Rach's Adventures in China

Here I am, back in London! My travels in China feel like a dream now.. It's hard to believe it actually happened!!

Right.. so I think I left off the blog at the Internet cafe in Jiujiang - that feels like ages ago! After leaving, we bought some Jasmine tea from a teahouse across the street and then hopped in a taxi to go home. The taxis in Jiujiang are unlike taxis I've seen anywhere else in the world - they were basically just tin boxes painted bright yellow and stuck on wheels! I got in the back and Liz hopped in the front. I can't repeat her words on the way home...there was a lot of cursing and swearing. Liz admits to being a bad backseat driver at the best of times but this guy's driving left a ridiculous amount to be desired. Apparently, the double yellow line in the middle of the road meant nothing to him - we spent most of the journey on the other side of the road passing cars - narrowly dodging the traffic coming towards us. I feel I should also mention that there are no seatbelts in these cabs..

So...the next day we got up really early to get ourselves prepared for our day at the adventure camp. The English-speaking Chinese girl knocked on our door at around 7:55 AM to see if we were ready and we followed her downstairs. Waiting for us, outside the hotel, was a beat-up Suzuki mini-bus thing. We climbed in, thinking that we'd probably be the only ones going, but low and behold, a Chinese man, his wife, and who I presume was there son all climb in the backseat behind us, and another girl gets in the front. The driver starts up the engine and we potter off on our way - we have no idea what to expect. We feared for our lives as the driver veered in and out of traffic, although I guess she was an amazing driver compared with the taxi the night before. We drove through some random villages and dropped and picked up people here and there - it was all very random and made no sense, since this was supposed to be a mini-bus going just to the mountain resort. We picked up a girl who was shocked by the two Western girls in the car but who fortunately spoke a bit of broken English - we had what had become a regular conversation of English/Chinese. She helped the woman in the back say 'Welcome to Jiujiang' - she was very pleased with herself and started chanting this! She started talking to me in Chinese, asking where I was from etc, and I was pretty chuffed that I understood and was able to reply. But, like every conversation in Chinese, it reached a point where I could no longer understand and that was the end of it.

We arrived at the mountain in one piece and climbed the steps to the entrance, walking past a sign which welcomed us to Stone Gate Ravine - also called Sho Men Gorge. We were left to our own devices from here on in and we entered the park (crossing a dodgy bridge) with open minds. I thought from the brochure that it was going to be like an adventure park - like one of those military places where you have assault courses. It turned out to just be a mountain trail and we climbed the mountain for hours - I'd say about 3 or 4 hours - in the pouring rain. We passed a random temple where the guy inside tried to get us to pray with him - we declined, since we're not Buddhist and had been advised by our Chinese students back in Beijing that it was rude to partake in religious activities if you're not of that sect. A random Chinese man stopped us on our way and started going off on one in Chinese - we didn't understand a word of what he was saying. It was a bit awkward - we couldn't understand so there was no point in staying there talking to him, yet he kept talking. I think he was trying to tell us something about the mountain or the best way to climb it...I'm sure whatever he was saying was helpful, but we couldn't get a word of it. Next we passed a random cave full of Chinese people! They had a fire going and everything. They were there to carry people up the mountain for a fee - which we saw them doing later. Lazy people, paying people to carry them up!! The steps on the mountain were rocky and treacherous so I have no idea how they did it without falling down or getting hurt.

