Tag Archives: Chinese tour group

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Our cute son, Travels

Getting Lost in Langzhong

January 29, 2017 CrazyChineseFamily 19 Comments

Remember my blog post “The Time we actually travelled somewhere”? Back then I only mentioned the Jianmenguan Pass however we still had another destination afterwards. I guess I tried to forget about it as the bus trip (which already took 6 hours to the Jianmenguan Pass) did not improve while driving to our final destination. In fact it got worse as the driver got lost several times so the whole trip took instead of another 2 1/2 hours again around 6 hours.

lz8 — One of the countless of Buildings we visited in Langzhong

At late night we arrived in Langzhong and were hushed by the tour guide into the old town to our Traditional Inn. As we arrived so late they did not have any dinner left and nearly all restaurants had closed already as the Old Town is a tourist attraction and thus only opened during daytime. After searching for what felt an eternity we found one restaurant we could eat something. On the down side it was filled with drunken patrons, on the bright side they had food for us. The only memories I have from the first night in the room was that those old buildings certainly do not give you any rest as you hear everyone in the whole inn talking or walking around.

lz10 — From the towers in the Ancient Town you have a wonderful view around

Because we were part of a tourist group it meant also a very strict timetable. Wake up was at 5:30 AM and by 6 AM we had to be done with breakfast and run around the ancient town of Langzhong. The place looks really amazing and it is full of history but running from one temple to the next ancient school to the next ancient tomb was very exhausting. Besides exhausting it was also very repetitive as after a while all those buildings were looking the same. Because of the strict timetable we had to rush to every location and we got lost several times as we could not keep up the speed together with Nathan. One good thing though was that the food was pretty decent unlike at the horrifying experience from the City Tour Extreme a year later.

Langzhong is a very interesting city as the ancient town is well-preserved and has an over 2.300 years of history. One of the main points I still remember is the ZhangFei Temple which is also where his tomb is located. On a funny side note I have to mention that MIL did not dare to enter the temple as she thinks that God will punish her for that. No idea where she got that from but in all our travels she never entered a temple due to her fear. Nathan became quickly an attraction on his own when we walked around wearing his monk costume. At one point there were several dozen people following him and taking pictures with him. Needless to say that MIL tried to be in each picture as well…

lz6 — See, take picture of me and also the little guy in my arms

Our tour group allowed to have some little “freedom” by being able to select certain extras to visit. One of those extras was a performance on the other side of the river. It was a really wonderful perfomance and the only negative thing was the ridiculous amount of selfie-sticks being used to take pictures and videos. Due to that I had too often a huge tablet right in front of me. I tried my best but somehow I could not find the name of the performance online nor does my wife remembers the name any longer. All I know is that it is located right next to the Jinping Hill which is on its own already a great location to visit. We had a strict timetable when visiting the Jinping Hill and kind of got lost half way through. Especially carrying Nathan’s small pram up and down countless of stairs was a bit hard.

I can only recommend to visit Langzhong but without a tour group! Two to three days would be best as there is a lot to see already in the ancient town and in the surrounding area. The Jinping Hill alone can easily consume up to six hours when trying to really “see” everything there. What I can not recommend is the vinegar museum as it is just a tourist trap and of course everyone in my tour group bought plenty of vinegar in the store located at the exit of the museum.

Many of these little performance groups were marching through the ancient town

Have you visited so-called Ancient Towns before?

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Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son, Travels, Uncategorized

City Tour Extreme: Day Three, Hangzhou and Wuzhen

May 23, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

I warned you in the last post that the torturous city tour did not end at day two with the trips to Yangzhou and Suzhou. Day three is the day when it really got out of hand with an insane plan for the day. It meant once again hours in a bus too small for humans, a howling monkey tour guide doing her best to keep us awake, tourist trap stops and spending too less time in the cities. Please not that this post is a bit longer as it was a very long day.

