Hi folks,

We roaming Romseys, have just returned to the UK from our two months travels through China , it was an interesting and an eye-opening trip from many perspectives.

China is a huge country and our journey involved travelling 9,000 kms by bus and train and a further 4,600km by internal plane flights, The journey, though long, did not seem so; We travelled over bumpy, dusty roads; along fast new expressways and on comfortable high-speed bullet trains. The scenery varied from endless dry deserts, majestic snow-capped mountains, smoke belching industrial plants and 100s of miles of green fields of vegetables, interspersed with cities sprouting forests of tall tower-cranes, busily building hundreds of modern high-rise apartment blocks to replace the dilapidated homes of yesteryear.

The 10 years of the Cultural Revolution from 1965-75 was a period of total madness that achieved little if anything; it humiliated and destroyed the spirit of those who possessed knowledge, with so-called ‘re-education programs’, and it destroyed everything that was old and precious.

Today, however, China is a country on the move, and has been so since 1979, when it opened itself up to western thinking on economics. It has since become the manufacturing power-house to the world, and in doing so it has achieved the impossible; it has managed to retain its authoritarian central communist control whilst allowing a market economy to develop, mainly by state run enterprises.

China does not, on the surface, appear very communist, its people seem happy, well fed, assertive, confident and enjoy freedoms that were once unheard of, the boundaries of which are constantly being expanded. They are benefiting from the millions of new homes being built and the massive infrastructure that goes with it; 1,000s of miles of new highways, rail tracks, power lines, power stations, reservoirs and piped water, sanitation and sewage treatment plants, new hospitals and schools. Their wages, though low by international standards, are within the local day to day value system of living, and it is this which allows it to remain competitive and be the manufacturing power house of the world.

The country is controlled (just) by 60 million Communist Party Members, although they constitute less than 5% of the population, they are nevertheless are in positions of authority scattered throughout the 23 provinces and five autonomous regions, they follow a mammoth centrally controlled plan of development, which amazingly seems to be working, they achieve things in time spans that we in the west, because of our planning laws, can only dream of. – We may disagree with their methods but we have to admire their achievements.

In the process of development, ‘Communist’ China has become a grossly unequal society, with billionaires and wealthy entrepreneurs at one end, the city population in the middle and the farming folk feeding the county at the other end. In the past 6 years the quality of life for city people (who are registered as citizens,) have risen by 71%, whereas for country people (who are registered as peasants) is only 3%. In order to help counterbalance this inequality, the government recently authorized a 40% discount on all electrical goods for peasants.

Because of low wages, the country has yet to become a consumption society. That however, is planned to change within the next 5-10 years and in doing so will change the cost base and the whole dynamics of China’s export trade, just where that will leave the rest of the world is as yet a mystery, but many countries are looking to adopt this new ‘China Model’.

Our reasons to travel to China were firstly to follow one of the old ‘ Silk Road ’ routes and later to visit two groups of friends. We spent the first 25 days with an organised Wendy Wu Tour in a group of 20 people; this was a strange departure from our normal independent travels. However, we quickly settled into the routine of being shepherded by our excellent guide from one interesting site to another, and to having our accommodation, food and transport all pre-organised. We undoubtedly covered more in those 25 days than we would have covered in 50 days of independent travel.

Our ‘ Silk Road ’ sojourn was in the convivial company of Australians and New Zealanders and involved four overnight train journeys on which we slept comfortably four to a cabin.

Our land route from Beijing went via Xian, Lanzhou, Xiahe, Jiayuguan, Donhuang, Turpan, Korla, Kuqa, Aksu and Kashgar and led us eventually to the remote north west of China, to the city of Urumqi, which is 2,445 kms from the sea and is the capital of China’s largest province; the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. It is a province where names such as Lop Nor, Turpan Depression, the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts and the city of Kashgar ring magically in the ears of seasoned travellers and where ten of the world’s highest mountains are located.

Whilst each city had its own unique qualities, they all seemed to be following a similar development plan; that of total demolition of yesterday’s homes followed by the building of wide streets, high-rise apartment blocks and fine public building in the form of stadiums, concert halls, museums, railway stations etc. whilst this is all very admirable, there is a westernised similarity to them all and if it were not for the Chinese food and Chinese people one could almost be anywhere in the world.

