 |
|
Discount hotels travel guide for worldwide travel
Travel guide
The first thing that strikes visitors to China is
the extraordinary density of its population. In central and eastern China, villages, towns and cities seem to sprawl endlessly into one
another along the grey arteries of busy expressways. These are the Han Chinese heartlands, a world of chopsticks,
tea, slippers, massed bicycles, shadow-boxing, exotic pop music, teeming crowds, chaotic train stations, smoky
temples, red flags and the smells of soot and frying tofu. Move west or north away from the major cities, however,
and the population thins out as it begins to vary: indeed, large areas of the People's Republic are inhabited
not by the "Chinese", but by more than two hundred distinct ethnic minorities, ranging from animist hill tribes
to urban Muslims. Here the landscape begins to dominate: green paddy fields and misty hilltops in the southwest,
the scorched, epic vistas of the old Silk Road in the northwest, and the magisterial mountains of
Tibet.
While travel around the country itself is seldom problematic, it would be wrong to pretend that it is an entirely easy matter to penetrate modern China. The tourist highlights - the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army and Yangzi gorges - are relatively few considering the size of the country. In particular, recent modernization have, quite deliberately, destroyed much of the historic architecture which would have lent Chinese cities the character enjoyed by those in Europe or the Middle East. On top of this are the frustrations of travelling in a land where few people speak English or any other Western languages, the writing system is alien and foreigners are regularly viewed as exotic objects of intense curiosity or as fodder for overcharging - though overall you'll find that the Chinese, despite a reputation for curtness, are generally hospitable and friendly.
Population: 1,319,132,500
|
Travel Tips
|
||||||||||||