"Hello-Nihao!" - Impressions of China

In a previous post I have already marvelled at the kindness of the Chinese people. "Hello-Nihao!" is the sweet expression we were very often greeted with in the countryside. Funnily, this and other small details are what comes to my mind everytime I think about China (and that happens quite often), now that we've moved on to new horizons.

Xi'an Terracotta Army was as impressive as expected, the landscapes of Yangshuo were beyond my dreams and Shanghai fullfilled our appetite for that "New China" buzz. All of these were pretty well described in our loyal Lonely Planet (and in any guide about China I'm sure), the following is a random collection of things that were not:

• the permanent concert of cicadas right in the middle of Beijing
• the Chinese survival kit: a pretty umbrella (as efficient against the sun as against the rain), a thermos bottle of green tea, and a pack of cigarette (the country has 350 million smokers — that's 36% of the population and 1 in 3 of the world's smokers, and with more than one million people a year dying in China from tobacco-related diseases, tobacco is the biggest killer)
• old ladies collecting used plastic bottles to be sold for recycling. If you want to make someone happy in China you have a good chance to do so by handing your used bottle to one of those charming ladies so they don't have to pick it up from the bin
• cycling in the countryside on tiny tracks, the smell of rice in the fields, kids hiding behind giant lotus leaves freshly picked up from a nearby pond
• multicolor dragonflies
• the constant desctruction/reconstruction cycle: in Datong within a 500 meters distance you go from collapsing hutongs (traditional old courtyards neighbourhood) to gigantic apartments building sites to cater for the staggering urban population growth. To be fair they seem to now have realized the touristic potential of the hutongs and are rebuilding replicas just across the street from the old ones...
• Starbucks' green tea frappucino, yum! (I did say it was a random collection!)
• People's love of colours (in clothing, nail art, dog's hairdo, food...) which is refreshing when coming from Europe

But most of all, China and its people display a contagious energy which makes it an ever-changing place and I'm happy i got to see it before it sheds the last layer of its past in the run to becoming the world's largest economy, which is set to happen by 2020... Watch that space.