The Great (fire)Wall of China

SHANGHAI: I hadn't appreciated quite how difficult communication would be in China. The Great (fire) Wall of China is firmly in place. I cannot access my blog, our website or facebook. I can log onto my google email account however and, so have had to send Henry and George this as a document for one of them to post. George tried all sorts of ways to get me to bypass the problem but none were satisfactory. Censorship rules. Because of this posts from China may be rather limited.

We arrived in Shanghai minus one of our suitcases, unfortunately the big heavy one with lots of stuff for the car in it. It should have come on the conveyor as a priority but we got that aweful sinking feeling as we waited and waited until all the luggage had come out and no sign of our big blue bag. We discovered that it was still in London and that, hopefully, it will get to us. It is packed full of car parts and essentials that will be impossible to buy here and so we sincerely hope that we do see it again or we may be in trouble.

We took the Maglev train from the airport. This gets up to a speed of 430km per hour. We have been on the Maglev test train in Japan and so have both now been on the two fastest trains in the world. These things are important to a railwayman, although the railwayman's wife thought it pretty good too. We have had a day sightseeing in Shanghai; our room on the 42nd floor has a fabulous view over The Bund, the old waterfront area. Shanghai is a very modern high rise place now and you have to search hard for any traces of the old city. There is an obsession with new here: make it higher, more glitzy, higher still. We went to a bar on the 91st floor, I needed a marguerita to stop the vertigo, or maybe just to give me vertigo of a different kind. Today we leave for Beijing on the day train. This takes about 10 hours. It should be very interesting with rural China passing past the window. The train is a 'bullet style' and should be very comfortable.

Once in Beijing this evening we will start to meet all our fellow competitors. One of them may have found a way to circumvent Chinese internet censorship, I hope so anyway. If not posting may be a little difficult until we reach Ulan Bataar. We leave Beijing on the 10th, have two nights in China before reaching Mongolia, a night camping and then the relative comfort of Ulan Bataar. I'll do what I can to keep in touch.

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