We eventually reached the top - wahey! It wasn't actually the top of the mountain but it was as high as we were allowed to go on the trail. I believe it was Mount Lu Shan...but we'll never be sure. We were cold and soaking wet and decided to head back down to the beginning. The English-speaking girl back at the travel agents had told us we could leave whenever we wanted.......this turned out to not be the case. We found the woman who had driven us and she ushered us into a little shack out of the rain where we were sat on a couple of stools, while she returned to her game of Mah Jong with her friends. We were pretty much ignored for the next hour - apart from them asking us if we wanted to eat, to which we politely replied no. Liz and I were both shivering - while it was good to be out of the rain, sitting there in our wet clothes was not the best thing for us and we both felt awful. There were a few animals around - a dog, a puppy, a cat and a kitten. The kitten was grossly underfed and kept mewing for food, it was so sad. Liz and I ate some biscuits, dropping crumbs on the floor for the kitten. We were devastated when the woman who owned the shack kicked the kitten across the room on a few occasions - the poor little thing went flying, it broke my heart. Eventually food was brought out and we were once again offered some - this time we felt it was rude to decline and we also thought it might help to warm us up so we tucked in. I have no idea what we ate..... The rice was really nice. The rest of it? I don't know what was in those dishes but I am suspicious that it was cat or dog, and Liz suspected one of them was a small bird. We were made to pay at the end of it, 10Y each, which was a bit steep for a meal we didn't even want!! Fortunately, the end of the meal meant we were allowed to go home and we piled back into the mini-bus - the other people who had joined us for the ride there appeared out of nowhere and came along home with us, being dropped off in random places along the way. Back at the hotel, we jumped in the shower and then went to bed for a few hours, getting up only to go to the local shop to get some food for dinner. We were exhausted!

The next day, we got up early and packed our bags up. We discovered an Internet cafe in our hotel so we went up there to look at hostels for our next destination, Hong Kong. Looking through the options on Hostelworld, we discovered that the majority seemed to be located either in Chungking Mansion or Mirador Mansion, both on Nathan Road. That in itself made me a little bit nervous, and then reading the reviews for the hostel, my suspicions grew. Most of them were from people in England, Australia or Canada but the English was not what you'd expect from native English speakers - they all sounded like foreigners, and the reviews seemed a bit too good to be true. But, since we were running out of time, we agree to book the first night in one of them so that we would at least have somewhere to stay upon our arrival and then we could always extend it when we got there.

We got back to our room at 11:55 am, ready for checkout at 12. Our bags were gone!!!!! We freaked out a little bit. All I had on me was my purse - no passport or anything!! We rushed downstairs and ran into the travel agents - apparently they'd taken it upon themselves to move our stuff out for us since it was getting so close to checkout time. Another example of the overwhelming kindness of Chinese people....but on this occasion, we were a little bit freaked out since all of our valuables had been taken!!! We checked our bags and luckily everything was still there.. My backpack had been left open from when I'd taken my purse out and my passport and camera were pretty much hanging out...I'm just grateful they were all still there!!

The travel agent directed us to the bus for Nanchang and we boarded it - once again getting a lot of funny looks. The buses vary so much over there - there's no companies or anything, it's just random people who own coaches and drive these random journeys for a living. From what I can gather anyway!! We got back to Nanchang and went to the same cafe that had entertained us the day we got there. Most of the family weren't there but one woman recognised us and brought us in. Everyone in there had a good chuckle as we ordered our food and drinks in Chinese. I think our pronunciation is fine (otherwise they wouldn't have understood us), they just find it funny to hear us speaking their language.

We headed to the waiting lounge for our train and it was absolutely packed, we sat down on our bags and waited in the steaming hot room under the watchful eyes of hundreds of locals. We nearly had our tickets nicked and other people tried to sell us better tickets than what we had. About 5 minutes before we were due to depart, they finally let us through to the platform. What a mad scramble!!!!!!!! We barely made it on to the train. Our tickets for this journey were hardseats....that's all they had available when we booked it. After experiencing the luxury of the soft sleeper and hard sleepers, we were certainly not prepared for what we were about to face. I cannot believe I complained about the hard sleeper!!

