the makings for our lunch and she got both peanut butter *and* cheese :) Yum!!!