A Trip with Mr Grumpot

Matt is one of my younger friends. He says he hates parties but always enjoys them, he says he likes his own company but is good with others – about 80% of the time; it is the other 20% that gave him his nickname.

Matt is well travelled in Asia but unfamiliar with mainland China so the plan was to head out from Guangzhou PDQ so we could visit three other places. Matt specified a quiet first night as he would have been 14 hours travelling to get to Guangzhou at 4.00 p.m. on New Years Day (or 8.00 a.m. London time; he had left from London).

So we don’t dump Matt’s case – straight to a bar for a quick German beer before going to a restaurant to meet Maurice. Maurice is one of my oldest friends in China; he refuses to make me rich by not translating his artist wife’s website in to English so I can have my next career as an art dealer flogging his wife’s (rather god) paintings in the west.

A good but expensive nosh and Maurice departs because he is not really a boozer but not before he has dropped us off at the BBR (Bar By the River). Bill soon turns up; he is untypically Chinese – he can drink like a fish. So we get stuck into the San Miguel, as is our want. Well one thing led to another. The other being the dice game; this is a brilliant game where you try and guess the total number on the faces of the dice of all players. I will not try to explain the rules here – suffice it to say that most games take a matter of a few seconds, there is a lot of lying involved and the loser (not the winner) drinks. I am an expert; Bill isn’t bad either but had a bad run at the start which means that he had probably drunk his first pint in less than ten minutes. Obviously we had had a few glasses before we started so drinking at that speed can be a bit tricky. Anyway, we made sure that Matt got his early night by leaving just before the last customers and going for a quick snack. We got to bed at 4.30.

Up with the lark, a very lazy lark, and into the new part of the city for a look round. This is quite impressive if you are into big modern buildings; they go up at a hell of a rate all over the place. There are less mindless blocks than there used to be ten years ago and some thought goes into the architecture of the buildings, the provincial library, museum and Opera House are all very interesting (and I can testify that the Opera House has excellent acoustics). The area is quiet, however, as it is almost all office blocks – what all the offices are for I have no idea. By the time Bill caught us up we were in a western bar and, after a couple of swift ones, Bill decided that he shouldn’t drive and phoned a number; five minutes later a driver appears who takes us to the BBR in Bill’s car. But it is a desultory evening and Bill barely drinks in the couple of hours he was there and drives himself home. (He has used the driver service to take him home; I know I was with him three weeks later when he did it. It costs little more than a taxi and you get your car home. The driver had a folding bike and, apparently, if there are no return drives into the city – unlikely late at night –, the drivers rendezvous and get a taxi back into the city. I do not understand how it works but it obviously does and it is a brilliant business idea. The organizing company takes 7RMB {$1.20, 90 euro cents or 70 pence} per trip.)

So Matt and I were left on our own. As you can imagine it was rather a lacklustre evening after the night before but we quaffed a few and ate some oysters; Matt was a little wary of these but they were coked (or was it cooked) and I ate about ten of the dozen.

The following day we were due to do the tour of the old city but Matt spent the night puking and shitting and this continued. He blamed the oysters so perhaps they had been coked! A lost day.

The following morning he decided that he was well enough to get the plane to Harbin – just as well really because it wasn’t a cheap flight. I hear you thinking “Where the f--- is Harbin? Why go there?” Well it is in the northern most province of China – Heiliongjjang – and cold, bloody cold – in the day it might reach as high as minus ten but the nights were distinctly nippy and you noticed as soon as the sun went down. So why were we there – for the Russian architecture? No, although some of it is interesting. No you go for the ice. They carve great chunks of ice out of the river and build all sorts of structures with them. I will come back to that shortly.

I had booked a four star hotel with many facilities including 24 hour bowling (permenantly locked), wifi (non-existent but replaced by a computer in your room with no internet connection), en suite (Matt was a little surprised that the shower was against the wall adjoining the bedroom and the wall was glass, I was a little surprised that my clothes were wet from the water leaking under the aforementioned glass wall) but breakfast was included and it only cost a hundred quid for three nights.

Matt was still feeling shit when we got to Harbin (well actually not just feeling – toilet visits were a regular feature of the next twenty-four hours) so we got no further than a noodle bar for dinner which, fortunately, had a convenience store next to it that sold, inter alia, beer and – this being near Russia – vodka so I could get my medicine whilst Matt could sit on the crapper.