I struggled to get to my seat - I got knocked over twice by a man who get pushing his way through the aisles. THey oversell the hardseat carriages so there are loads of people standing, who will often try to steal other people's seats. By the time we managed to get to our seats, all of the overhead storage was full so we managed to get one of our packs under our seat and then had to sit on the other one in an obscure balancing act. We went on like that for about an hour and then asked the people across from us if we could put it under their seat - there was no way we could have carried on for a 14 hour train journey like that! The stares were quite horrendous - it was nonstop. I know most people will think that we should have been used to it by now - and we were - but in our condition of complete exhaustion come the evening, it was more than tiresome. We played games (like Hangman) to make the time pass and even made lists of 100 things we want to do before we die. I got to around 73, I think. We were both so tired and by about 12 am (about 6 hours into our train journey) we were both feeling delusional and dreaming back to the days of the hard sleeper. The seats on this train were HARD and very uncomfortable. My butt fell asleep within 10 minutes of being on it and didn't wake up until about an hour after we'd got off the next day!! Anyway.. we both managed to sleep a little bit - although it was more like drifting in and out of consciousness!!

We were ridiculously grateful to arrive in Shenzhen the next morning. We had debated spending a night there but Liz's guide gave a very unappealing view of it, with very high levels of crime, so we gave it a miss and headed straight for customs to leave China and enter Hong Kong.. I'll leave the rest of this story to be told another day as it's late here in London and I need to go to bed!

Phew....where do I begin.

It's 7:30 PM and I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in a town called Jiujiang, which is north of Nanchang and on the Yangtze (sp?) river. I'm sure you're wondering how I ended up here.. (so am I, to be honest!)

We asked in our hostel in Shanghai if we could get the train to Hong Kong from Nanchang. You can't book train tickets from another city in this country - you have to actually be IN the city. It's ridiculous. So we planned to arrive in Nanchang today, book tickets to HK for Thursday night, and then have a few days to mess around in the countryside before heading down there. The woman at the hostel booked our tickets to Nanchang and reassured us that we could get the train to HK from there.

So we embark on our 11 hour train journey from Shanghai - this time we had a hard sleeper instead of a soft sleeper and it was far less luxurious!!! The train was completely open and there was 3 layers of beds. Luckily we boarded early and managed to get two of the low bunks so we wouldn't have to climb up to the top bunks!! The Chinese people found it quite hilarious that there were two Western girls on our train and basically stared at us for most of the journey. One girl tried to talk to us and would repeat everything we said back to the rest of the train in Chinese and they would have a good laugh. We're getting kind of use to this treatment by now!!

I managed toge to get a bit of sleep on the train and it went by a lot faster than I had anticipated. The train had been stopping a lot and we had no idea where we were so we didn't get off the train until one of the guards came and told us that this was our stop!

It was pissing it down with rain when we left the station in Nanchang. It was 6 am and the ticket office was closed so we got bundled into a little cafe opposite the station. Well, I say cafe, of course it's not really a cafe!! We asked for coffee (kafei) but they didn't sell it so we settled for Xuebi (Sprite) but decided to give the local delicacies which were on offer a miss. It was a family-run place and they all sat down with us at our table and had a long conversation with us, during which they offered to let us stay at their house. It's kind of funny here - a lot of people think that if we don't understand them when they speak Chinese to us, that we will understand if they write what they're saying down in Chinese characters. A lot of the people we've met don't know pinyin so it's been a bit of a struggle on all sides at times!!

Anyway.. we spent about an hour trying to figure out where to get tickets from and then about an hour queuing up for tickets. We find out that the train doesn't go to HK from Nanchang and so we have to go to Shenzhen instead. We got a bit flustered and ended up booking tickets for tonight - I had to go back and re-queue to change them for Wednesday instead. We felt a bit better after booking our tickets for the train - at least we'll be headed in the right direction. We were soaking wet and freezing cold and didn't really know what to do with ourselves so we tried to book into a hotel for the night, but the prices were extortionate (well, comparitively!!). As tempting as it was to whip out the Mastercard, we braved the rain again and walked around trying to find a bus that would take us to a town which was on the map in Liz's Lonely Planet guide called Jiujiang. There wasn't any info about the town but we decided to give it a go. We found a bus which was filled with local men who shouted 'Yin guo ren?!?' (English?!?) when we got on the bus - they all found it really funny. The bus took about 2 hours or so and when we arrived we faced the same problems as everywhere...language barriers and no idea what we're doing!! We thought about continuing on to another town called Lushan but we couldn't find a bus. The buses here make as much sense as the trains - there's just random coaches scattered around and you have to go and ask each one if they're going where you want to go!! Luckily a woman snatched us out of the street and took us to a travel agency where a girl spoke some English and she helped us get sorted out. Lushan sounded very expensive (and after another look at Liz's Lonely Planet, perhaps not a place we would like to stay overnight) so we asked them about other options. After about half an hour, we had agreed a price for 2 nights at the hotel next door as well as a day trip to an adventure camp place at a lake tomorrow. No idea what we're letting ourselves in for but it looks quite fun.

