Fenghuang

We’d been in China around a week and hadn’t yet been back on a train, coincidently not had a cold or felt ill yet either! The night train from Kunming to Huai Hua was a 17 hour affair with the obligatory giggles and stares from the other passengers at the funny foreigners – they seem to be fascinated by what you eat and are shocked if it happens to be the same as them! In our cabin we probably had the only English speaking Chinese person on the train and it wasn’t long before he braved to come and talk to us. He was an Oxford educated student who had returned to China having studied in England for 6 years, he loved football and misses an English breakfast, the football and a kebab after a few beers…who said Oxford students were all posh kids! He walked us through the rather grim city of Huai Hua and helped us get a bus to Fenghuang which was quite handy as we’d have had no idea where we were going otherwise. The weather was rubbish too, when we left Kunming it was sunny and warm, now we are more central and a little further north it is cold and wet – something I was repeatedly warned of (in a charades kind of way on the train!) because I had shorts and t-shirt on, think they all thought I was slightly weird.
Afters 4 hours or so on the bus we got dropped off in a muddy bus station of a relatively small and unattractive town… or so we thought! Walked a bit further and we discovered a whole other world. The main part of the old town in Fenghuang is what we had come to see and it is beautiful, its an oldie worldie place with cobbled streets, rickety old stilt houses, traditional shops, crumbling gate towers and stepping stones across the river that divides the town in two. With this charm though comes the mega-phone wielding and matching cap wearing Chinese tour groups. But step away from the main street and move into some of the little alleyways with pharamacies and doctors selling strange medicines, next to the butchers selling flattened pig faces…yep, you heard right, apparently a local speciality – what kind of speciality is that?!? 2D pig faces hang from shop windows on display, all very weird but the one we saw had a cigarette hanging from its mouth which was neither big nor clever of who ever did it – quite funny though!
The river bank makes for great exploring, crossing sides over one of the many bridges, seeing local fisherman trying to catch their supper, eating at the many little street stalls, avoiding the women trying to get you to dress up in a traditional outfit to have your picture taken or watching the hundreds of people cleaning their smalls (or other peoples, we had given our washing to the hostel and kept expecting to see some poor women cleaning my pants on the steps!) in public! The place comes even more alive in the evening, street restaurants appear out of nowhere taking over the road and selling all sorts of weird and wonderful food. Small cafes and bars on the river bank blast out bad music and try to lure you in with drink offers as you walk past. Chinese tourists prove that their love for karaoke hasn’t died as they hit off notes and shriek along to Chinese pop songs. Its a stunning little town steeped in history and charm with a bit of the modern fun China thrown in but without skyscrapers and the hugeness of everywhere else.