Travelling around China
Hello again P6! This month has been a very busy one for me, which has included two trips to different provinces in China. At the beginning of the month, China celebrated ‘Golden Week,’ (黄金周) which lasted from the 1st to the 7th of October. The holiday commemorates the founding of People’s Republic of China, and most Chinese people use this week-long holiday to travel around China. Therefore, the whole country is incredibly busy, as you can see in this picture of the subway station.
I, along with 17 of the other scholars decided to spend our Golden Week in Xi’an(西安) in Shaanxi (陕西省) province. The distance to Xi’an from Tianjin is very large, (imagine travelling from Glasgow to London and then back) so to get there, we were faced with a mammoth 20-hour train journey in a crammed carriage. After this tiring journey (during which I also managed to get food poisoning), we are all ready to relax in our hostel and get some sleep. However, when we arrived we discovered that had been a mix-up with the booking, and there was room for only 3 people, not 18! After hours of confusion, we finally reached a solution which meant that everyone had a room and could finally go out and explore the city. Although the experience was incredibly stressful at the time, we learned many lessons for travelling in the future – specially to triple check your booking details.
Our first day in Xi’an was spent cycling around the city walls which was a great experience. The views from the walls were incredible, and it allowed us to get our bearings in a city which we had never been to before. There were many historic traditional buildings which were quintessentially Chinese.
We then spent the evening trying some of the specialities of the region. I was surprised at how different Chinese food can be depending on which province you are in. As Xi’an is further west than Tianjin, the cuisine is more influenced by countries in central Asia. We found this out when we visited the Muslim street, where we tried lots of different foods made by the Muslim community in the city. The food tasted great, however it didn’t even feel like we were in China anymore!
The next few days were spent further exploring the city, and we stumbled upon lots of amazing places. However, the highlight of the week was our trip to visit the Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑). We had a very early start and took a bus to the outskirts of the city to see the warriors. Seeing the warriors in real life was quite a surreal experience, as the sheer number of statues was breath-taking. The statues seemed like they went on for miles, and it seemed like the lines of them would never end – much like the queue to get into the place.
After our visit, we decided to take a cable car up to the nearby mountains (山), which was a nice change to the massive cities which we were used to. Reaching the top of the mountain was a strange feeling, as the air was perfectly clean which reminded me of back home in Scotland (苏格兰). From the top of the mountain, one could see for miles, so we took some time to take in the views.
For our final day in Xi’an, we visited the wild goose pagodas. Here, we saw more beautiful traditional Chinese architecture, and got to try some great food at a food festival which was happening just down the road. We strolled around for hours, as the paths surrounding the pagodas went on for miles. For our final evening in Xi’an, we watched a water show at the pagodas, which was accompanied with some traditional Chinese music.
The next morning, we were back at Xi’an train station ready for another 20-hour train journey to get back to Tianjin. If we weren’t already enthused by the prospect of spending near enough a day sitting on a train seat, we had the added bonus of having an 8:30 AM class (课) 10 minutes after we arrived back in Tianjin.
Having had such a great time in Xi’an, we were all eager to visit more places in China. Fortunately, we would only have to wait another few weeks until our next trip. We visited the neighbouring Hebei province, where the world’s longest glass bridge is found! This time we were only faced with a 5-hour bus journey, which in comparison with our Xi’an train journey seemed like nothing. When we arrived, we ventured up the mountains and took in the incredible views from the bridge. Walking along the bridge was rather scary, but the views made it so worth it!
Later that evening (晚上), we had the opportunity to relax in some traditional Chinese hot springs. This was great fun, and incredibly relaxing after all the walking we had done that day. There were many different pools which you could bathe in; including ginseng, milk and alcohol pools. I felt totally rejuvenated and refreshed for yet another bus journey the next afternoon. Our final morning was spent doing some Chinese cultural activities, such as learning about Chinese medicine, music and poetry.
As well as our travels, we managed to fit a lot more into the month. One of the benefits of living in such a multicultural environment is that you can find people from anywhere in the world. An example of this was when I went out for dinner to a Mexican restaurant with some fellow scholars and a Congolese guy. This was a very great evening where we learned a lot about each other’s cultures and countries. It also demonstrated the value of learning a language, as we were able to communicate in French (法语), which made it much easier to have a conversation. It was also a nice change to eat some of my favourite food from home, and to be able to use a knife and fork!
Next month we have yet another busy month planned, with the highlight being a trip to Beijing for the St. Andrews ball. Along with the exciting parts of the month, there will also be lots of studying, as our mid-term examinations take place next month. I look forward to telling you all about what I get up to next month! 再见