Finally, I’m getting some blog posts up in my Asia section! How exciting!
I’d got to Hong Kong, I’d met the rest of my ‘team’ and we’d made our way to our first stop in China on The Dragon Trip – Yangshou. As I look back, I think this was one of my favourite stops on the tour. Beautiful Karst scenery, amazing lantern-lit night markets and some crazy nights with the infamous Monkey Jane (check her out, seeing is believing!) To break it down, here’s what we managed to fit in during our time there:

Bamboo Rafting down the Li River
This was listed as one of the ‘free un-missable attractions’ on our tour and it didn’t disappoint. The scenery was incredible, gigantic karst peaks rising out of the calm waters which twisted and turned through the epic scenery – straight off a postcard. The serenity was broken by water gun fights where we all got soaked, and we shrieked as we were hurtled down ‘rapids’, before getting our tummies tickled by weeds while we swam.  It was super fun - thrilling and peaceful in equal amounts!

Cormorant Fishing
An ancient fishing method dating back to 960AD, Cormorant Fishing is where fishermen tie a removable rubber band around the cormorant birds neck in order to use it to catch fish. Suprisingly the birds don’t swim away. The bands prevent the bird from swallowing its catches and it spits them out to the fisherman. At the end of their fishing adventure they are fed the smaller catches, leaving the bigger fish ready for market. I’d seen it on an old HSBC advert demonstrating different cultures and was eager to see it in real life!
The whole thing happens at night and is a wonderfully exciting experience. Under the cover of darkness, you make your way down to the river and follow alongside a fisherman in a motorized boat. Following the light from his lamp you watch the birds jump and dive out of the water and then have a chance to see them up close on the shore later on. I think because you do this at night, and everything’s quiet around you, you feel transported back in time. Seeing something so simple and effective is humbling, and the birds are cool!

Cooking Class
The rest of the group took off and went rock climbing (which was far too active for me) and I went to do a bit of Chinese cooking. My Dad’s the only one in our house who can whip up a good Chinese, so I wanted to be able to give him a run for his money. The fact that at home, I don’t have someone shouting out what to do every 2 minutes is beside the point, I am now a Chinese cookery master. End of.
We made a Kung Pao Chicken and a beef dish that I don’t remember the name of (everything contained pretty much the same blend of soy, hoisin and salt in differing quantaties) and my favourite;  home-made dumplings! I’m not kidding, everything tasted a-mazing, I couldn’t believe I’d made it, and I got to wear a Chef’s hat and use a massive meat cleaver! Nobody would ever trust me with one of them at home!

The morning trip to the market in prep for the class freaked a few people out, in particular a middle-aged American couple who stared wide eyed exclaiming, "It all comes wrapped in plastic where we're from". Luckily dog with noodles wasn't on the menu.

Moped-ing round the Mountains
After having a bash at tandem bicycles and realizing that a group of midly retarded 20-something year olds weren’t going to manage, we got scooters and headed up into the mountains. I say ‘we’, I didn’t get a scooter. I tried, they wouldn’t let me, with good reason. After a little break I had another go and slowly fell to the ground after moving maybe an inch. I think I just stopped holding on and plopped to the side – damn my centre of gravity! The views were insane, and we saw the image that is on the 20 Yen note. There’s something about riding around an unknown place on a bike, the wind hurtling at your face. You just feel so free.

In the middle our trip we spent a night up in the mountains at a village farmhouse. The toilets were interesting, a new take on the common ‘trough squatter’ and one of the boys in our group enjoyed squatting next to a friendly china-man as shit dropped effortlessly from his arsehole. There’s a new way to break language barriers. Regardless of the less than appealing sleeping quarters (Brogan ended up sleeping in the boys room after she saw a mouse in the room), the farmhouse was very traditional and picturesque and I took some awesome photos. 

We went for a little walk up into the mountains and had some brilliant views of the mountains. It reminded me of being at home at the autumn, the golds and ambers shimmering in the dusk light. Everything was quiet and we breathed fresh air for the first time in quite a few days. We made a little (or actually quite big) doggy friend; we called him Lassie. 

Dinner was served, steaming bowls of fresh veg and stews containing all possible parts of a chicken, including its head, and we sat round the campfire contemplating life.

The next day (or was it the day before, I don’t remember?) we stopped off at a river and the brave (or stupid, your call) girls had a splash in the freezing cold waters. Well done girls! Sterling effort!

