The Last Post...?

It’s funny to think that after however many weeks of writing, people still haven’t got the hang of writing comments on my posts. If a comment is from “Anonymous”, you should leave a name at the end of the message! Just joking – I do appreciate your comments, both named and anonymous.

So it seems that my time in China is drawing to a close. After numerous blogs, it seems as if this might be the last time that I write to you guys like this and that the next time that I see you will be in person.

I’ve been putting off writing this entry for a few days and in retrospect, it’s a good thing I did – the mood would have been quite different if I had written this three days earlier. Now I hate to leave you guys in suspense, but I will go into more details later.

So the last time I left you, we were on the way to Xian.

Xian. This city was amazing, Completely different to Beijing or Shanghai – what made it even more special was that we were staying in a youth hostel, with people who were willing to make our time as easy as possible.

The main sight in Xian is obviously the Terracotta Army, and we visited this on our first day there. The background behind the Terracotta Army is basically that the early Qin emperors believed that whatever was buried with them was taken into the afterlife. As a result, the first emperor created an army of 8000 full sized soldiers out of clay to be buried with him. This was done over 2300 years ago, and it was only discovered about 30 years ago that this even existed (the army had been buried underground).
As a result, only a fraction of the Terracotta army have been reformed and put back together. Excavation is still continuing today.

That evening, we went to a dumpling banquet. Being a vegetarian, I expected about 3 or 4 different types of dumplings that I could eat. Being a vegetarian with nut allergies, I expected even less for me to eat. So picture my surprise when I was brought plate upon plate of different types of Chinese dumplings. There must have been around 20 different kinds of dumplings to eat. It was incredible; for those of you who think the “gyoza” at Wagamama are good, you ain’t seen nothing yet!!

The following day, we went to see some giant pandas at an animal sanctuary about an hour away from the hostel. For those of you who don’t know, there are only 1600 of these giant pandas left in the world – so see them while you have a chance. Anyway, the pandas are just like you see on the TV or in books, very cute and very lazy – nothing remarkable there. The sanctuary itself was run down, and seemingly in need of funding – there were 7 workers caring for over 100 animals (not just giant pandas).

That afternoon, we had spare time, so we walked around the city. Xian is special because it houses a Muslim district within the city centre. This district was amazing – street sellers, people cooking food outdoors on huge grills, painters, small shops etc.

As a city, Xian was much smaller than Beijing or Shanghai and this gave it some character – it was quite modern, with the compulsory KFCs, McDonalds and Starbucks but it had some traditional features such as the city wall, the Muslim district, and the Bell and Drum Towers. When visiting China, Xian definitely deserves a look in.

From Xian we flew to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is about an hour’s drive from both Ningbo and Shanghai, and there is really nothing remarkable about the city. The main reason we went there, was due to the fact that two of my Chinese friends lived there and I had promised to visit them.

Anyway, Hangzhou involved a lot of walking around, eating, drinking and shopping. Despite my earlier comment, the West Lake in Hangzhou is a very beautiful sight and attracts many hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
In short, we had a nice time in Hangzhou, mainly due to the willingness of my friends to show us around.

Hangzhou really signalled the end of our travels as such. My last week in China was intended to consist of a week on Hainan Island. This island had been labelled by the travel brochures as China’s Hawaii and was one of the few places that I could wind down after my four months in China.

So we arrived in Hainan with expectations of a beach paradise, with white sands, crystal blue waters and palm trees. And this is exactly what we got. What we had not expected though, were the torrential rainstorms and gale force winds that grounded us for the first two days. These storms were so bad that they made national news in China.
This is the reason for my earlier comment (“…the mood would have been quite different…”).

So after two days in Hainan, I was thoroughly fed up and wanting to return back to the UK, or at least Shanghai.
Miraculously, though, the weather did clear up by the third day, and we were able to spend entire days by the sea.

Being a sea resort, there was not much vegetarian food, but an abundance of fresh fruit (pineapple, mango and lime smoothies every morning), chocolate ice cream, real chips with garlic and coriander, and cold beer got us through the culinary difficulties!

It wouldn’t be China, though, without something to ruin this paradise, and this inevitably came in the form of Chinese people having no qualms about spitting or peeing on the beach. On our last day, we were also subjected to needlessly loud and awful Chinese karaoke.
But this all detracts from the positives – because I did have a very nice time in Hainan. Aside from the beach, there is nothing more to say about the island but we had a good time.

And this all leads me to the present moment in time – I am sitting in Hainan airport, writing this blog, ready to spend one final night partying in Shanghai before the return to my beloved British Isles.

Due to popular request, I will be writing a summary/post mortem to my time in China. If you’re lucky, you may even get a blog about my time as a hot shot investment banker at Bear Stearns.


But goodbye for now,


Hope to see you all in person soon,



Nihal