China & Hong Kong

(Unfortunately most of my photos were on film, but I’ll try and get more of them up here soonish.)

I flew from Zurich to Hong Kong to rendezvous with Melinda who was flying in from Melbourne.  We spent a few days exploring Honkers – I really enjoyed HK and Kowloon and thought the city had a great vibe, a real “east meets west” feel.  I definitely put it in the category of one place I could live in for a few years.

Sunset from Hong Kong island.

We caught a high-speed ferry from Kowloon to the mainland, arriving at a city called Guangzhou nearby a few hours later.  We had a day there so we explored the colonial section of the city which was really pretty.  We also wandered the craziest local market I’ve even been to – absolutely anything living was for sale!

We flew from Guangzhou to Chongqing in central China to spend Christmas with Melinda’s parents, who have lived in China for several years.  My first impression of Chongqing?  MASSIVE!  It’s a city-state of something like 30 million and the high-rise apartments just go on and on and on.  Unfortunately the weather was miserable the whole time we were there – a grey foggy pall hung over the city, I never saw the sun and you couldn’t see more than a couple of hundred metres.  Yuk.

We traveled with Melinda’s parents to Chengdu via the World Heritage-listed site of Dazu.  This area is reknown for its centuries-old Buddhist caves, and it was a privilege to see them as not too many Westerners get out there.  Massive stone sculptures are carved out of the cave walls, some brilliantly painted or covered with gold leaf – wow!

   
Buddhist Caves at Dazu.                        Street scene from Lijiang.

We spent a day in Chengdu before flying down to Kunming in the Yunnan province in the south of China, kinda near Burma and Tibet.  This was the highlight of my China trip.  The ancient city of Lijiang (another World Heritage protected site) was picture-postcard perfect with traditional Chinese buildings and canals running along the streets, and the town is surrounded by some of the massive mountains that make up the foothills of the Tibetan Himalaya.  Interestingly, it’s a matriachal society and women definitely wear the pants (literally!) – they run the businesses etc.

We took a few days to walk the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a deep valley carved out by the Yangtze river – I think it’s something like 3 or 4km from the river to the mountain peaks!  It was a fantastic walk and when it was very undeveloped, which made it an even more memorable experience.  We stayed in some rudimentary “hotels” and farm houses along the way, and went down into the gorge to see the rapids that give the valley its name.  I’ve heard things have changed dramatically since the Chinese blasted a tourist road through the length of the valley – what a shame!!

A scene from Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Wish I had more of my photos available!!

After that it was back to Chongqing for a couple of days before I returned to HK to do all my duty-free shopping before jetting back to Zurich and – unfortunately – work.  To top it off I flew back on my birthday, and was rewarded with a bottle of champagne and some roses from Lufthansa – nice!  In all, it was a terrific four weeks or so I spent in China, and I’m looking forward to getting back there sometime in the future.