Hanno's blog

It made the news last year that in China, a copy of the austrian historic town Hallstatt was built. Not far from Guangzhou, and as I was there anyway on my way to Hongkong, I thought that's interesting and I'd pay it a visit.

It was a bit tricky to get there. I found only limited information online. The place is near Luoyang, which is part of an area called Boluo, near the town Huizhou. Getting to Huizhou was mostly hassle-free, there are many trains every day from Guangzhou and it takes about two hours. How to come to Luoyang/Boluo is another story. I had two bus numbers I found in some Internet forums, but I couldn't find them at the train station. So either the information was wrong or the buses with that numbers are departing from another place in Huizhou. I also had some GPS coordinates I found online of the copycat Hallstatt, but it turned out later that they were not very accurate.

Checking the map, the place I wanted to visit was only about 10 kilometers away, so I took a taxi. About 15 minutes later and 100 Yuan poorer I arrived in Luoyang. It was already late in the evening, so I decided to take one of the few hotels there. The next day, equipped with the GPS coordinates I went to the austrian village in China. Starting from Luoyang, there's a street with a stadium that's mostly still in construction. I found out that the coordinates I had were about two kilometers off. But after asking some workers, I finally arrived. (correct coordinates for the entrance are lat 23.18112, lon 114.32656, I'll also add something to Openstreetmap)

What is interesting to know is that this place isn't primarily a tourist destination. It's a housing development, people are supposed to live here. However, I think nobody lives here yet, because except for the town's center, everything is still in construction. There are a number of similar projects in China. Tianducheng in eastern China, which rebuilts parts of Paris, has gotten quite a lot of media attention lately as an example for the Chinese housing bubble. Almost nobody lives there and it's mostly a ghost town. As the chinese Hallstatt isn't yet ready to house anyone, the future will tell if it'll fall to the same fate.

There were a number of things that made this place weird. The most obvious thing: You usually don't see tropical plants in an austrian town. I have no idea why they had a (fake/nonworking) red, british-style phone booth. Maybe for a chinese Britain isn't that far from Austria after all. Although this place isn't primarily meant as a tourist destination, it certainly attracts a lot of them. It was quite crowded. I haven't seen anyone who looked like being from Austria though.

After staying here for a while and having a coffee, I went back to Luoyang. There is a bus station in front of the entrance (line 6, but I don't know where it's heading), but no bus came for a while, so I walked back. Grabbing my luggage from my Hotel, I wanted to take a taxi again, but luckily, when I arrived at the main street a bus with Huizhou written on it just stopped in front of me (to be precies, it had 惠州 written on it, but I manage to recognize chinese characters well enough to remember the towns where I've been lately). So my way back was much cheaper and the bus - without a line number - brought me directly to the train station where I headed back to Guangzhou.

I'd like to finish with a quick comment. When reading western news commenting about this case and others, they're often quick in condemning this kind of "copycat" culture. I think one needs to be careful with that. The importance of the "original" is something that is deeply rooted in cultural norms and traditions. Sticking to the original is something that's probably more important in European cultures than in China. But I don't think either of them is right or wrong, it's just a different approach to culture. After all, it doesn't hurt anybody if someone is rebuilding Austrian villages in China. Also, there is almost certainly no legal issue at stake here. While it may be debatable if a town's layout can be covered by copyright, Hallstatt is a historic city. So if there is any copyright on it, it's already expired.

Pictures from Luoyang
Pictures from Chinese Hallstatt

Some Links:
Blog entry about Hallstatt / China on thechinachronicle.com
Blog entry about Hallstatt / China on liongrass.hk

The well-known way of getting from Europe to China overland is the transsiberian railway. However, I noted that the route through Kazakhstan I took is the quickest way to get to China by train and bus. I thought I'd write that up:

• Take train EC 43 from Berlin Hauptbahnhof (09:37 on Monday, Berlin time) to Warsaw Wschodnia, change to train D 10SZ (15:28). If you - like me - feel that the time to switch trains is a bit risky in case of delaqys, you can take the earlier Beriln-Warsaw-train EC 41 (06:37 until 12:08). There's also a direct Berlin-Moscow-train D 50472 (Berlin 04:28, Moskwa Belorusskaja 10:33), but it's often sold out early.
• Spend some time in Moscow and then take the Metro Line 5 (Circular Line) to Komsol'skaya (Metro of Kazasky railway station)
• Take train 090У from Moscow Kazansky (18:48 on Tuesday, Moscow time) to Petropavl/Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan (09:46 on Thursday, Astana/Almaty time). Note that this only works every second Tuesday - you may choose other days where this train goes, but then other options may not work.
• Take train 152T from Petropavl (13:48 on Thursday, Astana/Almaty time) to Almaty (22:28 on Friday, Astana/Almaty time).
• Take bus number 100 to Sayran bus station and hope that they'll sell you a ticket late in the evening for the bus next morning. Find a place to sleep (but not very long).
• Take bus from Astana Sayran bus station (07:00 on Friday, Astana/Almaty time) to Yining (approx. 21:00 on Friday, Beijing time). You're in China.

With the transsiberian, you can leave Berlin on Monday (same options as above until Moscow) and take the D4ZJ direct train from Moscow to Beijing. You will enter China in Erlian on the next Monday at 00:47. So this makes almost 7 days vs. about 4 and a half days.

I wouldn't recommend anyone doing that. Better spend some time on the way and see some places in Russia or Kazakhstan. Also it should be noted that one obvious reason for being faster is that you'll enter China at a place much further in the west. And getting to the main part of china (the western part is much less inhabited than the eastern part and all big cities are in the east) can be somewhat troublesome. Still, I thought it might be of interest to document the fastest overland way from Europe to China.

