My family and I are riding across a grassy plateau carpeted with wild flowers,
laced with meandering streams and fringed with distant mountains. The sun is
warm, the sky a perfect blue. Our two guides are singing gently. Far away, a
giant bird of prey circles in the thermals. We can see for miles in every
direction, but there is not a sign of human life or habitation. We are alone
in this vast and lovely landscape, and I quietly rejoice that my eldest
daughter decided to drop out of Cambridge last year for there is no way we
would be here otherwise.
Hannah enlisted instead at Beijing University, rightly believing that she
would learn to speak Chinese much better and faster there than in East
Anglia. That gave us not only a reason for paying our first visit to China
but – more importantly – access to a fascinating people and extraordinary
country that would otherwise be almost impenetrable because of the
formidable language barrier.
Most foreign visitors can scarcely begin to plan independent journeys around
China because outside Beijing and Shanghai – and even within those cities –
remarkably few Chinese speak English. It is almost impossible for visitors
to book so much as a train ticket by themselves, let alone tell a taxi where
to go, order a meal, or bargain in a market. Consequently, all but the most
intrepid are forced to join tour groups that stay in bland hotels, eat
faux-Chinese food and visit Disneyfied tourist attractions, which is sad
since China, as we quickly discovered, has so much more to offer.
It has the culture and cheapness of India, but without the extremes of
poverty, the dirt and open sewers, the beggars, the thieves, the nonstop
jostling and hassling. The pollution in China’s cities is dire, blocking out
the sun and frequently reducing visibility to a few hundred yards, but it is
also a country where planting trees to improve the environment seems a
national obsession, a country where we found peasants sweeping roads with
twig brooms in the middle of the countryside, witnessed stewardesses in neat
uniforms standing to attention and saluting as our train reached its
destination, and watched taxi drivers turn off their meters after taking the
wrong route. It is a country where every meal is a culinary adventure, every
corner yields a fresh surprise, and journeys are often as interesting as the
places they lead to.
Our own journey took us from a large square in Beijing down to Shanghai, 1,000
miles (1,600km) west by train to Chengdu, 500 miles north by Jeep to
Lanzhou, then back to Beijing by plane via the ancient walled city of
Pingyao.
Our two-day ride into the grassy highlands of northern Sichuan province from
the tiny town of Langmusi was a highlight. We rented horses and guides for
150 yuan (£10) per person, and followed a river high into the mountains to a
vast green bowl dotted with the tents of Tibetan nomads and the herds of
yaks and goats that they take up there to graze each summer.
We stayed with one of the nomad families. We watched women with handsome,
weather-beaten faces milking the yaks, spreading the animals’ dung thinly on
the grass to dry for fuel, boiling their milk to make curd and fetching
water from the river. We watched wild-looking men on horseback rounding up
the yaks at dusk to protect them from wolves. We sat in a tent made entirely
of yak wool – even the ropes – and ate vegetable noodles with yak meat
cooked on a dung-burning open stove. As night fell the temperature plummeted
– the altitude was about 3,700m (12,000ft) – and by 10pm we were lying in
our sleeping bags on goatskin rugs and giggling as our guides covered us
with a further layer of thick wool blankets.
Conversation with our hosts was not easy. Hannah translated our questions into
Chinese, and the guides translated them into Tibetan. But the nomads were
able to describe a lifestyle that has remained unchanged for generations
save for the solar panel that charges their single lightbulb, and
confidently expect their children to continue it.
In truth, everything in China is an adventure. The train journey from Shanghai
to Chengdu took 40 hours, cost less than £35 each for what are called “hard
sleepers”, and was a delight despite running six hours late. Outside our
windows the grey industrial towns of eastern China, and the frenetic
construction of new roads, housing and high-rise office blocks, gradually
gave way to a bucolic landscape of paddy fields, lily ponds, fields of neat
little hayricks and tranquil villages. Inside stewardesses brought round
trolleys of hot food, tirelessly swept the floors and kept the squat
lavatories impeccably clean.
Courtesy of Hannah’s Chinese friends, we ate magnificent dinners in some of
Beijing’s best restaurants, where silk-clad waitresses brought dishes of
exquisitely presented delicacies faster than we could consume them.
Elsewhere, the five of us gorged on delicious dumplings, noodles and steamed
buns from roadside stalls for less than the cost of a chocolate bar in the
UK.
We spent hours walking the backstreets of towns and cities, enjoying
tantalising glimpses into the interiors of tiny bakeries, tofu factories and
noodle-makers. We saw butchers carving up carcasses on pavements. We watched
– and occasionally joined – groups performing their morning exercises or
evening dances in squares and parks. We took local buses, rode pillion on
motorbike taxis and rented bikes to explore the countryside.
We found markets selling snakes, scorpions, royal jelly and produce so utterly
alien that we were unable to tell if it was fruit or vegetable, root or nut,
or even meat. A bowl of what looked like large, rough-skinned kiwi fruit
turned out to be raw duck eggs buried in mud for 12 days. Peeled, they
stank, and we happily let our driver devour the one we bought.
We never booked ahead, but had no problem finding hotels. Most were clean,
though the Chinese seem more comfortable with the theory than practice of
Western plumbing. A room costing more than 200 yuan (£13) a night was
expensive.
The only places we disliked were the tourist traps. We fled the tiny Huanglong
national park, north of Chengdu, which attracts more than 40,000 Chinese
tourists a day in hundreds of exhaust-belching buses. We almost fled Pingyao
as well, but in the end we were glad we didn’t.
Pingyao is an easy overnight train journey from Beijing. Within the wall,
hundreds of foreigners stay in expensive hotels, eat in Westernised
restaurants, buy from overpriced “antique” shops, and visit tarted-up
historic buildings. It is a world removed from the authentic China right
outside the gates.
By all means go if you are overcome by Beijing’s sweltering heat during the
Olympics, or if its pollution overcomes Paula Radcliffe and dashes British
medal hopes. Pingyao is certainly a remarkable place. But do what we did.
Rent bikes. Cycle four miles out past the coalyards and railway sidings to
the pastoral Shuanglin temple. There you can stroll around in relative
solitude, admiring 2,000 statues – some almost 1,000 years old – that are so
lifelike and expressive that you’ll gasp. To appreciate them, at least, you
do not require an interpreter.
Need to know
If you don’t have a resident Chinese-speaking friend or relation to make your
travel arrangements and guide you, Audley Travel (01993 838220, www.audleytravel.com)
can tailor-make a journey similar to the Fletcher family’s.
A three-week trip, starting in Beijing and ending in Shanghai, takes in
Pingyao, Xiahe on the Tibetan plateau near Langmusi, horse trekking from
Langmusi, Jiuzhaigou national park, Chengdu and a two-night train journey to
Shanghai, and costs from £3,200pp, based on two sharing. The price includes
return flights, transfers and train tickets, B&B, mostly in three-star
hotels, and guides.
Going it alone? www.seat61.com has useful information on train travel in
China, including routes, timetables, fares, how to buy tickets and the
different classes of seats and sleepers.
