Up the Yangzte, Hang Zhou, Su Zhow and Shanghai

After spending an evening in Chunking, a heavily industrialized city, where we visit is superstore (like Macy's) with a huge assortment of everything (and we cannot decipher anything), we go down to the Yangtze river and take our ship for a three day river cruise. We have a nice cabin with a deck in a fairly large ship (500 passengers). Cruising the river is relaxing, serenely moving along the China of centuries. Our first stop is Feng Du where we visit the 'Snow Jade' caves and see a huge number of white, green and alabaster stalactites and stalagmites, formed over thousands of years.

We steam past the Qitang and Wu gorges to a small tributary where we transfer to rowing boats (punters) and go up the Shen Dong river famous for its cliffside vertical hanging coffins, an absolutely bizarre custom of the Tu Ja minority community - although why and how they did this is a mystery. Our guide is Miao- Miao (pronounced Meow-Meow) a Tu Ja who sings a duet with the oarsman - one of my tour highlights - punting along the bottom of a wildness ravine. The Tu Ja cry for 15 days before a marriage and sing and dance for 3 days after a death - just pause and think about the profound wisdom of that tradition!

At night we descent 2000m through 5 locks at the huge Three river gorge dam (yes the one that displaced over a million peasants) and spend a few hours at the dam site, before motoring to Wuhan another heavily industrialized city, stopping on the way to visit a Kindergarten school sponsored by Sinorama the tour company. Many adorable Chinese babies sing and dance for us, and Ellen spends time with a teacher and children - nothing is cutier that little Chinese boys and girls

Another domestic flight to Hang Zhou (again very efficient and punctual) where we visit a 1000 year old pagoda (one of the few not destroyed) built to prevent floods (superstition), cruise a lovely lake and visit a green tea garden where we learn the many medicinal properties of green tea. We motor up to Wu-Zhou the 'Venice of China' and explore the city along its many water canals. After stopping Su Zhou famous for its silk, and learning how silk is made and buying a few souvenirs, we motor to Shanghai. - a huge and imposing city (20 million population and 6 million daily subway riders!). Shanghai is the site of Expo 2010, a huge exhibition site - we see the Shanghai museum, explore the city by night and see an incredible show of Chinese acrobats -definitely one of the highlights of the trip - absolutely dazzling and performed to perfection. We end our stay with a visit to old Shanghai, teaming with people and stuff

All through the tour we have eaten food served on a lazy suzy, ten or so dishes, of pork, chicken, beef and some very tasty Chinese vegetables, passed around and eaten with chopsticks (with a fork as backup) - served one free glass of beer, soda or water (sometimes no free water). We have hung out with Elizabeth and John and Alex and Ann - all English speaking Canadians (amidst Chinese and French Canadians) - and their companionship has enhanced the trip. I have gained 5 lhs (alright about 2.2 kg for the rest of the world !)

And so on to Hong Kong, after a fortnight in a formidable (not forbidding) most impressive China

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing having flown 13 hours straight from Newark, NJ. The airport is new with an impressive curved roof, high strut ceilings and granite marble floors. It is spotless. We are met by our tour guide. Tina, who speaks good English (we are on a 14 day tour conducted by Sinorama Holidays of Canada, at a bargain price - later I hear it is subsidized by the Chinese government to encourage tourism!). I change money at the airport; the ATM swallows my credit card, but I get it back from the bank with a minimum of fuss. We drive to the hotel of a 6 lane highway, bordered with flowering shrubs and green grass. Dinner, as is most dinners, is buffet with numerous Chinese dishes (none to spicy) and I eat a ton (I weigh myself in at 80Kg). Our group consists of 7 Chinese Canadians, 2 Canadian Canadians, 2 Vietnamese Canadians and us, 2 Indian Americans - quite a motley collection.

Our first day takes us to a huge 'Temple of Heaven' complex, built by the Ming dynasty in the 15th century, devoted to the spiritual pursuits of only the Emperor and his entourage. Heaven is the Ying of the Earth's Yang. The Chinese seemed quite obsessed with the concept of Heaven, which appears to be a condition of being in harmony with all natural, spiritual and human elements. The temples have an ascending succession of spheres, ending in a spire and are very graceful. We pose and take a photo on the Heavenly Center Stone. The site is beautifully laid out with all trees over 500 years marked in red - these include many junipers and cypresses. On to a cycle rickshaw tour of old Beijing and then to the 'Forbidden City' - a most impressive collection of building, only for the Emperor (all others were forbidden entry) and his entourage which included his concubines, (Zhudi the 3rd emperor is said to have had 3000, give or take a few) and his eunuchs (so his concubines could be safe). Beautiful large building, with colored tiles in yellow and red and dragon carved eaves (the number of dragons denoting the importance of the inhabitant). All the building were constructed in wood, without nails, using only joints and have names like 'Hall of Preserved Harmony' or 'Heavenly Hall' with Blue being the most important color as it represented Heaven, followed by Yellow, Red and Green. The forbidden city has 9999 1/2 rooms as Heaven has 10,000. The forbidden city opens out into Tianamen square a huge opening dominated by a mausoleum of Mao. Large numbers of Chinese and foreigners walk about in the square and one becomes aware of the population of China. One curious phenomenon is the Chinese fascination with 'long nose' persons (Caucasians) and I am asked several time to pose with young Chinese men and women, for photos with them. I am also propositioned by a young Chinese lady - ah to be young again!

