China background information for walking holidays - hints and tips, page 2
This must be the biggest challenge facing most visitors to China, once they have overcome the general uncertainty about going somewhere that's still very different. Of course, it's one of the things that IS so different. Although teaching more people to speak English is a national priority, and many young people see it as a way to improve their career prospects, there are still very few people who can do so.
This is most likely to cause difficulties when travelling, particularly when buying the right ticket to your destination, or asking the taxi driver to take you to a certain place. The best tip is to have a guide book with place names, hotel names etc, in both Western script and Chinese characters - you can point to the place you want to go to, and the taxi driver can see the equivalent in Chinese. If you're staying in an upmarket hotel where the staff speak English, they will write down a place name for you in both languages, to show the taxi driver. And it's always a good idea to pick up a hotel brochure with the hotel name on it in Chinese.
It can be an expensive handicap in some places, as English language menus are sometimes more highly priced than the Chinese version - but of course, as foreign tourists we will tend to get charged more for most things, and still think we've got a bargain! Fortunately for us, Catriona had learnt to speak and read enough Chinese to deal with most of these situations, and catch out the waiters a couple of times! If you've got the patience, you can find out what the characters are for your favourite dishes, and search for them on the Chinese menu, but it's hard work with unfamiliar symbols.
Sign language is often used to negotiate the price of a bottle of water and other goods, so it's worth working out what the different hand signals mean.
Fortunately China is now making a big push to use English alongside Chinese on many signs - for street names in the cities, stations on the subways, and at the main tourist attractions. Some of these can be very amusing, as we found in Qincheng Hou Shan and elsewhere. The bilingual information signs around the Forbidden City were, I think, sponsored by an American bank, and this isn't unusual.
We found people everywhere were generally friendly towards us as foreign tourists - perhaps because the places we visited were all tourist locations to some extent. Cycling round the villages and countryside, children called out "Ni hao" and sometimes "hello" to us, with a giggle.
At the main tourist attractions, and when arriving at a bus station, we were always a target for hawkers and taxi drivers wanting to take us to a hotel. We just had to learn the expression "Bui yao" (I don't want it) and repeat it very forcefully at times.
Accommodation was much more readily available than I had expected - just a normal country really. In some places, such as Qincheng Hou Shan, there was far more accommodation than tourists to use it, and we spent quite a while going from one guest house to another to pick a suitable room.
As with most other things, it was possible to bargain the price down, and once we had left our highly-priced (by Chinese standards) Novotel in Beijing we found rooms at remarkably low cost. A room for three, with shower and toilet, was generally available outside the main cities for 100 yuan (£7 or 10 Euro).
The traditional style courtyard hotel we stayed at in Lijiang was adequate but cramped. It was busy, and we ended up being moved around from one room to another (the first night we were kept awake by a nearby generator). The recently refurbished Tibetan Lodge guest house in Dali was much better accommodation at the same price, with comfortable spacious timber-floored rooms. It had bike hire and free use of the internet and a good range of meals, with a frontage onto one of the most interesting streets in central Dali.
We had to pay a bit more in the cities. We arrived in Leshan in the evening, were besieged by taxi drivers, picked one friendly looking guy and asked him to take us to a hotel we'd found in Lonely Planet, in the centre of town (the Tao Yuan). It indicated on the sign that it was Lonely Planet recommended, but it was pretty dilapidated inside. However, it was very convenient for the ferry to the Great Buddha next morning. It cost around 240 yuan for a suite with a decent bathroom and western WC, and a great view of the river.
At Xi'an we found a hotel next to the bus stop from the airport and close to the railway station for our departure, with a comfortable clean 3-bedded room for 300 yuan (£20). At both Leshan and Xi'an, we were able to leave our packs in safe storage after checking out, until we left town in the evening.
On our return to Beijing, arriving early on the sleeper train, we chose a courtyard hotel near the Temple of Heaven from the Lonely Planet guide and after our taxi driver finally fought through the traffic to the right street, we found it had closed down! Luckily there was a guest house nearby with 2 reasonable twin rooms at 200 yuan (£13) each. Not quite as cheap, but comfortable and we couldn't face searching for somewhere else in the vast congested city.
All the hotels supply flasks of hot water or kettles, and cups (but not always tea bags or coffee, so it's worth buying some at one of the many tea shops). And every room had a large TV.
Toilets are a basic necessity, so it's as well to know what to expect. There was quite a variety, from the open-topped walk-in stalls at bus stations with men squatting and reading the paper, to the more modern cubicles (but still with squat toilets) at the airports. If you've visited southern France or North Africa, or even Japan, it's only the open-topped waist-high stalls that take a bit of getting used to.
Generally you have to take your own loo paper, or buy some for a few jiao from the attendant. You're more likely to find a warm air hand drier than in Japan, which was welcome!
Occasionally there's a western toilet available in one of the more modern facilities in parts of Beijing. But you have to get used to squatting, and you soon notice that many locals relax by squatting on steps outside shops and in parks and so keep their leg muscles stretched!
