Singing Chinese in the (t)rain

Kunming: a Chinese introduction

  Crossing in a sleeper bus

We were almost too late… but we caught our (very expensive) sleeping bus from Luang Prabang (in the middle of Laos) to Kunming (in the south of China)! It was a really nice experience:

• it was our first sleeper bus
• its design was surprising and quite comfortable
• the windows were large and we could admire the green landscape of North Laos
• we met a nice Chinese guy who gave us some advice for China

Something unexpected: the drivers were smoking… inside the bus!

In the sleeper bus to Kunming

At the border, we had to go with our bags outside of the bus: they checked our visas for quite a long time and asked us a lot of questions about our journies to Turkey and Egypt, few years back. But finally, everything was in order and we were allowed to pass without any issue. In the night, on the Chinese side of the borders, some soldiers stopped the bus and came inside: one guy was talking and talking very fast, very laud and very seriously. And behind him, a young woman was looking at us and laughing because we couldn't get a word. But they just wanted to check identities, passports and visas.

Lao-Chinese border

In the morning, we reached Kunming and… it was rainy and really cold! Indeed, the city is located in the mountains. We were very surprised (we didn't check before) and quite unhappy about that. But we kept being motivated: we had very few money (the ATM didn't wanted to accept our credit cards but we had some change from the border), we found a subway station and some people helped us with difficulty. Indeed, we had no language in common so they translated everything with their phones! However, we reached the right station, we found wifi in a coffee shop to contact our Couchsurfer and we came to his place! Such a complicated day!

Learning Chinese

When we arrived, Lawrence's enthusiasm was communicative. He already wanted to make us discover China's culture. He played us some Ruan, a traditional Chinese instrument and it was really nice! Afterward, he started a lesson of Chinese… which is a very difficult language! We only learned the basic pronunciation: the four sounds you can find. And… that's it! We did our best, but it was not very successful. Even remembering one sentence (“no meat, please!”), we couldn't do it. But the challenge was entertaining! The day after, in the evening, we also taught him some French and some German: he was really motivated!

Chinese Ruan

A rainy day

We spent two nights and one day in Kunming. Because Lawrence was busy with university and because it was rainy and cold, we developed some “Starbucks habits”: indeed, we needed some wifi to organized our trip and in the morning we were not so motivated to hang out in the rain. Both of us are really depending on the sun for a happy mood!

Green Lake

Green Lake

Nevertheless, we got tired of sitting inside: the rest of the day, we walked for hours: we wandered around the Green Lake and the university (that Lawrence showed us the evening before), we went to an exhibition, we saw two pagodas and a small temple and we bought some food in a little market! It was the occasion to experience for the first time how it is difficult to get vegetarian food in China (and it was even worse because of the difficulties of communication)!

Exhibition "Descending Movements" in Kunming

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In a temple - Kunming

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Hannah in the temple - Kunming

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The railways

The super fast train

Waking up at 5:45am. Walking in the empty streets seeing the first joggers. Catching the first metro at 6:45. Reaching the train station at 7:30. But… we were rushing! The station was very big and without indication in English, we had to pick up our tickets and to pass through a huge checking (they even didn't allowed Julie's knife in the train!). It was as if we would have taken the plane.

From Kunming to Beijing: 10 hours at 300km/h speed average. It seemed to us very crazy to go so fast and to leave such a long distance behind us. We were sleeping, reading and most of all looking through the windows: we saw the landscape evolving from a mountain area to an urban and flat country. Flat? Less and less because of the increasing number of high buildings! But this changing spectacle fascinated us.

Hannah in front of the "very-fast-train"

Underground hours in Beijing

Beijing was for us a lot of transport: indeed, as soon as we arrived and till the end of our journey, we spent hours and hours in the subway. It is true that it is quite practical to go here and there in the huge and populated capital: there are many stations and many lines and all of them were well indicated. The underground map is following the organization of the streets: some lines are in circle around the old center and the others are west-east or north-south oriented, which is very functional to reached the place you want. However, our savings got a bit hurt because the prices where finally quite high and because we had to use it more than twice a day.