So I ended last post with the remark that we went to our hotel and were able to enjoy some eatable dinner. The hotel, as mentioned last time, was surprisingly good. In fact it was nearly a five-star hotel, everything was clean, no tobacco smell anywhere, a bathroom bigger than the first hotels main room and a nice view from our room at the 17th floor. My father and I were already looking forward to the breakfast as the previous days that part was never something good. Oh boy, we should never ever have hopes in China it seems. You see, first of all we went to breakfast at 6:30 which meant it was nearly one hour before normal breakfast time for this hotel. At first glance it even looked good until we realized that under nearly all the food covers at the buffet only emptiness was awaiting us. So what food was ready this time? Indeed, mantou and some more mantou BUT there I found coffee and even milk. Big mistake again. The coffee was undrinkable as it appeared that they used 1/5 with actual super strong coffee, 1/5 with milk (or something similar to it) and last but not least 3/5 of sugar. After one sip my stomach was in turmoil so I grabbed the milk and big surprise it was hot milk with a weird aftertaste. The time between this experience and the bus leaving for Hangzhou I spent in the bathroom…

tour24 — A huge Buddha covered with pearls

Hangzhou was our next city on the agenda roughly 2 1/2 hours by bus. However after 30 minutes we stopped at a Pearl Museum. It sounded very nice and started off so well. There was this museum guide explaining the history of the freshwater pearls in China and how one scholar figured out how to cultivate them successfully back in the day. There were wonderful pearls on display, a dress full of pearls worn by Cixi 慈禧 and even a Buddha statue covered in pearls. As you might guess it was just the beginning which was nice at this museum because as we were walking to the next room we were suddenly in the biggest pearl selling place I have ever seen. First there were several rooms filled with hundred if not thousands of tourist at the different pearl selling stands. It was so loud and crowded, just so unbelievable how the whole scenery changed from a nice museum tour into this tourist trap within seconds. After we managed somehow to get out of those pearl selling rooms we were out of nowhere surrounded by vinegar selling stands then in the next room it was all about clothes and and and. We went from room to room, from floor to floor for about half hour until we finally got out. I am not kidding that they basically had everything to sell there what you might find in a huge mall, from jewelery over toys and clothes to food.

After this wonderful tourist trap stop we went on with our journey to Hangzhou. I don’t think I need to mention again how comfortable this trip was. The first destination in Hangzhou was Song Cheng, a large theme park with the architectural style based on the painting “Along the River during the Qingming Festival” by Zhang Zeduan. Once again it was just huge there and despite the terrible weather (yes, it was still raining) it was packed with people. My wife loved this place as she had watched before an episode of “Hurry Up, Brother or Running Man” 奔跑吧兄弟 which was shot in that theme park. I must say it was really nice there but of course we had just too little time there. The nice howling monkey reminded us once again that we had 60 minutes on our own there until the show “Romance of the Song Dynasty” would start. This gave us only time to visit few things there such as one of the great haunted houses (my wife is still scared) and a couple of amusement rides for Nathan. The show itself was incredible and what was even more incredible was that it was just huge there, the biggest theatre hall I have ever seen. All in all this was once again a place you could easily spend an entire day to see it all.

tour8 — West Lake with the Leifeng Pagoda in the background

Again it was time for a bus trip for a half hour to reach the West Lake. There a little “ship cruise” was planned and while waiting for the ship/ tiny boat we could enjoy the beautiful scenery there. We could see the Leifeng Pagoda and the Jingci Temple on the opposite side of the lake. The ship cruise itself wasn’t that interesting except that we saw one ridiculous ship which looked like a giant dragon. As our howling monkey got lost in the park trying to find the way back to the bus we passed by many interesting spots within this park but sadly it was raining the entire time and thus I could not take any pictures.

