CHINA
ROBERT & ROBIN CHARLTON
APRIL 2006
Welcome to China!
We go on a rare “group trip” for three weeks with China Focus Travel, led by our delightful guide Tony (inset photo).
We visit eight modern Chinese cities—Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Xi’an, Guilin, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai.
We spend three days cruising the Yangtze River and get a taste of rural China that makes us hungry for more.
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Beijing
Summer Palace
Our first full day in China is a big one—we see the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City all
in one day. The Summer Palace is packed with Chinese tourists, each tour group wearing its own distinctive colors.
We like the fanciful lions bracketing the entranceways to buildings at the Summer Palace. The male “grins” toothily,
right paw resting on a pomegranate, symbol of power. The female gives milk to her cub—through her claw!
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Beijing
Tiananmen Square
This is by far the most Communist-feeling place we visit in China. Guards stand with military erectness near the
red flag, plainclothes security personnel wander the square, and Chairman Mao stares benignly down at you.
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Beijing
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City, home to 24 emperors, is said to contain 9,999 rooms. Our favorite thing is wandering into some of
the less-visited side courtyards where all is quiet and you get a sense of the majesty and serenity of the place.
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Beijing
The Forbidden City (continued)
The Palace of Heavenly Peace—the centerpiece of the Forbidden City—is covered in scaffolding as Beijing
prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics, but many other buildings are freshly painted and incredibly beautiful.
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Beijing
The Great Wall
Just standing on the Great Wall gives us the shivers. We’ve always wanted to see it—and here we are! We climb
past hundreds of “love locks” placed there by couples who threw away the keys to lock their love together forever.
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Beijing
Historic Hutong
Okay, maybe it’s a bit touristy, like taking a gondola ride through Venice, but our rickshaw ride is undeniably fun.
We pass through the narrow streets of one of old Beijing’s few remaining low-rise neighborhoods, called hutongs.
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Beijing
Tian-Tan Park in Beijing
To see what the Chinese do for fun, go to a city park. Men and women perform tai chi, dance the tango, practice
slow-motion sword exercises with real swords, perform rhythmic gymnastics with long colorful ribbons, hold
impromptu musical concerts, and enjoy tai chi ball (which we try and discover is not as easy as it looks).
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Beijing
Temple of Heaven
The slightly raised dais on which Robin is standing is where the Emperor stood each winter solstice to pray for
bounteous harvests. It’s irresistible to stand on this spot. For a moment you imagine yourself emperor of all China.
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Wuhan
City of Wuhan
Fields of rapeseed (canola) bloom outside the city, resulting in marvelous swathes of bright yellow flowers
The centerpiece of Wuhan Provincial Museum is an amazing set of 65 bronze bells—still playable—from the 5th C. BC
That evening we wander down an irresistible side alley brimming over with steaming woks and all sorts of dumplings, noodles, and meat dishes being cooked right out on the street. We’re definitely way off the tourist path.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Three Gorges Dam
The Chinese do everything on a grand scale. They’re proud of the fact that the “Mega-dam” is the largest in the world.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Yangtze River Cruise
Half the fun of the next four days is the “bonus” activities like tai chi in the morning, mah jongg in the afternoon,
and fan dances in the evening—but we also spend a good deal of time up on deck enjoying the misty river scenery.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Yangtze River Cruise (continued)
Despite the rise in water levels (250 feet so far, another 250 feet by 2009), the scenery along the Yangtze is lovely.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Shennongxi Stream
The excursion we take up a tributary of the Yangtze is one of the highlights of our trip. Four oarsmen and one
captain in each large wooden sampan row us upriver against the current. When the water becomes shallower, the
oarsmen clamber out and pull the sampan by brute force upstream, as they have traditionally done for centuries.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Shennongxi Stream (continued)
Back at the dock after our excursion, men play cards on board their wooden vessels and rest amongst coils of rope.
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Yangtze River Cruise
Fengdu Ghost City
Fengdu is a picture-taker’s paradise filled with lovely courtyards, blooming trees, white curving bridges, carved
statues of laughing demons and gargoyles, golden Buddhas, burning incense, and brightly painted temples
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Yangtze River Cruise
Fengdu Ghost City (continued)
The “City of Ghosts” combines facets of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Since Han times it has been said
that “the dead come to Fengdu and the devils go to hell.” The stele at bottom says, “Only kindness brings peace.”
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Yangtze River Cruise
City of Chongqing
You can’t come all the way to China and not see pandas. We see six of the cuties—and lots of cute kids too.
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Xi’an
City of Xi’an
Xi’an is the home of our guide Tony, and the enthusiasm he brings to sharing it with us is touching. “I love this city!” he
says. “It is home to 73 emperors and 13 dynasties and enjoys fame on a par with Athens, Cairo, and Rome as one of
the four major ancient civilization capitals.” We find its people friendly and universally proud of the city they call home.
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Xi’an
City of Xi’an (continued)
Robin gets a shoeshine (25 cents) from the shoeshine lady in a parking lot near our hotel, attracting a good deal of
attention from the locals. The shoeshiner is happily surprised when Robin asks to have her picture taken with her.
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Xi’an
Terracotta Warriors
The 2,200-year-old terracotta warriors were discovered by accident in 1974 by farmers digging a well. The museum
has been built in situ—on top of the actual discovery site. Pit Number 1 is the largest—it contains 6,000 life-size
terracotta warriors and horses in battle formation—rank upon rank facing east towards an unknown enemy.
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Xi’an
Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Show
We dine on a delicious dumpling dinner featuring 18 different kinds of dumplings, followed by a traditional Tang
Dynasty show. The costumes and sets are lovely and the dancing is elegant. One man plays a flute that sounds
like a songbird in the frenzy of courtship. Another plays an amusing trumpet-like instrument that sounds like a duck.
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Xi’an
Xi’an City Wall
Built during the Ming Dynasty, this is the most complete city wall that has survived in China. It stands 40 feet tall, 40
feet wide, and is nearly nine miles in length. “In my ten years of leading tour groups,” Tony announces, “these four
are the first to have made it all the way around the entire wall. Even I haven’t done this, and I’m from Xi’an.”
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Xi’an
Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Our visit to this holy place is made memorable by the Buddhist monks with shaved heads and orange robes chanting inside. We also watch as a father shows his delighted young daughter how to light her first incense candle.
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Guilin
City of Guilin
Guilin is best known for the karst limestone hills that surround the city like dragons’ teeth. Guilin has always been
one of the two sites most visited by Chinese tourists because of its stunning natural beauty (Hangzhou is the other).
On a spur of the Li River within the city, we come across a little river community of sampan houseboats clustered
together. At the water’s edge is this woman mending fishing nets; she speaks no English but her smile says plenty.
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Guilin
Kindergarten in Guilin
Chinese kids are so cute! A short visit to a local Chinese kindergarten brings smiles to all our faces.
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Guilin
Guilin Park
This lovely park is like something out of a dream of China.
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Guilin
Solitary Beauty Peak, Reed Flute Cave, & Cormorant Fishing
Solitary Beauty Peak is a 500-foot-high limestone peak in the center of the city. Spiraling stone steps take us to the
top, and the panoramic views make it worth the effort. That’s me (below left) doing my Coke promo at the summit.
Of the 3,200 caves in and around Guilin, Reed Flute Cave is the most famous. A lovely and mysterious tarn
in a cavern called the Crystal Palace, filled with soft blue lighting, is the highlight of the tour.
(Left) Impromptu parade on a college campus in Guilin, complete with brilliant red Chinese flags. (Right) After
the sun sets, we go on a half-hour excursion to see cormorant fishing, a traditional mode of fishing in China.
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Guilin
Seven Star Park
Near the park entrance we meet a large group of school kids. One of their teachers approaches and asks if the kids
can have their pictures taken with us. “Sure!” we say, and the kids swarm all over us with smiles and hellos.
This picture (top right) is one of my favorites because of the expressions on the faces of the kids touching the big
guy’s belly. The big guy is Bob from our group; he has a handlebar mustache and a round Santa-Claus face. The
Chinese absolutely love him. Teens want to have their picture taken with him, kids come up and pat his belly, and
even adults shyly call him “laughing Buddha” in reference to the fat, jolly Buddha statues you see in Buddhist
temples. Fortunately, Bob is the kind of guy who laughs at all this and gets as much pleasure from it as they do.
Kids cram in front of the camera and adopt all sorts of kung-fu poses; they love seeing the results on the LCD screen.
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Guilin
Li River Cruise
We cruise down the Li River on a misty morning—perfect conditions for this experience. A particularly fun aspect of
the trip is the “pirates” who board our ship, paddling furiously to pull their sampans alongside to try and sell us stuff.
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Yangshuo
Yangshuo Bike Ride
This is my favorite day in China—the Li River cruise followed by a bike ride on our own through idyllic countryside.
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Yangshuo
Yangshuo Bike Ride (continued)
Limestone mountains rise up close at hand all around us, while half-drowned fields of rice stretch out on either side
of the road. We buy a handmade wreath of flowers from a roadside vendor which Robin wears the rest of the day.
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Yangshuo
Yulong River Bamboo Rafting
Here’s the icing on the cake—bamboo rafting through the Chinese countryside. Not part of our original plan, but who
can resist a bamboo raft with a lounge chair? Our bikes are loaded onto the back and off we go, past lovely green
mountains reflected in calm waters. All we hear is the drip-splash of water as the poler slowly pushes us along.
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Yangshuo
Yulong River Bamboo Rafting (continued)
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Hangzhou
West Lake
On the rainiest day of our trip, we board a dragon boat for a tour of this most famous of all Chinese lakes. It’s misty
and gray out, as so many scroll paintings depict. Lovely willows and flowering trees overhang the lake’s borders.
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Hangzhou
Hangzhou Gardens
It seems as if every tree and flower is in bloom in Hangzhou’s gardens, a definite advantage of a springtime visit.
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Hangzhou
Qing Dynasty Shopping Street
What to us is exotic and picture-worthy along this quaint pedestrian street is just a part of everyday life to the Chinese.
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Hangzhou
Tea Plantation
Pickers gathering tea leaves at plantations like this one work fast but may earn less than a dollar for a day’s work.
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Suzhou
City of Suzhou
Suzhou is called the Venice of the East for all its canals. We’re treated to a short boat tour of the main canal.
Afterwards we stroll down a side alley brimming with food stalls and vegetable stands. We stand out like sore
thumbs. Many people say “Hello!” (their only word of English) and smile and laugh when we say “Ni hao!” back.
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Suzhou
Garden of the Fishing Net Master
Many consider this the best example of a traditional Chinese garden in all of China. Every window offers a
new perspective. I particularly like the beautifully carved window framing a stand of live bamboo (front cover).
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Suzhou
Suzhou Silk Spinning Factory
th
Clacking machines with a 19 century feel to them process the cocoons, individually unwrapping each cocoon’s
one long strand. Feeling a single strand between your fingers really brings home how delicate yet strong silk is.
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Suzhou
Tongli Water Town
Fifteen rivers meander through this small, charming town near Suzhou, with forty-nine historic bridges crossing them.
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Suzhou
Tongli Water Town (continued)
We enjoy the unhurried pace of Tongli, its outdoor restaurants lining the water, its narrow brick-paved alleyways.
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Shanghai
City of Shanghai
Our three-week tour ends in the great city of Shanghai. We stroll past chic shops on Nanjing Road, see an acrobatic
show, and make a special trip to sample Shanghai’s “xiaolongbao” dumplings—the most delicious we’ve ever tasted.
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Shanghai
The Bund
The classical buildings of the Bund contrast sharply with the ultra-modern Oriental Pearl Tower and Jinmao Tower
in Pudong across the Huangpu River. Amazingly, Pudong was a marshy undeveloped area just ten years ago.
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Shanghai
Shanghai Museum
This beautiful museum displays sophisticated Chinese bronzes and porcelains dating back over 4,000 years.
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Not for the Faint of Heart…
Chinese “eat everything with four legs except the table.” How about a nice plate of frogs, grasshoppers, and scorpions
roasted and skewered on sticks? Or a tasty pig’s face? China can push the limits of even the most daring gourmet.
There’s nothing like a dead snake fermenting in a bottle of rice wine to add punch to your drink. Robin gets to experience the joys of Chinese-style squat toilets. We both get to experience a screechy over-amplified Chinese opera.
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TRIP TO CHINA
March 24 – April 15, 2006
After 21 days in China, we come away with a sense of
the vastness of the country and the incredible disparity
of wealth between the modern cities and the rural
countryside. Men wearing tailored suits and toting cell
phones make a sharp contrast with rice farmers just a
few miles away who are up to their knees in mud,
wearing traditional straw hats, guiding plows behind
water buffalo, and accustomed to making 8 yuan (US
$1) a day.
We see eight modern Chinese cities—Beijing, Wuhan,
Chongqing, Xi’an, Guilin, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and
Shanghai—and get a taste of rural China that makes
us hungry for more. We’re fortunate to visit in early
spring when the Chinese countryside is ablaze with
yellow fields of canola and the city gardens bloom with
flowering fruit trees. A three-day cruise down the
Yangtze River is a highlight of the trip. So is climbing
the Great Wall and seeing the Terracotta Warriors.
Cycling all the way around Xi’an’s city wall in less than
an hour is a challenge I won’t forget. And taking a lastminute taxi ride on our final evening in China to try
Shanghai’s famous xiaolongbao dumplings is one of
those small but wonderful experiences that stays with
you forever. But my personal favorite is bamboo rafting
down the Yulong River in southeastern China. Just
getting there involves an adventurous bicycle ride
through the Chinese countryside, and the reward is
magnificent views and utter serenity as you drift down
a peaceful stretch of river.
So now, as the travelogues are fond of saying, sit back
and relax as we take you on an armchair journey
through China as it looks to us in the Spring of 2006.
March 24 (Fri) – Denver to San Francisco. This
“bonus day” doesn’t count as an official day on our
itinerary but makes for a relaxing start to our trip. We
arrive at the San Francisco airport around 3 pm and
catch the free shuttle to the Marriott Airport Hotel. It’s
raining, so we relax on couches in the hotel’s lobby,
sip white wine, and enjoy the view from the wall-to-wall
picture windows. Jumbo international jets take off and
land, a faint rainbow arcs over the bay, and sandpipers
and egrets peck at the wide, water-soaked shore.
When the rain pauses, we take a short stroll along the
bay on a cement trail with flowering plants, passing
several restaurants but returning to our own hotel for
dinner, in part from the concern that it might start
raining again at any moment (which it does). We have
corn chowder for dinner and share a half bottle of red
wine. Then we settle into our room with its comfy kingsize bed, sleep for ten hours, and awake refreshed
and ready to start our adventure.
March 25-26 (Sat-Sun) – Flight to Beijing. Breakfast
in bed—scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon,
blueberry muffins, fresh orange juice, and tea—starts
our day off right. We take the complimentary shuttle to
the airport and off we go. Well, more precisely, off we
go to wait in line for several hours. But this gives us a
chance to get to know some of the other people in our
China Focus tour group. There are actually two groups
of China Focus travelers on the same plane, the one
group going on a two-week tour and the other on a
three-week tour. Those in the other group have stars
on their name badges. Despite our lack of stars, we
privately congratulate ourselves on having picked the
“Trip of a Lifetime” three-week tour that trumps all
other China Focus tours. Not too surprisingly, most of
the 33 people in our group are older than us and
retired, as not many people our age can afford to take
three weeks off from work, family, and responsibility.
Twelve hours straight is a long time on a plane. We
stand behind our seats and stretch our legs once or
twice for twenty minutes at a time, but otherwise we sit
and endure, practicing our Chinese phrases (“Hi, how
are you? I’m very well, thank you, and you? I’m fine
too, thanks. Good-bye!”)
We meet our national guide, Tony, after picking up our
luggage. His real name is Lu Wei but he says Tony is
easier for most Americans, and besides, it was the
name he was given when studying English in college.
He is affable and speaks excellent English. He wears
glasses and has a roundish face and black hair that
spikes up ever so slightly. He’s clearly intelligent and
also one of those instantly likable people you are
immensely relieved to discover is going to be your tour
guide for the next three weeks.
By the time we leave the airport, it’s dark outside and
just a bit cool. We board the thoroughly modern bus
and begin the drive through the city. Our first impression of Beijing at night is that it feels like home; the
highways, buildings, and lights make it feel like any
major American city—Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia—except that the neon signs are all in Chinese.
Beijing is home to 18 million people (registered; no
one knows how many unregistered people may live
here) and so it inevitably suffers with traffic jams,
smog, and urban sprawl. No less than six ring roads
circle the city, with more in the works. Our hotel, the
Central Garden Hotel, is located near the third ring
road in northwest-central Beijing.
It is 9 pm when we arrive, although internally it feels
like 3 am. It’s a relief to get to our rooms and see nice
double beds with clean linens waiting for us. We get a
laugh out of some of the signs posted in English.
“Please do not take the watermelon into your room”
one notice says. Our favorite is the sign placed
carefully on top of the bowl of fancy lotions and bath
oils in the bathroom saying “Uncomplimentary”—their
way of letting us know these items aren’t for free.
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The room is comfortable and Western feeling. Hot
running water, flush toilets, television with 69 cable
channels (more than we get at home), comfy beds,
morning wakeup calls (delivered in a clipped “It is time
for you to wake up now”), hair dryer, aerial view of
Beijing from our 16th floor window, and even a doorbell
that the bellhop rings when he delivers our luggage.
We’re far from roughing it. We spend a few minutes
flipping channels on Chinese TV, curious as to what
we’ll see. All except one (an English news channel)
are in Chinese. Many run amusing game shows, like
the one with the contestant who runs lightly over a row
of eight basketballs without touching the ground
(shown again in slo-mo). There are many romantic
soap operas set in historic times, two Chinese operas
with clanging cymbals and high-pitched singing, and
two video music channels that remind us of MTV in the
days when MTV still played music. By 10 pm we’re too
tired to stay awake any longer and fall into bed for a
deep night’s sleep.
March 27 (Mon) – Summer Palace, Tiananmen
Square, Forbidden City
This is our first real day in China and it’s a big one. We
see the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the
Forbidden City all in one day. We wake up early (for
us) at 6:30 am, refreshed and ready to take on China.
Breakfast is buffet style and offers both Chinese and
American dishes. Corn flakes, fried eggs over easy,
and sausages vie for attention with pork-filled buns,
egg rolls, fried noodles, and soy milk. We sit at a
communal table with others from our group, notably
Bob and Tony, an amusing pair who have already
started making purchases from the hotel gift shop and
don’t stop buying stuff until the plane leaves Chinese
soil twenty-one days later. Before long we all begin to
refer to this Bob as “Shopper Bob.”
The first stop on our itinerary is the Summer Palace.