The following day Matt was still not 100 % so he spent a fair amount of time in the room whilst I had a wander. This did mean that I had found enough good stuff near the hotel so when Matt was up for a bit of an evening stroll I could show him some of the ice sculptures. In the city proper they are not huge but the key thing is that they are lit up at night so you have these blocks of ice with all sorts of colours illuminating them. I had been before, in 2008, so knew what to expect but there were more sculptures dotted around the city than there had been six years ago. The thing that was missing was the Ice Bar. When I had been before I obviously had to try it. You go in and sit at a bench made of? Your drink is resting on a table made of? Your glass is made of? As a commercial venture I can see why it wouldn’t succeed; you are not likely to spend the night with your arse glued to the bench trying to wrestle your “glass” off the table with your hands stuck to your “glass” in order to get your lips stuck to the “glass”. Fun though for one drink.

(All photographs by Matt Mahony)

Matt was OK by the following day and we had a brilliant day. Matt had never walked on water before (obviously I do it regularly). The river was frozen for a few metres deep; they drive trucks across it. It is about a kilometer wide so not tiny. We went to the Snow Park. I had not been on my previous visit because that had been quite late in the season and the snow melts in the sun much quicker than the ice. Fantastic! There were hundreds (I would guess about 200) individual sculptures in competitions. Basically each group of contestants is given a block of frozen snow about 3 metres cubed and they can do what they like. This is China so the ability to dream up complete crap is wonderful to behold. The best were the ones where they had carved holes in blocks rather than just shape the outside. There were also four absolutely massive sculptures at least thirty metres high. For me the snowpark was the real highlight. (BTW entry fee was twenty-four quid each.) I know I am not nice but we had heard some loud-mouthed yanks in a café saying that they hadn’t bothered with the snow park and daren’t walk on the river. Hah!

It is about 5 kms from the snow park to the main display for the Ice Festival (30 quid each) so we walked to make sure we were warm. I was a little disappointed with the Ice Park. When I was there in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics, the theme was clear with things from Greece, Beijing and London; this time there did not seem a real theme and the signage was poor. However, it is spectacular with these great ice structures with lights inside them. They beat the height record each year and they are now over fifty metres high for the biggest display with lots of many coloured lights inside, all well sequenced as you would expect. This was Matt’s anticipated highlight of his whole trip and he wasn’t disappointed – everybody should go once in their life. Not the warmest of evenings though - minus thirty and windy. After about 45 minutes we had to go and get a hot drink and it took half an hour to warm up for round two. We were only on the site for two hours and damn glad that there was a nice warm taxi to take us back into the city.

One little oddity on the way back into the city. At the end of the bridge we needed to turn left but China drives on the right so it would not be surprising if we did a 270 degree turn. However, the bridge is about 30 metres above street level so there is a significant amount of height to lose so we did a 990 degree turn – work that out.

We ate in a really good fish restaurant. It was really good because I had spotted it when Matt was ill and it is not in the guide books so quite cheap. Excellent food, no other foreign tourists and a good host.

Harbin was a success.

So to Beijing.

Fortunately Matt had booked this hotel - a Novotel. The room we had smelt a bit and, as some of you will know, Matt can be a fussy bugger so he went to complain. He had some card that he waved about and this not only got us a change of room but an upgrade. Basically the upgrade was to a slightly larger room (so what) but also access to the bar on the nineteenth floor for “happy hour” between six and eight in the evening on. We decided to check this out and were very happy indeed – free food and booze for two hours and rather a good view of the city. This included decent Aussie wine and gin. Can you guess where we made sure where we were every evening by soon after six?

I had only been to Beijing (apart from the airport) once previously and that was twelve years ago so was happy to go. I had cut the planned time there by a day because it is in winter that Beijing is smoggy. What we got was brilliant clear blue skies (ironically Guangzhou was the smoggiest I have seen it for at least eight years). Cold, yes, but after Harbin a mere minus five felt like the tropics. We did have to scamper around a bit because I had cut the time but Matt got a good flavor and we did most things that we set out to do.

