Taishan, Beijing & The Great Wall: 8-13 June

Mount Taishan is one of the five holy mountains in China and the one that was most frequented by Emperors, who would make sacrifices and pay tributes at the summit. They have left behind fairly substantial ceremonial pathways more than two thousand years old, that snake up the mountainside past numerous temples (mainly Taoist) at which people still come to worship today.

We arrived in the late afternoon having been on the train for most of the day, coming north from Shanghai. The town at the base of the mountain is quite large but a world away from the glitz and glamour of Shanghai. It has the feeling of small-town China, with functional, utilitarian buildings, but was a pleasant enough place.

We checked into a hotel near the station. Nobody there spoke any English, but we managed to get by on our developed sign-language and by writing figures down. They only paid our passports and visas a cursory glance, so we weren't properly registered with the authorities, but hey, it was cheap. It was boiling hot - the thermometer on the train had said 34 degrees when we got off at 5pm. Perfect mountain climbing weather!

We set the alarm for 6am so that we would miss the worst of the heat and set off towards the mountain that looms over the town. It was a crystal clear day though already warm, and we could see the summit some 1500m above us. We took the eastern ceremonial trail, a well paved stone path and staircases that runs for 9km from the town to the summit. The first half of the climb was pretty unremarkable scenery-wise, the path running up a gully lined by trees, but the temples and souvenir stalls that popped up at a similar frequency kept us interested. It wasn't too crowded, but there were certainly more tourists than pilgrims and a lot of people were passing us on the way down having watched the sunrise from the summit.

At about halfway the views open out and we could see the town below us and appreciate how far we'd come. A bit further on and there's a kind of terminus where buses coming up a different route disgorge people who can then take a cable-car up to the summit, or join the walking path. Having been climbing stairs for a couple of hours, it's quite discouraging to then be joined by loads of fresh-faced Chinese bustling around you. A lot of them seemed to want to take our pictures as well, we must be in dozens of photo albums now, our pictures looking progressively hotter and sweatier - glad we were at our best for our public!

The final part of the climb is steep, the last 400 vertical metres covered in 1600+ stairs (according to the sign, we didn't count) with barely a flat section between flights in which to give the legs a break. At the top of the path we were greeted by the aptly named 'Southern Gateway to Heaven' through which you pass to the temple complex and multiple souvenir/snack shops that are on the summit. The views back down the mountain were incredible and the feeling of achievement was pretty good too. So much so, that we took decided to take the cable-car and bus down instead of walking! We were back down in time for a late lunch and an afternoon of lazing around before we got back on the train the following morning.

A short hop on the train later and we were back in Beijing, where we had last been five months ago. It had been literally freezing cold then, but was hot now. Oddly, it seems to have got hotter the further north we have come in China. We only had two and a half days in Beijing before our flight to Japan, so we embarked on a round of sight-seeing, taking in the lakes in the Houhai district, the Summer Palace, the Olympic Park and, of course, the Great Wall.

The Summer Palace is a collection of residences, temples and pagodas set in acres of parkland surrounding a big lake. It's a beautiful place and is where the great and good used to come to escape the heat of the city, we felt right at home! It certainly was hot in the city, so we thought we would do the same as did much of Beijing it seemed; there were lots of people enjoying the lake and what must have been several hundred pedal-boats out at once, which made for quite a sight.

From the Summer Palace it is a short hop on the tube to the contrasting sight of the Olympic park. There were a surprising amount of people here too; since the Olympics in 2008 it has become one of the must-see places for Chinese tourists with tour guides leading around streams of people. Food and souvenir merchants were out in force as were people just looking around (like us), or undertaking more organised activities such as speed-skating in front of the indoor stadium. We could see the 'bird's-nest' from a distance and initially it looked a little small, but certainly got more impressive the closer we got. It's a very impressive set-up with wide open pedestrian avenues and the stadiums and swimming complex grouped together. Looking forward to seeing London's efforts next year!

We decided that a fitting way to spend our last full day in China would be with a trip to the great wall, some 100km north of the city. We'd signed up with the hotel tour service instead of risking the public buses and were pleased to find that it was just us and two other guests that set off on the trip. It was a bright clear day, scorching hot again, as we set off for the mountains. First stop was the tomb of the 12th Ming Emperor. All bar three of the Ming Emperors are entombed in the same complex at the foot of at the foot of a mountain, but only three tombs have been restored and are open to the public. We arrived as the complex was opening and were the only people inside which made a pleasant change. Our guide was good and really informative about the meaning of the surrounding buildings and gates; the tomb was impressive and set amongst beautiful scenery, so made for a good stop on our way to the Wall. We stopped off at a Jade workshop a little further on which was less interesting, but a hazard of going on organised tours.

We were heading for the section of wall at Mutianyu; a little further away than Badaling (the closest section to Beijing) and correspondingly less crowded. It's a restored section of wall that runs along the top of a ridge, the wall rising and falling surprisingly steeply with the contours of the tree-covered hills. The air was crystal clear which made for amazing views, though the temperature made the going quite tough. Thankfully, there's a couple of (overpriced) cable cars up to the walls to save some of the effort. This section of wall is about 3km long, far enough to get away from most of the people and to snake over a few hills so that the view is ever changing. At the end of the day, it's just a wall, but the setting is fantastic and it felt great to be stood on top of it watching it disappear into the distance and admiring the views across the valleys.

To get down from the wall, there are the options of taking the cable car, walking, or the most fun option - a toboggan run. You sit on your own toboggan with a lever between your legs to work the brakes and set off down a 1500m long twisting metal runway, hoping that the people in front of you aren't going too slowly, which inevitably they were and Sue got a tad too close to the girl in front of her - whoops!