Unfortunately, our first day in China is anything but
summery. It’s cold and blustery—the coldest day of
our trip. We’re not exactly shivering but we’re not
exactly comfortable either. The chill has done nothing
to diminish the crowds: the place is packed. Tony tells
us this is nothing, that in the height of the tourist
season it is wall-to-wall people. It seems pretty wall-towall to me already, at least in the main courtyard. Most
of the tourists are Chinese traveling in groups. Each
group wears the same color hats and jackets, which
we find amusing and totally un-American in its conformity. But they certainly make for pretty pictures in their
own right in their bright swathes of reds, whites, and
yellows.
“Shopper Bob” makes his first purchase (chopsticks)
before he’s barely off the bus. Later on, when our
guide Tony sees Shopper Bob examining some cheap
T-shirts being sold by a street vendor, he tells him,
“We have a saying about this kind of shirt: ‘Wash it
once—for child; wash it twice—for pet.’”
Most of what we see at the Summer Palace is outdoor
gardens and courtyards. The rock gardens contain
pockmarked, twisted rocks from the West Lake that
are highly prized by the Chinese for their “character.”
The courtyard buildings have colorfully painted eaves
that turn up at the corners in that quintessentially
Chinese way. Our local Beijing tour guide, a friendly
and informative woman named Wen, finds a relatively
quiet corner for our tour group and gives a long talk on
the Empress Dowager Cixi and the last emperor, Puyi.
I listen with half an ear but spend most of my time
wandering around in a nearby courtyard, empty of
people for the moment, enjoying the peace and
serenity.
Robin and I like the baroque lions bracketing the
entranceways to buildings at the Summer Palace (and
throughout China). The male “grins” toothily, his right
paw resting on a pomegranate, symbol of power, while
the female holds a cub under her left paw as if she’s
about to crush him—but in fact she’s giving milk to her
baby through her claw! Since lions didn’t exist in
ancient China, the Chinese didn’t always get things
quite right about them. The statues are fanciful and
amusing—a cross between a ferocious lion and a
playful dog. (They’re sometimes called “foo dogs.”)
There is a beautiful covered walkway that extends
along the lake at the Summer Palace, but unfortunately it is under construction and covered over with a
tarp. This turns out to be true for several key sights in
the Beijing area—for instance, the Palace of Heavenly
Peace at the Forbidden City and the nearby Temple of
Heaven—as they prepare the city for the 2008
Summer Olympics. On the plus side, other buildings
and corridors at these same tourist sights are freshly
painted and incredibly beautiful.
After a brisk walk along the lake, we come to the
famous marble boat that Empress Cixi is said to have
built using funds earmarked for military defense. I’ve
read that the marble pier was actually already in place
and all she did was add the faux-marble superstructure and the marble paddle wheel, so while it’s a bit of
a boondoggle, it’s a pretty one that has drawn tourists
ever since.
It’s inevitable that our tour group spends some time
shopping. After our visit to the Summer Palace, we
attend a freshwater pearl demonstration at a store with
an ultra-perky young saleswoman named Rainbow.
She gives a well-rehearsed spiel, cuts open a freshwater oyster, and asks us to guess how many freshwater
pearls are inside before showing us the contents. We
guess too low—there are actually more than thirty
small pearls inside, quite a difference from the single
pearl typically found inside a sea oyster. Rainbow’s
over-the-top sales pitch reminds me of those “But wait!
There’s more!” Veg-O-Matic TV ads of the 70’s. As I
wander through the store, salespeople rush over as
soon as I pause or show the slightest interest in a
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product. A saleswomen hovers right behind me as I
walk along. Is she afraid I might steal something? No,
she’s just trying to be helpful, but it makes me uncomfortable. Not that this doesn’t happen in the U.S. too,
but most stores nowadays give you a little space to
look at your leisure. One thing we almost buy, from a
display of Western names rendered in calligraphy, is
the name “Robin” in Mandarin Chinese, the syllables
of which translate as “Net Baby.”
After a tasty buffet lunch next to the pearl store, and a
visit to the “happy house” (a Chinese euphemism for
the bathroom), our bus takes us to Tiananmen Square.
It’s cold and breezy. I wear my raingear as an extra
layer under my microfleece jacket, which helps a lot.
We also purchase wool caps with 2008 Beijing
Olympics logos for a dollar apiece from the “hello
people,” the Chinese name for street vendors selling to
foreign tourists.
Tiananmen Square is the largest urban square in the
world. Even on a cold day like today there are many
Chinese tourists, but the size of the place—over 100
acres—swallows them up. Quite a number are lined up
to see Mao’s well-preserved corpse in his aboveground tomb. Tiananmen Square is by far the most
Communist-feeling part of China we visit. Guards in
uniform stand with military erectness near the red flag
of China which flutters high up on a pole. Numerous
plainclothes security personnel wander the square,
identifiable by the cord dangling from their ear, a
certain forbidding look to their eyes, and the stern way
they carry themselves. This would not be the place to
call out “Free Tibet!” As Tony told us while we were
still on the bus, Tiananmen Square is a particularly
sensitive place and unique in China for the level of
security that is maintained. Anyone speaking out or
trying to start a rally here is immediately carted off.
Tony and Wen both speak with incredible freedom
about every issue and question we throw at them while
on the bus and even while on public tour, including
questions about the Tiananmen Square massacre
itself—but Tony cautions us about asking such
questions here.
As you walk across this parking-lot-like expanse, your
eye is inevitably drawn to the huge portrait of Chairman Mao on the entrance gate to the Forbidden City—
the Gate of Heavenly Peace. We walk towards this
picture until Mao peers benevolently down upon us.
What a strange juxtaposition to have Mao looking
down from the gate that used to house the emperors
of China.
We walk through an underpass to avoid the stream of
cars above and find ourselves at the front gate of the
Forbidden City. “Gate” may give the wrong idea, since
the gate is more like an elaborate red-painted building
with a tunnel-like entrance through the middle. We
pass through a series of grandiose gates and enormous courtyards that served as the home of 24
Chinese emperors between 1420 and 1911. I won’t go
into detail here since you can read about the Forbidden City in any number of books, but my overall
impression is of lovely tiled golden roofs and an
incredible attention to detail. Every stone post is
beautifully carved, and the wooden beams that
crisscross the ceilings of the covered walkways are
intricately painted in multiple colors. Many of the side
corridors have been freshly painted in preparation for
the 2008 Olympics and are stunningly crisp and
beautiful. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the centerpiece of the Forbidden City, is completely covered in
scaffolding. It’s clear that the Chinese are working
feverishly to get everything looking spiffy by 2008.
We’re given plenty of time to explore the hidden nooks
and crannies inside this enormous series of buildings,
said to contain 9,999 rooms. Our favorite thing is
wandering into some of the less-visited side corridors
and courtyards where all is quiet and you can get a
sense of the majesty and serenity of the place. We find
some lovely empty courtyards to wander in, and can
almost feel the ghost of Puyi, last emperor of China,
wandering through them with us.
Dinner is served that evening at tables for ten with a
rotating lazy Susan in the middle. There is no lack of
food—they just keep bringing more and more entrees
until there is no way we could finish it all. Around and
around the lazy Susan goes as each diner rotates it to
get to their favorite dish. Ours is the pork cutlets with
crunchy-sweet breading and the pumpkin dipped in
egg coating. Most of us eat with chopsticks even
though forks are provided. For me, using chopsticks is
like going on a diet since I can’t eat as much or as fast
as I usually would. Every once in awhile I switch to a
fork when some pesky bamboo shoot or slippery bok
choy refuses to allow itself to be picked up. It’s hard for
me to mix flavors with chopsticks since I can only grab
one thing at a time, so it’s a taste of beef followed by a
taste of veggie followed by a taste of rice, but rarely all
at the same time unless I get lucky.
Other than the cold weather, we’re very pleased with
our first tour day in China. We are given lots of time to
see the key sights, and Wen keeps the bus rides
interesting with her discussions on contemporary
China. Like Tony, she speaks very good English and
tells interesting stories about growing up in China
during the Cultural Revolution. She is very free about
expressing her frustrations with Chairman Mao. “I think
the only thing he got right was giving equal rights to
men and women,” she says. Even the sandstorms that
periodically blanket Beijing are Mao’s fault according
to Wen. She tells us that during his leadership, Mao
contended that humans could (and should) mold the
environment to their wishes, so he assigned workers
to farm the dry northern grasslands. These farms
inevitably failed, the grasslands turned to dust, and
that dust now periodically blows down on Beijing.
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It’s been a full day and we’re tired by the time we get
back to the hotel at 7:30 pm. We recharge our camera
batteries, e-mail our families to let them know we’re
well, and go to bed by 9:30 pm. Tomorrow is another
big day—the Great Wall!
March 28 (Tue) – Great Wall, Historic Hutong,
Peking Duck
On this morning—which is blessedly sunny and
warm—we climb the Great Wall as high as it will let us
go. We’re at the Juyongguan Pass area of the Great
Wall, picturesque but not as crowded as the more
famous Badaling area. We take a group picture at the
base and are given an hour-and-a-half to explore the
Great Wall on our own. After a quick “happy house”
break, Robin and I start hiking. Almost immediately we
come across an interesting sight—hundreds of
padlocks attached to chains that run along the
righthand side of the wall. These “love locks” signify
everlasting marriage; each lock is placed there by a
young couple who throws away the key in the hopes
that their love will be locked together forever.
Just standing on the Great Wall gives us the shivers.
It’s just one of those things we felt we had to do in our
lives—and here we are! “I think I’m gonna cry,” Robin
says. The lowest portion is the steepest. Each stair is
a big step, so it’s a good workout. About a quarter of
the way up, we stop and quietly sing happy birthday to
Robin’s mom while a train whistle blows in the valley
far below.
We start pushing harder, aware that our time is limited
and determined to make it to the top. We share
company with another couple in our group named
John and Rita from Utah. Even though they’re older
than us, they’re obviously in great shape. John starts
up before us and never stops, so he remains ahead of
us the whole way. Every once in awhile we pause to
catch our breath at one of the seven watchtowers. Rita
keeps pace with us the whole way up. The steps
become more shallow as we near the top, even turning
into ramps in places. At last, after some hard slogging,
we reach the seventh and final watchtower. The
Juyongguan section of the Great Wall ends at this
watchtower, so there’s no further to go. We’ve made it!
We climb ladder-like steps inside the tower to get to
the top of the tower itself and look down at the wall
curving picturesquely below us. The people just
starting their climb look like ants from up here. It’s a
perfect day, warm and sunny, with clear blue skies.
Robin and I go down together, just the two of us,
taking our time, exploring some of the stone watchtowers we hiked past on the way up. We see several
people from our group still heading up, lamenting the
fact they won’t have enough time to make it all the way
to the top (only eight people from our group do). By the
time Robin and I reach the bottom-most stretch of the
Wall, the place has become much more crowded with
tourists. We realize how lucky we were to start early
and get to the top while it was still uncrowded. Back at
our beginning point, we drink cold Cokes as a reward
and relax as the rest of our group trickles in.
We take the bus back to Beijing. It’s more than an hour
but it passes quickly as Wen keeps us entertained.
She shows us how to count to ten the Chinese way—
with one hand. She also teaches us a few elementary
Chinese characters. We’re pleased to learn that the
Chinese symbols for the United States translate as
“beautiful country.” The symbols for their own country
mean “Middle Kingdom.” We quickly develop a
newfound respect for any Chinese youngster faced
with learning all of these complex symbols.
“It sometimes seems to us that only the elderly are
truly happy,” Wen tells us. “Chinese children and
teenagers are too busy studying, and adults are too
busy making a living, so it’s only the elderly who have
time to enjoy life.” Teenagers apparently study nearly
every waking hour because it’s very competitive to get
into senior high school and college. Only a third of
students make it to college (it used to be even less,
only ten percent). Wen laments the long study hours of
students and the pressure put on them from parents
and teachers. She is a parent herself and says she
can’t seem to help herself from putting the same kind
of pressure on her own teenage daughter. She tells us
that grades 1-9 are free but after that parents have to
pay for their child’s further education.
After lunch, we drive to one of the few remaining old
neighborhoods in Beijing that has survived intact,
untouched by the high-rise apartments, skyscrapers,
shopping malls, and wide city streets that have taken
over the rest of Beijing. This maze of crooked streets
and low-rise homes is called a hutong, and Beijing
used to consist of hundreds of them. Now there are
only a handful left.
We begin our historic hutong tour with a visit to a local
kindergarten. After a brief stop in a pleasant courtyard
surrounded by low school buildings, we’re ushered into
a classroom full of cute five and six year olds. They
sing us a nursery rhyme song and shyly invite us to
dance with them. Mehdi, a member of our tour group
who comes from Iran, makes great friends with them
when he tosses them above his head and dances a jig
with them as they crowd around laughing. In another
classroom with slightly older kids, the children shyly
hand us drawings they’ve just completed, then return
to their desks and continue their studies. The kids
seem well-behaved and happy, and it’s not too hard to
believe that China will give the U.S. a run for its money
in the not-so-distant future with so many of these
smart kids coming of age.
After the kindergarten tour, we’re ushered onto
rickshaws. This is a part of the China Focus tour I
didn’t know about. Okay, maybe it’s a bit touristy—like
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taking a gondola ride through Venice—but it’s undeniably fun. Our rickshaw driver is a shy young man
who seats us in a yellow rickshaw and places a
colorful red blanket on our laps. He begins to pull us
along, part of a rickshaw convoy that makes its way
through the narrow streets of the hutong. We pass a
jumble of small homes and see many young Chinese
making their way through the streets on bicycle. In a
small park at the edge of a lake, we get a glimpse of
people practicing tai chi, playing hacky-sack, stretching, exercising, and ballroom dancing.
We turn a corner and come to what feels like the
center of the hutong. It’s a busy intersection with only
a few cars and lots of rickshaws and bicycles. We
cross over a curved bridge. Men are there to help our
rickshaw driver pull the rickshaw up and over the
bridge. We get a tantalizing glimpse of outdoor woks,
bars, colorful shops, lively people, and then we’re past
the intersection and back to quieter streets.
Our driver stops in a narrow lane behind a line of
parked rickshaws. We climb out and are ushered into
a traditional hutong home. It’s very small; fitting thirtythree people into the tiny living room is pushing it, but
we all manage to crowd inside and get a chance to
see what a traditional house looks like. The woman of
the house is there to answer any questions we may
have. She speaks little or no English so Tony translates for her. We learn that her husband’s family has
lived in this house for three generations and that their
extended family live in the other houses connected to
the same courtyard. Someone asks if they have pets.
Yes, a small Pekinese dog as well as a cricket. She
passes around the very large cricket which resides in a
small wooden cage. Her husband also keeps doves as
a hobby, she says, but she has recently limited the
number he can keep because they make such a mess.
We get a quick tour of the rest of the home, passing
through a small kitchen where dinner is being cooked,
a reasonably sized bedroom (with a personal computer), and a courtyard with a garden.
Back in our rickshaw, we sit for awhile waiting for the
rest of the group. “Hello people” try to sell us stuff. I
suggest to Robin she may want to give some of the
extra lipstick and cosmetics she brought along with her
to the vendors who are female. So the next one who
comes by gets a surprise when we offer her some
makeup as a gift. “Lipin” (“gift”) we say. “Me?” she
says in astonishment. “Thank you!” She seems very
pleased, and our rickshaw driver smiles and gives us a
thumbs up. We pass out more cosmetics before our
rickshaw ride resumes. Eventually we return to where
we began. We tip our driver handsomely and also give
him a Yao Ming basketball card that seems to baffle
him. He’s still staring at it as we walk away. Hopefully
one of his fellow rickshaw drivers knows more about
this world-famous Chinese basketball star than he
does.
That evening we’re treated to a special Peking duck
dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in Beijing. A
chef cuts the duck into thin slices tableside. The
waitress demonstrates how we’re supposed to eat it.
She takes a thin “pancake,” uses her chopsticks to add
several pieces of duck (dipped first in hoisin sauce),
puts some thinly sliced onions on top, rolls it up, and
hands it to me to try. Delicious! What I like even better
is the duck by itself with the hoisin sauce. Especially
memorable is the crispy skin, which tastes like the
perfectly cooked sizzled-fat ends of bacon. It’s
amazingly tasty but hardly qualifies as diet food.
As I’m eating, I find myself admiring a beautiful handpainted black-and-white scroll up on the restaurant
wall depicting bamboo leaves. Since the art is for sale
here, I ask the price and am told $50 US. Shopper Bob
comes to the rescue and helps me purchase it for $20
US. It’s the one personal gift I bring back from China.
March 29 (Wed) – Temple of Heaven, Fly Beijing to
Wuhan
Our day begins with a bus ride to the Temple of
Heaven in southeastern Beijing. Rush-hour traffic is
bad so it takes a while, but Wen keeps the ride
interesting. She tells us China has more than a
hundred thousand vehicle fatalities a year—the
highest per-car fatality rate of any nation in the world.
In part, this is due to drivers’ lack of experience behind
the wheel. The 2003 SARS epidemic caused many
people to purchase their first car so as to avoid public
transportation, so many people are still new to driving.
Another reason is the mix of autos, bicycles, and
pedestrians that share the roads. There are 200
vehicle-related deaths per month in Beijing alone,
most of them involving bicycles.
Wen points out all the construction cranes—the
national bird of China, she says jokingly. Until recently,
most of the cranes were concentrated in Shanghai, but
with the 2008 Olympics fast approaching, many are
now in Beijing. We pass endless rows of high-rise
apartment buildings. Wen tells us about the differences between some of the older buildings and the
newer ones. “The old apartments generally have about
450 square feet of living space. There is no living room
and sometimes no private bathroom. If you bring
guests to your apartment, you take them straight to
your bedroom because the bed is the only place to sit.”
Modern apartments, by comparison, have 1000 square
feet of living space, a living room, private bathroom,
and possibly even central air conditioning. Of course
they are a lot more expensive to rent. We learn that
housing is no longer provided by the government.
Everyone has to pay their own rent. This is a big
change for people that has occurred in the last ten
years. Health care is also no longer provided by the
government, something that weighs heavily on many
Chinese.
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Our group asks tons of questions about the one-child
policy in China. Wen informs us that women in China
who want to get pregnant need to get permission from
the local government first. “You need to let your local
committee know in advance.” This strikes us as quite
amusing but she is in earnest. She herself got in
trouble for not notifying the local committee before she
got pregnant and had to pay a fine and fill out a lot of
paperwork as a result.
What happens if you have more than one child? If you
live in a city, Wen says, you are heavily taxed and face
social stigma. Your second child may not be able to
attend high school or college or get official registration
cards, drivers licenses, and so on, making it very hard
for him later in life. However, if you live in the countryside and your first child is a girl, you can try again for a
boy. This is because male children are considered vital
to doing farm work and are expected to care for their
elderly parents later in life. But if the second child is a
girl too, then too bad, you get no more chances.
What if a woman becomes pregnant again unexpectedly? She usually has an abortion, Wen tells us. Some
women in the countryside get an abortion as soon as
the doctor tells them the fetus is female. The result:
there are now significantly more males in China than
females. “This has become a big problem,” Wen says.
