Back in the PRC

It has finally begun. One of the reasons we went to China first, rather than last, was to avoid the Olympic Crush. Now that the games have commenced, I feel a little nostalgic for Beijing. If you want a blow-by-blow account of goings on in Beijing you can check out Brendan O'Kane's blog coming to you live from that city.

China and Australia: Budgeting Accomodation and Transport with Kids

if you plan to travel to either China or Australia with children, you'll find both places very accomodating, but in different ways. It's worth understanding these differences up front, to help with your budget.

In China, the only places where we each of us got a bed to ourselves was the train to Xi'an and the boat on the Yangtze. In very other case, if you have more than one child, and don't want two rooms, you'll end up putting one of them in the extra bed (for which you'll pay something like 20% on top of the room rate) and the other (or others!) into the double bed with you. Very romantic. The alternative of two rooms means moving up the price bracket. For us it wasn't an option.

Very many attractions in China have a reduced rate, or no fee at all, for children under 1.2 meters. It's odd, and seems arbitrary, but it's almost universally applied. Universally, but not rigourously. Although Sara is a shade over 1.2 meters, she always got whatever discount was on offer. On one occasions she was going to be charged full price but when I pushed, even a little, the cashier conceded. All these rebates add up, expecially when you consider that over 1.2 meters pays the full adult price.

One place this height policy did not apply was in the underground/subway trains. In Beijing we all paid the 2 RMB and in Shanghai we had to pay 4 each. So for many trips, with four of us, it made more economic sense to take a taxi, where the minimum fare was 11 RMB but for most central destinations didn't rise much beyond that. But be aware that if you have more than 2 kids, you and your luggage will not fit into most taxis. There were a lot of scalpers trying to sell us van trips to our hotel at Shanghai's Hongqiao airport, and they tried to convince us that we would not fit into a taxi. By ignoring them, we saved ourselves a bill that would have been 4 times the taxi fare. if you don't want to separate into two taxis, and you don't want to line the pockets of those van operators working the airports, organize a pickup with your hotel. The price will be more reasonable than anything you can get in situ.

In Sydney so far, the experience has been in line with European expectations. Based on age, you will get a discount on admission to many attractions and museums. Family tickets typically cover parents and 2 kids, so if you have more, you're going to have to dig a little deeper.

Again, public transport is the exception to the rule, but in this case, a positive one. If you are travelling with your children by Sydney bus, train or ferry, you pay half for your first child, and nothing at all for any others (you hear that Tim!?) We pay for weekly travel tickets that cover everything we need - and the bus coverage in particular is excellent - at a cost of AU$87.50 (about 50 euro).

Buckbeak in Xi'an

Beijing is already a 24-hour old memory. It is a monumental city. Quite literally. I think that almost every day we were there we visited a UNESCO World Heritage site. And it's changing almost daily. Our Rough Guide was bought only a year ago, but already it needs updating - including some of the maps! One of the last images of the city was of the face of a new tall office block builiding, with its glass front being hoisted into place one window at a time, while a steady raiin of welding sparks fell from the top floor above. And I have never seen a train station as large as Beijing Xi. It's larger than any airport in Ireland, and is relatively centrally located in the city. But again, it was well orgainized and I found it easy to make my way to the correct section to wait for our overnight departure to Xi'an (I found it a great deal harder to convince Letizia that I had found the right place, but I'm kinda used to that).

Xi'an is an altogether different proposition. From the outset, let me tell you that I think it's a fantastic spot, and even though we haven't gone to see the Terracotta Warriors yet, I'm very glad it was on the itineray. It's an older city than Beijing, with a longer imperial history. The warriors that we'll go to see tomorrow were created as part of the funeral ceremonies of one of the most important and most terrible of Chinese emperors: Shi Huangdi of the Qin dynasty, which although it goes back more than 2 millenia is probably where this country got it European name. Xi'an was Shi Huangdi's capital after he united, for the first time, what is now China.

Now it's a well-to-do provincial capital which thanks to its surviving city wall, has a walkable inner city. The highlight of this place has to be the Muslim quarter. This is a foodstall and market area spread across a large number of streets and alleyways. But there is nothing like the in-your-face street vendor attitude of Beijing. We still stood out like sore thumbs, and drew the occasional prolonged stare, but for reasons that I can't explain, this provincial capital seems more urbane and at ease with foreigners than the national capital.

Needless to say we got thoroughly and royally screwed at the market today - at least at the start. Letizia bought a set of chopsticks which I (very proudly) haggled down from 16 euro to 14, only to find the exact same ones around the corner for less than 4. We hadn't much intention of buying much or indeed anything today, but once we realised how lame we had been, we embarked on a series of terrifying reprisal purchases, buying things we neither wanted nor needed (which we will now have to post home from Shanghai) for prices that enduced scowls from the vendors. We're not proud of what we did, and we know that in the end, there were no winners here today(except for the bugger with the 16 euro chops).

On an unrelataed note, a Beijing Harry Potter poster provoked a dinnertime conversation about who in the family corresponded to which charactor in the Potter books. Sara needed almost no time to figure me out: Buckbeak. I ask you!? A combined 5000 pages or so of heros both major and minor, and I get Buckbeak. I think I might be posting more than just chopsticks from Shanghai.