The food was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the visit, if you don't mind lots of fried food. There's hardly any baking in China because ovens aren't used. Breads tend to be fried or steamed, except at the occasional bakers in the up-market shopping centres. When sliced white bread is available in restaurants, it tends to be rather sweet, whilst the steamed rolls we had for breakfast one morning were pretty sticky and heavy. On the other hand, the circular fried flat bread we had for breakfast in Lijiang was delicious.
We ate out all the time, since it was so cheap. We tended to pick things we knew we were comfortable with, such as pork and green peppers, chicken and cashew nuts, green beans, or aubergine dishes. Each dish might cost 6-12 yuan each (all under £1), and we'd get 2 or 3 dishes between us and a bowl of rice to eat it with. We also tried spiced fish dishes of various kinds, and I found these were especially delicious, although the fish was sometimes sold by weight and could be a bit pricy (as on the riverboat restaurant in Chongqing).
Chongqing also had its own speciality - the hot-pot. For Catriona's final evening in the city she was joined by a crowd of her friends and colleagues who were teaching English around the city, at a hotpot restaurant. It was rather like a Swiss fondue, with various plates of meaty and fishy items to drop into boiling pots of oily spicy liquid on the table, then dipped into a sesame sauce before eating. Because of our (mine and Owen's) untrained palates, we had a low-spice option. This was a bit different, particularly the duck intestine and pig's stomach, but it was possible to avoid these and stick with meat dumplings, strips of pork and tofu, strange mushrooms and tiny eggs. We had a few beers as well, and the whole lot cost just 21 yuan each (£1.40 or 2 Euros) for 12 of us. Amazing value!
At Lijiang and Dali there were Tibetan style meals on offer as well, with Yak's milk, butter tea, and yoghurts, and some unusual dishes.
Everywhere there was low strength lager-style beer (Tsingtao in Xi'an and Beijing, Dali beer in Yunnan, Shancheng beer in Chongqing, and a strange green beer at the restaurant near the Xi'an terracotta warriors! Foreign beers such as Carlsberg or Sol would be available in some hotels and the karaoke bars for a large premium! We were surprised at the Beijing Duck restaurant to order Yanjing draught beer and be served with large glasses of dark semi-sweet stout - the only non-lager beer we encountered.
And then there was the tea. Sometimes green tea was served on arrival, free of charge. Sometimes it was a low cost option, and at other times it was quite a pricey ceremonial affair, as at the old restaurant beside the lake in Beihai park, Beijing. The pot of tea and two cups with a big flask of water cost 30 yuan (£2), whilst the dishes of food cost the usual 7-15 yuan. In Foreigner Street in Dali we sat at a cafe with a pot of darker pu'er tea and a big flask of hot water for over an hour, watching the world go by and writing diaries, for about 20 yuan.
Finally, snack foods can be handy when out walking, or to bridge the gap between breakfast and evening meal, but the Chinese options were rather strange and unpredictable. They don't go in much for western chocolate confectionary or fruit cake, but potato crisps are available. There are plastic packets of various things from bitter dried fruits still with stones in, to spicy crunchy rice balls. We were pleased to find a crispy kind of flapjack that tasted like Jordans Crunchy Breakfast cereal, but several other packets went into the bin only half-finished.
Despite efforts to plan the expansion of the cities for growing car traffic, the number of vehicles has apparently grown far faster than expected. There was a report to this effect about Shanghai just after we returned to Scotland, and it certainly seemed that all the cities we visited were being choked by cars, buses, vans and lorries. However, one way or another you get around, and the taxi and bus drivers have developed frightening techniques for dodging in and out of the lines of traffic to make progress. They toot their horns endlessly to persuade other traffic to make way for them, and maybe there's some sort of protocol for letting paid-for transport get through.
You might expect to see more accidents, with the number of vehicles and particularly the way bicycles (many pulling carts) are mixed in with the cars and buses. However, we only saw the aftermath of one small accident in the middle of the road, and there didn't seem to be many cars with dents in them! A parking attendant fixing tickets on cars in Beijing showed how similar some aspects of life are!
Beijing now has a couple of subway lines, which handle a large volume of passengers and seem to have frequent services, clean stations, and cheap fares - about £0.30 (half a Euro or 50 US cents) for a ticket to anywhere on the system! After using the system once, we realised it was the easiest way to zip around the central area of the city, but it doesn't extend far out into the suburbs yet. There are new lines being built in advance of the Olympics in 2008. One of the big concerns must be the air pollution resulting from all these vehicles, and the effect this will have on Olympic athletes (as well as the resident population).
The roads vary a lot - between the motorways through and between major cities, and the rural road network. We were astonished by the condition of the road we travelled on from Leshan towards Chongqing for 4 hours, before we reached a motorway. There were long stretches full of potholes, and the bus driver had to swing around from one side of the road to another. Even on an improved stretch, some bits were dug up and a couple of rocks placed in front to warn drivers!
