The great loop of China - April 2018 - Page 3

Before leaving Beijing, I took a walk to breakfast, through a Hutong. I found a Cafe Bene which I think is a Korean brand. I had a really good coffee there but it was somewhat ruined by a large group of French tourists who came in and were all dying. They needed to go to the hospital! One woman actually passed out and hit her head on the table, and jolted herself back to life. If I die of a disease while here, blame these French people! I burnt my throat drinking my coffee as fast as I could so I could leave, I wished I got a take away.

If a taxi isnt terrifying enough, you can go in a 3 wheeled electric motorbike taxi. Most of the time they dont tip over.

Here is the street scene outside of Cafe Bene. The trees here will form a complete canopy over the street soon, lots of streets in Beijing are like this.

The Beijing West station is quite far from the centre of the city, and even further from the central business district, this isnt the station itself but it was obvious its a highly developed area.

Here is a small part of the station, I could not get it all in the photo, to do so would mean trying to cross the road, there were fences to prevent that.

The inside of the station is quite modern, but not as modern as the more modern stations which have more modern amenities.

Once you get nearer your platform, you go into a crowded waiting room, and do whatever you can to prevent a line from forming!

The trains. I do like trains. I especially like ones that go really fast.

The inside of the train. These are very long trains, there are 3 classes, I am in the cheapest class of course, I travel among the people. There are also 2 dining cars, although one is exclusively for first class. Carts full of food and drink come past constantly. The trains are fast and very very quiet, I was also surprised at the lack of lung particles being coughed up constantly, most people went to sleep and were silent.

Zhengzhou East station. It reminded me of Shin-Osaka.

Here is a view of Zhengzhou new city, its quite far from where I am now which is the old city, hence the title of todays chapter.

I was a bit early to head to my hotel to check in so I looked for food. Duck necks were on offer, I didnt feel like crunching on vertebrae, so I went to....a bakery! I thought I had ordered cheese on toast, it got heated up for me, and looked good, then I bit into it and it was sweet. It is indeed cheese on toast, but with blueberry filling. Surprisingly nice!

Finding my hotel was not hard. It stands out above everything and has a UFO on the top. I already described checking in, it seems to be a great hotel and I think I am paying about $55 a night. It was just about the only hotel I could find to book in Zhengzhou.

Now we get the pics of my room, its actually an apartment, absolutely enormous.

It has a full kitchen and full sized fridge. The stove and oven is hidden under that blanket thing, I dont think it has ever been used.

I also get a view in 2 directions. Now this is going to look like I am staying in the middle of a bomb site, but the newer buildings are on the other side of the hotel which is the main shopping pedestrian street and enormous mall area.

Since I am on a corner I also get a different view out of my bathroom, which is also huge. After taking this photo I went downstairs to buy some drinks to put in my huge fridge and the police were on my floor with the staff trying to get into someones room! They motioned for me just to keep going, I did.

The mall area outside of my hotel has shops, a lot like what I remember from the crossing into Shenzhen from Hong Kong. To try and get young people to loiter, they have erected the worlds ultimate selfie station.

It is hard to tell in this photo, but this entire roof is a 3d screen. Things jump out at you. I never really saw anything like it before.

This is the central railway station. It does have high speed services, but I couldnt get one to Xian (my next destination). I recently realised the station that I am leaving from on Monday is not connected to the subway. It is however connected to the high speed line from the central station, so I checked if I could get a ticket between two high speed stations in Zhengzhou, and I could! On Monday I will take a 6 minute train ride.
I realise the above sounded very confusing, because it is.

This is the inside of what I thought would be a modern shopping centre. There are multiple levels of this.

This huge building is also what I think is just wholesale junk clothes markets. There were signs suggesting levels 9 and 10 were restaurants but I couldnt get up there, the place seemed shut.

I cant really convey the intersections in still photos, look at all those little things parked in the middle of the road..... there are no traffic lights!

This is also a wholesale clothing market. It was also shut. I then realised there was a whole other world under me, and that crossing the street in the traffic above ground was only for fools and long haired lost Australians.

There are lots of alleyways filled with food carts and little food stands such as this, 3 identical ma la tang shops in a row. They didnt really have anywhere to sit though, so I moved on.

This is back right by my hotel, the cold comfort of neon and stores that are open and trying to attract regular customers.

I descended into the underground, and wandered around a very long maze of little stores and people mingling about doing what they could to avoid what was going on above ground. I couldnt find any food down here which I thought was weird.

Then I realised theres mored than one level underground. Basement level 2 has a food 'street'.

I found ma la tang sushi train style, just like the ultra expensive fusion place by my house in Melbourne that charges $38 per person. Here in Zhengzhou, all you can eat is $3. There was no English, and there was some confusion as there are 6 soup choices. The way this all works is you get a bowl of soup on your own personal hot plate, you take things off the train and cook them yourself.
The boss came out from the kitchen and spoke really fast Chinese to me, I told him I can try and understand if he speaks slowly. He told me I am the first American customer he ever had.

This is Erqi square monument, it was constructed to memorialize a labour strike in 1927. I assume many people died. Nothing much of significance happens in China unless many people die. Now its the centre of the city, and about 100 metres from my hotel.

On the way back I decided to stop and lose all my money throwing neon hoops at plush toys.