South West China

August 2001

"China is a sleeping giant. Let her lie and sleep, for when she awakens she will astonish the world” (Napoleon) and, it should be added, attempt to rip off every foreign tourist who sets foot in the place.

How do you describe China? It is the third largest country in the world after Russia and China. 9.5 million square km in area, bordering Russia, Asia and a lot of SE Asia, with a teeming, thin, short-arsed population of over 1.2 billion people of differing ethnic origin. Actually, I was surprised to find tall, fat Chinese on this visit. They are starting to get wealthy! It is an enormous country of great regional variety. Two thirds of China is mountain, desert or unfit for cultivation. Only 20% of the land feeds all those people (as long as they like rice or noodles).

A recent newspaper report said that China was rapidly urbanising. In 1978, they had 193 cities and 2,173 towns. Now they have 600 cities and 20,000 towns. 10 million people are pouring into the cities annually -but only 35% are classified as urbanites. The rest live in the rural areas, which are suffering badly from over-grazing, over-logging and soil erosion - up to a third of the land area is classified as 'deteriorating'. On top of that, 5 out of 10 of the world's most polluted cities are in China. This rapid industrialisation is not pretty. Most cities are construction sites as China attempts to catch up with the rest of the world. The Communist Government smells western money and most of it seemed to be mine.

China's history stretches back thousands of years. They were inventing gunpowder and pizzas while we English were still running around in animal furs with war paint on our faces. The immense size of the country had always been uncontrollable by the various royal dynasties. They concentrated on the more important regions and left others to their own devices. They also had an isolationist policy to keep out the West, occasionally giving out tokens like Hong Kong and Macao when we sailed in and kicked their butts. To the Chinese, China is the centre of the world. Everywhere else is 'barbarian'. We have big noses, big feet and a lot of hair. They love to stroke the hair on your arms and legs.

In 1949, under Chairman Mao, China turned Communist, which pissed off the Americans big time (since they had supported them against the Japanese during World War Two). China shut down, and was shut off by the West and there followed 40 years of incompetent communist economic policies, which both revolutionised and destroyed China, depending on how senile Chairman Mao was. The 'Cultural Revolution' of the 1960s, carried out by the idealistic Chinese youth (Red Guards), was a 'Back to Basics' Policy. If it wasn't Chinese or did not fit into Chinese Communist ideals (religious belief was officially banned), it was destroyed. Anyone associated with 'Western decadence' or religion was killed or brainwashed. See Uncle Joseph Stalin for ideas.

The fall of Russia's Communist system, scared the shit out of the Chinese Government and since the early 1990s they have adapted their system to allow capitalism to thrive under controlled conditions. Tiananmen Square's horrific televised riots and clampdown in 1988, was an attempt to keep the status quo when the students got de-mob happy. The people can now get rich as long as they tow the party line. Ironically, as part of this new pseudo-capitalist policy, everything that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution is being rebuilt with determined vigour and Government money to entice the western tourists to flock in to see 'Ye olde China' and pay heavily for the privilege. Like Vietnam, they want your money and they want it now. And don't forget, it’s your fault that you have so much money, so why not give it to them.

On our arrival, Beijing had just been awarded the Olympic games in 2008 which the Chinese are already milking beyond belief (T-shirts on sale already! and TV commercials publicising it) to prove that they are nice people after all. The newspapers boasted how all the toilets in the Forbidden Palace would be upgraded to 3-star ablutions (replacing the ‘shitholes', literally, that we witnessed on a previous trip), Internet installed there, a Great Wall Triathlon established etc etc. What they really want is entry into the World Trade Organisation and despite the human rights record, especially in Tibet, they will get it. It is a case of the West also smelling money. 1.2 billion potential consumers is worth turning a blind eye to a couple of million people in Tibet living under a police state and getting pissed on from high by the Chinese Government.

What we had missed during our travels, was the 'US Spy Plane scandal' which had occurred a few months back. I read in a Chinese newspaper that the Chinese Government was moaning because the USA was only prepared to pay $34,000 storage costs for the plane in China. The Chinese Government wanted $90,000. Very logical since the Chinese were holding the plane hostage and wouldn't give it back. That mentality is what you are dealing with in China. Give us money. It is always your fault. I met a few Americans who wanted to call in an air strike just to let them know who was boss and bugger 1.2 billion consumers.

We had first visited China back in July 1996 on a cheap package holiday and were overwhelmed by the culture shock. Ignoring the high priced 'official' excursions, we did it all independently. Few people spoke English, and to get around, you had to get out your guidebook and point to the words written in Chinese calligraphy. The locals were still pedalling bicycles and dressed in the traditional dark blue tunics. But it was a fascinating place with friendly Chinese locals really eager to meet westerners for the first time.

There were interesting markets and cheap eating places on backstreets, where, faced with Chinese menus, we made chicken, pig and cow noises to indicate what we wanted. Or just roamed around the restaurant and pointed at whatever the locals were eating which looked good. With my size, and going topless in the humid summer heat, I was nicknamed 'Rambo' by everyone I met. I later discovered that it was illegal to walk around Beijing without a shirt. So, who ya gonna call? 'Fat Bastard Busters'?

Over a week, we took in all of Beijing's major sights -- the Forbidden Palace (awesome), Summer Palace (equally splendid), various temples and the Great Wall. This was one of the most spectacular sights in the world, if you visited the ‘unrestored' parts at Simitai, 110km NE of Beijing, where the impressive wall clung onto 1500m high cliffs. A flight down to Xian allowed us to take in the majestic 'Terracotta Warriors' and surrounding historical sites. I loved China on this visit where we had covered the most important historical and cultural sites. It was the most interesting place I'd ever visited and knew I'd return on numerous occasions.

This time, running out of money, we decided to target the South West region between Hong Kong and Tibet. We would concentrate on a few areas, minimise the tiring travel that you have to endure to get around, and take in what we could on a month's visa. Yet again, we were not disappointed, but the country was westernising fast and the 'dual pricing' policy (supposedly outlawed by the Chinese Government last year) was alive and well and we spent half our time attempting not to get ripped off with some interesting consequences.

It has always been a tradition in China that western tourists deserve to get ripped off wherever possible. I can honestly say that every tourist that we met on our travels in China (some who had started in Beijing, heading south via Xian and all points east and south) hated China by the time they left. It was a non-stop battle with dual pricing, governmental officialdom, petty regulations, terrible long journeys and just non-stop hassle. Fed up with their experiences, few people would ever come back or even recommend the place to their friends. Like India, it was a travel 'experience' - both good and bad, but most people were glad to escape the place. No - make that ALL tourists.

By now, after our long strange journey, it was just another country to us. We had been here before, we knew the score and what we should pay. We were also used to dual pricing, rip offs etc in other countries. The major difference was that we couldn't speak the language (essential to argue over costs), most people couldn't understand us and everyday, we just concentrated on winning a small victory against the traditional tourist rip-offs. Nevertheless, regardless of the problems, China is unmissable as a travel destination.

