On to China

By Train

We had an overnight train from Mongolia to Beijing, with a very long stop at the border in the middle of the night. This was for security checks, and to put the train wagons on different wheels. The track gauge is different from the Russian/Mongolian tracks to the Chinese tracks.

Then we got a bit of sleep. My very first view of China was.... corn fields. That was a surprise. There were actually quite a lot of them, not vast fields as in the US, but patches interspersed with other crops.

First view of China: corn fields

Lots of rugged landscape covered the distance to the big city.

Lots of erosion was evident

Here and there a random city punctuated the landscape.

Here and there, where people lived outside of cities, piles of garbage littered the landscape.

Non-city habitations tended to be like this: long rows of low houses.

And then came the city.

Beijing has traditional old parts like this, and mighty skyscrapers around those parts.

A hole-in-wall eatery on our first evening in China. The is beef, onions and peppers.

That is nasty: squid and onions. But some people like it.

Next: The Great Wall