Weekend in Xiamen part 4

The big sights in Xiamen are Gulangyu, Nanputuo Temple, Xiamen University, Zhongshan Park and Zhongshan Road.

We went to Gulangyu on our first trip to Xiamen and we absolutely hated it. There was nothing wrong with the island itself. It might even be pleasant on its own. The problem was that you can't really see it with millions of people milling about. Literally millions of people. It reminded me of Disneyland on opening day, only the people on Gulangyu were much angrier.

A quick ferry ride gets visitors from Xiamen Island to Gulangyu, but they cram the ferry as full as they possibly can. Even fuller than that, really. If you don't want to stand in a giant ashtray and smell what everyone else just ate, don't take the ferry. Gulangyu is an island with no connecting bridges, so there is no other way to get there. It is technically illegal to smoke on the ferry, but smoking laws are merely suggestions in China. Since pretty much everyone smokes, those suggestions are always ignored.

Once you are pushed off the ferry by the mob, it is still unbelievably crowded. Chinese people naturally push their way everywhere and this island is wall to wall people pushing to get to whatever they want to see. There is an observation deck on the highest hill, but getting there was an absolute nightmare. I have seen lions on the Discovery Channel that were more polite to the zebras they killed than the way most of the people on Gulangyu acted in their mad lust to be the first at everything.

We also went to Nanputuo Temple on our first trip. That was another place that is probably nice without millions of people all pushing each other. We did not even bother attempting the top of that hill.

Our first trip to Xiamen was in the middle of June and this one was at the end of May, so maybe we did not pick the best times to go. It might be less crowded in January. Maybe some of these places are better when there are only hundreds of thousands of people.

We never went to Xiamen University, on either trip. We never saw the point. There is supposed to be a nice lake at the university, but our hotel was next to a lake, so we never bothered.

Zhongshan Road is a major tourist shopping street. We went there on our first trip with mixed results. This was where we saw the world's filthiest Walmart and a woman urinating at the front door. There is nothing else on Zhongshan Road besides tourist shopping. Since we already knew that, we did not go back.

What we never saw on our first trip was Zhongshan Park, so we went there this time.