Huangshan Mountain!

From Beijing I took a flight to Tunxi, about 300km west of Shanghai to go hiking in the nearby Huangshan Mountain (also called yellow mountain). Even though I took the flight instead of the slower train, it took me probably 8 hours in total to get to my hotel there - it seems that I repeatedly underestimate distances in China. Especially the smaller connections (to and from the airport, waiting etc) add up a lot.
But finally I arrived at my hotel where I again noticed that Chinese receptionist seem to be quite inefficient. It always takes reaaally long to get keys or just to check out...
As I was exhausted from the long travel from Beijing and all the recent travels, I decided to visit the popular hot springs at the foot of the mountain for the evening. I had hearded that it is quite a fantastic experience to soak in different hot springs while enjoying the sight of the mighty mountains around. Even though it had turned dark when I arrived so that I got robbed of the view, it was very enjoyable to relax there. What was especially fancy was a huge collection of differently infused pools with stuff as coffee, coconut milk, wine etc.
Feeling much better, I went to bed early awaiting the next days climbing.

In the morning, I stocked up with water and snacks as I heard they are expensive on the top and soon started my hike up.
It was actually extremely exhausting and my tshirt was soaked in sweat very soon. However for my legs I still found it to be more pleasent compared to hiking down. Whatsmore, while getting higher I was immediately rewarded with a better and better view of the surroundings.
Finally I arrived at the top and got a stunning view of the mountains. A sign said that my point was "the best point for photographic scenery". Later though, I found a few more of these "best spots". I was wondering if there were some quarrelling guys "This is the best spot!" - "No, it's this one!" -"Shut up, you two idiots - its this here"
Here some impressions (it was really hard to choose - I took so many pictures):

thats where I wanna go!

exhausted - I could literally wring out my tshirt

And then there are these crazy guys! On my way up I passed at least 50 of them, carrying goods up. I calculated that a few of them had at least 40kg on EACH side! Thats more than carrying a Lino on their shoulders actually...

lots of clouds around - It was a bit like I would imagine the scene of those greek gods on Olympus

When I arrived at a peak of the mountain, while watching at the scenery, I met another traveller, Bridget from Australia. As we found that we stayed at the same hotel on top, we decided to go there together and actuall came to spend most of the day together hiking around different peaks of the mountains. She was a really cool and interesting person and we had lots of fun together. She had come from Shanghai where she was currently teaching English to Chinese children and the next day way actually her birthday.
While hiking around we struggled finding our way around as it seems that all maps at and of Huangshan and made with the intention to confuse people. We both had maps from our hotels that looked completely different and also the few signs at the path were just unbelieveable unhelpfull. Seriously, as if someone had made a competition about designing unhelpful maps and the winners maps were used for tourists -.-
However it was not too bad getting lost at Huangshan and we got to see a fantastic and stunnin scenery again and again. What I noticed once again was that while sightseeing and walking around a city I usually get tired quite fast, often just after one hour. Its completely different with hiking in nature for me. I can hike for hours and hours and often it seems I get energized instead of tired.

Bridget from Australia

For the next morning I got up at 4:20am to meet up with Bridget and another guy she had met earlier to see the morning sunrise together. Unfortunately it was so foggy that we did not get to see anything of the sun. It was more like beeing in a cloud.

beautiful morning sunrise...

with Bridget and Ellis

stupid maps!

It turned out that her friend Ellis was planning to get down the same route as I did, so we moved on together. It was really nice meeting him as he turned out to be a really cool guy who has already seen quite a bit of the world. He is also 22 and currently doing an internship in Shanghai. On our way down we had some pretty open and deep conversations and lots of fun together.
In general I feel that travellers are some really special people - very open minded, curious, interesting, deep and have lots of cool stories to tell. What also striked me was that I quite instantly got to talk with Bridget and Ellis very openly as if we had been good friends for a good while.

Ellis from the UK

"A relaxed and happy feeling comes from the harmonious coexistence between human and nature" - Oh yeah!

During the last weeks in some way I could enjoy pure freedem; I could go where I wanted to go, do whatever came to mind, no obligations, no one I depended on or depending on me; money not restricting (especially in China as stuff was rather cheap) - the single confining matter beeing time.
That was quite nice!

3 days Beijing! Great wall, Forbidden city

This post is about my stay in Beijing!

Together with my friend Eric, we took the G train from Jinan driving with a speed of around 300kmh :D

After arriving and relaxing for a bit at our hotel room, we met Erics friend Ben in the evening for dinner. He invited us to a fancy restaurant, where they ordered lots of dishes, including something with frog and one with slugs that I was afraid of tasting though. You know , I’m a bit picky regarding food. What ze Lino doesn’t know, ze Lino doesn’t put in his mouth ;-)

Erics friend told me that he had been to Germany and also Berlin recently. However when he left Germany, the guy at the customs office made him pay a 2000€ fine for his shopping, what we all agreed was very strange. Later though, he added that his shopping consisted of a bag of goods valuing about 300.000€...

