The BIG day is tomorrow!

Since I last wrote, the last 3 weeks have been dominated by preparations for tomorrow.

All the trees, flowers and bushes have been recently cut in pretty shapes. The lawn has been mowed all over, including in the sections between the highways and other strange places.

Every lampost in the inner city (an area of several miles) has a banner celebrating and welcoming the big day.

Every bus stop (in an even bigger area) has changed all the advertisements to government advertisements welcoming the big day. The TV is full of shows commemorating the achievements of the last 60 years.

Security which used to be a few people at each entrance to the subway is now 5-6 people (some men standing behind the women to back them up) and women who used to get away without putting their handbags on the x-ray machine no longer get away with it.

Our favorite restaurant is now longer able to put seating outside on the street as a massive information/notice board has gone up. Written at the top of the notice board a sign declares its purpose (translated into English): The Building a Civilized Spirit in the Capital Promotion Notice Board. Classic. Truly Chinese. These kinds of words are used all over the place, but I still laugh when I see them!

Due to two knife attacks earlier this month (an unusual event in a safe city) knifes are no longer on sale for the next 2 weeks and have been removed from any serviced apartments or hotels that have knifes of any kind in kitchens. This should keep the city much safer, as of course, no-one in the city already has any knifes!

And of course the Western media has articles covering China's progress and commemorating various points in the last 60 years since the People's Republic of China was founded. Aah, the PRC. 6 months ago, the government was always proudly talking up the significant progress the country has made since 1979. And it has. Now, though, the government talks up the progress from 1949 until 2009, which is laughable, as there was no progress in the first 30 years. In fact the country almost went backwards (which is a hard thing to do, since in 1949 the country was emerging from over 20 years of civil war and fighting the Japanese in WW2). It also leads to crazy comparisons of GDP going up thousands of percent.

So tomorrow will be military parade, the civilian parade and security is insane, so we'll be watching it on TV (although hopefully we'll see the air force's display overhead). I am not sure what will happen after tomorrow; the country has been solidly geared up for this after the Olympics finished. Next up is the Expo in Shanghai I suppose, and them i imagine some other event needs to be secured, so the government can continue promoting how amazing it is and inspiring everyone towards whatever slogans and goals it wants to associate with these events.

Well one thing is for sure, China will get back to looking at the future, and will forget about the past. For China only cares about the future as it races into a future that is moving very fast. Whether that future will be incredibly unsustainable or just a little unsustainable, we don't know... but the government is making promising noises around Climate Change at least -so lets stay tuned for more daily news on that until (and likely after) the Summit in Copenhagen in just a month or so.

In the desert

We went to some spectacular grottoes that i had been to before, which
are fun to look at due to the stairways carved out of, and sticking
out of, the cliff that you clomb to see the carvings. However the 6 hr
return journey was 12 in the end, so it might not have been worth it!

We did finally arrive at the desert for glorious sunshine, zip lines,
sand duning and quad biking amongst others. The area, sha po tou, is
split into a south section, where the desert meets the Yellow river
with fantastic views, and the north section. After zip lining down to
the river, it was the north section which we fell in love with and
ended up spontaneously staying the night at, in a hotel in the desert.
It was very well designed and fit into the scenery well, as did the
other buildings containing the attraction, and a bar which provided us
with a roof to drink on whilst the sun set. A quick game of football
on the sand broke up the drinking games before dinner.

The amazing quad biking was one of the best ten minutes i have ever
had doing any sport, so we did it 4 times. Flying, almost literally,
over the massive dunes was a wonderful experience, at speeds that did
not feel safe.

The resort area was very well designed physically and well laid out,
unusually for China. We really were in a playground in the desert,
with few other people, and surrounded by sand. Unfortunately the
Chinese are so keen to take your tourist money, after paying an
entrance fee we still paid for each activity we did.

The following day at another scenic site, sikou, we saw some dramatic
rocky scenery and had a fight over paying an additional fee to cross a
rope ladder, which was the main attraction we came to see (and paid
the entrance ticket for). As much as it was ridiculous to charge
another fee, we had to accept the Chinese tourism industry's desire to
play its role in increasing national consumption.

We then took a bus half way up Ningxia province to the capital. It is
a small province so it was only a 2 hour (fast) bus ride, which was
nice and then a quick dash out to the Western Xia tombs, from a
dynasty the ruled much of north-west China a milennium ago.

The province was one of the last provinces to be specified and is
supposed to be a Hui one, the Hui being an islamic ethnic minority.
But most Hui live elsewhere in China (only 1/3rd of those in Ningxia
are Hui nowadays) due to population movements. We saw more mosques a
few days earlier in Gansu than we did in Ningxia.

Being able to speak the language has rfevealed another benefit with
our constant negotiations with taxi drivers or others: being able to
understand them helps mean we can get their perspective on why a price
is set as it is; and in many cases found no need to bargain. Though
this has beem difficult for my sister who thinks we should bargain
everything, all the time, always!

The lack of english at the museum, a typical problem, even in major
cities, is frustrating. This especially so when they translate 1
paragraph, but nothing else!
More frustrating though is the lack of any interesting content that
gives you context or keeps you engaged or makes you interested.
Instead text is boring and factual, out of context and meaningless.
Museums is one area where the Chinese are not making much progress.