the great wall of chinese

mum and i spent the third and final week of our tour in my hometown of beijing. despite having spent a total of more than three months there (on and off) over the last couple of years, i have never actually approached it as just a tourist, and the experience was wonderful. a city so rich with culture and character and contrasts - flying into the future at breakneck speed, makes for a perfect ending to a trip to china with your mum :)

the great wall of china - jinshanling to simatai

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though walls had been built by various chinese groups since 500BCE (to keep nasty northern barbarian people out), the original "great wall of 10,000 li" was built by the great emperor qin (of terracotta warriors and horses fame) some time around the turn of the first century. this wall later fell into disrepair and has all but disappeared. the current wall (that you can walk around on and look at with millions of your chinese friends) was built by the ming (~1500CE) as an alternative to continuous warfare with the mongols. the ming wall was much grander, used bricks instead of just stones and rammed earth, and is characterised by regular watchtowers, separated by twice the distance an arrow could be fired. contrary to popular belief, the wall cannot be seen from the moon, and cannot even be seen from an orbit of 500km.

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mum and i first headed out to jinshanling, a section of the wall that hasn't been reconstructed, and from there hiked our way along the megastructure to a part of the wall called simatai. check out the pics - it was bliss.

badaling

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still hungry for wall, we decided to join the throngs of domestic tourists out to the most famous section - badaling. this section has been completely restored, and though it's often bagged by others as being too touristy, i feel there's a reason everyone goes there - because it's so beautiful. it was may week, a golden holiday in china, and we caught one of the buses leaving every 20 seconds from a northern bus stop to the wall. i have now visited many parts of the great wall in many different provinces, but it was this final experience that made me realise that the greatest wall in china is not made of brick and stone, it is made of arms and legs, bodies and faces, and the personalities, sounds and smells that come with them. to look at the great wall rolling over to the horizon and not be able to see a single inch of its stone carriageway - just metre after metre of human body pressed together barely able to move - that is really something. i was in awe of this great wall of humanity, and it has been without a doubt my favourite great wall experience. to mum's discomfort and my excitement, we realised that if there was any sort of panic or push, an immediate leap over the edge to the rocks 6 metres below would have been our only chance at survival.

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. beijing

the rest of the week we visited various sites, lounged about in peaceful parks and rooftop restaurants, and generally enjoyed.

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it's not every day you get to tour an amazing country with an even more amazing person, and even less common for that amazing person to be your own mother. i love you mum!

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in what seems like a goethian repetition, i've just left beijing again. though i'll be back in australia soon, the adventure certainly hasn't finished - in fact (eyes twinkling, tentative grin)...

i wish you all delicious virtue.

terra-australis warriors (and horses)

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ahhh xi'an...ancient capital of 12 chinese dynasties, birthplace of chinese civilisation, start and end of the ancient silk road, tourist magnet. mum and i braved an 18 hour seated train journey from suzhou in order to partake of its splendour.
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banpo village

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about seven thousand years ago, our ancestors built a village near xi'an called banpo. featuring semi-subterranean houses, central meeting places, graveyards, pottery kilns and a deep defensive moat around a settlement capable of holding over 200 people, banpo is one of the oldest and best-preserved neolithic villages in the china. (for reference, it's 2000 years older than scara brae in the orkneys). it's exciting to think about our ancestors potting around in these places - what were they thinking? what language were they speaking? our guide said that banpo was a matriarchal society in which everyone worked together for a common ideal and enjoyed complete equality, but i couldn't respond appropriately because i'd forgotten my little red book at home.
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what fascinated me most was the burial process - in general, people were lain on their backs with painted pottery placed on their legs, heads turned to face west. several bodies, however, were placed face down - noses squashed into the dirt - without a chip of pottery in sight. the guide didn't know why that was, but to any australian, what this 7000 year old clan thought of the recently deceased was obvious:
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you were a prick mate, get fucked.
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terracotta warriors and horses

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they say the terracotta warriors and horses are the biggest disappointment in china, and we were not disappointed in being disappointed. discovered in 1974 when a peasant was trying to drill a new well (photo with now-famous peasant for only twenty dollars), the 8099-figure army was built around 210BCE by the emperor of the qin dynasty to help rule his empire in the afterlife. the sheer arrogance is mindboggling. the figures occur in three separate pits - one being a huge army in battle formation, another being a sort of shed area with guards standing along the walls, and a third pit that is yet to be excavated. the actual emperor is interred in a necropolis nearby, which remains unexcavated because the government believes current technology is not advanced enough to ensure the process occurs without ruining the artefacts. i respect that.