tour4 — View from one of the bridges in Wuzhen

Now then to my favorite part of this day. From Hangzhou we drove roughly 1 1/2 hours to Wuzhen, a wonderful little town. As the schedule was completely messed up we arrived there around 7pm instead of half day earlier. At first I was afraid it would be another tourist trap as I saw pretty much millions of busses in front but as soon as we went to the check-in area it was empty. All visitors have to leave the old village center till 6 or 7pm and only the inhabitants, inn-guests and workers can stay. We had some delicious dinner there (the best food for the entire trip!) and then had to find our own inn rooms in the old village center. The view was just incredible as during night-time all the houses and bridges are covered in lights. After getting our luggage to our guest rooms we went for a little tour around to take some pictures till most of the lights were turned off. I can only recommend visiting Wuzhen or even stay in one of the guest houses within the water town as it is definitely a place I would love to stay for a couple of days.

With this a very long day came to and end. It was certainly chaotic and only towards our last destination we could finally relax and enjoy the surrounding for a bit. After this night in Wuzhen only two days remained however they will be in one blog post as it is all about Shanghai (and some annoying side stops…).

Someone tries to take a picture of my grandson? I need to be in it!

randomn drunk person after the big lights were turned off

Have you ever visited Wuzhen?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Travels

Going around Zhaohua Ancient Town

March 28, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 35 Comments

Remember when I wrote that I had totally forgotten that we actually did travel once a bit around in China? Back then I wrote about the trip to the Jianmenguan Pass which was actually in the end of a 3 day trip around the north of Sichuan. Why Sichuan? Because it is the neighbouring province of Shaanxi and just a few hours by bus away. Our first stop was Zhaohua Ancient Town which is in the Yuanba District, Guangyuan, Sichuan. Okay, it was not the first “stop” as we did had a couple of stops during the bus ride at service areas. In one of those service areas I saw a public toilet nightmare but this is just too much for this blog and it shall forever haunt only my memories.

zhao2 — Looks old but most of the structure is probably new

As I explained in the other post we were part of a tour group and hence the entire trip around was very carefully planned and left barely any time to go around on your own. At Zhaohua we went straight to eat at a little restaurant organized by the tour group. It was nothing special but good enough to have nothing to complain about. The tour around the ancient town was interesting but annoying at the same time. Interesting as the ancient town was really wonderful and offered tons of picture/ video material and annoying as the local tourist guide had a very fast pace going from building to building which forced me to run after the group more than just once as I was busy taking pictures or recording some videos.

Zhaohua is a very old town with several temples, an old city wall with several gates, old governmental buildings, sculptures and also an ancient flag stone road. I read back then in some online source that some thirty years ago the town was much smaller, many temples were missing/ destroyed back in the day but that there were also many wooden structures left from the early Qing Dynasty. Though there were many old structures left it was a bit messed up because ugly new houses had been build all over the town. In that source the author explained also how different the town looked when he went there again several years ago as many wooden structures had been torn down and replaced by these new structures. Now these houses didn’t look like new houses anymore as they got fake wooden house fronts so they looked like the old houses again. So by the time we went there I really couldn’t tell which were the original old houses and which were the new “fake old” houses. Besides that the whole town was pretty much very touristy. Not that I am unhappy that they rebuilt so many of these ancient structures but I really don’t understand why they had to tear down actual ancient houses and replace them with new ones.

We were in the town for a few of hours before heading to the next destination. Nearly the entire time there was spent with eating and running behind the tour guide. Thankfully we had some 45 min times to go around on our own which allowed us to relax a bit after running for so long time and take a closer look at the buildings. The main street in that town was full of little shops selling souvenirs, local snacks and clothes. It was also there that I suddenly ended up with a little snake in my camera bag. No, it didn’t just appeared out of thin air but a man had it on his shoulder and offered me to hold it myself. It was then that the snake decided it had seen enough people for one day and quickly wriggled its way out of my hands and into the dark and cosy camera bag. The man even offered me to buy the snake but you know it would be a bit hard to get that animal through security and customs at the airport…