"My first day in China"

My first full day in China and what an experience it was. Although I had always wanted to visit China, deep down I never thought that I would actually manage it, but here I was together with the 1.2 billion population. This was my ambition come true!

The first task of the day was to telephone Michelle back in England as it was nearly two weeks since I had said goodbye to her and I did not want her to think that I had forgotten about her. I went to a communications building where I had to first give the number to a telephonist who connected the call to a telephone in a private booth. The line was surprisingly good and of course it was excellent to talk with Michelle, I was actually a little bit upset that as yet she had not received any of my letters that I had written, this must be due to the postal service in Russia. The call was over far too quickly and cost £20.00 for just eight minutes!

During the journey on the Trans-Siberian train I had read at least a couple of hours every day to plan a route through China and on to Hong Kong. The book that I had brought with me was the Lonely Planet Guide to China, and is something of a Bible to the back-packer as it always gives tips on where to go and where not to go. I have used it before in other countries and was very glad to have one with me on this occasion. I had read that there are two ways to get train tickets in China, the first is to go to the China International Travel Service (CITS) and purchase the tickets there, or go to the railway station and purchase one on the black market. As I did not yet know the system I chose to go to the CITS and there I purchased my first ticket which was to Xi’an to visit the Terracotta Warriors. The good thing about using the CITS is that there is no effort involved, they speak English and are able to advise you and issue the tickets from the office. The bad point is the extra cost, as this is the China tourist authority, they want the hard currency that the travellers bring with them and, as a consequence, the tickets purchased are tourist-priced, which means they have 100% added onto the Chinese price! Having said that they are still good value as the journey to Xi’an is one thousand two hundred and two kilometres at a cost of 170 Yuan (English money £17.00). The trip would be overnight to maximise the amount of time I had to ’sight see’, and also to save on accommodation. The best bed, according to the Lonely Planet guide, is the middle one, why I’m not too sure but in four days time I shall find out. Katrine came with me as she wanted to purchase a train ticket to Hong Kong where she was to meet her boyfriend, so we set off for the CITS together. We went to the address that we had been given and I also had a map of the city. When we got to the address I had, the office was nowhere to be found, it had obviously moved since the publication of the L.P. book. Suddenly an old man cycled up to us in a rickshaw and tried to talk to us (in Chinese of course) we obviously could not understand him at first but then he produced a tourist leaflet showing the CITS building and it was then it clicked, this guy knew travellers would come to the old address to look for the office, so he was there to offer his services and take them to the new address. Later we found the same had happened to others in the hotel. We climbed aboard his rickshaw and off he went pedalling through the streets of Beijing, this was the only way to travel. The price of the journey was virtually nothing, just a few jiao (pennies) but it was certainly worth it as our legs were already starting to ache with the lack of exercise over the past week. As for the old man, ten out of ten for ingenuity!

Money

The money situation in China is far from simple. To start with they have two types of currency, one for the ’people’ and one for the tourists. The basic unit is the YUAN which is divided into JIAO and FEN. 10 FEN make up one JIAO, and 10 JIAO make up 1 YUAN. The Peoples currency is called Renminbi (RNB) and is issued by the bank of China and comes in denominations of 1,2,5 and 10 Yuan. 1,2,and 5 Jiao. and 1,2,and 5 fen. The tourist currency is called Foreign Exchange Certificates (FEC). and comes in the denominations 100,50,10,5 and 1 YUAN. 5 and 1 JIAO

RNB and FEC are suppose to be worth the same but in fact they are not, (what a surprise!) FEC is worth more, but when you pay in FEC you will almost always be given change in RNB. When you leave the country you cannot legally exchange RNB, if you try to pay for anything in RNB you face constant arguments as the people expect to be paid in FEC as you are a tourist and should not have RNB! Sometimes I felt like I could scream as it was at times so frustrating. You are always required to pay in FEC at railway stations, at hotels and for international telephone calls. I found that some shops had the prices in Fec but if I tried to pay in RNB the price was raised by as much as 50%.  At the time that I was in China the exchange rate was £1.00 = Y10.00.

Once Katrine and I had purchased our train tickets, we spent the rest of the day walking around the streets of Beijing, just taking in the sights and sounds of this amazing city. My first impressions were very good. The Chinese appeared to be happy and contented as they went about their daily business, despite being an oppressed nation. They had a good selection of food and fruit available in the shops, something that the Russians definitely did not have! and they were always smiling at us and saying "Hello" as we walked pass. I quickly learned how to say "Hi!" in Chinese which is, Nî Hâo (pronounce Nee How depending on the local dialect) Whenever I said it to them it always produced smiles and laughter, probably at my terrible attempt to pronounce it!!!

The roads of the city are very wide but for the number of people there is comparatively little noise which is partly due to the fact that most people are riding around on bicycles. The main noise that you hear is the constant ringing of the bicycle bells. Apparently you have to ring your bell whenever you approach a pedestrian or overtake another bike or, I believe for any other reason they could think of as the ringing was constant.

We walked for hours and visited the various Hutongs, or small courtyards, around which small communities live. There are about three thousand Hutongs in Beijing and within them they have shops and small restaurants where you can get a great meal for roughly £1.00 with a large bottle of beer included. The way to order food is unbelievable. On entering the restaurant you grab a seat and sit at a table, when the waiter comes, he of course is not going to speak English and my Chinese is non existent, so there is only one thing to do and that is to take the waiter around to other tables and point to the food that others are eating, (that is assuming it looks edible). Then you point to beer and rice or anything else you fancy and sit back and see what arrives at your table! On more than one occasion I had to make the "cluck" noise of a chicken, and a few times went into the kitchen to point to vegetables, chicken, (or something that looked like chicken), and then point to the wok and let them cook it. I had only one bad meal, which I shall explain more about that later in this journal.

Read Neils complete adventure here.