We had a good nap at the hotel - it was sooo nice to just have somewhere to kip and have a shower - we were feeling pretty miserable by this point!! We got a taxi into town around 5:30 and I picked up some trainers for about 4 or 5 pounds for the adventure place tomorrow. We couldn't find anywhere to eat for ages but eventually sidled down an alleyway and found a place that the locals seemed to eat in - basically you picked your own meats and veg and they cooked it all up for you. It's a bit stranger than it sounds though - luckily a woman took us under her wing and helped us with it all. The food was ridiculously spicy but really nice. It hit the spot - we hadn't really eaten a meal for a couple of days so it was nice to have some real food.

That brings us up to now - I'm just sat in an Internet cafe, about to head back to the hotel for an early night. We're leaving at 8 am tomorrow morning for this crazy adventure place. Should be interesting.

Hmmm what else... Shanghai was really different to Beijing. I'm trying to think what we did there!! My memory's a bit of a blur. On our first day, we just walked around the Putuo district (where we were staying) for a few hours and then came back for a bit of a rest. In the evening, we headed out into town and went up the Oriental Pearl tower which was amazing. We went right to the very top and the views were incredible, I've got loads of amazing pictures. It started to get a bit late so we headed back towards the hostel in search of some quick food. We ended up at the 'Be Good for You Teahouse' across the road which was very busy - seems like the place for the local people of about my age to hang out and play cards and have ice cream floats and stuff!! It was cute. On our way there, both Liz and I nearly got mugged by two different people. Obviously the area we were staying in wasn't that nice - we haven't had any problems anywhere else in China so far.

This is going to have to be a quick summary because our time is running out in the internet cafe.. The next day, Emily (from summer school) arrived at our hostel and we headed out in Shanghai with her. We walked around the Bund area as well as the shopping areas on Nanjing Street. Emily got a call from Sarah (another girl from summer school) who was meant to be flying from Shanghai but had missed her flight - we made plans to meet her somewhere. In the evening, we went to the Old Town where we got some very strange looks and I got yelled at for taken pictures of some of the locals - they weren't very pleased. Emily and I tried some street food - tentacles on a stick!! Next we got a taxi to Yuyuan street in search of a steamed bun restaurant but instead ended up on a seafood place where all they serve is crab and crayfish....it was amazing!!!! They bring you bowls of them and you have to crack the shells and pick ou the meat yourself. They even give you plastic gloves and aprons! It was really funny. After that, we wandered down a bit further and found a nice outdoor restaurant where we graized on some pork buns and rice jellies over some oolong tea. It was really nice there but there were quite a few Westerners as it was in the hotel district. We said goodbye to Emily and Sarah that night before bed as they were heading off the next morning.

On Sunday, we got up early and went to the Jade Buddha temple which was overrun with tourists. We'd read that it was one of few Buddhist monasteries in Shanghai that was still practicing. It was still practicing but unfortunately the tourism had kinda killed it. We got invited into a posh shop upstairs which we noticed they only invited Westerners too - they tried to sell us loads of memorabilia and sculptures which had been blessed - they all costs thousands or tens of thousands of yuan!! Yeah right!!

