Being in China for the first time I was quite surprised by how much the urban cities reminded me of Taiwan, with their infrastructure, conjested traffic and the amount of air pollution. So it was (literally) a breath of fresh air as we went to the suburbs, towns and their surrounding naturescapes. Coming from tiny Singapore it was certainly an experience to be among the huge plains, sprawling mountains, winding gorges and nature reserves.
Funnily some of the local tourist did not share the same feelings as me, being from other provinces that offer more or less the same set of sceneries.
Conveying the amazing sceneries that I had seen would take more than just a few paragraphs of words, so I'll just let the pictures do the narrating (check out all of them on my Facebook account here.)
Food over in Southwest China is quite heavy on the tastebuds which an emphasis on capsicums. Noodles seems to be their staple food although rice can be found relatively easy to find. Also with the region (Yunnan to be exact) being rich in flora you do get to see alot of mushrooms in dishes. Except for the infamous Sichuan hotpot, which had me waking up in the middle of the night to take a dump, I thoroughly enjoyed the food there.
Although you do get the shady people lurking around at times, China is quite a safe place to travel. Having a common language in Mandarin also made things easier especially in times of navigation, although it did took me quite a while to get the hang of Sichuanese, which is Mandarin given a radical makeover in character tones.
Thus if you are a nature lover restrained by a limited budget, China is definitely a viable option for a backpacking affair.