China - July 2009

For the past few years, China had been high up on my list of places to visit. I kn ew it was not going to be cheap and there were so many places I wanted to visit. Ross and I decided to go together and me made a mental list of the places we wanted to see and then ranked them, finally weighing up where we wanted to go with the cost of the trip. The outcome was a whirlwind tour of three of the biggest cities in China.

We started off in Beijing. Our lovely guide took us to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and the Summer Palace amongst other places. We enjoyed a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and had a delicious duck dinner. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people everywhere we went. I had expected to be surrounded by foreign tourists, given the places we were visiting, but there were so many Chinese people at these places too that we often felt like the sole Western people there!

Next, we headed by overnight sleeper train to X'ian, where we visited the Terracotta Warriors (one of the highlights of the trip for me). Expectations cane sometimes let you down, but when I walked into the main hall of this place my jaw dropped, it was so vast! We also saw the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, enjoyed a dumpling banquet in X'ian and watched a Tang Dynasty show, which was bright and colourful and beautiful.

Our last stop was Shanghai. It was the place I had least been excited about, but it really surprised me in so many ways. It is unlike any other Chinese city I have been to. What surprised me most of all is how Western it is - big, high rise buildings that are so modern and fantastic shopping! Out of the main city, more traditional Chinese life goes on, of course and the shops and stall round the Yuyuan Gardens are there to cater for tourist expectations of what China "should" be like. The Yuyuan Gardens themselves are beautiful, as is the Jade Buddha Temple. We also took in the Shanghai Acrobats Show, which is truly spectacular.

One of the main reasons we went to Shanghai and went to China at all at this time of year was to take in the total eclipse of the sun. Unfortunately the weather did not co-operate throughout Asia and we had torrential rain! That said, we did still have the very eerie sensation of seeing pitch darkness fall across the city in a matter of seconds - really weird!