The Village

While I was in college, the buildup to the all important end-of-year exams was a hectic period, with huge amounts of last minute cramming - this was when I was at my most focused. At the climax you sit down and write for three hours and then - nothing. All the pressure, anxiety and sobriety disappears once the final answer of the final exam has been written - and in the days that immediately follow I found it very hard switch to idle mode - restless, I always felt I should be doing something.

Switching from big-city China (too much to see with not enough time) to miniscule Luotiancun (too little to see with too much time) had a similar effect. I had to slow my brain down to the pace of life I found myself in. After we had sorted our accommodation, we went for a stroll around the village.

After an hour of curious observation, both from us and the locals we came across, we had seen everything there was to see. Freed from the sightseeing pressure that we had grown accustomed to, there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy the snail’s pace.

The scenery surrounding the village was a much needed break from concrete and glass, though the most memorable things about our time here were interacting with the locals whilst living the same way and doing the everyday things just like they did. Our toilet was communal, shared with numerous other households in our vicinity, and consisted of no more than a small shed with a narrow gap in the concrete floor to squat over. Only a few days before, I encountered the most advanced toilet I had ever seen - toilets providing excellent evidence of the huge contrast between city and rural life in China.

Having a shower was the most fun though, with the following routine:

1. Go to shower room to collect bucket.
2. Bring bucket to village well to fill with water.
3. Return to shower room with bucket.
4. Use bucket to wash yourself.

With the well and the shower room a couple of minutes walk from each other, it was definitely the most unique shower routine of my trip.



By the third day I’m certain the whole village had a name for each of us. We were different, but never felt like outsiders, being greeted with smiles wherever we wandered. I grew up in a small town, so perhaps this is one reason why I felt so at home here, so at ease.

Our host, who someone soon nicknamed “hostel mama” (I can’t remember who came up with that), cooked us a delicious dinner on a couple of occasions, but we also tried out the local restaurants. Some of the most memorable interactions with the locals were had here, where, with no menu to speak of, and no common language, ordering ended up with visits to the kitchen to point at ingredients.



With my charades experience finally proving useful, we had to mime how we wanted it cooked too - although at times it proved near impossible to convey to them that we wanted our noodles fried. At one meal Kaisa even supervised the whole cooking process, to make sure they cooked it the way we (she) wanted - though being a passionate fan of cooking herself, I think this was more for her own enjoyment. She cracked the whip quite well, as the subsequent meal was the best we had in our time in the village.

Of course, with the five of us together, there were many many games of bullshit and many beers had too. Somehow it always ended up with Fred and myself retrieving the beer, and we stayed loyal to a single shop for most of our brew supply. The kindly woman that owned the establishment sold more beer in three days than she probably had sold in the previous year - having to restock numerous times, she probably installed a new kitchen in her house after our visit.



Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the picture above is from the very last game of bullshit. Our plans too divergent, we would have to split back into the groups of two and three that we were before that night in Shanghai. We had made the first truly great friends of the trip.



The possibility of meeting Fred again in Vietnam was there, so that made it easier, though we didn’t know if we’d ever see Kaisa again. Such is life on the road. This was more difficult for Gearoid, for whom romance had sprung up with Kaisa. Would they ever see each other again? To find out, you’ll just have to keep reading.

Half the Fun

What do Chengdu, Xian, Beijing, Qingdao, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou all have in common? Answer: they’re all huge (Qingdao is by far the smallest of that set, but still has a population of 1.6 million). We knew there had to be more to China then concrete blocks and swathing masses, so I was tasked with finding somewhere more rural for our next destination.

And that I did. Luotiancun is a 1120-year-old village in the middle of nowhere northwest of Nanchang. It gets a passing mention in Lonely Planet as a possible day trip if you’re in Nanchang, which itself isn’t worth visiting (due to it’s staunchly communist past, and the fact there‘s nothing of note in the city). Once we arrived by train in Nanchang, bar the five of us, there was nary a westerner in sight.

An unpleasant walk through industrial and traffic-clogged streets took us to the bus station, where we played the ‘match the Chinese symbols’ game (there was no English anywhere) to board a bus to Anyi, a provincial town and a link on our journey to the village. With the help of some bemused locals, we eventually found the bus station for local destinations. Now we had to get to a place named Shibi, and from there it was a simple matter of hiring a sanlunche (three-wheeled motorbike) to the village. Easy!