We found our way to the tube station and headed back east. We managed to find Yuyuan gardens using our mapreading skills which turned out to be a really cute shopping area. We spent quite a while there and sampled some more local foods, like some strange fish balls and baby octupus. It was getting late and we rushed back to the hotel to get ready to head off to Shanghai South railway station in search of our next adventure!!

Right..time to go. can't imagine I'll be on the net again before Hong Kong! Bye everyone!

We managed to arrive in Shanghai safe and sound! It was a bit of an epic journey but it all turned out OK. We left the hotel around 6 pm last night and had a few teary goodbyes before heading on an hour-long taxi ride to the train station. We'd been warned that nobody would speak any English at the station and we would encounter loads of problems but we didn't have any trouble at all. With our limited Chinese and the continued friendliness of the Chinese people, we were able to find our way to the right platform with ease.

We shared a cabin with a Chinese man and his son, who didn't seem particularly shocked to be sharing with 2 Western girls. That's not to say we didn't get any funny looks!! Most people who passed by our cabin stopped to have a bit of a stare at us. Our beds were remarkably comfortable and it was definitely worth paying the bit extra to have beds instead of chairs. We went for dinner on the train - ordered everything in Chinese of course! Then we went to bed around 9 pm! I didn't sleep great on the train but it was better than nothing. It was great having an overnight journey - we went to sleep in Beijing and woke up in Shanghai! The train journey took about 11.5 hours in total but it didn't really feel like that long.

Coming out of the train station, we got approached asking if we needed a taxi. We didn't have the address written in Chinese characters and the man got a bit arsey with us. We called the hostel and they explained the address in Chinese to them. But then instead of taking us to a real taxi, they tried to bring us round the side of the station to one of their mate's cars!! We said 'no thanks' and went on our way to find a registered taxi. It wasn't exactly straight forward where you have to go to get a taxi but we eventually figured it out and managed to convey to the driver where we wanted to go. They gave us a set price of 50RMB, which is expensive for the distance but we were knackered and couldn't be bothered to argue.

Our hostel here is really nice - probably one of the nicest hostels I've ever stayed in, actually. We've just had breakfast (a full English fry-up...it had to be done!) and we're deciding what to do for the rest of the day. Some of the other people from the summer school had gone to Xi'an and were going to meet us here but we have reason to believe that they couldn't get a train so I don't think we'll bother waiting for them.

The exam went well on Tuesday - everyone passed! We had our graduation ceremony at 4 pm which was fun - we had speeches from reps from BNU, Manchester Uni, the British Council, and our student ambassador, Caroline. Then they played the DVD which they had been making the whole time we've been here. I've felt like a bit of a celebrity - constantly being filmed by their cameramen, as well as being asked to have my picture taken by Chinese people! The DVD was really funny and it kind of made me realise that the trip was really over, seeing the highlights from it. After that, the mood was uplifted again by every class giving their performances. The funniest had to be what the advanced class did - they reenacted the Peking Opera, but their words were mostly the phrases which we had learned in class - ie, "Ni baba, mama, shenti hao ma?" (How's your mum and dad?). You kinda had to be there to get the full effect, I'm not even going to try to describe it!!

Next we had dinner at a restaurant on campus with some of the Chinese students. Some people were leaving that night to go to Tibet or Xi'an so there were a few goodbyes. After dinner, about 30 of us went to Houhai park and rented boats and went to the little island in the middle of the lake to play drinking games and have a laugh. It was great. We ended up at a club called Angel later on that night, which was pretty disappointing, and we ended up coming home around 2 am and buying Frosties and milk from the uni shop for a late-night fix of Western food.

The next day a few of us went off to a hutong to do a bit of exploring in the afternoon - it was really nice to just walk around some random streets instead of constantly doing the tourist thing. We had lunch at a Chinese cinema place which was in one of the market streets and then found our way down a dirt road. This is what I find really bizarre here - you can have a main road - 6 lanes, surrounded by high rises, constant traffic - and then take a left and you're on a dirt road full of shanties. It's weird. We got some funny looks walking down this road - I guess it's not really a tourist attraction!!

