There are a bunch of topics I haven't had the chance to write about. I have one post in mind discussing our guides and how for better or worst they have shaped our experience. I have another post prepared in my head about my new found obsession with contemporary traditional Chinese landscape painting. I could wax lyrical about the food in China or give another essay on Urbanism. I haven't described the song and dance show in Xi'an or the Jade sellers clinging to the side of our boat in Guilin or complain at length about the state of the toilets. What I have tried to do, like a Chinese banquet, is provide tastes of many different experiences. I've attempted to avoid writing a simple log of our activities but to connect different experiences together around themes, ideas and contrasts.
Yesterday I asked everyone the inevitable question: “What was the best bit?”. I think we could answer honestly and say that it is impossible to say that any one day was measurably better than any other. Aside from our Jinan experience, which seems separated from the holiday part of our trip, each place has provided a different surprise, insight or just a great view. I would happily (and intend to) visit all the places we visited again. Notably, I would put Shanghai and Guilin on the top of my list whilst Jinan and Bejing are likely to become regular haunts over the next few years and, who knows, I may be working in Hong Kong before long.
We've overused the cliché “trip of a lifetime” but for Meng and me, I hope it's the first of many. However, for me, what makes this trip special is not the sales brochure pictures of pagodas, gardens, rice fields and terraces but that China is no longer a foreign country to me. Next time we come back I will be returning to my second home.
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