Going to China I understood that it would be a complete culture shock from UK lifestyle, especially since I had never been to Asia before! From pictures and videos I had seen of China before my trip, most show how packed every tourist attraction is, pictures of the Great Wall, Terracotta Army and many more are absolutely ramped with tourists came to mind.
In part, Xiamen did live up to this expectation, when visiting Gulangyu Island and in particular when shopping in the city centre, there were floods of tourists and even though they weren’t as busy as the likes of Beijing you could tell these were the main tourist attractions. But on the of other hand I was really impressed as to how tranquil, peaceful and untouched some areas were, even though they were just a stones throw away from these busy attractions. One evening hike really springs to mind when thinking about this. One evening we decided after dinner we just had a little wonder around the campus, which lead us through a very impressive tunnel, about a kilometre long and covered in paintings, some with quite western political messages, for such a communist country. On return we decided to follow a footpath over the mountain instead, it was about a 45 minute walk to the top where we had the most amazing views of the sunset and again another 45 down. Throughout this time we didn’t see one person, didn’t see one iPhone and it felt like we could be in anywhere in the world. This evening and a number of other days I felt like this and it’s fair to say parts of Xiamen are very untouched as well as some of the more touched areas.
Chris Lovett