The great blog of China – Rosa’s blog

Since finally arriving in China, I can tell you, it is everything I had dreamed it would be. From seeing pictures and hearing stories about this country since I was young, China is just like I had hoped, but also (like most places we’ve been) it’s something entirely different.

For example, the heat. Nobody told me China was going to be HOT. And, I mean, it was an okay sort of late summery weather when we first arrived in the northern part of China, but the place we’ve spent most of our time, Guilin, is practically TROPICAL. I wasn’t told about this. I wasn’t prepared for the relentless sun and the sweat-inducing humidity that continues late into the night without stopping. Oh, and the mosquitoes. Plenty of those. And then we have the locals having the audacity to tell us the weather’s getting COOL and this really isn’t that hot, all the while not sweating at all while I get slowly drenched for even daring to set foot outside my nice air-conditioned room.

But Guilin makes up for the terrible heat by its incredible beauty. The city is surrounded by, and built around, the most fantastical mountains I’ve ever seen, the type I fantasised about whenever I thought about China. The type that surround the town in Kung-Fu Panda. And they’re real. Sometimes when I look up and see that the mountains are still there and aren’t just made up, I get slightly overwhelmed. When I leave, I know I’ll miss it terribly.

Before we got to Guilin we got to spend some time in and around Chengdu, and that was amazing too. The architecture, both new and old, is magnificent, and the sheer SIZE of the city is just unknowable to someone whose biggest ever city experience has been London. Twenty million people live in Chengdu. How is that possible? And on top of that, in Chengdu we saw the pandas. Real life, Chinese pandas! They were EXACTLY what one would expect them to be like, and really they did nothing other than eat and sleep, but the way they went about it was so adorably lazy. It’s clear how much the people of China adore these creatures, which is lovely to be able to witness in real time.

Another thing China really has gotten right is the trains. Train travel in China has been on another level. The sheer level of organisation and punctuality would make our own train service cower in fear. It’s the first time any trains have arrived on time in our whole trip, and they’ve not only arrived on time but EXACTLY on time, at EVERY station. In our journey across China, we were lucky enough to be able to go on one of their high-speed bullet trains from Chengdu to Guilin, which is over 600 miles (Bristol to Edinburgh TWICE), and we got there in only 6 HOURS, all the while watching the landscapes become more and more picturesque. Rice paddies, lush green mountains, winding rivers, and incredible ancient buildings were all sights we saw just on that 6 hour trip.

And Guilin itself… Well, I’ve already gushed a bit about it, but really, a city like this can’t be gushed enough about. If you ever visit China, visit Guilin. It is simply the epitome of what I wanted China to be. The beauty of the city, the friendliness of the locals (plus the fact that most of them spoke very little English which for someone trying to learn the language was pretty helpful) and the incredible (affordable) food places wherever you went made Guilin feel like a place I would be happy to call home. Since me and my mum were there to learn Chinese, there were other students at the institute we were staying at who were also learning Chinese, and who created a lovely social feeling to our time in the city, as we befriended many of them and would go out to meals or to see things in the city with others. After only three weeks there, I already feel like my Mandarin skills have become dramatically better than they were before. Thank you CLI, and I hope I get to come back to Guilin and learn with you again.

To top it all off (and probably the main reason I like China so much :), my blonde hair made me very popular in China and it was almost a daily occurrence that somebody would come up to me and call me beautiful, then they would usually ask for a photograph with me. I can only assume this is what it feels like to be a celebrity (and I have to admit, I loved it – who wouldn’t?) They seem to have a different attitude towards foreigners in China, and most of the people we met were just fascinated with the fact that we were clearly not from this country. Many people told us they hoped we liked China, and all in all, we were made to feel very welcomed by the people we met. And they were always so happy when we spoke any Mandarin at all, which definitely helped to boost my confidence.

The day we finally left Guilin, it was raining, and the taxi was playing soft and melancholy Chinese pop music alongside it, perfectly mirroring our mood as we looked out at the familiar streets one final time. We would have only one more night in China, in a different city called Kunming, before we left it completely. It has been the hardest place to leave by a long shot so far.

But there’s no way I’m not coming back here. China has treated me so kindly, and I feel as if it is my duty to return.

In the meantime, goodbye China, I will most certainly miss you.

Rosa