All eyes were on the out-of-place whiteys as we marched with our backpacks into this most rustic of bus stations. Every attempt to point out our destination (in Chinese characters) in our guide book ended with a local browsing through most of the book with a look of fascination on their face. After a few minutes, where not one word of English was understood by the locals, and not one word of Mandarin was understood by us, we were herded onto a rickety old bus. As is common across Asia, the bus didn’t leave until it was filled - with weathered-faced farmers, various agricultural produce/equipment, the five of us, and our backpacks.

Our bus journey into the unknown terminated in a remote village square. I made the natural assumption that this was Shibi, and that somehow we had to find and arrange a lift to Luotiancun. Empty stomachs meant one of the pair of restaurants bordering the village square would have to be frequented.



We ordered using the “point and shout” method. I pointed at the uncooked leg of a pig that was dangling next to the vegetables - some pork would fill me up nicely I thought. After an interminable wait for our food (in which every Chinese diner, even those that arrived after us, were taken care of first), the food began to arrive. What I got was the pig’s leg - sliced up into large chunks, hair, claws and all. There was no meat to speak of, just bone and hog-fat. A step too far in the strange food scale for me (and everyone else). At least Fred and John enjoyed their eel and fried frog respectively.

Luckily the Chinese meal custom means everything is shared, so I didn’t go too hungry. Now it was time to somehow get to our destination. Asking a few different groups of locals, none of them seemed to understand what it was we wanted to do. We cursed our lack of Mandarin. After running around in circles, the penny dropped. What each local had been trying to tell us is that we were already in Luotiancun. We had bypassed Shibi somehow. Great! Now we had to find a place to stay.



Pointing to the word for ‘accommodation’ in my phrasebook, the first local I asked took us to a friendly woman in a small shop. We followed her as gestured, wandering down narrow little village laneways past numerous ancient yards and homes - eventually making our way to this woman’s house.



The two rooms were basic, but we could hardly expect anything else given where we were - this wasn’t a hostel, it was someone’s home.

And Then There Were Five

Shanghai was a city where we saw a lot of amazing things and had a lot of fun - but our traveling momentum meant it was impossible to stay any longer. This time leaving a place was different, as our group had grown to include Kaisa and Fred.

Kaisa and Fred had been traveling together in China for a while before we met them, but they themselves had only met for the first time on their travels. These kinds of friendships crop up all the time when traveling, especially with solo travellers.

Fred’s decision to join us in heading to Hangzhou, only a couple of hundred kilometers south-west of Shanghai, was made close to the last minute, meaning he had to take a later train. Kaisa, John, Gearoid and I had no problem in getting a taxi and finding our hostel, but poor Fred made a brave attempt to use local buses and ended up having to take two taxies (the first one had no idea where the hostel was).



The hostel itself was one of the highlights of our time here, a serene place away from the tourist hustle and bustle with a Chinese garden and communal area combined adjacent to the dorms. But the highlight of Hangzhou is undoubtedly West Lake (Xi Hu).



Almost all the time spent outside the hostel was spent on the shores of this picturesque tranquil reservoir. You couldn’t help but lower your heart rate strolling around it’s edge, in direct opposite to the Shanghai effect. I could see why it was so popular with Chinese tourists, although I can’t imagine it being quite as tranquil when they arrive in their hordes (all Chinese have their holidays on the same days of the year - meaning that on those days the entire country is a swirling mess of holidaymakers - we were to experience it ourselves soon).



Slowly making our way back to the hostel, down a street awash with money (with upmarket clubs/bars, as well as Ferrari, Porshe, Maserati and Aston Martin dealerships, no less), we came across a vendor cooking the best street food I had in China. Watching the noodles, vegetables and egg being expertly fried together in the wok right in front of me was a pleasure in itself, though nothing compared to the actual eating.



The new five-member group dynamic was working well - so well in fact that we spent the entire next day just hanging out together in the hostel. We had plans to go out in Hangzhou that night, but it started to rain, so we just played bullshit instead. Not exactly top blogging subject matter, but for me this day was memorable just for the fact that all day we did nothing yet had so much fun.



The next day wasn’t exactly the most active of our trip either, thanks to the inevitable post-bullshit hangover. Kaisa, Gearoid and myself did make a new culinary discovery though - Taiwanese food is amazing. We found a tiny food place not too far from our hostel. Unbeknownst to us, the cook (and his son - both pictured above) were from Taiwan, and they cooked food from their island. A post-meal chat revealed their friendliness and gave a glowing endorsement to Taiwanese people. In my head I added Taiwan to the list of places I want to travel to.

Complications involving extending Kaisa and Fred’s visas meant the following day was spent wondering/worrying whether they would be able to continue travelling in China with us, while at the same time finally getting our arses in gear to walk around the lake and see the far side (which we hadn’t managed yet). When we returned to the hostel the news was good - they were able to get their visas extended. All of us were getting sick of big Chinese cities, so for our next destination we decided for a change of scenery.

