Fran Goodman
A gorge along the Yangtze
Bridge over the Shennong Stream
The sheer scale of China is thrilling and daunting – a nation of 1.4 billion people, many living in cities three times the size of London, in a country 3,200 miles across by 3,400 deep.
Its awesome sights run from the dazzling, multi-coloured skyscrapers of Shanghai to the rural beauty of the Yangtze River, from the 2,000year-old engineering feat the Great Wall to a modern feat of conservation, the giant panda breeding programme.
The distances are vast, the languages almost impossible to grasp, the customs alien. How to even scratch the surface on a two-week holiday?
Without expert help, I’d probably still be trying to find my way out of the airport. But fortunately help was on hand, with Mercury Holidays’ Wonders of China tour, all executed seamlessly by national guide Max.
On our full-on 16-day sprint around China’s highlights we took in a four-day Yangtze cruise, raced 250 miles to Chengdu for panda action, headed to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors, and ended in Beijing.
It involved two internal flights, one bullet train, one ship, four hotels, three shows and a wedding.
But we started in Shanghai, a city with a rich colonial past and an even more colourful present. Luxury shops were everywhere, teenagers cruised the streets in Ferraris.
Its two worlds collide at the Huangpu River where The Bund – home to grand banks and trading centres, 1920s temples to European empires – faces the Pudong district across the water, where skyscrapers of every imaginable shape and colour crowd the skyline.
The Bund embankment is ideal for an afternoon stroll, but Pudong is best viewed after dark, so we took a night boat and spent an enjoyable hour oohing and aahing past one dazzlingly bright office block after another.
It was in Shanghai’s French Concession, a smart colonial area now full of restaurants and shops, that we first experienced what would become routine – the secret snappers.
As I listened to Max talk about the history, I noticed a woman 10ft away pointing her phone at us. Then I saw the tiny elderly lady closing in on me as her companion snapped away.
Max explained many of the Chinese we saw were tourists too, visiting relatives in the big city, and thrilled to spot blue-eyed exotics.
Almost every day we were asked to pose with babies, children or grannies and the delight when we agreed was lovely.
The next morning saw us back at
For the ‘crying marriage’ the bride starts weeping a month before the big day