Dueling Backpacks

China! Where to begin? This is my attempt to make this short, but it seems there is no end of things to talk about from our time in China. It was a challenging travel experience but rewarding and eye-opening.  It was by far the most culturally different place we visited this year.  

Day 343 (June 6, 2019) – Shanghai, China Shanghai was the last stop on our adventures through China, but in some sense it seemed like we'd  already left as soon as we arrived. Shanghai felt very different from the rest of China. It was the most cosmopolitan and the most modern. It felt more similar to Hong Kong than to other places we had been in mainland China.

Day 337 (May 31, 2019) - Tianjin, China After the crowds of Beijing, and all the hiking at the Great Wall, we were ready for a change of pace. We were headed to Tianjin, a city only about 30 minutes by bullet train from Beijing. We probably wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t for our friend from grad school (Mark O.) now working and living in Tianjin. He has lived here for the last several years with his family, and he graciously offered to meet up with us and show us around. We only spent two days in Tianjin, but we made the most of our time.

Day 334 (May 28, 2019) – Gubeikou, Beijing, China We took a bus from downtown Beijing to the northeast corner of Beijing Municipality on the boarder with Hebei Province and arrived at Gubeikou in the pouring rain. It was raining buckets, which wasn’t a good sign. We were in Gubeikou to spend some time outdoors hiking along the Great Wall. It was starting to remind us of our drenched hike in New Zealand before we even started. After taking shelter at the bus stop during the worst of it, a brief pause in the rain gave us enough time to run out and meet the host from our guesthouse, who had arrived in his car to take us the rest of the way.

Day 331 (May 25, 2019) – Beijing, China Beijing is enormous. I feel like we only ever saw a tiny section of the city during our time there. It was also noticeably more expensive than other places we had been in China and, to our surprise, much hotter. We were staying in a hotel near the drum and bell towers, which are just north of the Forbidden City. Around the neighborhood were many small residential areas with narrow, interconnecting alleys called hutongs. Most of the neighborhoods were quite historical, with some houses and courtyards being hundreds of years old.

Day 326 (May 20, 2019) - Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China Pingyao, located between Xi’an and Beijing, is claimed to be one of the best-preserved ancient cities in China. Because of this distinction we had high hopes for our visit, but unfortunately we left feeling a bit unimpressed. We should have known better by now. Anything with that kind of touristic honor was going to be crowded and over visited.

Day 323 (May 17, 2019) – Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China As soon as we arrived in Xi’an it felt like we were back on China’s main tourist trail. During the last week or so, we could have counted on a single hand the number of westerners we saw. Now in Xi’an, it was like we couldn’t get away from everyone. International tourists, like us, stick out like sore thumbs and tend to congregate at the same restaurants, bars, and tourist sites. But being on the tourist trail has its conveniences. We never had an issue finding English menus and the woman running our accommodation spoke perfectly to us and was able to give us all sorts of advice about the city. She even directed us to an affordable Belgian beer bar where we were able to get the fullest bodied beers we had had in over a month.  

Day 319 (May 13, 2019) – Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China We had an action-packed trip to Dunhuang. We were there for three nights, but we wished we had stayed longer. We arrived feeling exhausted after getting up at two in the morning to catch our train from Jiayuguan City . After checking into our hotel, we went out to find a strong cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Our first day in Dunhang was just an organizational day for us. We signed up for an all-day tour to the desert for next day and then bought tickets to visit the Mogao Caves for the day after that. We had to hike halfway across town to buy the tickets and it seemed like before we knew it the day was over. 

Day 316 (May 10, 2019) – Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China Jiayuguan was a short stop for us but it was full of surprises. We were headed there to see the western end of China's Great Wall and Jiayuguan Fort. Jiayuguan Fort used to mark the edge of China’s known land. When people were banished from the kingdom they were brought to the fort and shoved out the western gate, leaving them to figure things out for themselves in the desert.

Day 314 (May 8, 2019) – Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China We had one of our most memorable welcomes when we arrived at our Lanzhou hotel. A very professional woman greeted us and checked us in. She didn’t speak English, but she was lightning fast at typing messages onto her phone, which she then had speak to us in her translation app’s robotic English voice. After getting all our information and scanning our passports and visas her last message ended with something like, “we apologize for not speaking English well, so we can use this app to communicate, but here are some tomatoes.” Tomatoes? The app had been doing a very good job until it started talking about tomatoes. But then as we looked up at her, slightly confused but thankful for her kind welcome, she presented us each with a box of tomatoes. So, it turned out the app wasn’t mistaken. She was actually giving us tomatoes. We never would have expected that one.

Day 311 (May 5, 2019) – Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Chengdu is famous for two things: Sichuan hot pot and giant pandas. Of course, there is much more than that to do in the city, but those two items were on our Chengdu bucket list.

Day 306 (April 30, 2019) – Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China Lijiang was a few hours by train further into Yunnan Province from Dali. We were on a slow train, but it made it somewhat easier to see the scenery pass by as we climbed the mountains above Erhai Lake. We had arranged for our hotel to pick us up from the train station on our arrival because we heard that the Lijiang Old Town was notoriously easy to get lost in. We were glad we decided to do that.

Day 302 (April 26, 2019) – Dali, Yunnan Province, China Dali was full of surprises. Some good and others not so good. There are actually two places called Dali. The modern part of Dali is called Dali City and the more historic part of town is called Dali Old Town (or sometimes Dali Ancient City). They are a good distance apart from one another but as a tourist almost everyone arrives by train in Dali City and then heads over to Dali Old Town.