Even though Shanghai sits on the Pacific (or East China Sea for you pedants), there ain’t much beach action going on here. Seems like they’ve used every inch of shoreline for container ports, factory waste dumpage or expo grounds. So it being summer and all, some friends and I decided to trek out to Shengsi Island to get some unhealthy doses of solar radiation, and booze.

Shengsi Island is actually not part of Shanghai. It falls under the administrative incompetence of Zhejiang Province. To get there requires a taxi from wherever you are in Shanghai to the bus station underneath the Nanpu bridge, followed by an hour or so bus ride to a desolate part of Pudong where the ferry terminal is, and then a 70 minute boat ride to the island itself. The boat is the worst part, the seats are tightly packed, the Chinese tourists don’t handle the sea well, and if your stomach isn’t sick, the non-stop Mr. Bean on the TVs ensure your brain is. Avoid the washrooms at all costs. You’ve been warned.

Once you’re there, the island is pretty fucking ace. The air is as clean as you’re going to get in Asia, and that means there’s some awesome clouds doing their thing above you. Yes I love clouds.

When you plan your trip, it’s crucial you find a decent place to stay. I would not advise being bamboozled into 2 large rooms without beds for $150 a night, as our group was. Instead, there’s lots of guest houses around, and my independence seeking friend and I scored a nice air-conditioned and mosquito free place for $15 a night. Always remember to play the student card even if you’re rocking grey hair, suspenders and a sweater vest.

About those mosquitoes, you’ll want to bring the strongest repellent known to man, cause the little buggers aren’t little at all. They’re actually man eating beasts that move with the agility of mountain goats on crystal meth. I’m not really sure what that means, but they make Vlad Ţepeș look like a punk ass bitch.

The initial place we were staying at (the scamming rat bastards) had a “private beach”. What they really meant was a spit of sand covered in toxic waste from the nearby fishing/industrial village down the way. Luckily a 15 minute walk lead us to the massive, pristine Nanchangtu (南长途) beach with decent waves and practically no other people. Yeah it cost 20kuai to get in, but it was well worth being turned into a fried tomato, thanks to the Sun’s loving atomic rays.

The food on the island is mostly a poisonous variety of seafood that will destroy your intestines with the intensity of a thousand piranhas. I survived on granola bars and beef jerky acquired on the mainland. That’s called thinking ahead people. The best plan, would be to bring a small bbq, and get groceries from the town, and have a sweet rave party on the beach with glowing sweat. Interestingly, the main cash crop of the island was edamame beans that were in fact delicious.

If you can stomach other people not stomaching the boat ride, Shengsi island is a natural escape from the evil clutches of Shanghai. Just remember mosquitoes as big as 747s and seafood as bad as Michael Jackson circa 1987.

In this edition of my travels to famous Chinese tourist meccas, I present to you my do and don’t guide to visiting the famous Karst Limestone mountain area of Guilin/Yangshuo.

Do: tell your driver to take you on the Bamao (巴茂) highway to get from Guilin to Yangshuo. It offers endless views of the karstic mountains and lush green farmland you could eat up like a salad. Because no one else uses it, your driver will be able to see if his Santana really can make the needle hit 140km/h.

Don’t: let your driver take the provincial highway to get from Guilin to Yangshuo. It’s basically two lanes of giant trucks crawling along 40km/h that everyone else on the road is playing chicken with in order to get one position ahead. It also costs 30 kuai less than the fast highway. But takes an hour more. So if there’s 12 of you traveling together, and you do this, your time is worth a whopping 2.5 kuai an hour. That’s what I’ll pay my legions of peons, when I give them a 2.5 kuai raise.

Do: stay in one of the many chilled out resorts on the outskirts of Yangshuo. Other than being family run, having great service and food, clean rooms with internet, they’ll also remember your name every time they greet you while you reply back with an embarrassing “oh hi……you”.

Don’t: stay anywhere near downtown Yangshuo. It’s a giant swirling vortex of watch! bag! dvd!, shitty tourists, dirty hippies, “western” food and probably even some god-damned nazis. If you have to go, wear a cape and a mask to confuse the hell out of everyone, and bring some bear repellent just to be sure (I heard it works on them nazis).