Later Eric told me that his father has a high position in the government as an army general...

Nevertheless, Ben was really nice and drove us around in his brand new Audi and showed us the Olympic park which was quite impressive. Especially one building looked as if it came right of a Star Trek movie. Afterwards we went to a skybar on top of an exquisite hotel where we enjoyed just an other awesome view over Beijing.

What a good start!

at the retaurant with Eric and his friend Ben

Star Trek building...

For the next two days, Eric had booked a tourist sightseeing tour with the Chinese equivalent of Groupon . For only 36yuan (~4€) we were supposed to be picked up at our hotel, brought to the great wall, kings tomb, forbidden city and other fancy places and this including lunches. Maybe we could have seen that this was suspiciously cheap…

On the first day, to my great horror we were already picked up from our hotel at 5 in the morning :-/ I hate not getting enough sleep! At the bus, we also had to pay an additional 100yuan for some compulsory “show” and were not allowed to participate at the tour without alo paying this :-/

Then during the 2hour ride to the Great wall, the tour guide woman was literally barking at us without a pause (Check out the video below)! Really - without any pause!

According to Eric this is typical for Beijing women. Maybe I should consider picking my prospective tiny Asian wife not from the Beijing area ;-)

Finally after lots of barking we arrived at the great wall and climbed lots of steep steps together with hundreds of other tourists. Unfortunately my legs were still hurting pretty badly from Mount Tai.
Nevertheless it was very impressive on top of the wall and the surrounding nature was also staggering. 
So far so good.

I think the architect of the Hotel in Seoul "the tent" was inspired by these steps

The next point on our agenda was the “Kings tomb”. This however turned out to be huge souvenir and jewelry shop masked as a museum where we were just left for 30 minutes to spend some money and then got a shitty lunch -.-

After that, we were brought to the show which was actually quite nice with impressive acrobatics and stuff. Then came the worst part: We were just brought to some kind of food outlet, that was designed in such a way that you had to go through every single room and pass every product (like IKEA), so that walking right through took us about 15 minutes!

Actually I had slept during the ride there and when Eric asked the guide women to just leave us in the bus so that I could get some more sleep, she told him, this was not possible as she receives 20yuan from the outlet for every tourist she brings there. What a bitch! ;-)

When we were just about to depart, someone found that he had lost something in the store so that our bus had to wait there for quite a while. To make matters worse, the driver didn’t turn on the air conditioning because “oil is expensive” :D At some point, everyone in the bus was extremely pissed and the situation as a whole escalating somehow had an amusing aspect^^ You could call it "the dark side of capitalism".
After that, Eric actually asked me to write a formal complaint to the ministry of travel about this “for the future of China” (As a foreigner you are taken much more serious than Chinese people).

All in all it was nevertheless a very interesting day.

On the following day we decided to give the tourguides a second chance as we would visit local sights inside of the city and thought that we could just leave the group when they brought us to a shitty place.

Unfortunately we had to get up at 5am again and this time we were brought to the bus in a small van. When we were 12 people inside (6, including me sitting on wooden benches in the back) I thought the car was full. However, the driver seemed to have a different opinion and picked up more and more people from their hotels until we were 16 inside!
At the bus they did the same trick as before and wanted to get 120yuan for a “boat tour”. This time though we refused to accept that and as they didn’t want to let us into the bus then, we just left the group and made our own way to the forbidden city. Arriving there a bit after 7, we  found that the gates are only open after 8:30 so we had to wait for an hour -  I just imagined how I could have spent this time in my cosy hotel bed -.-

But finally the doors opened and what I saw that day was extremely impressive. Well, it’s called forbidden city, but I didn’t expect it to be really as big as a small city – just for the emperor! And when there were about 2 or 3 impressive buildings at a Japanese temple, there were literally hundreds of these in the forbidden city! Just for the king, his family and his many wives, as Eric told me. What a glorious waste…

Tiananmen square!

so many people! At the gates of the forbidden city

We found a present resident of the forbidden city!

After that we toured through a nearby park, but as we were both quite tired from the early getting up, soon we went back to our hotel to get some more sleep and I also had to organize my further travels. I had actually changed my plan as to spend more time at Huangshan Mountain and to fly from there to Xiamen (coastal city close to Taiwan) and to skip Shanghai – I had already seen to many big cities… 
Eric was a huge help by organizing everything and I promised him that, if he ever comes to Germany, I will organize everything for him!

