well, i guess its about time for another update - im sure you must have digested the last one by now!!! but dont worry, i dont seem to have been much recently, so this one will be much shorter!! ok, so it was pointed out to me that although i said id taken the train from pyongyang, i made no mention of the train explosion that occurred at the end of april. well, yes we did pass through the site of it, it was almost hard to believe that there had been such a massive accident, so recently, they seem to have cleared the site of most of the debris, though it was a hive of activity, people pushing wheelbarrows, more people in fact in this one place than i saw anywhere else in the country. i guess they were due to start rebuilding work. and i would also like to take this opportunity to point out that i am not responsible for the map and flag which now adorns the beginning of each entry - what a great idea, but i cannot take the credit!! therefore it is not my fault that the last entry, about the dprk, in fact bears the flag of the south... (a capital offence in the north!!) anyway, after my return to normalcy (if china can be called that) i took an overnight train from beijing to shanghai. what a train it was!! the most luxurious ive travelled on. apparently the trains were only brought into service this year. so the duvets were soft inside their starched white covers and the pillows were still plump. dinner was included, and i have to say i actually had the best nights sleep, maybe not of my trip, but certainly in the last month or so. it was fantastic. shanghai itself did not live up to expectations, which i was quite disappointed about, as id heard good things about it. but i think its one of those places you have to be for a while (or at least longer than a few days) in order to dig out its high points. i just didnt have the time to spare. i visited the shanghai museum, which i have to say was very good. i really didnt think id be interested in seeing the ancient bronzes, or sculptures, or the exhibition on calligraphy, but all of it held my attention and of course i took loads of photos. there was also an exhibition of cartier jewelry, which was interesting. there were maybe over a hundred pieces, most of which were too gaudy for my taste...but there were some which had been loaned from personal collections, including those of the duchess of kent and even elton john! but other than that, i wouldnt really recommend spending more than a day in the city. the WORST ripoff is the bund tourist tunnel. why it was built, i simply cannot imagine. well, no, it was to lighten the wallets of tourists. basically, you are in a cablecar type thing, and you travel under the river, on a journey lasting about 6minutes. on the way, as you pass through a darkened tunnel, lights start flashing and an american voice says things like "space swirl,''fossil variants' and 'nascent magma'. it is utterly bizarre and really serves no good purpose. it takes you over to the new side of the river, full of skyscrapers but which arent very touristy. so, either you catch a cab back to where you started....or you take the tunnel again. once was more than enough. i visited a couple of temples and wandered about trying to avoid all the shops, but really it is something of a shoppers paradise. there didnt seem to be many of the markets that i discovered with ease in beijing. but theres loads of department stores - all airconditioned, which is very nice when its about 33c outside!! i also went to a former residence of dr sun yat sen, who is regarded by many to be the father of modern china. then i took a train to nanjing. unfortunately, i could only get a seat in 'hard seat' class, which really is about as comfortable as it sounds. people spit on the floor, they smoke despite the carriages being non smoking... the waiting room for the train was equally grim. i ended up trying to doze off with my rucksack on my lap - really didnt fancy putting it on the floor along with all the spit, cigarette ends and ash, and foodstuffs like chicken bones and skin.... in nanjing, which was once capital of china, i visited the memorial museum to the nanjing massacre, which took place in 1937. china estimates that over 250,000 people were killed during the massacre by japanese soldiers, which lasted little over 6 weeks. japan even to this day, denies the number was anything like this, maybe around 40,000. and many japanese people know little or nothing of the events in nanjing, as the government approves all high school texts books, and refuses to allow more than a few lines to what happened there. that said, i dont think many people worldwide know much about it. i had read a book about the massacre not long before my trip, so felt i should see the memorial, when i was nearby. its a very sobering experience, with a pit showing skeletons piled up, as they had been found in a mass grave. there were monuments to various different sights round the city - scenes of mass killings or mass burials. there were copies of photos taken by japanese army officers, showing scenes of torture, or its aftermath. it was all pretty horrific. but the rest of my time there was spent in less sombre mood. i visited a confuscian temple - which