| Shanghai at night. A modern, vibrant city. Excuse me, I seem
to have swallowed a guide book. |
|
| Temple of the Jade Buddha, Shanghai. |
|
| Ying and Yang, the two opposing forces, is a consistent theme
in china. Perhaps this is why the previous photo was of nice statues and
this one is downright nasty. |
|
| If I could have taken a photo of the entire wall that this
is just a detail of it would be enormous. It would also smack you round
the head at the level of detail of it all. |
|
| No pictures of the Jade Buddha, I'm afraid, it's not allowed.
This is a rather nice picture, I think. |
|
| On our way down to the bazaars, and the streets are teeming
with people. |
|
| You can't see much, but take it from me, this was taken on
the 87th floor of the Hyatt, where we sipped cocktails and gawped out of
the window. It was about as far removed from the picture you may have in
your mind of communist China as you can get. |
|
| And this is looking up at where we were from ground level. |
|
| The Hunagpu river runs through Shanghai. It's a working river,
with barges sailing up and down all day. |
|
| Telescopes on the banks of the Hunagpu. Unfortunately, they
played a horrible, tinny sort of music-on-hold. One invention we could all
do without. |
|
|
If ever you needed evidence that communism is dead, this is it. On the
Nanching Road, customers are enticed into a shop by this, this...thing.
Three doors away was a sex shop. We spent a couple of days laying waste
to the bazaars around the Nanching Road, loads of "genuine"
merchandise being sold by people yelling "lookee, lookee" at
you as you walked past. My favourite was the place that sold loads of
watches with multiple dials and thngs on the face, only there was no way
of actually getting at the dials, there was only one winder on the watch.
One or two DVDs were purchased!
|
|
| Another view of Shanghai at night. |
|
| From Shanghai we took the train to Hangzhou, another beautiful
city. We ate at a restaurant that had more staff than menu items; the food
was great and the staff were noisy and inattentive. We then visited the
night market, a great invention. The next day we went for a cruise along
the West Lake. |
|
| Passing traffic on the West Lake. |
|
| Another local outing leaving the boat at the West Lake. About
fifty yards from this was the coach park, where we saw endless processions
of locals, all wearing the same caps and all yelling at people two inches
away from them. |
|
| Lingyin Temple. Inside the caves, which were lethally slippery. |
|
| The laughing Buddha, one of the features of the Lingyin Temple. |
|
| Chipmonk at the Lingyin Temple. |
|
| Monks at the Lingyin Temple. |
|
| Another sign warning the "big-noses" how to behave
in a temple. |
|
| When you're faced with a place as nice as this, however, only
a moron would misbehave. |
|
| Gemma is strangely enigmatic whilst Dus and Mary ham it up
for the camera. |
|
| Lingyin Temple, another place to go back to. |
|
| At the Tea Plantation. By now we were heartily sick of visiting
factories and sat there whilst they tried to flog us bloody expensive green
tea. To my sophisticated palate, it was like drinking dishwater. |
|
| I think this is in Hangzhou, walking round the lake. Again,
it was a perfect day, in a perfect place, with perfect company. |
|
| Many tourist-y places in China are so clean that they look
like they have been cleaned every half hour. Many of them are. |
|
| Sunset over the lake. Invigorated by this wonderful sight,
we set off to a restaurant a bit further down and ate ourselves to a standstill.
Someone has some interesting photos of our walk back, especially some poses
outside MacDonalds. |
|
| From Hangzhou we drove out to Longshen and then on to the
rice terraces at Londi Village. This was the lodge we spent the night in.
We arrived late, in the dark and didn't see much. But we heard the nightlife,
all manner of creatures and beasties. In the morning we awoke to see....very
little. It was hammering down and the cloud was all around. The cliud cleared,
but the rain stayed. |
|
| Rain, schmain. Just look at the view of the Dragon's Backbone
Rice Terraces. |
|
| The women of the Yao tribe escorted us up the mountain..... |
|
| ......and then sold us anything they could. Here's Gemma in
a bandana. |
|
| And Dus. |
|
| And, completing the trio, Mary. I bought one for my niece
but didn't wear it. |
|
| Janet does a Yao dance in Yao costume. |
|
| Trouble with flyaway hair? |
|
|
|
|
|