Do: make sure to arrange all your transportation in advance of leaving wherever it is your staying. Best bet is to hire a driver for the times you need him, like when you’re so drunk you decide to go swimming naked in the Li river with a bunch of naked chicks, who are actually just your clothes that are floating away.

Don’t: expect to be able to hail taxis and pay a metered rate. Supply and demand rules here. Actually demand rules, and supply is its little bitch. The open air taxis are greedy blood sucking vampires. They will stop at nothing to pick you up and bring you somewhere at a grossly inflated rate given the vehicle they are transporting you in will probably break down and go out Hiroshima style on its way there.

Do: eat Guangxi style Chinese food. The chicken soup puts the chicken back in soup. Not that it ever left…well it tried to, but that’s a story for another day. A good restaurant to check out in Guilin is: 祥云居 in 鲁家村. You can find that on 桃花江路.This is a real deal local place, you won’t find it in the LP or Frommers. Once you get there you have to walk across a dam to get to it.

Don’t: bother with the western food in Yangshuo. If you want garbage save yourself the time and go straight to McDonalds. Although it might be a little hard to find.

Do: take a boat cruise down the Li river from Yangti to Xingping and have your photo taken in the famous spot that’s rendered on the 20Y bill despite it being as ridiculously cliché as throwing a penny in a fountain and wishing for world peace or eating dog meat in North Korea. Just watch out for pirates.

Don’t: take one of the big ass cuise boats down the river. They’re noisy, too fast, and akin to trying to take in Route 66 from the back of your grandpa’s Winnebago when you could be in a Cadillac drop top. I would also like to mention that almost every one I saw had a naked dude washing himself in the back of it. Ass pirates. True story.

Do: go exploring into the towns and villages along the river if you can. There’s all kinds of ancient buildings still standing, random chickens doing that thing they do, and well adjusted locals that don’t seem to mind you scoping out their hood.

Don’t: not go to Guangxi. The scenic beauty is something you should never not have the impossibility to lack the chance to see in your lifetime when you aren’t busy not trying to figure out all these double negatives.

On Thursday, at the crack of dawn, we awoke to grab some free breakfast from the hostel (yes this place had it all) and get ready for our trip to the magnificent Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We were joined by a family who I guessed to be from the Canton area due to the Cantonese they were speaking. They had two very affectionate daughters, or possibly one daughter who brought along her girlfriend. Giant panda sex was not the only topic of discussion my friend and I had that day.

The ride along the smoky highway was quick, the traffic wasn’t too fierce, and our loaf-of-bread-mobile made it from the hostel to the research centre in about 30 minutes. Once there, we followed our awesome driver/tour guide as he cut straight to the chase. This guy didn’t mess around, he barely spoke a word the whole time he was with us and once we were past the entrance we followed him on some sketchy trails through the bamboo right to the red panda enclosure.

These red pandas were awesome and IMO better than those big black and white cousins. They troop around like soldiers, foraging about for whatever it is they forage, and then they go hang around in trees like little ginger acrobats. I wanted to spend more time with my new found friends, but our tour guide insisted we get a move on to the main event before the stars passed out. I came to the realization that the giant pandas and I had much in common, we’re both active for only a short period of the day, consume a lot of a certain substance (for them bamboo, for me booze) after which we crash hard, wake, and repeat.

After more trekking through the bush we came to a large clearing where the actual breeding center was. It looked like something from the USSR or maybe even the Temple of Doom. Shit, it even had a rope bridge to get in! Despite the large warning signs saying not to rock it, our tour guide made sure everyone of us damn near fell into the gravel pit below to be eaten by what I can only imagine were mutant gravel dwellers.

Once inside the compound, we came across this poor bastard. After seeing him, I was worried that we were too late. All we’d get to see would be a bunch of pathetic black and white bags of fur, passed out in their own manure.

To my relief, we soon happened upon some delightful characters, who were quite entertaining. No I’m not talking about the mother and her baby cub in the following pictures. I’m actually talking about the group of Japanese girls who were all wearing matching panda hats and making the KAAAWAAIIIII!! and kekekeke noises that their species is well known for. If I ever get the chance, I’d also like to visit their breeding centre.

