A final post … our learnings from China

Having arrived home on Friday at about lunch time I set about doing the unpacking, washing, putting away and basically bringing the adventure to China to a close. Saturday we caught up with family … our boys and lunch with Ian’s mum, sister and brother in law.

Sunday dawned … and I fell into a heap. I mean a heap! Head cold, grotty nose, phlegm, coughing, aches and pains, a fever … generally sick! And so in bed I stayed! This is something I never do … or very rarely. But I think the last few months finally caught up with me and my body decided to rebel. So in bed I stayed … for Sunday and Monday. Tuesday I have ventured to the couch … yay me! I am feeling better but boy was I slammed. Thankfully I am Covid free … so onward and upward we go.

Now I sit to write a post about the things we learnt in China. In no particular order …

1. China is welcoming, friendly, open, clean and safe. I had some apprehension about the trip to China … not sure what to expect from a communist country. My thoughts had been plagued by images you see on TV … a militant army, a controlled society. And boy was I wrong. The Chinese are wonderful … they made us feel welcome, delighted in our joy in their country and in our attempts to communicate. They loved watching us eat their food … eager to find out what we thought. They embrace tourism and welcome visitors to learn more about their country. I had anticipated they may have been a little anti-American with all that is going on between the US and China at the moment, but whilst they acknowledge the problems with a certain leader and his government, they hold no animosity to the American people. 

2. China is full of stairs! If you are planning to go to China then get ready to walk a gazillion stairs. Stairs everywhere! China is much hillier than we expected. Stairs get you from A to B … so stairs it was! My leg muscles are in great shape after this holiday. Ian’s ankle had a good workout.

3. The mountains in China are breathtaking. We were lucky to travel to Zhangjiajie and to Tianmen Mountain. I cannot possibly do them justice as I am not that eloquent but the peaks and pillars that emerge out of the clouds are just beyond. Sheer rock faces with tops dotted with trees and even flowers … stunning.

4. When looking at your itinerary make sure you look for things you can do in your “down time”. China is safe. You can go out at night or wander the streets exploring. We walked around parks, back streets, through shopping marts … never did we feel unsafe. By all means be careful and be alert … but don’t stay in your hotel room because your guide is finished for the day. Lace those shoes up and go exploring.

5. The food is incredible! Not your standard Australian Chinese fare … but full flavoured dishes that leave you wanting more. We loved the noodles … especially the Biang Biang. We loved the lightly sautéed vegetables. The dumplings were delicious, especially the soup filled dumplings that you first bit a hole in and then let the soup fall into your spoon before woofing down the noodle and its filling. The street food is fantastic. We had many snacks along the way that were so tasty and so incredibly cheap.

6. Listen to your guides. We had the opportunity to be one on one with our guides but even in a group … listen, ask questions, learn. The guides have studied hard to be leaders, and even harder to be an English guide (where they are tested at a university level on their English proficiency). They know so much about their country, the history, the architecture, the cities. Use them to help you be more informed. I will also add … compliment them, praise them, give them the feedback they need to keep doing the job they love. Many of our guides only have work during the tourist season so they work back to back tours. William, our guide in Beijing, was working everyday between our trip and June 16th … with no break! 

7. Smoking (and I will add spitting). You need to accept that China has a high smoking rate, especially amongst the men. So get used to walking through wafts of smoke. Just learn to be upwind if you can. And the spitting … yep it happens … but again, that is their culture so you just accept it and move on.

8. Toilets … and the joy of seeing a symbol of a sitting toilet! Toilets are everywhere in China. Public toilet blocks are easy to find, they are clean, they are well maintained. Just remember … grab the toilet paper BEFORE you enter the stall, don’t flush the paper (place it in the bin provided … which gets emptied frequently … the pipes in China cannot handle the paper load of 1.4 billion people). And if you are a woman … look for the sitting toilet symbol because my body just cannot cope with that squatting gig! If all else fails … use the disabled or strip!

9. Faces … the Chinese do not look alike. There are so many different ethnic groups that skin tone, eye shape, face shape … they all look different. And surprisingly we found that there were faces that were familiar to us … we saw people who reminded us of family members and friends (Malcolm, Mary, Jack, Katrina). In a world where we are all different … in many ways we are the same.

10. Road spaghetti … which rivals and in many cases beats LA. The roads in China are amazing. So smooth. Major arterial routes are lined with flowers! Not a single pot hole in sight (Victoria I am looking at you sternly). The roads intertwining and winding around leave you fascinated as you try to follow along on Google maps from the back seat.

11. Brown signs for tourist sites are a world wide thing! We discovered that the brown signs we have here in Victoria pointing the way to tourist spots … Sovereign Hill, The Zoo, Phillip Island … are in fact something that is common in all countries. We thought it was odd when we first saw them and did a quick Google to find that yes indeed … that murky brown is used around the world! Who knew.

12. Google translate … is definitely a friend you want to have in your pocket. We used Google translate to read menus, road signs, maps and information at the airport. Being able to translate a menu in real time meant we avoided foods we couldn’t eat (fish and seafood for me) … but it also allowed us to have confidence to go out and about on our own. I used Google translate in the local pharmacy to indicate pain and location of pain … which then had the assistant scurrying off to a shelf and hand me two packet … google translate tells me he has handed over ibuprofen and paracetamol!

13. Google maps … may sometimes be your best friend. But sometimes it isn’t! The Chinese do not use Google maps but use their own alternate. So we would be following along and wonder why our ETA was so different to theirs. When our driver would take a turn off our expected route we realised their maps were better than ours.

14. China is security conscious. Our passports had a major workout this holiday as we had to scan in at multiple locations as we visited the major tourist spots, and then scan out again at the end. In some locations they used biometric face recognition after the first scan. Our bags were repeatedly scanned as we entered venues as well. Some may find this intrusive or be anxious about their data being kept … but it made me feel safer knowing they were checking so carefully. If I am going to be in the Forbidden City with 50,000 people … I want to know we are all on the same page!

15. You get what you pay for (mostly). Not always true, but the reason some tours are cheap is because you are staying in a hotel an hour from the city centre. Which means way more dead time in the back of a bus or car. Those extra few dollars mean you can step out of your hotel and within minutes … cycle the Fortress Wall in Xi’an, stroll down Nanjing Rd to the Bund, visit the downtown malls in Chengdu.

And finally …

16. Don’t wait to travel! You don’t know what the future holds … in terms of your health and capacity to travel, the situations around the world, the other factors in your life. No one predicted Covid, or a war in Russia and the Ukraine, or a conflict in the Middle East. Travel when you can. Plan your travel to make the most of your time.There is so much you can see and do in just 60 minutes. Book those extra excursions, you won’t miss the money when you’re older but you will have those memories. We travel with the view that we will never return to a country … so we make sure we see as much as we can and we definitely aim to see what we want. We don’t stick to set itineraries … but adapt itineraries to give us the best outcome. Time is fleeting. Life is for living. The world is huge … see what you can! And as a final note … wherever possible … travel with the one you love!