The Forbidden City is boring – courtyard after courtyard – the Temple of Heaven is great (although we were too late to actually get in the building), Tiananmen Square is odd. To get into it you have to go through a security check! This is the largest square in the world and they have closed off any direct pedestrian access by barriers and cops (and there were lots of cops) so you have to go through an underpass to get into the square. They are completely paranoid. There was a drive in suicide jobbie by some Xinjiang separatists in November but this is not exactly Derry in the 70s. We managed to mistime it to see Mao in all his glory or, more accurately, there is nowhere to leave a bag whilst you go and see the old dodger.

Where we went on The Great Wall the Rough Guide warns you that there is a steep climb to get up to the wall if you don’t take the cable car. What it doesn’t tell you is The Wall itself is steeper than the climb up. In stretches the angle is well over 45 degrees – to the extent that I had to turn and face the steps to go down. The Wall that you know was all built by the Ming in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and is wide enough for four horses – allegedly. How you would get four horses up a stretch like that I have no idea. I kept thinking that they were completely and utterly bonkers – who is going to climb this cliff to attack anything let alone some hill in the middle of nowhere?

We had hired a car for the day and went to a second world heritage site – the Ming Tombs – a waste of time unless you have ten days in Beijing - and a third, the summer palace. We were too late to go in the buildings but they are quite modern anyway. In 1860 when the British were on one of their expeditions to make China open up for trade they brought a substantial army and some gunboats to make the emperor sign a treaty. When the British neared Beijing they sent a negotiating party, most of whom were rather gruesomely killed. Rather than randomly slaughter the people of Beijing the British commander decided to destroy the Emperor's home (the Emperor had fled) so the British spent three days systematically destroying all the palaces – and there are many at the “Summer Palace” - so the buildings are not that important, it is the location that makes it although the Stone Boat is a very curious oddity. Set by a lake with lots of walkways and the sun going down meant Matt must have taken over a hundred photos. There were lunatics out on the ice skating and walking but it appeared that all round the edges was water and broken ice. Three World Heritage Sites in one day and Five in two days – beat that Mother. And we made it back to the 19^th floor in plenty of time.

Oddities.

Beijing was amazingly quiet. There are no restaurants within 200 metres of Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City. We really had to hunt for places to eat and drink. Matt commented later that he would much rather live in Guangzhou because it was lively and Beijing is not.

Leaving was interesting. On an internal flight you had to take your checked baggage to the check-in desk – fair enough. I was called through to the back of the check-in desk after my bag went through the scanner and had to throw away two half empty booze bottles. WHAT? Apparently it was because they had been opened! Fortunately I had not paid a fortune and I know better than to do other than slaver at these creeps everywhere in the world as if they were actually doing something useful rather than doing Bin Laden’s work for him by wasting many lives every day.

Matt was next up. Apparently he had two fag lighters in his checked luggage. So what? Dangerous apparently; I am sure every other passenger in the queue was quivering in their boots at the thought of this skinny guailo having two cigarette lighters. Matt found one quite quickly but where was the second? It went through the machine three times before Mat found it in the lining of his case; it had probably been there for years.

No, no you have got it wrong, they are not paranoid in Beijing, it is just that a man carrying two cigarette lighters must be a danger to the whole human race.

On the trip we had great fun with Chinglish but it was in Beijing that it reached its peak so these are examples from different locations.

At the Ming tombs there were lots of signs saying “Do not portray”. This was a literal translation from the Chinese so must have been correct. We had absolutely no idea what they were on about, nor had my Chinese friends when I asked them.

At a restaurant called “West House Spectabilities” we were offered such delights as “Sprinkle with yellow bead”, “Bullfrog taste”, “Grandma multigrain package” and “Gaping and turn corn” but the one that really caught my eye was “Rotten Salmon.” I couldn’t resist returning a couple of days later to try it – very tasty

At a different restaurant I skipped such delights as “Husband and wife lung slice”, “Disabled mountain duck”, “Pot sheep miscellaneous”, “Sauteed bullfrog in chilli sauce”, “Fantastic baby food” and “Beijing heaving” in favour of “Swallow baby of soup dishes” which I was assured contained no meat. I should have looked at the entirely accurate picture – it was basically a bowel full of cabbage with three shrimps.

There were many others and I am full of praise for the effort that they make for so few people as a proportion of their clientele but I am always left wondering why they don’t get a native speaker to have a look before they go to print. I have considered doing it as a business sideline but my friends think it would be more trouble that it is worth.