“Men of marrying age, especially in the countryside,
have to vie hard for the attentions of a limited number
of females of marrying age. They have to pay large
dowries to win a bride.”
What about divorce and the one-child policy? “Even if
a husband and wife get a divorce, both the man and
the woman can still only have one birth between them.
So, for a man who remarries, his new wife cannot
have a child of her own.” Wow, that’s harsh. We’re
also surprised to learn that many modern Chinese who
live in the cities opt for no children at all because of the
expense of raising them—yet another stark difference
between city and country life in China.
Wen points out that the one-child policy only applies to
Han Chinese, not to minority populations in China, so
the Han are actually harder on themselves in this
respect than they are on the minorities. Since the
current population of China is 1.2 billion, it’s understandable why they are trying so hard to limit population growth. But it is strange to see so many children in
our travels and realize that practically none of them
have brothers or sisters. “As only children, they tend to
be spoiled rotten by their parents and grandparents,”
Wen says. Many people on our bus laugh and nod,
being grandparents themselves. We certainly see with
our own eyes how doted upon children are in China.
Parents and grandparents walk with them hand-inhand in parks, hold them in their arms, and spend
large sums of money to send them to the best kindergartens and schools.
We arrive at the Temple of Heaven by mid-morning
and begin with a walk through Tian-Tan Park, a vast
park with wide walkways surrounded by historic pine
woods very popular with the Chinese. The weather is
perfect and people are out in droves—a bit of a
surprise since it’s a Wednesday morning. Why aren’t
these people at work? Wen explains that many are
elderly folk who no longer have to work and who like to
come to the city park to play mah jongg, exercise, and
sing. Others work unusual shifts and happen to have
the morning off. Still others can’t find work so they’ve
come to the park to forget their troubles for the day.
We learn that most parks in China aren’t free; you
have to pay a small fee to get in, though the elderly
are exempt.
If you want to see the real China on display, parks are
the place to go. We see men and women performing
tai chi, dancing the tango, and doing slow-motion
sword exercises with real swords. Groups of middleaged women perform rhythmic gymnastics with long
colorful ribbons that they flamboyantly fling out in front
of them or twirl around their heads. Teenagers play
hacky-sack in groups of four or five with a feathered,
weighted disk. A very popular form of exercise at the
moment is tai chi ball. You toss the ball into the air with
your paddle, catch it on the paddle, and send it into the
air again, all the while moving in synch with the
instructor and the other participants. Robin and I give it
a try and quickly discover it’s not so easy.
We stroll down a long covered corridor where men and
women congregate in large numbers. They stand in
convivial groups or sit on wooden ledges as they play
traditional Chinese music, sing in chorus, listen to
Chinese opera, and play cards or Chinese chess. For
every two men playing chess, there are six or seven
men gathered around watching their progress. We
pause to watch a woman practicing calligraphy on the
cement with water from a bucket, using what looks like
a cross between a wet mop and an oversize paint
brush. Nearby, the man playing a two-stringed vertical
“fiddle” (called an erhu) is nearly drowned out by the
amateur opera singers twenty paces away. The
cacophony of sounds and sights is amazing. What we
love most is that these people aren’t doing any of this
for us—this is what they do for themselves, on their
own time. There seems to be little sense of shyness
about exercising, singing, or performing in public.
Anyone can join a group activity—even us—and be
welcomed with a smile.
A short walk brings us to the Temple of Heaven
complex, built in 1420 AD during the Ming Dynasty.
The centerpiece—the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests—is closed for renovations on the inside but we
can still get good views on the outside. It really is a
beautiful structure—circular in shape, three stories tall,
with three tiers of blue-tiled roofs. Like a wedding
cake, each higher tier is smaller than the one below it.
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The roof on top is cone-shaped and crowned with a
gilded knob. The amazing thing is that the entire
structure was built without using a single nail.
We stroll along a vast stretch of concrete, eventually
passing through the “Heavenly Gate”—three adjacent
red-painted arches thirty feet thick. Looking back
through the arches, we see the Hall of Prayer for Good
Harvests framed within. We continue onward, climbing
a series of three layered terraces with marbled
balustrades to reach the Circular Altar. This slightly
raised dais is where the emperor stood each winter
solstice to offer sacrifices to heaven and pray for
bounteous harvests. It is irresistible to stand on this
spot. Every tourist does it. For just a moment you
imagine yourself as emperor of all China, and you get
the thrill of knowing you are standing on exactly the
same spot the emperor would have stood upon during
the most important ceremony of the year.
We make a quick visit to “Echo Wall” which encloses a
smaller ceremonial temple. You’re supposed to be
able to stand on one side of the circular wall and hear
words whispered to you from the other side—but with
the crowds of people present, this is impossible to test
(not that people don’t try anyway).
Lunch is memorable because we get to try genuine
turtle soup courtesy of Stella, a wonderful older lady in
our group who speaks Chinese and encourages us to
try every type of strange food imaginable. The soup
arrives at our table in an enormous tureen. I can vouch
for its authenticity as there is literally a cooked turtle
floating around in the soup. The white turtle meat is
tender enough but I find the soup bland—a common
complaint I have about most of the soups we’re served
in China. During lunch, a lively older couple in our
group named John and Jade tell us about a barge trip
they took in England. Jade, who is less than five feet
tall, went to shore to raise a bridge by a chain and
ended up instead getting lifted off her feet. Dangling
there, she watched helpless as the bridge began to
descend onto their boat. John was luckily able to come
to her rescue before too much damage was done.
As we make our way to the Beijing airport, Wen says
her farewells. We’ll miss her. In parting, she tells us an
anecdote about President Bush’s first visit to China to
meet President Hu Jintao. “As the plane touched
down, Bush asked Condoleeza Rice, ‘Who is the
president of China?’ ‘Hu,’ Rice replied. ‘No, I want you
to tell me who!’ Bush responded.” Apocryphal no
doubt, but amusing.
That afternoon we fly from Beijing to Wuhan. Boarding
the plane is a bit different than in the U.S. We exit the
gate and board a bus which drives us to the plane
sitting on the tarmac, then we go up a portable flight of
steps to the airplane entrance. The in-flight food is
terrible but we get a kick out of the moist towelettes
labeled, “Hygiene Wet Turban Needless Wash.”
Dinner in Wuhan that evening is one of the best of the
trip. Several spicy dishes are served, including a
deliciously tender, spicy eggplant dish. We’ve also
come to enjoy lotus root, a vegetable that, when cut
into slices, resembles a wagon wheel because of the
large air pockets that give it buoyancy in the water
where it grows. It tastes wet-crunchy, something like a
water chestnut.
Our hotel, the Holiday Inn Tian An, is located in the
center of Wuhan, a modern metropolis of 8 million.
Located along the Yangtze River, Wuhan is actually
divided into three parts by the river and sprawls over
both its banks. Robin and I take a walk in the evening
down some of the city streets near our hotel. We walk
through a large department store with the vague
mission of finding an extra Minolta battery for Robin’s
camera, but that’s really just an excuse to wander. We
see no tourists but lots of Chinese teenagers hanging
out. They seem surprised to see us. Modern pop
music blares over the speakers. We pass a store
selling Playboy footwear—not something we expected
to see in China. We peek into stores selling everything
from the latest electronics to chic clothing to convenient household products, but not Minolta batteries.
Back out on the street, we meet up with John, one of
our favorite members of the group. He’s from Concord,
Massachusetts and has the accent to prove it. He’s a
reverend by day and an inveterate traveler by night—
which is to say, he’s been to lots of interesting places
like Laos, India, and Tanzania, often on church-related
service missions. Even though he likes to keep the
reverend thing low-key, we come to refer to him as
Reverend John to distinguish him from the two other
Johns in our group. The three of us take a stroll down
a side alley where a flower market is just closing up for
the day. We wander a bit further down the main street,
then cross a pedestrian bridge and begin making our
way back towards the hotel. Pausing at a bakery shop,
John asks us to split an enormous pastry with him. It
looks like a giant Twinkie. We beg off at first, being full
from dinner, but he seems so disappointed that we
end up splitting it with him. It tastes like angel food
cake and is actually quite good. From that point on, the
three of us seek out bakeries at each Chinese city we
visit in search of giant Twinkie-like pastries.
It’s around 8 pm and the outdoor food stalls are in full
swing, serving every kind of food imaginable. We get
photos of some very strange meats—frogs on a stick,
grasshoppers on a stick, scorpions on a stick. Anything that can be roasted and skewered is on display.
One of the most unsettling sights is pig faces, each
sold separately. They seem to stare up at you,
bewildered. Roasted whole ducks (heads, necks, and
all) are also a common sight. But what seems bizarre
to us is totally normal to the Chinese, and you can see
them smiling in amusement as we take pictures of
what to them is just food.
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We’re surprised to run into two other intrepid explorers
from our group—Bob and Ruby. Like us, they’re from
Colorado. Bob is a big guy, both vertically and horizontally. He has a handlebar mustache and a round Santa
Claus face. The Chinese absolutely love him. Teenagers want to have their picture taken with him. Kids
come up and pat his belly. Even adults smile and shyly
call him “laughing Buddha” in reference to the fat, jolly
Buddha statues you see in Buddhist temples. Fortunately, Bob is the kind of guy who laughs at all this and
gets as much pleasure from it as they do. As the trip
progresses, we discover that he and Ruby are pretty
adventurous about exploring back streets off the
beaten path, so more than once we find ourselves
sharing their company.
The five of us wander down an irresistible side alley
brimming over with steaming woks and all sorts of
dumplings, noodles, and meat dishes being cooked
right out on the street. We are definitely way off the
tourist path now. The alley is dark but there are lots of
Chinese dining outside at tables. The atmosphere is
convivial and only slightly intimidating to us out-ofplace tourists. Clearly we are as interesting to them as
they are to us. We watch a vocal and animated card
game being played by a group of men. One of them
speaks to me and I speak back. We both laugh but
neither of us understands what the other is saying. A
few paces further, as I’m lining up a picture of a food
stall on my digital camera’s LCD screen, I discover a
young Chinese fellow peering over my shoulder. We
have a brief conversation, half in English, half in
Chinese. Robin and I have learned a few key words
and phrases in Mandarin, enough to say things like,
“I’m American” or “This is very good” or “I don’t
understand.” It’s enough to piece together a brief
conversation, and we part with a smile. At a picturesque fruit stand, Big Bob tries to take a picture but
the shy vendor breaks into giggles, turns away from
the camera, and hides her face in her hands. Her
comrades urge her to pose but she’s too shy. Each
time she lowers her hands to see if he’s gone, Big Bob
is there following her with his camera, chuckling as the
hands come back up again.
We reach a point in the dark alley where the food
stands and vegetable stalls peter out and groups of
young men loiter in the shadows. We decide this is a
good place to turn around. On our way back, four
young men sitting in plastic chairs at an outside dining
table call out “Hello!” to us. Skewers of meat and a
pitcher of strong drink sit on the table. We call back
hello just as vociferously and they laugh. I strike up a
“conversation” in broken Chinese with one of them
which consists of hand gestures and body language as
much as it does words. The next thing I know, he
hands me three skewers of what I think (hope) is
chicken. “Jirou”? I ask. “Chicken?” He rattles off
something too fast for me to understand, then mimics
the animal I’m about to eat. As best our group can tell,
we think he’s mimicking a goat. Okay, I’ve had goat
before. I try it. Hmm, not bad. Quite tasty actually—
well cooked and spicy in a dry-hot-peppery sort of
way. “Hun hao!” I say. “Very good!” One of them pours
me a shot of liquor in a plastic cup. I raise my plastic
cup and shout “Ganbei!” “Ganbei!” they shout back
and we all drink something that burns all the way
down. “Hun hao” I rasp. Waving and laughing, we
make our way back home. What fun it is to be in a
place that isn’t jaded on tourists, where we’re of as
much interest to the locals as they are to us.
After some late-night e-mails to family, we make it to
bed by midnight. It’s our first late night in China. Who
would have guessed that the city of Wuhan would hold
some of our favorite memories of the trip?
March 30 (Thu) – Wuhan Provincial Museum, Bus
Ride to Yichang
Low-flow showerheads definitely haven’t made their
way to China yet; the shower that morning is like
standing under a hot waterfall. The buffet breakfast is
on the top floor in a rotating restaurant. The elaborate
buffet goes on and on, literally circling the inside of the
restaurant. Every kind of American and Chinese
breakfast food you could ever want or imagine is there.
For what amounts to a budget three-week tour of
China, we’re sure staying in some swank places. (In
case you’re interested, the trip cost is $2400 per
person including all international and domestic airfare,
food, lodging, and transportation, plus $400 to cover
taxes, visa fees, and tips).
That morning we visit Wuhan Provincial Museum,
which Tony says is one of his favorite museums in all
of China. I can see why. The centerpiece of the
collection is a set of 65 bronze bells from the 5th
century BC. They were discovered intact but jumbled
in the tomb of a powerful warlord known as the
Marquis Yi of Zeng (433 BC). Nearly everything in the
museum comes from this one tomb, excavated in
1978. Each bell has two tones. The largest is almost
five feet high and weighs 450 pounds. The whole set
of bells is amazingly well preserved. Near the marquis’
own lacquered double coffin, 21 other coffins were
found in the tomb containing young women who were
sacrificed (by poison) at the time of the marquis’
death—a practice that was already unusual by that
time. The young women were between the ages of 13
and 25. The eight in the eastern chamber were
probably musicians who had entertained the marquis
at court, while the other thirteen might have been
concubines.
This small museum contains beautiful works of art in
bronze, gold, lacquer, and jade. Two of our favorites
are made of wood—a mandarin duck statue symbolizing eternal love, and a mythological beast with deer
antlers and a crane’s neck symbolizing longevity. A
few of the bronze works utilize the “lost wax method”
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of bronze casting that is now (you guessed it) lost to
us. It results in intricate, delicate, almost airy bronze
sculptures. We finish our visit with a bell concert of
traditional Chinese music played on a replica of the
bronze bells discovered in the tomb.
At lunch, I find myself standing behind Carol and Al in
the buffet line. They are of Chinese and Vietnamese
descent and encourage me to try several things I
might have passed up otherwise, including pig’s ear
and a sardine-like fish eaten head and all. The fish
isn’t bad, but the pig’s ear tastes like rubbery cartilage
and is the second-worst thing I eat during the trip (the
worst is tripe, offal from the stomach lining of a cow).
There’s a saying: “The Chinese eat everything with
four legs except the table,” and they aren’t kidding.
The rest of the afternoon consists of a long drive to
Yichang by bus. It’s a five-hour ride to get us to the
starting point of our Yangtze River cruise. The journey
is enhanced by beautiful scenery outside our windows.
Whole fields of rapeseed (canola) are in bloom,
resulting in marvelous swathes of bright yellow that go
on and on for hundreds of yards at a time. We catch
our first glimpses of the Chinese countryside—water
buffalo, rice paddies, farmers wearing traditional straw
hats. We also see many ancestral gravesites covered
with flowers in anticipation of Qing Ming Jie (“Tomb
Sweeping Day”) on April 5. It all passes by at 50 mph
so most of the pictures I take come out blurred. I
delete them as quickly as I take them, but I do have
one movie that shows those beautiful yellow fields
going by.
We descend a steep road to the Galaxy Cruise Ship, a
four-star, 120-passenger vessel that only has 40
passengers for this particular voyage. Since 33 of the
passengers consist of members of our group, it means
we have the cruise ship nearly to ourselves. In fact
there are more staff on board than passengers. We
check out the ship, which doesn’t take too long since
it’s much smaller than the cruise ships we’re used to.
The top deck consists of green Astroturf and a few
picnic benches bolted down at the corners so you can
sit and enjoy the view. There are other outside viewing
areas at the bow and stern. On each floor, the circular
stairwell opens onto spacious rooms where Chinese
artisans practice their crafts and sell their handiwork—
jade “stamps” carved with your name on them, tiny
perfume-like bottles painstakingly painted on the
insides as well as the outsides for a 3D effect, and
lovely framed silk “paintings” that are both works of art
and triumphs of patience. The dining room is on the
second floor aft, and the fourth deck contains a bar
and comfortable lounge with a dance floor. Our cabin
(number 304) is towards the bow and is only a bit
smaller than what we’re used to from other cruises.
The beds are hard but comfortable. The big selling
point of our cabin is the large picture window that
slides open and offers great views of the Yangtze.
Our first dinner on board is very good indeed. Afterwards, Robin and I sit in the lounge area and have a
glass of Dynasty red wine, the first decent wine we’ve
had in China. The rest has either been too vinegary or
too weak and plummy. The beer, on the other hand, is
consistently good—it’s German-based even though it’s
made here in China. We find ourselves drinking
Tsingtao beer with nearly every lunch and dinner. It’s
the most beer we’ve ever drunk in our lives. Since the
Coca-Cola is served without ice, it just doesn’t taste
that good, so we almost always opt for the Tsingtao.
March 31 (Fri) – Three Gorges Dam (Day 1 of
Yangtze River Cruise)
I start the day by trying tai chi at 6:45 am outdoors on
the top deck, but the instructor moves too fast for me
to follow, especially that early in the morning. Virtually
our whole group is there—we have a very early-rising
and active group. A few already know tai chi and do
well, like Ellis, 82 years old, who practices tai chi at
home in San Francisco. The rest look as awkward as I
do, but at least they’re up there trying.
That morning we board a bus and visit the Three
Gorges Dam site. I should mention that the ship hasn’t
moved anywhere overnight; it has simply stayed put
and served as our hotel. We pass through several
amazingly long tunnels—miles long at a stretch—
before arriving at a viewing point below the dam. Just
thinking about the massive amounts of water being
held back by that wall of concrete makes us pray for
no earthquakes, because if that thing were to break,
we’d be toast. It’s a hazy morning, so our first view of
the dam is shrouded in mystery—we can barely see to
the far side, which is over a mile away. Billed as
China’s biggest construction project since the Great
Wall, it has become a tourist attraction in itself. It’s the
largest hydroelectric dam in the world, spanning over a
mile across and towering 600 feet above the world’s
third longest river. Its reservoir stretches 350 miles
upstream. Close to 2 million people were displaced
from their homes when water levels started to rise. On
the plus side, it is expected to generate ten percent of
China’s energy needs by 2009 when fully operational.
Our overall impression is that most Chinese are proud
of the dam and see it as a symbol of what the modern
nation of China can accomplish.
Everything seems so solid and calm that it feels like
the dam must have been here forever, but it has only
been operational since June 2003. Water levels have
risen 250 feet since then and are projected to rise
another 250 feet by 2009. Of course, on the downriver
side where we are now, water levels remain essentially unchanged.
We reboard our bus and drive to an upriver vantage
point. There’s an exhibition hall here with a scale
model of the dam. Outside, above the green lawns and
manicured garden areas, there’s a conical hill with
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steep steps you can climb to reach a viewing platform
on top. From here you can get a panoramic view of the
entire dam site, including the series of five ship locks.
Currently only the first four locks are in use; the fifth
lock won’t be necessary until water levels rise higher.
