Pam's Story - Beyond the Wall
Heather and I both trekked on the Great Wall of China for IRHH but I was lucky enough to stay in China for an extra a week with my friend Andrea who was also raising money for another charity.
After a couple of nights in Beijing , a fabulous city - buzzy, exciting, noisy with building work for the Olympics (I think it has more cranes than Dubai ) we flew to Lijiang, a beautiful ancient city near the Tibetan border. This is a World Heritage site and is stunningly beautiful. It has everything you would imagine - little rivers, wooden bridges, pagodas, houses made of timber and a local ethnic 'tribe' called the Naxis. They are very dignified people who wear their own national dress. My abiding memory will be of the older Naxi people practising their Tai Chi early in the morning in the local park. Lijiang gave us a wonderful opportunity to see ancient Chinese culture at first hand.
We took another two internal flights to start a three night "cruise" on the Yangtse River . Departing from Chongquing in Sichuan province situated in the middle of China , the contrast with Lijiang was very obvious - here was the industrial China we all hear about. Chongquing is a city of around 18 million people, sporting tower blocks - many on the river front - factories and a river that never sleeps. Barges with cargoes of coal chugged up and down night and day. Containers loaded with cars, lumber (and many other unidentifiables) steamed past.
Further east, the river becomes more picturesque with steep gorges and beautiful green
hills farmed in terraces - only 10% of land in China is arable, so every patch of ground is used. As we cruised past, we could see farmers working on the land and loading their tiny boats - I was captured by such a beautiful and fascinating sight. On our last night, we went through about 22 massive concrete locks to arrive the next morning at Yunang, our final destination. The locks are an incredible engineering feat and nothing like those at Marsworth.
I am mindful that because of Iain Rennie, I had a wonderful time, but it was good to have a purpose and a goal. Like Heather, I will continue to look for other opportunities to do more for the charity and widen my experience of the world at the same time - these
challenges present a win-win situation. The challenge was a wonderful experience - hard work but worthwhile.
22nd July 2008