In the evening, we went back to our favourite cheap restaurant across the road - the family there have pretty much adopted us! We gave them a Mandarin/English phrasebook as a gift - I think I'll miss that place more than anywhere else in Beijing!! The food was amazing as usual and after a few drinks, we headed out to Propaganda, a bar that does All-you-can-drink for 30 RMB on Wednesday nights. Most of the cohort were there and it was a really fun night of dancing and chatting to everyone for our last night in Beijing.

On Thursday morning, I wasn't feeling so great. I would love to say it was a hangover but I'm fairly confident it was food poisoning - I never get sick like that from alcohol!! It was quite a painful day and it was debatable whether I'd be able to get on the train but luckily I pulled through in the end and we were able to make it here! It's almost midday and Shanghai awaits so I think it's time to get out and do a bit of exploring. We're booked in here for 3 nights and then who knows where we'll end up next...

Yesterday, after my last entry, I dossed around the apartment for a bit before heading over to the hairdresser's to check in on some friends. After my success last weekend, two of the girls decided to brave the same place although they went much more extreme than me - Liz got her hair re-blonded and her pixie cut trimmed shorter, while Caroline went from having long, thick, wavy golden brown hair to having short, dark red curly hair!! They both looked fantastic. Their cuts cost way more than mine - the salon uses L'Oreal products so to have colours and perms costs quite a lot - not as much as in the UK but not cheap!!

To celebrate their new hair, we got snazzed up a bit and headed out into town with some of the other girls to a hutong that they had discovered last week. It was by a lot of the backpackers hostels so there was many other Westerners around - not quite as many stares from the Chinese as usual! We had Peking duck at one of the restaurants there and then split off into groups as we had different agendas - my group ended up at a quaint little teahouse and were served free tea samples for the next couple of hours. A few other English girls came in and we invited them to join our table - turns out they had all just graduated from Oxford and were travelling around for a bit before starting work back in London. The teas were all lovely - my favourites were jasmine mixed with rosebud and milk oolong (which tasted a bit like white chocolate!). We also tried a really nice peach blossom tea and a sugary chrysanthemum tea, which were both nice but a bit too sweet for me. The only one I didn't really like was a gunpowder tea - it was very smoky. We sat there for ages chatting away and then finally decided on which ones to buy - I went for a pot of jasmine and a pot of rosebuds, of course! After that, we met up with everyone else at a bar in one of the hostels - it was really chilled out and one of those international kind of hostels where you feel like you could be anywhere in the world. It was cool to hang out there for a bit, they even had some live music. Becky requested 'A Whole New World' (from Aladdin) on our behalf - it's been the theme tune of our trip...long story! The guy didn't know enough of it so we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel. While it was fun to be in a backpackers place for a bit, it kinda felt a bit touristy. I guess I can't really say much when I've been in a group of 100 Westerners for this whole trip - but somehow I feel like my experience of Beijing has been a bit more authentic than someone who stayed at a hostel here for a few days and just saw the Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc. Although I guess what's made my stay here more authentic was the fact that I've actually been able to speak Chinese to the locals!

While I'm sitting here typing this, Becky is next to me reading my last blog entry and we started talking about the visit to the British Council and how we seem to hit a brick wall whenever we ask questions about the political situation in China. It's really frustrating...you can't really get any straight answers. If you ask a Chinese person a question which they don't want to answer, they will just change the subject or find some way of avoiding answering your question in any comprehendable way. Becky went to church here on Sunday and apparently only Chinese people are allowed to preach - even in the English part of the church - because they don't want outsiders to spread any foreign doctrine. This seems a bit strange since they're encouraging their youth to go abroad and open their minds to education and new ideas in other countries.....yet the impression we're given here is that they are still highly indoctrinated with Chinese pride and nationalistic identity. We've just been talking again about the guy at the British Council meeting who yelled 'Are you Chinese or are you a foreigner?' - it's interesting that has such a nationalist point of view - it almost seemed like that the kind of attitude you could imagine someone having if they had never left China - not that of someone who had lived in London for 10 years and who used words like "cool" and tried to show us how well he fitted into life in the UK.

