Songpan - Qingdao: distances, duck pancakes and drinking

After 2 months to get through the single Chinese province of Yunnan in the south west and spending a leisurely four weeks in the province of Sichuan, we seem to have now got a rocket up our arses and in the space of two weeks have passed through four provinces at high speed ending up right at the other side of the country.

After a warming bowl of yak dumplings in Songpan, where I wrote my last entry, we headed to Langmusi - another Tibetan monastery town straddling the provinces of Sichuan and Gansu. The scenery on the bus journey was breathtaking - vast grassy plains ringed by mountains with a huge blue sky stretching forever above. In Langmusi we exerted ourselves and hiked up some local cliffs. This was no mean feat as at 3600m the altitude made me feel around seventy and at one point I was nearly sick but when we reached the top the 360 degree views of the surrounding mountain ranges more than made up for it. After being sunburnt on our hike the next day brought snow so, after checking out the characters in town, we headed to the next stop - Xiahe.

Labrang, in Xiahe, is one of the six most important monasteries in Tibetan buddhism, home to the most important Lama after the Dalai and Panchen Lamas and is full of pilgrims prostrating themselves as they spend hours circuiting the prayer wheels that surround the monastery. Taking all this into consideration I took a guided tour but was quite disappointed. To me the monastery looked pretty similar to the several others we have already seen on our jaunt into eastern Tibet (full of yak-butter statues, scary buddhas and gaudily coloured guardians) and our guide was the most apathetic monk ever, so I didn't really get more of an insight into things. I did, however, find a marvellous yak-butter statue of a were-cow which I'm sure my sister will appreciate.

After all that we left Tibet (probably for the last time on this trip as I'm a bit Tibet-ed out now) to catch an overnight train to Xi'an. Getting back to Han China and its fantastic food was great. Getting back to trains after two and a half months of knee-crushing, ear-splitting bus travel was even better. Ah! To be horizontal. We slept like babies.

Our next stop was the lovely walled city of Xi'an. Our YHA was pure luxury and we were delighted to sniff out a duck restaurant serving Peking duck pancakes on the street at around 15p a pop. Apart from eating we managed to fit in some culture too with a visit to the fantastic terracotta warriors. Pah to all those people we've met who said they were disappointing. Where were you looking? My favourites were the horses, of course, and the poor buggers who hadn't yet been restored.

We also hired bikes and cycled on the top of the wall, which was pretty nice.

From Xi'an we caught another overnight train to Qufu - home to Confucius (but he was out when we got there). I loved this place. It was really small but I think that the small places are the best. It's easier to sniff out the heart of a small town and Qufu had more heart than most in its amazing food market with stalls of all sorts stuffed into the streets. We wandered from one to another trying each one's specialities to make amazing meals for about 50p (although we avoided the dog-meat stalls with their smiling canine skulls). It was in said market that we were befriended by Xu from Harbin who invited us to join him and his friends at their table where they gambei-ed us lots with beer ("gambei" means "cheers" but literally means "drain your glass" so each time it's said everyone has to down their drink) and we all ended up getting very drunk and playing pool until the early hours.

In contrast to the joys of the market (which even provided us with 1am jaozi-dumplings to ward off our gambei-induced hangovers) there was also a lot of history in Qufu. We visited the Confucius Temple, which was nice, but I think Pete and I are more interested in real life than ancient Chinese temples to be honest so we didn't spend long there!

We took another train from Qufu to Qingdao (the east coast port which is home to the famous Tsingtao beer) and we were lucky enough to have a compartment to ourselves, which was luxury. We also treated ourselves to our staple meal in China - qingjiao rousi, or pork and green chilli to you and me - in the buffet car.

Qingdao was to be our last port of call in China before Japan and the two days we spent there were taken up with sorting rail passes and ferry tickets so there is not much to say about it right now. We will be returning there after Japan though so I expect I'll get to try the beer there if nothing else!

I must end this entry with a mention of the amazing food we've been scoffing recently just so I don't ever forget: jaozi (ravioli dumplings filled with pork meat steamed and served with a chilli and vinegar dip; stewed pork and green peppers served in a warm naan-like bun; Peking duck pancakes; muslim pancake-bread filled with pork and spring onions; fresh thin salty bread torn into strips and served with chopped spring onion; deep-fried sesame pork with crispy deep-fried red chillies; piles of steamed wilted Chinese greens served cold with a sesame dressing; cold fresh noodles served with a soy and sesame dressing; discs of fried aubergine stuffed with sausage meat. Mmmmm. China.