Imagine spending the best part of 4 months in a couple of the world’s poorest countries, then taking a flight and landing suddenly in one of the world’s richest. Culture shock!!
I think that’s probably how we felt after our flight to Hong Kong at the end of April 1991. From previous blogs you will have noticed that we had relaxed into ‘travelling’ gear, consisting of T shirts and flowery trousers. We arrived in Hong Kong where everyone seemed to wear suits and designer gear. Low level buildings had suddenly been replaced by vertiginous glassy high-tech sky-scrapers.
We met my brother Pete, who’d been working there for a while, in one of the huge (upmarket) sparkly hotels on the waterfront. He was wearing a suit too – was that just to show us up…?
He took us back to his place on an enviable commute on one of the regular ferries out to Discovery Bay, Lantau Island. It was a short, but very sweaty (suddenly so humid) walk up the hill to his shared apartment on the 10th floor. Lantau was in the early stages of building on any reasonably flat land and Discovery Bay appeared to be a recently-built community, with a small shopping area and leisure centre with buildings all around. Some were fairly low level and others were tower blocks. We spent some happy hours watching people from the balcony – it was the early days of karaoke and people in nearby flats were dressing up and singing in the privacy (or so they perhaps thought) of their own apartments.
Our plan was to stay a few days, find jobs and accommodation and earn a bit of cash to continue our travels.
We settled in for a few days on Pete’s couches, exploring a bit and updating our wardrobes and doing essentials like getting haircuts. We booked an appointment for a job interview with an English language school and looked at cheap accommodation. I think that shocked us as much as the sudden change in the culture around us, and the sobering thought that days spent in an English-speaking booth would only just cover the rent. Whilst we wandered this alien place we had a sudden idea: “Let’s go to China”.
So that is what we did…
We explored the idea of going up the Pearl river by boat to Canton/Guangzhou and a couple of days later we were settling into an overnight bunk in a weirdly open-plan boat with hundreds of bunks. Certainly ‘cattle class’.
We woke up the next morning in another alien place. We moved into a Youth Hostel and wandered about the city, fascinated by the huge groups of people in parks doing their Tai Chi.
Memorable moments included the city market where everything that you could possibly imagine was for sale, and plenty more, including snakes, frogs, hedgehogs and monkeys. There were flattened roasted pigs faces everywhere.
Mealtimes were fascinating. And challenging. Restaurants were generally huge, multi- storey buildings with huge tables and we were just allocated places on these tables, often to the bemusement (or amusement) of the locals. One had indoor waterfalls and streams that you could sit by. Ordering food was fun. We had a guide-book with some basic pictographs of foods. We tried that. Some limited success. Sometimes we wandered around pointing at other peoples’ food. That worked pretty well. Generally it was a lot of gesturing and pot-luck what you actually ate in the end. Good job we weren’t very fussy back then. We stayed in one hotel where a starter always arrived first – either small slippery mushrooms or peanuts – all to be managed with chopsticks – that always entertained us until the main course, and perhaps the waiting staff too.
Some days we became lazy and broke our rules about eating local and representative of where we were. The American Colonel appeared to have taken up many prime real-estate positions and was preparing his famous chicken (that appears in buckets) and we occasionally succumbed. These places were also popular with the locals judging by the queues.
People-watching was one of our favourite past-times (nothing new there). Again people were interested in us. It was so different from India and Nepal though. People wanted to chat, but didn’t feel safe talking to us. We often had the experience of someone sidling up to sit or stand near us, and then talking to us, without ever looking our way. Some told us they couldn’t be seen talking to foreigners, others told us that they secretly listened to World Services.
There were always people out and about at the tourist sites. The difference in China, that we noticed, was that everything was pristine. The monuments had all been restored to look brand-new, and the people were mostly out and about in their best clothes. We found this really amusing because at that time pop-socks were the obvious height of fashion along with frilly and lacy tiered dresses. We found ourselves highly entertained by the ‘fashion victims’ who were out and about enjoying the sights – and taking it in turns to be photographed by their friends (this was very much pre selfie-stick days). This amusement may well have been us feeling inadequate in our recently bought t-shirts and jeans (a change from our Indian traveller gear).
Everywhere was busy and we found refuge from the busy streets in quiet(er) parks where we enjoyed endless cups of tea. (OK, I know I don’t drink tea, but Indian chai and Chinese tea are different – and perhaps when travelling, I too, am different).
After a few days in Guangzhou wandering its parks, where strangely we met up with someone Mark used to work with, we headed off for another adventure. This one was an eye-opener from the moment we arrived at the train station. There were huge waiting rooms for each train. We waited in ours, listening to the canned music and chat that was a constant everywhere in China, until there was some announcement. At that point everyone (apart from us!) raced for the doors…we meekly followed once the doors opened…and the stampede continued down corridors and to the train. It was an incredible spectacle of seething humanity. I am amazed that people were’t killed in the crush. the funny part was that all seats and bunks were numbered anyway and those of us that were slow getting to the carriage and our bunks still got our places…
We had 2 nights on that train…I remember sleep being elusive due to the other 5 people in our bit of the carriage (triple bunks) and the ubiquitous canned music and what we imagined was regular propaganda updates over the speaker-system. I suspect our travelling moods were strained by being stir-crazy in that weird tin-can situation. Train food was served up in a very impressive restaurant car, comfortable and calm with waiters, tablecloths etc…and these irritating travellers wandering up and down the carriage pointing at other peoples’ food!
