Our China epic continues. We have now tried all 4 classes of train travel and can give our very conditional approval to most. The "hard sleeper" was our first experience and involved 48 triple bunks in the carriage and was not as noisy as we expected, the Chinese not being known for their volume control. We were in the middle bunks and despite a lack of head room actually managed to get a reasonable sleep in, plus converse in smiles and mime to the chinese couple below us, of whom the poor woman had just been discharged from hospital in Beijing with a fresh cut full length down her body and was now subjected to the tortuous form of Chinese queuing which is to say that everybody goes madly each for themselves to try to secure the best place on the train/bus/platform/boat/pavement wherever they are trying to be! That train took us to Kaifeng, which remains in my mind the only Chinese town we have seen which seems to have retained some of it's own unique character. We took a lovely (but bitterly cold) walk aroundthe lake here and found a weird Chinese park containing huge dragons made entirely of fake flowers, a zoo containing a dog and 4 ducks, lots of bridges and big rocks sticking up in the middle that you had to clamber over! We were the local tourist attraction in that town, it is not a tourist attraction kind of a place (we went because we wanted to see somewhere 'normal'). As a result peole were literally falling of their bikes and smacking into bollards as they stared at us, it kept us amused! Next we took a "hard seat" to Luoyang, this was a far less nice way to travel. We stood for the first hour of the journey not having yet sharpened our elbows and perfected the pushing and shoving technique beloved of the Chinese. When we did finally sit it was amongst the cigarette smoke and rubbish of your common or garden Chinese traveller. This is the cheapest way to travel and it would have to be! The attendants swept the floor of our carriage after 2 hours and the pile was (no exaggeration here) about 2m by 1m by 0.5 m of fag butts, plastic wrappers, potnoodle boxes, monkey nuts, sunflower seeds etc. And where do they dispose of all this, well in the place everybody is SUPPOSED to dump it to start with, in the bin? NO! Out the moving window/door straight into the "pristine" environment! Unbelievable. Luoyang itself I have to say is the filthiest place I have ever visited, and we saw a few non-too-clean places in Africa I can tell you. None of them compare to Luoyang. Let me give you a glimpse into our first eating experience in this town: I hope you're not eating as you read this, we were as we saw it. Whilst trying to swallow our fat soaked noodles the woman at the next table was vomiting all over her table, the floor and her own feet and hand bag, meanwhile her supportive friends and husband completely ignored her and continued to drink their tea, finish their equally unappealing food and then they all got up and without a word waltzed out of the restaurant. It took some time before the waiting staff noticed the mess amongst the general chaos of the restaurant and tipped dirt on it to soak it up. We gave up on our meal and decided to find chocolate at the local supermarket. I am forever grateful for the fact that there was a wonderful restaurant for dinner attached to our hotel in Luoyang with lovely staff. The reason for our visit to Luoyang was to visit the Longmen Grottoes. We took a bus (for Y1 as opposed to the Y60 that we were assured was the "only way to get there") and braved the hawker stalls en route and arrived at a place that was unbelieveble. On a huge rock face along a river Buddhists 2000 years ago carved amazing statues into the rock, literally hundreds of thousands of carvings in many hundreds of man made caves. Some carvings were only a couple of centimetres high whereas others dwarfed us. Well worth the general hardship of the local town. Once again we managed to make ourselves the centre of attention. This time we were having our lunch in what we believed to be an out of the way spot, when we were spotted by some medical students. You can always tell when someone is going to come and speak to you as you can hear them practising "excuse me" for 10 minutes before the inevitable onslaught! 