Tea, and a show...

On the Qianmenxidajie there is a teahouse, well indicated in the guidebooks, called Laoshe Teahouse (Laoshe chaguan) where for a reasonable price you can get watered and entertained together. We went there yesterday after a morning in the spectacular Temple of Heaven and a browse through the little alleys of Qianmen. For 210RMB (a little more than 20 euro) the whole family could be treated to a show of acrobatics, music, comedy, shadow play and the like. And the price included "tea and a snake".

What now? Snake is definitly on my to-eat list but I wasn't expecting to encounter any here, and certainly not with tea. Dammit - turns out it was "tea and a snack". The snake will have to wait (presumably in long grass somewhere). But despite this initial disappointment, the show itself was great. From the very start, the tea was flowing. I got a cup with some jasmine tea leaves, and the waiters come very regularly to add some more hot water. The girls didn't think much of it, but I sipped away and needed a refill each time.

First act: Shadow play. From behind the screen, a group of puppeteers recreated scenes involving the Monkey King and various other charaters I'm too ignorant to identify.

Slurp of tea. Then came some vocal imitators - birds, jets, trains. Nina and Sara lapped it up. More tea slurping. Peking Opera. Slurp.
Vase juggling. Slurpedy slurp. Another hour of all kind of wonderous entertainment involving magic, song and (apparently) satire, all accompanied by refills of tea.

The highlight for me was something called Kung Fu Tea. My colleague Simon Wang had told me about this already. 'Kung Fu' (actually Gong Fu) is an adjective that can be applied to any activity taken to its ultimate height in expert execution. In this case, two tea waiters performed synchronized acrobatics with very long-handled teapots, pouring tea in improbably difficult ways and directions. Sluuuuuuuuurp.

I don't know how many litres of jasmine tea I consumed, but when the curtain came down I made straight for the gents where I put on an inpromptu demonstration of the little-known, but exceedingly satisfying occidental art of kung fu pissing. I haven't included photos.

Liping and Ian: Today we went to the Summer Palace - photos will be uploaded presently - and on the way I chatted - yes chatted - with the taxi driver all the way there. I'm not saying it was the most scintillating conversation the man ever had, but personally I've been treated to worse by Dublin cabbies. So anyone in Cork who wants to learn Chinese, note that you have an excellent local teacher available in Xiong Liping.

Tomorrow we'll check out the Forbidden City before jumping on an overnight train to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors, and of course, have more tea.

Giangi: I've reduced the exposure. Thanks!
Simon Moore: Now that you know the trip isn't an elaborate hoax, I'd like to see photographic evidence that your new offspring isn't one either...

Our original Great Wall plan was to go to the 3 hour distant Simatai section. In the end we opted for the closest and more touristy Badaling section, given that it's not high season. I wanted to find the #1 or #5 tourist bus which leaves from the very street our hotel is on, but I couldn't find it and we ended up on a tour bus. The price was more or less the same, and the kids went free. So no damage done.

The organisation and cleanliness of the first day gave way finally to the kind of chaotic mess that I was expecting. We were bumped from bus to bus, each one messier than the last before we finally got underway. The windows of the bus, like those of the hotel, werre cakes in dried, fine dust, and indication I suppose of how things can be here when the sky isn't as blue as it continues to be for us right now.

Most of the other tour passengers were Chinese, and our relative rareness as Westerners continues to surprise me. It took 1.5 hours or travel time to get to the Badaling section, and then out we got and started marching. We ignored the cable car option and walked to the main entrance. It was busy enough but not crazy, there were vendors aplenty but not as many as Tiananmen square, and everywhere were signs of present-day China. But the wall was magnificent.

The steepness of certain sections bordered on sheer drop but that didn't stop Sara. She hit the trail like a bargain hunter in a sale and we struggled to keep up with her. If she had her way we were going all the way to the Yellow Sea. She slept all the way there, and all the way back, but she gave the wall, and the overpriced hot chocolcate afterwards, her undivided attention.
(you can check out all our photos uploaded so far here)

It's already 2008 here in Beijing, and the jetlag has another day to run, I think, so I'm wishing you a Xinnian kuaile (Happy New Year) from a pre-dawn hotel room in Beijing.

Thanks for the comments on the previous entry. The Great Firewall of China lets me post to my blog, but not to read it (and so, not to reply directly to comments). Tomorrow we'll be staying nearby, going to the Temple of Heaven (that's right Mam - I'm going to to a church, and it's not even Sunday) and wandering slowly North to Qienmen to browse the older alleyways (hutong) of the city. We got a small taste of them yesterday when we needed a pharmacy, and I think it's going to be an interesting experience. We might even take in a show - more tomorrow.

Blue skies and jetlag

What can I say? The only reason we ventured out in -2 C instead of staying in our nice warm hotel room is that we have to try to kick the jetlag rather than just succumb. Beijing looks fantastic, even clean. I was expecting dust and smog but we have been lucky so far. The airport was a model of efficiency, and folks on the street are fun. The hawkers of various tat on the street are prepared to laugh it off when you tell them they're too expensive. And the requests for photos with the laowei kids is actually quite charming (though that might wear off).

We're going to ground for the next 18 hours or so, with a view to going to the great wall tomorrow at a reasonably early hour. Till then.