Hong Kong

Last stop on our China trip, Hong Kong still feels somewhat different from the mainland: different currency, a somewhat different script, different traffic rules (drive on the left! I wonder what happens at the border...). English is much more widely understood, so it is easier for western tourists to get around.

Hong Kong consists of the island of Hong Kong, a much larger territory adjacent to the mainland and separated from Hong Kong proper by a straight, and dozens of outlying islands. Our first stop was the famous Victoria Peak, with a view over part of the island of Hong Kong, across the straight, and into Kowloon (linked to Hong Kong City by subway, auto tunnel, and ferry.) We took the bus there, which brought us up to the peak, and we went back by ferry. Here's the view:

And here is Nan Lian Garden, once a garden associated with a private residence, on the Kowloon side. (You can spot the highrises on the left margin of the photo; this is really in the middle of a very urbanized area.)

And finally, a picture of how they use bamboo scaffolding in their construction projects. This particular one Rosemarie found interesting because of the way the bamboo is cantilevered well over the traffic on the adjacent street.

And that's it for these China ramblings.

Li River

We took a bus ride south from Guelin, parallel to the river, for about an hour, to the embarkation point. There were dozens of buses arriving around the same time, a crowded building where our guide got us our tickets, and then perhaps 6 or 8 boats all getting loaded at the same time for cruises down the river.

Here is a case where the pictures just about speak for themselves. You can see why this trip is so popular. (Once again, the majority of the tourists were Chinese, although we did meet a group of a dozen or so German tourists on our boat.)

For example:

 and

 and

Guelin

Clean-up

Guelin is a pretty city in Southern China, on the Li River, in a landscape of eroded limestone, with dozens and dozens of small but steep limestone hills scattered all around. They built a nice promenade on both sides of the river (so I had the best jogging of anywhere on the trip). The city is also blessed by a string of linked lakes, around which they have a string of parks. Very lovely.

One thing I remarked very early in the trip, back when we were in Beijing and traveling alongside the waterway in the city moat, was how clean the water was: no plastic bags, no cigarette butts, no newspaper, no rags of cast-off clothing ... none of the detritus of urban living that so sullies the many waterways in and around Bangkok.

The same thing is true of the Li River. It was clean. People were swimming in it when I went for my early morning jog. (Each swimmer had a plastic bag with him  ---  only saw men in the water --- , where I assumed they carried their towel and change of clothes, which they couldn't safely leave on the bank of the river.)

And here's one of the reasons for the cleanliness. There are people -- I assume employed by the state -- who boat back and forth fetching garbage out of the river. A very nice service!

Public dancing

I think everyone knows how popular Tai Chi is. You can see people doing various kinds of Tai Chi exercises (with swords, with flags, or with just their body) in the parks, especially in the morning. But one thing that is less expected is the number of people who like to dance in public places, such as parks. They bring their own music, and do traditional Chinese dances, or, very frequently, western-style ballroom dances (40's style slow lindy, waltzes, fox-trots). On one occasion one woman in our group was persuaded to join in the fun, and she played along, as the partner to another woman in a group-dance event.

Here in Guelin, taking a walk later that first day along the river promenade, we saw two ladies doing a fan dance. The one on the left was the instructor, and the one on the right was learning. What I liked about the scene was the grandmother smiling while watching them, and the little girl they gave a fan to, trying to follow along.

Twin pagodas

Here is a scene that caught my eye as I was walking along the string of lakes later that day ... a day that turned into a downpour as we caught the tail of a Typhoon that buffeted southern China. They light the pagodas up at night, a sight that we didn't catch this trip.

A couple of more scenes from Xi'an

Small Wild Goose Pagoda

The Small Wild Goose Pagoda (not to be confused with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda) and Buddhist Temple was one of our stops the day after visiting the Terracotta Warriors. It's from the Tang Dynasty, about 1500 years old. It had some lovely grounds; I actually found the adjacent park of more interest than the pagoda itself. But I do like this photo of the pagoda, so I'll stick it here so you can admire it too.

Dumplings

After visiting the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, we went for lunch at a restaurant specializing in dumplings. There were 28 courses, all dumplings, and all different. (Or maybe it was 27 dumpling courses, followed by a fruit platter.) Invariably, our Chinese meals ended with fruit; most often, a plate of watermelon; occasionally watermelon plus orange slices.

As an aside, the tour organizers gave us two or three meals at so called "Western" restaurants. Apparently, they felt that we needed a break from the steady diet of Chinese food. At one restaurant, I remember our tour director telling us that the cook had never been in the West, but had learned all his recipes from cookbooks. And it tasted like it. I didn't enjoy any of these "Western" meals ... Also, on one free eveining, we went to the Japanese restaurant at the hotel we were staying at. It was annoying, because they barely spoke English, and although we knew the Japanese names of the dishes we liked, the staff didn't. They also served the tea luke warm, for some reason, and when we asked them to refill the pot they brought us water. Not the most enjoyable meal.  I would have been much happier if we had had Chinese food all the time ... it was always good and plentiful. 