Yunnan

A long way from Beijing. And we were only going to look at some terraces in a particular location in the southern part of the province!

This was my choice. Harbin & Beijing had been Matt’s choices. Why would we want to go and look at some terraces? Well Bill had been there eleven years ago and took some rather good photos. So a morning flight to Kunming (the provincial capital) and a couple of hundred kilometers on the bus towards our destination leads us to a rather pleasant town. We found the gaff that we had booked into and Matt was rather impressed – a courtyard approach (quite common in the south-west of China) with some rather good decorations. A quick reviver later and we are off to explore some rather nice old streets and gateways – and, of course, find a restaurant. Nice streets, plenty of shops open selling mobile phones but restaurants – hah. We had spotted a decent looking place but at 8.45 it was, of course, closing. Never mind, on we go but there was nothing – nada, niet, hakuna, mayo. Phone shops aplenty (how many phones and how often can people buy them – at least fifteen percent of all open shops in the middle of town were phone shops).

We ended up in a dismal bar with crap food and not much better beer. Yes it was a minor Chinese tourist town and not a western one but surely even Chinese tourists must be more interested in eating and drinking when they are away on holiday instead of buying fucking phones? What do I know?

A look round in the morning did confirm that it was an interesting place – the gates – but we had things to do so got the bus over a quite interesting pass. It was rather steep, not the pass but the drop-offs on the side and the road was wet mud: I suggest that great aunts should not be taken that way. There is an expressway that goes round; it might be environmentally unfriendly and cost more but takes the same amount of time.

So we arrive and it is time for food. Nice enough restaurant but one of the oddities throughout southern China is that they think it never gets cold so they never close a door. So there we are about 2,000 metres up with a temperature of about 8 degrees with the door open and, obviously, no heater in sight. This does have one advantage however, the cloud can blow in. This was a new one to me, I have been caught in thick fog walking before but to have the fog come to say hello in a restaurant was something I had never experienced.

The following morning it didn’t look much better but, after a bit of a struggle, we located the tourist agency recommended by the Rough Guide and purchased a walking map for all of twenty pence.

Off we went out of this small town up through some grotty buildings on to a mud track and were directed up a stone path to a village. We did see the odd terrace but not exactly worth a couple of hundred quid each (for the flight and all the ecodamage Ed the …..). However the route then descended from the village and we were below the clouds. Now you are talking. The reason why people go to the terraces in winter is because there is no rice! However, they are full of water so we had this lovely view of all these terraces not reflecting a blazing sun but at one with the clouds above. Just water everywhere and some of the terraces are so small it is ridiculous and some only a dozen centimeters different in height from their neighbours but all molded to maximise the water catching potential of the mist and dew (not really the rain) that is constant in this area in Winter.

The inadequacy of the map at this stage proved to be an advantage. An enquiry with a local resulted (of course) with being walked half a kilometer and the rest of the way pointed out (expected cost nothing, actual cost nothing – this is China). It was fun picking a route through the terraces. We will draw a veil over the awful music in two villages as we walked back into town.

Lunch and we were off again. No planed route this time but Matt’s dodgy knee meant that we walked up the tarmac out of town for about 4 km until we passed a public convenience that was well designed. It had the simple expedient of avoiding all flushing systems, everything just slowly subsided down the slope to fertilize the field below.

Shortly after that we turned down a lane and, after about three hundred metres, it was clear that Mr Grumpot was suffering. Being the hero that I am, I suggested that he wait whilst I wandered further down the track to investigate. So I did – about five metres – and looked over the edge.

Fantastic! The terraces were uncountable. It was the classic view of Yuan Yuang.

So Matt’s trip had come down to two wonderful days in Harbin and Yuan Yang. Can you name a better trip?

Actually he had enjoyed lots of other bits as well but to have two days like that in one trip is not common.

A night in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, (which was definitely a lot more lively than Beijing, Yuan Yang was livelier than Beijing) raised my impression of a city I had been to at least half a dozen times before.

Back in Guangzhou, Matt finally got to see some of the backstreets and markets that make it such an interesting place to live in – he will be back.

Apart from mentioning his puking and shitting plus his knee there was barely a whinge out of him the whole trip!