Our fourth trip to China, and our longest to date (two weeks), this one drew a line between three points, all of which have served as the capital (although the "China" they have headed up has taken very different forms).

We covered the intervening distances by overnight train, which -- once you're on board -- is a pretty comfortable way to go. For masses of helpful info on train travel in China (or indeed anywhere else), see The Man in Seat Sixty-One.

We booked our hotels on Agoda, and we didn't book breakfasts. This was a good move. China does breakfast prolifically. There was rarely a problem getting a cheap, tasty morning meal (even if it wasn't always quite what we expected -- see below).

Pre-trip attempts to learn more Chinese were scuppered -- as usual -- by work. Nevertheless, we managed to get around reasonably well with our three words and lots of point-and-smile (and let it be noted that the vast majority of Chinese people are incredibly helpful). But there are layers and layers to this place, which can be mined only with more understanding of the language. I've said it before, and I say it again: Prudence, forget the too-old-for-Chinese stuff, get serious, and LEARN CHINESE... Just do it...

Beijing

The summer months are not a good time to visit the current capital... We kind of knew this from last year, but we thought early July might be better than late August. Well, as it turns out, not really...

So again, we either skipped the major sights or did the bits you don't have to go IN. (Reminds me a bit of our early, very poor, travel days, when basically if you had to PAY to go in somewhere, you didn't go in it...)

Nevertheless, despite the crowds and the heat and the leaden skies, there were many rewarding and/or interesting experiences:

1. Climbing Jingshan Park's little hills (made from the earth dug out to make the Forbidden City moat), and watching the sun set over the mountains we'd crossed in the train from Mongolia just that morning



2. Taking the long metro ride to the Summer Palace, where you can admire the proliferation of water lilies, watch your fellow-visitors photographing, picnicking, and pedaloing, eat delicious traditional ice-cream (paper-wrapped blocks on sticks), and wonder about the kind of life evoked by labels such as: "When the emperor and empress went by boat from the Garden of Clear Ripples to Jade Spring Hills, they would pass under the Jade Belt Bridge"



3. Enjoying lots of great food (star turns: smoked pork and grilled capsicum; sweet and sour eggplant; and various tasty things in Sichuan chilli oil from the friendly but non-English-speaking restaurant next door to the hotel)
4. Wondering every day what this same establishment would supply for breakfast (little stuffed steamed buns we could always point to successfully, but whenever we pointed at what we thought was rice porridge, we got either clear soup with egg, or some kind of corn grits...)



5. Watching the Beijing blossom falling like pale green snow
6. Wishing I'd paid closer attention during our walk through the Foreign Legation quarter, as it subsequently all featured in a tranche of reading
7. Relaxing in the calm of historic Zhongshan Park -- what a total life-saver after the melee of neighbouring Tiananmen Square and the entrance to the (still unvisited) Forbidden City
8. Wishing we had a KL equivalent of The Bookworm (such a comfortable, homely, relaxed bookshop/cafe/bar/concert venue)



9. Stumbling (while en route to the Miaoying Temple White Dagoba) across a lovely bit of hutong (traditional residential alleyways), with old guys airing their songbirds and playing cards or go (the Dagoba is one of the few bits of Mongol-era construction left in Beijing -- we didn't actually see inside, but it floats ghost-like over the neighbourhood)



10. Experiencing the Beijing rush-hour, when yellow-shirted marshals keep the crowds in order (the passenger-on-train density is sometimes equalled by KL transport, it is true, but the frequency of the trains is something to be wondered at -- these guys really know how to shift people)
11. Totally failing to locate the Museum of Tap Water (yes, we did want to go there -- it sounded pretty interesting to us), but observing with interest the morning demographics, with lots of elderly people looking after their grandies in the little strips of public garden along the way
12. Taking in some lovely porcelain and Buddhist statuary in the Capital Museum
13. Drinking a green tea pond-in-a-glass in the hotel lobby while waiting to set off for Beijing West station



14. Surviving the utter bedlam of the railway ticket purchasing area...

Xian

This is a major-league historic city (the capital for 10 dynasties). It's also really engaging. It was hit by an official heatwave while we were there, which somewhat took the edge off our sightseeing ardour, but we still did plenty of exploring.

Highlights:

1. Getting upgraded at The Ramada Bell Tower (this SO rarely happens to us...)
2. Marking time by the sweet chimes of the clock nearby (which is not the Bell Tower, be it noted)



3. Just loving the Muslim Quarter's food offerings -- different kinds of sticky rice cakes; walnut cakes (made by an adorably complicated machine); dried persimmons; peanut brittle (pounded and pulled by hand); creamy drinking yoghurt; sunflower or sesame seed-studded flat-bread, either on its own or piled with cumin beef; refreshing chilled noodles; "Chinese hamburgers" (small flatbreads stuffed with cured meat); a thickened vegetable and meatball soup that makes your tongue tingle (the culprit here, which later showed up in a beans and chilli dish, with nowhere to hide, turned out to be tiny berries: the notorious Sichuan pepper...); fabulous beef noodles... (and those are just the things we personally tried)









4. Also appreciating the lovely buildings of this part of town, such as the peaceful and beautiful Grand Mosque (which -- like others in this area -- is an intriguing mixture of Chinese and Islamic culture), or the labyrinthine former home of Qing bureaucrat Gao Yuesong







5. Enjoying some of Xian's trademark fun food -- firstly, from a bread-and-soup joint, where you choose your meat (beef or lamb), rip up the two small flatbreads with which you're provided, put the pieces in your bowl, and send it off to have the soup added (so you end up with chunks of deliciously tender meat, tasty broth, a few glass noodles, and broth-saturated bread), and then eat the lot accompanied by whole cloves of pickled garlic; and secondly, from First Noodle Under the Sun, a franchise with weirdly labelled but tasty dishes, where we chose sour soup and dumplings, and the famous 3.8-metre noodle (this comes in its own liquid support environment, from which you manoeuvre pieces into the two bowls of soup that accompany it, all of which is no mean chopstick feat, I can tell you...)