Obviously, at this point there were pandas everywhere. But most of them were just eating and pooping. Kind of like big hairy babies. You see their metabolism doesn’t get much energy out of Bamboo, so they have to spend their waking hours eating as much of it as possible, instead of, well, switching diets to something that could keep them from winning the Darwin award. Furthermore, I can’t help but wonder if these animals would be so special if they didn’t have that unique coat of fur. Like if they were hairless, blobs of bear meat would they still be revered like this? I’d bet they’d already be extinct, or at the very least emasculated, having their dicks all chopped off to be ground up into some erectile dysfunction super tonic used by the locals.

Our Journey ended with a 15 minute video on Panda breeding, that was actually quite informative, despite comparing Panda breeding to putting a satellites into space and having a 1 minute looping soundtrack by Enya. I, like the 3 other people in the theatre watching, was definitely ready to watch some hardcore panda porn. To our disappointment, the big buggers aren’t really into knockin boots. Most of the captive Pandas are bred via artificial insemination. It looks to me as if this animal’s raison d’être is to be extinct. I wonder how they even evolved this far to begin with.

Actually I lied, our journey really ended with another walk through a museumish place full of funny pictures of pandas from the past, and the evil western imperialist invaders hunting them. And then finally another series of really awesome dioramas. I’m going to start searching out Chinese museums just so I can see these, I mean just look at this. A horse being attacked by a saber-tooth tiger? Looks more like the tiger’s trying to get it on! And what’s with all those white things on the horse? Are those fleas? The damn thing isn’t even real! And what exactly does any of this have to do with pandas? These dioramas and the whole day at the centre left me with more questions than answers. I was puzzled and my feelings could be summed up exactly like my friend here:

My food poisoning had subsided by the time I’d boarded that morning, heading from Chungking to Chengdu via the high speed train. Originally when we were at the train station buying the tickets, we thought that the robotic ticket dispenser was a genius idea compared to waiting in a big line for the ticket window. Little did we know that robotic son of a bitch would screw us over by getting us to think we had seats next to each other with sequential numbers, when in reality the two seats were cut between different sections of the car. Not only did I get cut off from my friend but I had the pleasure of sitting in one of those annoying seats with the back to the front of the car, looking across at two other guys who were staring so hard at me I thought they were trying to steal my soul. A few minutes after the train lurched out of the station I felt like He-Man after kicking Beastman’s ass when my friend came to inform me that the seat next to him was vacant. I blew a kiss goodbye to my soulmates and spent the rest of the morning staring into the smoggy, hilly farmland of Sichuan at 200km/h.

We were staying at the Chengdu Mix Hostel, and it was pretty generous because it provided us free pickup from the train station via taxi. Now I may be comparing apples to peacocks here, but if you stay at the Peninsula in Shanghai, they charge 2500rmb to pick you up. Sure they may pick you up in a Rolls-Royce Phantom, but I mean, it costs infinitely more times than Chengdu Mix Hostel’s service. You just can’t argue with infinity…unless you want your formulas to explode. But enough about Iranian scientists.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city by foot, bus and taxi. Now I want to make it clear I’m no fan of temples. I recognize that they have some cultural importance and are handy for the odd human sacrifice, but honestly, you’ve seen one you’ve seen em’ all. I’m especially repelled by the fact that they usually want ridiculous admission charges to see boring poorly re-built designs that looks like all the others. Add in all the tourists, and I avoid the places like a Justin Bieber concert. Chengdu gave me some exceptions to my rules when it provided a couple of decent temple complexes (Aidao Nunnery, Wenshu Temple and Qingyang Temple) and that were cheap at 5 to 10rmb, devoid of tourists, and somewhat unique in design. They even had people praying instead of the typical junk sellers that congregate at these venues.