Anyway! This morning we had Chinese class from 8 - 11:30 as usual and then again from 1 - 2:30. We reviewed everything that we've learned and then worked on our little performance number which we have to do tomorrow during the closing ceremony - my class is singing the song from the acrobatics show with a little dance, as well as some acrobatic demonstrations! Should be interesting.. The afternoon was pretty lazy and turned into a little stroll with a bit of shopping down one of the streets near uni. Around 7 pm we met up with some more people for dinner at the cheap bar across the street and now I've just come back to write this before I go study up for the exam in the morning. I'm not worried about it at all, it should be dead easy, but it would be good to go into it with confidence. It's hard to believe that Chinese class is over - I want to learn so much more. When I get back to uni, I'm definitely going to keep taking Mandarin lessons.

On Friday, Liz and I spent 2.5 hours in the bank trying to get some currency changed into yuan. The other day when I'd gone to change some dollars, the manager gave me a VIP ticket and I was able to jump the queue - no such luck this time. Although I have to admit, I felt kinda bad the other day when there was about 50 Chinese people in front of me and I'd obviously been given preferential treatment for being foreign. We started talking to a guy in the bank who told us that he'd just graduated from Beijing Normal University (where we're studying). He explained that the reason the bank is so ridiculously busy every day is because of the stock market - nearly everyone in there was trying to buy stock. It was really interesting. We started talking about the Olympics and I asked him how he thought the city would cope with the massive flux of people next year. I'm finding it really hard to see how Beijing will cope. He says that the government is offering free English classes to pretty much everyone. Judging from my experience thus far, not many people are taking them up on the offer!! Every time we get a taxi, we have to have the address written in Chinese characters or have a map with us. Many Chinese people don't know pinyin (the words written out in Latin characters instead of symbols) and despite our best efforts, they don't always understand us if we say words in Chinese. The taxi drivers have been given tapes to help them learn English phrases for when they have foreigners on board, but instead of learning the words, they just play the tape when you get in. We're all getting the hang of China now - obviously we have a massive advantage since we've spent 2 weeks learning Chinese every day! I'm really interested to see what happens over the next year in preparation for the Olympics. It would be amazing to come back next summer and be able to make a comparison.

Anyway, after the bank, we decided to go for a massage. There's a parlour in the basement of our hotel and we got a 1-hour full body massage for only 48Y - less than 3 pounds! Over here, most of the masseurs are blind - which can make for some humourous situations. My massage was great and left me feeling very relaxed. We met up with some of the girls who'd gone shopping for the afternoon and had dinner together at a swish restaurant in the hotel. Being less squeamish than most of the girls I've met, I've tried to order something a bit different each time I have Chinese food. Last weekend I tried fish cheek for the first time - it was sooo nice. I think I put a few people off their food though when I was dissecting the fishhead though.. On Friday night, I ordered braised bullfrog with bamboo shoots. Everyone looked at me with disdain but I wouldn't be dissuaded! I have to admit - when the food came, the frog looked absolutely disgusting. Basically, it was just chunks of frog - bones and all - which had been braised in a sauce. It wasn't like frogs' legs or anything - this was just hunks of carcus. After some careful dissection, I quickly realised that it was delicious, albeit very challenging to eat. Only one other girl at the table would try it - most of them looked at it with disgust and quickly rotated the turntable in the middle whenever the frog landed in front of them. I can understand where they're coming from - maybe a few months ago I would have been the same - but since I arrived in China I've been really trying to have an open mind about everything to do with their culture.

Some of the girls went shopping again after the meal but I wasn't really feeling up to that so I had a nice chilled evening in chatting with Becky (who will be happy that I finally mentioned her in my blog) and then messing about on the Internet. Loads of people went out clubbing to 'Club Banana' but that definitely wasn't on my agenda. Sounds like I missed a good night but there'll be plenty more!