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the pits were broken into and most of the statues were smashed after the emperor's death. what i found more fascinating than the rebuilt statues, was looking at the fragments of smashed statues - faces, arms, hands - all lying around randomly on the ground.

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every single warrior has a different face, facial expression and lines on his palms (apparently). my favourite terracotta warriors and horses fact is this: in 2006, a german art student infiltrated the exhibition and hid among the army, dressed as a terracotta warrior. his disguise was so good that he wasn't found for a full two days, but because he hadn't damaged anything and was only living out a life-long passion to be a warrior, he was released with only a simple warning. what a hero!
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xi'an town

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as an ancient capital and the start of the ancient silk road, xi'an was a hive of activity for people of all nations, and even 3000 years ago had a foreign population of over 50,000. can yous believe it? persian and greek coinage has been found littered throughout the suburbs.

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today, xi'an is fresh, relatively pollution free, and lots of fun to be in as a tourist. within the massive city walls - which have been restored so that you can now ride a bike around the entire perimeter - lies the old muslim quarter, with a 1300 year old mosque and an active 50,000 person strong muslim hui minority whose purpose in life seems to be making and selling lots of yummy food.

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mum and i strolled about the muslim quarter on a nightly basis, cramming food into our face-holes, and taking in the sights from the beautiful drum and bell towers that we lived next to.

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just outside the city is the big goose pagoda, a 1300 year old buddhist structure built to hold sutras and buddhist figurines (boring). more interestingly, next to the pagoda is a massive cascaded concrete area impregnated with hundreds of small squirters and lights, and at night an area about the size of 5 tennis courts erupts in the best water show on earth! best of all - you can run through it all if you have the courage. xi'an is a university town, so in the middle of summer, i have a feeling the nightly water shows will be transformed into an orgy of wet panted and t-shirted youths getting sprayed and splayed at all angles. yum.

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so ends part two of mum and bondy's tour de chine. with arses still bruised, we opted for a softer option and got a sleeping compartment on our way from the ancient to the modern capital. find out next time how it's possible to still be in love with beijing after all this time, but first things first: and not necessarily in that order. peace

mum's the word

after leaving hong kong (cœur blessé), a sobered ondrej flew to shanghai to meet his maker. mum and i teamed up for a three week power-tour of china's finest.

i'll try and put more pictures in this entry, and let them do the talking. it's fascinating to see china again for the first time through mum's eyes and realise just how many things i've come to view as completely ordinary - how many things i'd stopped seeing. who would have thought two years ago that my mind would neutralise deep throat spitting, yelling at the top of your voice to the person standing next to you (even pondered the irony in the name of the children's game 'chinese whispers'?) or public toilet floors so covered in piss and shit that you actually have to skate in and out?

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mum had a great taste of the real china on our first day when we stumbled upon the back exit of a chinese tea garden in the shanghai old town. surrounding us, a chinese tour group made up exclusively of old, red-hatted, blue-jacketed, five-foot-nothing village women decided they couldn't be bothered going around the front of the tea house to pay entry, and linked hands to charge through the exit, the guard, and half a dozen other people blocking their way. i rode the wave of oldies through the gates, but mum got caught in a rip and was tossed to the side. one foot wrong in that crowd and you'd be quite literally trampled under mao-slipper.

.from shanghai we popped into a water town ('when you see its beautiful canals and ancient buildings, how can you not but fall into a reverie?' asked one advertisement), before heading to hangzhou to check out the legendary west lake..

