This is the next installment of our Aging Adventurers Blog. The planning started many moons ago (the lunar calendar is very important to the Chinese). This was Reggie and Terry Delovitch’s idea and they did a lot of the groundwork (thanks Reggie and Terry!) Initially there were to be about 5 of us going together, but the numbers grew to 16, and then shrunk so now we are a group of 11 friends travelling together.
May 14 China May 12-26
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| Summer Palace grounds |
Monday
Later on we visited the Great Wall. This is the most impressive structure. Even though we only saw a very small part of it, it was quite something. Irene and I climbed up to the first rampart. This was very steep and it was a climb of several hundred feet. We both made it! I amazed myself, because at the end I was only panting slightly and I did not have aching muscles (although the next day was a different story). I took it somewhat slowly, but I like to think that the exercise bicycle at home had something to do with it.
Beijing is huge 160 x 165 miles. The population is 24 million people, and I think they are all on the road at the same time. Traffic is something else. The road system is very good, wide multilane boulevards, many highways, but despite this traffic often crawls. Beijing is also crowded (not surprising) but has a host of large parks and gardens. There are also large areas that are uninhabited, partly because the mountains surrounding the main part of the city are not built up, and partly because there are rivers, electric pylon rights of way, etc. Strange to say it is only the third biggest city in China. Shanghai has a smaller area but has 25 million inhabitants. The largest of all is Chongqing at 33 million. However we more recently learned that these figures are a bit misleading. Beijing, Shanghai and Chongking are equivalent to provinces in terms of government and they are called municipalities. However a good proportion of the population in the municipalities is rural. So, for example Chongking has about 10 million living in the urban areas.
Haze and smog is justly famous. We witnessed it firsthand. Surprisingly, my allergies have been bothering me much less than usual.
Morris omitted to mention our visit to the snack market, which as its name indicates, sells snacks of all kinds. There are booths with vendors selling all kinds of meat on skewers, fruit drinks, nuts and various foods we did not recognize. Something we did recognize but decided to give it a miss were scorpions on a skewer. I kid you not! We knew they were super fresh from the way they wriggled! Once you chose your scorpions on the stick they would be barbecued right before your eyes! How fresh is that! Also served were thick worms and beetles- also barbecued! There was even a vendor selling huge spiders awaiting the same fate as the scorpions. Good thing we were so stuffed from supper or I might’ve tried some!
May 15th, Tuesday
Today we went to the Temple of Heaven. I forget its raison d’être but essentially it is a very big pagoda. They were preparing for some ceremony or other and were in the process of setting up pots and pots of roses. They were gorgeous, and there were so many of them that that alone was worth the price of admission. That’s another feature of Beijing- there are roses everywhere. The big streets are lined with roses. They must be millions of them, and all in bloom. It softened and beautified the streets.
In the afternoon we visited Tiananmen Square. Our guide made only passing comment about the massacre, only to say there was some trouble there. The square is huge, it can accommodate 1 million people. But apart from the open space and a relatively small garden there is nothing there.
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| Tiananmen Square and Gardens |
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| Forbidden City |
Morris left out the bit about being separated from the group- him not me! Our guide Risa generally holds up a stick with a little flag on it and we meet to get information. Then we have time to explore on our own. She forgot to put a flag up and took us off to the side to discuss some of the aspects of the Forbidden City. Morris stayed to take some photos and before he knew it we were gone. We spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out where he was before getting a frantic/irritated phone call from him. Hard to figure things out when all the buildings are the same shape and colour and the signs are in Chinese!
Close to the end of our visit to the Forbidden City we were standing in a square when all of a sudden some soldiers came along. They had a very long length of yellow ribbon or what looked like police tape to herd people toward the exits. Amazing how quickly they were able to do this. There must’ve been 1000 people in the Square. Just before the soldiers arrived to clear the square Ron and Mitchell had gone for a pit stop and we were worried that they would be separated from the group. There are so many people there that it would be easy to do. Eagle eyes Joan spotted them and screamed loud enough for them to hear her.
