Beijihg

Wow...so after many exciting european and russian adventures we have made it to Asia. It feels kind of wierd when i think that we got all the way here by cycling and train. The first evening in Beijing was spent wandering around awestruck with eyes wide and jaw dropped. Possibly due to the sensory depravation of 6 days on a train, but also cos its really cool.

We are staying with an Argentinian we met on couch surfers who is also travelling but has stopped in the city to make some cash teaching english and tango. He is really nice and his flat is really central so its worked out perfect. And he rides his bike really fast to get around the city.

So far we have seen tianamen square (a bit disappointing, maybe i have seen too many sqares already), Forbidden City (beautiful, and the sun was shining so made even more colourful), The Wall yesterday which was really stunning, and today we went to a flea market which was really cool, not too touristy and a great variety of things on sale from unusual antiques to caligraphy paintings to silk to books and loads of other stuff. Tomorrow we will go to the Buddist Lama Temple with a group of students learning English. Some guy on the street touted us to be free english practice for them, in return for paying our entrance. Could be intresting or annoying, but we will give it a try. Its National day tomorrow anyway so anywhere we go is gonna be packed.

On tuesday we get on a train to Guilin, a 24 hour journey and we couldnt get a hard sleeper ticket or even a soft seat so we are travelling "hard seat". They don't even try to make the name sound appealling, although apparently there are also classes of travel called "dirty train" and "cheap train" . I think its gonna be a nightmare, but cos its the holiday we were lucky to be able to get out of beijing at all even though we booked it as soon as we arrived. We have to transit our bikes there as luggage, they will go on a different train. Im a bit worried but people seem to think its ok.

Yesterday we got scammed by some young Chinese who approached us in Tianamen Square and said they wanted to practice their english. They took us to a really expensive tea shop, with loads of hidden costs, and we had to pay 25 quid to try three cups of tea. A lesson about trusting people who approach you in touristy areas there i guess.

Beijing Part 2:

Going to Beijing's Lama Temple, a Buddhist place of worship as well as tourist attraction, on Chinese National Day with a group of young children on an educational day trip might not seem like a fun idea??? An english teacher had approached me and Claire in the park and started chatting. He wanted some native english speakers to visit the temple with his young students so they could practice their spoken english.

And actually it was really fun, and educational for us too! There wasn't any chance we were going to enjoy the serenity of the temple amongst the national holiday hoards, so why not hang out with 15 hyperactive kids? Even though they were only young (8-13yrs) their english was really good and they were really excited to meet us. They taught us about Chinese history and tradition, and at the end each gave a speech starting like: "Today i am very happy because we went to the Lama Temple with two foreigners..."

Chatting with the kids, parents and teachers was a good opertunity for us to meet with some locals, and also gave us an insight into the pressure kids are under from a young age. Parents are desperate for their kids to benefit from China's rapid economic growth and apparently a standard school education is not enough. They have to stand out from the crowd, and in China the crowd is big. This means loads of extra tuition as well as "normal" school resulting in longs days and a 7 day educational week for 8 year old kids. I can see that leading to a generation of rich but socially and emotionally maladjusted Chinese managers and business people.

Having said that the kids we met were great and not in the least socially deficiant (that we witnessed!).

After visiting the temple we navigated Beijing West Station (the size of a small country) armed with our bikes and a bit of paper that said "Please tell us what to do with our bikes" in Chinese, and managed to get them booked in to be freighted to Guilin. Walking away from the station bikeless felt quite wierd.

The following day it was our turn to get the train to Guilin. We waited in trepidation in a massive airport style lounge, apprehensive about what the 24 hour journey would be like.

As it turned out "hard seat" class doesn't resemble church pew style benches crammed into a dark smelly carriage. Its actually just like seats on a normal train, with little tables, and windows with curtains, and those things on the back of the seats to stop your hair making the seat dirty. It was totally packed out, with people sleeping in the aisle and in the doorways, and our seats were pretty upright but many people didn't have seats at all. We were the only forigners in the carriage, maybe the train, but they guy opposite spoke a little english. The most annoying thing was being stared at constantly by people..."now the foreigners are eating 2 minute noodles, now the foreigners are looking in their bag, now the foreigners are reading a book, picking nose, scratching arse etc". I think staring is not considered rude here.