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From Tokyo we flew to Taipei, where we remained a few days before flying on to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the easiest place from which to enter mainland China. First of all, there is barely any hassle to getting a visa here and secondly a good train connection links Hong Kong to Guangzhou, from where you can start to arrange onward travel in China at Chinese prices.

In China "everything is more beautiful now!"

Odv
2006-04-13 19:57:22

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From Tokyo we flew to Taipei, where we remained a few days before flying on to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the easiest place from which to enter mainland China. First of all, there is barely any hassle to getting a visa here and secondly a good train connection links Hong Kong to Guangzhou, from where you can start to arrange onward travel in China at Chinese prices.

In the train to Guangzhou I finally got the feeling that I was traveling again into the unknown. Once in Guangzhou we settled on the island of Shamian a former trading concession to France and England.

This is also the first time that we saw restaurants having all kinds of live animals in containers on display for customer to choose which particular one they want to eat. The concept kind of cut our appetite, especially as some of the animals where turtles, snakes and even really disgusting looking water beetles!

In the streets of Guangzhou, we saw many western couples with young Chinese children. Apparently adoption is another booming business in China, as the Chinese themselves don't like to adopt while in western countries there is shortage of adoptable babies.

Our first impression of Chinese people was that they acted somewhat nervous around us, but we didn't quite manage to put our finger on the cause with certainty. Most likely it is because they feel unsure of how to deal with foreigners.

Yangshuo and the Li River
Having discovered how cheap it is to fly in China, we flew on to Guilin, where the famous Li river flows between magnificent peaks. The kind of landscape reminiscent of Chinese scroll paintings that you may see in your local Chinese restaurant.

A cruise on the Li river starting near Guilin ends in Yangshuo. Yangshuo is a mellow place with a very nice main street filled with little shops, restaurants and bars. A great place for backpackers to chill out. The town is also a good place to take some Chinese (or ...