Later in the day, our own ship will enter these same
locks and rise up to the level of the water on the
upriver side of the dam.
Back at the ship, we set sail from Yichang by late
morning and begin our upstream journey of the
Yangtze River Gorge. We go topside to watch the ship
depart the dock with a belch of black smoke. We begin
sailing up the Xiling Gorge—the first of three gorges.
It’s a hazy day, not ideal for taking pictures, but the
green cliffs that rise up in a V on both sides are
beautiful despite the haze. Once the scenery gets a
little less dramatic, we head downstairs for lunch,
sitting at our own “honeymoon table” since the others
are already full. At 1:30 pm, we enter the first of five
locks. Every passenger on board stands above decks
to watch. We decide to head for the fore deck on the
second floor, which offers unobstructed views forward.
From this vantage point, we enter the first lock in the
company of four other ships. One is a 5-star cruise
ship, another is a beat-up scow with a forlorn cow tied
to a metal post on the back deck. Once the enormous
lock doors swing closed behind us, the water levels
rise incredibly swiftly, then the front lock doors swing
open and we proceed to the next lock. It’s all reminiscent of the Panama Canal—and, I would guess, just
about every other lock system in the world.
After the first lock we take a nap. Waking from a deep
snooze, we find ourselves on the far side of the locks.
We open our cabin window wide to enjoy the lovely
views, the cool breeze, and the sound of the chugging
motor. Terraced farms rise above the shoreline, soon
to be submerged. It’s the dry season now, so water
levels have actually subsided slightly, but once the
rains arrive in May or June, the river will start to rise
again. We take opportunistic pictures from our room as
the scenery passes by. Every mile or so, we see a
series of white placard signs rising above the shoreline
with numbers on them that indicate the current level of
the water. The highest placard always says “175 m”—
indicating the eventual high water mark of 175 meters
above sea level.
Up in the lounge, we sip drinks and enjoy the views.
We’ve already passed through the most dramatic
sections of the Xiling Gorge, and we won’t arrive at the
next two gorges until tomorrow afternoon, so we
decide to join other members of our group in learning
how to play mah jongg. After a quick run-through of
the rules, Robin and I play a game with “Rev. John”
and “Utah John.” The game reminds me of gin except
you use tiles instead of cards. The basic idea is to put
together three tiles of a kind or three number tiles in a
series. Learning the Chinese symbols on some of the
tiles is the hardest part. We play two games, getting
lots of advice from the cruise staff. Robin wins the first
game and Rev. John wins the second. I get a kick out
of the Chinese guy behind me who speaks no English
but “advises” me with great gusto as to which tile I
should play next. Clearly he’s a mah jongg aficionado
who knows what he’s about. He gets into animated
discussions with the cruise staff as to why such-andsuch a tile should be played, then they all nod their
heads and one of the cruise staff says, “Play that one.”
Just as with gin, part of the strategy is remembering
what has already been played, so clearly there’s more
than just luck involved in winning.
After dinner, we attend a silk embroidery demo. The
40% off sale they announce after the demo leads to a
buying frenzy, with people from our group purchasing
silk embroideries left and right. We particularly like a
large, silk-embroidered tiger but resist buying it since
we’d have to schlep it along with us for the rest of the
trip. Late in the evening, Robin and a few other
members of our group learn how to do the Chinese
“fan dance” in preparation for a talent show tomorrow
night. Our group also learns how to sing the Jasmine
song, a traditional Chinese melody.
April 1 (Sat) – Shennong Stream (Day 2 of Yangtze
River Cruise)
The excursion we take this morning is the highlight of
our trip up the Yangtze. We board a small ferry and
sail up a tributary called the Shennong Stream. The
gorge quickly narrows, offering memorable scenery as
the green cliffs rise higher and pull in closer on both
sides. It’s misty again, but the mist seems to add to the
scenic romance of this stretch of river. Clear green
water, soft green bamboo, and dark green mountains
greet us at each turn of the river. We catch sight of a
howler monkey on the shore. High above us, our
guides point out one of the mysterious hanging coffins
of the ancient Ba people. These are coffins that were
suspended in lofty, virtually unreachable crevices of
the cliffs and that remain in place to this day.
The mists clear somewhat and the sun pops out once
or twice. The ferry drops us off a few miles upriver and
then the real fun begins. Our group is divided in half
and each half boards a long unmotorized sampan. We
each don bright orange life vests. There are four
oarsmen and one captain in each wooden sampan
and it is their job to row us upriver, against the current,
through a shallower section of the Shennong Stream.
The put-off point is essentially a shallow lake, but as
the sampans move upstream, we enter a narrower
stretch of water with a faster current and rounded
green hills rising to either side. The four oarsmen
strike up a good rhythm, and the sound of the thin oars
striking the water in unison continues unabated for the
next thirty minutes. It’s peaceful—no cars, no motorized boats (the water is too shallow), no noise except
for the sound of the oars. Now and then we pass a
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sampan going downstream, full of happy Chinese
passengers in orange life vests. They wave and smile,
calling out “Hello!” and snapping pictures of us as we
snap pictures of them.
Eventually the water gets so shallow you can see the
rounded stones on the bottom. The current moves
swiftly here. At a word from the captain, the four
oarsmen clamber out. They affix one end of a long
rope to the sampan and place loops at the other end
crosswise over their shoulders and torsos. Wading to
the shore, they begin walking forward until the rope
pulls taut. By brute force they pull the sampan, filled
with seventeen passengers, upstream against the
fiercely resisting current. They chant to keep up a
rhythm. The boat inches forward. They bend nearly
double with the effort of pulling us upstream, like
human oxen. It feels like we’ve gone back in time, to
the days when trackers pulled boats up swiftly flowing
sections of the Yangtze River in just such a fashion.
Eventually, we come to a point where the river widens
and the current is less swift. The trackers clamber
back into the boat, execute a broad turn, and take us
back downriver. The current does the work for them
now so they can rest. As our sampan floats down the
river, our female guide sings us a hauntingly sweet
love song of the minority people who live along this
stretch of river. The captain sings a traditional rowing
song as we reach the shallow lake and are rowed back
to the starting point.
There is a picturesque little “sampan city” at the put-off
point where men play cards on board their wooden
vessels and rest amongst coils of rope in between
journeys. I snap photos while other members of our
group are “stalled” at the long row of vendor stalls
lining the way back to our ferry. Shopper Bob buys one
of Mao’s Little Red Books, only to discover afterwards
that it’s in French.
Lunch includes spicy kung pao chicken and plenty of
beer (we’re only supposed to get one free glass per
meal but sometimes they “forget”). We take a brief nap
afterwards, only to be awakened by the sound of
dynamite. That afternoon we pass through scenic Wu
Gorge and Qutong Gorge. There are announcements
at 1:30 and 3:30 pm to let us know when the scenery
is at its best, and at these points we head topside to
enjoy the views. The vertical cliffs and surrounding
mountains rise to impressive heights, and it’s hard to
believe the rising water has made much of a dent in
terms of the scenery. At one particularly dramatic spot,
the cruise staff points out that the view on the back of
the 10 yuan note is the same as the view we’re looking
at. We all pull out our ten yuan notes and stare.
When the scenery turns less dramatic, we return to our
room and relax on our beds, idly watching the scenery
pass by our window. It’s all very mellow and easy—a
nice break from the fast pace of the rest of the trip. We
see farmers cultivating terraces halfway up the slopes,
women washing clothes on flat stretches of rock along
the Yangtze, demolished villages near the water line,
and the ubiquitous placards saying “175 m,” implacable reminders that what we’re seeing at the level of the
river won’t be here a year from now.
At 4 pm, we have drinks (happy hour) and attend a talk
by Tony about his perspective of China today. I sit by
the picture windows and watch the view pass by while
listening. Tony tells us that in China, a farmer can
lease the land for 30 years and a city dweller can
lease a home for 70 years but neither the land nor the
home can be owned outright. Since this is still (technically at least) a Communist country, ownership of land
and homes remains a bugaboo. The government can’t
quite bring itself to say that you can actually own the
land you live on, so no one owns land in China other
than the government itself. This means that a farmer
can lease the land he lives on for 30 years. What
happens after 30 years? “No one knows,” Tony says.
“This is a big question. It is something we still have to
figure out.”
Tony informs us that “poverty” as defined by the
Chinese government equates to less than $75 US per
year. Millions still live below this poverty level—and a
whopping 70 million live below the official poverty level
set by the U.N—mostly in the far western regions of
China. Just this year, China’s government abolished
the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax in an attempt to
even the playing field somewhat between the rich
cities and the poor countryside. Since only one-eighth
of China’s land is arable, the government wants to do
all it can to keep people on the farm so it can continue
to feed its 1.2 billion people.
Here’s another interesting tidbit: the Chinese government requires that all rural families own a coffin if
anyone in the family is over age 50—so a coffin is one
sure piece of “furniture” you’ll find in many rural
homes.
We also learn that Chinese people are very superstitious about numbers—numbers that appear on their
license plates, cell phones, apartments, and so on.
Because the number 4 is associated with death, most
hotels we stay at are missing a fourth floor—it is
simply skipped on the elevator buttons, which go from
3 to 5, just as the number 13 is sometimes skipped in
the U.S. Other numbers have more positive connotations: 9 signifies longevity and 6 good fortune (everything will go smoothly in life). The number 8, symbolizing prosperity, seems particularly popular these
days—Tony tells us that people pay extra for two
eights in a phone number or on a license plate. He did!
The buffet dinner that evening includes chicken wings,
mapa tofu with red peppers, and Asian meatballs. The
crew puts on a talent show for us, then it’s Robin’s turn
to dance the fan dance. We all sing the Jasmine song.
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Shopper Bob pretends to read from Mao’s Little Red
Book in French—with Stella behind a red curtain doing
the actual speaking. When we go to bed that night at
11 pm, the ship continues down the Yangtze, like the
Mississippi barges from our college days which
chugged along all night with their spotlights roving.
April 2 (Sun) – Fengdu (Day 3 of Yangtze River
Cruise)
We begin the day with a shore excursion to Fengdu,
City of Ghosts. This turns out to be a very photogenic
place that combines facets of Buddhism, Taoism, and
Confucianism. Since Han times (25-200 AD), it has
been said that “the dead come to Fengdu and the
devils go to hell.” We climb a lot of steps to get to
Fengdu, so it must be a steep journey to get to the
spirit world. At the top, we enter a picturesque courtyard filled with blooming trees, white curving bridges,
carved statues of laughing demons and gargoyles, and
brightly painted temples. Robin and I successfully
cross the Bridge of Love in nine steps, which means
we’ll stay together in the next life. Most members of
our group opt for the Bridge of Health to its left or the
Bridge of Prosperity to its right. Nearby, there’s an iron
ball that you’re supposed to lift and balance on top of a
peg to demonstrate your fidelity. Unfortunately I can’t
budge it. Then again, it weighs 400 pounds. We watch
as a Chinese man uses a special technique to roll the
ball into place on top of the peg. At the threshold of
another temple, our guide tells us that if you go in
through the left door, you’ll come back in the next life
as a man, or through the right door as a woman, or
through the large center door as bisexual. We figure
what the hell and stride through the center door.
Fengdu is full of statues. Incense burns in front of an
enormous golden Buddha. He is surrounded on all
sides by life-size golden bodhisattvas including
Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy—sort of the Buddhist
equivalent of our Virgin Mary. Another room contains
garishly painted, life-size statues of warrior demons
who stick out their tongues and make ghoulish faces at
us. A series of smaller figurines behind glass, each
about a foot tall, show the stages of hell in gory
detail—like a 3D Hieronymus Bosch painting with
people being burned, drowned, gored, flayed alive,
and cut into pieces. Lovely. Stone statues flanking a
stairway depict fanciful demons of every sort—a devil
child being spanked, a fawn suckling at the breast of a
female vampire, a troll-like creature with a pitchfork
eating a severed hand. There are some great picturetaking opportunities here. Robin stands pleading for
her life beneath a statue of an executioner with his ax
raised for the final stroke. I try to look suitably demonic
beside the head of a particularly whacked-out devil. In
the midst of all this deviltry is an uplifting message. On
a stone tablet at the base of a Chinese temple is a
complex Chinese symbol inscribed in black that means
“Only kindness brings peace.”
We’re given plenty of time to wander through the
complex of temples and courtyards—in fact, we spend
over three hours visiting Fengdu. “Welcome back from
hell,” they say with a smile as we reboard the ship.
We nap after lunch and are awakened by the ship’s
foghorn. We head to the top deck in time to see the
city of Fuling, a thriving port city with an enormous
bermed wall built around it to protect it from the rising
river. Later on, we attend a demonstration on how to
make Chinese dumplings, followed by a visit to the
Captain’s Bridge. I get to push the green FOGHORN
button for six long, loud seconds. We eat oranges in
our room. I give Robin a foot massage. That evening
at dinner, we dine at a big table for eight with just one
other couple—Bob and Ruby from Colorado—so
there’s plenty of extra plum wine and food to spare.
Bob and Ruby talk about all the changes since their
last visit to China nine years ago.
There’s karaoke in the lounge that evening, and nearly
everyone from our group participates. Robin get many
compliments when she sings “I Saw the Light” and
“For Your Eyes Only”—in fact, two separate couples
come up to her and say they thought it was a professional singing the songs during a break from the
karaoke. For the first time ever, and possibly the last, I
actually sing a song (“Annie’s Song”). Tony, our guide,
croons several Chinese favorites. On two separate
occasions, the foghorn interrupts Carol’s singing,
provoking gales of laughter. Young David belts out
several solos in a high falsetto, yelling out “Crap!”
when a particularly tough song continues for another
verse. Big Bob sings several slow country songs in a
deep baritone, crooning “doo-be-do” whenever he
doesn’t know the words.
This is the last night of our Yangtze Cruise. We tip one
of the waitresses extra who’s been particularly friendly
and has helped us with our Chinese throughout the
voyage. Then we settle our bill, pack, and go to bed.
April 3 (Mon) – Chongqing and Flight to Xi’an
We disembark the ship and take a bus to the zoo in
Chongqing to see its six pandas. Four of them are
active that morning, eating bamboo, sitting in a tub of
cool water, pacing through a faux-stone tunnel,
nursing an aluminum pan smeared with something
tasty. They really do seem too cute to be real. The one
who’s eating bamboo makes a lot of noise—crack! as
she breaks a cane of bamboo in half and starts
munching happily. We also visit two Siberian tigers
and a 7-Up-drinking Tibetan bear. A woman—I
assume she’s not a paid zoo employee but rather a
frequent guest who’s gotten to know the bear’s
habits—stands above the open-air enclosure and calls
out “Za-za-za-za-zu!” As if on command, the bear
turns in a circle on his hind legs then gets rewarded
with a drink of 7-Up poured from on high. It can’t be
good for the bear, but the bear isn’t complaining.
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The zoo is an oasis of greenery, bamboo, blossoming
trees, and willow-edged lakes in the midst of an
enormous industrial metropolis that’s home to 33
million people. The city itself has 15 million people—
the Chinese tend to define the geographical limits of
their cities rather liberally—which makes Chongqing
the most highly populated city in China. (It’s amazing
to consider that over 200 Chinese cities have a
population over 1 million and yet there are still far
more people in the countryside than in the cities. The
official statistic is 30% cities, 70% countryside, but
however you slice it, 1.2 billion is a lot of people, three
times as many as live in the U.S.) During our quick bus
tour of Chongqing, we find it hazy with pollution,
crowded, traffic-jammed, and filled with people busily
going about their lives. We pass by narrow alleys lined
with tenement buildings. An astonishing amount of
colorful laundry hangs crisscross between the buildings. Tony calls it China’s international flag show.
Robin points out all the billboards depicting too-happy
nurses in white outfits and white caps, suggesting
there must be a nursing shortage in China too.
Eventually we arrive at Chongqing’s Renmin Square.
Nearly every city in China has a Renmin (People’s)
Square. This one is large and handsome, with reddish
tiles, enormous shade trees with circular wooden
benches underneath, imposing buildings and staircases, and blossoming gardens. Children chase one
another or walk hand-in-hand with a parent or grandparent. Teenagers in an outdoor art class sit crosslegged on the ground, busily drawing pictures of the
park on oversize drawing pads. The tree-shaded
benches are filled with adults content just to sit and
enjoy the day. We wander around for awhile snapping
pictures, then sit down on a cement bench near a
canal. A middle-aged Chinese woman sits down a few
feet away from us, ostensibly to have her picture taken
near the water. She sidles a foot closer to us, then
another foot—then shrugs and laughs and signlanguages if she can sit between us and have her
picture taken. Of course we’re delighted to oblige.
Each of the woman’s friends also wants her picture
taken with us. We feel like celebrities.
Chongqing sits right at the edge of Sichuan Province,
so it’s not surprising that the lunch includes spicy
Sichuan dishes—making it one of my favorite meals in
China. “Did you try the soup?” several people ask in a
disbelieving tone after the meal. “My goodness, it was
hot!”
The bus takes us to Chongqing’s airport for our
second domestic flight. It’s a one-hour journey to Xi’an,
home to 3,100 years of Chinese history. Upon arrival,
we take a bus from the airport. The landscape around
Xi’an looks very different from what we’ve seen before
in China—it’s flatter and drier, like Kansas or Nebraska. “Winter wheat and corn are the two main crops
grown near Xi’an,” Tony tells us.
Right near the airport, we see strange green hills rising
up in the midst of the flat plains. Tony explains that
each of these hills is manmade and represents the
tomb of an emperor or other important person. There
are over 600 ancient tombs in and around Xi’an, nearly
all of them unexplored! The Chinese are waiting (with
far more patience and caution than I can imagine
Americans waiting) before they begin excavating them.
They want to be sure the technology is at a point
where the tombs and their contents can be excavated
safely—for instance, so that ancient scrolls and silks
don’t oxidize and crumble away into nothing the
moment they come into contact with the air. Imagine
how wonderful it would have been if the bright colors
originally painted on the terracotta warriors had
remained intact instead of fading away once they were
unburied. Tony tells with regret of a tomb nearby
where precious scrolls and silks disintegrated in front
of archaeologists’ eyes before they could even be
photographed.
”There are two key numbers you need to remember for
Xi’an,” Tony informs us. “The first is 73, the number of
emperors buried here. The second is 13, the number
of Chinese dynasties that had their capitol here. Xi’an
enjoys fame on a par with Athens, Cairo, and Rome as
one of the four major ancient civilization capitals.”
Xi’an is also Tony’s home town, so he’s not only our
national guide but also our local guide for this portion
of the tour. The enthusiasm he brings to sharing his
city with us is touching. “I love this city!” he says more
than once. We’re all happy he gets to be with his wife
and four-year-old daughter during our evenings here.
The countryside abruptly gives way to Xi’an itself, a
city of 8 million people (3 million inside the city walls).
Our hotel is on the outskirts of the city. After dinner, we
take a short walk around the neighborhood, but it is
empty and quiet. We miss the night-time bustle of our
centrally located hotel in Wuhan.
