On my first visit to China as a tourist more than 40 years ago, I was followed around the streets of Shanghai by a mob of curious, Mao-suited Chinese, today I don't even rate a glance.
I'm just one of millions of western tourists who are finding China a fascinating destination. Within a decade China is expected to top the list of the world's most popular destinations.
Of course, China has changed beyond recognition. It has pulled down its bamboo curtain and embraced a new hybrid of capitalist communism.
The Great Wall of China, once built to keep people out of China, is now being used as a tool to bring tourists into China.
Today, Beijing, Xian, the Yangtze River, Guilin, the Li River, Yangshuo and Shanghai are among the main tourist places of interest.
China is not a place yet for the independent traveller: English is not widely spoken and internal travel isn't easy. Far better to take a package tour with an accompanying escort who can take care of the detail.
Wendy Wu Tours is an experienced China hand and has a 17-day package called the Wonders of China which takes in the highlights. It is an ideal way to see the main points of interest in four-star comfort.
We enjoyed a cross-section of China – from big cities to farmland and small villages; to Yangtze river life; to a home visit in Beijing and a close look at a farmer's country farmhouse.
Our tour began in Beijing, a city in the midst of a big makeover to prepare for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Chinese see the Olympic Games as a coming out party and are sparing nothing to get the city ready.
A city of modern skyscraper buildings and freeways, it is, in that respect, much like many other cities – except for the smog.
It can give you a wrong impression of China. A third of the city's three million cars will be kept off the roads during the Games and many public servants given holidays to try to reduce the smog.
City fathers are also planting gardens and trees to try to soak up the smog.
Police and taxi drivers are being given English language lessons and residents are being asked to take classes in how to behave at sports events. Spitting is banned and thousands of extra, portable toilets are being installed in Beijing streets.
Beijing's icons include the massive Tiananmen Square, with Mao Zedong's mausoleum (closed at present for restoration), the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall.
Be prepared for lots of walking around these icons. Be ready, too, for crowds, although because of the scale of these places one never really felt crushed.
And beware of hawkers wanting to sell you anything from hats to souvenir books.
(Practise saying something that sounds like: "booyerchercher". It means, I'm assured: "I don't want it, thank you.")
You'll make an early morning visit to the Great Wall at Juyongguan.
Wendy Wu, sensibly, got us there before the crowds. Walk on the wall – at least for a short distance. To the right (west) of the entrance, up the hill, it is steep. The steps, worn by millions of feet, are uneven. To the left it is flatter but less spectacular.
In the evenings enjoy a spectacular acrobatic show and, if there is time, take in on another night, The Legend of Kung Fu, a wonderful, spiritual and energetic ballet tracing the life of a boy who becomes a warrior monk.
A short flight away is Xian, start of the Silk Road and home of the Terracotta Warriors, the bigger-than-lifesize army created to protect China's first emperor, Qin.
Described as the eighth wonder of the world, it was discovered as recently as 1974 by a local farmer digging a well. (You can shake his hand in the souvenir shop where he sits day after day autographing the souvenir book.)
The diggings, in three pits, cover 20ha and are under a dome roof. Spend most time in pit No 1 which is the most spectacular.
The four-night Yangtze River cruise gave us a chance to see the Three Gorges Dam, one of the world's biggest projects, and watch life on the river which carries 80 percent of China's waterborne traffic and whose catchment area is home to more than a third of China's 1.3 billion population.
When the dam is finished in 2009 the water-level will rise another 25 metres and flood many cities and villages. A million people are being displaced and relocated in newly-built towns.
You'll be taken on a fascinating side trip up a narrow river in a peapod-shaped boat sculled and dragged by local boatmen just as they have done over centuries against the rapids and swift flow of the river.
A highlight of the tour was undoubtedly a three-hour cruise on the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo, past the karsts, ragged mountains that look like giant green molehills and remind one of classic Chinese landscape painting.
You'll see a slice of river life, including buffaloes lazily ploughing rice fields , and fishermen who use trained cormorants to fish from their flat bamboo craft.
Yangshuo is a delightful small town. Good for shopping in the marketplace. And don't miss an evening performance of a sound-and-light show featuring a cast of 600 local farmers and fishermen on a set that incorporates the river and a backdrop of the mountains.
Truly spectacular, it has been directed by Zhang Yimou who will direct the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Shanghai today is a modern city. Not a Mao suit in sight. If it is said of Xian that one sees there 1,000 years of Chinese history and in Beijing, 100 years then in Shanghai one sees the past 10 years of China's amazing development. The elegant, European architecture of the old riverside thoroughfare, the Bund, is still there.
But across the river, where rice fields existed just 15 years ago, are skyscrapers to match those anywhere. At night they are lit to show off a spectacle of colour.
As if to exemplify the speed with which China is charging into the 21st century, Shanghai has a rail link between its CBD and new international airport, 30km away. It covers the distance in less than eight minutes at speeds up to 431km an hour. We took it just for fun – at about $15 ($NZ16.92) return.
It's a far cry from the Shanghai I remembered of 40 years ago when the fastest vehicle in sight was a bicycle.
IF YOU GO:
China specialist Wendy Wu Tours has a number of fully-escorted tours of China ranging from 10 days to 29 days. The 17-day Wonders of China tour runs from March to November and prices start at $3,980 twin share, including international air fares, national escort and local guides, all meals and visa.
Cathay Pacific Airways has China Trader return air fares from major Australian cities starting at $1,075 plus taxes to Beijing or Shanghai.
Source:http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4151656a34.html
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