Backpacking China
at 19 Years Old
“I feel like nobody goes to China.”
Me, planning my uni holidays trip in 2016.
It was 2016, I was 19 years old and on uni holidays. Whenever I could, I would hop in my car or on a plane and explore. In Australia, winter break is four weeks long. Four weeks of travel for me! I had Asia on my mind and a backpack in my wardrobe, ready to set off. The previous uni break I had met a guy named Joe in a hostel in New Zealand. He was a true inspiration to the way I would continue to live my life. Little 18-year-old Tash knew she wanted to travel the world, but hadn’t realised there were people living this lifestyle full time, not just on holidays. Joe taught me I could, too.
I started to research India, intrigued by the culture and ready for a challenge. I soon realised that July was smack bang in the middle of monsoon season. India would wait. Looking at the map, my eyes wandered over to China… a country I had never considered to see, and I hadn’t heard of anyone I knew visiting before. Apart from The Great Wall of China, what on earth was there to do there? Excited to travel alone, but not entirely confident I could do it, I contacted Joe and invited him to join me. He’d travelled a good chunk of the world already, but China hadn’t been on his radar yet either. So, we agreed to check it out!
I organized my entry visa in Brisbane, but Joe was traveling (as per) so had to do it in Hong Kong. Traveling on a budget and being in Hong Kong aren’t two things you’d usually find in the same sentence… needless to say, we stuck around to get his visa and jumped on a train to Shenzhen ASAP. Hong Kong is awesome! But you need to have some disposable funds.
In mainland China, we quickly realised that English wouldn’t get us far. At the time, I only knew ‘ni hao’ and ‘xie xie’, but we were even butchering the pronunciation of that. We were also traveling without sim cards, relying on hostel WIFI to pre-load our maps for the day. What a challenge we had ahead of us!
China was fascinating from the get go. The trains were incredibly efficient, everything was cheap, and what stuck out most to me – nobody bothered us! Nobody acted any different to how they usually would. Nobody pestered us because we were tourists. Nobody charged us anymore than they did the locals. We were just two more people amongst the masses living their lives in China.
China was so unlike what I had experienced in other parts of Asia, and it was refreshing.
We properly started the trip in Guilin. I still remember the simple yet delicious soup noodles we had on the road for something like 6rmb (AUD$1). The hostel had a dumpling cooking class on the day we arrived and we got to eat our body weight in that. Fascinatingly, wifi’s were setup with automatic VPNs, so we weren’t feeling the complete detachment from Western social media.
Next up, Yangshuo. We couldn’t believe our eyes. This was China?! Hills, rivers, hiking… nature dominated the city – not the other way around. This wasn’t the China that we were shown in Australia. I was so pleased with this city that seemed like a hidden gem.
With some new pals we met in our hostel, we explored Yangshuo on ebikes. We saw Moon Hill, farmlands amongst the rolling mountains, and we finished our time there perched on the TV tower watching the sunset over the city. Check out my Guilin page for more details on these spots.
The mopeds were great fun, until we ran out of battery in the middle of a village… The guy who rented us the bikes definitely mentioned not to go too far, and we definitely did not take him seriously enough. Remember that none of us spoke a word of Chinese, and there was no chance that the people in this village spoke a word of English. With hand gestures we managed to explain to the lovely but confused onlookers what had happened. They called the now angry moped shop owner and we charged our bikes there until we had enough battery to roll back to town.
Whilst in this region, Joe and I decided to take a bus to the Longji Rice Terraces. The drive was incredible, with vertical cliffs towering over us and cascading below the road our bus followed. We arrived at rice terraces so big that multiple villages were tucked into the hills. This place was wet. It was pouring with rain the entire 3-4 hours we were hiking.
We had one goal in mind: get to the top of the terraces.
Arriving in the evening, amongst dense mist, we found a hotel that had space for us. We warmed up with tea in our hands sat at the windowsill watching the low, misty clouds passing by. I had never expected to experience such serenity in a country that I only ever knew for its infrastructure, smog, and crowded population. We spent the next day hiking amongst the terraces and clouds for hours.
After Longji, we headed to Yunnan. The journey was a long one, including a stopover in a place called Guiyang. There we had an interesting conversation with a local. Yes, in English! Remember I noted how little people acknowledged us as tourists, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t getting stared at. We were foreigners in a place that didn’t see that many tourists, and we both had blue eyes (another rarity in China).
A young guy approached us and asked us what on earth we were doing in Guiyang! Taken aback at the use of English, but pleased to be able to speak to a local, we told him we were backpacking. This really intrigued him. It seemed that traveling wasn’t as easy of a task for Chinese people. It was this conversation that really got me thinking about how privileged I was to hold the passport that I did.
We soon learnt that the guy had learnt English from playing video games! How cool is that. Not only did he pick up the language, but the video games inspired him to see places like Amsterdam and Paris. We told him about these places that we had visited before, and he told us a bit more about Guiyang.
He also shared that we were the first foreigners he had ever met there, as a local to the area. Wow!
Here’s where the locals in China not bothering with you isn’t so great…
We were buying tickets for buses and trains going off how we thought we should be pronouncing the destination names. Now that I know how to speak Chinese, I’m laughing on reflection. So we would rock up to a train station, totally unaware of how quickly trains sell out in China ALL year round, and taking the cheapest tickets that were left.
This leg of the journey? Guiyang to Kunming – 13 hour slow train – on a hard seat. We arrived so tired we could hardly speak. For 13 hours we sat on a seat in a carriage that didn’t turn off its lights. My body was so stiff and achy. We jumped into a taxi with the Chinese address of our hostel at the ready and hardly said a word to each other or the driver.
