Gv and Yuki's sprint through East China
march 2002

Our first trip to China and a pleasant one at that! I have wanted to go to China for such a long time that everything was quite surreal once I finally got there. For the most part we traveled back packer style and tried to cram as much into our two week vacation as we could. In many cases we were only able to spend two days in places that we would love to have spent at least two weeks. The highlights for me were probably Yangshuo and Shaolin, though I really enjoyed every one of the places that we went to.

I was really surprised at how modern China was. In many cases, I felt that Japan was much more like my previous vision of China (circa Tang Dynasty), and that China was much more like the United States than I would have ever imagined. The transportation infrastructure was very extensive and convenient, but it was pretty difficult to get around, as a local would, due to the language barrier (not many people spoke English... unless they were trying to sell us something). We were able to make our way, however, thanks to Yuki and her notepad that was eventually filled with Kanji (Chinese Character) conversations.