Our third day takes us to the absolutely amazing Great Wall of China - at Badling (seven hills), built from 500 AD on. I climb a little and then just sit and look at this huge edifice, stretching miles in every direction, along steep hills and down dales and wonder and how its building was sustained for over 600 years. We visit the Ming tombs, but I have seen so much already that I am saturated. We also visit a Jade factory - jade being the favorite precious stone of the Chinese as it is very hard, comes in a variety of colors and is available in China. Ellen buys a bracelet and I buy a small Pixiu - a mythical dragon and lion - a symbol of good luck. On our way back we stop off at the Olympic site and see the Bird's Nest main pavilion and the Water Cube aquatic stadium - both very impressive. Dinner is Peiping Duck, a 7 day force fed duck, roasted and eaten in a tortia with duck sauce. Delicious and crispy without the trace of a fatty taste

Our last day have us visiting the Summer palace - residence of the Dragon Empress, a concubine that produced a favorite son and was regent for half a century - built around a huge ornamental lake. Very peaceful and protected by the Chinese version of a unicorn that prevented floods. We visit a pearl factory and then its off to the airport for a domestic flight to Chunking (pronounced ChinChoon) the embarkation point for a 3 day cruise down the Yangzte river. But that and the rest of our Chinese trip in the next blog

CHINA Overview

Sept 18th in Hong Kong - I have not had any time to blog during our China trip and now in Hong Kong I have some free time.


China is frightening - it is so dynamic, so purposeful, so efficient - that I think it is inevitable it will take over the world economically and dictate to the world how to live. Anyone under 40 had better beware and be prepared (hint - learn Mandarin). When I think about the way the Western world operates - its pace; its priorities; its attitudes - I cannot imagine how it can withstand the Chinese juggernaut. The only possible escape from this fate, a fanciful thought, is that the Chinese become like the West - work less, spend more, become wasteful and self indulgent. I do not think this will happen in the near future. In China everything seems to work. In our 2 week trip, we travelled by car, bus, plane, ship and rickshaw; we checked in and out of numerous hotels; we ate at many different types of restaurants; we visited innumerable sites, we rambled about many markets and we toured many cities - both large and small. In all these activities, I cannot think of significant examples of inefficiency, neglect, or bureaucratic high handedness/stupidity. Perhaps because we were tourists we did not get to see the real China, but I think what we saw quite a bit of the real China and it was formidable.


Some overall highlights:
The national bird of China is the crane - not the one with a beak and wings, but a power operated cantilever, high above a construction site. There were literally thousand to them, in every city and all over the country side; building high rise apartment and office complexes; building high speed rail lines, monorails, six lane highways and bridges. It was a staggering sight to see the magnitude of work being done on the infrastructure. As we flew into Beijing I noticed that the terminal had about 20 stalls and only a few of them had planes in them. My immediate reaction was that this was a waste of capacity, to be seemingly confirmed by an very sparsely used airport. Sometime along our trip I got it - China is building not for today's needs but for the future (and to cover overloads), so it will not have to continuously patch its existing infrastructure or rebuild every decade!

China is clean and its people keep it so. Everywhere there are waste bins and persons sweeping public areas. Even small towns appeared to have sewage. There is an abundance of water. No one litters. And this condition applies to their toilets too. We toured the old city of Shanghai where there must have been thousands of tourists and locals and we visited the toilets and found them spotless!

Language is a problem and communicating is a problem; but the general person in the street/shop/restaurant is helpful and patient. I did not see much evidence of any form of worship or religion - churches, pagodas, temples were few and far between. There is an easy intermingling of the sexes and everywhere men/women seem to associate casually and romantically. The Chinese are generally slim, well dressed and on the move. The women were very attractive in their above the knee dresses, showing off well formed legs. Men were also well built. Children were so attractive - a chinese baby is irresistible. China still has the one child restriction (with some exceptions) and it is enforced, so one senses there are some heavy control elements in its society. I was informed that men were preferred to women, but I saw no evidence of that in any of the sites or areas we visited. Lastly I saw many instances, particularly among seniors, where an attempt was being made to be in harmony with nature - tai chi, park dancing, playing and scoping a ball etc.

Two aspects of Chinese culture bothered me: they are loud and they are aggressive in getting around (we were quite often pushed out of the way) and this includes their road manners which were scary at times

Next blog will detail our activities starting with Beijing