If there is harmony in the hotel, there will be harmony in the nation...

So there we were, the first morning of our first day in the strangest, most alien place we had ever been in our lives - Beijing on a monday morning, in late 2002, standing on the doorstep of the Harmony Hotel, ravenous. What could possibly go wrong, after 28 hours on every airline in the Eastern hemisphere? And what does one see when one first arrives in Beijing? Last night had been all long flowing roads, strangely oriental-themed high-rises, and a dark alley full of scattered piles of rubbish and stray cats. So what did we see now, in the mid-morning sun?

These fragments of memory are still quite clear to me, because they were my first daylit experiences of somewhere completely new to me. I stood at the front of the hotel, a narrow road in front of me, surrounded by the busy noises of a morning at work in Beijing - the sound of construction work, a few hawkers desultorily selling their wares, many small vehicles moving around, and somewhere off to my left the distant sound of a steady stream of traffic, which we were to later discover was the same road we had come down last night - the taxi driver had dropped us literally metres away from our hotel, but we couldn't see it and walked the wrong way, so came to it by a loop. The sounds of the morning were industrious but not particularly loud, though occasionally punctuated by sharp announcements on a loudspeaker, because across our narrow road was the municipal headquarters of the China Post Office, a carpark full of green delivery trucks and a massive banner in Mandarin and English, proclaiming the intention of China Post to "Boldly march forward to a future of cooperation and joy" or somesuch (these banners were common throughout China). Busy postmen ran about, a security guard frowned at us, and all was peaceful energy. To our right was the alley we had come down last night, now completely free of rubbish and cats. The air was already suffused with that Asian city smell, somewhere between exotic cooking, sewage and strange building materials. And very soon the exotic cooking smell became overwhelming, because to our right was a little collection of restaurants we were to soon come to know very well.

Here we stood then: starving, tired, confused, armed with a phrasebook, some cameras, and a single 3 month night school course in mandarin between us. All that stood between us and some kind of delicious Chinese breakfast was a massive cultural gap, a completely inscrutable language, and a total lack of any knowledge about what Chinese people eat. This is the stuff that (small) adventures are made of. So, best foot forward! We marched up to the nearest restaurant, which didn't look very closed, and thence inside to what from now on, dear reader, you should assume will be the tableau that will greet us a further 83 times while in this vast, sprawling nation, unless we tell you otherwise:

• a tiled floor, clean but grimed with ancient scuff marks and dirt
• cheap vinyl tables, covered in a plastic or paper table cloth, perhaps patterned with gingham or some other cheap surface, and surrounded with cheap vinyl or metal chairs
• on each table a selection of sauce bottles and a bowl of raw garlic (peeled in the fancier places)
• a counter at one end, in front of which stood 3 bored girls (in chinese dresses if it was a tourist spot, or uniforms if it was a fancier place)
• above the counter, a picture of Mao
• next to the counter, or on the wall somewhere, a calendar
• next to the counter, an open door leading into the kitchen, possibly also with a serving window
• an awesome smell of great food

That's it - The Chinese Restaurant, circa 2002. If they had names we could neither see them nor read them; if they had some special advertising point to separate them from the one next door, we couldn't read it. This restaurant, it turned out, had a window facing out from the kitchen to the outside world, from which they sold very good (I'm told) cheap local versions of egg mcmuffins. When we entered there was only one bored girl at the counter, because the other two were stuffing dumplings (bao tzu? I think they're called, in Japanese "gyoza") ready for the lunch crowd. The bored girl perked up when she saw us and gestured for us to sit, then stared at us like we were some kind of new cooking challenge. After a moment she asked us if we wanted an English menu, and all our dreams came true.

An English menu - don't get used to it. Where we're going, this stuff ain't happening. But we are outside the Harmony Hotel, and in the harmonious neighbourhood of this fantastic place, the restaurants share between them a single scrappy piece of paper with all their main dishes typed in perfect english, and at the bottom a few choice phrases you can point to if you need to : "Not very spicy please," or "I am allergic to peanuts," and, shock! against all expectations! "I'm vegetarian." Our helpful restaurant even had the pingyin (roman character) Mandarin pronunciation, so after months of being told I would not be able to get vegan food in China, here I was on my first morning in the country reading how to order vegetarian food.

It's a credit to the exotic nature of a first day in China that I can still remember what we ordered: braised egg and tomato, and fried rice with egg and spring onion. Signature Northern Chinese dishes, completely delicious and thoroughly commendable. If ever you're in the neighbourhood of the Harmony Hotel, I strongly advise trying either of the two restaurants facing onto the street that leads to the central Beijing railway station, just across from the Post Office. They rock!