Along the way we enjoyed visits to the amazing discovery of the Terracotta Warriors at Xian, The Great Wall of China - both in Beijing and again at the western end of the wall at Jiayuguan, - we visited various isolated Buddhist caves, temples, Grottoes and the Labrang Lamasery in Little Tibet where 3,000 monks lead austere lives, studying among other subjects, medicine and philosophy. We also visited a desert fortress, buried desert cities, mosques and many oases along the Silk Road . There still remains enough of ‘old China ’ in this part of the world to whet the appetite of intrepid travellers and satisfy our photographic eye.

We found the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang mind bogglingly huge, it is an area that shares its long 5,600 km borders with eight different countries, and is home to 13 distinct ethnic minorities, each with different cultures and languages, many of whom follow the Muslim culture of dress and religion and whose features belong more to the Central Asian countries rather than to that of the Han Chinese who came late to the region, but who now make up 40% of the population.

We were in a politically sensitive area of China , where because of local unrest, the government had closed down the telephone and internet services last year and where in some cities we saw a strong military presence in the form of patrols of baton and gun welding squads on the streets.

Each city had its large central ‘Peoples Square’ where community activities were held in the evenings, such as concerts, group exercising, line dancing, and where families promenaded with their child or grandchild. (Only city people are limited to one child, minorities and farmers are allowed two children. People have come to accept this as the norm and generally have no problem with this policy)

Public transport and taxis are plentiful and cheap, while private car ownership is as yet limited to government officials, entrepreneurs and the few who can afford it; as a consequence, road traffic is not yet heavy. No one seems to follow any road discipline, therefore bad driving is the norm, vehicles park on the pavements as they are not allowed to park on roads, which in turn makes it difficult for pedestrians. a large numbers of silent, electrically driven cycles, scooters and trishaws also add to the problem. I read in the ‘China Daily’ newspaper that in one part of China they had just had a traffic jam, or rather a gridlock; an incident occurred that caused 7,000 trucks carrying coal to a power station to back-up and blocked roads for a week.

We left our Wendy Wu Tour at Urumqi and travelled six hours south by train to the Gobi desert town of Hami; quoted by Marco Polo for its melons and hospitality. We were to spend two wonderful weeks catching our breath in the company of local girl Youzhi, and her French husband Jerome who are our delightful neighbours in England .

Because of Youzhi and her parents we gained a great insight into Chinese day to day life and met people and went to places which we might not otherwise have done so.

As foreigners we were an oddity and were frequently stopped by school children who wanted to try out their English skills on us, in return we learned that Hami’s population was 300,000 and that the local economy is based upon the production of melons, dates, raisons, coal and oil.

Before leaving China we spent a further two weeks in the company of Mary and her artist husband, Professor Qing, they live in the very modern, coastal city of Qingdao where the recent Olympic Sailing events were held and which at the turn of the last century had been a German Colony. – When the Germans were ousted, they left behind some fine Gothic buildings and a brewery that is still in production today. (30 pence a bottle).

Qingdao is a city of newly built skyscrapers, high-rise apartments, elevated expressways, beaches, parks and incredibly designed public buildings and universities. The city is both a naval port as well as a manufacturing hub for electronic and electrical goods. We were greatly impressed with the city, which is still being torn down and developed at an incredible rate. The layout and buildings at their newest university surpasses anything we had seen elsewhere; it has 25,000 students resident on campus.

Despite their busy lives, Mary and Qing were great hosts, they found time to take us on walking and bus tours around the city, visiting markets, back lanes, academia, gallery art openings and exhibitions. Most evenings were spent sharing an evening meal, chatting and learning much about China . We left all too soon.

A comfortable, ten hour, day-time express bullet train to Shanghai was our final leg through China . We arrived in pouring rain and were thankful that for once we had a pre-booked hotel waiting for us. Our plan was to visit the International World Expo for two days and shop for one, but because of the inclement weather and the horrendous queues, we managed just one day at Expo. Despite the exhibition covering several sq kms and being excellently organised, the various national pavilions had great difficulty coping with the over 400,000 visitors each day. We enjoyed looking at the brilliant and often quirky architecture of the pavilions, and found the few we managed to visit tremendously enlightening.

It was time to go home; China had not only been interesting, but also an eye-opener. The silk route had lived up to our expectations, but we had not expected to find yesterday’s third world communist China in such an advanced, progressive and reasonably open state; they are on course to catch up and perhaps overtake the developed world in a very short time. It is debatable whether China will remain communist in name only or even be able to maintain its strict authoritarian rule, The future however seems bright, but has the potential for great turmoil.

Roy and Jean