Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 50 - Tuesday June 28th 2016 - Beijing to Xi'an, China

So the alarm went off at 07:30 but as is normal we were awake before it had actually sounded. We went down for our last breakfast and saw that Mr. Pound (our driver) had already arrived in the hotels car park, way to early yet!

We nipped across the road to the seven eleven to pick up some goodies for the train journey not knowing what they would have on board then went back to the room to get the bags, check we had everything then start on yet another travel day to Xi’an.

For some reason our cases just seem to be getting fuller and fuller and heavier as well and we really have not bought anything and we have sent stuff back. It really makes no sense at all but as we both tried to zip up the Samsonite’s they seem to have more resistance than ever before.

Our new guide of the morning Jade was waiting down in the reception area

with Mr. Pound and once we had checked out we got into the Red Flag and motored across Beijing to the train station. The traffic was obviously a lot easier than the guides had imagined as by 10:15 we were there. Our train was not until 12:07 so there was going to be quite a lot of hanging around beforehand. We shook hands with Mr. Pound and said our goodbyes before Jade navigated us around the train station.

We had to wait outside for a bit avoiding the internal chaos as she went to fetch our pre booked train tickets from the counter. We had booked VIP class, the best they had so it will be interesting to see what that means and what we end up sitting in.

The train station was really manic, people everywhere toing and froing coming in and coming out of the station. The signage was joint language with Chinese so if we had to do it on our own I think we would have got there, to be honest the sheer number of people was more intimidating.

Like on the subway your bags all need to be security cleared before you can even enter the station we were then sent to a holding area to wait for our train to be called and as I mentioned earlier we had quite a wait.

To be honest the time went quite quickly and we were soon in line, making our way to carriage 8 seats 9a and 9c right at the back of the bullet train. The seats were fab, like business class on an airliner, all reclining and extra wide with cup holders that kind of thing. We were the only westerners in the VIP carriage but next to me over the walkway sat a lovely Chinese lady that spoke English that really helped us out with the female guard when it came to ordering some food (again we didn’t really need it, certainly not this early anyway).

As the train pulled out of Beijing it seemed to be high rise after high rise of residential flats. This soon gave way to small towns again with high rise flats and field after field. The train travels at 300 km per hour so it’s pretty quick and the journey was going to take us about five hours. We had opted for the train so that one we could say we had both been on a bullet train and two so we could see something scenic rather than being above the cloud in an aluminium tube.

Now being honest here the view out of the window was not riveting. We would go from farm land and crops to factories to new towns still being built that looked deserted apart from the construction workers. The countryside (if that’s what they call it) was not ugly in the slightest, just uneventful.

There must be a story though behind all the construction going on in China. Seriously they are building high rise apartment complexes at a serious rate. The weird thing is though that many of them are just shells, the bare naked concrete all 50 plus floors of them yet in this unfinished state they have taken all the cranes away, there is no sign of ongoing works and they do feel like ghost towns. It was the same for some of the road systems that we saw. We hurtled pass five lane motorways in each direction without a single car on them and on one of the roads we even saw abandoned coaches seemingly just parked in the middle of all the lanes. The only thing this scene was missing was the tumbleweed that normally goes together with this kind of scene, at least that’s what you get in the movies.

Some surprises though, we did not see the plumes of smoke escaping into the atmosphere form the factories that we passed, what we did see was green and lush and landscaped. The train stations that we went through all looked brand new if not deserted and everything just seemed ordered and clean. If China really is the most populated country in the world they certainly do not live anywhere around the train line between Beijing and Xi’an.

As we approached out destination, Xi’an mountains appeared on the west side creating a stunning green backdrop to a city that is obviously very much expanding, the difference being though that here there were genuine signs of life and the city from the train looked a lot bigger than we had ever imagined and certainly a lot more upright with glass towers and residential blocks punching into the air along with countless cranes for the future builds.

The train station felt more like an airport than a train station, maybe that’s because we are far more used to the Victorian variety in England but here the station was vast and open and shiny and polished.

Unfortunately, there were four exits marked for the station and we had not been told which one to head for to meet our car and guide. One of the other taxi drivers that tried to get us to head off with him told us to wait in the middle of the station which all seemed a bit odd but we did and within seconds we saw a young Chinese girl in blue skinny jeans running on the polished floor carrying a hand written sign spelling out Trevor Ronald Blofeld, this was our girl.

Lucia (her adopted European name) was a little pocket rocket. All energy and smiles and excitement. Her smile was the size of her face and she immediately just got you all up and excited about being in Xi’an. We set of in the car with Mr. Bruce (he’s been told that he looks like Bruce Lee and to be honest you could see it) and into the very busy traffic in Xi’an.

The city felt very very new and was still growing and the traffic felt worse than what we had experienced in Beijing so it took a disproportionate amount of time to reach the hotel and our driver to a wrong turn which didn’t help.

We passed the time in the car talking about our travels and where we had been. Lucia was amazed and seemed genuinely interested. We talked about Chinese property and the fact that you can never own a property outright in the city. Everything is owned by the government here and you buy a 70 year lease. You can buy the freehold on a property in the county but apparently not in any city.

Eventually we made it to the hotel that was inside the old city walls so we had left the new city behind and you could really feel that. Lucia left us to it after we checked in and after dropping off our bags in the room and a quick freshen up we hit the streets. Our driver (Bruce Lee) had told us that there was a street food market just round the corner form the hotel or a more upmarket restaurant just along the road so we had a choice. As we were checking in though Lucia had really stressed that we should not eat the food from the street market as she had some guests that did and they had been poorly and that was the last thing that we wanted so taking her advice we decided there and then that we would look at the street food but that would be all.

The street food market was indeed literally just around the corner from the hotel. I really don’t think I can explain how different it felt and looked to what we had experience in Beijing but this really was a total reverse and not in a good way.

The streets in this area were dirty and pot holed feeling unloved and the food stall felt dirty and off putting, no we would definitely not be eating dinner here! The stalls were a mixture of fruit stalls and wok stalls serving freshly cooked food over a ridiculously hot flame. The heat was generated from hot charcoals an as you walked past a stall it felt more like a furnace. This really did feel like a different China, the one we had expected more but the one up until now had eluded us so in a way it was good to take in this contrast, real locals in a real unbleached setting with no western influence at all.

For some reason seeing all the fatty meats and gristle sitting around in the hot sun had taken our appetites away so we made a quick bee line for the nearest seven eleven for cold drinks then it was back to the hotel for us.

In the end we knew we needed something to eat so we ventured down to an almost deserted hotel restaurant and ordered light snacks just to see us through, it was still only about 20:00 but as we had been doing very little all day that had made us more tired than we should be so after a few beers and our snack we headed back to the room to chill and make sure we were ready to just go tomorrow morning as it was going to be a full on day.

In a way it was shame that we did not get to stay in the new part of Xi’an as I’m sure that would have given us something to take in but then again that would have been more of the new China that we had seen in Beijing. It didn’t really matter though as we are only here for one night and with the time ticking we would not have seen much if anything at all. We just needed to hope that tomorrows tour would deliver us enough of a taste of this new city. Certainly we had high hopes for Lucia, she had really made a great impression on us and that made us even more excited for tomorrow.