And now it behooves me to mention the nature of Chinese service, which I experienced again in Shanghai in 2004 and again at Shanghai Pudong airport, and on China Eastern Air, in 2009, and which doesn't seem to have changed. Mainland Chinese service is energetic, ditzy, simultaneously polite but strangely transgressive, charming, and simultaneously brusque but shy. I can perhaps explain this with some fragments of Chinese experiences in 2002 and 2009:

• On the airline in 2009, I asked for bread. The woman who served me the bread nodded enthusiastically and rushed away to one end of the plane. I thought she'd disappeared forever but she reappeared 2 minutes later over my left shoulder, and tossed some warmed bread onto my plate in a way that I can only say was simultaneously extremely focussed yet strangely impolite. And then she was gone without a word! Only to return from the opposite end of the plane moments later, with butter that she shyly and politely placed on my tray, along with a great beaming smile. Figure that out.
• As soon as we sat down, the bored girl would be demanding our order, as if we already knew what the restaurant could serve us. They would be most confused when asked to wait, as if deliberation were some bourgeouis plot, but they would always wait attentively by their counter
• The staff would make almost anything for us, and giggle while they did it
• Sometimes the staff would be awesomely polite when they showed you into the restaurant and took your order; but while you were eating they would be lounging on a counter smoking, or playing practical jokes on each other outside
• Food would never come in order, but there would always be too much and it would always be delivered cheerfully with a smile, even if it was being slapped down on top of something else in a very haphazard way
• There was often a part of the menu that was in Mandarin only...

Our guide - whose task it is the Sergeant's to introduce - told us that no-one in China is allowed to starve, it's something of a national paranoia of theirs, and so there was always an abundance of food. I don't know if this is true out in the wilds of Qinghai but I certainly never saw anything except an abundance of food on sale in China. And, at least in the North, such great food it was! And very fitting indeed that our introduction to China should have been so simple and harmonious, at that most essential of Chinese social spots - the cheap vinyl dinner table! We'll be seeing a lot more of that...

So for the rest of our first day in Beijing, we walked around, and watched the mundanities of city life that make up the extraordinary moments of a first day in a new country. We walked out to the main road, where the taxi driver had abandoned us the night before, and found a lane of the road devoted to bicycles, riding 10 abreast in a flowing river. There was construction everywhere, and we wandered into the hutong area, where the old houses of Beijing squat in dusty square compounds around a central garden. We found a pair of old men playing Chinese chess on a makeshift table outside one of the hutongs, and wandered through a couple of malls that looked for all the world like something straight from the Australian suburbs. In one of these a friendly woman took us from her stamp shop on a winding walk through the mall to a bookshop, leaving her wares unattended, and helped us buy an english language map. Then we returned to the hotel, and a meal of steaming noodles, dumplings, spicy eggplant and tofu, so much food that we couldn't eat it. Crushed into a busy restaurant, we handed our uneaten noodles to the guys at the table next to us, and they returned our favour in cigarettes we couldn't smoke. So it was that our first day ended in the same harmonious fashion it started and we staggered, drunk on cheap Chinese beer and stuffed with cheap Beijing food, back to the Harmony hotel, our first day of exploration successful and pleasurable.

Beijing! City of open dusty streets, scorpions on sticks, smelly hutongs and cheerful, jokey people ... our first experience of China.

- Sir S

The Flight

The day of departure finally arrived, and after a night of agonising over the weight of our backpacks (it is surprisingly hard to keep a backpack down around 10 kilograms) we set off to Sydney Airport buzzing with anticipation. Our Singapore Airlines flight would take us first to Melbourne airport where we would pick up more passengers and then north to Kuala Lumpar for a transfer to a flight directly into Beijing.


There are many details of the flight that I cannot recall. What flight number did we board? What meals did they serve? Did I watch a movie? 

Ask me what I remember and the details come in flashes.

Leaning across the aisle to whisper to S "What the hell? Diverted to Adelaide because of fog? Are we going to miss our connecting flight?" S' reply; "I hope not."

Next we are sitting in the airport at Kuala Lumpar waiting for a new flight to take us to Hong Kong because we missed our connecting flight. Briefly we flash to an image of the blood draining from my face as I sit over a bowl of Won Ton; "I've swallowed my labret piercing!"

Three hours later I can recall a flight to Hong Kong. Volcanic Islands looming out of the smog, slowly becoming more numerous till they connect up into one giant island. Endless lines of container ships ploughing through the greenish water into the welcoming bosom of China's commercial harlot; Hong Kong harbour.

Waiting at Hong Kong for 2 hours for an internal flight to take us to Beijing.

Praying we do not die on the Air China flight to Beijing. At this point, there was a concerned conversation heard between the only two westerners on the plane. "We were meant to get there at 4:30 in the afternoon. It's now 10 in the evening. Will we even be able to check into our hotel?"  The whispered reply. "I don't know. We will just have to find out when we get there."

"If we get there."

When we finally touched down in Beijing it was an immense relief. We made our way through a practically deserted airport and slipped through customs with almost too much ease.

"I think we are going to make it S. Your constant reminders of our impending doom may be unfounded."

"I wouldn't count on it Sarge!"

S and I managed to to find another adventurer looking for a taxi into the city so we all bundled on board and gave a command that we hoped the taxi driver could understand. He was able to decipher our pidgin Mandarin and in no time we found ourselves hurtling towards the heart of modern China along wide express ways surrounded by a surprising amount of nothing, nothing apart from the smog.