April 4 (Tue) – Xi’an Terracotta Warriors, Tang
Dynasty Show
We listen to the Chinese version of MTV while getting
ready in the morning. Called “V,” it actually plays
music videos like MTV once did. Our favorite is a
Chinese country western song sung by two young
Chinese women wearing cowboy hats and strumming
guitars.
One of the best features of the China Focus tour has
been the informative talks given during bus rides.
These lectures turn “down time” into interesting time.
As we head off to see the Terracotta Warriors, Tony
gives us the lowdown on Qin Shihuangdi, the First
Emperor of China who ordered their creation. You get
a sense of this man’s importance when you realize
that the word Qin (pronounced “Chin”) is the likely
origin of the word “China.” Emperor for only 22 years
(221-206 BC), he was undoubtedly a brutal tyrant, but
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he also united China for the first time, began the
building of the Great Wall, and left an army of terracotta warriors behind that is now one of China’s mustsee sights. It took a lot of bloodshed to unite China into
one realm, and Qin was not afraid of spilling blood. He
rewarded his troops for enemy kills. Three enemy
heads was enough to move up to a higher rank. Five
enemy heads meant a warrior’s father could be freed
from slavery. The battle formations and tactics he and
his military advisors introduced made his troops
invincible. Arrows three feet long have been discovered which archers shot into the mud-brick walls
surrounding fortresses so that warriors could climb up
them like steps to gain access. Clever approaches like
this enabled Qin Shihuangdi to conquer all his enemies and unite China for the first time.
The 2,200-year-old terracotta warriors were discovered by accident in 1974 by farmers digging a well.
The museum has been built in situ—on top of the
actual discovery site. You can see the actual well dug
by the farmers and meet the farmer who made the
discovery (he signs books in the gift shop now!). Pit
Number 1 is the largest—it’s like standing inside an
enormous aircraft hangar. It contains 6,000 life-size
terracotta warriors and horses in battle formation. All of
the soldiers and horses face east towards an unknown
enemy. Tony explains that Qin believed the greatest
threat to his realm came from the east, across the sea.
Given the multiple invasions that subsequently came
from the north, perhaps they should have been facing
ninety degrees counterclockwise.
When you see rank upon rank of warriors, then realize
each warrior’s face is uniquely individual, you can’t
help but be impressed. Most of the warriors stand
upright but some of the archers kneel. The bronze
weapons they once held are missing—eighty percent
were taken during a farmers’ revolt which ended the
Qin Dynasty shortly after the First Emperor’s death
(the rest of the weapons are in safekeeping in a
museum). The peasants ransacked the chambers, set
them afire, and smashed most of the terracotta
warriors to bits. A reconstruction area is set up in the
back of the hangar where you can see incomplete
warriors and horses standing in rows, half-assembled
or missing pieces here and there like unfinished threedimensional jigsaw puzzles.
The terracotta warriors were originally painted in bright
colors, but the paint oxidized away over the centuries
(or upon excavation). All you can see now is traces of
paint on a few terracotta warriors kept behind airtight
glass. It is for this reason that the Emperor’s tomb
itself has not been excavated. I didn’t have a clear
understanding of this before coming to Xi’an, but the
terracotta warriors aren’t in the Emperor’s tomb itself.
Rather, they are in the vanguard of the Emperor’s
tomb, which is located about a mile to the west. You
can see the hill or burial mound where the tomb is
located (underground sonograms confirm its existence), but it remains off limits even to archaeologists
until a technology is approved by the Chinese government that allows discoveries to be excavated and
displayed without causing oxidation damage. Archaeologists believe there is possibly even a larger and
more impressive army still buried in the Emperor’s
tomb itself.
We are given a leisurely hour to walk around Pit
Number 1 to see the warriors from different perspectives. A catwalk encircles the hangar. Most of the time
you look down into the pit at the warriors below, which
were excavated and reassembled where they were
found. On the right-hand side of the pit, you can see
some of the warriors at eye level, which is worthwhile
since you can see their individual features better.
We visit Pit Number 3 next, believed to have been the
“command post” for the terracotta army. It is much
smaller in size. We look down on it from above and
see some of the terracotta warriors and horses still
lying in situ, broken in pieces. Our next stop, Pit
Number 2, is believed to have held reinforcements for
the main troops in Pit 1. This second-largest pit
remains mostly unexcavated, so what you see is
mounds of hard-packed earth covering over where the
terracotta warriors still lie. Nevertheless, over 1,400
warriors, horses, and chariots have already been
excavated from Pit 2. The above-ground museum
connected to Pit 2 contains five airtight glass cases
where you can see a kneeling archer, a horse, a
standing archer, and a foot soldier up close. The
kneeling archer still has red paint on the back of his
clothes. A mysterious Bronze Age sword is also on
display that is still so sharp it can cut through twenty
sheets of paper. Scientists have discovered chrome
plating on the sword, which is pretty amazing since
chrome plating wasn’t utilized in the West until the
early twentieth century.
We make a final stop to see two half-size scale models
of bronze chariots excavated near the mausoleum “for
the Emperor’s eternal use.” They are amazingly
intricate and beautiful, faithfully created down to the
last detail, each complete with a team of four horses, a
driver, and a shade umbrella.
Our tour of the Terracotta Warriors Museum lasts 3½
hours. A late lunch includes candied sweet potatoes
and ultra-long noodles that are amazingly slippery to
get out of the bowl with chopsticks.
Back at the hotel, we go for an afternoon walk around
the neighborhood. Things are much busier than they
were the night before. We walk past endless indoor
stalls where only locals shop. I find an electronics
store and purchase an extra 1 Gb memory chip for my
Canon camera. This transaction happens mostly
through sign language. The salesperson doesn’t carry
1 Gb chips but signals for us to wait, then dashes off to
Page 14
another store. He returns a few minutes later with two
chips in hand, one a Toshiba and the other a Kingston.
I point to the Kingston. He pulls out his calculator and
shows me a price. I smile, shake my head, borrow his
calculator, and show him a lower price. Back and forth
we go. I show him my Visa card but he can’t take
credit cards. I shrug and prepare to leave since I don’t
have enough Chinese yuan to make the purchase. He
urges me to stay. I show him how much cash I have
and we agree on a price of 400 yuan ($50), down from
480 yuan ($60). This leaves me with a total of 10 yuan
in my pocket, but I don’t regret making the purchase—
I’ve been taking so many pictures I’m nearly out of
memory, and the negotiating is fun in its own right. I
even take a picture of the smiling electronics staff on
my way out. I’m guessing we’re their first-ever American customers.
On our way home, Robin notices her black shoes are
covered in dust and decides to get a shoeshine from
the shoeshine lady in the parking lot. It costs all of 2
yuan (25 cents), but this is so ridiculously low we pay
her 5 yuan. Robin asks if she can have her picture
taken with her and she seems happily surprised and
beams into the camera. I don’t think anyone ever
asked to have their picture taken with her before.
As we drive to dinner, someone comments on the fact
that none of the drivers use their car horns in Xi’an.
“That’s because you aren’t allowed to,” Tony tells us.
“It’s against the law. The horn blowing got so bad at
one point that the city government outlawed it. Now, if
you use your horn, the police will find you very fast and
give you a ticket.” It’s the only city we visit in China
that doesn’t suffer from constant horn blowing. Maybe
every city should pass such a law.
Tony points out a forlorn middle-aged man standing by
the side of the road with a red flag in his hand. “That is
what we call a Policeman’s Assistant,” he tells us. “He
was speeding or broke some other traffic law, so the
policeman pulled him over and gave him a choice:
either pay the ticket now, or stand on the side of the
road and hold this red flag as an example to other
motorists until the next person gets pulled over and is
given the same choice. Sometimes it takes a long time
for the next person to get pulled over. After one or two
hours, sometimes the offender will approach the
policeman and say, ‘Please give me a ticket instead!”
That evening, we dine on a delicious dumpling dinner
before seeing a traditional Tang Dynasty music and
dance show. Eighteen different kinds of dumplings are
served. Each dumpling is shaped differently. For
instance, dumplings made with minced duck are
shaped like ducks. We get to try a lot of different
dumplings that evening—fish, walnut, pumpkin, lotus
root, shrimp, scallop, pork, pickle (sauerkraut),
sausage, and deep fried dumplings, to name just a
few. We’re stuffed by the time that last dumpling is
served. We also get to try quail eggs for the first time,
which taste just like regular hard-boiled eggs except
they’re smaller—you can pop a whole egg in your
mouth in one easy bite. Hot rice wine accompanies the
meal, which is interesting to try but unlikely to displace
red wine once we get back home.
The Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Show is excellent. The costumes and sets are lovely and the
dancing is elegant. One man plays a flute that sounds
like a songbird in the frenzy of courtship. Another plays
a trumpet-like instrument that sounds like a duck; he
alternates between the trumpet and his own nasally
duck-like voice. He gets the most laughs of the night.
Late that evening, on the bus ride back to our hotel,
we see people burning fake paper money at street
corners. This is in honor of Qing Ming (Tomb Sweeping) Day, a day for honoring your ancestors. Officially,
Qing Ming is tomorrow, but people appear to be
getting an early start. Burning paper money at street
corners is a symbolic way to ensure your ancestors
have everything they need in the afterlife and are not
found wanting. Burning the money at a crossroads is
said to be necessary so your ancestors can find the
money more easily.
April 5 (Wed) – Xi’an City Wall, Big Wild Goose
Pagoda, Flight to Guilin
As the bus takes us to Xi’an’s city wall, Tony tells us
about his childhood. He grew up in Xi’an in one of its
old neighborhoods, long since demolished. His home
bordered a courtyard shared by five related families,
so he was always surrounded by aunts and uncles and
cousins. “Every evening I had a choice of five meals,”
he tells us. “As a young child, I would visit each of my
aunts and see what each one was cooking to find the
meal I wanted most.” His house had no heat or air
conditioning. Families gathered out in the courtyard if it
was hot, and in the wintertime, when it was cold, the
only option to get warm was to go to bed. There was
no TV. “I remember my dad made a TV out of parts
and I was very proud of him for that. We were the first
family in our neighborhood to have a TV. Everyone
would gather around to watch.” The first show he
remembers seeing is Man from Atlantis—the first
American TV program ever shown in China. Patrick
Duffy, who played the man from Atlantis, remains a
star in mainland China to this day.
The greatest hardship he remembers is that twentyseven people shared two bathrooms. He can still recall
the cough signal used to see if someone was already
in there. There was no tap water in the houses, so you
had to go to a central tap water station for the whole
area. Every morning, Tony got up at 3:30 or 4:00 am
to get water for his family, one mile away. This was in
the 1980s. Despite the hardships, Tony remembers
this as an idyllic time because he was so close to his
extended family and says he would go back to this
kind of living if he had a choice.
Page 15
Tony tells us that when his best friend was born, his
friend’s dad was so excited to finally have a boy that
he gave out a half-kilo of sugar to all the neighbors—
kind of like us giving out a cigar. To this day, his best
friend is known as “Half-Kilo”.
Tony grew up at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution.
On Wednesday mornings (I don’t know why only on
Wednesdays but that’s what he said), in the factory
where his mom worked, people were always afraid
they would be singled out to be punished publicly
because of some questionable aspect in their family
history. Anything that smacked of higher education or
Western culture or prior land ownership was enough to
get you into trouble. If you had a teacher as an
ancestor, for instance, you could be branded an
enemy of the state and publicly humiliated. This is all
pretty amazing when you realize that Tony is close to
our own age, perhaps in his mid thirties, and has lived
through all these changes. Now, of course, he is very
well to do by Chinese standards. He wears black
Ralph Lauren shirts, has traveled to Europe once and
Hong Kong countless times, has taken his parents on
a trip to Thailand, sends his daughter to one of the
best kindergartens in Xi’an, and has paid for his own
family, his parents, and his in-laws to move to much
nicer homes in Xi’an.
When asked if he has been to the United States, Tony
tells us he has tried twice but it is difficult to get the
necessary paperwork. “You have to know somebody—
have the right connections,” he says. Delays in
processing of visa applications by U.S. consulates in
China is a part of the problem, plus China has not yet
designated the U.S. as an “approved” travel destination for its citizens, so there are many bureaucratic
hurdles to get past. “I very much want to go,” he tells
us. “What do you think is the number one destination
Chinese want to visit in the United States?” The Grand
Canyon? New York City? Disney World? No. Las
Vegas!
We arrive at Xi’an’s city wall, built during the Ming
Dynasty. It is the most complete city wall that has
survived in China and one of the largest ancient
military defensive systems in the world. The wall
stands 40 feet tall, 40 feet wide at the top, and 50 feet
thick at the bottom. It is nearly nine miles in length,
with a deep moat surrounding it. Every 120 yards there
is a rampart which extends out from the main wall built
to defend against an enemy climbing up the wall. Each
rampart has a sentry building. We climb steep stairs to
get to the top of the wall. I can’t remember ever having
stood on a wall as wide as this one. The 30-foot-wide
roadway on top was designed to allow a large number
of soldiers to move rapidly to any section that was
being attacked. Today, it is a promenade enjoyed by
strolling tourists and bicyclists.
I’m very keen on renting a bike. Fortunately, there
happens to be a bike rental stand with a lime-green
tent cover right on top of the wall where we’re able to
rent bikes for 10 yuan each. We set off on a leisurely
journey of exploration. The roadway is perfectly flat, as
you would expect it to be on a manmade wall. Robin
and I are accompanied by several others from our
group—Rev. John, Utah John, Joanne, and 20something David. We have a great time cycling along,
enjoying the views of Xi’an from on high, stopping for
the occasional snapshot, and even getting some
exercise by racing each other from point to point. We
pass a Chinese teenager who’s flying a string of six or
seven small attached kites behind her as she walks
and can’t resist circling back to request a photo.
After two miles or so, we’ve reached our second tower.
Robin and Joanne have had enough and are ready to
head back. I’m all for pressing on and have visions of
making it the whole way around the 9-mile wall. The
problem is, we were only given an hour to explore on
our own, and half that time has already passed. But
how long can it take to go six or seven miles on a
bike? I decide to keep going, and I convince Utah John
to join me. “We’ll have to go fast if we’re going to make
it back on time,” he says. No problem, I assure him.
Just as we’re about to set off, Rev. John pulls up next
to us. We tell him our plans and he says, “Count me
in.” Rev. John isn’t in quite as good of shape as we
are, so Utah John looks a bit worried—but hey, we’re
having fun, aren’t we? Off we go. We don’t stop much,
because there isn’t much time to stop. The roadway
becomes more cobbly and pothole-strewn as we go
along. Every once in awhile, we have to circle around
a rampart or sentry station. The wall is mostly empty at
this time of day, but occasionally we pass one or two
Chinese strolling along.
We’re about halfway around the wall when 20something David catches up to us. Apparently he
talked to Robin, learned we were going the whole way
around, and set off after us. “At least there will be four
of us who are late,” Utah John says. And it starts to
look pretty evident we will be late. Utah John and I
have held back our pace so we could stay together
with the rest of our little group. Even so, David stops to
take pictures more than the rest of us so he falls
behind again. The three of us push on. It’s taking
longer than it feels like it should to go nine miles on a
bike, and we are really pedaling hard now to try to
make up time. We begin to wonder if we might have
missed a turn somewhere, but really, how can you get
lost on a square city wall? It shouldn’t be possible.
Still, we start to worry.
Our 11:00 am meeting time comes and goes and
we’re still not there. Utah John has backtracked to
make sure David is doing okay. I push on with Rev.
John at my side. “Do you see anything that looks
familiar?” Rev. John asks me. “No, not yet, but I’m
sure we’re getting close,” I assure him. Clearly, Rev.
John is getting tired and voicing the worry I’m begin-
Page 16
ning to feel too. “Surely we must be almost there now,”
he says a few minutes later. What can I say? I’m
hoping to see that lime-green tent as much as he is. Is
it possible the tent was on a side-spur of the wall and
we went past it? Surely not.
We come to a construction zone with red barrier tape
and Chinese workmen everywhere and I think to
myself, “Now we’re in for it—we’ve come to a dead
end and we’re going to have to go back the way we
came.” But we’re able to snake our way around the red
tape and continue on. It’s 11:15—fifteen minutes late.
We pass through an open stone doorway and it’s with
a palpable sense of relief that I finally spot the limegreen tent in the distance. I call to Rev. John, “It’s just
up ahead,” then dash forward as fast as I can pedal.
Utah John has caught back up with us and arrives at
the tent alongside me. I get a photo of Rev. John
crossing the “finish line” with his arms raised in a
mixture of exhausted relief and accomplishment. David
arrives a minute or two later.
Robin is waiting for me with a welcoming smile. She
has already informed Tony what we were up to, so
Tony isn’t surprised by the fact that we’re a little late.
“It’s no problem,” he assures us. “If I had known you
were going to go all the way around the wall, I would
have given you some extra time.” “We didn’t know we
were going all the way around until we did it,” we
explain.
Robin takes a picture of the four of us, triumphant and
a bit sweaty. As we reboard the bus full of waiting
people, Utah John points at me and says, “It’s his fault!
He’s the devil! The devil made me do it!” But nobody
seems mad, thankfully. “In my ten years of leading tour
groups,” Tony announces, “these four are the first to
have made it all the way around the entire wall. Even I
haven’t done this, and I’m from Xi’an.” The whole
group breaks into applause. Yea for us!
Late that morning, we visit a store featuring fine
lacquer furniture and handmade silk rugs. The rugs
actually change the tone of their colors depending on
which direction you hold them. We learn that one small
rug the size of a large tea towel can take up to two
years to complete! We watch as two women weave
one of these rugs with painstaking care on an oldfashioned loom, one silk thread at a time. The store
also has silk clothing for sale, and Robin ends up
making her only big purchase of the trip—a dressy silk
Asian-style jacket in red and black.
During a tasty buffet lunch at the Xi’an Opera House,
we watch a chef turn a slab of dough into noodles just
by stretching it. Even though I watch the whole
process twice, I still don’t understand what causes the
individual strands to form out of the dough. Xi’an is
known for its noodle dishes, and the spicy sauce on
top of mine makes it a memorable meal.
After lunch, we visit Big Wild Goose Pagoda. This
seven-story-tall pagoda, originally built in 652 during
the Tang Dynasty, is a holy place for Buddhists. It was
built to hold Buddhist texts and relics brought from faroff India by China’s most intrepid early traveler,
Xuanzang. This extraordinary man started off from
ancient Xi’an, traveling along the Silk Road and
through deserts, finally arriving in India, the cradle of
Buddhism. Seventeen years later, long since presumed dead, Xuanzang returned, bringing 657 sutras
with him (important Buddhist texts). He was the talk of
the dynasty.
