Note: this post is as long as an old man's scrotum.

TL;DR edition: Travel kicked major ass. I broke my face, danced like an idiot and experienced the pinnacle of nature's beauty. Harrison and I also tripped balls due to fever.

Holy freaking space balls, there was a LOT of stuff that happened on winter travel, I don't even really know where to begin. I suppose I should inform you guys about where I actually went first of all. So, for those of you who may not know, we were given a month of travel time in winter and we will be getting another month in summer around June. Booking all the train tickets was horrible and booking all the hostels was even more horrible, but eventually everything was in order and all we had to do was get our arses to where we wanted to be. To begin with, we made our way to Harbin where there was a massive ice festival we wanted to check out. If I'm honest, I found it a little less breathtaking than I was expecting, but there was an ice rink and a toboggan thing set up on the river which had completely frozen over and that was awesome. It felt so surreal to be walking around on a giant river with the knowledge that there was freezing cold water mere inches beneath your feet. Anyway, I ended up trying to show off while ice skating (we were playing grab-the-other-guys-hat-and-make-him-look-like-a-knob) and I fell straight onto my face. Literally, I went down so fast that I didn't have time to put my hands out. Needed four stitches. Got a scar and everything, it was awesome. I should mention that the main guys I was travelling with were Harrison, Callum, Pat Pat, Alistair and Ben who were all amazingly good company. We met Quin there as well! She was the receptionist at the hostel we stayed at and she spoke really good English. Really sweet and funny girl.

So, Harbin was eventful. Moving on to Nanjing! Nanjing was a very historical city as it is one of the oldest cities in all of China. It was also the capital city for six dynasties until Beijing replaced it as the capital. Many of you may be aware of the infamous Nanjing massacre of 1937 when Japanese soldiers invaded the city and brutally murdered and raped around 200000 Chinese civilians. This is an incident which China still holds against Japan to this day, mainly because of the Japanese government's refusal to accept responsibility for what happened. The reason I'm telling you all this is because one of the first things that we did in Nanjing was visit the massacre memorial which was dedicated to all those who died. Although horrific and undeniably evil the massacre was, the amount of anti-Japanese propaganda which was portrayed as fact in the memorial was staggering. While I did understand why the Chinese government would portray Japanese people as demonic creatures, it didn't change the fact that the memorial did not only criminalise those involved (rightfully so), but every single Japanese person. The s*** that these horrible b******s did in Nanjing was absolutely horrendous however: heads on pikes, forced incest, torture, rape and a complete disrespect to any and all articles of war. Unforgivable (but don't be racist guys, come on).

That was a downer, sorry. On a much lighter note, we stumbled across possibly the best club I have been to in all of China. It was basically a temple which worshipped foreigners: when we entered this muscle-bound black man greeted us warmly, took our jackets and showed us to a table. Now, I have to point out that when I say muscle-bound, I don't mean that he had been hitting the gym. Nah, man. I mean this guy was the personification of human strength. He put mountains to shame. This man was so huge that Mike Tyson himself would have made his knuckles sore if he hit him. The guy made Hercules, the son of Zeus himself, ponder his own masculinity and consider giving up his title of demi-God in order to pursue a career in competitive flower arranging. He was alright, made me laugh a few times. So after we were all settled, our eyes turned to the bar where a scantily clad woman appeared to be trying to escape from an oversized bowl of soup. I reminded myself that I would act in a club as though Jill were with me, but I found myself incapable of prying my eyes away from her struggled, somewhat sexual movements. Eventually I guess she found away out of the evil soup bowl because about twenty minutes later she had vanished. Before she did rid herself of the dreaded cream of mushroom however, Maurice (not his real name, but he was from Mauritius and Maurice from Mauritius sounds funny) came to bring us our drinks: a big f***-off tank of vodka and orange juice and another f***-off tank of what I think was rum and coke. All free, by the way. So, with that much alcohol at our disposal, it was inevitable that we would eventually start dancing. And dance we did. With men. With women. With whatever the f*** I ended up with, it didn't matter, every Chinese person in the club treated us like we were a dying species; they all wanted to dance with us. I think Alastair almost ended up getting off with a guy, it was weird. So yeah, we danced like idiots, came back the night after, met up with the Gansu lot who had just arrived, danced some more and went on to our next destination.

