Xiamen – Gulang Yu
Now in Gulang Yu, Xiamen in Fujian Province, in my younger days referred to as Amoy. A long slow train journey to get here and about 26 hours. No fast train this one, would have done British Rail proud and food to match. At least few people on board and there were only a few of us in the carriage so all friendly enough. Little in the ways of views except the usual non descript Chinese towns which one would hope they never have to visit. But the usual road, railway construction going on and probably won’tbe long before a new high speed railway line completed. Given how slow it was coming into Xiamen I think they were laying the track as we were going along.Arrived Xiamen and first sight was a TESCO, nearly tempted to go shopping !. From th erailway station to here no major hassles, the locals friendly and soon got me on a local bus and to the dockside for the quick crossing here. The big downside is that for the first time the tourists have been out in force, I guess being further south a tempting location for Christmas/New Year and finding an available room hard going. Probably for the first time ever had to pay full rack rate for a room so expensive and not even nice with no hot shower. Like so often with Chinese hotels the foyer looked really smart so you think the room must be good only to find they spent all the money at the entrance !.Also one other big downside, its rained since arriving. Not cold, I am in a t shirt but just wet. And this place must be a big wedding photo destination as there are lot of couples having there wedding photos done and white flowing wedding dresses don’t like the wet any more than in the west.Anyway Gulang Yu. Nice place, another China lite destination. A small island with lots of old colonial buildings, a few churches, very clean and kind of chic. Wandering around the small alleys pleasant enough and some good seafood so no complaints. An historical aside. Like Shanghai it was a treaty port which basically meant we turned up with our gunboats and threatened to flatten them unless they gave us some of their land and traded with us. So Gulang Hu like the Bund was for our sole use and under our control. We were then able to use the concessions to push opium onto the population. Then when they objected due to them all becoming heroin addicts, we flattened them until they gave us more concessions – the 2nd opium war saw us doing an excursion to Beijing to totally destroy the original Summer Palace, which they remind everyone on entry – still a sore point in history.Next plan was to go to Hong Kong for New Year but might go sooner.
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