At this point I should point out that the only instructions we had for finding our hotel was a vague street address and the description of the giant neon sign above the hotel. Just look for the neon sign and you will be fine we were told. With that in mind I shall return to the narrative.

Our acquaintance turned out to be a nice chap who was planning to backpack around the major cities of China for a few weeks before heading back home. A commendable enterprise both S and I agreed. We however, had no illusions as to our ability to self navigate this vast non-English speaking country and still see and experience everything we would want to within those week. We wanted to experience the real China, the part of China that did not know tourists as a reliable source of income, and through the Intrepid tour was the only way we would achieve this.

Setting down at the YHA we bid our temporary travel companion good luck and set out in the direction of our hotel along deserted unlit streets. S was sure he could pick the way to our hotel based on our printed map so handing over responsibility for our direction to him I cast my eyes around the sleeping city.

What struck me first was the stillness. We were in the middle of one of China's biggest cities and there were very little city noise. The second thing was the size of the buildings. Having not visited America yet I was unfamiliar with arhcitecture that was designed to make the inhabitants feel special. Giant towering buildings looming towards each other over broad streets, or at least, the buildings we could see along the main boulevard. A walk of five minutes would find us down close, dark alleyways amongst two storey crumbling houses, dodging cracked egg shells, old rice and rotting cabbage that had been cast on the road side for overnight garbage collection.

I digress though, for I have not revealed why we found ourselves down a dark alley, laden with our backpacks being followed by a man on a scooter who, for all we knew, was waiting to mug us and leave us gasping through slit throats in the refuse of last nights dinner.

We were to find out the next day that in Beijing, neon signs and other external lights were turned off after 11 at night to conserve electricity, and so, as we stumbled though the dark streets, we missed our neon sign for the hotel. Fearing ourselves lost we looked around for help. A lone man on a scooter with a little cart attached to the back puttered past us so we braved our lack of Mandarin to try and gain directions. After a moments thought he, realising his English was probably worse than our Mandarin, gestured for us to get into the back of his scooter cart. "We'll never fit in there!" S exclaimed. Hurriedly S tried to indicate that we just needed the general direction pointed out and after a brief pause, the gentleman  gestured down a dark alley, away from the main street. Oh great, I thought, we've been here for less than two hours and we are already being ushered into dark alleys by the locals. I looked at S. We were both tired and at the end of our respective tethers.

"Let's just do it" He said.

I looked down the alley. It was not only dark, but narrow with rotting vegetable matter thrown across the road.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes."

We started down the alley, now feeling like we were making a hideous mistake. To make it worse, the man on the scooter started to putt down the alley after us, keeping a discrete distance.

"Oh Shit." One of us said. Possibly both of us at this stage as  the situation became a little stressful on top of the 16 hours of travelling.

To our relief, we came to the end of the alley unmolested to find ourselves standing in front of our hotel. Relief flooded through us and, seeing that we had found our quarry, the gentleman on the scooter cheerfully waved us good night and putted on down another alley.

I do not recall anything else after this point, but as I am quite sure that I awoke the next morning in the hotel with both my kidneys so I am going to make the bold assumption that we had no more mishaps that night. I do recall upon gazing at the neon sign the following evening that it really was quite noticeable within the surroundings. A mighty shame it was of little use to us, but it did teach us our first lesson of China. It was surprisingly safe and the locals were actually nice. Lesson learned, and a hundred more to take. The next four weeks were going to be an experience unlike any other we had ever had.

24 Days in China

In October of 2002, I took a 24 day trip around China with close friend Sir S. China, with it's rich, turbulent history and breathtaking scenery was a country that I had wanted to see for a while, and finding a like minded soul in Sir S, we set about plans for our Tour of the Orient.

We were looking for a trip where we could experience China as it was, without the artificial air of a packaged tour, but were honest on our limitations. Neither Sir S or myself felt that we could learn to read or speak Mandarin with enough confidence to allow us to trek unguided across the country but wanted to see the most we could without sticking to the traditional tourist route. Intrepid Tours proved to be our saviour. They boasted travel leaders rather than guides, taking small groups of people through exotic locations that circumvented the traditional tourist routes to give the true cultural experience of China. The idea was simple, the Tour leader would book our accommodation, coordinate our transport and leave the rest to us. There would be options for activities but these were not mandatory.

We booked ourselves into the Grand China Traverse, heralded as an invigorating and culturally immersive trek west from Beijing across the backbone of China, up to the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan, down to Chengdu and into the lush provinces of Guangxi to end in Hong Kong. With a physical grading of three elephants, we were sold.


We booked our trip in early 2002 and waited eagerly for October to come around. I headed off to the UK for 6 months, returning to Australia two weeks before our trip armed with a back pack, and a basic misunderstanding of Mandarin. I hunkered down with Sir S in his Potts Point abode to await the day we flew out and discussed the myriad of sites we would be seeing. This, we were infomred by the Intrepid office, was the last tour they ran in the year until Spring in the following March as the Winters in China brought freezing temperatures and heavy snow to the mountains in the Sezchuan province.

This was going to be exciting.