Christmas Time

A few weeks ago we took Little Mark to one of my favorite holiday traditions - the annual open house at "The Model Railroad Club" in Union N. J. (Here is their website: http://www.tmrci.com/) They are a large model railroad club with their own building which houses a huge and expanding HO scale layout and a smaller but still impressive N scale layout. Well, I thought at age 3, Little Mark would be old enough to understand what he was seeing - in view of his favorable opinion of my half-baked HO layout in my basement. I was not disappointed. The little dude's first words on seeing the club's setup was "Wow".

One of the things that he really was fascinated by was a working miniature carnival with rides that they had set up. Little Mark, is, I should mention, a big fan of carnivals. This set in motion a whole chain of events.

I set up a small but pretty detailed HO layout in our bay window every Christmas which has a steam train and a trolley car running around in a circle. Little Mark likes this because he can run the trains himself. Now, I thought, the setup needs a carnival ride.

With the help of Michelle's e-bay expertise, I was able to buy, at a great low price a hobby kit to assemble a working HO carousel, complete with horses that bob up and down like the real thing. In record time, the kit was delivered (Michelle gave the seller an excellent feedback rating on e-bay for this) painted, assembled, and running on the Xmas layout. The next time our grandnephew got baby sat, he rewarded our efforts with another "Wow".

Wow - a carousel

The other thing which fascinated him that day was Michelle's Stephen Colbert Krackle bar. She has it hanging on the wall in a frame with the date of the show (see the previous blog entry). Try and explain to a three-year old why a highly edible candy bar is hanging on a wall in a glass frame. Not easy.

Colbert Again

My faithful readers (reader? Hi Stacey!) will recall that a while ago I blogged about a trip into NYC to be an audience member of the Comedy Central hit show "The Colbert Report" (pronounced Colbair Repour??) Well, Michelle got tickets again and the other day we went to see the show with our nephew Tom and his wife Stacey.

The entrance to the Colbert studio on W. 54th St. The "Daily Show" used to be taped here and is still produced just around the corner on 11th Ave.

We had a great time and we had great seats. We were in the front row, literally ten feet from the desk where Stephen Colbert sits and does his schtick.

Before the show, a warm-up comedian who is quite funny in his own right came out on stage and got the audience "wound up". Since this young guy was as bald as a billiard ball of course he ragged on Tom and I for having full heads of gray hair. Michelle and Stacey thought this was pretty funny.

Now one of the things Stephen does after he comes on stage but before the show goes on the air is to sit at his desk and toss these red wristband thingys to the audience. Michelle, sitting next to me, did not manage to snag one, but then Stephen looked right at her and reaching under his desk tossed her a miniature Hershey's Krackle candy bar. She was delighted - in fact I think she's going to have it bronzed.

The Infamous Krackle Bar - With Stephen Colbert's fingerprints still on it.

The show was quite funny that night and to add to the enjoyment, Stephen's guest for the segment was Yo-Yo Ma the world-renowned cellist. He appeared with a small group of musicians and played a piece from his newly-released album "Songs of Joy & Peace." After the offical "end" of the show, in a portion that was not aired, Stephen sang the hymn "Dona Nobis Pacem" accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and his musicians. Stephen has a fairly decent voice. He then invited the audience to sing along with him and afterward informed us that we had now "performed" with Yo-Yo Ma.

Afterward, we went to "Roberto Passon", an Italian restaurant on the corner of 9th and 50th for dinner. The food was excellent, the wine was good, and the company - Tom and Stacey - was enjoyable. All in all a good day.

Toxic in New Brunswick

We just saw "The Toxic Avenger" - The Musical- at the George Street Theater in New Brunswick today. It was very good and side-splittingly funny. It's based on the movie of the same name from the Eighties although with original music and a lot more New Jersey jokes.

The show's songs were written by a member of Bon Jovi's band and they were very good and very funny.

The plot - for those who haven't seen the movie - concerns a nebbishy nerd who is pitched into a vat of toxic waste and is turned into a superhero.

The show is well worth seeing. It's finishing its run in New Brunswick in a week or so, but word is that it will be opening in New York City sometime in December. I'd recommend seeing it while it's still in previews in the city so as to save some bucks.

Fun stuff.

Black Bear Film Festival

Last Saturday we took a ride to Milford PA which is about a forty-five minute ride from our house. The goal was to attend the "Black Bear Film Festival" which is held every year in Milford. Now this is not exactly the Sundance festival, although there was an incredibly handsome guy named Robert in attendance this year (cough! cough! choke...). Seriously, it's a small but quite good festival and we ended up seeing a couple of very good indie films.