So we rolled into the Chinese border at Shenzhen (a special 'economic zone') where we were speedily processed. Only one question "Where are you going?" "China?", I replied straight-faced. Stupid question. We entered the province of Guangdong for a quick three-hour ride to the capital of Guangzhou, a sprawl of urbanisation.

Guangdong's proximity to Hong Kong has made it a major gateway into China (even if we were the only westerners we saw for the next two days). It has also made it China's most affluent province with record economic growth. Essentially it is just a continuation of Hong Kong's wealth. Populated by Cantonese, the northern Chinese have always envied it both for its wealth and suspected it for its prosperous contact with the West. Much of Hong Kong's manufacturing has relocated here and 15% of China's foreign trade is conducted here.

Essential Cantonese Chinese: Ni Hoa - hello, Duoshao Qian - how much? and Piss Off when you get the price.

In Guangzhou, we found an ATM to issue Yuan currency (which was nice), but all local Chinese hotels were off limits to the barbarians. Lots of hotel touts around. We checked into a western hotel at murderous prices of £7 each. But I can't knock Chinese hotels. You get spacious comfortable a/c rooms with ensuite hot showers, slippers, toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, soap, towels, a flask of hot water, teabags and 40 channels of Chinese shit on the TV (English/Chinese news at 11pm on Channel 4). We didn't get a key. A female floor attendant would let us in and pass us the ‘energy key’ to power everything. Chinese hotels were the nicest we had on the whole trip. The secret is to get the same thing for local prices.

The first thing you do when you hit a Chinese city is planning a way out again. We walked to the packed railway station full of lines. With the communication problem, there are plenty of touts that offer to buy tickets for you - at a price. We abandoned the train and after endless walking where noone could tell us where it was, found the long distance bus station. Shoving our guidebook into the face of the female ticket issuer behind the glass counter and pointing at our destination in Chinese, we secured two bus tickets for the next day.

We explored the city (in ferocious 34’C humid heat), which didn't have much on offer behind the concrete sprawl and were surprised to get constantly approached by hotel touts even though we had no luggage - surely that's an obvious sign? A pleasant park by a manmade lake had signs on the grass that said 'Take care of the grass. Please don't come in' - our first 'Chinglish' sign (Chinese attempts at English signs). It took an hour (after much questioning of locals who had never heard of the place) to visit the most famous relic - the 'Temple of the Six Bunyan Trees' (long cut down and burnt). The 55m octagonal pagoda, hardly visible behind the tower blocks was supposedly constructed in 1097, but, covered in scaffolding, it looked pretty new to me. Not exactly worth the long hunt.

More illuminating were the supermarkets. It was a Sunday afternoon when we descended into a basement 'Park and Shop' to find it bursting to capacity. The cashier queues were 30 deep down narrow aisles. You couldn't move. What I'd call a fire hazard. It took me 20 minutes to squeeze through absolute bedlam to find an exit. It was like watching communism die!

In the backstreets, we found a quiet Chinese supermarket that sold cheap ice-cold beer and sat down to watch the toad-traders at work. There was a large bamboo wicker basket of plump black toads piled on top of one another. One man would grab a toad, knock it out by thumping its head against some wood, cut off its head, split the chest and pull out the innards which were passed to someone else for washing, while the remains were dumped into a bloody bowl. The legs of the dead, headless, innard-less toads were still kicking in the bowl. As we watched, he told me that he was available for children's parties. This was the best sight that Guangzhou had to offer.

The following morning at the bus terminal we thrust our tickets into everyone’s faces and were directed to the exit gate. Smart Chinese hostesses dressed in pink uniforms, told us to wait and then guided us aboard to our seats. It was an a/c deluxe bus with reclining seats, bottles of water and lunch included (plastic boxes of rice, beef, peppers and wooden chopsticks). We were expecting a long 16 hour ride to Guilin, but by luck/mistake, we'd been booked onto an 8 hour express bus (as indicated by the fact that the driver honked his horn and overtook everything on the road) with prices to match.

We drove through endless urban sprawl, which evolved, into mundane rural scenery of paddy fields, water buffalo and peasants in conical hats. Following the wide twisting Gui River, we had no idea where we were because we couldn't read the Chinese signs. Stupendous vast towering jagged, green mountainous Karst limestone scenery appeared after a few hours. I was thinking, this looks a great place, shame we have another 8 hours on the bus. As we passed though a touristy town, I spotted western tourists and Internet cafes. It was Yangshou, our destination - 8 hours earlier than anticipated.

Met off the bus by a new hotel owner, we checked into another luxurious Chinese hotel, this time at local prices and a triple room with all the comforts. We checked in for 5 nights and made ourselves at home. That is, finding a local stall across the road, selling ice-cold beer for 21p a pint, while locals played Chinese checkers on the pavement outside. There was also a local food stall where we sat on tiny stools with low tables to enjoy cheap home Chinese cooking. It was always our tactic. Find the places selling everything at local prices and become a regular. You know the price so all haggling is removed. Stick to what you know. Dim Sums (Chinese meat-filled dumplings) would become a regular breakfast throughout China - 42p for 15 delicious fresh cooked morsels).

Here we met Anya, a 30 year old, ex-East German ("I'm NOT bloody German!"), and IT Project Manager. She had been touring China for seven weeks, starting from Beijing, and commented, "I'm staying here until my visa runs out and heading straight to Macao. I've had enough of China". It was a familiar story.

Yangshou is a lovely quiet place. It has western cafes such as the ‘Hard Seat Café’ (with delights like ‘Drunk Duck', ‘Beer Fish,‘Dutchman Meatballs' which promised to ‘Provide reliable and tender service' (all at 3x the local rate), abysmally slow Internet cafes and wonderful souvenir markets surrounded by beautiful limestone mountains. We fell in love with the place immediately, as had every other western tourist who had given up on China and then discovered this sanctuary. Anya, Jo and I teamed up for the rest of our stay.

The best way to explore the area is on rented bicycle for 60p a day. We pedalled off 9km up the road to the small town of Baishe to take in the local market. The road which passed lovely green fields with surrounding limestone hills, was full of honking, smoke belching buses, and old diesel driven communist tractors with open engines stuck out front with large drive belts - they looked like badly made lawnmowers. We passed a woman on a bicycle making a strange noise. It was a basket of ducks on the back rack in a wooden cage quacking away.

Baishe market was a real Chinese market full of strange sights. Under shade, were lines of butcher’s stalls with huge slabs of pork, pig’s heads, and innards on the wooden tables. We spotted a couple of dismembered dogs, the headless, shaven white backend with just the hind legs and all innards removed. The woman tried to cover it up when we attempted to take photos. We also saw a basket of kittens. They were probably food as well.

There were lines of ducks and hens in cramped bamboo baskets, large open baskets of fluffy ducklings, and thousands of white duck eggs. Live snakes and frogs in bowls, endless vegetables, and baskets of raw white noodles and colourful collections of herbs in plastic bags. Wooden rice threshing machines were on sale and an armoury of farming tools. There was lots of food on offer. We sampled small steaming dim sums, small round pancakes (like muffins) filled with syrup, and dishes of caramel custard. As the only westerners at the market, the locals laughed at our trials with market food. Like many countries, they are really honoured if you sit down to sample the fare and if you don’t smile after swallowing the offerings, they give you a strange look.