This is China, Qingdao, Jinan, Mount Tai

Holy moly, I'm in CHINA!
And I had a good start at the airport: After ariving there, I went to the exit and a guy came to me and asked "taxi, taxi?". After some bargaining I was actually happy that I had brought down the price to my hotel form 200 to 100yuan (the extremely unfriendly woman at the airports tourist information had told me it should cost about 100yuan) so I followed the guy to the parking lot. However after a suspiciously long walk, we arrived at a black car,which was definitely not an official cab with an other guy sitting in it :-/ yay!
So I just walked back to the airport exit where I actually found a queue for official cabs. And finally I only had to pay 15! yuan (about 1,80€ for ~15min drive) to get to my hotel.
This time I had booked a nice three-star hotel (30€/night) and my room way quite an advancement compared to the "tent" in Seoul. I really don't mind staying in a very cheap, shitty place while visiting a place like London or Amsterdam for a weekend. But if you are travelling for a few weeks, your hotel becomes your temporary home and its quite unpleasent if you don't feel comfortable there. Therefore by now I place much more value on a pleasent accomodation than I used to...

are my feet to large or the shoes to small?

As everything here seems to be quite cheap compared to western standards, I think that I shouldn't show off the comparatively rich western guy to much. However, I decided to make an exception for the first two days - so to started my first day with a massage (60min - 12€) :D Oh yeah!

While skyping with my friend Jakob who asked me about Qingdao, the city I was in, I said "well it's some smaller Chinese city at the coast" and googled it. Whoops - 8,7million live here; 2,5 times Berlin :D
Well, I guess its still small for Chinese standards...
Also, you see construction work going on everywhere. Of course you know about Chinas massive GDP growth in recent years but finally seeing this is quite impressive!

construction work everywhere

I'm actually happy about every single word of Chinese that I had learned so far in Berlin as only very, very few people here speak any English. When I wanted to ask for advice at my hotels reception regarding getting a train ticket to Jinan we also encountered some language problems. Fortunately a very friendly Chinese businessman who overheard us helped me out and after arranging everything regarding the train, we had a conversation for probably 1 or 2 hours and he told me lots of interesting stuff about China. Encountering this kindness and hospitality from strangers is one of the great things during travelling!

the friendly businessman

people dancing in the evening

In the evening I got a bit hungry and just wanted to eat a small snack at a restaurant. Because of my Chinese language issues though, I somehow ended up in a hot pot restaurant with this meal^^

my "snack" for dinner - Chinese hot pot

Whats funny for me is that many people are staring at me here in China. When I had entered the hot pot restaurant, the staff even wanted to take pictures with me. I guess there are not too many handsome white giants around in China ;-)
At first I always had to start grinning when I got aware of someone staring at me - weird feeling^^

What has also been quite interesting is watching the Chinese traffic! I identified three basic rules:
1) Whatever works!
2) Not giving a fuck!
3) Honk as much as possible!
Even though its not as bad as in some of the videos I've seen about India for example, its still a huge difference to the extremely organized traffic in Germany. You just go whenever theres a free gap and if theres something in he way, just honk!

After my first two days in Qingdao, I took the train to visit my Chinese friend Yuyue/Eric in Jinan. The train ride was very pleasent, as the Chinese government invests lots of money in the railway system making it at least as efficient as Germanys.

Qingdao train station

In Jinan, Eric picked me up at the train station and brought me to his grandma, where we stayed for the next two days and I even got my own room there. Erics family has been extremely hospitable and generous, making my days in Jinan very enjoyable and giving me a perfect start for China. He showed me the popular springs in Jinan and in the evening his parents invited us for dinner to show me all the typical food of the Shandong province.

dinner with Eric made by his grandma

dinner with Erics family!

What a feast!

Lihong hen bao! (Lino is full)

On the second day we hiked to the nearby Mount Tai together with Erics father. Erics parents used some relationships to organize free entrance for us - we actually got a ticket that is to be used for the major of the city :D This is China!
We took the cable car to get up and had quite a great view on the top!  However, for the way down we walked the stair with 6000!!! steps. Now, two days later my legs are still burning :-/

the way down - 6000 steps -.-

and then there are these guys - carrying stuff up

you see the small slack in the distance in the middle of the picture - thats where we started

so steep!

my legs shaking after the hike down...

After the hike, some friends of Erics parents invited us for lunch and I could try even more typical Chinese food. I have to admit, that I was a bit sceptic about Chinese food - a German stereotype about Chinese people is that they just eat everything (no offence ;-) ). And as I am quite picky regarding food, I was afraid that this might be a problem. But so far I enjoyed the food here a lot! Interestingly its still very different to the food served in Chinese restaurants in Germany though.

breakfast - Chinese style ;-)

After this, together with Eric I took the train to Beijing - more about this in the next post!