Travelling in China
China continues to fascinate us all. Since my last blog post so much has happened. We were lucky enough to get some time off university as it was a national holiday in China. During this time, I visited Jinan - a sizeable city in the Shandong Province which boasted beautiful statues, great weather and spectacular natural features throughout the city. It took us over 5 hours to get to Jinan from Tianjin as we opted for the cheaper - but rather uncomfortable - slow train there. We chose (yes - chose) to return on a 'standing train'. This essentially meant we would spend this 5+ hour journey on the exact same type of train only without seats this time. What a laugh that was!
We stayed in a very nice 4 star hotel called the LiTian hotel in the centre of Jinan. We had good views of the city which was really cool and helped us gather our bearings. When we were there we mainly used buses to get around. We took buses to the famous thousand Buddha mountain and back. We visited Baotu Springs in Jinan which were absolutely gorgeous with so many stunning natural features. The little waterfalls and ancient style Chinese buildings really made for an amazing, magical experience. All of the photos we took really do not do these places justice. I would recommend a visit to Jinan to anyone considering coming to China as we loved our visit.
An amazing feature in Jinan City was the huge golden Maitreya Buddha situated near the base of the Thousand Buddha Mountain. It was invisible from most surrounding areas due to the sheer prominence of greenery on the mountain. At the top there was a view of the whole city and the lands surrounding it. There were many Buddhas dotted around this vast expanse of trees, many of which were tall enough to protrude from the canopy. Despite the fact Tianjin is almost three times as big as Jinan, the journey took us almost an hour on the bus to get from our hotel to the mountain and it still had a huge population of way over 5 million.
Some of us also went to Mount Tai (泰山) which was a train ride from the city. The walk consisted of a seemingly infinite number of stairs. It was a very long walk up - so long that despite us waking early and getting there as fast as possible we didn't have time to walk up and instead chose to take the cable car to the top. It turns out it takes another 40 minutes to reach the actual top of the mountain from the 'top' but it was the coolest part of the walk and not just because of the significant drop in temperature. There were temples and stalls everywhere and awesome views of the lesser mountains through the mystical fog residing at the peak. It was a very cool day and possibly my favourite in China so far. This was our first experience of travel in China and it definitely set the bar high.
For Halloween we had a small celebration. We dressed up in our costumes and visited the local bar with our friends from around the world. We were struggling to find costumes so everyone had to be creative. We had a pirate, a cat, Little Red Riding Hood, a schoolgirl, the tantan fox and Danny and Sandy. I went as James Bond dressed in a black three piece suit with a bow tie. We also had apple dunking which got a little bit messy as you could imagine. It was a really fun night and a really good way to celebrate Halloween. We also had a bit of trick or treating in the dormitory!
We had a University outing in October to see the Great Wall. It was a good day trip but because of the poor visibility due to smog we had to stop for quite a long time and got less time on the wall. We made the most of the time we had, climbing high up to a good viewpoint atop a guard tower. The view was stunning. The way the wall connects the mountains together is breath-taking and it is difficult to imagine the true length of it. The fact it was built so long ago is really surprising as it is an incredible architectural structure and so intricately designed in some places. The craftsmanship is unbelievable!
October was definitely another successful month in Tianjin which has really got me excited for travelling in January and February!
Joseph Duffy