Arriving at 7am, we had hours to kill before we could check into our dorm. Big ups to the hostel, they let us sleep on some couches in the corner of the common area. We passed out immediately. Once we slept off that horrid train ride, we got to see a little bit of Kunming. The city was pretty and had some fun markets to explore. Being nature lovers however, we quickly made our way to Lijiang.
To this day, Lijiang is one of my favourite places I’ve ever visited. The city was built on a hill and surrounded by enormous mountains. The old town held all the traditional Chinese qualities of the area. There was delicious street food and stunning drawings on all the walls. I later learnt that these drawings were actually Naxi script (which I became fascinated with and got tattooed on me).
Our hostel owner told us about surrounding hikes over tea and local liquor. He had the clear liquid in what looked to be a petrol barrel – the way his neighbour shared his home brew. But apart from its questionable storage, it was great! This was my first introduction to baijiu, and my favourite baijiu to date. What wasn’t great, was that we were leaving bright and early to start our 8-hour hike along Tiger Leaping Gorge the next morning.
If you’ve ever met me in person – I’ve probably talked about Tiger Leaping Gorge.
I’ve done this hike again and it’s still one of my favourites to date. A bus drove us out of town and to a dirt track that led into the mountain and started our ascent. There were about eight of us on the trail that day, some from Australia, others from Poland and the UK. We bonded over the usual stuff, but what really connected us was the agreed (pleasant) shock of China.
Arriving to the guesthouse at the top, we were exhausted but happy as Larry. The prices continued to be pleasantly low, even at the top of a mountain. The room for two had a balcony overlooking the enormous gorge and towering mountains – and it only cost an absurd 40rmb (AUD$8). Returning in 2021, the prices were relatively the same!
After getting back to town, we set off for Shangri-La. The bus arrived in a city built on the Tibetan plateau. The people were dressed in what looked like Tibetan attire. All you could see on the horizon were mountains.
There’s a reason it’s called Shangri-La (earthly paradise).
We rented some ebikes and drove off into the mountains, the wind much crisper at that altitude. Nearing the end of our journey, we were keen to chill and take things slow. We strolled through the Songzanlin Monastery – the biggest Tibetan monastery in Yunnan. Later we found the enormous prayer wheel in town. Shangri-La’s prayer wheel is the biggest in the world. There must have been 20-30 people surrounding it spinning it clockwise! Apart from the incredible architecture, there was something that stood out to us more than anywhere else. HOTPOT! This was some of the best hotpot I’d ever eaten. We had that meal two or three times that week.
Now remember how I said we couldn’t speak a word of Chinese…
Returning back to Lijiang, I was prepared to say goodbye to Joe and fly to Beijing for my final few days before going home. He was finishing the trip in another city. I had bought a flight from Lüliang (airport code LVG) NOT Lijiang (LNG). At the airport, I got nothing more than ‘not this flight’ from the staff members…
Without a sim card, I had no way of connecting to airport WIFI to look for alternative flights. Uh oh. Not wanting to pay a fortune at the counter, I decided I’d head back into town and figure it out there. Getting back to town was then followed with a bus to Kunming and finally a flight to Beijing – two days too late. I arrived in Beijing exhausted, emotionally and physically. Tragically, my phone was on 1% when I stepped off the plane. I kept it on flight mode with a screenshot of the hostel address ready. I also had previously researched what bus to take downtown.
My first impressions of Beijing weren’t too grand. It was very dull with replicated buildings one after the other along the highway. As we drove along, I listened for the stop I needed but became increasingly worried about my difficulty to catch the pronunciation that the bus driver was yelling out.
I missed my stop.
Stepping out onto this busy, big city street, I was lost. What’s more, my phone had died – so a taxi wasn’t an option anymore. I popped into a family restaurant, a hole in the wall, and ordered what looked on the picture to be vegetable fried rice. It was! Success. And my phone was charging! Another success.
Thinking that everything was looking up, I stepped onto the road and flagged down a taxi driver. He declined the journey. As did the next. And the next. In these moments as a traveller, you really see how emotionally it can affect you when you can’t communicate with another human being. I had no idea why they weren’t taking me, I was exhausted and I became increasingly stressed. Tears may have started to run… (I now realise the distance was too short for it to be worthwhile for them.)
But suddenly, this big, tall guy approaches me and speaks ENGLISH! This lovely guy will forever live in my good memory box. He identified the address of the hostel and said he’d walk me there. Along the way, we stopped at the hospital. I was incredibly confused. “I just need to check on my mum,” he said. Oh god! I’ve interrupted this guy’s visit to see his sick mum – I felt terrible.
But it truly didn’t seem like he minded and he told me to wait 10 minutes for him to return. I wasn’t convinced he would, but I stayed hopeful and stayed put at hospital reception – wearing my huge backpack – looking confused and stressed. What a comedy.
He did return! The generosity continued with him taking my backpack from my back as he shook his head and mumbled that it was too big for me. I didn’t object too hard… Just around the corner was the hostel, and we were there in 5 minutes. I thanked this kind man and he went on his way. After arriving in this dull city, crying and stressed, he truly was an angel.
Seeing as my time was wasted in Yunnan, I had the evening to explore Beijing before my morning flight. I visited a busy food market in a park and even managed to buy a nice top in a vintage shop. Overall, my opinion about the city hadn’t changed much and I wasn’t too eager to return even years later when I moved to China (read more). Though one day I knew I’d need to return to see The Great Wall which I had sadly missed!