Moreover, we were astonished by the amount of advertisement and advices: not only communication about this or this product, about this or this new movie, but also a lot of slogans, boards and movies to encourage you to the most ethical behavior ever. So surprising! But people didn't seem to care so much… maybe because all of them were absorbed into their cellphones? It was a weird experience.

Xitucheng

We had our favorite subway station, with the very long elevator: Xitucheng! Why? It is true that, excepte this elevator, it seems to have nothing in particular. However, however… it was the closest station from the house of Wayne, our amazing host in Beijing! He welcomed us during around six nights at his place and, thanks to him, we had a really nice time.

Therefore we were very happy, every time we were at Xitucheng: it becomes the ritual opening and closing of our days! Some mornings, we could see some old persons playing music and dancing with traditional fans in the park close by. And in the evenings, we were impatient and joyful to reach “home” to join Wayne – once, we even came back almost at the same time than him: we ran on the street because he was just walking fifty meters in front of us at the exit of the station!

Fans dance in the park of Xitucheng

Umbrellas and tourism

Chinese tourism

Chinese tourists and their umbrellas

In Beijing, we experienced the “Chinese tourism”. First of all, there were not only foreigners in the most touristic places. Indeed, we saw many local families, and most of them with children – which is mostly because of the suppression of the “one child” policy. There is a new young generation which is very visible on public spaces.

Otherwise, we noticed to things which are quite typical in the visited places:

• The milk ice creams: you can find it every where and every one has one! As soon as a seller opens the carton box, it is already empty!
• The umbrellas: Chinese women are very careful with the tint of their skin… which has to stay as light as possible! That is why, however the weather is, you will find a bunch of umbrellas going here and there around the touristic points!

Touristic calendar

We had quite a lot of time to spend in the capital and we could follow a very touristic and cultural calendar without really realizing it. We didn't have any planing – only advices of friends and nice suggestions from Wayne.

Day 1 - Tienanmen and Temple of Heaven – we walked around in the square and went into a small museum inside the south gate, which was efficient and interesting! We got a nice overview of China's history. We visited the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon: we were amazed by the beauty and the peace of the place!

Tienamen

The Temple of Heaven

Day 2 - Forbidden city – it was a very long day in this huge and crowded touristic place – where the royal family used to leave. We saw a lot different buildings and we ended our visit on the top of the hill on the opposite side, so as to have an amazing view of all the area.

In the Forbidden city

Overview

Hannah sitting on the top of the hill

Day 3 - National Museum – we didn't spend so much time inside, but we saw the porcelains, the wood carpentry work, the political presents from others countries to China, and, last but not least, a very impressive and affecting sculpture exhibition about {…}a massacre.

Inside the National Museum

For Jo and Mayank...

Day 4 - Great Wall – we went by bus (three buses and two and a half hours) to the Great Wall and we were so happy to see one of the seven wonders of the world! The area was huge: we walked through a garden full of trees close to a lake, along a river and most of all on the great wall it self! We liked the place a lot.
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Great Wall

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Great Wall

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Great Wall

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Day 5 - Summer Palace – at the end of our journey, even if both of us were a bit sick, we went to see the Summer Palace. We reached the top of the hill, where the main building is, and we walked around the lake, where many tourists were.

Inside the Summer Palace

Touristic way of life

We adopted a touristic way of life… by taking selfies. At the beginning, it was for our friend Matthias but, day after day, we got used to this joke! Shame on us?

Kunming

Tianamen

Temple of Heaven

Forbidden City

Forbidden City

Great Wall

Beijing's life

/!\ no English & no Google /!\

Hang out in the capital

Wayne showed us really nice places, especially to experience the night life of Beijing. The second evening, we went all together with shared bicycles to Huhai Lake, where there was a lot of animations: bars, concerts, people, street snacks and illuminations!
 

Close to Huhai

He suggested us also to go to Nanluoguxiang street, which is very crowded and very touristic, but where you can find really nice postcards and really nice food! Such a joyful night atmosphere!


We spent also the end of our Saturday in the East part of Beijing: the commercial area. It was really impressive how much it is like a “city of malls”. There are all kinds of fancy and expensive brands, chic bars and restaurants. It is not really the place where we usually like to go, but it was interesting to see the people going around, the amount of the shops and the organization of the space (with very large and very clean walking streets).

