1. Sang along on the karoke bus.

2. Amused the locals with our woolly hats. 

3. Avoided food poisoning, amazingly!

4. Hiked the 4^th New Wonder of the World.

5. Played and won at Texas Hold’em [best poker face ever].

6. Drank far too much Tsingtao Beer – pure piss, but cheap.

7. Spent far too much money with nothing to show for it [apart from damaged livers].

8. Learned absolutely no Mandarin other than ‘Ni Hao’.

9. Smoked 20 cigs a day by choice, and 90 with without [pollution].

10. Watched a whole series of House [Hugh Laurie].

Started by China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, and later added to by the Qing and Ming Dynasties, the Great Wall is the world’s longest human-made structure, stretching over approximately 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 km (4,160 miles) in total.  It is also the largest human-made structure ever built in terms of surface area and mass. At its peak the wall was guarded by more than one million men. It has been estimated that somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.

We trekked the less touristed and restored section from Jinshanling to Simatai (10k), a truly authentic wall experience.  We awoke at 5am and following a 3–hour drive were ready to start our hike at 9.  It was a tough 4–hours (30 towers) but it was spectacular with incredible surroundings.  When you look back at the long section completed, it’s just jaw-dropping.  We were very snap happy, with around 350 photographs.  Amazingly, we only met two other trekkers en route, so we had the wall pretty much to ourselves. 

The same hair raising feeling that you get at the Taj and the Pyramids, and one you don’t get at the other UNESCO sites, a unique cultural heritage site and a natural selection as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Interesting fact: the myth that the Great Wall is visible with the naked eye from the moon was finally buried in 2003, when China’s first astronaut failed to spot the barrier from space.  The wall can be seen from a low earth orbit, but so can many other objects of human construction, such as motorways and railways.  Looked at from above, the relative width and uniform colour of large roads renders them more distinct than the Great Wall, a structure even less visible from the moon.  The myth has been edited from Chinese textbooks, where is has cast its spell over generations of Chinese.

Video also included!  More photos here.

UNESCO World Heritage Site #13

For almost five centuries it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

We have yet to visit a UNESCO Site and not take hundreds of photos.  On this occasion we took only a few. The complex so vast, the buildings were so large and so busy with tourists, it was almost impossible to capture a decent shot.  There was literally thousands upon thousands of tourists, truly incredible and what a money spinner.

We, like most of our travel comrades in the hostel, became frustrated walking around and in the end just headed for home.  We have provided a few pictures, but they are all crap…even the ariel photos taken from Beihai Park looking down on the city are layered with smog…

The two boys in the picture below had the right idea .

UNESCO World Heritage Site #12

We left at 7pm and braved 12hrs sitting on our rucksacks in the smoking section in between two windy carriages. There is a silver lining however, at least the clouds of smoke drowned the stench of piss (or ammonia) from the French style squatting toilets either side.

Our colds were on the mend but we now feel ropey again. Still, this means we are now officially quadruple hard traveller types.  Backpacking is not all about chilling and drinking beer you know…

It’s just a few shots of us rambling through one of the tourist streets, but we think it still captures the laid back approach that seems to be unique to Pingyao.  Not sure what the quality will be like.  We shot it in HD but not sure how youtube handles this type of media.

The smog of Xi’an and change in temperature from the south has given us both pretty bad colds, confining us to our beds for most of today.  Having nice residence in which to laze about will no doubt aid the healing process.  It rather difficult to write posts when your brain feels like jelly!

Energy levels permitting, tomorrow we plan on visiting Pingyao’s many temples, so expect more from here soon.

New addition: Davey’s ramblings, just press play below!

Pingyao was a thriving merchant town during the Ming dynasty and centre of a large network of trade that extended from the south of China to Mongolia.  Local businessmen had become so successful by the Qing dynasty that they created the country’s first banks and cheques, in order to facilitate the transfer of enormous amounts of silver from one place to another.  The city fell into poverty in the 20th century, and thankfully, without the cash to modernise, it’s streets have since gone unchanged.

With a movie-set charm, it has obviously become a major tourist trap mobbed with megaphone-wielding tour groups.  To escape the souvenir shops and Japanese paparazzi, we hired a couple of bicycles and got to see its 21^st century wealth – dusty cobbled streets and architecture more akin to life in imperial China.

UNESCO World Heritage Site #11

The warriors were built by a crazy emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who decided that a simple burial tomb was not enough and so build himself an entire burial city. The warriors are some 2km from his tomb.  The surrounding areas have yet to be fully uncovered.

The emperor’s original plan was to bury the actual soldiers for protection in the after life, but someone slightly more sane convinced him to make clay replicas. There are thousands of them and each is based on an actual soldier – some 6,000 unique faces. It’s amazing to see thousands upon thousands of these soldiers all in line. Many were damaged from years of warfare after the fall of the Qing dynasty.

Less than half of the soldiers have actually been uncovered to-date, as their colouring fades when exposed to light or air. They are investigating new preservation technologies before they uncover the remainder. It must have been beautiful to see all these soldiers fully painted.

 UNESCO World Heritage Site #10

Xi’an is a considerable step up from Cunming, rather reassuring that we will find some solace during our short visit.  It didn’t start well. Chinese people will never admit when they don’t know something and would prefer to give you a wrong answer than suffer the shame of not knowing the answer. For us this translated into 4 people giving us different directions to our hotel from the bus station. It took us over an hour to go what should have been less than a kilometre.

Xi’an is what we all imagine a Chinese city to be like – polluted, traffic jams, ugly concrete buildings, etc. The pollution here was not like anything we’d ever experienced before. Going outside made our eyes water, gave us a headache and made us short of breath, on top 20 fags each a day! They actually have black snow here in the winter.

We hadn’t come to Xi’an for the city, though. This was the base from which to visit the terracotta warriors, which we plan to visit tomorrow.

Probably the most interesting part of Xi’an city is the Muslin quarter. Xi’an has the largest Muslim population in China. We visited one of the mosques but found it hard to see the architectural differences between it and a Buddhist temple – except fore the Arabic writing.

Some photos of our walk about town including the famous Drum and Bell Towers.  We’ll starting with a pic of the polluted sky – this is not mist it’s smog!  One for the boys – pic 2 – the standard issue uniform for female police officers.

When we we eventually ventured from our cocoon we were slightly taken aback by the inhabitants of this, soon to be, 21^st century super-power – gobbing, spitting, and flemming are just the start.  Pushing and shoving and grunting can also be added to the list.  The one time we ate we watched as they spat everything that wasn’t welcome on their plate right to the floor – animals.  In their defence, we felt like spitting out the foot too, it was disgusting!

It is said that one in every three cigarettes consumed worldwide is smoked in China – this we can confirm without question.  We hid in our cabin throughout to avoid the smoke engulfed carriages.  It was almost a comedy sketch, a fag in one hand and chopsticks in the other – eating and smoking at once – something you certainly wouldn’t see back home.  Everything they did was started and finished with a fag.  They passed around a water pipe like it was a bag of sweets – everybody pulling and chuffing, comical really.

The majority of passengers seemed to be country bumkins, so hopefully this will not be the norm throughout China – we’ll see.  The carriage windows were so dirty we could not take any scenic photos – great start!

First photo: Sam explaining to the police officer (that took our order) that he forgot to return our ten Yuan change, no doubt he was hoping we hadn’t noticed – chuffing on a fag!