The festival web site can be found here: http://www.blackbearfilm.com/





The films were shown in a little old town movie theater which has seen better days, but I think the fact that it was not held in some megaplex added to the charm of the experience. In honor of the festival, they had an exhibit of cleverly decorated bear sculptures set up outside the theater. My favorite was a bear gotten up like Indiana Jones.

Here's a picture of the theater from the 2002 festival with that year's bears.

We saw two movies that day: "Absurdistan" and "Dreams With Sharp Teeth". The former was a Russian film with English subtitles. Now I'm not usually a big fan of subtitled films, but this movie was hilarious. It is set in a place that is so remote no country wants to claim it and tells the tale of how the town's womenfolk go on strike when the menfolk are too lazy to repair the town's broken water supply system - i.e. no water, no sex. I always saw the Russians as having a fine tuned sense of the absurd and this film with its various plot twists and complications bore this out. It is a very funny movie and if it shows up on IFC well worth a Tivo-ing.

The second film was a documentary on author Harlan Ellison. It was the least boring documentary I have ever seen and nearly as funny as the previous comedy film. Harlan Ellison is a writer who has been active since the Sixties and has won just about every award there is in the field of fantasy and science fiction. He has also written scripts for films and TV shows including "Star Trek" and "The Outer Limits". Dedicated Trekkies may remember an episode called "City on the Edge of Forever"- this was the one with Joan Collins where Kirk goes back in time to the Depression-era U.S.- well, Harlan wrote the script for it. He is and was a proud and outspoken skeptic, curmudgeon, and all-around troublemaker and the film covered his many feuds, battles and eccentricities. He is a very funny guy.

To add icing on the cake so to speak, after the film finished, the organizers arranged a speaker phone hookup with Harlan at his home in California and he answered questions from the audience. Apparently, he was involved in a science fiction writers workshop in Milford in the Sixties and Seventies and has a soft spot for the place. He even wanted to know if the Milford Diner was still open (it is).

After this, we headed home with a stop for dinner at the Jefferson Diner on State Route 15 - a joint which is actually featured on the Food Network.

All in all, it was a pleasant, enjoyable day, and we hope to attend the festival next year. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys offbeat film and a nice ride in the country.

By George!

By Lake George, that is. Lake George is a large lake in New York State which is located about an hour's drive north of Albany. Michelle and I took a ride up there last week to look at the autumn foliage and as a sort of mini-getaway. We stayed in the village of Lake George which is located at the southern end of the lake. The village is kind of a quaint touristy kind of place with everything from old fashioned "cabin" motels to rather fancy resorts. For the Wikipedia article on Lake George (the lake itself) go here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_George_(New_York)



Lake George, along with Lake Champlain and the Hudson River, formed an important water-borne route from Canada to New York City in colonial times. As a result two forts were built at either end of the lake: Fort William Henry at the southern end near where we stayed, and the better-known Fort Ticonderoga at the northern end where Lake George links with Lake Champlain. Fort Ticonderoga played an important part in the French and Indian War when the British took it from the French, and in the American Revolution when the Americans took it from the British - and then took its heavy cannons to Boston to help run the Brits out of there.

We booked a room in a quite nice hotel which is part of the "Wingate" chain. I have stayed in a "Wingate" property before when I used to travel to Alabama for my job. My positive experience with that hotel prompted us to take a chance on this place at Lake George. We were not disappointed. The room was reasonably priced, clean, large and modern. It featured a comfortable King-sized bed, free internet access and a complimentary hot breakfast buffet. We stayed two nights and were quite pleased.

After we checked in, we took a ride into town and had lunch at a place called "The Boardwalk". The food was O.K. but the best part was the view from the open deck where we were served. The foliage around the lake was about 80-90% turned and the mountains surrounding the lake were blazing with color. It was a bit chilly on the deck, but the view was worth it.

After lunch we wandered around the town a bit but most of the businesses were either already closed for the season or preparing to do so. Since we were really there for the foliage and views, this was no big deal.

That evening we ate at a barbeque joint called the "Barnsider Smokehouse". They served pretty decent ribs and chicken. Afterward we went in search of a sports bar to watch the NY Giants play Monday night football. Unfortunately, nothing was open and we ended up watching them in our hotel room as they disgraced themselves by losing to Cleveland. Oh well.