6. Visiting the Bell and Drum Towers, for great views, interesting exhibitions, and invigorating performances



7. Climbing sweatily to the top of the Big Goose Pagoda, and paying our respects to the original monk-hero of the Journey to the West



8. Getting to see the Big Goose-adjacent monorail doing a test lap (alas, it won't be in service until September)
9. Overcoming our crowd-phobia to visit the Terracotta Warriors, the antiquity, scale, and artistry of which are truly amazing
10. Enjoying tea and tea stories at the Warriors' tea house (I don't know the official name, but it's a haven of quiet refinement amid the masses of visitors)









11. Vowing never to order by pictures again, after inadvertently acquiring all the bony bits of a chilli duck, beak and all...
12. Riding a tandem around Xian's beautifully preserved city walls



13. Sunday strolling round the outside of those same walls; watching people relaxing -- dancing, performing Chinese opera, playing go...; and then deviating off to the Shu Yuan Men "culture street", where the shops offer paintings and all kinds of calligraphy supplies
14. Surviving the scrum that is Xian railway station (these older stations just can't comfortably handle the volume, it seems)

Chongqing

Chiang Kai-shek's wartime capital, this was the Cinderella of our cities, I suppose, as it is not particularly known as a tourist destination. We came primarily for the monorail (ask Nigel...)

But we actually found it full of interest.

Admittedly, when the cloud is down, visibility is apocalyptic, and the atmosphere a steambath. (We knew this city was humid in the summer, and to be honest we didn't take the warning seriously. We live in the tropics, for goodness sake... We live humidly... But I tell you, this place makes Malaysia look arid...)

On the other hand, Chongqing also provided the bluest, brightest days of our whole China trip, and whatever the weather, this is a place worth visiting.

The worst part of the experience was the very unimpressive airport on the way home. Obviously, the answer here is to keep travelling, and leave by train...

Key things:

1. Making the most of the 15-hour train journey from Xian (I don't actually think it was supposed to take that long -- we got stuck interminably at Xian South); rejoicing in the reappearance of rice terraces in the fabulously wooded mountains that lined our rail route; and admiring the world of viaducts and high-speed trains that marks the approach to the city
2. Getting used to Chongqing's topography -- it's built on a series of elevations, so everywhere there are sides of cliffs, flights of steps, escalators (the city lays claim to Asia's longest single escalator, from Lianglukou Metro Station to the central railway station), tunnels, and vertiginous buildings (so that you step into something at what is apparently ground level, and discover there are eight floors below you on the other side)



3. Looking at some of the few remaining houses (and their original pictures and modern imitators) that demonstrate the traditional way of dealing with this topography -- by using stilts







4. Checking out the stately People's Square and Great Hall of the People; the Arhat temple (the hall with the famous terracotta figures is being renovated at the moment, but the rest is still very atmospheric); the moss-covered remains of an old city gate; the rambling and so very photogenic Huguang Guild Hall; and the excellently laid out Three Gorges Museum







5. Returning to the World War 2 era in the interesting little museums commemorating the Flying Tigers (the US-Chinese air cooperation that resisted the Japanese), General Joseph Stilwell, Zhou Enlai, and Sun Yat Sen's wife, Song Qing Ling (the last three are all fascinating buildings aside from their significance as historical sites); and the Liziba collection of relocated buildings from the time when Chongqing was the capital





6. Sampling the amble-friendly snack food (thin, chewy, green onion cake; slightly sweet, crumpet-reminiscent yellow cakes; spongy white fermented rice cakes; pastries that resembled kaya puffs...)
7. Joining the Chongqingers for their favourite breakfast chilli noodles (noodles in a thick, spicy gravy, with peanuts, vegetables, and coriander)
8. Joining the Chongqingers on their tiny side-of-the-road stools at lunchtime for high-decibel kuaytiao and soya milk
9. Meeting the Yangtze (wow, that's one BIG, meaty, fast-flowing river) -- walking across it on the big bridge, labouring up it and skimming back down it on a brief lunchtime cruise, and watching it collide with the Jialing at the great confluence



10. Checking out the Liberation Monument, with its Rolex clock and its surrounding mall area (I had an affogato at Haagen Dazs -- just because I could...)



11. Zipping around on the very user-friendly train network (of course, the monorail was our favourite, but the normal light rail is very serviceable too)
12. Surviving Ciqikou, the restored "ancient city" (we should have known -- these tourist-adapted heritage places are always totally manic...), by dint of popping into an upstairs air-conditioned cafe for another pond of tea, and then taking refuge in the highly photogenic Baolun temple



13. Discovering -- unfortunately rather late in the piece -- a lovely branch of Oliver Brown very close to the hotel
14. Deciding definitively that I do NOT like those Sichuan peppers (spicy -- yes, good; tingly -- no, weird...)



Till next time, China. It's been awesome...