Malls - East part of Beijing

Chi bo le: a chopsticks story

Even if it was difficult to find vegetarian food, we really enjoyed the food in Beijing. But first of all, eating was a challenge … due to the chopsticks! We tried to learn how to use it properly, but we have to confess that it was not very successful. Wayne seemed to be a bit desperate!

Momos!

In Old Beijing, we tried different typical staff:

Old Beijing

• Chinese snacks: it is a shop where you can find a lot of local sweets – you take as much as you want and at the end, you pay per kilogram. We felled like children in the chocolate world of Willy Wonka!
• Beans soup: Wayne was really happy and really proud to make us try a typical soup of Beijing, based on the rest of a beans' meal. It was surprising, but not bad at all!
• Chinese tea: Lilia, one of Wayne's friends, brought us to a tea shop to try some Chinese tea. We learned that there are four main kinds of tea in China: the green tea, the red tea, the oblong tea and the flowers tea!

Chinese snacks

In the shop

We went also in some restaurants and we need to confess the last one was quite epic: we had a huge pot with two different kinds of watery soup (one spicy and one not) where we could put some ingredients inside to cook them. We ordered way too much food! But to “keep us awake”, we had this incredible Chinese wine (more than 40%…!).

Hot Pot

Wayne and Hannah

Julie and Hannah

That evening, Wayne was saying all the time:

But why are you vegetarian
Next time you come, you will eat meat!
If I send a picture of all these veggies to my friends, they will laugh and say that it is not a proper meal.
Seriously girls, you don't regret?

So… we just ordered one more plate of his favorite meat. And it was very tasty!

Beijing's style

We now have an idea about the life in Beijing, even if Wayne said all the time that he is not “a proper Chinese dude”. He is leaving alone, wants to change his life, he is playing basketball and he is running, he is a very good photographer and he will become soon a master of guitar (yes, yes, yes).


But still.

He told us a lot about the lives of Chinese people, he talked about his family, he suggested us some movies and he showed us some very amusing Chinese TV shows. And also, he taught us a funny card game which everybody is apparently playing in China! Globally, he answered all our questions about China and Chinese Culture (and we have always many questions) and thanks to him, we know better what kind of rhythm and of way of life you can expect to have in the middle of this huge city.

Break in the curving

An intensive rest

When we arrived in the capital, we were getting tired of leaving every time a place after two nights. This rhythm of traveling was quite exhausting! In Beijing, we stayed almost a week for several reasons: and such a long break was absolutely new for us! It was so nice to begin to have a kind of routine, especially in a comfortable place like the one where we were. It was like holidays.

Cool attitude

However, we didn't fully take a rest. We had always something to do, we went always out for some activities, we walked a lot and we slept not enough! But we really enjoy our time in the city: we did all what we wanted to do, we discovered a lot of places, we met nice people and we had good moments together!


The experience was intense and full of emotions.

Get ready on the starting block

If we rushed so much to reach Beijing and if we stayed so long there, it is because we booked the Transmongolian on the 4th of July. But French citizens need to get a visa for Mongolia and there is no express one!

Therefore, during these 6 days, we were busy with:


Applying for the Mongolian Visa [problem: they said that they needed one more working day than expected to deliver the visa, so we had to argue a bit and it was finally fine!]


Finding the train tickets to Ulaanbataar [problem: China Ticket Online doesn't have e-ticket for international trains, so we had to meet a guy Alex, at a random subway station, to pick up our ticket]


Organizing the transit through Russia [problem: the information on the Internet about the Transit visa were not so easy to get and at some point we even thought that we won't have enough time to apply before the departure of our train to Novosibirsk!]


But finally, each problem was solved, one after another. We could organized everything before leaving Wayne's place, even if it was sometime at the last minutes (like for the requests on Couchsurfing!).

The Transmongolian

Beijing was a really important and symbolic step for us. It was the end of East Asia and of our crazy running competition to the North. From there, everything was supposed to be easier and more peaceful.
Going up into the legend-train, we felt ready. Ready in the curve to have a look to our compass and to change of direction. Ready to start a new chapter.


Cap to the West!

Transmongolian