Birthday Celebrations Chinese Style

Chinese beer is very weak. At 3.1%, it takes a few to have any effect on us. But this also means it takes a lot to get any sort of a hangover, a fact we were grateful for as we groggily arose the morning after our card-playing shenanigans the previous night. I was just about able for the Shanghai Museum, which was excellent, taking me most of the day to explore (John and Gearoid were waiting for me outside for over an hour).

Seeing as it was close by, we decided to go for a stroll down the French concession, with examples of colonial architecture that would become a familiar sight in Vietnam and Laos. It was mostly shops, that were well out of our price range, so we found a cheap restaurant and returned to the hostel for a (relatively) quiet night in preparation for Gearoid’s birthday the following day.



I slept in extra-late the next day, and made my way downstairs to find that the birthday celebrations had already begun without me. John and Gearoid, along with Kaisa (Finnish) and Fred (German) (you’ll be hearing those names a lot on this blog), were playing bullshit again. I (Irish) joined, then Dan and Jonas joined (Aussies), then Risto (Finnish) joined, then Leanne (English) joined. All these people just happened to be staying in the hostel.

A marathon bullshit session ensued. The only break we had was for dinner at a nearby restaurant - the nine of us were given a room to ourselves with a round table. Whether that was to protect the other diners or not is open to debate. The scene of grown men crying after the chili-eating contest suggests it was the right decision (to this day my mouth has never experienced anything that hot). Back to the hostel we stumbled for more card/drink shenanigans. We strictly adhered to the rules of the game, so you can imagine what state the birthday boy was in. He wanted to stay there for the night, but we were having none of it. We were gonna go out and celebrate, Chinese style.

We had seen signs for KTV absolutely everywhere in China. We eventually learned that it’s karaoke, and is China’s national pastime. What better way to make Gearoid’s birthday special for him than forcing him up in front of a small crowd and making him sing?

Well, it wasn’t quite like that. We arrived at the KTV building thinking it was a four-star hotel. I wondered into the lobby area, and confirmed that it was our intended destination. Somehow it took ten minutes of confused interchanges between staff in Chinese and celebrators in drunken English to make progress past the lobby. A porter took us into a lift, and we were brought to the fourth floor, where I was amazed to see a maze of halls lined with doorways, behind each one a room with the sound of unpleasant vocal warbling coming from within.



I think it was this small level of privacy (and lots and lots of alcohol) that lowered everyone’s level of inhibition - no-one held back on the singing front. There were solos, duets, and whole choirs. I’m sure we were the loudest in the whole building. We were also quite possibly the last to leave - dawn had already come and gone when we re-emerged out into the Shanghai street.



I believe it was good to experience this important aspect of Chinese culture. Without doubt, one of the best nights out of the whole trip. Gearoid’s birthday next year has a lot to live up to.

The Rules of Bullshit

Bullshit is a card game for 2+ players, though it’s best with four or more.

Requirements for play:

• One deck of cards.
• One bar nearby, preferably with cheap beer (if no bar is available, an off-licence will suffice).

Rules:

1. The cards are arranged in a pyramid as in the picture above. The rows have values as follows: the bottom (first) row is 1 drink, the second row is 2 drinks, the third row 3 drinks, the fourth 4 and the fifth 5.
2. Each player is given four cards.
3. Before the game begins, each player is given 3 seconds to look at and remember the value and position of each of their cards.
4. The game begins: the first card of the bottom row is turned over and is in play.
5. Now any player can call “drink” to any other player. When they do this they claim that they have a card of the same value as the one that was turned over. When this happens: The targeted player can believe the person by drinking or can not believe them and call “bullshit”. If the targeted player calls “bullshit”, then the player who called “drink” initially has to turn over the card. If it doesn’t match the card that’s in play, then the person who called “drink” (who lied) has to drink twice the amount. If it does match (telling the truth), then the person that called “bullshit” has to drink twice the amount.

It’s also possible to call “drink drink” (and “drink drink drink“), where you claim you have two cards of the same value as the card in play. This doubles the amount of drinks involved.

Special rules added in by ourselves:

• If it is the birthday of a participant, then whilst that participant is away at the toilet or another urgent matter, the other players are obliged to fix the game so that said participant consumes as much alcohol as possible.
• If Gearoid Crowley is playing, remember that he is boring and honest and never lies.