2 girls started the conversation and asked for the predictable photograph with you, as soon as the cameras came out 20 more girls appeared as if from nowhere, then 4 boys and even a policeman came to join in the fun and get his photo taken with the Laowai ("foreigners"). It's all very odd but it happens wherever we go. Pete said no to someone who asked to have a photo taken with him once and felt so bad at the heartbroken look on the poor bloke's face that he ended up not only taking photos but also losing much of his rare morning alone conversing with him. From Luoyang we took the "soft seat" option to get to Xi'an. Now this was a whole different travelling experience, for one thing we were not the only westerners on the train! Not only that but it was a double decker train and we had gold lame seat covers and fake flowers on the table! Very posh! We met a really sweet Chinese couple who could speak English and chatted to them for the 5 hour journey. We also met Adam and Tasha for Oz who we spent much of the next few days with in Xi'an, especially in the evenings, dining out in style in the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an. Beautiful food and an amazing night street. Lots of weird and wonderful dried fruits for sale which we just had to buy + I managed to secure a special gift for Andrew Withey! Xi'an itself was a very modern city with a huge city wall that we walked in the growing dusk and could look over into the chockablock flats that people there live in. There is a stark difference between the streets in which they work (neon lit and sparkling) and the streets in which they live (nothing remotely sparkling about them). From Xi'an of course we had to go to see the Terracotta Warriors, but have to admit to a certain amount of disappointment in our visit. Photos lead you to believe that there are many thousands of them lined up in neat rows, in actual fact there are relatively few on display and many are broken. Unsurprising given what they've survived (or not) through, but a little disappointing nonetheless. From there we travelled back on ourselves briefly to visit the sacred mountain Hua Shan. It began as a beautiful walk - very uphill - along a river with relatively few people around. We were walking with 3 Chinese speaking Americans, which came in very handy at times. At we got closer to the summit climbing near vertical narrow stairs (I was very brave even if I do say so myself!) the number of Chinese tourists began to increase until we could hear the steady hum of the Chinese yelling at each other. At the top was the cable car that you can zip up in and along with it several thousand Chinese tourists, all pushing shoving and holding each other up with prolonged photo calls. Pete's idea of a nightmare... his beautiful mountain peace was shattered and I thought he would give up and cry!! We stayed in a room at the top of the North Peak and in the morning Pete stupidly braved the crowds and walked for 3 1/2 hours around the other 2 peaks. He returned stressed, flustered and proclaiming that he had to "get off this goddamned mountain!" So much for sacred serenity! The cable car ride was an experience in itself though and after an hour wait on a packed minibus whilst the driver tried to squeeze 2 more people into no space we were off and back to Xi'an. From Xi'an we decided to go upmarket and travel "soft sleeper" class on the train overnight to Yichang where we intended to get on a cruise down the Yangtze river. Softsleeper is much like hard sleeper except only 2 bunks high and every 4 bunks has a closed off compartment door, this serves to lock you in with snoring, yelling, smoking (Pete threw a fit at this stage and chucked out the bloke who had woken us at 4.30am by yelling to his mate and then promptly lit up a fag in a compartment with no open windows!) co-travellers! We got off the train and were met by a taxi driver who got us onto a boat on the Yangtze within 35minutes of our feet touching the ground! We took a Chinese tourist boat, as opposed to an expensive foreigners only boat and went first class. This bought us a private room with it's own person cabbage smell and a shower directly over the pit loo. It was lovely! The Yangtze itself was beautiful, amasing to travel through the 3 gorges that because of the dam will not exist by 2009. the water has already risen by 139m and so we were sailing over villages that have already been submerged. Everywhere there were markers showing the level the water will come to next year and by 2009. It was so sad to see all the well tended gardens, temples and homes that would no longer exist in a very short while. We took a side trip down the little 3 gorges and further into the mini 3 gorges which were idyllic and had not been big enough to get a boat down until the dam had flooded the area. We even saw some wildlife - monkeys on one of the islands. Clearly they must be inedible monkeys otherwise they wouldn't have stood a chance. Having said that I have been very pleased to see the number of dogs kept as pets in China, apparently it is increasing and bodes well for the plight of the species as haute cuisine! In Kaifeng I had been distressed to see puppies in a cart for sale until I realised they were all wearing silk jackets and were in fact very well cared for! We are back on terrafirma now and made it by bus this time to Chengdu. We are doing boring tasks today such as visa extensions but are going to go the the Sichuan Opera tonight and see Pandas tomorrow, I'll let you know how that goes and whether our eardrums survive the Chinese operatic test! Love to all and sundry, keep in touch