There was a covered area full of barbers. Men sat in seats getting a trim. With this heat, I also needed one. The barber removed about half my hair (communication was a problem! - you want haircut? You get Chinese hairstyle!), shaved my forehead, eyebrows and chin. It was worth 43p for the experience but took weeks to recover. Thus ended my final haircut of the trip (Nepal, Saigon, Bali, Cairns and Baishe).

On the way out of town, a Chinese man approached us. He turned out to be called David and he ran a small summer school teaching English to keen students. Would I like to participate in a class? No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow.

We spent the afternoon, cycling around the fabulous Karst limestone scenery outside Yangshou. Miles of empty roads, towering limestone pinnacles, lush green farmland, graceful rivers and waterways. And er, overpriced admission charges to limestone caves, Moon Hill (a limestone outreach with a circular hole in the middle) and even ‘scenic routes' where you paid for the privilege of cycling down a lane to see exactly the same scenery as from the road. We avoided it all and were content to see it all for free from the road. Posses of westerners on ‘guided tours' passed us (it was difficult to get lost on the sole road!). We were badly sunburnt from the sweltering heat, but it was a wonderful area to explore. Spectacular does not describe the scenery.

Along with Anya, we teamed up with Christine, a 50-year-old English tourist also fed up with China ("I’m counting down the days"). Both Anya and Christine had done the famous ‘Yangste River 3 Gorges Trip' and both were heavily critical. “A waste of time" was the conclusion. A few years back, the Chinese decided to dam part of the Yangste River (6300km long, it is the third longest river in the world after the Nile and Amazon). The dam had been flooding a vast gorge area, and the Chinese were pushing the site for all it’s worth. Which isn’t much. For your 3 day cruise, you get 1 day of passing smelly polluted coal driven industrial cities, a day passing through the gorges which are already flooded, so no longer gorges and a final day of wide, non-descript river which is so wide that you can’t even see the edges. The boats are grubby, the cabins stink, the toilets blocked and is hardly worth about £70. Anya said she just got drunk with Australian tourists to pass the time. After 2 days, many tourists had had enough and got off a day early. It’s that bad. So we decided (and we got half a dozen reports saying the same) to abandon this excursion later on. As with many things in China, you are now too late to see what the country is famous for -it’s moving too fast. You have been warned.

The following morning, we bussed out to Fuji market (via Baishe in completely the wrong direction - more communication problems - the Chinese don’t care where you’re going as long as you get on the bus!). Fuji market was pretty uninteresting apart from the dog meat on sale at the food-stalls (bowls of dark meat with dog skulls liberally sprinkled on top). It tasted like ox-tail. A fortune-teller had a tray of teeth. Each tooth had a Chinese numeric carved onto it. You picked a tooth and the fortune-teller read the tiny numeral with a magnified glass. I think Jo’s was '6 months to live' again. Back in Yangshou, while the girls tried on every pair of silk trousers in the market, I did some serious haggling for Chinese silk dressing gowns and Pyjamas.

I returned to Baishe for my English class. When I walked in, David welcomed me and I got a standing ovation. On the wall above were five portraits - Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao in that order. The class consisted of 14 students aged 13-16. For the lesson, I took them through their new vocabulary and got them to practice sentences from their book. It looked like boring stuff to me (i.e. what time does the plane land? - as if they would ever fly), but they were keen and enthusiastic. After the lesson, I invited open questions from the class: I replied to - what food do you like, how many in your family, do you like China and why do you have such big feet and a big nose and can we touch your hair etc.

David and his ‘star pupil' (I’d call her his girlfriend), a petite and gorgeous 20 year girl called Wo Ying, invited me to dinner at his house that evening. Can I bring some friends? So I dashed back to Yangshou to find my three ladies refreshed from a Chinese massage after their strenuous shopping and said “Fancy having dinner at a local Chinese house?" So we dashed back to Baishe. We were led through a farming community to his home, a wooden hut with dirt floors. David, who enjoyed having Western tourists to dinner, had cooked the entire meal himself. We perched on tiny stools (a real killer on western backs) around a low table to sample the fares: chicken stew, fish stew, omelette, beansprouts and rice. Small bowls to fill with chopsticks.

While we sat and asked questions about China, locals poked their heads through the door to see four strange westerners dining. David had taught himself English, listening to the BBC World Service. His English was actually pretty bad and I wondered how his students ever learnt proper English from his lessons. But he was obviously the only qualified teacher in the area. Wo Ying, despite continual apologies for her lack of vocabulary was much better.

After the meal, we returned to the classroom, where some of the students had returned on the promise to meet some westerners. Jo sat and listened to a group of boys read to her. She looked like a mother hen with her brood around her. She couldn’t get over how enthusiastic they were. It was a very enjoyable evening and we felt as if we’d done our bit towards Chinese-western relations. Wo Ying presented me with a hand painted Chinese umbrella for my sterling work.

On another day, we did the scenic Li River excursion -an ‘unofficial' one. Christine had said that it was much more impressive than the Yangste River Gorge trip. We caught a local bus to the river port of Xingping. We knew that tourists got charged 5 Yuan -double the local price. The conductress had a sneaky way around our protests. She got other local people to pay 5Y (so we could see what the price was) and then during the ride, she would try and sneak back 2.5Y to the locals without us seeing. This is what you are dealing with in China. We kicked up such a fuss at the end of the ride, she gave us our change just to be rid of us.

Rather than an ‘official boat' we teamed up with a Dutch couple and rented a wooden motor boat driven by a tiny wrinkly old man for a two-hour trip, up the river and back for a 50% discount. The winding river had herds of water buffalo floating with just their heads above water. They would dive down to the riverbed to feed off the underwater grasses. Surrounding us on a pretty gloomy day were endless towering mounds of breathtaking limestone karst with sheer white sides and green vegetation on them. They were so steep, you’d need ropes to get up them.

The Chinese had named all these hills with such delights as: ‘Horse fresco hill', ‘Lion watching the nine horses', ‘Yellow Cloth in the Water', ‘Tortoise Climbing The Hill', ‘Lion Ascending the Five Finger Hill', ‘Eight Supernaturals Crossing The River', and ‘Grandpa Watching Apple'. You had to use an awful lot of imagination to spot any of these symbols on the hills. But they were great names.

After an hour’s pleasant peaceful cruising, we pulled into a small rural village for a quick look around. Locals punted around on long narrow bamboo rafts. When we went to re-board our boat, our little man wouldn’t let us on. Oh no, we’re being scammed, we all thought. He wants more money to take us back. Actually, it was a lot more intricate than that. While we climbed on board and refused to move, he desperately tried to find an interpreter. There were two dozen stranded Chinese tourists on the sandbank nearby, also waiting for their ‘unofficial' boat. One of them came to explain.