Beijing was our destination. We did get there eventually and settled into our usual occupation of exploring the streets (still shocked to remember that in one area where we strayed into the public toilets at the bottom of a tower block there was no running water and they were presumably the toilets for that block – just imagine that night-soil image) and the tourist sites. We watched the dressed-up locals out enjoying themselves and we were shocked more by just how sanitised everything was. Objets d’art in The Forbidden City were labelled as being thousands of years old, but were clearly either heavily restored or replicas.
The Forbidden City was huge, but also was a bit repetitive – lots of similar buildings with artefacts in each of the buildings. I may just be a bit of a heathen and lacking appreciation of culture! I think I was also annoyed by having to join in a tourist queue and pay significantly more than Chinese tourists.
Sitting in Tienanmen Square was way more interesting. It was 2 years, almost to the day in early May, since the Massacre. People slyly talked to us as we sat watching the world, and their kites, go by. Some talked about what had happened. Others were less forthcoming. We went to one of the hotels near the square (good places to get a drink and a cake!) and read some of the books available in English. Apparently a massacre did not occur. The students rioted due to American propaganda, and the army moved in to help them with food, tents etc, then helped them to leave. There were many attacks on the army by the students, and there were gory pictures of the injured and dying. One caption read ‘This soldier was carrying a machine gun but preferred to die himself at the hands of the protesters to using his weapon on innocent people’. Interestingly no protesters were killed but many soldiers were. The book was produced by the government. Very different stories from the ones we’d heard before.
We also went to the zoo whilst in Beijing to see the giant pandas. We were quite upset by the poor conditions that all the animals were kept in, and didn’t stay long. There were large areas of gardens for the people…
Whilst in China there was one thing that we had to see. The big wall. Being the cheapskates that we were (OK, still are) we went to the local bus station and booked a tour (not via one of the big westernised hotels…). So we found ourselves on a bus, obviously the only non-Chinese, and bemused by where we were at each stop… There were a few stops: the Ming Tombs; an underground palace; a strange underground chamber of horrors and waxworks and then the wall. Or not…Instead a weird folk museum of Mongolian History and Genghis Khan’s attempts to unify Mongolia. We began to wonder if we were on the wrong trip…
Then we got to a hugely crowded place, with so many tat-and-trinket souvenir shops. We knew we’d made it! Crowds walking and jostling on the wall up to a high point, then lots of posed photos, awarding of certificates and return journeys down. Except for the intrepid few…Walk on about 25 m from the top-spot and there was no-one else. We had a lovely walk along this amazing monument and had our bit of peace – and no certificates! A Chinese day out to remember.
Our last stop in China was Shanghai after another one of those interesting train journeys (though luckily not quite as long). They are not my most positive memories of travel! I do like to sleep beyond 5am and am not keen on having no choice but loud piped music! Shanghai was a busy city and accommodation was in huge dorm rooms. We met a girl who’d been travelling with a group of Chinese art students that she’d met on a train. Since arriving in Shanghai the teacher suddenly was no longer able to meet with her and she was worrying that he had disappeared as his students had complained that she had joined them.
Shanghai was a very beautiful city to wander along the river-front, The Bund. The buildings were elegant and the people were out in their Sunday best. I imagine this scene has changed massively since 1991.
We spent a lot of time just wandering and people watching, and also managed to find an office in one of the buildings for a shipping company who were sailing back to Hong Kong, and had room for up to 18 passengers (hardly a cruise!!).
Our last night in Shanghai was at a Chinese circus. It featured a lot of acrobats which were pretty good, although not quite as perfect as we’d hoped with a couple of injuries! I also wasn’t happy as there were elephant balancing acts, some monkeys riding bikes and the finale of a panda riding in a cart tossing a ball and supposedly blowing a trumpet. Bizarre. Bizarrely too the whole audience just got up and headed for the door as the whole troupe came back to bow.
The ‘cruise’ was a great way to travel back to Hong Kong, initially along a very polluted area where there was so much industry and smog on the river. Then out to sea.
We had our own port-hole, bunks and bathroom and spent the three day cruise reading, sleeping and chilling on the deck. One of the other passengers wanted to engage us all in deck games..but I drew the line at a bit of a swim in the tiny deck pool.
On this cruise I also discovered that eels for breakfast are not my favourite things. That morning was the last that I went for the Chinese breakfast and the other two I went with the toast and jam option.
We arrived back in Hong Kong in the midst of a wild electric storm. We had what looked like a laser and fireworks display from the boat. The following morning we were able to disembark and head back to Lantau.
Mark had a week or so back in the UK for his sister’s wedding so I stayed put. I have memories of making the most of the leisure club in Discovery Bay (with a borrowed entry pass…) and then meeting him on his return.
I went to the airport and watched the unbelievable landings of the jets. This was prior to the new airport being built on reclaimed land on Lantau. The old airport jutted out into the sea and the planes descended almost between tower blocks.
Our last few days on Hong Kong included walks around the green, hilly island of Lantau.
A new giant Buddha had recently been built and we went to see. It was a quiet and untouristed part of the island. Things are very different now as we discovered last year. Worship of various kinds…
Then it was time to move on again. It’d been an interesting journey for our first foray into the far east, although it doesn’t strike me as my favourite part of the trip. Looking back I think we were shocked by the difference in wealth, after our time in India and Nepal. China didn’t seem quite real to us either (perhaps partly as we only saw cities and the bits of cities we were allowed to see). Everything was pristine, artefacts had been fixed and there seemed to be a huge disparity between what we were told there and what we’d read before. People were friendly but were also very wary, and it was difficult to get a really good picture of what ‘normal’ life was like.
Perhaps we were a bit jaded from our earlier travels, exhausted by our trekking, and possibly a little lacklustre due to our underlying health condition (which we discovered later). It was probably perfect timing that we had had the opportunity to chill a bit in the comfort of Pete’s place before moving on. Thanks Pete!
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