Later in the day we went on a short rickshaw ride through some of old Beijing. The streets are extremely narrow and the cars are parked on both sides leaving enough room for one-way traffic. There are wires running everywhere but somehow not as bad as in New Delhi. People don’t seem to throw anything out so there are piles of what looks like useable rubbish in everyone’s yard or entry.
We ate dinner prepared by a Chinese family. They set up tables and stools, fairly crowded together and then they served us in their home. The food kept coming out until we were all pretty stuffed. At the end of the meal the chef came out and saying a song to us. I think singing is very much a cultural thing and we have often heard groups of Chinese singing.
The 16th, Wednesday- Transfer to Shanghai, Sheraton Hotel
We really only had one day of sightseeing in Shanghai. Again it was hot. We did the obligatory Bund view of all the modern skyscrapers on one side of the river, with more colonial buildings on the other. We saw the Shanghai museum which had some interesting things to see, but overall Shanghai is not a tourist mecca.
It may not have much history because the city Shanghai is only 100 years old, but the buildings are spectacular! One reason we didn’t hear much about Shanghai is that the local guide from Shanghai decided to tell us all about herself and her family. While some of her personal information was interesting in terms of culture, we didn’t learn much about the city. The guide’s English name was Alice and she welcomed us into her Wonderland, Shanghai.
One interesting tidbit in terms of culture, is that the mother of the bride embroiders three silk quilts for the newly married couple. One is for the first year when they want to sleep close together, a second is for the second year when they want to be more comfortable and sleep each with their own quilt and the third is for the child to be.
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| Inside Shanghai museum |
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| Shanghai- The Bund area-very modern |
May 17, Friday
We were given free time but chose to take things easy. Morris worked on his pictures and work emails. Lilli and I went to the gym and pool. where we enjoyed the beautiful gym as well as the wonderful pool. Tonight we head for the Yangtze River for three days cruising.
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| Inside Shanghai Museum |
An annoyance to us, me especially is that the guide Risa suggested that we opt for the upgraded food package/diningroom which she said would be more comfortable, have more food choices and better service. As a result we were eating with Westerners but I would have like to eat in the same place as the Chinese tourists. On the other hand our dining room does seem a bit cooler and no one pushes and shoves the way our guide said the Chinese do. She is most likely right about that and I’m sure I would’ve been complaining if we ate in the other dining room.
We went on a number of tours. The first was Water Village which has been built up as an old village of the area, very much like the idea of Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto. People were dressed in traditional costume and enacted different aspects of daily life including a marriage scene. The setting was just spectacular and amongst beautiful trees, a stream and waterfall. What a terrific job they did! As a little bonus we saw some monkeys.
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| Water Village |
In the afternoon we went to the Three Gorges Dam site. They did a beautiful job of creating a place where people could come and learn about the dam project which took 24 years and employed about a 100,000 people. Another day we took a ferry to a smaller boat and sailed down the Wushan River to see the spectacular Goddess Gorge. In order to build the dam many areas had to be flooded and 100,000 people were displaced. People were offered the choice of moving to another city or into a village higher up at the mountain into a house complete with furniture. Every household also got a computer but they don’t have WIFI.
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Scenes from The Yangtze River |
Our guide, who lives in one of the mountain villages, had to walk one hour to get to the river where she took a small boat to reach land. (There are no roads where she lives.) She learned to speak English by watching TV and her English was really good! She was so informative and had a wonderful sense of humor. She was telling us that when her daughter is born the parents plant a tree in the yard. When their daughter gets married, they chop down the tree and make furniture for her as part of her dowry. She pointed to a really big tree on the mountain belonging to a family whose daughter never married!
On the third day of the trip we visited the Red Pagoda, a 500-year-old pagoda in very good shape. We had to walk through a town lined on both sides with vendors. There must’ve been over 100 shops all carrying similar items. You wonder how they make a living considering how much stock they have. However, they start off with prices that are about 5 to 10 times what they will settle for. It’s really a question of how much you are willing to spend. In any case, we crossed a very long suspension bridge and then had another climb to the top of the pagoda.