Back to the dumplings. One surprise was that several of them were shaped to represent the food that they contained. Like the head of a pig, for example. Or like little ducks. Here's an example:

Xi'an City Wall

The main reason why tourists go to Xi'an is for the Qin mausoleum with the warriors. But the city wall is also extraordinary. It dates from the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago, and (considering all the wars and revolts that China has had to endure) is in a very good state of repair. It's a rectangle, 40 feet high, 60 feet thick at the bottom and 8½ miles in perimeter, with defensive towers every 400 feet or so. They run marathons around the wall every year, that seem to be well attended. And one thing I liked is that you can rent a bike and ride around the wall. They've built wooden ramps to allow the bikes to go up and down the staircases at the various towers.

Here's a picture, taken from the top of the wall near one of the four main gates, and looking along the length. This also gives you an idea of the smog that plagues the country. And they say that winters are much worse than the summers, because of all the coal fires for heating the older houses. (New houses are heated with electricity.)

Xi'an

Xi'an

Xi'an (pronounced, approximately "She-on") is in central China. This is the city that Qin Huangdi, the emperor who first unified China, chose as his capital. Qin is pronounced approximately "Chin", and the Qin dynasty is the source of our name of China.

Qin Huangdi not only unified China (conquering the six other competing states); he also ordered the construction of the Great Wall, and, in addition, built the enormous mausoleum for himself, with the famous terra cotta warriors. I forget how many workers they estimate were busy on the construction .. it was many hundreds of thousands, they think. The people were so oppressed by this forced labor that they revolted, and burnt down the mausoeleums not long after Qin's death. Its location was only rediscovered in the 1970's (a farmer digging a well found some of the terracotta pieces, and the mayor called in archeologists who recognized the significance of the find) and the Chinese have built several truly wonderful exhibition halls around the excavation sites.


I want to add, the Chinese are doing the excavations very slowly, and with special care. After some bad early experiences, they want to be sure that they don't destroy anything (like the traces of colors on the statues.) Our guide says that they know the location of Qin Haungdi's tomb, but they do not want to open it until they are certain they have the technology to preserve what they find there.


I won't give you any pictures of the terracotta warriors --- this is something that you really should see for yourself if you possibly can -- it is truly awesome.

Instead, let's go to the...

Pep rally

I saw a scene like in the photo twice while wandering through one of the commercial streets in Xi'an. The restaurant staff lined up outside the restaurant in two lines facing one another, and one leader stood at the end facing both lines, and he shouted out some slogan, and they repeated it, loudly, accompanied by clapping of hands. I imagine they were saying things like "Ho's Noodle Shop is great" "Ho's Noodle Shop is great" "We have the best team" "We have the best team" (clap-clap) "We believe in Ho's" "We believe in Ho's" (clap-clap-clap) "Go team" "Go team .. hurray", and then they marched back into the restaurant. I showed the picture to our tour director, who recognized the situation, and said that they do this, first, to give the workers a break, and second, to generate publicity for the restaurant.

 

Traffic conflict

Cars were pretty orderly in traffic, I would say. But bicycles didn't follow any rules that I could discern, and neither did the motor scooters or motorized rickshaws.

As an aside, almost all the motor scooters and motor bikes are electric, as an anti-pollution measure. So you don't get the terrible exhaust fumes from the two-stroke engines that sully the air in Thailand and Malaysia. And they are quiet too. Generally an advantage, except that you don't hear them when they come from behind you on the sidewalk. (Or in the market, as I mentioned earlier.)

Many of the major streets have separated bike lanes. The motor scooters are able to use these too (or, better said, they do use them.) And, they go in both directions there. It's kind of a free-for-all. Although I didn't see any crashes, so I guess there must be some subtle order to things that I couldn't figure out.

I did manage to take this photo of a temporary conflict, though. A bus was headed down the street, and a motorized rickshaw (e.g. a cheap taxi) was headed the other way, squeezing between the bus and the curb, when a scooter bicycle came down the same narrow space the right way, followed by a bicycle, each checking the progress of the other. But the drivers bore the impasse patiently, and after a minute the bus was able to move on and the drivers could get around each other.

More scenes from the Yangtze

Street market

After visiting the relocated farmer, we spent an hour or so in a street market in their town of Fengdu, on the Yangtze. (Before the building of the dam, and the opening of the river to larger boats, the town was pretty isolated, being between the first and second of the gorges.) Our tour guide brought us there as an unscheduled side trip; it was certainly not on the regular tourist route. Several young people took photos of us (the "long noses" they say we are called), and we returned the honor.

