China - Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Yichang, and Xi'an

I'd like to say that we've seen a lot of beautiful things in China, but I can't. All we've really seen so far is mist and fog.



All three days that we spent in Hong Kong were shrouded in fog which made it hard to appreciate that impressive skyline that the city is known for. We did however take advantage of the nightlife in Hong Kong and got reasonably drunk in the Soho bars. We took the funicular railway up to Victoria peak on the second day, which was a bit of a waste of time as we could barely see our hands front of our faces. By the third day, the fog was starting to get us down, so we were quite glad to be hopping onto the KCR East train across the border to Shenzhen. Shenzhen proved to be quite a culture shock for us both. The first noticable site that we happened across after leaving the station was a corpse. Some desperate chinese guy was using his apparently dead father as a begging tool. Being the caring sharing people that we are, we hurried away along the street and into our 5* hotel (a bargain at 30 pounds per night). Shenzhen was a reasonably grim city overall, but we did find a nice park and treated ourself to a western dinner in the evening.



From Shenzhen, we flew up to Chongqing and met up with our friend Jeremy. The three of us then started our voyage down the Yangtze river on the Oriental Emperor cruise ship. This was a wonderful three days, and we made some great new friends on board. We spent most of our time sipping cold Tsingtao beer on the sundeck and playing an old man's Irish card game (Tara ... "my Dad would be so proud, passing on his love of 25s"). Our cruise lasted three days and three nights, and took us through the three gorges. This is a section of the river that has been flooded by an enormous dam. Essentially when the dam project is finished, the water level of the river will have risen to 175m. This is good news for the electricity supply in China as the dam generates a huge amount of power, but not such good news for the 2 million people whose homes have been submerged. The Chinese propaganda machine seems to be working well though, because all but one tour guide claimed that everybody was delighted with their homes being washed away (and their resettlement into ugly highrise concrete flats). It was still a really good trip and so worthwhile (even if alot of cool historial stuff and all the little farms are now submerged under water), the scenery was amazing and we got to do some worthwhile little trips off the boat along the way.





When we arrived in Yichang, we decided against using the ferry-supplied coach because we'd convinced ourselves that the crew were trying to rip us off. This proved to be somewhat of a mistake, as the taxi drivers at the port were far more adept at ripping us off. After 30 minutes of haggling and arguing (via Jeremy's chinese interpreter) in the baking mid-day sun we eventually managed to arrange some transport into the centre of town. Yichang was another typical "small" Chinese city of 5 million people, so we decided to make our way to the airport a little early and onto Xi'an.

Xi'an is by far our favourite city so far. We've happened across a fantastic hostel, and have enjoyed our first day exploring the city bell towers, pagodas and temples.