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| Red Pagoda |
May 22
Chongqing was next on the agenda-32,000,000 people -about the population of Canada. However, about 10 million live in the city proper and the rest are in the surrounding rural area. Chongqing means Mountain City because it is surrounded by spectacular mountains. There are almost no bicycles because the city is so steep. Things are transported by coolie in the same way they have been transported for eons. Wheels are not an advantage here!
We started with a visit to the zoo and the world-famous pandas. Although it was raining the pandas came out of their villas to play, walk around and eat their bamboo. They were really fun to watch as they somersaulted and then lay back enjoying their bamboo treats. There are only 3000 pandas, both in captivity and in the wild. The reason is that bamboo has been chopped down so there is not enough to eat. Pandas give birth to one baby at a time and may have 3 to 5 babies over a lifespan. Pandas in captivity lose their desired to reproduce. The zoo was definitely a highlight in spite of the pouring rain.
Our guide, Handsome David, pointed out his apartment overlooking the zoo, where he lives with his wife, son and parents. He talked about how the bridegroom’s parents move in with the young couple after their child is born. It is they who take care of the child so that the parents can go to work. The condos are small about 1000 ft.², somewhat small for five people according to our standards.
David said that there was a lot of conflict between his wife and mother, and he was often put in the middle but naturally he would have to take his mother’s side on account of respect.
Also noticeable, were the elderly park attendants chopping and bundling bamboo branches for the pandas. Everywhere we went we saw people, usually seniors, sweeping, picking up bits of rubbish-not much-and generally keeping the streets clean. As a matter of fact, everywhere we went in China, it was very clean!
Xi’an and Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum were next on the agenda and probably the highlight of the trip. Finally, we got to enjoy the terra-cotta warriors which we had previously seen in pictures and on TV. What a thrill! In 1974 some local farmers were drilling for a well when the first pit of the terra-cotta warriors was unearthed. An archeological dig was begun almost immediately and it is believed that 6000 Warriors will be dug up before everything is unearthed. Unfortunately, these beautiful life-sized warriors were broken and had to be painstakingly reconstructed over the last 40 years. There was only one warrior which was found intact and it is now protected in a glass display case.
Each breathtaking warrior has a different face and clothing. The soldiers are all very tall averaging 6 feet in height. They were made that way on purpose because they would be stronger and more fierce looking so as to better protect the emperor in the afterlife.
Their heads, legs and arms are hollow and were made by coiling clay. The bottom of the legs are solid for stability. The warriors were glazed in colour but now 2000 years later most of the colour is gone. Archeologists continue to work reassembling the Warriors on site where visitors can watch from a distance.
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| Terra Cotta Warriors |
In the evening we went for a dumpling banquet-16 different dumplings some in animal shapes-duck, pig, fish, owl… they looked better than they tasted for the most part. After that we had dancers in full costume who put on a show, very much a tourist destination. It was OK.
May 24-trip almost over!
We departed from Xi’an to Luoyan by high speed bullet train.
We visited the Luoyang Grottoes which is a UNESCO site. We saw the Shaolin Temple, birthplace of Kung Fu and of Buddhism in China. There was a wonderful display of Kung Fu by students. Our return to Beijing was by bullet train with speeds up to 302 km per hour.
One of the interesting facts we learned from our guide, is that there is no private ownership of land in China. Condos are built by private companies and bought by individuals. Apartments are theirs for only 70 years and then they will have to wait-and-see. It is up to the government to decide what will happen next. (Now we know why the Chinese are so anxious to buy property outside China. They buy it and it’s theirs for as long as they want). They pay about 10,000 yuan ($2000) per square metre. Apartments come as a roughed in box with roughed in water and electricity. The rest is up to the buyers. That includes the walls, the floors, kitchen cabinets, etc.
All in all, we had an amazing trip. We got to see so much and enjoyed the company of old and new friends. We would recommend the tour company but found out they are going out of business!!!
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| Motorcycle with child seat! Not quite North American standards |
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| Dinner aboard riverboat |
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