David's Big Adventure in China

On July 20 we took a 3.5 hour bus ride west of Xiamen to Yongding County. It is a rural mountainous area famous for the earthen buildings there. Some of the oldest ones were built over 600 years ago and are still lived in today (see the pics). The construction is quite unique. They do now have electricity and some have running water and some still use the wells that were originally built. If you notice some crooked posts on the upper levels of one of the buildings apparently that was a result of a misunderstanding of the conditions of employment of the workers. They expected meals to be provided and when they were not they responded by installing the posts at angles. In one of the earthen building pics you see a couple ladies on the inside of the building, the leaves laying next to them are tobacco leaves as tobacco is one of the crops grown in this area. The first day there we hired a guide/taxi and he drove us around in his car to many places for almost 3 hours at a cost of $20. He then dropped us off at a local hotel in a small village. It was actually more like a B&B Chinese style. It was owned by a family with the wife serving as front desk clerk, maid, waitress, cook and travel coordinator. I assume the husband had some other job. The family lived there and the hotel had 8 to 10 rooms. The cost was less than $11 per night for the nicest room which was very spartan. No toilet paper or towels were provided but it did have cable tv, a/c and hot water. The toilet was a hole in the floor Chinese style but at least the room came with a private bathroom. It wasn’t really a B&B because we had to pay for breakfast separate which cost $.66 for two of us. We had dinner there which was much more expensive and cost almost $6 for two. Fresh meat is delivered daily by the local “butcher on a bike” (see pic). The meat is fresh as the chickens and pig were killed that morning. I took a look in the kitchen before we left and it certainly wouldn’t meet American health standards. If you get freaked out about food safety then you probably don’t want to travel much in China. I have taken the approach that if it doesn’t kill the locals then it probably won’t kill me either. I got a haircut and shampoo at the village salon and it cost me $1.06. My hair is shorter now than it’s been since I was a kid as I got my money’s worth on the haircut. Some of the earthen buildings we visited on are the world heritage cultural sites list. For the big round buildings it is typical for about 17 to 20 families to live there. The second day there we hired a motorcycle tour guide (arranged by the lady at the hotel) for about $11 and he drove us to many of the buildings for about 2.5 hours. There were 3 of us on a 125cc bike going up and down mountains on some pretty rough roads some of which were under construction (see pic). The roads and the homes in rural China seem to be in a perennial state of construction. The construction methods seem to be still pretty rudimentary. I didn’t see any power tools in use where they were building the bridge. The driver told us that two of the small villages we passed through which were only a couple miles apart spoke different dialects. China is still very regionalized and there can be difficulties communicating because of language differences. The people in this rural area were all very nice and friendly. They are accustomed to having tourists but don’t get a lot of western tourists. In the small village where we stayed it seemed that many people left their doors and windows open even if they weren’t home….like small town America used to be. To properly complete this luxurious tour of the hinterland we had a 4 hour bus ride back to Xiamen to catch our flight to Shanghai. It was not a very nice bus and the roads for the first 2.5 hours were very rough, curvy and with lots of elevation changes. There was at least one person with serious motion sickness. We stopped one time by the side of the road for a couple children to relieve themselves and later on the trip some parents sitting behind us but across the aisle allowed their roughly 3 year old son to pee on the floor. The only thing missing to make it a complete experience was livestock……lol. Once we made it back to Xiamen we found a restaurant for dinner and included in our dish was bamboo which looked and tasted a bit like potato. I’m writing this part from the airport in Xiamen waiting for our flight which has been delayed by over 3 hours. It’s now almost midnight and I really need a hot shower and a comfy bed!
We arrived at the hotel in Shanghai at about 2:00 a.m. It would be considered a 2 star hotel in the U.S. but it seemed like luxury to me. It cost about $25 per night and had all the essentials. Shanghai is not part of any province. It is an administrative region that reports directly to the federal government sort of like Washington D.C. There are 4 such regions including Beijing, Chongqing and Tianjin. On Sunday we toured some of the sites of Shanghai – Yu Yuan Garden, Chang Huang Miao Temple, the Bund area, Oriental Pearl Tower and the Shanghai Museum (see pics). I’m not really very impressed with Shanghai other than it’s size. It doesn’t seem like there’s that much here worth seeing. There are too many people and the people are not nearly as nice as the country people. It does have easy access to western food though and after 4 days of nothing but Chinese food I was ready for some. We went in a big mall and ate at Burger King. The mall also had KFC, Starbucks, and McDonalds that I saw without really touring much of the mall. I’m writing this at a train station while waiting for a train to take us to Hangzhou which is about 1 hour away.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 5:43 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.