After a last day of relaxing in Macau we felt finally ready to tackle the immense China! We took a bus to the border, walked through immigration both sides and then made it onto a 2 ½ hour coach ride to Foshan, just outside of Guangzhou city in the South. The difference was noticeable as soon as we crossed the border. Very little English and suddenly realizing the need to learn the difference between the Chinese characters for the ladies toilet and the men’s!
Our first impressions as we gazed out of the bus window were built up, bleak and grey. We could also immediately see the vastness of China and the size of the population was already apparent in the housing we could see. At the same time the landscape in the South is very similar to North Vietnam and the climate is similar too. It was strange to see rural landscapes with fish farms, paddy fields and farmers in wellington boots adjacent to large housing estates. There was one in particular we notice that was just huge, it seemed about 100 times the size of Le Squez!
When we got off the bus we flagged down a taxi to take us to our hotel. We thought we were fairly organized here as we had the name of the Hotel written in Chinese characters too. This didn’t seem to make a lot of difference as the taxi driver still seemed just as confused. So after a few minutes of us trying to say place names and him saying things back to us which we hoped were right we set off…luckily we made it to the correct place, phew – hurdle one, complete!
The hotel was in the middle of nowhere it seemed or maybe just a very poor area. We walked through the nearby streets and market and it was immediately clear to us that they don’t get very many Western faces around here. We were a source of much amusement to the locals, particularly because it was about 20 degrees so John was in shorts, t-shirt and flip flops but they all had huge coats on. They pointed and laughed a lot and some shouted hello, got children to wave, giggled madly or were just plain miserable. It seems that we bring out the best in everybody! We braved it and managed to buy some food of a street stall by pointing and holding up fingers for our unknown pot luck choices which turned out to be a little parcel of rice and a cabbage filled dumpling. The hotel staff barely spoke any English which resulted in John swimming in the lobby to find out where the hotel pool and gym where. China is going to be very hard work!
On our second day in Foshan we made the pilgrimage to the legacy of Grandmaster Ip Man (John’s Wing Chun hero) at the Foshan museum.
We spent a couple of hours browsing the exhibits and wandering around what was a very comprehensive and beautiful museum. The courtyard was lovely and the buildings architecturally stunning. They even had some martial arts lessons going on in parts which we watched for a while. It’s definitely back to celebrity status for us as I was asked to have my photo taken with a random women and when we walked to the next sight school children, pointed, shouted hello, giggled and were obviously talking about us! Oh how we have missed being celebrities!
We visited a temple which had some amazing Bonsai trees in the courtyard, then an old ancestral home and gardens. The gardens were everything you imagine of a beautiful, relaxing Chinese garden. There were pagodas, a lotus pond, Koi carp, bridges, rocks and bamboo.
Again two men seemed very excited to try out their limited English of ‘Hello’ on us and then one felt it his duty to become our personal photographer. With signs he insisted on taking our photo and then we had to follow him around the gardens while he pointed at places for us to stand for more photos! One of them involving climbing over a fence and standing on a rock in the pond – not sure the gardener would have approved.
Anyway we ended up with some very nice photos thanks to him but we had to say no after a while as there are only so many photos I can pose for in one day without getting a permanent fixed smile!
Our next hurdle was to buy a train ticket to Beijing so we headed to the train station. On the way John stopped at a street seller to try a piece of Bamboo. They peel it for you and you bite a bit off, chew it, then spit it out. Extremely sweet but very nice!! They thought it was hilarious again that we were ordering this. There were sticks of various lengths and we only wanted the smallest, which he was amazed at and kept trying to give us a bigger one. He then tried to give it to us for free! I think he felt it was so small he couldn’t sell it to us – it was still too big for us though and we ended up chucking the rest away. We did make him take a little bit of money though, equivalent of about 10p I think!
We made it to the train station and queued up with our phrase book in hand. As ever in Asia queuing makes no difference and someone still managed to push straight in front of us. We pointed to the words in the phrase book but it seemed the woman still couldn’t understand what we wanted! Luckily a young guy behind us spoke a little English and managed to help – phew again! He was very kind and even caught us up after to make sure we knew what time we had to be at the station for.
So here we are now on our 21 ½ hour train to Beijing in Soft sleeper which means you have 4 beds in the compartment. They provide blankets and pillows and a flask of hot water too. It’s quite comfortable although first class looks even nicer!
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