Our travel journal of China
Hong Kong 12th June 1998
The circular tour of China.
On the 30th May we arrived in Beijing (Peking) (5,5 Million inhabitants) and suddenly found ourselves in another world. One could establish that the people here had a low standard of living but were very open towards strangers. Those who were able to speak a foreign language did so with pleasure and searched contact. Our interlocutor wished information about the rest of the world, then they have no possibility to leave their town or region, not to mention travelling to another country. Radio and television, also the daily newspaper are censored, so that any information from abroad is impossible.
For the inhabitants a car is a unattainable luxury and that is why the main form of transportation is the bicycle or moped. Freight of all kinds are transported with wheel – barrows or the traditional baskets. The means of transport in the country is a cart drawn by water – buffaloes. The buffaloes are also used for field work, for example ploughing in the rice fields. To learn to know people and country a little better we travel with a driver and a Guide. We visited many palaces and temples, also historic monuments – the Square of Heavenly Peace and the Mao Mausoleum impressed us greatly, also the Forbidden City: the residence of the Chinese Emperor.
Our journey takes us further to the Chinese wall – one of the most imposing buildings of man. It is alone through its gigantic measurements – 9 meters height – 5 meters wide – 6'300 kilometres long. It is the only building on earth that can seen from the moon.
Our next stop is the old emperor city of Xian a city with almost 2 million inhabitants. This city is famous for the excavation of the Terra Kotta Army of the great insane emperor Qin Shi Huangoi, (221 – 210 bc) with over 7'000 life-size earthern-ware figures – soldiers, horses and chariots, these had been built by 6000'000 prisoners. These figures were later partly destroyed by angry farmers as they had to pay high taxes for the gigantic army.
In the city we visited the bell tower on the well preserved town wall.
We were able to enjoy a boat – trip on the River Li – passing through rice fields that are watered from the river – a landscape with high very bizarre limestone mountains. Water buffaloes bustle about in the river and feed on sea – weed. Our trip takes us further through huge corn – fields that are still cut by hand. We also have the pleasure of visiting a Buddhist temple. The next city that we visit is Guilin and here they are more accustomed to tourists – we are taken as quite often – through souvenir shops which are really worth seeing.
The Elephant Mountain a very large stalagmite cave was also worth a visit.
We fly further through a thunderstorm to Hong Kong (6,1 million inhabitants) the pilot has quite an effort to land the aircraft as he has to land between sky scrappers. It worked the second time and I believe the passengers were glad to have solid ground under their feet again. 14 days after our spectacular landing here, on a new man-made island, a very large airport – 60 kilometres outside the city – was opened. After we leave the air-conditioned aircraft we are greeted by a tropical climate – 30 degrees heat and 75 % humidity. The only way to endure this climate is in air-conditioned hotels and shops. The variety and range of items offered lead us to plunder our travel savings.
The next stop of journey is Vietnam.