Our visit here is made memorable by the Buddhist
monks with shaved heads and orange robes chanting
inside the pagoda. Seated in rows with books before
them on dark wooden tables, they all repeat a text
together in a monotone, as a group. Tom-tom-like
drums play rapidly and lightly to keep everyone at the
same rhythm. Incense burns. It feels mysterious and
almost otherworldly. The inside of the pagoda is rich
with gold-leaf decoration and Buddha statues. It’s
shadowy and dark inside as we peer in from the sunny
portico. Chinese and foreign tourists alike crane their
necks to see through the open windows and doorways, snapping photos and murmuring among
themselves, but if any of this is a bother to the chanting monks inside, they don’t let on.
An enormous “incense candle tree” sits in the middle
of the sunny portico where Buddhists can light an
incense candle and add it to the tree. We watch as a
father shows his delighted young daughter how to light
her first candle from another already-lit candle and add
it to the tree.
At 6 pm that evening, we fly to Guilin. We meet our
local guide, David, who tells us on the short bus ride
from the airport that Guilin means “cinnamon forest”
because of all the cinnamon trees in the area. Guilin is
best known for the 3,000 karst limestone hills that
surround the city like dragons’ teeth, but we’ll have to
wait until tomorrow morning to see them because it’s
dark outside. We arrive at our hotel at 9 pm and have
a very late dinner.
April 6 (Thu) – Guilin
Our local guide, David, tells us that the population of
Guilin is a mere 600,000, small by Chinese standards.
But despite its size, Guilin has always been one of the
two sites most visited by Chinese tourists (the other
being Hangzhou). This is because of its stunning
natural beauty. David tells us there are twenty times
more tourists in Guilin per year than there are residents.
We begin with a short visit to a local kindergarten
where we watch a hundred happy kids playing in a
large courtyard, doing calisthenics, and generally
being rowdy. Then we walk through a pretty park next
door that offers lovely views of the karst hills behind a
Page 17
placid lake. These hills are like something out of a
dream. If you’ve ever seen traditional Chinese paintings that depict nearly vertical hills rising out of flat rice
fields, this is the place. The paintings aren’t as fanciful
as they might first appear, because the landscape
around here really does look like that.
There are 3,200 caves in and around Guilin, and our
next stop is at the most famous, Reed Flute Cave. It is
named for the verdant reeds that grow just outside its
entrance from which locals make flutes. If memory
serves me correctly, we actually climb up a wooden
staircase first, then pass through a gift shop on the
way to the cave entrance. We walk through a dripping
corridor, down a long set of stairs, and emerge into a
series of enormous caverns filled with stalactites,
stone pillars, and rock formations illuminated with
colored lights. The colored lighting is pretty but
somehow feels like cheating. The Chinese have a
passion for seeing shapes in the rocks, so various
formations are pointed out to us that look like mushrooms, roses, birds, and even Santa Claus and a
snowman. A lovely and mysterious tarn in a cavern
called the Crystal Palace, filled with soft blue lighting,
is the highlight of the tour. You could easily imagine
Gollum living in its black depths.
After lunch at a pleasant restaurant with hanging
lanterns, we visit Solitary Beauty Peak. This 500-foothigh limestone peak in the center of the city is famous
(at least among the Chinese) for the historically
important inscriptions written onto the limestone walls
near its base, but I’m more interested in climbing the
peak than reading what’s on it. We’re given 45 minutes
of free time to explore. Robin and I set off immediately,
climbing a spiraling series of 400 stone steps up a
steep incline, and are surprised at how quickly we
arrive at the top. It takes us less than ten minutes, and
the panoramic views are certainly worth the effort. The
city of Guilin spreads out beneath us, with the lovely
rows of dagger-like karst hills rising up behind. For a
wonder, it’s not misty, so we get a rare glimpse of the
karst scenery in the sunshine.
We still have some free time once we reach the base,
so we walk around the campus of Guangxi Normal
College which sits right next to Solitary Beauty Peak.
We see a group of college students gathered together
and head over to see what’s up. “I love NBA!” one
student says to me with a big smile. None of them
speak much English, so our conversation is necessarily limited. They seem surprised but pleased at our
rudimentary attempts to speak Chinese. We wave
goodbye after a few minutes and head back. A short
while later we see the same students heading down
the campus’s main street in informal parade formation
waving two large, brilliantly red Chinese flags. We
have no idea what the parade is for, but we stop to
take their pictures. The women giggle shyly as they
pass by, hands held over their mouths.
Once the bus drops us off at the hotel, we have the
rest of the afternoon at leisure. We decide to go for a
walk in nearby Seven Star Park. We pay an admission
to get into the park, something common throughout
China. Near the park entrance, we meet a group of
twenty or so young school kids. One of their teachers
approaches and asks if the kids could have their
picture taken with us. We agree and the kids swarm all
over us with smiles and hellos. We pose for the official
picture, taken by the teachers, then take a bunch of
our own photos of the kids. They cram in front of the
camera and adopt all sorts of kung-fu-like poses. They
love to see the results of each picture in the LCD
screen.
We stroll through a small zoo where we see a sleeping
panda, strutting peacocks, and busily munching deer.
It’s a perfect day in Guilin, sunny and 70 degrees. This
is rare since it’s usually rainy and misty here. We
wander at random down a garden path and eventually
reach Camel Hill, which is—you guessed it—shaped
like a two-humped camel. We meet up with Bob and
Ruby from our group, and the four of us amble along a
side trail that hugs the edge of the park, past green
vegetation and dripping rocks. Exiting the park at its
southern end, we cross some traffic and eventually
reach a spur of the Li River, where we see sampan
houseboats clustered together in a little river community. It looks like a pretty rustic lifestyle. The sampans
are cluttered with all the detritus of life on the river—
nets for fishing, cooking pots and pans, drums of who
knows what—oil? Robin’s not too sure about heading
closer, but we all end up walking along a dirt path that
takes us right up to the sampans. A passing bicyclist
stops to say hi. He speaks some English, enough to
explain that he’s going swimming in the Li River. “You
want come?” he asks, mimicking a person swimming.
We laugh and shake our heads.
At the end of the dirt path, at the water’s edge, is a
matronly woman with a weathered face mending
fishing nets. We say hello in Chinese and she smiles
and says “ni hao” back. She speaks no English, so we
speak in very broken Chinese. Eventually we come to
understand she’s asking us if we want a ride on a
sampan up and down the spur of the Li River. When I
ask her how much (“Duoshao qian?”), I can’t understand her answer. Oh well, it’s close to 5 pm anyway
and we have a long walk back to our hotel. We smile
and wave farewell and hurry home in the hot sun. After
a quick shower, we have dinner at the hotel.
Late that evening, after the sun has set, we go on a
half-hour excursion to see cormorant fishing, a
traditional mode of fishing in China. We board a small
ferry boat on the Li River. The boat chugs away from
the pier slowly, paralleling a fisherman on a bamboo
raft. The fisherman stands near the back of the raft
and uses a long pole to propel himself forward through
the shallow water. Lanterns are suspended over the
Page 18
water at the bow and stern to attract fish. Four cormorants perch on the front of the bamboo raft. When the
fisherman softly calls out “hway, hway,” the cormorants dive off the raft at his command. One of them
needs a little extra prodding to get off its comfortable
perch, so the fisherman nudges him off with his pole.
The cormorants are excellent swimmers—they can
outswim a fish. When they see one, they dive down,
chase after it underwater, and more times than not
come up with a fish in their gullets. But since they have
rings around their necks, they can’t swallow the fish,
so instead they clamber back onto the raft and
disgorge the fish for the fisherman. He collects all the
fish in a big woven basket on the back of the raft. The
cormorants can swallow the smaller fish they catch, so
it’s only the big ones that make it back to the fisherman. When their work is done, the rings are removed
from the cormorants’ necks so they can eat. It’s said
that one good cormorant can feed an entire family.
These days, I suspect the fishermen make as much
from the tourists who pay to watch them as they do
from the fishing itself. Still, it’s a glimpse into an
unusual way of life that has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years in China.
April 7 (Fri) – Li River Cruise, Yangshuo Biking and
Bamboo Rafting
This is my favorite day in China. We begin with a
cruise down the Li River on a misty morning—perfect
conditions for this experience. As soon as the boat
starts moving, we head to the top deck, out in the open
air, to enjoy the views. I snap a hundred pictures
before the cruise is halfway over. Each bend of the
river brings new sights. The karst limestone hills look
like sharks’ teeth—or the Chinese might say like
dragons’ teeth. The whole cruise is 3½ hours long,
with the most dramatic scenery being in the first two
hours and the final half hour.
A particularly fun aspect of the trip is the “pirates” who
keep boarding our ship. Two men on a sampan row
out near the ship, paddle furiously, then manage to
pull their sampans alongside. It takes quite a bit of
prowess to get an unmotorized sampan moored to a
fast-moving ferry in midstream, and not every attempt
is successful. For those who do succeed, they immediately begin trying to sell us stuff—statuettes, fans,
food, knickknacks. “Hullo! Hullo!” they call, trying to get
our attention. They find a fair number of buyers before
casting off and rowing back to their starting point. This
happens repeatedly during our cruise downriver.
After we’ve passed the most dramatic scenery, lunch
is served. The food is average but they are generous
with the beer, providing four big bottles per table. The
extra beer is donated to a table of Chinese tourists—a
goodwill gesture that is much appreciated.
We arrive in Yangshuo. The dock is packed with
vendors. Two weatherbeaten old men with cormorants
on long poles slung over their shoulders stand waiting
patiently for tourists who want to have their pictures
taken with them. We pass through the throng. For
those who like to shop, there are densely packed
market stalls on either side of the street stretching for
half a mile to our hotel. We opt to leave the madness
behind and take the golf cart to the hotel.
After getting settled in our room, we return to the lobby
at 2 pm. Most people are going on a golf cart tour of
nearby villages, but I’m in the mood for adventure; I
want to get off the beaten path and do something on
our own. Robin is unsure at first; she almost does the
golf cart trip, then decides to join me in going on a bike
ride into the countryside. We rent bikes from a shop
right next to the hotel for 10 yuan each ($1.25) for the
whole afternoon. There are a few other people riding
bikes—twenty-something David, Joanne, and Utah
John. Our original plan is to follow the golf carts out of
the busy center of town, then go at our own pace once
we reach the countryside. Unfortunately, Robin is still
getting her seat adjusted when the golf carts take off—
very annoying. Utah John and Joanne manage to
follow, but Robin and I, along with twenty-something
David, are left behind to make our way as best we can.
The traffic in central Yangshuo is surprisingly heavy.
After the golf cart fiasco, the three of us hazard the
crowded streets for ten minutes, trying to guess which
way the golf carts went, then wisely decide to turn
back and revisit the bike shop for better directions. The
owner kindly offers to lead us on a different route
heading the other way out to the countryside. He
jumps on his motor scooter and off we go. I stay right
on the motor scooter’s tail, but Robin and David are
further back. They cross a busy intersection with a bus
bearing down on them. They barely make it across in
time, bus horn blaring at them all the way. Yikes!
Robin is none too happy with me at this point. I keep
my distance for awhile until she has a chance to cool
down.
Without a doubt, the scariest part of the trip is getting
out of Yangshuo. Once we reach the side road, our
guide waves us on, and from that point forward, a very
stressful beginning turns into a wonderful experience.
The country road is clear of traffic except for other
bicycles and an occasional car or bus. We see country
folk ambling up and down the road, working in the
fields next to the road, hoeing, pulling carts—and
selling to tourists. Yes, even here in the countryside
there are vendors, and they’re selling both to international and to fellow Chinese tourists. A fair number of
young Chinese (primarily women, not many men for
some reason) are riding bikes along this road, enjoying
a taste of the countryside. Several older women stand
in the road selling leis of fresh flowers. I buy one for
Robin for a dollar and she wears it the rest of the day.
For another dollar we buy two wooden painted ducks
from a sweet old lady with no teeth. We pay three
Page 19
yuan for the privilege of taking a picture of an old man
walking along the street with his water buffalo—you
get the sense this is his job, just walking up and down
this narrow lane each day in hopes of tourists wanting
to take his picture. Still, he is a photogenic old guy with
a water buffalo, so we don’t mind.
Meanwhile, the scenery around us has turned stunning. Karst limestone mountains rise up close at hand
all around us, while half-drowned fields of rice stretch
out on either side of the road.
Eventually we come to a point where the main road
goes straight and a grassy side trail veers off to the left
with a sign saying something about a wharf. There are
two rough-looking men standing there who insist we
should turn down this side lane. When we start to go
straight, they call out “No! no! This way!” We have no
idea if they are genuinely trying to be helpful or if their
purpose is more sinister. Not sure what to do, we stay
on the main road and go another mile or so. But the
guy at the cycle shop did say something about turning
left at some point and following along the Yulong
River, so we eventually backtrack. The same two men
are still there, urging us onto the path. “Hullo! Hullo!
This way!” A young woman with a boyish haircut
makes an appearance. She keeps saying “Byoo-teeful!” out of any context except for pointing down the
grassy lane. We reluctantly turn down the lane with the
three of them following behind us. When we pause to
let the men go by, the woman stays behind, waiting.
It finally dawns on me that the two other words she
keeps repeating—“baboo laughing! baboo laughing!”—
are “bamboo rafting” and I feel a sense of relief. These
are just country folk trying to sell us on a bamboo
rafting trip. I feel a bit of an idiot for suspecting them of
foul play.
We reach the end of the lane, which appears to run
right into the Yulong River. If there is a bike lane
following along the river, it’s incredibly muddy and
indistinct. But as soon as I see the bamboo rafts
complete with lounge chairs, I think this looks like just
about the greatest thing ever. Robin and David seem
less certain. They are concerned about the time—it’s
nearly 4 pm and we’re supposed to be back for dinner
at 6 pm—and they are concerned about where the
rafts will take us, and where the bikes will go, not to
mention the fact that the river guides can’t speak any
English and we can’t speak any Chinese.
The three of us go back and forth for several painful
minutes. They can see I really want to do this, and I
can see they’re really not very comfortable with the
idea. Meanwhile, I’m trying to communicate with four
or five Chinese people who hover around us, trying
very hard to convince us to go. They keep giving us
the price—120 yuan ($15) for the three of us, on two
rafts, with the bicycles going on the backs of the
rafts—but what we want to know is, how long will the
trip take, and will it take us to Yangshuo. Every time
we say “Yangshuo” they repeat the word and nod and
point downriver, so that seems encouraging. But “How
long?” gets us nothing but puzzled looks and another
attempt to show us the price on a piece of paper.
I draw a clock on the paper and move my finger
around it. The man nods and writes down “30” and
“40.” I have no idea what this means, although in
retrospect I understand. The rafting part of the trip
takes thirty minutes and the bike journey back to
Yangshuo from where the rafts put in takes another
forty minutes. But of course, at this point we aren’t
even aware there is more biking to be done after the
raft trip, so we’re puzzled by the two numbers. In any
case, despite valiant efforts, we can’t really get much
of an idea about the time involved, and in the end—
after balancing on a knife edge of indecision—we
agree to take the plunge and go for it. In typical Bob
fashion, I say “How bad can it be?” and prattle on
about the worst case being missing dinner—oh, and
possibly the show later that evening that we’ve already
paid $50 for. This does much to raise everyone’s
spirits.
I pay the man 120 yuan and two raftsmen set about
loading our bicycles onto the backs of two bamboo
rafts. They put two bikes on the back of David’s raft
and one bike on the back of ours, which further
confuses us, but eventually I understand they’re just
trying to balance the loads. The two polers climb
aboard and pole us into the middle of the slow-moving
river. We begin heading upstream. Robin mutters to
me, “Aren’t we going the wrong way?” by which she
means, away from Yangshuo. Indeed we are. I noticed
the same thing but wasn’t going to mention it.
Just upstream is a small rapids. I can’t see how the
rafts can possibly get above them, so I’m assuming
we’re just going upstream to get turned around or to
enjoy the view—and this turns out to be the case.
Behind the rapids is an idyllic scene of rounded green
hills reflected in the water. Wow, the view is truly
amazing and I’m instantly glad we did this. As if to
complete the scene, a woman crosses carefully over a
stone walkway on top of the rapids, carrying a pole
across her shoulders with a bundle of sticks tied to
each end. A minute later, a man leading an ox crosses
at the same spot. It’s all timed so perfectly I have my
suspicions it has been staged, but that doesn’t stop
me from snapping photos and enjoying the beauty of
the scene.
The polers turn us around and we head downriver.
Now we can relax and enjoy ourselves. There is a
near-perfect reflection of the green mountains in the
calm waters of the Yulong River. Such uninterrupted
serenity is rare these days. The silence is unbroken by
any modern sounds; all we hear is the call of birds and
the drip-splash of water as the polers slowly push us
along.
Page 20
Our progress is so slow that I begin to wonder if there
will be daylight left by the time we reach Yangshuo.
But reclining in our comfortable bamboo lounge chairs,
it’s hard to get too worked up about anything. I take
pictures of David on his raft and he takes pictures of
us on ours. It’s bucolic and wonderful, the perfect
antidote to civilization and hurry. What more could we
possibly want?
Well, a beer, perhaps. All right then, how about a beer
vendor who just happens to be waiting downstream on
her own bamboo raft? We pole up to her, pay her a
few dollars, then pay a few dollars more when she
ever-so-thoughtfully gestures that we might also want
to buy bottles of beer for our raftsmen. She opens our
bottles with a bottle opener, but David and his rafter
have already floated downstream a bit. In a show of
manliness, David’s poler decides that bottle openers
are for wimps and bites the beer cap off with his teeth.
He succeeds in getting it off, but I swear I see him spit
out a bit of tooth afterwards. Hopefully it was just a bit
of white label.
David’s poler is a likeable fellow. He has a twinkle in
his eye and enjoys trying to communicate with us,
which adds to the fun of the trip. “Yingwen?” he asks
us. Are you English? We respond, “Megguo”—
American. He seems surprised by this, and we gather
that most people who go on this adventure are
European rather than American. Indeed, according to
David, our Guilin tour guide, the Chinese tend to think
of Europeans as adventurous. “Europeans like to get
out in the fields and actually help the farmer plow the
field with his water buffalo, getting very muddy in the
process. Americans are mostly known as shoppers
and eaters.” That sounds about right.
The views really are unbelievable. It’s the reflections of
the mountains in the calm water that make it outstanding. Everybody should do this trip! Later we learn
that it was incredibly popular with tour groups two
years ago, then some French guy drowned and all the
tour groups shunned it for fear of being held liable.
Now, it’s only individual travelers who get to enjoy this
little slice of heaven. But frankly, how anyone could
drown on a placid river like this one is beyond me. The
two or three manmade rapids the rafts go over can’t be
more than Class 1.
We continue along, drinking our beers and toasting our
polers with calls of “Ganbei!” Our polers happily toast
us back. We go over our second rapids—the biggest
of the trip. Just beyond is a bamboo way-station fixed
in the middle of the river, equipped with a hi-tech
computer, color printer, and laminator! A photographer
has taken our picture going over the rapids and
already has digital images ready for us to view. We
each pick our favorite image, and in less than five
minutes, we have laminated mementos of our adventure. Talk about the old meeting the new in China!
