Bye bye China

So, amazingly it's my last day in China today. It's been 9 weeks since I left the UK and I get the Trans-Siberian (or more accurately the Trans-Mongolian) tomorrow to go to Russia, via a 2 night stop-over in Ulan-Bator.

Scary stuff really - in some ways the time has gone very quickly but in other ways it feels like a long time since I was back in the UK. It feels like ages since I saw Cath so I'm really looking forward to seeing her in Poland in a week or so.

Anyway, last time I wrote I was in Kunming which turned out to probably be my favourite city in China. There were lots of parks and trees and it wasn't as crowded or as manic as everywhere else that I've been, plus the climate was quite nice - not too hot and not cold, although it did pour with rain for a couple of days while I was there. There wasn't anything specifically outstanding to go and visit but it was a nice place to spend a bit of time wandering around the city and visiting the parks and things.

After Kunming I flew up to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. Xi'an was massive - much bigger than I expected (although I should have expected it to be large since it was the capital of China at one time) and it was really very hot indeed - too hot for me.

I took the chance to visit my friend Marc who is currently lecturing at a university outside Xi'an (somehow he's been made an Associate Professor!) and he showed me around Yangling and then his wife cooked us a very nice dinner. It was good to catch up with him and I think he enjoyed the chance to speak with another westerner since there are only around 10 westerners in the town in total!

The Terracotta Warriors were great although our tour did spend around 4 hours there which was a bit too long and I ended up being a bit bored - I think maybe an hour or two would have been enough time. It was great to see them though and although I was a bit worried that I might be disappointed when I finally saw them in the flesh I shouldn't have worried. Perhaps they could have made a bit more effort to make them presentable so that you could get up close to see them but it's basically an archeological dig site that's still in progress so I won't complain too much!

There wasn't really too much else to see in Xi'an so I took the overnight train to Beijing which was going to be my last stop in China before I set off back to Europe.

It was good to be back somewhere I was familiar with but I still had a few places that I wanted to visit. I went to the Great Hall of the People which I suppose is the Chinese parliament building. It looked very grand from the outside but inside it was a bit underwhelming with frayed carpets and generally a tired feel to it. It was nice, but there was nothing grand or impressive about it. I suppose the Chinese Communist Party make all their decisions in darkened, smoky rooms so they have no real need for a parliament building...

The next day I went to the Military Museum and spent a fantastic few hours looking at tanks and missiles and rifles and things. It was great. They had missiles cut in half so you could see how they worked and they also had a massive selection of handguns and machine guns and revolvers and basically all the kinds of toys that you wanted when you were a kid. The rest of the museum was dedicated to Chinese conflicts of the past but it was all in Chinese so I didn't have much of a clue what was going on. I had a brief sortie around the place looking at the pictures but after all the weapons and stuff it was a bit dull. I totally recommend a visit though if you're a big kid.

I finally got around to seeing the Great Wall as well. I'd been meaning to see it ever since I first landed in Beijing in mid-April but somehow never got around to it so yesterday I joined a tour out to one of the restored sections of the wall. I was expecting to be disappointed but I absolutely wasn't. It's just so impressive and the scale of the achievement of building it is there to see. It must have been a massive undertaking.

We took a cable car up the hill (about 1000 metres up - we could have walked but our guide told us we were short of time) and at the top you could see hills into the far distance and the wall perched along the top of them. The pictures don't do it justice (and nor do they show the steepness of the bit that I climbed - I was mildly out of breath by the time I got to the top - thank goodness for my Olympian fitness). I was glad that I'd finally seen it and I should get another chance tomorrow since the Trans-Siberian goes under the wall before we reach Mongolia.

And so that's China for me!

I'm not sure when I'll next get the chance to post - probably when I'm back in the UK so I hope you'll all manage to keep a meaningful life going in the interim.

All the best,
Gregor