Travelling (Bronwyn)
This month as well as January were our months of holiday for Chinese new year. I spent the time we had off travelling around China. I travelled around China with Latifa and Hannah for about two weeks.
We started off in Shanghai, visiting the oriental pearl tower, the bund, happy valley (a rollercoaster park), and yu garden. Our train was 12 hours long but we got sleeper beds for the trip down so it was quite fun. Next we travelled from Shanghai to Xi’an, which was around 15 hours on the sleeper train. We bought sleeper beds again and it made the journey very easy but arriving in at 5am made us nonetheless pretty tired.
In Xi’an we visited the drum tower, bell tower, the terracotta warriors, and the tang dynasty area in Xi’an city. My favourite part of the whole trip was visiting the tang dynasty area of Xi’an so I would highly recommend. We stayed in a hostel in Xi’an so we were able to meet people from various other countries who were all visiting or studying in China. Our next train was around 4 hours from Xi’an to Chengdu.
Chengdu was the place where we did the least during our travels, with the highlights being seeing giant pandas at the breeding centre in Chengdu and the performance of Sichuan opera that we went to see on our second night in Chengdu. Chengdu was the hardest city to find vegetarian options in so I mainly had to order in food, though it still took a long time to find somewhere to eat. Sichuan opera was a collection of acts put together, including the mask changing act. My favourite act was when they done a segment of the story “journey to the west” with a lot of martial arts being done, which was really cool to watch. Our final train from Chengdu to Chongqing was only around 2 hours long which was comparatively much easier than our earlier sleeper trains.
Chongqing was the best city that we visited. It was a beautiful city with lovely people and even though it was quite hilly it was my favourite city to walk around in. In Chongqing we went to hongya cave, the ten floor shopping area, and the guild halls. The river cableway and CBD were also pretty fun. We also had hotpot in Chongqing which is one of the best meals I had during the trip. Out of all of the cities we visited I would say Chongqing was the best and I would certainly visit again.
During February I went with Ruby, Sonny, and our friend Jenny, to go to the area of the great wall in Tianjin. The landscape surrounding the wall was beautiful and the area in Tianjin was less busy than it would’ve been in Beijing, especially since it’s the winter season.
The last place I visited during my travels in China was Nanchang, to visit one of the friends I made here on campus. She lives in one of the outer districts of Nanchang which is famous for firework production so after dinner on the first night we went to a firework show. The next day we went to the movies, explored the city, and went to karaoke. At her home, I was taught how to use a traditional tea set and play mahjong. Travelling throughout China was really exciting and I’m glad we were given so much time to do so.