I always assumed the starting point Berlin, obviously because I live there, adapting that to other starting places should be trivial. For example you can usually easily (and for a comparatively cheap price) reach Berlin by Eurolines bus in a day from other major european cities like Paris or London.

After another train ride, I arrived at Xi'an. This was releaving for me, because as I already wrote, I originally wanted to go directly from Urumqi to Xi'an, which wasn't possible. I finally passed that part now. The longer journey gave me the experience of now knowing various transport modes and train classes common in China.

Between Dunhuang and Lanzhou, I took what is called the "hard seat" class for a 14 hour ride (not overnight). I can quote Wikivoyage on that:
"Traveling in a seat (hard or soft-class) means you will share the car space with lots of locals. You will most likely encounter smokers, loud noise, and constant activity in the aisle while you try to sleep. *Do not* travel hard class if you are uncomfortable with these settings."

While I certainly was an interesting experience, it is not exactly one I'd like to repeat. It was challenging and I was quite happy when I finally arrived.

With my arrival in Xi'an, finally I noticed that I approach the warmer zones of China. While not really "summer-warm", I apprechiated not having to wear winter clothes all the time. Appart from that, Xi'an was quite different from the other cities I've visited before. It is in many small ways much more like a western city (and, to be not mistaken, in many ways this is a good thing - better hygiene, less dangerous traffic, no smoking in non-smoking zones). And regarding my last blog post, yes, coffee is usually available, although often expensive.

Xi'an is also home of one of Chinas most popular tourist attractions, the so-called terracotta warriors and - not that well known - the Chinese pyramids. I didn't know that there are pyramids in China, so found that worth seeing. Unlike pyramids in other places of the world, the chinese pyramids are not buildings, they are artificial hills. The biggest one, near the terracotta warriors, is the mausoleum of Chinas first emperor Qin Shi Huang.

My initial plan was to visit the pyramid and then decide if I still had time and motivation to see the terracotta warriors. I took the bus to the terracotta warriors and walked the roughly two kilometers to the pyramid. Turned out my planning was not really how one was supposed to do things. Going to the pyramid is only possible with an entrance ticket for the terracotta warrior museum - and you cannot buy it at the entrance of the pyramid area. There's a free shuttle service which I then took to get the ticket and drive back.

The pyramid doesn't look that spectacular and there's hardly a spot where you can actually see it's a pyramid. It once was much bigger, but during the centuries, the earth got compressed and it became smaller. I walked around a lot, the area around is a nice park.

As it is common amongst tourist destinations probably everywhere in the world, there is a huge amount of people who want to sell you things - from terracotta warrior replica in all sizes (including ones in original size and made mostly out of the same materials than the original ones) to the various tour guides. I refused all these offers and preferred to find my own way. One more thing notable: This isn't mainly a tourist spot for foreign tourist. The vast majority were domestic tourists.

As for accomodation, I stayed in the so-called "capsule hostel" in Xi'an. I read about these capsule hotels before (they're especially common in Japan), so I was curious. It is kind of a compromise between a dorm bed and a real hotel room. You get a small private capsule made out of plastic that contains your bed. They even have a television in every capsule (I fail to understand why no matter where in the world you are, a television in every hotel room seems to be standard). It was quite okay, although I would have one suggestion for an improvement: There capsule can not be locked, so you have to put your valuable private stuff into a separate locker every time you leave.

While writing this, I'm in the highspeed train from Xi'an to Guangzhou (taking only 8 hours). I've been to Guangzhou before, and I'm not going there not mainly because I want to see something there. I have a double-entry 2 x 30 days visa and from Guangzhou, I intend to make a quick hop to Hong Kong. Although part of China, in visa issues Hong Kong is like going to another country. So by going to Hong Kong, I have another 30 days to spend in China. Arriving in Guangzhou, I can also finally leave any traces of the northern hemisphere winter behind myself. It has comfortable temperatures all year round.

Pictures from Xian
Pictures from Guangzhou

I like drinking coffee and I usually drink quite a lot of it. And I'm pretty used to the fact that usually, you can get coffee just about everywhere. Well, at least so I thought.

When travelling, I usually have my own coffee making equipment, which consists of a couple of coffee filters, a collapsable filter holder, some coffee powder and some coffee creamer powder (which doesn't make a very delicious coffee and I prefer real milk or soy milk if possible, but it's a reasonable compromise when travelling).

I was running out of coffee powder shortly after I entered China. I really hadn't expected that it would be a problem. After all, the biggest international coffee chains, Starbucks and Costa Coffee, are flooding eastern and southern China with their restaurants and Chinese chains and independent coffee houses are trying to keep up with that. Well, the problem is that I entered China in the far northwest. And the Chinese love for coffee hasn't made it there yet.

I could hardly believe this, but between Yining and Dunhuang, I didn't find any coffee. None at all. Not in the form of coffee powder and not in brewed form. Yeah, supermarkets have a large collection of soluble instant coffee, most of it Nescafe and also some Chinese brands. But I refuse to call that stuff coffee. Most of it contains more sugar than anything else. When you get coffee in restaurants at all, you can bet it's also instant coffee. I checked where the next Starbucks is: In Xi'an, thousands of kilometers away. I checked for the next Costa Coffee: Also in Xi'an. (I'm on my way to Xi'an now - no, not just because of the coffee, it was my plan anyway.)

After all, I bought some non-sugared instant coffee. No, I wasn't happy with it, but it seemed it was the best I could get.

Lesson learned: There's just no coffee in northwest China.