The decision to go to Harbin was some kind of snap choice made in a desparate bid to find some snow for Lili to see..

It was freeeezing. We arrived and had the breath knocked out of us by the cold. The kind of place you navigate by hopping from one heated shop to the next.

We took a room at the first hostel we could locate and set out to explore the place, while wearing just about every layer of clothing we had with us.

The place is preparing for their ice sculpture festival which isn’t fully underway, but we still saw plenty of ice sculptures around the place.

The architecture in Harbin clearly shows its Russian influence. But other than a few pretty sights the place didn’t hold much interest for us. I mean, what were we going to do, visit the old Japanese Germ Warfare Research Facility?

We stayed one night before heading out to try to find transport back to Beijing. We started to freak out when it seemed that no trains would be heading in that direction. Ever. Were we doomed to build an igloo on the frozen river and live out our lives hunting wandering Siberians for food? Hmm.

While I was daydreaming about cannibalism however, Lili was researching our guidebooks and determined that the smartest thing would be to take a bus to a city closer to Beijing, Shenyang, the transport “hub” of the region. Once we got there we booked tickets for later that night to Beijing and went off to find some food.

Mission Impossible 3 was on the TV of the second leg, so we got to enjoy flyovers of Sydney Harbor cutting immediately to the red outback. It was dubbed into Mandarin, with Mandarin subtitles. The interesting thing is, the action sequences in that movie are even worse when they’re all you’ve got to entertain you.

In total we spent 15 hours between those two bus trips, suffering some kind of cruel parody of sleep. We never did see any real snow in Harbin. I think the ice falls out of the sky in there big rough-hewn bricks. We were defeated, but at least we knew the true meaning of cold.

It’s been a long time since my last post. In part because of the Taiwanese plot to inhibit my ability to connect to the internet, but also because I’m lazy and end up doing other things on the ‘net, getting side tracked, and then being told to hurry up by a then-hungry Lili. That’s the way it goes.

We’ve spent quite a long time in Beijing, with a break to visit the frozen city of Harbin(Haerbin?) in the north.

Beijing is a big place, and like most of China, being constructed/reconstructed at great pace. It’s even more pronounced here since the Olympics in 2008 are a motivating factor in prettying up the place. So, in other words, they’re clamping down on street vendors and rebuilding the Hutongs as some kind of Western-acceptible approximation.

We wandered around for the first couple of days. Found a frozen lake. Ate interesting food in some kind of Muslim place. Switched hostels to avoid extortionary rates. Generally just explored the areas around where we stayed.

Christmas saw us in the Grand Hyatt for an extended lunch buffet with altogether too much good food and free flowing Aussie red wine, but the next day was back to the tough stuff as we woke early and hopped on a bus to The Great Wall.

The man-made wonder of the world had a reputation to live up to and I was a little worried that it would be a typically watered down tourist experience like just about every other “must see” sight we’ve encountered here in China. Hoping to reduce that likelihood we opted for The Hike. We arrived in misty foothills, and proceeded up a winding path through a frosty forrest and, after much cursing and effort, made it to the top of the wall. Many layers of clothing were shed at this point. My camera was unsheathed and the hike proper began.

The walk was something like three hours of clambering more or less up and down the spine of this mountain range, on the top of the crumbling wall, in some places so decayed that we were walking beside it. The view was awesome and the scale of the thing was probably the most impressive aspect. Photos will have to wait until I have more reliable internet access though.

Lili befriended a tout, who held her hand for moral support through some of the tougher sections, and who turned out to be a pretty good English speaker. Chatting to her was interesting, she is a corn farmer from a local village with no farm work to do, so she comes up to the wall to sell the usual t-shirts and other crap to tourists.

She pointed out some graffiti on the wall from the Ming soldiers who were stationed there, and, before coming into sight of an initial checkpoint, bid us farewell, shaking our’s with her impressively calloused hand.

Eventually the wall reached a rennovated section and the going was less tough, and ultimately we ended up on the other side where we ate a quick lunch while waiting for the bus. (Or kept the bus waiting. Whichever you prefer.)

By this time we had spent about 6 nights in Beijing and it was time to push on, so we booked tickets to Harbin and left on an overnight sleeper.

