China

Thoughts whilst sitting on the train travelling from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar to comment on a few observations not necessarily in any order but as they came into our heads, whilst sitting on the train gazing out of the window at the beautiful countryside.
Both in the cities that we stayed in and the surrounding countryside the air was very hazy. Once out of the cities the air is clear and the skies are blue.




The China we have seen is in many ways different to the China that we had expected. Everywhere is so much cleaner and greener. Everywhere we have travelled there were trees lining the streets and parks and gardens with floral displays. Interestingly a lot of the trees are painted white at the base. 


Apparently it is to preserve the trees in the colder weather. Every street seemed to have a street cleaner sweeping and/or picking up rubbish. There was even a work team hosing down trees.


The people are mainly friendly and helpful. We rarely had to use our translate application as we managed to make ourselves understood.
Obviously there are crowds of people as we expected but with a lot more pushing and shoving than we are used to.
Public facilities were in abundance and also generally very clean and well maintained.


The traffic was as crazy as we expected but surprisingly very few accidents. Plenty of traffic jams. Eric organised an Uber car to take us back to our hotel from the Forbidden City. It only cost us 18 Yuan but the trip took ages to only travel a short distance.
We noticed that in Xian there had obviously been more pride in their history than Beijing as their historic buildings had been maintained/preserved/restored.