Watch your step. Everyone here is a Kung Fu master.

Haggling with a street vendor over the price of a meat and vegetable roll. After agreeing to the price, he told us that that price didn’t include the meat.

I would have left and gone to the next stall, but it was selling deep fried grasshoppers and chicken fetus on a stick.

Not bad in the hostels, although it’s the usual “no paper in the bowl” routine of most Asian countries. Beijing is also the only place in the world where I’ve seen a toilet with a star rating.

However, I’ll never forget the look of horror on the face of my friend when he returned from using a public toilet at night. To this day, he still refuses to speak of it.

Having visited China in the dead of winter, my thoughts on the culture and majesty of the 5000 year old empire could be summed up with one thought; “bloody hell, it’s cold”. Every night, upon returning to my hostel, I had to check that all extraneous body parts were still attached.

That’s not to say that there weren’t highlights. The largest man made structure on earth, the Great Wall of China is supposedly visible from space. While this may or may not be the case, I can truthfully state that it isn’t visible from 5 metres in front of your face once the fog rolls in.

The Chinese acrobat theater was a definite highlight of Beijing. It’s the perfect place to go if you want to see humans flip flopping like landed fish, or contorting into the shape of a lotus petal.

There is also a thriving black market trade in Beijing. In the famous silk road, travelers can buy designer clothes and bags for a fraction of the cost, and at a fraction of the quality, of the real thing.

If you are searching for DVDs however, it is best to be careful. A Danish guy we met had bought “Return of the King” two years before it had been released in the cinema. Apparently next door there was a shop selling Playstation 6 games.

Xian is home to the fabled terracotta warriors. Literally thousands of these life sized sculptures stand guard over the tomb of a long dead Chinese king. Dozens more stand guard over various stores on the path leading to the famous site.

Tempted as I was to buy a life sized replica of a huge stone statue, I wasn’t sure of the logistics of getting it home. Maybe next time I’ll visit the tomb of Xan Xipun, whose eternal rest is watched over by 25,000 life sized blow-up sex dolls.


Having just arrived in our hostel in Beijing, my friend and I sat down in the common room, for a non-deserved, but well appreciated, beer.

While we were innocuously sitting there, a young American woman sauntered over and asked us if we knew where she could score some opium.

Now, neither my friend nor I look like shady characters as far as I know. That didn’t deter this young lady though, as she began to regale us (two complete strangers) with tales of all the places she had visited, and what drugs she had taken there.

I’m sure during her continuing travels she will experience many unique pleasures; the heady joys of an opium den, the transcendental bliss of ganja meditation and the intimacy of a Bangkok prison.
 
Visible from space my arse!
 

We took an overnight sleeper train from Xian to Beijing. After boarding, I left my case on the top bunk, which was to be mine, and sat on the bottom bunk, talking to my friend.

Suddenly, a small group of Chinese people tried to move me. I thought I must have been sitting on their bunk so I moved to the one across from it. They still tried to move me.

After I had gotten out of the way, one of them proceeded to vomit all over the carpeted floor. Unperturbed, his friends simply rolled up the carpet and took it outside, where they left it sitting on the platform.

The perpetrator then lay down on the bunk and fell asleep. He didn’t stir until we reached Beijing.


The “Return of the King” story is actually true.

It had a poorly photocopied cover with pictures of Tom Cruise on it. The blurb was random paragraphs, cut from different movies, and then pasted into a jumbled whole.

I’ll always remember the last line. It was “and Whoopie Goldberg’s head falls off.” I’m not sure what movie it was taken from, but I want to see it.
Trust me, you did not want to see the one star version.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1,306,313,812 (2005)
Beijing

The Chinese Yuan

A$1 = 6.5 Yuan (1/80 of a rip off North Face Jacket)

2001/2002
Beijing, Xian
2 but I was there in winter. I bet it goes up in summer.

4.7 Now this is more like it! Beer here was cheap and plentiful, although the variable alcohol levels were a little on the dangerous side.