An extra benefit of stopping for the photos is that the
photographer actually speaks some English. We learn
for the first time that after the rafting trip ends (in
another fifteen minutes or so), we’ll have a fortyminute bike ride still to go. Even so, that will get us
back to our hotel close to 6 pm. We just might make it
to dinner after all.
I trade thumbs up with the polers as the scenery just
keeps getting better. At last, after a forty-five-minute
journey (with stops), they pole us over to the bank and
we clamber out. Our polers wrestle our bikes ashore.
They point us straight ahead, indicating the way, but
all we can see is a concrete agricultural ditch and rice
fields stretching as far as the eye can see in every
direction. They shrug and lead us along the concrete
ditch until at last I can make out a dirt road in the
distance. “Okay!” I say. They nod and grin, and their
grins widen enormously when we tip them $2 each, a
huge tip by Chinese standards. David’s boatman
actually kisses me on both cheeks! I’ve never gotten
that response to a tip before. He does the same for
Robin and David, then the two men are off, waving
friendly goodbyes.
The raised part of the concrete ditch is too narrow for
us and the bikes, so we walk on the concrete while
pushing our bikes alongside us in the mud. The bikes
quickly turn filthy. We reach a mucky road and begin
peddling. The mountain bike tires throw up globs of
mud, spattering our clothing, but we keep peddling,
intent on reaching Yangshuo. The journey is mostly
level and takes about an hour (not the forty minutes
they claim), but we do get there. Every once in awhile,
we stop and say “Yangshuo?” to some local person,
pointing up the road, and they always nod and say
“Dui” (yes) to indicate we’re going the right way.
We reach the outskirts of Yangshuo and the traffic
gets heavier. When we arrive at the town proper, we
come to a big roundabout. I pull out my map, point to
our hotel, and a young woman is able to give us
directions, pointing to the far side of the roundabout.
Negotiating the rotary with car and truck traffic is
challenging but we survive and are soon biking up the
busy main street in Yangshuo. It doesn’t seem quite so
bad this time, now that we’re a bit more seasoned, but
it’s still a great relief to see the banner proclaiming
“Welcome China Focus!” hanging across the entrance
of our hotel.
Phew! It’s 6:15 pm. We return our mud-covered bikes
to the rental shop, half expecting the bike owner to
complain about the sorry state they’re in, but he simply
nods. We tip him extra for guiding us (and out of guilt
for our mud-covered bikes), then hurry to the hotel. As
sweaty and mud-spattered as we are, we go straight to
the restaurant to let everyone know we’re all right and
are actually greeted with applause. David stays to
have dinner with his family, but we return to our room
to shower. We do our best to get the mud off our
Page 21
clothing. My convertible pants legs are in such sorry
shape that I unzip them and soak them in the sink,
going down to dinner in just shorts. We head in for a
quick bite just as most other people are finishing. So
was the journey worth being a little late for dinner?
Absolutely!
At 7:20 pm, we head out for an evening show called
“Impressions.” This is a big deal in Yangshuo right now
and is hugely popular with the Chinese. It is an
extravaganza of lights and special effects and boasts
an enormous cast of over 600 people. The show is
staged on the Li River, with the karst mountains as a
backdrop. Seeing the mountains all lit up at night is a
sight in itself. We perch in our high-tiered seats and
watch the spectacle. The binoculars we rent for 5 yuan
come in handy every now and then, but it’s more the
overall effect that’s fascinating than any individual
performer. One scene involves over a hundred
sampans rowing simultaneously across the river; all at
once the rowers raise broad red ribbons hundreds of
yards long out of the water as if from nowhere. There’s
a collective gasp from the audience—quite dramatic.
A beautiful moon dancer flits up and down an enormous crescent moon that seems to hang just over the
water. We hear that for the first two weeks of the show
she was nude, but our binoculars confirm she is
wearing a body stocking now. In another sequence,
500 people wearing silver costumes with blinking lights
link hands and crisscross over the water on hidden
platforms, forming a continuous line. All at once they
disappear, then reappear at random, then reappear in
sequence, blinking on and off like twinkling stars.
Lovely floating pavilions all lit up on the water are the
centerpiece of a romantic musical interlude. The
amplifiers and sound system must be state-of-the-art
to carry sound to such a huge outdoor venue as this
one. The show is only an hour long but well worth the
price of admission. Tony tells us it’s only staged if they
can get a certain number of tickets sold, since it isn’t
cost-effective otherwise with so many performers
involved. One cultural thing I learn is that clapping isn’t
as common in China as it is in the U.S. A performance
has to really wow the audience for them to react with
applause. The only time that happens during this show
is when the red ribbons are raised out of the water.
By the time we get to the hotel, we’re just plum
tuckered out—too beat to explore Yangshuo at night,
even though it’s a town with a lot of night life and local
color. We fall into bed and sleep like the dead.
April 8 (Sat) – Travel Day from Yangshuo to
Hangzhou
This travel day is one of the least active sightseeing
days of the trip. We get an early wakeup call at 6 am;
it’s hard to get up after such a busy day yesterday.
After a quick breakfast of OJ, bananas, and apple
slices, we’re on the bus by 7:20 am. The bus takes us
to the airport in Guilin, about an hour away, then we
catch an early flight from Guilin to Shanghai (our last
domestic flight). A 2½ hour bus ride takes us from
Shanghai to Hangzhou. The scenery outside the
windows is interesting—I’m surprised to see farmers
working rice paddies so close to ultra-modern Shanghai. Here we are on a smooth four-lane superhighway,
but the farmers to either side of the road still use water
buffalo to pull their plows.
We take a break midway through the bus ride and stop
for a traditional Chinese snack called zongi (“tsoonguh” with the “uh” almost silent). Served hot, these large
snacks are somewhat like tamales with pork inside (or
some other meat or bean paste) and sticky rice on the
outside shaped in a triangle and covered with bamboo
leaves. Some of the people in our group seem to be
holding back, but I stride purposefully up to the counter
and call out “Zongi! Zongi zhourou!” The woman
behind the counter stares at me in confusion. I repeat
myself and eventually get what I ask for, but not
without some amused bewilderment on the part of the
staff. Apparently my pronunciation of zhourou (“jewrow,” or pork) is not spot-on. I get a lesson from
Tony—“joo” he says, his hand and voice level, “row”
he says with his hand and voice descending sharply.
After an early dinner at 5:30, about half of the people
in our group take a pleasant evening stroll along West
Lake, with Tony leading, starting at a musical fountain
similar to the Bellagio and finishing at a tall, brightly lit
pagoda. Tony tells us it’s the only pagoda in China
with an elevator that whisks you to the top. We stroll
for about three miles. It’s a nice evening with some
sprinkles but no real rain, and I’m quite comfortable in
my short sleeves. The hillside across the lake is
luminous with greenish lights, and the willow trees
lining the lake are softly lit as well. Plum, peach, and
cherry trees are all in full spring bloom. Many young
couples sit on benches or stroll hand in hand. It’s very
romantic. Robin and I agree we could imagine living
for a time in Hangzhou in one of the apartments lining
the park (very expensive by Chinese standards). We
stop at a cart and order fresh-made cotton candy.
Tony laughs when he sees me trying to eat it. “Your
nose is too big, I think, for Chinese cotton candy!”
The pagoda, which closes at 8:30 pm, seems to keep
receding from us. We give up on making it there in
time—only to realize we’ve lost two members of our
group. Dean (who uses a cane) and Herb are nowhere
to be found. We search all around but can’t find them.
Tony gets a call on his cell phone. “Where are you?”
Herb asks. “Where are you?” Tony counters. “We’re at
the pagoda!” Herb replies. How they got there ahead
of us we’ll never know. We all meet at the pagoda and
are nearly locked inside the park as the guards close
the iron gates. Tony hails multiple taxis for the ride
back to the hotel. Joanne, Robin, and I share a ride.
I’m in the front seat, and it’s a bit scary at times as our
Page 22
driver veers across three lanes of traffic in an apparent
bid to beat the other taxis to our hotel. The cost is 30
yuan ($4) for a half-hour taxi ride.
Robin and I cross the street to a 7-Eleven-type store
and buy four Snickers, a cold Coke, and a bottle of red
wine. The wine ($1.25) tastes like plummy grape juice,
but what can you expect for a buck?
April 9 (Sunday) – Hangzhou’s West Lake, Tea
Plantation
I’ve been doing pushups in the morning instead of
going to breakfast in an attempt to stay in some
semblance of shape. That and journal writing are my
usual morning activities. Usually we’re required to
have our luggage out an hour before we leave, so
getting packed is another necessity.
We set out for West Lake on a drizzly gray morning.
This is by far the wettest day of our trip. We arrive at
the lake, and as we have been warned, it is very, very
crowded. It’s a Sunday and it’s simply packed with
Chinese tourists. For them, West Lake and Guilin are
their two most cherished vacation destinations. The
rain really starts to pour, so we all open our umbrellas
or pull on our rain gear. I get a picture of all the
Chinese tourists walking along in the rain, a sea of
colorful umbrellas above their heads.
We board a ship designed with a dragon motif and
head out for a 45-minute tour of the lake. It’s not
raining now, but it’s misty and gray, just like the many
scroll paintings you see of the lake. Lovely willows and
flowering trees overhang its borders. The ship charts a
course through the middle of the lake, so much of the
shoreline scenery is too far away to appreciate. Many
Chinese families are in oared wooden boats spending
a leisurely day on the lake. A rower takes them to and
from the islands and other key sights. I can see tea
being served on some of the boats and cards being
played on others.
Once we return to land, we set out for a walk in a
beautiful garden area next to West Lake. It seems as if
every tree and flower is in bloom, a definite advantage
of coming this time of year. A dozen Chinese teenagers, all boys, ask me if I’ll be in their picture. Sure, why
not! I pose with them. I’m not sure why they want me—
possibly because I look quintessentially American to
them with my blue jeans and “big nose,” or perhaps
because I’m six feet tall, quite tall by Chinese standards. All the boys are in matching sweatpants and
reasonably tall, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were
high school basketball players themselves.
Next we visit a historically interesting shopping district
in Hangzhou. It’s a pedestrian mall with wooden
buildings that have been preserved more or less as
they would have looked in Qing Dynasty times. As
soon as we arrive, the heavens open up and it just
pours down. Wouldn’t you know it? We get off the bus
and slosh through huge puddles as we walk along the
street. It’s very picturesque, even in the rain, so I snap
dozens of pictures of stores and shopkeepers and
strange items for sale. We visit a traditional herbal
medicine store as a group (think garlic, gnarled roots,
snake oil, and powdered shark cartilage and you won’t
be too far off the mark). During a free half hour to
explore on our own, Robin and I pose for a picture in a
red hand-carried wedding carriage and eat a whole
bag of delicious sweet sesame wafers that cost us 3
yuan (less than fifty cents).
After lunch, we head for a green tea plantation. The
pickers gathering tea leaves work very fast but only
earn 5 yuan (75 cents) for a whole day’s work. Most of
them are minority peoples. During the “tea demo,” we
learn there are basically three kinds of tea in the world:
green (unfermented), black (fully fermented), and
ulong (partially fermented). Naturally, they tout the
wonders of the green tea they’re selling. We’re each
given a cup, and I suck down as many floating tea
leaves as I do tea. The woman giving the presentation
demonstrates her mastery at packing tea very tightly in
a container—but all I end up buying is some green tea
candy. In the attached gift store, Robin buys a ruffled
silk body sleeve for $12.50. From its size, it looks like
it’s made for a baby (or a Chihuahua), but later she
puts it on and it fits like a glove.
We visit one more garden that afternoon where an
amplified Chinese opera is being performed. The
amps are turned way too high and it’s painfully loud
and screechy. We move on quickly. The garden
scenery is lovely but once again it starts pouring rain,
this time with thunder and lightning thrown in. Except
for a few wise souls who stayed on the bus, we’re all
quite drenched by the time we get back. We sit there
dripping and steaming in our seats as the bus windows
fog up.
Back at the hotel, we have an hour to relax. Several of
us have expressed an interest in visiting the four-floor
music and book store next door, so Tony accompanies
us and helps us buy music. We need his help since all
the labels are in Chinese and we don’t know what’s
good from what’s bad. He helps me buy a compilation
3-CD set of contemporary Chinese pop music for 12
yuan ($1.50). I also buy an instrumental Chinese CD
he recommends for $2. I can’t get over the low prices
in China. As another point of comparison, several
people in our group get haircuts and only pay 10 yuan
each ($1.25).
Before dinner I head down to the hotel’s ping pong
room to see what’s going on. I watch a Chinese man
play ping pong with his young son. The son asks me in
English, “Excuse me; my father want me to ask if you
play game with him.” The son keeps score. After a
hard-fought match, I barely manage to beat him 21 to
19. Frankly, I think he’s surprised to have been beaten
by an American at this particular sport.
Page 23
Dinner is at a hotel near West Lake. Our lovable local
guide, Han (and her young sidekick Mao-Mao, who is
in training), offer to walk us around West Lake again,
but no one takes her up on her offer since it’s still
raining out. Han tells us a few quick jokes on the bus
ride back. What do you call a blind deer? No eye deer.
What do you call a blind deer with no legs? Still no eye
deer. Why can’t bicycles stand on their own? Because
they’re too tired. (Groan.)
That evening, twenty-something David and I play ping
pong for two hours. Our game looks pretty sedate
compared to what’s going on at the far end of the
room, where four terrific Chinese players duke it out.
They are shirtless and sweating, yelling at the big
points and really slamming the ball back and forth.
Robin eventually comes down in search of me and
winds up playing a few games herself.
April 10 (Mon) – Suzhou Canal Tour
Tony seems to be taking it easier on us as the tour
progresses into its third week. For example, we don’t
have to be on the bus this morning until 9:30 am. I
actually have breakfast with Robin for a change.
The drive to Suzhou takes 2½ hours. Tony gives us
another compelling talk. “For most Chinese, the top
five keys to success are home, son, money, health,
car.” (We notice love doesn’t make the list.) The four
main subjects taught in junior high are mathematics,
history, Chinese language, and English. English! That
means that in five or ten years, most young adults will
be able to speak English in China. He goes on to tell
us about “tofu projects,” housing and road construction
projects that are so shoddy they collapse like tofu
shortly after they’re built. The Chinese government has
actually executed white-collar workers for tofu projects.
For instance, 17 upper-level highway officials were
recently executed by the government due to a bridge
that collapsed due to shoddy construction, killing
dozens of people.
Tony’s next subject is the top ten profit-making
businesses in China. Monopolization is responsible for
many of the biggest profits. Not surprisingly, at or near
the top of the list are energy, automobile manufacturing, real estate, cable TV, and telecom (especially cell
phones). But some of the others are a surprise.
Funeral services is a big money maker. School
textbook publishing makes the top ten. Highway
construction is very lucrative (Tony tells us toll booth
operators are well paid because of family connections
with highway construction bosses). On-line Internet
games are incredibly profitable. But the biggest
surprise is plastic surgery. The Chinese spent $25
billion on plastic surgery in the past year. And it’s not
just China; 13% of South Korean women have had
plastic surgery. “There are specialized tours,” Tony
tells us, “where Chinese women are taken to Korea as
a group for sightseeing combined with plastic surgery.
Special note has to be taken by the government when
they leave China since they look so different from their
passport photos when they come back!”
During a stop along the way, I purchase a bagful of
warm chestnuts. The first four or five are tasty enough,
but I end up donating the rest of the bag to the bus
driver who seems to really like them.
After lunch in Suzhou, I try a shot of snake wine. It’s
called snake wine because a large snake (dead)
ferments at the bottom of a broad-necked bottle of rice
wine. The snake is big enough that it coils several
times around the bottom. The waiter pours me a glass.
By now a small audience has gathered to watch. I
raise my glass, call out “Ganbei!” and down it in one
shot. It tastes like a shot of cognac. “It’s actually quite
good!” I insist, but nobody else wants to try it. Rev
John offers to give me last rites and suggests Nurse
Robin check my pulse. Utah John, who’s a doctor,
claims I look a bit pale. Ellis, a gentle-spoken Chinese
man in his eighties, tells me snake wine is very good
for the knees. Stella, his wife, assures Robin she will
be very happy with me tonight because snake wine
has certain other benefits. Robin, meanwhile, vows not
to kiss me for a week.
Just behind the restaurant, we board three small boats
and take a short tour of the main canal encircling (or
“ensquaring” since it is more or less square-shaped)
central Suzhou. Suzhou is called “The Venice of the
East” because of all its canals. It’s a misty afternoon
but at least it’s not raining. We watch a fisherman
using a lever to lower a huge, globe-shaped bamboo
dipping net into the water. A few women wash clothes
on steps that disappear into the water. Two-story
ramshackle houses crowd both sides of the canal.
Arched bridges cross overhead where Chinese
families stand and wave at us. On our way back, we
pass through a narrow side canal that only fits one
boat’s width at a time.
A bus takes us to our hotel in Suzhou, called the
Glamor Hotel. I’m not sure if “glamour” is misspelled
on purpose or not, but in any case, it’s a brand-new
hotel and probably the fanciest place we’ve stayed on
the trip. We have a beautiful room with a king-size
bed, a large silkscreen dividing the bedroom from the
office, an extra-deep bathtub, and a separate standalone shower. I sack out for about an hour and sleep
really deep (maybe it’s the snake wine). Robin goes
for a short walk around the neighborhood and buys a
bottle of Dynasty Red Wine for $7. This is the only
decent red wine we drink in China.
It’s still only 5 pm when Robin gets back, so we decide
to go for a walk together before dinner. We stroll down
a side street with lots of great shops, food stalls,
vegetable stands, and covered markets. We see lots
of young people and eventually discover a university
with a gated entrance just off the street. We are the
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only Americans there and stand out like a sore thumb,
but everyone is very pleasant. Many people say
“Hello!” to us (it’s the only word of English they know)
and smile and laugh when we say “Ni hao!” back. The
assortment of foods in the covered market is surprising
to American eyes. For instance, the seafood portion of
the market doesn’t just have live fish but also live
squid and live eel. A young Chinese guy pantomimes
picking up one of the eels out of a tray of water that
contains dozens of them, black and slowly wriggling,
and lowering it into his mouth. He points to me. I
pantomime “you first” and pretend to take his picture,
and he laughs. I touch the eels in their container, but
there’s no way I’m eating one until it’s cooked. (You’ve
got to draw the line somewhere.)
Back near the entrance to the alleyway, we watch a
man making Chinese “crepes” for 2 yuan each (25
cents). They looks so good, I’m ready to order one on
the spot, but the line is too long and dinner is only
twenty minutes away. A crowd gathers around the
food stand apparently as a result of our presence
there.
After dinner, we go out for another stroll at night. It’s
around 8 pm. We walk toward the same side street as
before and run into a large number of people from our
group. Stella, who was once a Chinese chef, urges us
to try “dragon’s eyes,” gray-skinned, grape-sized fruits
that taste like crunchy lychees. Robin and I both like
them. We also get to try “wife cookies,” crisp wafers
traditionally given by the groom to the bride’s family as
part of his dowry. (In China, it’s the man who gives the
dowry to the woman.)