We’re currently in the cafe of the Hotel Sofitel in Zhengzhou. Ritzy.
We’ve been killing time with much needed relaxation after the trials and ordeals of our Shaolin experience-of-questionable-authenticity. Lunch has been one drawn out afternoon tea buffet, and my head aches from the absolutely zero nutritional content food, and the endless cycle of instrumental versions of Amazing Grace, and various renditions of Christmas carols.
We have tickets to Beijing, leaving tonight. The trip is around 7 hours, and we’ve opted for hard sleepers again, since it’s the best way to avoid having someone’s elbow in your ear all night. It also bumps your traveling companions up one tiny economic notch, which makes a difference that cannot be overestimated. Take a seat and all the available floor space has been sold to the people who can’t afford anything else. No allocated maximum number of people either, it’s just as many as can crush in around you. No mind given to the fact that someone will then doggedly push a meal cart up and down that carriage every hour or so. We’re exhausted already, and that ain’t nobody’s idea of a good time. Traveling at night saves on accommodation too.

So far China has lived up to many expectations. The divide between wealthy and poor is fairly obvious. There aren’t as many beggars as other places we’ve been. They are here, but as we noticed last time we were in China, they do seem to actually get money out of the locals.

Half the cities we’ve been to have been bloated industrialised sprawls, with booming consumer markets driven by the cheap manufacturing in the area and an abundance of a new middle class of city dwelling Chinese. Many of the more successful cities get rewarded with their own economic zoning, making it more profitable to operate in these tax havens. In some ways this creates a safety net for many locals, with health care and such available to city dwellers. Unfortunately this causes an obvious disparity between people living in the city and those in the more neglected rural areas. It creates the age-old influx of rural people into urban areas. Even though this process is obviously happening, there are strangely fewer beggars than one might expect.

On the other hand, there seems to be a huge cheap workforce, with people nominated to do everything from sweeping streets, collecting recyclable rubbish and unblocking sewers. In the hospitality industry, you’ll find a tiny eatery will have ten floorstaff, most of them with nothing to do.

But somehow it seems to be working. They must be getting paid enough to spend their money, if the glitzy advertising, bejeweled mobile phones and frippery are any indicator.

Take a walk away from the city centre in most cities though and you’re quickly on unpaved roads. The illusion of abundant wealth fades. People gawk and tut, you feel like an alien from a different universe of dentistry and store-bought clothing.

Shooting through the outskirts of town on a train affords glimpses of shanty towns, barely discernible from the rubbish piles they’ve grown from.

It will be interesting to visit Beijing, the political heart of the country. Images of concrete and red banners come to mind every time I think about it.

We’re having fun. Lili has finally seen ice on the ground. We’ll soon be in reach of the remnants of the great wall of China. Everywhere we go there’s this sense of age upon age of civilisation, stacked up, with the neon lights and fake fur coats just a tiny bit of sediment clinging to the latest layer.

From Kaifeng it was a simple matter of a bus ride to the city of Zhengzhou, and after spending the night, leaving the bulk of our posessions in the hands of left luggage, while another short bus ride through Dengfeng took us out to the legendary Shaolin Monestary.

The mountains stood vigil over the temple and monastery, where hundreds of red track-suited children were honing their martial skills in this, the spiritual birthplace of kung fu, the ancestor of almost all eastern fighting arts.

The qi hung in the air like the barely perceptible trembling of an adrenaline charged fighter as we checked into the peasant hotel and went to meet our sifu. A brief introduction left us awestruck, happily handing over the pittance it would cost to receive his martial tutelage.

With some hours of daylight left, we took a walk through the monastery, observing both empty-hand and weapon drills being performed with dilligence and determination by rank upon rank of deadly young men and women. It was a privilage to pay the humble entry fee required to watch the Shaolin Monks demonstrate their physical prowess and displays of concentration on stage for us lowly foreigners, and we were rewarded with displays of choreographed weaponry, and the deadly technique of “Throwing a Needle Through The Pane of Glass”.

We went to bed, in the icy room of our hotel, woke early and begun mental preparation for the task ahead of us. A bowl of steamed rice primed our metabolisms sufficiently, and at the appointed time a young fighter-student fetched us to the kung fu school.

Little time was spared for us to get our bearings, and soon we were under the direct supervision of one of the sifu’s best students, learning techniques for empty-hand combat. Frustrating hours passed where our wills were tested to breaking point, our bodies exhausted until they worn thin as bowstrings.

Finally, reprieve. We ate heartily alongside our fellow students. But it was all too soon before our near-broken bodies were back out in the foothills of the Song Mountain Range, progressing to weapon forms.

Brutal and skilled demonstrations had us quivering with anticipation, and we were given the honor of choosing our weapon of choice. The noble spear was to be our school and we practiced with renewed zeal.