Finn
Travelling
Right after my exams finished in early January, as early as we could feasibly leave after a little decompression, we headed straight to Harbin in the north of China. I think the warmest it ever got in Harbin was about -18 degrees. It got as low negative 20s which supposedly felt as cold as around -30 due to wind chill; I’ve personally never felt cold like that before, it’s a cold that chills you straight to the core and manages to whip straight through multiple layers. The high speed train was 6 hours from Tianjin to Harbin, so the ‘first’ day was just dinner and sleep. For dinner we went to a delicious, if not too filling, Xinjiang skewer/BBQ place.
On the first full day there we met up with some friends who were also there and went to a lovely winter clothes shop and stocked up on gloves, buffs and winter boots. On that same day were goinh to a ski slope in the city so we also got sallapettes and ski masks. The drive to the ski slope was very beautiful and gave us a wider impression of the city: it felt like a fusion of Russian/Soviet and Chinese architecture.
The skiing itself was surprisingly really good despite being inside the city itself and the ‘slope’ (a glorified hill) not being too large. We spent a good two and half hours there just going up and down the slope, racing and trying to remember the lessons I had when I was younger. To reinforce just how cold it was, after a little while a good portion of my hair was frozen solid! When we finished skiing we went and met up with even more people we know and went and got some lovely Korean BBQ before the group that we had met up with went home the next morning.
The next day was even colder than the last and we just so happened to be going to a place named ice and snow world… It’s the biggest attraction in Harbin and it is quite breathtaking, almost other worldly.
We were there for a long time and explored most of all of the ice sculptures and attractions, including, but not limited to: a Chinese style temple made from ice, a big and slightly less big ice slide (only one person from our group of 6 managed to get on the smaller slide), a closed ferris wheel which our friends said was the best part, a billion other ice sculptures and a stage where they were holding bizarre fashion show-style cat walks with underdressed (for the weather) models. I personally think that the place is overrated and far too cold, though I could be biased against the place as I lost my prescription sunglasses there!
The next and final day we spent exploring the city and doing little things. We ate at a 东北 (Dongbei, north east, north eastern) restaurant, visited the cathedral, went to a fayre kind of thing on top of the frozen river (where we got swung around on an inflatable seat attached to a Jeep) and finished the day by visiting one of my fav kinds of Chinese restaurant — these small little restaurants that usually have similar menus, often featuring fried rice, noodles and meat in broth, dumplings and then some more particular dishes.
After that we headed back to Tianjin, washed all our clothes, packed and rested in preparation for the next part of our holidays.
The first destination on this marathon of a round trip of East Asia was Shanghai, possibly my favourite city I’ve visited this year. It was another long highspeed train down to Shanghai, and with it a much appreciated jump in temperature. Once we dropped our stuff off at the hotel we took a didi (Chinese Uber equivalent, but much better) straight to the Bund, the main viewpoint of central Shanghai. I’d been looking forward to seeing it in person for a long time and it was breathtaking. The juxtaposition between the gorgeous colonial era buildings and the towering modern sky scrapers just across the river is one of the most beautiful cityscapes I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.
Afterwards we met up with the same people as we went skiing with and had dinner at a Yunnan restaurant near the bund. The next day we went to lovely gardens called, I think, Yu Gardens. It was lovely to meander around and sit and chat with the water, trees and occasional fish and ducks; there were some historical buildings dotted around the place as well.
Just outside of Yu Gardens is a whole, very sizable, ancient market with boundless stalls. It was all in an ancient Chinese style, and very beautiful.
That same evening we headed back to the Bund area, to the docks more specifically, in order to catch a boat that would take us up and down the river, giving us brilliant views of the centre of the city. After a little bit of frustration trying to get the trinkets from the ticket office, we managed to get on the boat and it was really quite gorgeous. My photos honestly don’t nearly do it justice.
The next day we got to go up the Orient Tower (the big funky looking one with all the balls). The views from it were beautiful and it had a terrifying part that I think was technically ‘outside the tower.’ This section consists of a small, wraparound glass viewing deck with a high wall that wasn’t sealed in. You could look down through the glass at what was below but you also felt and could hear the wind whistling around you. For someone with a fear of heights it really was a challenge, but worth it to go in and look around.