Huangshan, b****es. This was by far my favourite place that we visited, partly because walking up the mountain, beholding the infinite horizon and the steady setting of the sun were the most beautfiul things I have ever seen in my life and partly because Harrison became sick and started tripping for like, a day. It was so funny to see him in the front seat of a taxi, steadily tilting his head to one side and warning Ben and I that we should be mindful of the dream cloud which was approaching. Also, he thought that we were riding in a flying cactus. And that we were on our way to slay a dragon. He used a roll of toilet paper as a sword, thrusting away at an invisible enemy. It was hilarious. Still makes me chuckle. Huangshan though, the mountain was a monotonous climb as there were no real paths. The Chinese government had the excellent idea of implementing a billion stone steps as a means of scaling the mountain instead of using a path system like in the UK. Nevertheless, the views were out of this world and the endless stairs were well worth it. Some of the rock formations made me take a moment to remind myself that I was, in fact, still on planet Earth and had not yet ascended through the gates of Valhalla. When we arrived at our hotel at the top of the mountain, we were able to appreciate the wonder of the peaks in more detail: there were some peaks which just barely poked through a thin layer of mist which had settled neatly around our feet as we admired the beauty of our planet and thanked whatever divine being who was responsible for making Earth such a gorgeous piece of ass. That night, we gathered atop the highest, most western peak we could reach and watched the sun sink below the clouds. Then Alastair and I bellowed out 'I'll Make a Man Out of You' from the Disney motion picture, 'Mulan'. We thought it was appropriate and it just felt right. The sun setting wasn't enough for us though, no sir, the next morning we all woke up early and gathered at the highest, most eastern peak to watch the sun rise. I don't know how, but I ended up getting separated from the others and had a chance to do a bit of inner thinking while watching the sun rise. This actually helped give me an idea for a story, or rather an idea I could work into a story I was writing.

The descent down the mountain was much, much better than the way up; there were sections which felt like that bit in 'The Fellowship of The Ring' where Gandalf is leading the fellowship down to the Mines of Moria - not the actual mines themselves, but rather the mountain path which leads down to the entrance - and this feeling seemed to be reciprocated by the lads because we were soon all singing songs from The Lord of The Rings. Then Callum and I decided to run the rest of the way down the mountain. That was good fun. So, onto Shanghai!

First, I need to talk about the ridiculous contrast that Shanghai has between it's new city and it's old city: we went to the Bund in the new city first and I can't really describe its appearance in a concise way other than just saying it looked like the city from Futurama (forgot the name of that city, sorry). It was really, really bizarre. The old city, on the other hand, was full of little market stalls, traditional style buildings and a lovely garden that we ended up walking through. We also had western food in Shanghai, which I have sorely missed. Still can't beat that Chinese grub, though. Shanghai was great because we met up with the Gansu vols and shared stories with each other all while getting utterly mashed. Good times, yo! Oh! I almost forgot to say that we all had an Indian on Chinese New Year! It was sooooooo good! Harriet is the f***ing devil though. You don't mock others for not having their food yet when you have yours, girl. It's the unspoken code of conduct and you broke it. Poor form.

So...that was my longest post I think, but I don't think there is a really concise way of putting all of winter travel into one post. I think I'll update when my Mum comes to visit, once my birthday rolls around and then again when Brian's birthday happens. After that, it'll be summer travel time! Exciting. I'll also update intermittently about China stuff, like doing stuff with Will or Xia Jie (our badminton buddy, not sure if I've really talked about her yet, but she's really funny). Xia Jie is actually 'big sister' in Chinese; it's not her real name, but an affectionate term her friends call her by. Basically, it's a Chinese nickname. Anyway, I'll talk more about that when the time comes. 'Til next time. As always, remember to stay beautiful, you cool cats!