The Red Giant (final conclusions)

I had the intention of sharing my experience in China with this series of posts, nothing else. I did not have the intention to get deep into any particular issue or drive these posts into any political discussion whatsoever. It is true that i rised some points throughout the posts but never went deep into them. I cannot pretend to show more than what my visit was, simply 19 days traveling through a small part of China and having no knowledge of Chinese language at all. What i wrote is very simple, just impressions of a guy who has been traveling around enjoying a beautiful country and having serious difficulties to engage in a conversation with local people. These were my impressions and they are subject to criticism because they can of course, be wrong.

We also have to take into account the fact that i was in Sichuan only for 15 days. If we had had more time we would have planned it in a very different way. This means, yes, i am sure that you can avoid the crowds much better than we did. I can imagine traveling by bike, getting to more remote places and spending more time trying to find beautiful isolated places and do them yourself. This was out of our scope due to the time limitation but i think we still managed pretty well to avoid them. Just have this in mind when you plan any traveling there because any known place will be packed.

Other things you shouldn't get suprised of:

-At least in Sichuan, 90% of the food they shell is expired, in many cases it has been expired for a couple of months.

-The information centers are usually closed and if they are opened you will be very lucky if someone speaks any English at all.

-Of course people will try to give you a price which is at the very least, twice more expensive than for Chinese so...bargain, bargain, bargain and bargain.

The food is incredibly good. A few things you should try:

Dim sum in Hong Kong, which are small bite-size portions of food (let's say, kind of Spanish tapas). Try also their fruit like the dragon eye or the rambutan. The ice cream with mango and read bean. Hot pot in Sichuan, wonton soup and Chinese damplins, congee for breakfast, winter melon stew, crab balls, and all the seafood...endless list and you will love it. Of course everything accompained with rice for which they have this saying: “Precious things are not pearls or jade but the five grains” (one of them is supposed to be rice, and now it is included as “of which rice is the finest”).

I never thought i would find China so incredibly interesting and exciting. Unfortunately i only had 19 days there and i wish it could have been 19 months. This is my experience and I wanted to share it. Of course i am leaving many things, impressions and thoughts but i probably killed a lot of people with this endless post. I would like to read from other people's experience so...anyone who has been to China i would love to know about the experience. I am open to any critic. If somebody disagrees on something, considers something to be false or inaccurate or has a different view please share it, I would love to read it. If you just want to share another beautiful experience or thing about China, please, do it!

I also saw on the statistics of the Blog that I have also had a few visits from Hong Kong and China. I really hope you enjoyed it and I apologize if I offended anyone with what I said, it wasn't my intention. There are clear cultural differences and we cannot help find some very different and feel shocked about them, but that is also what made the trip more special. China has beautiful things but also others which I found really disturbing. This happens everywhere, it is not exclusive of China. Once more, if someone felt offended, I apologize.

I finish this with a funny observation. It is now trendy in China to wear rimless glasses (i think they are called like this, i mean glasses without glasses!). It was very funny to see it. As far as i know, there is no such a thing in Europe. Am i correct? I wouldn't be surprised if it also exists but I haven noticed. This is it about China. Share your view!