The country is so big, that air services provide the quickest way to get from one side to another - we used them more than we should have, from an environmental point of view, but the prices were very reasonable and the services clean and efficient. The flight from Beijing to Kunming was equivalent to Scotland to Crete, taking three and a half hours, and cost around £50 for a single ticket.
The buses are much cheaper, and usually the services are pretty good. The bus stations vary a lot - Chengdu had a shiny one with electronic bus timetable, others were older and more crowded. The cities are so big, they usually have several bus stations, so you need to make sure you're going to the right one for your journey. Electronic baggage checks are used for bus travellers, but not enforced very rigorously.
We used the buses a lot in each of the areas we visited, and had to get used to the aggressive driving techniques used by most drivers. We took a sleeper bus for one journey, but the noise of a violent film on TV and the bumpy road made sleep impossible for the first couple of hours. There were no toilets on the buses we took, but on longer journeys the drivers did stop at service stations for breaks.
We had various "interesting" experiences on the buses - the Lijiang to Dali bus was particularly crowded with local people and their luggage. At one point on the journey, a cardboard box started bouncing around, and suddently a chicken pushed it's head out through the top!
The bus from Lijiang to Tiger Leaping Gorge was also crowded - packed in fact, and the legroom was designed for very small people. With half a dozen Europeans crammed in at the back, none of us could sit with our legs straight in front of us.
And then there were the breakdowns. We had two of them - one at the end of that journey from Leshan to Chongqing mentioned above - we stopped in a road tunnel, with heavy lorries speeding past and air filled with choking fumes. After a lot of tinkering with the engine, the driver eventually got started again - he'd actually run out of fuel (a bit embarrassing really)! And then on the way back to Beijing from the Great Wall, on our last day, the bus broke down, the driver tinkered with the engine, and we waited for over an hour with no indication of when we'd get going again. We were tired and hungry, so we disembarked and hailed a passing service bus, which soon took us back into the city. Presumably the rest of the passengers got back before bedtime!
Minibuses are also in widespread use, and these are very "mini", often taking just 6 or 7 passengers. We were glad to see one on the road back through Tiger Leaping Gorge, which took us back to Qiaotou for 10 yuan each (70p or 1 Euro). Then there was another to drive us back to Lijiang for another 15 yuan each. Much more comfortable than the cramped bus we had gone out on the day before.
The trains are pretty good, although we only took one (apart from the Beijing subway) - from Xian to Beijing at the end of our tour. We managed to get a soft sleeper, and although it was quite expensive compared to bus travel it was very comfortable. There were both Chinese and Western style WCs, hot water for flasks, and - of course - a TV at the end of each bunk bed!
There are hordes of taxis in all the cities, and they are a pretty cheap way to get around if you make sure you get into a registered cab (see "ripoffs"). Interestingly in Lijiang most of the taxi drivers seemed to be women - perhaps reflecting the position of women in Naxi minority society. If there are 2 or 3 of you, a cost-effective way to get around for the day is to hire a taxi, and the driver will be there waiting for you after you've visited each attraction (make sure not to pay him the full fare until you get to the end of the journey).
Other kinds of "taxi". In addition to all these conventional-sounding means of transport, there are other less familiar types. Pedicabs (a man on a bike pulling a little wagon for 1 or 2 passengers) are used in Beijing and elsewhere, but take a long time - the 3 of us managed to squeeze into one in Beijing for a persistent cyclist, and we felt sorry for him cycling us about 2 km through the city to a bar. There are similar ones with motor scooters doing the work and larger cabs. Dali has small horse-drawn carriages, for no more than the cost of a taxi-ride (5 or 10 yuan), and we used these twice - when we arrived, to find our hotel, and at the end of our walk through the fields above the town. Chongqing doesn't have pedicabs as the city is judged too hilly for bicycles, so instead there are lots of motorcycle taxis - the riders carry a spare helmet which the pillion passenger can wear, and they zoom in and out of the lines of traffic. More thrilling, but a bit more perilous, than the usual kind of taxi ride!
You can hire a bicycle, as we did in Lijiang to visit minority villages, and in Dali to get out to the temples and cycle across farmland. These cost around 30 yuan for the day (£2 or 3 euro) but can probably be hired more cheaply if you are better at bargaining! You feel a bit more like the locals - although I wouldn't risk trying to cycle around Beijing even though thousands of others do so. There are cycle lanes along many main roads, but not all of them.
For carrying goods, bicycles with carts are a common site - often with enormous loads on them. We saw fridges, a set of table and chairs, large TVs, and lots of other types of delivery. And people also carry a lot of goods themselves, often on bam-bam poles. Even with the advance of techology and the growing number of vehicles, man-power (and women-power) is still relied on to a great extent.
Next page>Money and prices
Ripoffs
China for walkers
Maps and guidebooks
Other walkers
Walking in towns and cities
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