October 2002
In October, 2002, we went to China. Because of the difference in culture and the incomprehensibility of the language we didn't feel comfortable attempting such a trip on our own so we joined a 21 day Uniworld Tour. Our friends, Sandy and Bill Flank (from New York) joined us on this adventure.
Our first stop was Beijing, the current capital of China. We were housed in the Kempinski Hotel in the "Embassy Section" of the city. It's a world-class hotel (5-star) but - giving us our first sense of what we were in for - we were told not to drink tap water, Each guest in the hotel is given two, sealed bottles of purified water each day. Wonderful hotel, and the morning breakfast buffet was beyond description.Sunday, April 20, 2003
We met our Tour Leader Richard Hua. Richard is a native of Beijing and would spend the next 18 days with us as we travelled China. We also met Bill and Sandy and the other thirteen members of our group- 17 of us, total: two from England and the rest from "The States."
Beijing is a city of 15 million people (moderate size in China). It is a contrast of modern buildings, soviet-style rectangular apartment blocks (physically deteriorating) next to newer high-rise apartments; lots of traffic- cars, trucks, busses, taxis and bicycles(an incredible numbers of bicycles), and people walking. And in the midst of it all are ancient buildings (2000 - 3000 years old).
Lots of new building going on. Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympics and is busy getting ready. Also, China is building large numbers of housing, especially in the cities. The population of China is over 1.3 Billion and many young men and women from the rural areas keep coming to the cities seeking a better life.
The Forbidden City- home of the Chinese Emperors for more than 500 years. It is located in the heart of Beijing and forms one side of Tian'anmen Square. Originally built in the 1400's there are 800 different structures, large and small, within its moat and walls. Very impressive...
We drove 10 miles out of the city to visit the Summer Palace built in the 1880's by the Empress Cixi. She spent the budget designated for modernizing the Chinese navy on building this summer retreat...
The Summer palace (located on 700 acres) is situated on a large lake surrounded by beautiful buildings. There is an 800 yard covered walkway along the lake painted, inside and out, with scenes of China, and a marble boat currently used for state functions...
That evening we attended a performance of the Beijing Opera. Performed in a small building located in a park in the city, we saw traditional performers and listened to the sounds of Chinese music- very different than our western sounds.
The next day we drove 44 miles to Badaling (northwest of Beijing) where we visited the Great Wall of China. It certainly is an astounding work. It's origins reach back 2500 years when the Emperor Qin (pronounced "chin") first united the various warring factions of China and decreed that all of the different fortifications should be joined together. The forced labor of millions of Chinese created the wall. It extends 3000 miles from the shore of the Yellow Sea in the west to the Gobi Desert in the northeast. Most of the wall is is a state of deterioration but several places have been restored, such as the Wall at Badaling.
It is quite a sight! Lots of Chinese tourists as well as us foreigners. Many souvenir stands- we were first treated to a call we would grow tired of as we travelled: "Hello! One Dollah. Postcard/hat/etc. one dollah!" The wall is tall, quite wide (about 20 feet) and very steep in places (35-40 degrees). It was quite a feeling walking the top and knowing how far it extended into China. We could see the wall snaking its way over mountains and down into valleys. The wall follows the contour of the land and, in some places, is very steep.
We visited the Tombs of the Ming Emperors, a part of the valley where the dynasty buried their dead. Interesting walkway with large, stone animals guarding the tomb of Yongle, the first of the Ming emperors (built in 1407)...
We visited a silk rug factory were the process of creating silk thread from the cocoons of the silk worms was explained...
[from left to right: Silk worms feed on mulberry leaves; the cocoons are taken and boiled; the silk thread is pulled form the cocoon in one long strand; several strands are twisted together to make silk thread]
Wherever we went Richard made sure that we ate well. The Chinese feel that there should always be adequate amount of food, and the tables reflected that idea. The food was good although, at almost every meal, we would ask "What do you think that is?".
We spent some time wandering around Tian'anmen Square. It forms the center of the capital and is bordered by the Forbidden City (with a giant picture of Chairman Mao still hanging in front of the main gate), the Great Hall of the People (where the government meets), Chairman Mao Zedong's tomb, and two museums of Chinese history and the revolution. Normally there are lots of Chinese visitors- but the day we were there it was almost deserted...
After a flight into the central part of northern China we arrived in Xian (about 6 1/2 million population). The city was one of the first capitals of China (under the Emperor Qin 2300 years ago) In 1974 a discovery was made by a group of farmers digging a well. Their efforts brought up some pottery pieces- and the Terra Cotta Warriors were discovered. A buried army of larger-than-life-size figures arranged as if they were on display along with horses and chariots. Xian is also a walled city, one where the medieval walls are still standing. The city was the Chinese terminus of The Silk Road of ancient times- the one that Marco Polo travelled.
