Photo: http://picasaweb.com/lostconversation/China1
Skeggia Coming to China on the road (Ske Ze Dong): 4 weeks
The Chinese have given wonderful surprises and adventures, but also the first moments of uncertainty gut!
From Mongolia to China 'was a drastic change of places, people, culture and even the way I travel: couchsurfing is not always attainable, so consumed by life as a hostel and bearded traveler, travel and destinations without obligations and fixed times, that freer but more exposed to risk, more deliberately without Lonely Planet, which helps you and spoils you too much, but with leaflets written in Chinese of greasy fried!
I often found himself trying to jump out of talking with your hands and feet in front of Chinese perplexed by my presence, but often friendly and helpful, but hard work!
But what satisfaction to see me on those trains and those taken by bus to the flight times absurd and infinite distances, on those machines and that hitch bike that took me to villages scattered chissadove to talk to who knows whom and who knows what language!
In reality 'I have often been very lucky: once you understand the meaning of the verb "wait", a word unknown to me before, I realized that when everything seems incomprehensible room and just wait and sit tight, and usually arrive sooner or later someone who speaks English and wants to help you, and you trust him blindly, it becomes your best friend for 5 minutes or 10 hours, if you travel together for a while!
Beijing: I expected to go into Blade Runner, and instead I just caught the last 3 days of sun sparkling Olympic due to factory closures, and that once re-opened have stained the sky a black yellowish disturbing enough! Beijing Olympic
A nice, clean, tidy and even perfumed, where everything works from fear, no sgarra and nobody honks, and billions of police, soldiers, guards and volunteers ensure that everything runs smoothly to show the world that Chinese there they do! With my bike to run around the 5 ring roads within the cities' motion to lift sponging me the power is turned on so well, made new friends and started to enjoy the cuisine of China, calling mestesso "the king of chopsticks."
A nap in the boring town 'banned after a night without sleep, a visit to the hutongs (ancient and once many, now few and ultra modern, but intriguing), a session of official tasting of 8 different types of tea (for me of course all equal), a lesson in martial arts with a lot of whip strokes in a Zen garden, chat with local artists and girls, beautiful but very shy, and others made me spend a great week!
And then a trip to the Great Wall, a hike of 5 hours under the sun to revisit the past and the other from a tower, with plenty of injury: fracture of the big toe nail right on the fault of my sandals loser bought in Ulan Bator!
After that I was on that train, my mom that the truck, 9 hours in all of China, 1.3 billion into that car, sitting on the ground between the skins of peanuts, dirt and spittle, hanging from the trunk, one arm to 'another, were all!
While writing my travelogue I turned abruptly and I counted the heads that I was watching from the back: 13! 13 Chinese ones that smiling little heads peeped my writing, inconprensibile including myself! Record!
And then on the road again, in Pingyao ancient town in the millennia, a giant Buddha caves in Luoyang, the Shaolin temple where the famous martial art began to spy on the movements of young students, then to climb a mountain Huashan Sacred dizzy for hours with 8 +8 Daoist hermits looking for company, then in the museum where Mao is revered as a God (!), then on the famous Yellow River beneath the raging waterfalls, yeah!
Along the way every time so many interesting encounters with attaccapezza Chinese and some foreigners, including a Ghanaian that eating an egg at 6 am on the train asked me to stop in China to teach English for 6 months!
Then in Xian, where the terracotta army I shot down 3 days in bed with fever, intestinal turmoil and moral ground, licking my wounds ...
But I knew, part of the game:-ultrapiccante some hot soup, a bit of meditation and 48 consecutive hours of sleep I was back on its feet, ready to cross the threshold of the Sichuan region in which I am now, the one struck by earthquake that bus and there 's been in the middle of the epicenter, including destroyed homes and tents are preparing for winter and the people trying to finish rebuilding the house before the snow arrives ...
that bus took me to a Tibetan village in the midst of a giant natural park with lakes, colored, to speak with the Tibetans, finally!
I have heard both sides of the coin Tibetan and here I changed my mind, no, it 's true, but at least more easily distinguish good and bad, and nothing' as it seems, we are so far away, and we see only what our eyes want to see!
And here I am finally in Chengdu a few days to rest and wash some cloth in the company of foreigners fuoroni moved here for work.
My original plan was to get me to China-Tibet in September, October and November nepal india, but for various reasons I changed my program: I have extended the Chinese visa and then I shall see that even in China in October, quietly, visiting Sichuan and Yunnan, and then well, we'll see! Vietnam, Laos or Burma?
China is not 'easy, and you must be ready to put aside many misconceptions, but then as he told me that Ghanaian "In China you can enjoy yourself," and if he says believe it!
Photo: http://picasaweb.com/lostconversation/China1
