The traditional Christmas Eve barbecue.

What happened next is still pretty surreal but I’ll do my best to explain it. It seems it is a local tradition – bear in mind this is a country which doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas – for everybody in the town to purchase cans of aerosol foam and to congregate in the streets with the express aim of spraying eachother in the face. That is until a Westerner walks by, when the aim becomes to spray said Westerner. The air was filled with the cruel laughter of bullies and the sinister clacking of cans being shaken.

She’s smiling, but she’s not happy.

We’d been told that one guy was blinded for 3 days last year as a result of these hijinks, so Amy was terrified. She wrapped her scarf round her face and made me guide her through the crowded streets like a Labrador in a high-vis. This of course just made us more conspicuous and we arrived at the Bad Monkey covered in fake snow.

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a belly dancer.

Party time at the Bad Monkey! Everyone was enjoying themselves, Chinese and Western alike, until a Chinese girl approached the bar with her whole face covered in blood, screaming. The poor girl had been bottled by a Chinese man for refusing to dance with him. A riot ensued (ah, it was just like being at home). As you might expect, the culprit snuck out pretty fast. But in the confusion an innocent guy was fingered and the unlucky reveller received a triple head-butt…and then it really kicked off. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Day on a rooftop with some of our new pals. A strange Christmas…

Christmas day was tame in comparison. Drinking in the hostel kicked off at midday and dinner at the Bad Monkey wasn’t until 8pm. The dinner was delicious, they had managed to get hold of a turkey and just about every trimming conceivable. But we, like the turkey, were pretty cooked by this point and retired to bed about 11pm.

Christmas dinner.

Boxing day we went on a good old hike up in the Cang Shan mountains to clear out the previous days’ sins. Worked a treat, so we headed back down to the Bad Monkey!

This needs no caption.

And so it is with a heavy heart that we leave not only Dali, where the expats and semi-expats had made us feel so welcome and we’d spent a great Christmas with our fellow Brits, Americans, Canadians, Australians and of course Chinese – but China itself. Yeah, there’s a lot of ersatz Chinesery and it’s rank with pollution, and they charge you an entrance fee everywhere (worst Commies ever). But the real China – the old geezers playing chess or mah-jong, or the woman practising Tai Chi in the park, the friendliness of the Chinese and the magnificence of the landscape – is something we’ve fallen in love with. Our one complaint is that we didn’t give ourselves longer.

We fly to India next.

Us in Kunming. Sunshine at last!

Dali was our next stop and was to be our home for the next week or so. A town situated in a basin, hemmed in on all sides by flumpy mountains, surrounded by a criss-cross patchwork of villages and rice paddies irrigated by the enormous Erhai Lake. This was a town well in tune with the backpacker demographic – bars, pizza parlours, coffee shops and plenty of Westerners. Almost immediately we headed for the Bad Monkey, a Brit-run outfit that brew their own ales (ales!) in the nearby hills.

Ale!

Now, hitherto, the only backpackers we had met were either Chinese (nothing wrong with that but makes conversation difficult) or of the white-man-with-dreadlocks, baggy trousered, more-vegetarian-than-thou variety. True, the Bad Monkey had its fair share of dreadlocked white men, but we felt right at home there. Scousers, Welsh, Cockneys, Mancs – we signed up to Christmas dinner that very night.

We took a bike ride into the surrounding villages. It was a bit windy.

But first we were to head up to Lijiang and then on to Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Lijiang had been a town we were looking forward to, billed as an ancient Chinese town but in reality more like a parody of what an ancient Chinese town would look like if ancient China had McDonalds, KFC and a thousand souvenir shops. We began to have doubts as to its true ancient-ness when we noticed they were still building parts of it.

Mmm…Foooooood.

The old town is the heart of Lijiang. The minute you set foot in the old town you can consider yourself lost. All the street signs are in Chinese and you have no points of reference as every building is one of: restaurant, inn, tat shop – all identical. The ‘You are Here’ signs we can only presume are some kind of practical joke and its only when you buy a map that you have any hope of getting out alive.
We also visited another nearby ancient town, Shuhe, where they tried to charge us around £8 for entry. We noticed Chinese people walking in unmolested so told our taxi driver to double back and then snuck past the ticket office. Once in it was more of the same really so glad we didn’t pay the 8 quid!

One of the nicer things about Lijiang is the mountain permanently in view.