The air quality in Xian was horrific! It consisted of building dust (10% of the world's building projects are currently being carried out in China!) mixed with the results of burning soft coal (families burn the coal to cook and heat the homes, factories burn the coal to produce energy for manufacturing, and all of the cars, taxis, trucks, and busses do not have pollution controls. To make it even worse, the farmers (and all cities are surrounded by farmland; the Chinese farm every bit of arable land they can) were burning the stalks of the recently harvested corn and any other harvest residue. The air was so thick that many members of our group began coughing and we couldn't see more than a quarter of a mile.
The Terra Cotta Army is incredible! The Emperor Qin had the figures made to guard him in the next life. The figures were buried in underground chambers arranged as an army would be, and then forgotten for over 2000 years. Over the years the roofs of the chambers had fallen in and the figures of the warriors and the horses smashed. So, after the discovery of the army, the Chinese archaeologists have had to piece the figures back together. They have repaired about 1,000 of them and believe that there are 8-10,000 more still buried. There are three pits being excavated, each enclosed several different body types, but each head (which sits in the neck of the body) shows subtile differences. They have even found faces with western features.
While in Xian Sandy, Bill and we went for a exploratory walk away from the hotel. We passed bike shop after bike shop- for three blocks. It seems that, although the Chinese government allows some experimentation with a free-market economy (one can - is expected to - dicker about the price of an item) it also decided that it would be easier for the shopper if all of the stores selling the same goods were kept together. We saw the same thing all over China. At one point we turned down a small side lane where we saw people cooking by the side of the lane and the old-style apartment houses, but we had to tun back because the stench of human waste was overpowering. People in the street and in stores smiled at us and said "hello," most probably the only English word they knew. Beautiful children, mothers and fathers with babies, grandparents with grandchildren- everywhere we went in China....
We attended a cultural show that evening...
The next day we spent some time visiting the ancient city walls of Xian...
and visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine. A quiet and serene place in the middle of the city.
Before leaving Xian we were treated to a lunch at a dumpling restaurant, and served with the most amazing selection of dumplings. They came in a wide variety of shapes and colors. Here is one of the dumpling chefs preparing a bear dumpling for us...
Next we flew to Shanghai (13 million population). It's a modern city with an impressive skyline and waterfront. We visited "The Bund," the waterfront area where the European nations originally had trading and residential areas. It was the first city opened to foreign trade by the Chinese Emperors. We watched all sorts of vessels moving up and down the Huangpu River...
visited Shanghai's Old Town area...
and walked through the magnificent Yu Yuan Garden that dated from the 16th century.
We were taken to a Children's Palace. It's an after school and weekend program where children can go to learn traditional Chinese arts, crafts, dance and music. We enjoyed watching and listening...
That evening we attended a performance of the Shanghai Acrobats, What a show! Astonishing performances with a climax of 7 motorcyclists driving inside a metal cage- at the same time.
The next day we visited Tongli. The ride to Tongli was through farmland and we were treated to scenes of rice paddies ready for harvest.We passed over many canals and saw houseboats moored to the banks.
Tongli is a small medieval town (built in the mid 1300's) that is cris-crossed by canals. Quite charming. We watched a fisherman in one of the canals using tamed cormorants in a century-old method of fishing (he ties a cord around the bird's throat, loosely enough so the bird can catch and eat small fish but the bigger fish get stuck so the fisherman can pull them out). We walked the narrow streets by the canals and even had our picture taken as Emperor and Concubine...
We boarded a tour ferry, passed over a small lake and entered the Grand Canal. An emperor, in the 1200's, ordered that a canal be dug from Beijing to Suzhou- about 1100 miles. It's still in use...
On the way into Suzhou we stopped at the #1 Silk factory and were treated to an exhibition of how the silk worms are raised and silk threads made from the cocoons.
Awakening the next morning to the sight of Tai-Chi being practiced outside our window of the Sushou Sheraton...
we toured the Humble Administrator's Garden...
and then took China Airways to Wuhan where we boarded the M.V. Victoria #5 (Cruise Boat) for our 5 day Yangtze River cruise. We arrived during the evening and that night the boat left Wuhan and started up river towards Chongqing, nearly 300 miles away. The Yangtze is a very swiftly flowing, extremely large river. When we were on it the heavy rains of previous weeks had turned the river into a torrent of mud-laden water of a reddish-brown color. We could see millions of tons of China's soil being washed towards the ocean. The boat was full of mostly American and German tourists and we met a number of Chinese-Americans on tour.