. .there are 36 'west lakes' in china, but hangzhou's is the one from which all the others got their name - the original. originality in china?! (i hear you cry in disbelief) nay! well, it's true. a 3km x 3km body of water filled with man-made islands, surrounded by drooping weeping willows on a backdrop of pagoda-topped mountains. despite the hype, the lake was stunning, strolling its shores and islands really was peaceful (i couldn't help but fall into a reverie) and even the surrounding tourist shopping precincts were (and i never thought i'd say this of china): tasteful. at night a series of water jets on the east bank squirted water in arcs over coloured lights to the rhythm of some unknown 80's western music. sounds trashy? wasn't a dry eye in the house.
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.mum and i hauled our ever-fatter arses up to suzhou to bliss out in the UNESCO world heritage listed gardens (reverie) and sample various types of transport and food (in that order). some of the gardens date back more than 1000 years, and make amazing use of light and space, which i've been unable to adequately capture in my photos. mum and i were positively transported to another level.
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and so ended the first leg of mum + bondy's tour de chine. tune in next time to find out why being shot in your sleep is better than an 18-hour train ride across central china. until then: zai jian.
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pics 1 - mum and i on the bund across from the oriental pearl tower in the must-have nothing shot.
2 - a drop of character
3 - relaxing in the park
4 - mum takes a break in (5) a shanghai garden
6 + 7 - zhouzhuang the water town. beware the reverie.
8 - some of the gardens surrounding west lake

9 - what i'm going to look like if i don't curb these obsessive eating habits.
10 - china's version of pisa - the leaning pagoda at tiger hill, suzhou
11 - simple - just join the line and buy a ticket.
12, 15, 16, 17 - gardens in suzhou
13 - ondrej sitting in the 'with whom shall i sit pavilion'.
14 - loved the sign

just as bad as the rest of them

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the conte de fée continues as ondrej leapfrogs his way to thailand via hong kong and back again for a well deserved 5 day holiday from his holiday. centre stage is the evil french frog protagonist gerard who plays with the innocent boy's heart, and also involved is the princess sarah, who comes to bask in the sun and share in the fun.

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after a night in bangkok, the trio made their way to koh samet, a small beach-paradise in the gulf of siam, several hundred kilometres south east of the sprawling metropolis.

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surely the pinnacle of human invention is the motorbike. what else combines function with so much fun? along the potholed, sandy and rocky roads of koh samet, i made a new discovery: why drive responsibly, when you can drive irresponsibly? shall we assume lotus position again? there's no other word for it people: i hooned. you know those annoying western tourists who burn around foreign countries on motos at top speed with those revolting self-satisfied 'i'm all that' expressions on their faces? well that was me baby: all the way.

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we snorkeled, we swan, we hooned around on the motos, we lay on the beach drinking coconut milk, we oggled passers-by: we enjoyed. pad thai, banana pancakes and slurpees made up 90% of our diet. at one stage gerard and i stumbled onto what i can only imagine was a gay beach, replete with groups of thai boys draped in rainbow flags limp-wristedly jumping for joy in the sand infront of their camera-clicking comrades. i felt like i was in an allan hollinghurst novel. we swam out to a floating platform populated exlusively by gorgeous young males for some diving practice. every time i pulled myself up onto the boards, wet bathers clinging, it was a case of 'those aren't my eyes'. it was all very well and good, but before i knew it there was an unfortunate incident involving myself and three young thai boys with a penchant for wrestling, and i became quite permanently damaged.

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there's something about thai society that is just better. perhaps it's the high level of inter-personal acceptance and mutual respect that sets it above the rest. nothing symbolises that better than the wai (palms held together infront of the head as a greeting). let's introduce it into australian society and see what happens. the wai, nightly dancing in the public spaces with the local grannies, mandatory cuddling on sunday afternoons, and unlimited supplies of white rabbit milk lollies. could there be a more comprehensive recipe for happiness? i've got it all worked out people: ondrej for president.

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i'm back in hong kong for a few days before i meet up with mum in shanghai this weekend. can't wait. my life is being pushed and pulled in directions i wouldn't have thought possible only a fortnight ago. opportunities masquerading as magic doors are opening all the time, none closing, for me the question at the centre of all this confusion is: could this really be what life is like?

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wow. (with a french accent).

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pics

1 - dinner on the beach

2 - catch a boat to this little restaurant

3 - requisite coconut sucking shot

4 - hello moto

5 + 6 - chaisse-longues and a few ugly dogs on the beach

7 - protection from the bangkok monsoon :)

all my love and thoughts with sarah and carolyn.