Follow in the footsteps of Marko Polo to China – Part 1

Travelling in China is a bit like travelling in Australia in that you do not really comprehend how big it is until you actually get there and are thinking about going from one place to the next. The main difference between Australia and China is that Australians speak English, for the most part in China people do not unless you are in one of the bigger cities.

So there we have two quite big reasons why China has in the past been inaccessible or seen as not an easy place to travel. This is also complicated with the necessity for a Chinese visa which can still be problematic but is becoming easier when transiting as I did on my trip to Shanghai 4 years ago.

China for me is one of the best places I’ve been and I’ve been three times in total to the mainland now, to Beijing and Xian in 2009, all across half the country from Hangzhou and through Laos to Thailand in 2011 and as a stopover in 2013 between the UK and New Zealand in Shanghai so I know a bit about travel here!

The country is too big to say you’ve seen the lot even in three trips, I doubt I’ve even touched the surface but I’ve been to quite a lot of the main tourist attractions and then some so here is a little China travel guide based on places I’ve been.

Beijing

The capital and my first taste of China, the climate when I went was similar to the UK at the time of year in April but it gets very muggy in summer apparently. A sprawling metropolis Beijing in itself has the focal point of the Wangfujing area which is the Oxford Street of the city. We based ourselves here and it was in walking distance of Tianenmen square and the Forbidden city. Needless to say these are two of the most famous things you can do in Beijing city itself and totally worthwhile. Also at the same time for the (slightly morbid) you can take a walk past the mummified body of Mao Zedong, which is in the middle of Tiananmen square. Outside of the city is the big reason people go to Beijing, the Great Wall of China, the two most popular parts are Badaling and Mutianyu and these are generally where tours go but  the wall is miles and miles long so there are lots of different sections to explore. We went out and walked 4.5k along the Jinshanling/Simatai stretch of the wall which has the bonus of a flying fox from off the wall at the end over a lake!

Beijing has some amazing food and the dumplings in particular here are very good as well as the famous Peking duck. What you find with China is that each place has its own speciality food (as well as language dialect) and Beijing is no exception, though food up here is more sustaining and substantial I found, possibly because the winters are cold! If you can get past the strange options on offer, trying some street food at a hutong is worth doing, some of the barbeque stuff all around China is spectacular. Other things to see are the Summer palace which is an opulent summer house for the emperors of China which is a little out of the central drag which is full of gardens and pagodas. For shopping I would  recommend the Beijing Hongqiao Pearl market and also the silk market. Both sell everything really, not just silk and pearls but you need to negotiate hard and offer half initial price given as a rule at least! Finally the Olympic village is worth a look for the incredible modern architecture. Getting around is actually quite easy on the modern subway, getting a taxi is a little more difficult (and this stands for China generally) because of the language.

Xian

This is a walled city about 8 hours inland by train from Beijing, the main reason we went here was to see the famous terracotta warriors but there is much more beside as the city is right at the end of the ancient Silk Road. We started off heading out of the city to the Terracotta warriors but on the way out there was actually a number of Qin Dynasty tombs built into massive mounds, in fact this area of the city was just one big burial ground, the mounds are still being excavated and explored in places. The interesting thing once we got out to the Terracotta warriors was that there really weren’t as many as I expected, this was because a lot had been taken away on display around the world!

Xian itself was a beautiful walled with lots of pagodas and an ancient mosque in the centre, the silk road from the middle east ended here so was something of a crossroad in years gone by and may well again be in the future!

Shanghai and Hangzhou

Shanghai is an amazing modern city with massive skyscrapers but also a nod to history with the concession areas. The juxtaposition between these two things is very evident in the cities’ Bund area. This is a promenade along the Huangpu river backed up by old colonial style buildings, across the river you can see the massive Shanghai and Jin Mao towers which are lit up like Christmas trees at nightime. When we went to the Bund it was very busy with local teenagers and tourists, it also seemed to be a popular destination for wedding photos as there were a lot of local girls in wedding dresses amongst the crowds! We also went to the famous Yu gardens which not only had traditional Chinese gardens and architecture but also had a big shopping and restaurant attached. They do this quite a bit in China and modernise ancient things (when maybe they dont need to be) quite a lot which is a bit of a shame actually if you ask me! Other things you can do in Shanghai include going on a trip to the top of the Shanghai tower to the observation deck and as we did hang out in Renmin park. We also went to the building where they had  1st national congress of the communist party which also had an informative and interesting museum about some of Chinas communist history. For shopping we found a good market at the Shanghai Science centre, which is not exactly telegraphed but the best place to go for market type shopping, otherwise there are quite a few big shopping malls and Nanjing road basically is full of western shops, it even has a Marks and Spencers and Pizza Express!

Shanghai is a destination in its own right but does have quite a few outlying cities and I visited one of these Hangzhou in 2011, Suzhou is also nearby and has an ancient canal system but I’ve not been. For Hangzhou the main attraction here is the massive West Lake complex which is exactly as it sounds a big lake but it is also interspersed with traditional Chinese gardens and pagodas. There are some beautiful views out over the lake here and there are pathways right down the middle of the lake that you can walk along so worth a visit as a daytrip from Shanghai if you have an extended time there.