was new, and seemed designed to relieve tourists of their money. its hard to believe there was much worship going on when you could buy your tacky souvenirs in the same hall as the main portrait of confuscius. and i also visited the taiping heavenly kingdom museum. i knew nothing of the heavenly kingdom, and really learned very little in the museum, as there were few captions in english. and in fact, none of the exhibits were authentic. they were all photocopies, or replicas with the originals being kept elsewhere. seems a bit of a waste really. finally during my lightning stop to nanjing, i went to sun yat sens mauoleum - seemed appropriate when id seemn where he had lived! it was quite impressive (not quite on the same scale as that for kim il sung but....) the tomb itself is at the end of an enormous stairway, over 300m long and about 70m wide. there is a marble gateway at the end of the stairs. inside the mausoleum itself, a marble statue of the man rests on top of his coffin. next i travelled back to beijing, to meet up with a friend. because id left it rather late in the day to make my booking, i was left to again travel hard seat. not much fun for a 12 hour journey, but amazingly i managed to get some sleep, and was quite refreshed when i met up with nic. ive known her since i first went to canada, but we only ever seem to see each other on foreign soil - first time in vancouver, next in melbourne and now in beijing...begs the question, where next!!! we had a shopping trip to a famous market in beijing where we found numerous bargains- i really shouldnt buy any more clothes - theres no room in my rucksack. then i took another train - again was forced to travel hard seat - to xi'an. the journey itself wasnt too bad, but i did have an extremely annoying travel companion. due to not having had much sleep over the previous few nights, i was quite tired, but that didnt stop a young chinese bloke constantly nudging me, even though it was late, and my eyes were closed as though i was trying to sleep, and offering me cigarettes and beer. he would hold the beer right in front of my nose and wait for a reaction. i told him in chinese (one of the few phrases i know) and english that i didnt want it, it made no difference. of course after a few minutes all the people sitting anywhere nearby were watching to see what would happen. every time i pushed him away, he would repeat 'no, no, no' to the amusement of his mates, but the annoyance of me. eventually, after about 30minutes, he took the hint. but picked up where hed left off next morning, when, by 8.30 he was on the vodka and determined that i would eat the fruit he was offering. i did eat a little, out of politeness, but didnt want to take it with me. as i got off the train, he kept trying to put it in my bag - until i literally shouted at him as i got off the train that i didnt want it. had i been there much longer, id probably have thrown it at him!!! so xi'an - home of the terracotta warriors. before i visited i had no idea about the history of them. in a nutshell, they were built around 220bc by the emperor who founded the qin dynasty, to accompany him to the afterlife. however, about 30years after he was buried, his tomb was looted and the warriors smashed up. they then lay forgotten for about 2000years, until they were accidentally discovered, in 1974, by some peasants who were building a well. they are quite an impressive sight, these soldiers and horses are all life size, each with a different facial expression, are arranged in battle formation. but actually i came away with the feeling that what we were looking at was in fact a reconstruction of how it should have looked before the tomb was plundered, and had been designed, once more, to relieve tourists of their cash. it certainly wasnt a cheap sight - in a place where you can get a bed for y25 (less than two pounds) this cost y90!! i did a couple of other touristy things in xi'an, saw the grand mosque and a few pagodas, which were nice, but it felt like another big city, so i headed off, by train - this time hard sleeper class, which isnt as bad as it sounds, at least you get a bed - to chengdu, where the first thing i did was visit the giant panda breeding and research centre. now, anyone who knows me will be able to guess how much i enjoyed this. the pandas were just SO cute. there were some cubs as well as adults. i took so many photos, i just couldnt help it!! they were absolutely lovely, and the two hours i spent there just wasnt long enough. also here, i took a sichuan cookery course, which was good fun. only drawback was that after wed made each dish, we were expected to eat it. no problem there, except that they werent fun sized portions, and we made 5 different things!!! after the first two, i could only manage a mouthful of the others. but ill definitely be trying the recipes out when i get home, so any volunteers......? ok, so i think that is you now up to date on all that ive been doing recently. my time is up in this internet cafe, and my next adventure is about to begin...... thanks for reading.... just so you know, ive just had my 4th cd of photos burned - theres now 28kb - at least 2500pictures. just let me know if you want to see them all:)