China is gigantic behemoth of a country. Everything is gargantuan; our tour company mission statement “you are never alone with China Odyssey” is frankly redundant. Alone? Wherever you find yourself in this country there are millions of people around you with whom you can talk ( or mostly gesture) and both come away laughing. Great fun! Kids particularly also want a picture.
In Perth the construction indicator is the number of cranes on the city skyline. Here we’ve seen hundreds. Thirty on the right side of the road and turn the corner and there’s another 30 or forty on the left. And it is high- rise apartments everywhere beneath the cranes, each about 30 stories and there is literally hundreds of them being built. Where else to house over a billion people?
Friday night in downtown Chongqing ( Chong-Ching) the place is jumping. All the usual 5 star hotel chains, tens upon tens of brilliant new eating places, Prada and Cartier, thousands of excited effervescent young people and massive gaudy garish colourful TV type screens and neon to light up the frivolity, What a buzz! A few years ago this city needed a bridge or two over the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Voila! Today they have 22 and all as big as Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The Chinese are warm and friendly, smiling, courteous and every last one of them industrious to the very core of their being. How fascinating to think all these people don’t get to vote and get the government they don’t want, while we get the vote and still end up with the government we don’t want!
When push comes to shove I was always of the opinion that it was a Chinese mastery. But not so!
In the crush of a crowd the orientals are very adept at filling even the smallest void ahead of them. If you see them coming, take a half-a-step back and gesture that they should go ahead and lo, they smile courteously and insist you go ahead before them.
The same is not so when driving. You must hold your nerve at least until a fraction of a millimetre of paint comes away from either car. Wimps and the faint hearted do give way to every determined forced entry. Tourist coaches intimidate Mums’ pushing prams on a cross walk, scooter riders never live beyond 22 and the very very old Chinese man pulling a decrepit old fully laden wooden cart, with iron wheels, ignores all and meanders at will across the busiest of intersections
The country roads we travelled out of Yangshuo back to Guilin were once concrete but today are a patchwork of potholes, ruts and ravines with occasional glimpses of axle busting elevated concrete portions. And being wrapped in a shroud of early morning fog, one needs keep a sharp eye out for the occasional farmers market using up the 1st lane and oncoming traffic and trucks appearing out of the morning mist without the headlights switched on.
In every city the roads are usually dual carriageway, (fenced in the middle to stop pedestrian access), beautifully tree lined for mile upon mile, and spectacularly landscaped with alternating colourful hedges. Hedges that are all trimmed by hand, thus creating more jobs. Road and pavement sweepers are everywhere. Another rich source of jobs for all; a workforce with untrammelled right of passage, against the lights, across the biggest city intersections and wide footpaths populated by the masses.
Remember how frightening it was as a kid riding the Ghost Train at the Royal Show? At Guilin airport PA announcements are not exactly mellifluous–sweetly sounding or smoothly flowing; contrarily the voices are always female at about 160 decibels, preceded by a dinner gong and shrill sounding like short-wave radio static which reverberates throughout the lounge area like a sideshow ghost ride.
We have been fortunate to have fine temperate weather each day but humidity can be quite oppressive at times, although there is plenty of air conditioning for hybrid orchid types like us westerners. A word of caution: fitness is mandatory to negotiate the thousands of steps and ancient cobblestones, all with the odd loose flagstones and nary a handrail to be seen anywhere.
Confucius say: Wherever you go, go with your heart
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