The local river police were making one of their infrequent checks up the river to combat ‘unofficial' tours (and keep the prices high on the official boats). Our man had to motor up the river to pretend he was just fishing. We still weren’t sure, so we took his mobile phone as a security in case he really was doing a runner. It seemed stupid, because if the police were upstream, why was he going up there to report in? Why didn’t he just turn back and they’d be none the wiser. But that’s China for you. Even more stupid was that we saw the river police pass by as in a speedboat. They must have sussed that we were stranded ‘un-official' tourists. The boat owners made payoffs no doubt.

So we sat on the sandbanks for 2 hours while our man disappeared and official boats came past with their tourist passengers looking out and thinking ‘what are those prats doing sitting on a sandbank?'. Eventually, our boat returned, artfully decked out in fishing gear and no trace of our presence on it. We motored back down the river with the current, but as we approached the wharf, there was a police car waiting, so we couldn’t land there. We had to land on the other side of the river and catch a ferryboat across. Oh no, here comes the next scam. But it was free. It had been an interesting afternoon of watching local Chinese deal with Chinese bureaucracy to make a humble living. Our little man had been efficient and honest and we were glad that he got our money rather than the tour agencies.

The piece d’resistence was on the way home. Back on a local bus, it filled with a western tour group. Anya and I were thinking, they are all going to pay 5 Yuan because that’s what they expect. The Dutch couple who had tried paying the local price on the way there had been kicked off the bus! But after an afternoon of frustration, we decided to cause trouble and refuse to pay 5Y.

When Anya offered 2.5Y, the bus ground to a halt in the middle of nowhere. After 7 weeks, she’d had enough of dual pricing and just wanted to piss the Chinese off. The conductor found someone who spoke English to declare the fare was 5Y. We argued back. A few tourists joined our campaign, but after 15 minutes of sitting there, started to give in. We didn’t care. We had been hanging around all afternoon in the name of Chinese bureaucracy. At worse, we’d get kicked off and catch another bus. The interpreter said that this was the last bus. I said that this was untrue, and had it confirmed when another bus rolled by and stopped to see why our bus had stopped. We told the tour group to get on that one. But that bus refused to take them!

Now, some of the tourists started to bitch. An English girl whined how she had to get back to the hotel to make an important phone call. Well if it’s that that important you should have taken a taxi. A fat American girl called us ‘bastards' (with her size she should have been paying for 2 seats anyway). The tour group offered to pay the extra 7.5Y to make up for our lack of payment, but the Chinese not wanting to lose face refused to accept it or move. Eventually, after 30 minutes, the bus started again. Everyone paid 5 Yuan, we paid 2.5Y and the tourists didn’t have to pay the difference.

Yes, I know it was a small amount, (local price was 21p) but it was the principal. The next tourists will be paying 10Y. If I get a bus ticket with a price, I have no argument, but local buses do not issue tickets and charge tourists what they can get away with. The secret is to watch locals to see what they are paying, and then have the correct change and just hand it over. If the conductor argues, you just point at everyone else and wave your money. Eventually they back down. It was just our own little private battle with dual pricing and every small victory was still a victory over the Chinese. Tour groups don’t care. They’ll pay whatever it takes. It was a good job that we were leaving town the next day, the tour group would probably have lynched us, had they seen us again.

Anya accompanied us to Guilin, the regional capital, an hour away. It was a city full of construction sites. Jo and I booked a sleeper bus for the following day, and the three of us headed up through the hills to Longsheng, to view the ‘Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces'. The bumpy, twisty road was full of thousands of construction workers in conical hats, shovelling rocks and dust around in a haphazard fashion. Onboard the bus, slapstick ‘Kung Fu' films were playing. The hero would fight off 20 enemies in synchronised movements and when he hit someone in the face, their eye would immediately be blackened. Well, it passed the time. The bus was another ‘chicken express' with baskets of ducks on the roof and chickens in bags under the seats.

Naturally, since it’s China, you pay an entrance fee to view the rice terraces. They are very impressive, but nowhere near the stature of the ones in the Philippines. We were dumped in the tiny village of Huanglo Yao with no accommodation. Asking around, a farmer had a small room with 2 beds on the first floor of his wooden shack built on stilts by the river. 60p each! The ground floor was one large room with kitchen, lounge and TV - just bare wooden floorboards, with a few couches for the family to sleep on. Very humble. There was an outside toilet (just a hole) beneath the wooden shack with a nearby grunting pig and washing facilities were in the river, where everyone else washed. Noone gave me a second glance when I stripped off just before dusk.

Passing over the river on an old rickety wooden suspension bridge, we climbed up the many levelled rice terraces to lookouts on the same overcast afternoon. The area is populated by the ethnic minority cultures of Dong, Zhuang, Yao and Miao (which sounded like a bunch of cats fighting). The Yao women grow their thick black hair to extreme lengths (i.e. the ground). They wrap it up around their heads like shiny black turbans and charge tourists to take photos while they unravel it and then do it up again. It was a strange sight. Some of them even had 4-ft hairpieces attached (someone else’s hair?) to thicken their own. The women dress in beautiful pink skirts cut above the knees, which swish around as they walk, and contrast vividly with their hair. They also wore unfeasibly large amounts of jewellery.

At the top of the rice terraces were small, scenic wooden villages, very similar to Nepalese lodges where the tour groups stay. Some Chinese tourists were being carried up the terraces on sedan chairs carried by 4 local men - lazy buggers! Mist swirled around the terraces full of green rice growing.

Chinese tourist blurb describes the 66 sq. km area of the ‘Longji' Rice Terraces like this: “It began its construction in the Yuan Dynasty and was completed during the Qing Dynasty (650 years - probably started 1000 years ago). The matchless terraced fields stretch out like chains and ribbons piled up from the foot of the mountains to the hilltops. Some hills are much smaller in size, shaped like snails while the larger ones are like towers. They tier upon one another. The fields turn up to be a picture of silver belts in spring (full of water), vast green waves in summer (when we saw it) and enchanting golden towers in autumn and dragons gambolling with water in the winter (what dragons?). Endowed with the combination of grace, elegance and magnificence, it is regarded as the only one of its kind in the world". Yet again, the Chinese regard China as the centre of the world. Nothing else exists. They have never heard of Banaue, Luzon in the Philippines.

Back at our abode, another tourist couple had rolled in. Do you cook dinner we asked the wife. What do you want? Chicken, we suggested in animated gestures. As we sipped ice-cold beers outside, we witnessed some pour chicken being slaughtered, plucked and dumped in the kitchen cooking pot. The five of us, armed with chopsticks and bowls, tucked into a lovely home cooked medley of green veg, tiny fish, omelette, rice and er, chicken stew (complete with head and feet). As the local celebrities, with a good party atmosphere, the closed local stall across the road was knocked up to replenish our dwindling beer supplies on more than one occasion (which was nice). It was another intriguing example of Chinese life at the local level.