Our first river stop was Dongting Lake, the second largest freshwater lake in China. We took a bus to the Yueyang Tower, a three story wooden tower built by a general 1600 years ago so he could watch his navy practice. Chairman Mao, when he visited the tower, wrote a poem which is inscribed on wood inside the tower today.
The cruise ship moved upstream against the powerful current, past small boats moored by bow and stern lines that mark the channel. Over 1/2 the water flowing into the China Sea comes from this river. Early in the morning we passed through the old Geshouba Dam across the Yangtze. The Victioria 5 edged into the lock along with three other boats- there couldn't have been more than two feet separating our boat from the neighboring cruise ship.
We then visited the site of the new Three Gorges Dam being built across the Yangtze River. Built on the only stretch of the Yangtze that has a granite rock river bed (the rest of the river bed is sandstone and limestone- soft rock)the dam will be the largest in the world. It will be 2325 meters across (8000 feet - nearly 1 1/2 miles), 185 meters high (600 feet)and will cause the river to rise into a lake nearly 80 meters (260 feet) deep, raising the river level for nearly 200 miles upstream. The dam is scheduled for completion in 2009 and the Victoria 5 was one of the last cruise boats to pass by the dam site before it closed off the river.
The Three Gorges Dam will serve several purposes: it will act to help stop the annual flooding of the Yangtze (we saw the results of the floods- boats several hundred yards inland, breaks in the river's levees, silt covering the riverfront areas of towns); it will provide hydroelectric power to central China, an area that is dependent on coal-powered electricity generation; it will assist with irrigation in a country with 1.5 BILLION people- where farming is done on every available acre of soil; and it will allow ocean-going vessels of up to 10,000 tons to move from the ocean upriver to the city of Chongqing (a city of nearly 34 million people, and one that is not yet really industrialized).
We motored up the Yangtze in fog and rain and entered the Three Gorges area. The Chinese give names to all rock formations and the names go back several thousand years. We saw the old "Trekkers' Path," a footpath used by the hundreds of coolies (peasant workers) that were used to pull the sampans upstream against the current and through rapids. In places there were holes in the sheer rock face of the 3000 foot cliffs. They used to place cut logs into them on which a wooden plank path was laid for the Trekkers to walk.
Along with beautiful scenery and the swift flowing river we saw homes and ancient bridges that are going to be buried by the rising water...
Lots of boats use the river- it's the main transportation link for the movement of goods and people.
Moving up the river we passed through portions of the gorges where the boat traffic was regulated to one-way passage because of the rapids and the narrowness of the gorge. We stopped at Wushan, left the ship and embarked onto small motored sampans to travel up into the narrow Lesser Gorges of the Daning River...
All of the cities along the river are under construction- the lower part of the city is being demolished and a new area being developed higher on the hills. This is because the rising water behind the dam will flood the lower city area. It's incredible to see, because it is being completed, largely, by hand labor. We passed sites with men and women in hard hats swinging sledge hammers and then loading the bricks and re-bars onto trucks to be re-used in the new construction. Driving through the cities was an experience, the roads were not too wide...
And in the midst of the chaos and dust were people getting on with their daily lives...
We stopped for a few hours at Wuzhou, a "small" town of only 400,000 people, to attend a local market.
It was quite colorful and once we had walked through the tourist stuff we found ourselves in the fruits, vegetables and meats- it was a bit grisly, but interesting. Getting on/off the cruise ship was always an experience...
The cruise ship's crew provided us with an evening of entertainment and showed off not only their talents but various traditional costumes of China..
The end of our river journey, the City of Chongqing- the largest city in China with a population of over 30 Million
people. We disembarked across a series of floating docks and made our way up a steep walkway to the busses fending off the "bang-bang men" (workers who carry goods using the shoulder yoke) as we went.
We drove out of the city to Dazu, a rural area where there are over 50,000 Buddhist figures carved into the rocks of a canyon.
Driving through farmland we saw farmers working in the rice fields with water buffalo pulling the plows, donkeys carrying loads, and children coming home from school...
Dazu. This is a rural area where, in 892 A.D., a Buddhist monk began carving stone sculptures into the rock of a local gorge. The work continued for more than 400 years by local artists and resulted in more than 50,000 stone sculptures of all sizes.
We arrived rather late in the day (our landing in Chongqing was delayed because of river fog) and took bicycle-rickshaws (pedicabs) from the parking lot to the entrance of the gorge.
Then we explored to sculptures...
We then drove the two hours back to Chongqing. It's a city that is active 24 hours a day and is built on the side of large hills. No bicycles could be seen in the narrow lanes. The city is so large- we were told that there are 15,000 taxis!