On Saturday morning, we left at 9:30 am to drive out to the countryside to stay at a farm. I still have no idea where we went - they didn't actually tell us where we were going. It was about 1.5 hours outside of Beijing though. The village was very rural and basic but they had obviously turned it into an attraction - most of the homes were also guesthomes and they were used to having tourists stay with them. There were 10 to a house and our lady welcomed us with open arms into her home. She had two basic rooms for us - one with a 6 person bed and one with a 4 person bed. When I say bed - it was basically just a hard surface with a mat thrown over it. It was comfortable enough once you got used to it - I actually had a great night's sleep!! She prepared a massive feast of a lunch for us which we scarfed down - it was really nice to eat some proper Chinese food in someone's home instead of at a restaurant. She had two children, including a 6 month old baby, who we played with. One of her friends came over to the house and started talking to us - she spoke no English and obviously our Chinese isn't great so we were pretty limited. It's really interesting trying to talk to people here. We know enough to be able to pick out certain words and so after a bit of group guesswork we can usually get an idea of what they're saying and banter back and forth. She invited us to come to her house, where a group of the boys were staying. We hung out with them for a bit and then 3 o'clock came up and it was time for our hike! We climbed a beautiful mountain in this town - I have no idea what it was called but it was obviously an attraction. It took us about 2 hours to climb to the top but it was worth every minute - the view was amazing. It was great to get a bit of exercise too. Obviously it wasn't a race but I was still chuffed to be the 2nd girl to reach the top!

On the way down, Becky and I climbed up another set of steps to a little pagoda which housed a bell. The view wasn't as amazing as from the very top of the mountain but it was still nice. I had a bit of a 'I'm the King of the world!' moment while leaning over the bar and my anti-bacterial gel tumbled down the side of the mountain - I was gutted. I won't go into detail about the state of the bathroom we had to use at the farm but it's not pretty and anti-bac is a MUST. I haven't seen it sold anywhere here so Liz and I are going to have to start rationing since it'll probably get worse when we're trekking through rural southern China in a week's time.

Our host cooked us another beautiful meal - we were all starving after the hike. At 8 pm, we wandered down to the playground area of the village where they locals had set up a bonfire in our honour. A sound system was in place and and some of the local women demonstrated some traditional dances and singing (it's more like rapping, actually). Then it turned into a big party and we drank a few beers and danced the night away...well...we danced until 10 and then they told us it was over. The locals were so friendly to us and even showed us how to do their dances. A lot of the girls got whisked away to do some ballroom dancing around the campfire! At the end, a few of us went back to the boys' house and sat outside playing a few games but we got booted out at 11 so it was time to head back to ours to go to bed.

This morning we got up at 8, had breakfast - which consisted of steamed buns, hardboiled eggs, rice soup, won tons, and a few vegetable dishes - then jumped on the coach to come back to Beijing. It was nice to spend a night somewhere like that but I'm glad it was only one night. The facilities at our house were truly basic - we didn't even have a shower, and as I mentioned, the toilet was literally just a hole in the ground in a little shack outside our house - the door didn't even shut.

It's nice to be back in Beijing - it's really started to feel like home here now!!! It's cold here today (only 22 degrees or so) and raining so I think this afternoon will be a bit lazy and then a bunch of us are going out for dinner and drinks at a hutong somewhere this evening. Tomorrow is our last Chinese class - we have class all morning and then for part of the afternoon too! On Tuesday we have our exam in the morning and then graduation ceremony in the afternoon. In the evening we have a social with the Chinese students which should be really fun. On Wednesday people will start leaving!!! I can't believe how quickly this trip has gone - I still feel like I only just got here. Liz and I have booked our train tickets - we leave for Shanghai on the 30th on the overnight train. We're meeting up with some other people from the group in Shanghai which should be good. The plan is to stay there for 3 nights and then started trekking down through southern China through some rural villages and get a taste of 'real' China before we get to Hong Kong.