Travel tips for first-time visitors from Planet Backpacker
A Trip Through Northern China
Jeannette & the Great Buddha in the caves at Datong.
Our visit to the Peoples Republic in 2005 was accompanied by sick feelings from the footage on Chinese TV: desperate black Americans stranded on the rooftops of their houses, floating amid the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. Americans who were obviously poor, helpless, and sinking fast For the Chinese, it must have been a shocker: not everyone in America is a spoiled, rich, blond teenager chiseled from The Hills mode of southern California. China has set itself a lofty goal: to be the number one tourist destination in the world within 20 years. Given that two-thirds of this country of 1.1 billion is rock-bottom poor and riven with internal strife over jobs, pollution and inequity, it may be a tall order for China just to keep its borders intact over that time period, short of a Soviet Union-style breakup. Just west of Beijing, we saw pigs walking in and out of the dirt-floor homes of peasants. Speaking of breakups, that's the dilemma faced by the first-time visitor to China. Considering that the country is roughly the same size as the United States, most visitors check out one region at a time. But which one? Do you concentrate on the Cantonese south with the limestone mountains of Guilian, the Yangtze River, Sichuan and Hong Kong? Head north for Xian and Beijing? Or west on the new highway to Tibet? Having been to Hong Kong, Kowloon and Macau for a week during the height of the SARS scare, my wife and I decided to head north on our second visit to China.
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Copyright 2011 - Robert Downes - The Wandering Press - write me: bob@planetbackpacker.net