The stunning region deserves more than one day and Anya decided to stay on. We bade her farewell (she had been a great travel partner) and headed back to Guilin to catch our ‘Sleeper Bus' to Kunming - a mere 33 hours away!

Chinese sleeper buses are infamous long distance transport, competing against the trains, which were heavily overbooked during our visit in the summer. What you get is a double bunk bed, with a 6" mattress and pillow, and a rack at the foot of the bed to store bags. We had a bottom bunk with other people sleeping above us. Inevitably the cargo holds were full of luggage so all backpacks got dumped in the aisles.

Leaving around 2pm, the bus seemed to zoom south down a good highway to Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province. The scenery was pretty non-descript, but at least we could stretch out and read. As we approached the bus station around 10.30pm, there was a large crowd of rubbernecks on the pavement. A moped lay on the ground and a tiny Chinese woman lay flat on her back, with her shopping around her and a pool of blood emanating from her head. Noone was touching her. She was definitely dead and our first human road-kill of the trip. When we passed by, an hour later, on the way out of town, the police had arrived, but she was still lying in the road. There wasn’t even a blanket over her face.

In Yangshou, while eating at our foodstall, we had witnessed two moped riders crash and go flying. Noone was allowed to touch the scene until the police arrived. The mopeds lay sprawled in the road. Traffic backed up and couldn’t move. The police would finally arrive, take photos, measure distances, interview the victims and witnesses and maybe, after a couple of hours, the road would be cleared. Got to get the paperwork right.

Rolling on through the night, the bus engine seemed to be deteriorating badly. A torrential rainstorm flooded the road, but we battled through. It rained all the next day. Not much to see apart from acres of sad waterlogged yellow sunflowers with their drooping heads, a few mountains, large muddy coloured rushing rivers, messy squalid towns and litter everywhere. True to form, all the Chinese passengers threw their litter out of the bus windows. Outside Xingyi, we saw the impressive Maling Gorge - a steep sided cut into the land with huge waterfalls pouring over the sides into the river below.

At one foodstop, there was another scam. The bus pulled into a restaurant forecourt and the gates were locked behind it. The food prices were highly inflated but you were not allowed out of the gates to go looking for cheap eats. So we, along with the other backpackers just boycotted the place.

The ride just dragged on and on. The bus engine was shot to hell by the time we arrived in Kunming, and barely able to climb the hills. There were many new garages being built. Huge affairs with 50 pumps. When we arrived exhausted, around midnight, we were lucky to find a Chinese hotel with local rate, next to the bus station.

At an elevation of 1890m, Kunming has a milder climate than most Chinese cities and at 25’C, was ten degrees cooler than Yangshou. Despite a population of 3.5m people, Kunming was a very pleasant city - fully rebuilt, no construction sights, wide boulevards with overpasses where ramps had been incorporated into the steps to get the bicycles/trolleys up and down. There were some interesting backstreet markets with huge sides of beef hanging from frames and it was very hospitable. A vast improvement over Guangzhou and Guilin. A local man even pedalled up on his bike to sell us a Chinese-English newspaper for 1Y - the first we’d seen in China. Women pushed bicycles around with trays of hot potatoes on the back.

The only sight we wanted to see was the Bamboo Temple. Inevitably, the authorities had scrapped the local bus there and we had to use private hotel minibuses for the 12km climb into the surrounding hills. The good news was that admission had dropped from 30Y to 4Y, compensating the minibus hike. It is a bit galling to have to shell out 30Y (£2.56) for every temple in China. Consequently, you tend to just target a few. This one was a stunner.

We joined an American tour group, which commandeered a few minibuses. They had just arrived in China and were non-plussed by the fact that one of their group had been immediately deported upon arrival in Beijing, because she arrived one day later than stated on her visa. Doh! On the way, the male driver stroked my hairy arms and legs (“you are awful. But I like you!").

The original 639AD temple had been destroyed and rebuilt in 1422. It was later restored in 1890 by a master sculptor, Li Guangxiu and his apprentices. They fashioned 500 ‘luchan' (noble ones) to fill the temples. These life size clay figures are both realistic and surrealistic. The statues “have been done with the precision of a split-second photograph -a monk about to chomp into a large peach (the face contorted almost to a scream), a figure caught turning around to emphasise a discussion point, another about to clap two hand cymbals together... The old, sick and emaciated - nothing is spared: the expressions of joy, anger, grief or boredom are extremely vivid"(Lonely Planet). They were almost human, and one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen.

There is a ritual where you choose a figure (from the four tier rows) and randomly count around the tiers. When you reach your age, the figure you land on is supposed to represent your true spirit. You repeat this process in three other temples and you often end up with a similar figure in each place -no matter where you start. Strange but true.

Down two parallel walls of the main temple came the incredible 70 odd ‘surfing buddhas', riding the steep blue waves on a variety of mounts (oo-er)- blue dogs, giant crabs, shrimp, turtles, and unicorns. One man had metre long white eyebrows that dangled down his face, and another had an arm that stretched clear across the hall to the ceiling. It was almost like a 3-D Salvador Dali piece and could have done with a Beach Boys soundtrack. Unfortunately all photos were banned of the strange statues.

The rest of the complex was an ornately carved series of wooden doors, colourful panels, alcoves, more temples, huge pots of incense sticks and gardens of blooming red and yellow flowers. It was one of the most interesting Chinese temples anywhere in the world. The sign outside said “One of the first batch of open temples after the religious policies to be implemented (i.e. post Cultural Revolution when religious beliefs were banned). It’s really a good place to visit and pilgrimage". Whatever. It’s a great place.

A deafening thunderstorm echoed throughout the night. It came right over our room and scared the living daylights out of us. In continuing pouring rain the next morning, about 200ft from our hotel, we boarded a minibus to Xiaguan. The driver was taking no prisoners and only slowed when he saw flashing policecar lights ahead on the freeway. On board, a mother with her two small children had a fluffy Andrex puppy that was let loose to wander down the aisle. It took a piss right by my legs. Which was nice. It was shortly ejected from the bus using my right boot. Cruel but fair. (“Oh c’mon kids. Cut out the crying! It’s a dog!").

The heavy rainfall had taken its toll and the road was awash with landslides, which we’d pick our way around, while construction crews were clearing vast collections of boulders. There were a few police checks, but the officials ignored us. We covered 400km in under 5 and a half-hours - quite astounding for China. Xiaguan, an ugly industrial city was once an important staging post on the old Burma Road. We were straight out on a local bus to old Dali City 30 minutes away.

Dali lies on the western edge of Erhai Lake at an altitude of 1900m with the imposing Cangshan Mountains (average height 4000m) behind it. It was the old capital of Yunnan province which, on the Chinese border with Laos and Myanmar, was left to its own devices for over 500 years by the dynasties in Beijing. The old city still retains some of the original character - city walls and watchtowers, cobbled streets and traditional architecture with lots of shutters. The Bai minority predominates. We’d heard good reports about Dali and checked in for 4 nights.