The next two days were a lot of looking around some of the cool areas of Shanghai, particularly the fashion related areas. I got to see a lot of clothes I never would’ve seen back home, mostly because they were leagues out of my price range; it was still awesome to see none the less. At the same time I managed to eat from two Michelin star restaurants! Having, as with many things I did whilst traveling, never done that before, to do it twice in two days was something. At the first I had an incredible pork knuckle and wanton soup and at the second I split crab 小笼包 (xiaolongbao) with a friend of mine. The pork knuckle was definitely my favourite of the three dishes, despite it being cold; it had a really nice, firm texture with super creamy fat throughout. The wanton soup was similar to other wanton soups I've had before, although better, so not too much to say there. The 小笼包 was a bizarre experience though. You could taste that it was extraordinary high quality, but at the same time it wasn’t my favourite 小笼包 I’ve had. It might just be because I had the crab one and the crab flavour was potent, but still, quite strange.
After that we headed to Chongqing. Unfortunately I feel I underutilised my time in Chongqing, so there are only two things I really want to mention. First of all, Chongqing is a crazy city from a visual and utility perspective. Walking around there almost feels like a maze sometimes. It being built on top of a very hilly region means there is no consistent feeling of ground level pretty much anywhere. It can be very disorientating. The way they built the city not only leans into this, but I think it greatly accentuates it. That combined with its quite famous cyberpunk vibe makes it a really amazing city if you want to walk around looking at it and ending up in random places, though it is not so good for strictly scheduled traveling.
The second is Chongqing 1949. It’s a play centred around the end of the Chinese civil war and the liberation of Chongqing from the Guomingdang/Kuomingtang forces. Even if you aren’t particularly interested in the time period, and even if the plot of the show never really grabs you, it is something so worth going for the visuals alone. I didn’t get any photos as I was too busy taking it in, but the whole play takes place on top of a spinning sort of stage and the sets maximise this through opening out and morphing while it is spinning. The most memorable part was when a section of the stage was swinging right by where I was sat and you could see a man (playing a KMT soldier) walking down a corridor and kicking down a door. It may not sound too incredible, but it just felt like you were in the scene and I'll never forget that! It’s something so worth seeing if you ever do go.
In short, Chongqing is a gorgeous, though confusing, city; the people I encountered there were generally really lovely and it’s somewhere I would love to go back to.
After that we went to Chengdu, the main attraction there being Pandas of course. We ended up going to what I think is the main panda base (as it’s the base with the most famous panda, Huahua) on my birthday actually. We spent most of the day there looking around at all the different enclosures as well as gift shops and such. Aside from the Giant Pandas (which is in Chinese 熊貓, pronounced xiongmao, literally translates to bear cat) we saw some peacocks and red pandas (which in Chinese are called 小熊猫, pronounced xiaoxiongmao, means little panda, which I think is cute).
Later on we went to Tokyo, our longest stay in a single city which allowed us to visit a lot of the different areas: Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Ikebukuro, etc. Each area had a surprisingly distinctive identity for being so close to each other. Shibuya is like the typical city centre, Harajuku is the main fashion place, Shinjuku was the night life area, Akihabara was the main Otaku area I believe and Ikebukuro was a nice mix of things, but I’d say mainly entertainment I guess? I could be wrong on a lot of these descriptions, but these were the vibes I got from them. I think I had the most fun in Ikebukuro, but that’s mainly because I met two people from England there and spent two nights out with them. In general the city was beautiful, if a little bit strict in certain respects (and weirdly lax in others), but nothing too major. The food there was fire as well. In Shinjuku I got to have the first A5 beef I’ve ever had, and it was not too ridiculously priced either.
The final country we visited was South Korea, where we stayed in Seoul. Seoul was one of the cities I was least interested in to be honest, though I don't know why. There was a lot of cool jewellery and vintage clothes shops around where we stayed, not to mention a lot of really good food. The most interesting thing for me was what I did outside of Korea: namely, visiting the Demilitarised Zone, i.e. the border between North and South Korea. We took a bus out from near our hotel to see different parts around the DMZ while getting information on the history and goings on of the area from our tour guide. He was a good speaker and it was interesting to listen to, especially the yearning for the reunification of the country, however it was very obviously non-impartial, to say the least. Aside from that, it was not what I was expecting. Instead of a lot of tall fences and barbed wire across a barren wasteland, it was a pretty well forested area which, according to the observatory we went to, was home to a lot of rare wild and plant life. Also being able to look at the DPRK felt very special to me, especially having studied a little about the history of the Korean war. After that we flew back to China, signalling the end of the longest trip of my life.