The next day we headed to the airport for a flight to Guelin. We were ahead of schedule (there was no traffic!) so Richard (the tour guide) had the bus stop in a town near the airport and we got out to stroll around. It was a place that tourists generally do not go and we found ourselves stared at as white-skinned foreigners. Some people even called to others to come out of homes and stores to have a look. But if we said "Ni Hao" (hello) to the people we were rewarded with big smiles.
Guelin. We arrived in a heavy overcast and were told that it was normal - rain falls over 320 days each year. The unique karst (limestone) mountains of this area has made it a tourist attraction for over 4,000 years and it has been an inspiration for countless Chinese artists and poets. We stayed in a hotel beside the Li river...
and walked around the area near the hotel- very modern.
The Li (Lijang) River runs through the center of Guelin and the amazing mountains start nearby. We drove out of the city to an embarkation point for a 52 mile excursion down the river - in the midst of a rainstorm.
We slowly moved down the river in a parade of tourist boats looking at the mountains. We saw fishermen in sampans and a variety of homes along the river.
We were served a lunch prepared on the boat- actually it was prepared on the stern section since we tourists took up most of the available space - some of the fish served was right out of the river (we did have some concern about the use of the river water for washing dished and cooking but both Richard, our tour guide, and the crew assured us that it was fine).
Despite the rain we were treated to one wonderful sight after another...
As we disembarked we were, once again, surrounded by people selling tourist goods...
After visiting one of the many local caves, the next morning we undertook our final China flight - into Hong Kong. The Chinese government considers travel to H.K. as an "international" flight and Chinese citizens must have a special visa to enter. After over three weeks our tour guide, Richard, had to leave us at the Guelin airport.
We were met in Hong Kong by our H.K. guide, Jupiter (she chose the English name) and taken to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the center of Hong Kong. It is an old and venerated hotel right next to the ferry and in the midst of the "Central" area of the city.
Began the next day with a bus sightseeing tour. H.K. is made up of three areas: "Central" which is 32 square miles in size, "Kowloon" 3 1/2 square miles and across the harbor from Central, and "The New Territories" 365 square miles and extending from Kowloon to the Chinese border. There are 75 million people in Hong Kong, 95% of them Chinese. English and Cantonese are the principal languages. Our tour guide, Jupiter, spoke English very well, but she used phrases that are not in common use; she told us she learned a lot of her English from old movies.
Hong Kong is an island. It is quite mountainous and, therefore, has a limited amount of space that can be used. As a result much of what has been built has been adapted to building vertically. There is a tram that leads from sea level up to "The Peak" where large houses are perched on the mountain side, and a moving walkway from the "central" business area at sea level to and through shopping districts that extend 2/3 the way up the mountain side.
The coach drove along narrow, twisting roads from place to place around the island passing clusters of homes large and small. The island is so limited in space that even the cemeteries are built vertically. We ended up at Stanley Market, a sort of on-going "flea market" - many small shops clustered along narrow lanes.
We drove a short distance to Aberdeen and boarded small motorized sampans for a cruise around Aberdeen Harbor. The harbor is ringed with high-rise apartment buildings but is full of sampans that serve as homes for fishermen. We peered into the boats where they live and saw families sorting fish. There were, also, modern fishing vessels in the harbor.
On the way in and out of the harbor we passed a gigantic floating restaurant that is built to resemble an imperial palace...
We then returned to Central and rode the Star Ferry to Kowloon where we walked around for a short time. It, like Central, is crowded with tall buildings with small shops on the street level. Small parks are found in the midst of wall-to-wall people and tremendous traffic.
Evenings we went for a walk with Bill and Sandy through the streets of the Central district.
Hong Kong is a bustling city at all hours, filled with Oriental and Caucasian people. The air was full of dust due to the many construction projects throughout the city. As we rode the "moving stairway," which consists of a series of escalators leading to the middle shopping areas (up the mountain), the sheer number of small shops and restaurants and the streets filled with people was almost overwhelming; yet we felt quite safe just wandering. The escalators are one-way (for rush-hour traffic): down in the morning and up during most of the day until they close at midnight.
The next day we were treated to a boat tour of Hong Kong's harbor, one of the best in all of Asia and the reason H.K. thrives as an international seaport and gateway to China.
Before leaving Hong Kong for "The States" we wandered through some of the exquisite shopping available in the Central area..
Quite an experience- sights, sounds, smells and tastes unlike anything we had experienced before. Such a sense of 'bigness' that our definition of "huge" has been expanded simply by the Chinese experience. Many, many friendly people. A most cohesive tour group and excellent tour guides. We came away from this three-week experience quite tired, but with new friends and wonderful memories.
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