The same guy is still making those Chinese “crepes,”
and this time I order one. The cook puts batter on the
flat griddle and spreads it out thin like a crepe, adds an
egg on top, sprinkles in some diced onions and spices,
and folds it over once. He adds hoisin sauce and a
spicy red sauce (“yi dien dien,” I say, “Just a little”
which gets a laugh). Finally, he adds crunchy wafers
on top and folds the whole thing again, cutting it in half
and dropping the two halves into a bag. It’s crunchy,
spicy, and genuinely delicious. If I had room in my
stomach, I’d easily have another one.
Several members of our group grew up in China or
Taiwan and speak Mandarin well enough that they can
communicate with the shopkeepers and people we
meet. One friendly Chinese woman, a bus driver by
trade, talks with Ming-Lee from our group, telling us we
should venture further down the side street to where it
narrows even further into a lane of historic Chinese
houses. We may have to try that tomorrow, if we’re
feeling brave enough.
We amble back, stopping frequently. I get a Coke for
the equivalent of 30 cents, and Robin gets a bottle of
Tsingtao beer for about the same. After checking with
the shop owner to make sure it’s legal, she drinks the
beer as she makes her way back to the hotel. That
night, we draw ourselves a bath, soak for awhile, and
hit the sack by 11:30 pm. For a quiet day with only one
planned activity (the canal cruise), it turns out to be
surprisingly full of fun and adventure.
April 11 (Tue) – Suzhou Gardens, Silk Spinning
Factory, Tongli Water Town
Our first tour of the day is of the famous courtyard
garden in Suzhou called the Garden of the Fishing Net
Master. It is considered to be the best example of a
traditional Chinese garden in Suzhou and probably in
all of China. We are given plenty of time to wander
through its rooms and courtyards. At the center of the
gardens is a beautiful pond with lilies, flowering shrubs
on the banks, and courtyards and pavilions all around.
It’s one of those places that offers splendid views no
matter where you walk or what angle you take. Every
window offers a new perspective. I particularly like an
open window with a beautiful wood-carved design
framing a stand of live bamboo. Robin and I wander
away from our official group for most of the visit,
enjoying the gardens in a more quiet way. I spend the
last ten minutes sitting peacefully, enjoying a view of
the lily pond. Seeing it in springtime when the shrubs
are in bloom makes it especially lovely.
Next we visit the Suzhou Silk Spinning Factory, where
we see the silk spinning process from beginning to
end. Complex machines with a 19th-century feel to
them process the cocoons, unwrapping them one
strand of silk at a time. Feeling a single strand between your fingers really brings home how delicate yet
strong silk is. Double cocoons—ones that contain two
silkworms and twice as much silk—are treated
differently from single cocoons. Getting the two
strands of silk separate from each other isn’t worth the
effort, so this silk is used for the batting that goes
inside duvets and bed covers. We watch as four
workers pull the “batting” silk from packet-of-cards size
to table size. Next comes a fashion show complete
with runway models sporting silk blouses, dresses,
and lingerie. Last, of course, comes the enormous silk
store itself, rooms and rooms of it, from duvets and
bedspreads to silk clothing of every kind. We find it a
bit overwhelming and only spend a few minutes
shopping before heading off to a buffet lunch next
door.
That afternoon, we drive to the nearby “water town” of
Tongli, called such because of all the waterways
crisscrossing it. Tongli’s intact historic buildings and
small-town feel (pop. 120,000) make it a charming
change from all the big modernized cities we’ve
visited. Fifteen rivers meander through Tongli, and
forty-nine bridges cross them. For convenience, its
households are built next to canals rather than streets.
We enjoy the quiet pace of Tongli, the ancient bridges
crossing the canals, the outdoor restaurants lining the
water, the laid-back vendors, the narrow paved
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alleyways, and the boats poling up and down the
waterways. We’re given twenty minutes to wander
around town by ourselves, which isn’t quite enough
time, but we see a fair portion of the town before we
have to head back. It’s worth noting that Tongli, for all
its charm, is certainly already on the tourist map. No
town or city we’ve visited on this tour has been
untouristed—although you only have to walk a few
streets away from your hotel to find untouristed
sections of touristed cities.
We return to our hotel around 5 pm and are still feeling
energetic enough to go for a stroll. Once again we
walk down the busy alleyway with all the food stalls,
but this time we keep going past the vendors to the
residential area beyond it. Narrow alleyways, whitewashed apartment buildings, hung laundry, and
residents doing daily chores make for plenty of local
color. We definitely stand out like sore thumbs. We get
lots of double-takes and hesitant smiles and nods, but
as soon as we say “ni hao,” most of the people smile
and say “ni hao” back with a quiet laugh. They always
seem surprised to hear us speak even this little bit of
Mandarin. When we say something beyond “Ni hao”
like “wanshang hao” (good evening), they seem very
surprised indeed. You can hear them chattering and
laughing among themselves after we’ve passed.
A group of young school kids calls out “Hello!” then
they get all nervous and shy when we actually come
up to speak with them in English. When I ask them in
Mandarin if they speak any English, they giggle and
laugh before one boy replies—in Mandarin—“Yi dien
dien” (a little bit). Our efforts at communication don’t
get very far, and we eventually say “bye-bye”—
something 90% of Chinese say themselves—and “zaijian” (tsai-chee-en, goodbye). Still, there are smiles on
all sides as we leave, and we can hear the kids
giggling among themselves as we head off. We stroll
through this off-the-beaten-path community for a good
hour before heading back to the hotel.
April 12 (Wed) – Shanghai’s Yuyuan Bazaar, The
Bund, Acrobatic Show
Tony is going easier on us. There’s no wake-up call
this morning and we don’t depart for Shanghai until 10
am.
The bus drives to Shanghai in heavy traffic and heavy
rain. This is the second rainy day of our trip, and to top
it off, it’s chilly. When the bus arrives in Shanghai, it
unfortunately has to stop several blocks away from the
restaurant where we’re having lunch. The trudge
through the rain looks to be unpleasant enough that
Robin purchases an umbrella for a dollar and we
huddle beneath it as we walk.
We arrive at the restaurant, on the fourth floor of a
state-run department store. Unfortunately, the food
has become repetitive by this time. Every meal seems
to have fried fish, bok choy, sweet and sour chicken,
fried and plain rice, a beef-and-onion dish in brown
sauce, a bland soup, and always, always, watermelon
for dessert. Pizza is starting to sound really good.
Tony tells us we are in the “Times Square” of the oldtown portion of Shanghai. There is a conspicuous
McDonald’s across the street and the Yuyuan Gardens
and Bazaar right next door. We are given two hours on
our own to explore the Yuyuan Bazaar, a confusing
maze of shops selling antiques (mostly reproductions),
handicrafts, tea, clothes, electronics, food, and much
more. Unfortunately (from my standpoint), it has been
“upscaled” in recent years and doesn’t feel much
different from walking around an outdoor pedestrian
mall in the U.S. It’s telling that our first stop is a
Starbucks and that there is a second Starbucks within
two blocks of it. Robin gets a hot coffee which tastes
really good given the cold wet weather. We pass
endless rows of shops and umbrella-toting shoppers.
Our favorite thing is crossing a zigzag bridge meant to
ward off evil spirits.
The shopkeepers can sometimes be aggressive. They
start pushing their wares as soon as we pause to look
at something. This approach doesn’t work well for us,
so we end up just window shopping. We get to a point
where we’ve taken enough twists and turns that even
Robin is starting to get turned around, so we head
back. We happen to cross paths with Joanne from our
group, and she is very relieved to see us since she
has gotten totally turned around in the maze of shops.
I do end up making one purchase. As we pass a store
selling computer memory, an enthusiastic saleswoman
persuades me to buy a 1 GB SanDisk memory card for
330 yuan ($40, originally listed at 600 yuan). The deal
is too good to resist. I want to pay by credit card, which
involves walking up four flights of stairs to the only
counter capable of taking credit cards.
Rev. John and Shopper Bob tell us of their “bazaar
adventure” trying to buy Tommy Hilfiger watches on
the cheap. “We were led to a private room behind a
secret wallpaper door, locked inside the room, and
guided through a storehouse of hidden possessions
from watches to cameras to CD and DVD players. We
were worried the next people through the door might
be the state police!”
We make a short visit to the Bund, the historic section
of classical European buildings next to the Huangpu
River. Normally we would spend longer here, but it’s
raining hard enough that fifteen minutes seems like
plenty of time. The low-rise classical buildings on this
side of the Huangpu contrast sharply with the ultramodern skyscrapers on the Pudong side. Amazingly,
Pudong was a marshy, undeveloped area ten years
ago, and now its skyline rivals that of New York City.
The Oriental Pearl Tower, an enormous spaceship-like
TV and radio tower that has become a key Shanghai
landmark, is half-hidden in mist. The other key
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landmark on the Pudong side is Jinmao Tower, a
skyscraper built to resemble a modern pagoda which
dwarfs all the other buildings around it. In the park
area along the Huangpu River, the blooming trees and
colorful umbrellas make it a beautiful spot to visit even
in the rain. We hope tomorrow we get a chance to see
it in better weather.
Our next stop, thankfully, is an indoors one. The
Shanghai Acrobatic Show is set to begin at 5:15 pm.
We’re early, so we purchase popcorn at the concession stand, which is more like kettle corn with honey
than the hot buttered popcorn we were expecting. The
acrobatic show is excellent. We have front row center
seats. There are human balancing acts, a “pass the
fedora to your neighbor” act, a balancing plates dance,
a foot juggler (impressive), aerial ribbon dancers,
bicycle balancing, acrobats who jump through a series
of hoops (one placed as high as seven feet), a young
girl who balances plates on her head while doing
acrobatic feats on top of a man’s head, a contortionist
who can fit her body through an impossibly narrow
tube, and, for the big finale, five motorcyclists who spin
around simultaneously inside a metal “Sphere of
Death” without crashing into each other.
Dinner comes after the show. It’s raining, so we ask
our local guide how far we’ll have to walk to get to the
restaurant. “Oh, no more than 20 minutes,” he says.
Some serious grumbling starts up before he realizes
his mistake and says 20 meters. During the dinner,
Joanne makes a nice toast to Tony for all his hard
work and all the different hats he has worn during the
trip—including window cleaner when our bus windows
fogged up today. There’s a new dish served at dinner
that we really like called “fried milk”—a hot, crispy
pastry with a milky butter-and-cream filling. Delish!
We reach the hotel at 9 pm. Before getting off the bus,
Tony gives each of us a CD with pictures he’s taken of
the group during the trip. What a nice gift!
I buy a rich chocolate mousse pastry for $2 from a
hotel shop and take it up to the room for a decadent
ending to our day. We’re glad to be out of the rain,
quite sleepy after a full day, and hopeful that tomorrow
will offer better weather for our last day in Shanghai.
April 13 (Thu) – Shanghai Museum, Nanjing Road,
Dumplings
Our final day in China is a good one. We start off with
a visit to the Shanghai Museum. There are very wellpresented, well-lit displays of Chinese bronzes dating
back 4,000 years. Individually lit cases in the center of
each room highlight the best of the best. Some of our
favorites have animal motifs—a wine jar shaped like a
water buffalo, a jug with handles fashioned like
leopards peering curiously into the insides of the jug, a
water bowl with ducks and fish that seem to swim in
the bottom of the basin. We have two hours in the
museum, so after a leisurely viewing of the bronzes—
considered the highlight of the museum—we still have
time to see the smaller displays of Ming and Qing
dynasty furniture, jade, landscape painting, ceramics,
and calligraphy. (We have fun trying, and failing, to tell
the difference between running script and cursive
script.) We finish up at 11:40 am and meet in the
lobby. The bus takes us to a nearby restaurant where
we eat our last meal together as a group.
From the restaurant, we walk to the pedestrian-only
section of Nanjing Road, which our guide tells us is
like the Times Square of Shanghai (there appear to be
two “Times Squares” in Shanghai, one in the new
section and one in the old section of town). Nanjing
Road is a very happening place. It’s a broad, bricklined pedestrian mall with chic shops, neon signs, flags
and banners, colorful clothes, and a whole host of fastfood restaurants (Pizza Huts and KFCs and
McDonalds) all vying for attention. Imagine Pearl
Street in Boulder but much broader and with more glitz
and glamour. Here is where Tony and our local guide
part company with us for the day. They head back to
the hotel with a fair number of our group who are just
too tuckered out to continue sightseeing.
Ten of us begin to explore on our own at this point, but
the group quickly falls apart into smaller units. We find
ourselves walking mostly with Bob and Ruby and meet
up occasionally with Rev. John, Utah John, and
Shopper Bob. We walk towards the Bund, which is
about 45 minutes to the east if one were to keep up a
steady walking pace (which we do not). We stroll along
slowly, stopping frequently to look into shops, and end
up buying a box of four elegant mahogany chopsticks,
in case we ever get the urge to use chopsticks at
home. We check out all the cool silk fabrics in Silk
King but don’t purchase anything.
We gradually lose track of everyone except Bob and
Ruby, only to reconnect with Rev. John and Shopper
Bob at the Peace Hotel on the Bund. Since they are
heading for fast food and have already been to the
Bund, the four of us continue on our own way. A rest
stop in the Peace Hotel gives us a chance to see the
lobby of this historic hotel. The darkly elegant bar
upstairs would make a nice place to have a beer and
relax, but we press on. We see the imposing statue of
Chairman Mao along the Bund, then take the pedestrian underpass to the Bund itself, right next to the
water. Fortunately, the weather today is much nicer
than yesterday, still cool and gray, but at least it’s not
raining, so we get to stroll along the Bund and see the
Pudong view without getting wet.
At this point, we’ve seen everything we felt we had to
see, and Robin is feeling a bit under the weather (it
seems like more people than not in our group are
feeling under the weather at this point), so we agree to
take it easy. We begin to search out the Westin Hotel,
where Tony has told us there is a great view from on
high overlooking the Bund. The Westin, it turns out, is
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a mile away from the Bund, in the very tall building
with a lotus-leaf design at the top. It takes us awhile to
find it, but when we do, we zip on up to the 50th floor,
where there is a bar and a restaurant with a terrific
view of Shanghai. The restaurant is closed because
it’s only 4 pm, so we sit in the bar, share some drinks
with Bob and Ruby, and look out at the Shanghai
scenery to the west (away from the Bund). We sneak
over to the restaurant side for a truly fabulous view of
the Bund and the amazing Pudong area to the east.
The broad sweep of the Huangpu River divides the
two. I can only imagine what this view must look like at
night when the whole city is lit up—it must be stunning.
But since it’s only 5 pm when we finish our drinks, and
we’re not willing to sit around until 6 pm when the
restaurant opens, we decide to continue on our way.
The four of us have no real plans at this point. We
consider getting burgers at McDonald’s but wisely
decide in the end to take a taxi to a restaurant recommended by Tony which is known for its xiaolongbao
dumplings. These dumplings are a Shanghai specialty.
Tony has written out the name of the restaurant in
Chinese characters, so we show this to the taxi driver
and off we go. The taxi ride costs us two bucks total (I
might become a devotee of taxis if the prices were
always this reasonable). We arrive at the restaurant,
called the Union Restaurant. No one there speaks any
English. They seem surprised to see us but are glad to
show us to a table.
I say “xiaolongbao” a few times and eventually they
point to a line on the menu—under “Desserts” for
some reason—that sounds like the right thing. Basically they are described as minced pork dumplings.
We order two baskets of dumplings, each only 9 yuan
($1.12). Fifteen minutes later, two round, woven,
covered baskets appear, each of them containing
twelve steaming dumplings. The waiter fills up a small
bowl with a vinegar sauce for dipping. We let the
dumplings cool for a moment, because we have been
forewarned that the hot oil inside the dumplings can be
very hot, like the filling in a McDonald’s hot apple pie.
We use our chopsticks (no forks here) to pick up a
dumpling, dip it in the sauce, and pop it in our mouths.
Ooooh, delicious! Each dumpling has its own “broth”
on the inside, so when you bite down on it you get this
little explosion of flavor and juice, mixed with the tart
taste of the vinegar sauce.
We quickly gobble up all twelve dumplings in the top
basket and begin to attack the dumplings in the
second basket underneath. These too quickly disappear. We all agree on ordering another round. Two
more baskets of xiaolongbao dumplings please! And
while we are at it, we order a soup too—the one that
sounds closest to hot and sour soup. It is described on
the menu as a vinegar-peppered soup with sliced pork
and bamboo shoots. The soup is every bit as good as
the dumplings—by far the best soup we’ve had during
our entire China trip. There’s no comparison between
this soup and the bland soups we’ve had elsewhere on
the trip. We gobble up the soup, then the second order
of dumplings appears, and we gobble those up too.
Ahhh! We finish our beers, say “Hao chr” to the
waitress (literally, “good eat”), and pay the ridiculously
low tab. The whole meal for four, with four baskets of
12 dumplings each, four large bottles of beer, and
soup tureen for four, comes to less than $14.
Finding a cab at rush hour in Shanghai turns out to be
a real challenge. We try for twenty minutes but every
cab that passes us (and a lot of cabs pass us) already
has passengers. We give up and walk to the nearest
hotel, where we find a taxi stand and wait in line. We
show the driver the card from our hotel, and he whisks
us off as fast as the Shanghai traffic will allow. The half
hour cab ride costs us all of $4. It’s going to be hard
going back to San Francisco prices.
We arrive at our hotel at 8 pm. I get a small black
forest cake and bring it up to the room. We spend the
rest of the evening packing and relaxing. Robin turns
in before I do, so here I am on the floor of the bathroom with a pillow behind my back, resting against the
tub, finishing up my journal writing before the 15-hour
flight tomorrow. It’s 11:30 pm now, and our wake-up
call is at 6:30 am, so I’d better sign off.
April 14 (Fri) – Shanghai to San Francisco
We leave Shanghai at 11 am local time and arrive at
San Francisco at noon on the same day. We both
manage to sleep on the long flight and enjoy watching
the in-flight movie Pride and Prejudice. We arrive in
San Francisco, make it quickly through customs and
baggage claim, say goodbye to all the friends we’ve
made, and pick up the free shuttle to our Marriott
Airport Hotel. I’m feeling awake enough to enjoy the
day but Robin is dead tired. When my head hits the
soft pillow, I discover I’m pretty tired too. We’re out for
4½ hours with no hope of waking up. I struggle up
from a dead sleep several times before succumbing
and going under again.
At 5:30 pm, we awake,
shower, and walk to
dinner at El Torito. It’s not
the greatest Mexican
food we’ve ever had, but
at least it’s not Chinese.
The nacho chips with
salsa taste wonderful,
and my Coke with ice is
all I need to be happy. At
the hotel gift shop, we
pay $4 for a Vanilla
Frappuccino and are thus
reminded once and for all
that we are not in China
any longer.
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