After a late lunch we headed back to Beijing, stopping at Dr T's, the largest tea-house in the city for tea-tasting which was interesting and surprisingly hilarious thanks to the way our hostess explained the subtleties of chewing tea in her sing-song English. We brought a souvenir tea-pot to add to the pile of stuff to handover to Sue's parents in a couple of weeks. We rounded out the day with a surprisingly painful foot massage at the Olympic sports centre before heading back to the hotel to pack for our flight to Japan the following day.

So, how to summarise our thoughts of China?

It's big. Stating the obvious really, but we do feel like we've covered some massive distances here while only scratching the surface of the country. There are whole areas such as the deserts to the north-west and mountains of the south-west that we haven't even glimpsed. An 18hr, thousand kilometre journey can sometimes only take you into the next province and barely make an impression on the map.

It's loud. The people are louder than elsewhere, probably because there's so many of them they have to shout to be heard - they shout at each other, or down the phone. The cheap and cheerful shops blare loud music into the street, while employees stand at the doors shouting special offers into megaphones, competing with the shouting of street vendors. The tour guides use microphones and speakers. Meanwhile the traffic competes with everything else with the constant honking of car/bus/bike horns.

It's cheap and outrageously expensive. Food and drink is generally cheap (although we did happen upon a restaurant who were charging £68 for a bottle of Jacobs Creek wine!!) and it's quite easy to find a decent, clean hotel for little money. Travel is very reasonable; the train fares are cheap when you consider the distance, but the distances are long and we were travelling frequently, so the cost adds up. Anything related to tourism on the other hand is massively expensive, a bit of a bind when you're here to see the sights! Tourism is big business, there are more and more Chinese people on the move and the major sights are having to cater for millions of visitors a year, hence the various methods that different sites have come up with for moving large numbers of people efficiently - cable cars, buses and electric buggies and the like. It's a similar feeling on public transport (or at least on the trains); the big city stations are like airports, massive halls where you need to arrive early to go through x-ray security and ticket checks before moving on to set departure halls that service the 20+ platforms. Upon arrival at your destination, you exit through different sections of the station following signs to onward travel connections.

It's every man/woman for themselves. It's a cultural thing of course, but the people can feel rude and inconsiderate to us delicate westerners. They have different concepts of privacy and personal space. They queue for tickets and things, but if you leave a foot of space between you and the person in front you can guarantee that someone will barge in front of you. You have to fight to get off subway trains against the tide of boarding passengers. It's actually sometimes quite gratifying to mow through a crowd of people with your elbows out and big backpacks on. Most of the time it's quite draining though. While the people seem friendly when you speak to them one on one, they do not seem as approachable as elsewhere - don't count on anyone offering you any help if you get lost. By far the worst habit though is the spitting. Everyone does it. Anywhere. Many has been the time when we've heard a big hocking sound right behind us and turned around to see a respectfully dressed business woman taking a break from talking into her i-phone to launch a big bit of flem onto the pavement somewhere near our feet. Nice.

It's difficult to be understood. This is by far the most difficult place we've visited language-wise. English is still an official language in India, while in the other Asian countries we've visited it is widely spoken. Outside of the very touristy parts of China though, not many people seem to speak any English at all. Add to that the fact that written Chinese is totally incomprehensible to us means that there is a major block in the most routine of communications, be it trying to get to a hotel, or trying to get something to eat. If the street signs and station names hadn't been written in English as well as Chinese we would probably have had some serious issues!

It's difficult to eat out. Due to the language issues, it was surprisingly difficult to access Chinese food. Most Chinese restaurants don't have an English menu, so you are left looking for places with a picture menu. Even then it's difficult to know what's in a dish and we had only mixed success ordering from pictures. Add to that the fact that any body-part from any animal seems to be fair-game for eating and you're never sure of what's going to arrive on your plate! There are also relatively few restaurants as we would know them; most Chinese places seem to be canteen-style affairs which specialise in one type of dish. When you are tired and hungry, it's all too easy to get sucked into the numerous Pizza Huts and KFCs that seem to be on every street corner in the cities. We tried Chinese breakfasts, but never really got used to pork noodle soup and dumplings so early in the morning, so stocked up on bread etc at the supermarkets we passed. They were interesting places too, particularly the butcher sections and the fish tanks with live fish and turtles swimming around for you to choose from!

It's a fashion hot-spot. They're a very fashion conscious bunch the Chinese, especially the youngsters. The guys must take as much time over their hair as the girls; we've never seen so many dyed, straightened or artistic haircuts on guys. Some of the girls look like they've seen a picture in a fashion magazine and copied it down to the last impractical detail. We felt rather dowdy in our sandals and combats, so have both invested in a pair of jeans! Two unfortunate Chinese fashions on the go at the moment are: fake spectacles - not just glasses with clear lenses, but thick frames with no glass at all, and: his 'n' hers matching t-shirts, the exact same style and colour in mens/ladies cuts. Some have gone as far as to dress their kids in smaller versions of the same items, presumably so that they remember who their single child is.. Like the fashions, the cities are cutting edge as well, amazing modern architecture and massive glistening cities that are kept scrupulously clean and filled with the Gucci's and Armani's of this world. Looking around places like Shanghai, it's often quite difficult to reconcile this with the fact that China is a communist state.

And so that brings us to the end of our musings about China. We've been in the country for 5 weeks but it has really flown by. By the time you see this, we should be somewhere in Japan! Looking forward to it.

Keep well,
Dan & Sue.