Avoiding the backpacker hostels, we found the most luxurious Chinese hotel and haggled down the price to less than the backpacker places. We had a splendid room with all the usual trimmings. Built on traditional architectural styles with lots of painted panels, it lay on a side road, just off the main pedestrianized strip with a lovely quiet courtyard. Chinese tour groups came and went, noisily at 4am, yelling, clearing their throats and with no consideration to other guests. We switched rooms on the second day. Chinese people who’d destroyed the room had vacated it. By the time we returned, the room was as good as new. They must love tidy western tourists.

The local female guides all wore traditional costumes -white trouser suits with pink/red tunics, a wide white cummerbund belt on their waists and flowery colourful headgear. Strange to see them clutching mobile phones as they led their tour groups down Fuxing Lu (‘Foreigner’s Strip') to see the old stone watch towers and city walls. Dali was very relaxed and noone hassled you. The souvenir stalls lining the main parade were so-so, and the place was brim-full of Chinese tour groups. Even the young girls were encouraged to wear traditional costumes, which brightened the place up. They giggled shyly, whenever we tried to take photos. Proud mothers would push them forward and tell them to smile. Dali also had the fastest Internet in China we’d find - at 26p an hour.

The old people still wore their traditional blue tunics and caps. You just had to walk around early in the morning to see the old China you still expect to see in this rapidly developing country. Outside the library at 6am, a group of women in pink uniforms did their daily synchronised fan dances. Wrinkly, shrunken, older women nearby did less strenuous morning exercises of Tai Chi. Old men would sit in the sun and puff on their pipes. I watched a man cut up an entire cow. The head and skin lay on the ground. The carcass hung from a metal rack, which he sawed and carved. It took him 2 hours to reduce it to steaks. The market was full of Chinese women in blue tunics and the usual stalls. I spotted a strange sign above a building: 'The Station of Prevention Care for Schistosomiasis of Dali City'. What the hell is that?

On our first night, we noticed people clutching lit wooden torches and charging around the place. They’d run up behind someone, sprinkle saltpetre (gunpowder) on the flames, which would erupt into a massive ball of fire. It was the Bai people’s New Year celebrations. They obviously don’t have clocks here.

Fortified by a few ales (Dali Beer - ‘brewed by the Rude River') and getting fed up with the antics, I took off my shirt, took the offensive and urged on everyone with torches. I’d be surrounded by people sprinkling saltpetre and erupting flames. "C’mon China! You can do better than that!", I’d roar, Rambo style. It got pretty intense and eventually my shorts caught fire which got a big laugh. Just doing my bit for Anglo-Chinese relations. Groups of girls, fed up with being picked on would hurl buckets of water over the torch carriers. So I got soaked as well. It was an interesting welcome to Dali, which, surprisingly, was empty of western tourists.

In the evenings, many food stalls would set up with smoke bellowing from the grills. We became regulars at a couple’s stall, who had a small baby. We’d stuff ourselves full of kebabs, grilled aubergine, roast potatoes etc at cheap prices and after three nights there, the couple invited us to their home the following morning. They lived in one room with a bed and a cot, a small table and not much else. We had a severe communication problem. We couldn’t speak Chinese and they couldn’t speak English. Even pointing to our guidebook, they failed to understand. She would write down sentences in Chinese, oblivious to the fact that we couldn’t read it. Even my body gestures failed. After an hour going nowhere, we politely excused ourselves from the situation. But it was the thought that counted. They were just trying to make contact with westerners.

We did a couple of local trips. One to the old village of Xizhou which we found disappointing, despite the supposed ‘traditional farming town' label. We were the only tourists. When Jo decided to buy something (an embroidered money belt), 15 other female money belt sellers rushed up the street, surrounded her and pleaded for a sale. She ended up with 3 of the bloody things.

Much more interesting was the hike up the mountain to the Zhonghe Temple at 2700m. We shunned the 80Y tourist price cable lift chairs and sweated our way up through alpine forests of purple and yellow summer flowers, and strange Chinese cemeteries where brown cows nibbled on flowers off the graves. The Chinese tourists passed us overhead on the chairs, laughing at the cheapskate tourists below. But it took us less than an hour. The temple was nothing special. Groups of men gorged themselves on plates of snails at the outside cafe. In the mist, we barely caught a view of the Erhai Lake. There was a 7km sealed walkway above the temple, which took you around the gorges and crashing waterfalls. Chinese tourists will only walk on flat footpaths.

At the bottom, we passed through a local village where women humped up baskets of spring onions and root crops for washing and sorting. On their backs, they wore strange long horsehair back protectors to avoid blistering their backs. As in Nepal, the baskets were held steady by a headband around the forehead.

We paid our respects to the Three Pagodas. They are among the oldest standing structures in SW China. The main pink Qianxun pagoda reached up to 70 metres with 16 tiers and was flanked by two 42m pagodas with 10 tiers. We avoided the steep admission charge and saw them from the entrance. You couldn’t climb them so why pay to walk around them?

On our final night at our regular outdoor foodstall, the rain bucketed down. The couple erected an umbrella over us, while the wife cooked on the smoke-making-your-eyes-water grill under a deluge of water. I have to give the local Chinese credit - like the Indians, they work their bollocks off to survive on meagre incomes. On the next table, a group of rather drunk, Chinese tourists, insisted on obligatory photos with their ‘foreign friends'. “You are very card"(kind) they slurred. As with Yangshou, I would thoroughly recommend Dali for a few days to see real China.

Back in Xiaguan the following morning, with incessant rain, there were 4 bus stations and no one could tell us which was the correct one. I tramped around in the puddles, until I found a bus heading for Lijiang, our next base. It was a fast 3 and a half-hour minibus ride up into the hills where the mist was so thick that visibility was almost zero. The road had no barriers and I wondered if we’d just crash into the valleys below.

North of Dali, bordering Tibet, the city of Lijiang is set in a beautiful valley. Surrounded by the new city, the old town is a delightful maze of cobbled streets, rickety old red wooden buildings, narrow canals and endless souvenir shops. In 1996, a 7 point on the Richter scale earthquake crushed the new city, but the old town stayed standing. This prompted UNESCO to declare the old town as a World Heritage Site and it is now firmly on any tourist itinerary in China.

The old town is constantly being rebuilt with Government money to pull in the tourists. They are replacing the modern concrete buildings and bridges with traditional Naxi architecture. Half the place seemed to be having its drainage system replaced and you were forced to walk across planks of wood above muddy trenches. If you stay in the touristy, but atmospheric old town, you pay over the odds for accommodation - basic rooms with shared cold showers and squat toilet bathrooms. It took us two hours of searching, but we eventually found (after many rejections from ‘Chinese only' hotels), a local Chinese hotel with our usual standard for the same price as basic stuff in the old city. Ironically, it was 100m from the bus station.

Lijiang is the base of the Naxi minority (descended from the Tibetans). The women are the dominant gender (surely some mistake?). They wear blue blouses and trousers covered by a narrow striped apron. The Naxi language is in pictographs!