The street market stretched for two blocks up a hill, and for one block off to the right, in a kind of "T" shape. Here is a picture of one of the vendors' stands. (Looking at it again makes my mouth water.)

Sanpan

Picture taken from our boat, cruising up river towards our destination at Chungqing.

Chongqing

This is officially China's largest city, with a population of over 30 million. But for some unexplained reason, the Chinese make the municipal boundary the size of a whole province. It's as if Miami's city line was the Florida state line, and Miami was said to have a population of 20 million. 

I asked the local guide what the urban population of Chongqing was, and he said it was only 15 million or so.

Chongqing ("Chungking" in the old spelling), incidentally, was Chang Kai-Shek's capital during the Second World War, after the Japanese chased his government out of Nanjing ("Nanking" in the old spelling) and massacring untold thousands of civilians after taking the city. The Chinese refer to that war as the "War of Resistance against Japan."

We arrived in Chongqing shortly after dusk and were blown away by the city lights as seen from the river. (The pictures I took just didn't capture anything like it.) Buildings not just lit up, but extravagantly lit up (and the bridges too), with animated displays covering the whole faces of the buildings.

Here's a picture of a porter reloading the boat with beer for the return trip down-river as we were disembarking.

Scenes from the Yangtze

Phony but beautiful

 

The "Tujia" are one of the officially recognized minority ethnic groups in China. (The Han, the majority, constitute something like 90% or 95% of the population). On our cruise up the Yangtze River, we choose an optional visit to a tribal area. We were informed, this was not an authentic village we would be seeing, but instead it was something set up for tourists, with local people dressed in costumes. They staged a "wedding" for the visitors every fifteen minutes. Sort of like our "Wild West" show with "Indians". But, despite that caveat, we went on the excursion anyway. (Lots of people did; primarily Chinese.) Here is one picture, illustrating some romantic story well-known to all the Chinese. I thought I would include it, because, despite being SOOO phony, it is also SOOO beautiful.

Plain but authentic

 

Some 1.3 million people had to be relocated because their houses or land was flooded by the waters of the Three Gorges Dam. The farmers were given the choice of remaining to be farmers, or of becoming urbanites. Most chose to become urbanites, because of the many advantages, such as health care (farmers are not eligible). But some chose to remain farmers, because that was the life they were familiar with. One of our land excursions during the Yangtze River cruise was to visit the farm house and farm of one of the relocated families. (They got just ½ acre to farm, not what they had before, but received a supplement ... if I remember correctly, it was about $50/month ... to compensate them for loss of income). And, undoubtedly, they welcomed the income from hosting a group of visitors for an hour or so once a week. Here's a picture of the sitting room of their house, and one of the master bedroom. (The sparse decoration was very typical, based on the several homes we visited.)

 

 

Great Wall, Shanghai, Sozhou

The Great Wall

Can be steep.

 Folk dancing at the senior center. 

We visited a senior center in Shanghai. Most men retire at 60 (unless, in a few cases, if they have special skills, their employer gets permission to keep them on) and women at 55. They told us, the retired guys like to hang out at the park, or go fishing, etc., while many women want to do something more stimulating. The senior center offers classes in folk dancing, costume making, embroidery, silk painting, and other crafts. When we visited we were treated to a fashion show and a folk dance demonstration of the dances of one of China's minority groups. (There are 55 officially recognized minorities.) The woman on the left must have been a beginner ... she kept looking at the other for clues about what step comes next.

Speaking of minorities, one interesting thing I learned is that the minorities are exempt from the one-child policy.

The three women on the couch in back are on the staff of the senior center, and on the right, our tour director is talking to the local Shanghai guide (whose name was "Ho", or "Rainbow" in English.)

Market scene

This is in the same neighborhood as the senior center. This was in a large structure with lots of stalls side by side, with stands for (among others) live eels, live ducks, piles of unidentifiable sea critters, meats, miscellaneous small hardware items, CDs, electronics, etc. etc. What was surprising to me was that some people did their shopping on their electric scooters. (It seemed to be acceptable ... no one was taken aback by a scooter in the aisle.) Here's a picture of a vegetable stand.

The Grand Canal 

The Grand Canal connects Beijing with Hangzhou, south of Shanghai. It's over 1000 miles in length. It was constructed in pieces, connecting different waterways a piece at a time, but it was completed the full length in the 6th century A.D. (It became necessary to move rice from the south to the north, when the population in the north required more food than could be grown locally.) It passes closest to Shanghai in a city called Souzhou, a city famous for its many gardens.

We took a bullet train from Shanghai to Souzhou to take a boat ride on a short portion of the canal, and also to visit one of the gardens. Here is a picture taken from the boat of a bridge over the canal, and a picture of the garden we visited.