The time has
come to travel for a month! Finally!
Some of the
places I will visit are: Beijing , Shanghai , Chengdu (I’ll be
seeing some pandas hopefully!), Xian, Yangshuo and Zhengzhou . Then I will go to Thailand for a
week! I can’t begin to express how excited I am!
In the last two
weeks, I had a taster of what is to see outside of Zhengzhou . I have been in this city for
around 5 months now and I was beginning to think that the whole of China must be
like this city; quite dirty, overcrowded and polluted. How glad was I when I
discovered that it’s not!
Near Dengfeng is
the Shaolin Temple ,
about an hour and a half from Zhengzhou .
On the Saturday night, we went to see the ShaoLin Zen Music Ritual. I didn’t
know we were going to see it and so it was a big surprise! It was honestly the
most beautiful performance I have ever seen! Of course, I’m Welsh so I went
without a coat. Luckily they were renting big Chinese military coats to wear as
the performance was outside and it was cold!
The setting is
just beautiful. The stage is between two mountains with the stars and moon
above. The performance lasted an hour and a half and the whole performance was
full of beautiful instruments, beautiful costumes, beautiful music and amazing
martial arts! I recommend this show to everyone!!! During the performance,
there are monks sat at the front and they don’t move at all, they look like
statues. Maybe this is to show how good they are at meditating?
Chinese people
don’t know how to be quiet during a show. There were even men behind me getting
drunk on Baijiu. However, I was so mesmerised by the whole performance that the
sound disappeared as I was so focused on what was happening in front of me!
The next day we
were up early to go to the Shaolin
Temple
I was
disappointed by the Shaolin Temple and I will tell you why. When we went it was a National holiday.
Therefore, the amount of Chinese people was phenomenal! It felt like half of China had gone there
for the day! From our hotel it should have taken us twenty minutes to get
there…it took us two hours!
We were the only
Westerners there and this made us somewhat of a tourist attraction. Instead of
taking pictures of the magnificent temple, they were taking photos of us! At
one point I had a crowd of people pushing and shoving to have photos with me. I
realised that this must be what it’s like to be famous. Why on earth do people
want to be famous if this is what it would be like?
We didn’t spend
very long there either as two of the girls who were with me had a flight to
catch in the afternoon so we probably spent a total of one hour there! Luckily,
I will be going there again in a few weeks. We ended the visit in a really nice
restaurant in a beautiful location!
The following
week I went to the Yuntai mountain near Jiaozuo ,
about a three hour bus ride from Zhengzhou .
I went with my school as part of a school trip for the teachers. Once again, it
was amazing to see green and realise not all of China
is like the concrete city of ZZ .
One again, it was beautiful and I really enjoyed it.
The weather was
hot and I actually got sunburn on my arms! I haven’t seen the sun properly for
so long! Many of the Chinese teachers say my skin is like snow White’s! It’s
all about being pale in China
but I can’t wait to get some colour and not look like a ghost so much!
When there’s
greenery, there are bugs! The ants were giant ants! The beetles were big too! Natasha
and I were lucky enough to see some wild monkeys while we were on a boat on a
lake. We saw big frogs and we saw thousands of tadpoles too!
It’s time to
travel. When I return I will have quite a few things to write about I’m sure! I’ll
write as soon as I’m back about my adventures! :)
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