Gardens

As an observation although the Chinese clearly like to look at gardens given the way they live in their cities, anyway, the opportunity to "garden" would have to be between limited and nil unlike in NZ when most home owners have the opportunity - although here in Auckland few really seize on it.

There are a lot of large public open spaces with fairly structured gardens. The example below is from Zhongshan which is known as a garden city. These spaces really get used and I quite of then came upon out door exercise classes, music classes or some lone exponent with the CD blaring.

Chinese seem to have a fear of silence and often these lovely spaces come with piped music which I found a little  disconcerting, not here but elsewhere.

All the older private gardens now open to the public (for a fee) are very very structured and certainly I never saw anything resembling western gardens and especially nothing looking like a rambling perennial border.  However I did find them very tranquil. 

 Garden views framed by structures 

 Water with its reflections are strong features in all the gardens we visited although some were frozen over !

For the most part we saw the gardens in "winter" except as below in "Autumn"

Transport

In summary, "not what I expected" and characterised by being "on time"  especially the subway  and high speed trains. Also very clean and totally devoid of graffiti.

This is the Chinese high speed train they run on a mainly elevated, purpose built, network right across China with continued expansion. 

We took them twice - Guangzhou to Beijing 2500km, 8 hours two short stops and then Beijing to Xian.

For me it was one of the personal highlights of my visit and illustrates what can be done with the right will power and the absence of the resource management act !!- such a network would be beyond transformational for NZ 

Pretty much low level flying - see the speed below from my GPS (below)

This is first class - not so expensive for westerners and really comfortable seats that are so high you can't see the other passengers

In the last two decades China has moved from a people powered nation to one thats petrol powered.

As a result their big cities are incredibly motorised and congested. Motorways everywhere - which all seem tolled - and those costs can add up fast . There seemed to be a lot cameras of mounted on overhead gantries for what nefarious purpose wasn't obvious .

The fleet which features more luxury cars than I ever saw in North America is incredibly new. The average age of the fleet would have to be five to ten years newer than NZ although I could not say the same for the truck fleet. 

Almost all two wheeled vehicles are electric, which came as a huge surprise. The rest of the two wheeled motorised fleet are scooters and small motorbikes - I never saw one over 125cc. 

I noticed what road rules I could work out seemed to vary geographically with the North American "right turn on red" in operation in some places.

On mainland China they drive on the right, Macau and Hong Kong on the left.

The standard of driving seems very region centric with it varying from terrifying to not quite so terrifying. I did not drive there my level of trust in other motorist actions is too high to survive five minutes. Having said that I fully realise our driving is second rate compared to a lot of places. 

For the most part Public transport is good and cheap as are taxis - although many taxis refuse to take you a short distance which is off putting at night.

Generally pedestrians in the bigger cities are very well looked after with many over-bridges and unlike in NZ where the steps and ramps completely put people off using them many in China can be accessed using escalators - as can be seen below (Shanghai)

China has a massive reliance on water transport and of course is home to the Grand Canal a UNESCO World Heritage site with the oldest parts dating to the 5th century BC and the newest around 600AD. Total length 1776 km some southern sections still in heavy use .

From my hotel window I counted 32 passenger ferries in operation on the Hong Kong harbour along with an uncountable number of fright vessels.

There is a decent if clunky tram network surviving in Hong Kong from the days of British imperialism but this hides the very fast and modern subway system including one track that runs at 130km/hr between the city and the airport.

There are downsides of course, congestion, pollution and queuing for a taxi as in the one hour wait at the main rail station in Beijing which kind of undermines the pace the high speed rail network!

Food

Let me say from the outset that I've eaten very little in the way of Chinese food that would come close to what I ate in China. In a way this was a bit of a gastronomically-centric tour, perhaps because Kylie wanted to show that much of what goes for "Chinese" in NZ is a shadow of the real thing.

To be fair we were careful as travellers so we mainly ate only that which was well cooked.

Yumcha 

So much better presented that what I had seen before - attention to detail 

This I had in Hilton in Zhongshan

It soup and thats tofu waving as if a sea Anemone 

Pekin Duck in Beijing 

Worth going to Beijing for alone 

 Its the way its cut ...perfection our equivalent

looks comparatively like its been done with a chain saw. 

Crab soup inside a bun

Duck tongues, actually really good eating  

Sweet and sour fish, not as red as it looks in the photo but 

one of the really impressive things was how the skin stayed crunchy right to the end 

I had it three times.....in Shanghai 

Only in Shanghai - fish soup using the Yellow fish from

the Huang Pu River 

Baby Pigeon very good eating  

Hilton in Zhongshen, it wasn't till after I'd eaten this 

that someone said what it was (I already had a fair idea)

Some kind of insect that live on rice plants in a fritter - actually 

I'd eat it again quite happily 

Sea snake - a bit chewy and I found it only interesting 

from the anatomical point of view - we don't have snakes 

This was more spectacular to look at than eat, but its the 

look that really appealed to me - no Chinese cake or 

"deserts" even approach the sweetness we are used to in the west.

Typical bakery - none of them are sweet (to me) 

Poached chicken 

I can't recall what this is made from but its about the size of a Soccer 

ball - hollow inside and a bit chewy to eat but quite good and

you wouldn't tackle it on your own.

Moslem market in Xian 

"Wet" Market Hong Kong