beijing, xinning and beyond.

The moment i stepped off the plane in Beijing i knew i was in china, not because of the signs full characters, the many chinese faces or the fact that i couldn’t understand anything being said around me. It was the smell. If you’ve ever walked down the back alleys of Melbourne in search of one of the more secluded restaurants or bars you no doubt know the smell. A pungent odour that is hard to describe as anything other than asian street smell, and seeing as though beijing is comprised of many streets and its an asian street the smell was no surprise.

I’m not complaining though, its all part and parcel being in China, along with the busy streets, stray dogs, street hawkers selling you anything from clothes and trinkets to food (all crazy kinds of food mind you, anything is on the menu, innards and Dog are common, in fact i was witness to the skinning of 3 dogs on the street outside a resaurant near my hostel, mmmm mmmm – they were probably strays…)

After a few short days in beijing, enough time for the uninnitiated to get acusomted to the crazyness of a large forgien city, we were off to start our joiney to Tibet. After piling into 3 taxis, we crammed 4 of the 8 into the first one, piling bags into every crack we could find and passing them ontop of those already seated. The driver could barely change gear but we mannaged, the 2nd taxi driver demanded we get a 3rd one so for the second group the ride was far more comfortable! The destination was the West beijing train station, a monolithic building that just stood impressivly over everything else around, it wasnt tall like a sky scraper it was just LARGE and imposing.

We got our first taste of ‘true’ china in the waiting room surrounded by bags and people crammed in so tight that it was as much fun as a hedge maze when trying to get form one end of the room to the other with patriotic symolbs and images linning the walls.

We jumped onto a massive train, a good 500m long, well maybe not that long but it was huge! Our carrages were sleepers, 3 racks high and about 2 feet wide each with about 2 feel walking space down the isle with a few seats. The ride itself was 24 hours but it flew by.

Xinning is an amazing city, cast agains the backdrop of the mountians (its situated in a vallet) that jut up sharply into the sky around it. Its arrid and dry but beautiful in its own way. It’s a real pity that no one where really enjoys the outdoors as i have come to. I dont think anyone could really blame the people here, life is all about day to day existence, struggling to get by in a really harsh world. It really lets me appreciate the oppotunities i have in Australia and norway to hang out in gods wonderful creation.

We met our host, and He’s an amazing guy, a crazy norweigain outdoors guy. I’ll tell you more when i get out of china as things are meant to be hush hush, better safe than sorry aye?

Anyways we’re sitting at about 2300m at the moment, spending a few days here to acclimatise to the altitude before we move up to 3300m at the english school. We have 2 weeks of teaching english ahead of us and will be going for a big hike at some point, hopefully making it up to 5300m or so. Anyways theres a large argument about the differences between male and female communication its getting heated… and very distracting… so have a good one. I’ll try and write something with a little more cohesion later.