Sights, Beer and Bullshit

With a huge number of things to see, we decided to start our first day proper in Shanghai with the tallest: the Shanghai World Financial Centre. Like Beijing, Shanghai’s metro system, running above and below ground, is extremely efficient and easy to use (save for a couple of minor problems with it’s e-card ticket system). We breezed over to Pudong New Area, the area of the city with the tallest skyscrapers, in no time.



Ascending the stairs leading out of the metro station, the collection of tallest skyscrapers slowly came into view, and my jaw dropped. Having never been to New York or anywhere else with buildings near this height, this was a new sensation for my eyes. I felt a child-like excitement surge inside me, and spent close to two minutes just standing in one spot skyscraper-gazing.



To get to the top-floor observation deck of the SWFC was expensive, but worth it. This really was China showing off it’s financial might, with an impressive lights/special effects show preceding the incredibly fast ascent up to the 97th floor (the lift ascends at 8m per second). Once there, the extra money we paid meant we could ascend three stories higher. The views from the top were outstanding. If you visit the SWFC and you’ve never been to Japan (I haven’t, yet), then go down to the food court in the basement and check out the toilets, an experience in itself.



It took a bit of convincing, but I persuaded John and Gearoid that the best way to get across the river to the Bund district on the other side was to take the famously bad Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. Passengers are herded onto a moving platform, which slowly proceeds under the river through a barrage of cheap light effects and a soundtrack straight from “BBC Sound Effects Volume 3“. Like a Steven Seagal film, it was so bad it was hilarious, at least I thought so. John and Gearoid still haven’t forgiven me though.



The Bund itself in many parts looks more like a street in New York than China. With neoclassical reminders of Shanghai’s past on one side, and the ultra-modern Pudong skyline across the Huangpu River on the other, walking down the Bund was, for me, another experience unique to China that I enjoyed immensely.



If I thought it all looked impressive during the day, after dusk the views really blew my socks off. We went for a stroll down the enormous East Nanjing Road, the biggest capitalist/shopping street in the city, and by the time we returned to the Bund for a boat tour on the river, the Pudong skyline had transformed into a neon wonderment, an iconic sight and rightly so.

A long day’s sightseeing earned a few drinks that night, the after-effects of which resulted in a long lie-in the next morning. We got so comfortable in the hostel bar that this ended up being the second day spent entirely within it‘s borders.



With weary eyes, we were nearly ready to retire to our dorm room when, unwittingly, one of the defining moments of our trip occurred. A Finnish girl came over and asked us if we wanted to join in a game of cards. We agreed, joining a motley crew of travellers at the table, and learned the skills of a drinking/card game that would come to define a significant part of our time in China. The name of the game? Bullshit.

Heads Up

Being the largest city, and also arguably the most happening spot in the country, Shanghai was the main draw of the eastern side of China. Because of it’s history (the small fishing town that existed here was aggrandized into a city by the British, French and other foreign powers), it has a mix of architecture and an atmosphere that’s different to any other city in China.

Before entering the Shanghai metropolis, we spent a couple of uneventful days in Suzhou - one of the most traditionally Chinese looking (in the centre) cities in China, full of gardens and ancient buildings. Emerging from Shanghai’s northern train station, the scene presented to us was as big a contrast to that as you can get in this country. My neck took the first of many strains as I looked up in awe at the size of the skyscrapers.



The size of the city is apparent from the amount of pages taken up by maps in Lonely Planet - most places have a single page - Shanghai has nine. Just picking a region to base ourselves in was a big task. With help from the invaluable (and Irish) hostelworld.com, we picked a hostel that turned out to be arguably the best accommodation of the entire trip.

The communal/bar area was so nice that we didn’t even manage to make it outside the hostel front door on the day we arrived (though the rain outside played a part in that too). It wouldn’t be the first day spent exclusively in the hostel.

A Bedtime Story

The single night we resided in Nanjing happened to coincide with a very important Italy versus Ireland world cup qualifier in Bari. The time difference meant that kick-off was at about 2am - and the chances of finding a bar in Nanjing showing it were almost non-existent. So I would have to rely on the internet for coverage (and of course I was going to watch the game at that hour!)

With the hostel bar closed, I had to watch it in my bed, one of eight in our cozy dorm in which every bed was occupied that night. 1-0 down and with the Italians never looking like conceding a goal, out of nowhere Robbie Keane grabbed an unexpected equaliser. I had my earphones on, so I’m not sure exactly how loud my cheer was, but it took all my restraint to stop myself screaming my heart out. Luckily no-one woke up. Or maybe they did, and were too embarrassed to ask why the hell I was screaming with joy in my top-bunk bed at four o’clock in the morning.