The best place to see real Naxi culture is the market outside the old town. Here at the pig market, we had a real eyeful. A squealing piglet would be hoisted from a basket by its hind legs and had its head hung over an open sewer while the local boy stood on the body with his feet to keep it immobile. The pig would have its throat slit vertically, with a sharp knife, and the blood squirted into the sewer or over the ground. If the pig kept squealing, the cut was enlarged. One dead pig later, it was thrown into a strange round tumble dryer with long rubber prongs on the inside. It was spun around and the prongs removed the hair, which dropped out of the bottom slot. One gleaming, white, hairless pig later, it was plopped on a wooden board, where someone else took a blowtorch to it, to brown the skin. It is a tough life being a pig in China -spin dried and BBQ’d in less than 10 minutes. Next door, the chickens were getting a good kicking as well. I almost felt guilty eating my dim sums while watching all the action. The market stalls were crowded with bent over sunbrown-wrinkled old Chinese women with their blue tunics and caps and baskets strapped to their backs to take home their shopping.

It was lovely to just get lost in the narrow cobbled streets. Outside the tourist centre, it was everyday life. Within the centre, it was just a tourist Mecca. We had ‘chops' made. These were small green marble stamps with a carved dragon’s head on the top and your name in Chinese/English on the bottom. Nice souvenirs to rubberstamp your correspondence. Yangshou had been full of beautiful carved marbleware - but how do you carry the stuff home? Strange signs seen: ‘Sexual Healah Things Shop' and Chinese Postal Savings - ‘Civilised Unit'.

Despite the World Heritage tag, Lijiang is still being re-designed by the Chinese government to milk money out of the tourists and is becoming a little antiseptic. It was starting to look like an old Spanish or French quarter near the Pyranees.

On one evening, we visited the famous ‘Naxi Orchestra'. The auditorium was filled with loud Chinese tour groups, mobile phones buzzing throughout the performance. There were about 30 members, old men with white beards, colourfully dressed in green and red embroidered silk gowns. They played a type of Taoist temple music that has been lost elsewhere in China. The pieces they perform are supposedly faithful renditions of music from the Han, Song and Tang Dynasties (10th -14th Centuries), played on original instruments (many were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and the musicians buried them underground).

A cheerful bilingual leader called Xuan Ke introduced the pieces. He told us that it was a dying orchestra because the young people preferred rock n' roll and karaoke. One of the musicians had died the week before. He spent more time introducing the pieces in Chinese, which got a lot of laughs, than the length of the short pieces. As the only westerners, we would listen to 10 minutes of Chinese explanation and then just get the title of the piece in English. At one point, his microphone failed. “Must have been made in Japan" he said, which brought the house down.

The pieces were your usual Chinese cat getting strangled type squeaks, but expertly and tastefully done. After 90 minutes (with maybe 30 minutes of music), the old men shuffled off, and were changed and had pipes in their mouths before the audience was half cleared. We were glad that we had cheap seats. Suffering from mass Chinese tourism, it was definitely missable. Just turn up 15 minutes before the end, walk in for free and hear one tune. Good enough.

Two hours north of Lijiang is the stupendous Tiger Leaping Gorge. Now we are definitely talking. On the minibus we chatted to a French couple who had been getting ripped off everywhere. They even paid double for this ride which was strange because the computerised ticket office was efficient and honest. Eventually, we reached the town of Qiaotou, where a sign said “You are welcome to the Tiger Leaping Gorge". It was still pouring with rain and we wondered if we would cope with the muddy trail.

After making its first turn at Shigu (‘First Bend of the Yangzi'), the mighty Yangzi River (3rd longest in world), surges between the Habu Mountains on one side and the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains (stretching up to 5300m) on the other, through one of the deepest gorges in the world - about 3900m from the river to the peaks. The entire gorge only measures 16km but is magnificent.

The rain petered off at the entrance to the ‘park’ and we climbed up the ‘upper trail' on a muddy path, past maize fields, and small Naxi farms. After 30 minutes, there were yellow/red arrows to guide you (it would have been nice to have them at the start). A gradual climb along a narrow rocky trail hugged the edge of the mountains above the valley with the roaring chocolate coloured river below. It was like a river of bubbling Galaxy Chocolate - honest! The mist swirled around the peaks on the other side. Far below us, we could see the ‘Low Road' which was being constructed until recently, by dynamiting the mountains. It is now fully sealed for half the gorge, and now allows the Chinese tour groups to see the gorge without stepping out of the bus.

Up and up we climbed, finally ascending the '24 bends' which were more like 30 overgrown narrow bends that took us up to the highest point. We passed horses and donkeys grazing on the vegetation, bells ringing around their necks. The sun was now shining and we had spectacular views of the sheer sided Jade Dragon Mountains on the other side of the gorge that seemed to stretch to the heavens, with the chocolate river far below. The traffic on the ‘low road' were just tiny miniatures. Apart from a few local shepherds, we had the entire route to ourselves. It was the most stunning physical site I had seen in China (except for the Great Wall). There were death defying narrow trails with no barriers and a 2000m drop off the sides. Waterfalls crashed above our heads and over the trail.

25 km and 7 hours later, we were so high up we wondered how we’d descend, but a slippery, muddy trail finally took us down to the hamlet of Walnut Grove, a motley collection of tourist lodges. We checked into an empty ‘Woody’s 2 Guesthouse’, which was a brand new lodge of polished wood, and lay just above the torrent of water overlooking the narrowest section of the gorge. The food was cheap and tasty, and sipping a beer on the balcony, it had one of the most scenic views I have ever seen from a lodge.

It rained all night and rained all the next day. We had decided to return back along the ‘Low Road' to Qiaotou. Incidentally, you can enter the Gorge at the other end at Deju, but you not only pay the 30Y entrance fee, but an additional 40Y because you are passing through the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Nat Park.

In miserable rainstorms, we hiked back along the rocky track (still to be sealed), followed by a few young Chinese walkers carrying umbrellas. Waterfalls crashed down and created temporary rivers across the road. There was no alternative but to wade through and have the water pour into your boots. Added to that, rocks and stones would crash down with the water and bounce off your head/body. We left the Chinese wondering if it was worth the bother. Within an hour, we were soaked from head to foot. A 4WD taxi pulled up and we clambered in. He took us all the way to Qiaotou and the 85p fare was worth every penny. We were back in Lijiang by midday. Whatever the weather, if you come to China, see the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

We had a final long haul to Chengdu via Jinjiang. The first hour was a spectacular winding road through towering gorge scenery with the chocolate coloured Jinsha River far below (this journey isn’t even mentioned in the guidebooks, but was one of the best in China). Then it was back to farmland, scruffy towns, people throwing litter out of the bus windows etc.

At one market town, while a tyre was replaced, we strolled through the street market to see another strange sight. An old man was squatted down, with his shirt pulled up and a female herbalist/doctor had stuck 7 small glass containers into his lower back. She then stuck a long syringe in each bottle. We were not sure if she was injecting something or removing blood. It was taking place at the side of the road, and noone else gave them a second glance. But it looked pretty gruesome.