There’s a lot to dislike about Lijiang but, like Beijing, it slowly revealed its charms. We found a great hostel, and a bar that overlooked the whole town, plus some good street food stalls so we left on good terms, although we probably won’t be going back.
From there we headed for Qiatou for the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek, which we planned to do over 2 days.
The guide book warned that the trek was not to be taken lightly, and they weren’t kidding. We set off at sunrise, the first 3 hours being comparatively easy. It was the low season – despite the cloudless sky and warm sunshine – so we didn’t see another soul for the whole day. We hit the notorious 28 Bends, described by the guide book as agonizing (again they were pretty much spot on here). We climbed for about 2 hours until, panting and sweating, we reached the summit where we were rewarded with a magnificent view of the gorge – the craggy, snow crusted peaks opposite and the Yangtzi river rushing along some 3000m below. Truly glorious. So we had some lunch.

Sunrise in the gorge. Seen worse.

Lunch consumed, we began the descent. Our only guide were these sporadic spray-painted arrows and we eventually came across one which pointed straight down what looked like a sheer cliff face. By this time we were foot-sore and wind-battered and were in no mood for jokes. But of course it was no joke. Gale force winds howled and dragged us this way and that, and scree gave way underfoot as we scrambled down. We suddenly felt very small and very alone.

The view at the summit. Seen worse.

But we lived to tell the tale and the sun was setting as we hopped into our guest house for the night. A long day. The next day was far easier – a final descent down to the floor of the gorge, a gander at the violently raging river, back up to the guest house and then the bus back to Lijiang. We stayed there one night and then back to our favourite place for Christmas.

Amy in Dali.

Amy at the Gorge.

Larking about in Kunming. What a card.

Another one of the view at TLG.

We were a little underwhelmed at first. We found ourselves impervious to the city’s charms, dulled as they were through the bitter cold (-6 C) and felt a little like we were just going through the motions: Forbidden City, a collection of almost identical temples – done. Tiananmen Square, largest public square in the world and not a whole lot else – done. But gradually we warmed to the place (not literally, its still bloody freezing); we discovered the view from the pagoda at the top of Jingshan Park, the stunning grounds and waterways of the Summer Palace, saw a giant panda and a white Bengali tiger at the zoo (the polar bears had the day off) and Beijing began, with its nighttime neon twinkliness, Chinese lanterns and affable street vendors, to win us over.

Veeery cold.

Its also surprisingly easy – far easier than Moscow – to get around and communicate. And it scores well on the Beer Price Index, with a pint averaging about £2 but extra bonus points for our hostel selling a large bottle of beer for 30 pence! Sa-weet.

This is us, doing what the Chinese do. Just trying to fit in.

Bruce taught us this.

For a city of 20 million inhabitants, it seems remarkably calm, and nowhere more so than in the hutong. Hutong is the name given to these warrens of tranquil alleyways and one-storey grey brick buildings (a little like upmarket slums) that give the city its charm. The government is busily deconstructing them in the name of modernisation but enough of the residents stubbornly remain that the hutong still, for now, exist.

One night we decided to take a short-cut home through the hutong. We were lost almost instantly, the hutong span us around and spat us out about 2 miles from where we needed to be. It was a long trudge home.

Beijing by night.

Our hostel (best Hostel in Asia 2009) had a lovely courtyard setting and we were almost the only people there. The only other guest was a hypochondriac Canadian TV presenter called Brandy, who accosted us each night to explain all her current ailments and regale us with stories of glorious illnesses past. She was alright though.

The Summer Palace…in winter.

You don’t come to Beijing and not see the Great Wall though do you?
We decided to forego the over-priced day trips to the Wall and make our own way there using public transport. This meant a bus from the city to Huarou, 60k away. Once there we bartered over a taxi which turned out to be a smiley maniac with a beaten up car. Thick snow was falling and the roads were treacherous, but nobody told our driver. Each time he swerved to avoid other vehicles that had fallen prey to the ice we gripped the door panel and silently wished we had seat-belts.

Amy at the Wall

We ignored all the shouted exhortations that the Wall was too slippery and we should take the cable car (obviously more expensive) and started up the hundreds of steps to the Great Wall. Once at the top we found that there was nobody as far as the eye could see (admittedly not very far – it was quite foggy) and clambered over this UNESCO world heritage site, this wonder of the world, completely alone.

Me at the Wall.

We strolled between the watch towers, and from each one you could see the snow-covered battlements reaching up or down into the mist. It was amazingly peaceful. Wonderful.

Amy at the Wall again.

The Wall as a defensive structure was arguably a failure – Gengis Khan’s armies stormed it, the British just ignored it and turned up by boat, and the Japanese simply flew over it – but it is still a sight to behold.

We have had just about enough of the cold now (yeah, by the way if it looks like we’ve been wearing the same clothes in all the photos its because we have, we only have limited warm clothes!) and tonight fly to warmer climes – Yunnan Province.

Giant Panda!

White Tiger!

Bear. Amy. Bear.

What a card.

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