We were lucky enough to visit an orphanage in Dengfeng, and in return for a few bags of rice and a very poorly organized English lesson we were taught how to be Kung Fu Masters! I know, I know, you’re all thinking “Wow! How cool?!” along with “Emily’s so well suited to being a Kung Fu Master, how has she never gotten into this life skill before?” Well now I have, and I’m a lethal weapon, as the following pictures document.

Our teacher, who was trained at the nearby Shaolin Temple which we visited the next day, taught us two fairly basic routines, (one with a shield/knife thing!). Our efforts were pretty poor. 5 year old children did handstands on their fingertips and tripled somersaulted over each other around us, putting us to shame. It was hard work, but by the end I was certain I could break a stack of bricks with my head, I was feeling so zen.

The next day feeling suitable pumped we headed to the Shaolin Temple, reported home of Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism. It’s literally a city of temples. The Kung Fu school, which is famous for being one of the best Kung Fu schools in the world put on a show that is seriously incredible…kids bend metal with their mind and pop balloons through glass without shattering it. I’ve seen it and I still don’t get it. We also felt super cool because we were all wearing the same shoes that the Kung Fu kids train in, having bought them at the orphanage the day before.

There’s lots to do at the site; you can watch the kids train, walk up a shit load of steps to a cave where a monk apparently sat for a really long time (this story was cool but Wikipedia isn’t doing me any favours right now so it’s not getting included, I obviously didn’t do it because of the steps) or get a cable car and walk around the hill tops to magic-performing platforms and other cool stuff. My favourite bit of the day was when we tried to get another ‘zen’ photo and I invited randomers to join in. This is what happens when Chinese, Japanese and Korean tourists are invited to be in a photo with a group of westerners. Jokes! 

We got loads done during our 2 days in Xi’an. My trip included more bike riding (it’s a good job I got my Dad to take me down the park for a practice as bike riding has featured heavily on this RTW trip, I now do not regret feeling like a total retard – a 23 yr old being watched by a group of illiterate chavs while her Dad yells at her to ‘push harder on the pedals!’), volunteered at a soup kitchen, checked out a free fountain and light show and of course saw the famous Terracotta Warriors.

The Terracotta Army is a MASSIVE collection of sculptures that was originally made for the first Emporer of China, Qin Shi Huang. It was made for him to be buried with, to protect him in the afterlife. Parts of the tomb are still undiscovered and (maybe unsurprisingly?) pop up in farmers fields from time to time. Many people bitch about the fact that it’s all fake reproductions. Unfortunately parts of the tomb have been raided and destroyed over the centuries – you can see parts of the tombs as they were found, but the most breathtaking spectacle is seeing the reproductions lined up as they would have originally been. The museum documents and shows all its restoration work, and I wasn’t disappointed. The story behind it is really cool, and each soldiers face is completely original, no two are the same, can you believe that? (Current estimates state there are around 8000 soldiers!)

Our bike ride around the city walls was really fun, I still freak out on a bike but I’m getting better! And I didn’t even moan that much about having to do another fucking bike ride…I still haven’t got round to enjoying anything active or exercise based. Travelling hasn’t ‘changed me’ yet.

Before going into any info about the joy of seeing Giant Pandas, I need to set the scene. Somebody (certainly not me) thought it would be a good idea to go out for some drinks before our early rise to meet the pandas. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I never have ‘a few’ drinks and the group soon found themselves rolling into the hostel at 5am. An hour later and still incredibly drunk I was shouted out of bed and boarded the bus in a daze, almost forgetting to put a bra on and remembering just in time.

Hopefully you are now in the same frame of mind as us, and can share the mixed feelings of sheer joy and happiness at seeing one of nature’s most wonderful and almost extinct spectacles, whilst also understand the pure pain of having an hours sleep, smelling like an ashtray in last night’s clothes and rapidly declining from drunk to hungover in the space of a few hours.

It started off well, we went to see the tiny, cute red pandas and were really happy about it. They were eating and we wanted to hug them!

Then it was time for the big pandas! They sat and munched off piles and piles of bamboo (giant pandas need to eat a lot!). They seemed dopey and chilled, which, in my state, I thoroughly enjoyed. The walk around the enclosures was long and there were lots of tourists which, in my state, I thoroughly did not enjoy.

They had baby pandas in little incubators! Aaaaah cute! This section kind of freaked me out though. Still drunk, my mind confused and fuzzy, I felt like I was in some kind of weird sci-fi film where either pandas were thought of as people or were having tests done on them, or something weird like that… You also had ‘Panda Police’ ushering you through at top speed, I didn’t like that very much.

By the end of it, we’d all seen a Panda and were happy, and were all ready to go back to bed. Brogan more than most of us.