After a few hours, large coal towns emerged with bellowing smoke from tall chimneys. New, ugly gigantic concrete bridges crossed the gorge. Eight hours later, we pulled into Jinjiang - a rail terminal at the start of the southern gorges/mountains.

No buses to Chengdu. It was the train or nothing. There was a train leaving at 5.30pm but only ‘hard seats' (3rd class), were available for the overnight journey. With no choice, I lined up, fighting the crowds, thrust my book in front of the glass and secured two tickets -the cheapest and only ones available.

The long green train was 16 carriages long and we were in carriage 16. I was surprised that we had numbered seats and that the overhead luggage racks were big enough to take backpacks. We settled in among the screaming children and Chinese families. The seats were padded but had vertical backs and a table was fixed between the pairs of seats. Fans tried to disperse the air above. The windows were left open until darkness fell. Our first and only Chinese train and oh well, only another 14 hours to go!

Train employees pushed cartloads of hot food up and down the aisles. A right ‘jobs worth' ticket inspector would prowl around, yell at people to get their feet off the seats, tuck in their hand luggage under the seats and question families who squeezed their kids (with no tickets) between them. After an hour of him, I just wanted to give him a slap. Our tickets were examined after nearly every stop, which seemed pointless, because we were the only two westerners aboard. Surely he could spot the difference.

At every stop, food hawkers would pile on with food, or you could buy food from the train windows from vendors pushing wheelbarrows on the platform. The Chinese couldn’t sit still. They’d roam up and down the carriages. There was an endless array of Chinese habits that pissed you off - spitting on the floor (we even saw them spitting in internet cafes), loud slurping of noodle soup, and endless throat clearing.

People finally fell asleep with their heads on the table. I read all night and at 4.30am, the carriage was deadly quiet. At 5am, we pulled into another stop and all hell let loose. Food hawkers stormed the carriage, everyone woke up and it was back to yelling, spitting slurping and throat clearing.

Thankfully, Chengdu appeared around 7.30am. We had entered the province of Sichuan (‘Heavenly Kingdom’), one of the largest and heavily populated in China. I had read in a newspaper about the latest culinary delight - Rabbit’s Head! It used to be ‘Viagra Hotpot' - consisting of penises of 4 different animals (take your pick, they weren’t named). Rabbits Head recipe was outlined: “the first step in rendering a rabbit’s head edible is to boil it with 9 others in a wok. Then the head is dabbed with sauces and spices, grilled into the meat over an open-air grill. When it is stewed, it still has its prominent eyes and teeth. Accomplished diners can find a lot of meat on them. When you dine, you should have only bones on your plate - no brains, no eyes and certainly no meat". They cost about 20p a head (ho-ho).

Chengdu is Sichuan’s capital, admin, educational and cultural centre. It is also the economic, political and military lynchpin of Southwest China. It is quite a smart city, with wide boulevards, modest high-rises and a splendid Mao Square with an imposing white statue of their ex-sacred leader. What it doesn’t have is local Chinese hotels for foreigners. We must have visited over 20 of them, only to get refused, and laughed off and finally resort to the cheapest Western hotel which for the price of our usual local places, consisted of a cramped double room and shared facilities.

We found the reception in this town so unfriendly that we opted to leave as soon as possible: to Tibet (that’ll teach them). Consequently, we failed to see the Giant Panda Breeding Centre, which had just turned down Panda cloning. We had seen the pandas in Beijing’s terrible zoo on the previous visit. We also failed to visit Leshan with its giant 713AD Buddha - a 71m high sitting statue carved into a cliff face and supposedly the largest in the world (now that the Afghans terrorists have blown up the previous world’s tallest in Afghanistan). And we bypassed Emeishan, one of the eight sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Anya had done this and said for a terrible admission price, you just followed thousands of loud, littering Chinese tourists up and down a hill with a few rebuilt temples en route. Waste of time, she concluded. I’m sure on my next visit to China, I’ll return to do them but by now we were ready to flee the country.

Getting to Tibet is an expensive business. It is a ‘de facto' part of China since their ‘liberation' of the country in 1950, and knowing the western tourists are more interested in Tibet than China, they go for the throat, finance wise. You can only enter Tibet on an ‘official' guided tour. This gives them the excuse to charge blatant rip-off prices. Show them the money or you aren’t going in. We discovered that ‘tour' prices had inflated outrageously to 2700Y (£230). For this we would get a flight to Lhasa (which only costs £100), airport transfers, 3 nights accommodation in a dorm room and a couple of days with tour guide to see sites you could do on your own. And you still had to pay the heavy admission prices. A visit to Tibet will leave you hating the Chinese Government.

So late afternoon, I was sitting outside the hotel, nursing a beer and writing the diary (as you do), when a young kid approached to practice his English. His father, a policeman had taught him, rather than the school. So we chatted away while a male Chinese tour group with their female tour guide, came and watched. I was then invited to dinner with the group at the hotel restaurant.

There was a huge spread of dishes (over 20) for the party of 10, but this was mostly ignored due to the continual drinking toasts of rice wine (‘white wine' - I’d call it Chinese Schnapps or Japanese Saki). It was served by the thimbleful but had to be downed in one. They had 3 bottles of the stuff and were definitely going for it. As the ‘honoured guest' like my experience in Hanoi, Vietnam, I had to drink more than the rest. Everyone got very rowdy, and arm wrestling with the foreigner became the evening sport. Loser to drink 3 shots, down in one. I lost every challenge but was still respected because I could handle the booze. It was a fine send-off from China as I staggered off to bed, really looking forward to the 4am start for Tibet.

Final Impressions: On a local level, the Chinese people are great. They are usually friendly and kind (despite communication problems) and almost honoured to have a westerner as a guest, even at their foodstalls. They will go out of their way to help or find someone who can help you. The sights are often amazing and if you can handle the haggling, you can do it pretty cheaply.

Against that, you have Chinese bureaucracy, double pricing and endless attempted rip-offs. The China you expect to find, has long gone. It is modernising and westernising rapidly and to travel throughout the country, as with India, you will pass a lot of crap to find the jewels.

The Communist market economy is dying quickly, but the Government still loves central control. Getting rather exhausted with our trip, we preferred to concentrate on a region, but I will return to tour around the rest of the country in the future.

Personally, I’d recommend that you give China a miss until dual pricing has been completely eradicated and you can stay at any hotel you choose. You are already too late to see the old traditional China, so why pay for the privilege to see the new one. It will still be there when you go, and the Chinese may have finished their cities by the time you arrive. I’m generalising of course. It is a vast country of different regions, but even our short trip through the South West region revealed an increasing homogeneous mass of modern Chinese culture. They are fast learning to use Internet and eat at McDonalds and KFC’s. You have to get off the tourist trail to see what is left.

Costs in China for 19 days (in British Pounds Sterling)

Travel - £293.20 (including £230.80 Tibet 'guided' tour)
Accommodation - £51.79
Food - £40.41
Other - £55.84
Total - £441.24
Grand Total - £12,909.68