Lunch was some authentic Sichuan street food at a place that literally was a hole in the wall. I’m not talking smack here, it looked like the kitchen had been fashioned out of a mortar blast from the civil war. The food was real tasty and lived up to it’s spicy reputation. Although I was still skittish thanks to my experience in Chungking, everything seemed cooked properly and nothing caused me severe or debilitating pains. Dinner had us in a rustic but clean and new hotpot restaurant, because I missed out on it in Chungking. We ordered the dual pot system, with a spicy and non-spicy broth and thank god for that. The spicy broth was so incredibly tongue numbing, after trying it I couldn’t taste anything. I mean, it doesn’t hurt, it just removed all sensation from my mouth. So would someone please enlighten me on what the point of it is, if you can’t even taste the food? It’s like going to a concert and setting the volume so high that you go deaf, or buying a porcupine instead of a pet dog, or going to watch a play and the actors pull out real guns and start shooting the audience right in the eyeballs. Jesus. Maybe the whole experience is some Chinese post-modernist experiment on consumption, like “if your mouth doesn’t feel anything, are you really eating?” Anyways the non-spicy bowl was yummy, plus the quality of all the stuff they gave us was seemed to be above Toyota grade, so overall I would go back.

After the hot pot we took a stroll through this hyper-touristified pedestrian area called Jinli Ancient Street. It reminded me of Qianmen Street in Beijing, or any of the other recreated old style pedestrian districts that have been appearing like boils over China’s urban skin. In a delicious twist of irony, the only thing I find these “ancient” streets useful for is the Western modernity that inhabits them. Starbucks, Dairy Queen or any number of restaurants selling burgers and Italian food are always guaranteed. I suppose the people watching can be mildly entertaining, but if you really want to check out the freaks, hang around the train station for a bit.

Fast forward to our last night in Chengdu. Nothing says awesome like finishing a bottle of vodka while wandering around the central business district and hanging out in Tianfu square while the place swarmed with military police. Sampling the nightlife in Chengdu was a little bit like sucking balls. Not that I would know. Or that that’s even a bad thing. It’s just something I wouldn’t want to do again, personally. The nightlife in Chengdu that is. I heard it was supposed to have more bars and clubs than most cities its size so I had my preconceived notions. While there was a few clubs and bars playing music that wasn’t by Lady Gaga, the patrons of said bars were as wank as…papa-razzi. Case one: My friend walking across an empty dance floor to the bar when another patron walks by and coldly crosschecks him. Case two: At another bar some random comes up to me and tells me that he makes more money than I’ll make in ten lifetimes, and then walks off. Also some guys as white as snow dressed as if they just finished filming a rap video…from 15 years ago. We wound up going to some Chinese clubs identical to the ones we saw in Chungking, and everywhere else in China, where we met a few patrons who were quite accommodating to us in sharing some booze. It’s funny how that works out.

The next day I flew back to the beautiful bubble of modern westernization that is Jing’an and lived happily ever after. There’s probably a ton more stuff that I should’ve seen in Sichuan, but the traffic was so bad and the pollution so thick that the hours stuck in a tourist bus to see the blurry whatever it was wouldn’t have been a wise investment of my time. You’re probably wondering what happened during the daytime of second day because I fast forwarded through that part. I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with PANDA ORGY.

Just a couple weeks ago I ran into some time, money and a travel buddy, all of which I don’t normally have. Seizing the opportunity like a walrus presented with a beachball, I grabbed tickets for a Xiamen Airlines direct flight to Chungking.

We arrived well past dark on our first night, so the only thing I noticed while driving into the city was walls of concrete apartments trying their best to do a Kowloon imitation. Being so late, we didn’t have any time to try out the famous Chongqing style hotpot, so we opted for street food. The options consisted of animal parts you would only eat if you were starving to death. The parts of said animals that usually take up most of the animal (i.e. the meat) were unsurprisingly absent.

I opted for some noodles and a few sticks of bbq’d mystery meat. Tasty and a little spicy it was, but my tongue wasn’t about to chop off its leg Saw style to escape. We sampled both local beer varieties and came to the conclusion that 3% alcohol and carbonation does not a beer brew. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say they were both bottled with water straight from the Yangtze River. They certainly tasted like it. No I haven’t actually tasted water taken directly from the Yangtze, but I would extrapolate that if I did, I wouldn’t be writing this right now.

