The danger of dumplings!

Although there are many adventures I intend to cover during this blog let me first draw your attention to a couple of social observations that I can no longer ignore. Firstly Chinese people spit a lot, no I'm sorry 'spitting' just isn't an accurate description... hacking up great balls of flem from deep within their lungs and propelling it from their mouths at a rate of knots is more like it. Squat toilets I can deal with, crazy traffic I'm getting used to, I can even cope with fruit salad served smothered in salad cream, but never, EVER will I be ok with this social norm.

Secondly, middle aged Chinese men snore a lot! I appreciate you may be a little concerned as to why I know this, but I can assure you these encounters have been entirely Innocent! I am now highly qualified in differentiating between each category of disfunctioning nasal cavities. Firstly there was the sporadic snorer whom we had the pleasure of sharing a dorm room with in Beijing. This kindly gent would wait until you were just drifting off into the land of z's when all of a sudden he'd let out an almighty whistle, just loud enough to startle you back into an uncomfortable conscious state. We were then greeted in our next dorm room in Pingyao with the constant grunter (admittedly he was actually Argentinian but he was in China so he still counts!). This tune persisted all night long and became rather rhythmic after listening to it for 6 hours straight, it sounded rather like there was a small animal trapped inside him, and judging by the size of him, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was in fact the case. Finally there is the snoring symphony which sounds from every carriage of every night train we ever journey on. This is an amalgamation of around 40 individuals unique squeals, grunts and snorts all cutting through my silent slumber at once, resulting in me having obscure dreams about smothering strangers with pillows.

Perhaps I should now reassure you that we are actually loving china, and have had many positive experiences of Chinese people. Only today Abi and I had the pleasure of taking part in a public aerobics class in the park and then a delightful encounter with two elderly ladies in their 80's who taught us how to ballroom dance. We have also conveened with several young enthusiastic Chinese lads and lasses our own age, a couple of whom even joined us in a rather muddled game of cards, many of the rules were lost in translation! It seems in general that most of the population have one of two responses to our existence in their country, extreme curiosity, or complete refusal to acknowledge our existence, the latter of the two, frustratingly, is normally demonstrated by taxi drivers.

So from Pingyao we headed further in land to Xi-an. The city itself was a little lacking in character to say the least, but it was a destination that simply couldn't be missed as this is the home of the Terracotta Warriors. Of course being one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century this site is naturally very touristy, but regardless of the hoards of people gawping at what essentially is a paranoid tyrant's ego trip, this is the stuff found only in legends, and is quite simply fascinating. In a nut shell in 200BC Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered a tomb to be made (the largest in the world to date) in preparation for his death. Given that at that time it was commonly believed that you take everything with you to the after life, not only did he surround himself with 8,000 terracotta soldiers, 130 chariots with over 600 horses he also insisted that 1000 of his precious concubines were also burried alive when he went! Thousands of workers dedicated 40 years of their lives to building these figures (no two warriors faces are the same) only to find that thier reward was also to be burried alive! This man was a real meanie but as a result something truly spectacular was created.

While in Xi-an we made the most of our hostel's many free-bees including a class in dumpling making which we then got to eat afterwards! Unfortunately soon after Abi was struck by a mysterious illness which left her incapable of climbing Hua Shan with me, a near by mountain. Like the loyal friend I am I abandoned Abi for one night and replaced her with an English guy called Ali who had not embarked on dumpling making the night before and therefore was fit and healthy! This mountain is twice the height of Snowdon and an absolute killer to climb... in some cases quite literately. Within 20 minutes of setting out at the foot of the mountain Ali and I witnessed a group of men carrying a dead body on a stretcher down from the exact route we were about to embark on. As you may imagine this didn't exactly fill me with confidence, but persevere we did, and besides a sever pain in my gluttonous maximus for several days afterwards, I remain unscathed. The landscape really was breath taking, the contrast of the Autumn leaves and white rock constantly drawing my eyes away from my feet, a dangerous allure! At the summit we had a rather surreal encounter with a black and white domestic cat, which was quite fearless and sat happily on a rock edge staring into an endless abyss, slightly dizzy from the altitude, I did wonder if this moggy was a figment of my imagination, so just in case I took a photo.

We stayed the night at the summit in a very basic hostel and then after much insistance on my behalf we got up bright and early at 5am the following morning to watch the sun rise, only to find that dawn doesn't actually break until 7! I remained as excited as a kid at Christmas for the entire two long, dark, cold hours, which Ali endured through gritted teeth!

From Xi-an we have travelled even further in land to yet another big city called Chengdu. This morning we went to a Panda reserve, which would melt the heart of the coldest of folk, and truly did turn Abi and I to mush. There are only round 1000 giant pandas left in the wild which is mainly due to the fact that copulating takes too much energy! Captive breeding is therefore essential to the survival of this majestic creature. We were privileged to watch pandas from one month old to 20 years of age going about their daily business which involves eating a lot of bamboo, play fighting for the kids and sleeping all day for the adults, what a life!

Today we are off to see the largest buddha in the world and then to climb another mountain, which hopefully will involve no dead bodies!