After our quick meal, we went to give the local nightlife a try. After making our way through a few places, we settled on one that looked identical to all the others, had the same identical layout inside, but was playing some western pop music instead of the campy trash that they normally deafen you with. I ordered us two Heinekens for 30 kuai a piece, the only things on the menu that weren’t some form of Chivas. At that point we were trapped. For some reason it took 10 minutes to get the beers (apparently the beers aren’t kept at the bar?!?!) During this time, the music quickly denigrated into the same steamy crap that we heard at the other clubs. I’ll honestly say this wasn’t the first time, and nor the last time for me to be fooled like this. I have a secret fantasy that one days these clubs will grow up and play music that you can dance to, drinks will be served by the glass, and there won’t be 5 guys dressed in rainbow panda suits jumping around on the stage to a techno remix of happy birthday.

We found solace in a lounge the club at set up near the entrance that was separate from the main room, where there was plenty of space, big comfortable couches, and the volume permitted regular conversation. Of course none of the clientele was enjoying this, everyone in there was passed out drunk or crying about relationship woes. My friend and I stumbled across some employment applications for the bar, and began to humorously conjecture applying when we were accosted by some boy who couldn’t have been more than 18, shitfaced and trying to practice his English. I’ve been through this kind of conversation more than once, knowing full well it was nothing. However, if a guy came up and started by telling you how handsome you were, and asking if you had a girlfriend, you’d probably guess otherwise. Giving him as boring and as unresponsive yet inoffensive responses as possible seemed to work in temporarily repelling him, but we knew he’d be back, so we made our break back to the hostel.

The next morning my welcoming present from the city of Chungking had manifested itself, I had food poisoning. Despite this, I still trudged around the city feeling like a sack of rotten potatoes both days I was there. I have my suspicions that it was actually a niacin overdose from the UHT milk I bought that morning, because I never drink that filth, and we all know how good milk is in China, but who knows, I was biased from that point on.

In terms of urban geography, the city is unlike most Chinese cities in that it’s laid out over the mountains. On a map it’s deceiving, because what looks to be a 5 minute stroll, is actually a 400 foot climb up a steep set of stairs followed by a bottle of beer to cool off, then another, then falling back down the stairs and waking up trying to figure out where you are exactly.

The architecture of the city is abnormally tall, mostly dreary concrete apartment blocks that reminded me of Kowloon. Ironically, the infamous Chungking Mansions in Kowloon closely resembles most of the buildings in Chungking. I’m not sure if that’s coincidental, or some genius thought that copying either would be a great idea. If it was the latter, I hope that guy is wanking with Gaudí and Le Corbusier in hell.

In true budget backpacker fashion, we thought about visiting some of the sights, but just wandered around the city parks and the downtown square instead. Observing the casual lives of Chungkingers, we noted that they enjoy playing majiang among other card games, sitting around doing nothing, and harassing us with ill-pitched hellos. We did manage to check out the Three Gorges Museum, whose massive concrete and glass crustacean shaped structure is completely unavoidable in its position adjacent to the square. The museum is worth checking out, mostly because it’s free, but also because some of the exhibits inside are pretty decent even by my goosey standards. You will also come across some hilarious dioramas as are mandatory per the People’s Committee for Museum Excellence’s fifth plenary session.

We stayed at the Yangtze River Hostel. Although on the map it looked like a good location, you really have to get around the city by taxi, there’s just no other way. You could walk, I mean, that’s another way, but the air pollution was pretty awful and you’d succumb to respiratory illness and die. So like I said there is no other way. Speaking of air pollution, the view from the patio of the hostel would have been magnificent, overlooking the river and the opposite bank. The only thing you could see was some rectangles drawn in MS Paint with the blur filter in Photoshop and added a tint of orange. The people working at the hostel were great though, super helpful and kind, definitely better than what you’d find in a motel, hotel holiday inn.

So, the consensus was that Chungking rivaled Riker’s Island for places you should visit. With this in mind, we quickly decided to grab tickets for the Chungking-Chengdu Express and head high speed to the heart of Sichuan, to peruse pandas and to savor some spice.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what these were, all I know is that they’re all asking questions related to the family planning policy of the PRC. Are they some diminutive form of propaganda or what?