Next morning started out cloudy and foggy, but we decided to take a ride up along the lake. It soon cleared and became sunny which resulted in wonderful views of the multi-colored mountains surrounding the lake. We also passed through some very pretty little villages located along the western shore of the lake. Eventually, we found our way to the northern end of Lake George which is near the southern end of Lake Champlain. At that point we paid a visit to Fort Ticonderoga, or, as Michelle called it: "Fort Pencil" ("Ticonderoga" is a well known brand of wooden pencils). It was quite interesting. The fort has been restored to its approximate configuration in the 18th century and had a number of interesting exhibits about its history, colonial warfare, etc. The view of the lake and the surrounding mountains from the fort's battlements was also quite breathtaking. Following our tour of the fort, we retraced our route back to Lake George Village. We lunched in a place called "Duffy's Tavern" which overlooked the lake but had the advantage of allowing us to eat indoors behind glass instead of on an open deck. The food was better than the previous day's lunch although the place itself was pretty much a local dive in much need of renovation inside.

Now as we wandered around the area that day, one thing began to concern us: the number of restaurants and bars that were already closed for the season and whether we would find anyplace open that night for dinner. Well, that afternoon we took a ride to a series of outlets located to the south of the town. The outlets were pretty much a bust except for an Xmas present I found for The World's Cutest Grandnephew (TM) at a Kaybee Toy outlet store. However, while tooling around the outlets we spotted a likely looking, still open restaurant called the "Log Jam". We returned there that night for dinner and had a pretty good meal. The place had a nice well-stocked salad bar and I had a decent prime rib. The atmosphere was also kind of nice as the place was a large, rustic log building.

The next day, we set off for home. On the way, we stopped at Poughkeepsie where our niece Melissa is attending Marist College and took her out for lunch. It was nice spending time with her and catching up on her life at school. After lunch, she guided us on a driving tour of Marist which is located right on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie. The campus is very pretty and has some spectacular new buildings. We then dropped Melissa off at her campus housing and headed on home.

I know this was probably not my most spectacular travel blog, but, hey, they can't all be trips to China. And anyway, it beat going to Newark for a kidney stone treatment.

Later.

Stoned

Well folks, I was all set to write a series of blogs about our exciting trip across the North Atlantic on the "M/S Norwegian Jewel" via the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Only problem is: it didn't happen. About a week before we were to fly to the U.K. to board the ship, I started to get a sharp pain in my lower back. After a trip to the Morristown ER and a bunch of boring medical stuff, my urologist said: "Kid, you have a kidney stone and an 11-day boat trip is probably not such a good idea." or words to that effect.

Fortunately, Michelle had the foresight to take out trip insurance against such an eventuality, so we should lose minimum money on the deal.

However, we did get to take another exciting trip -this time to Newark New Jersey. Now normally a trip to Newark means Ferry Street and the Ironbound section for Portuguese or Brazilian food. But this time it was to the campus of the UMDNJ on Bergen St. and a place called the "Stone Center" - as in kidney stones. What they have there is a piece of equipment which is used to perform a procedure called "lithotripsy". Litho meaning stone (in Greek) and tripsy meaning to shatter (likewise in Greek). The device generates sonic shock waves which pass harmlessly through the soft tissue of your back and kidney and shatter the hard mass of the kidney stone into small pieces which can be more easily passed. In other words, they ping you like a U-boat being hunted by allied destroyers. And then you shoot out tiny stone torpedoes.

A Lithotripsy machine

A U-boat. Actually where we were supposed to have cruised in the North Atlantic was pretty much the hunting grounds of the U-boats in WWII

The actual procedure was overseen by my urologist who, although he practices in Denville, is a staff participant at the Stone Center.

What the whole thing comes down to is they lay you on a table with a kind of soft liquid-filled hemisphere pressed against the offending kidney and for twenty minutes you feel a kind of tapping on your back. Of course you are under a type of light anesthesia (Nurse Michelle calls it "twilight") so you can't really feel any pain.

Afterward, they made me hang out for about an hour until I peed and then told me to get dressed and get the hell out.

Actually, I thought that the staff were pretty good there. They were professional courteous and sympathetic. The place even had free valet parking!

About the only down side to the place was not for the patient, but for the person accompanying him/her. Since everyone undergoes some form of anesthesia they require you to bring someone with you to take you home. In my case this was Michelle. Unfortunately, she found the waiting room where she had to stay to be rather cramped and stuffy. Also, there was no place for her or the other people awaiting patients to even get a glass of water never mind a cup of coffee or tea. Well, we mentioned this in the survey they sent us, so maybe they will do something about it - who knows?

Since I was not allowed to eat anything from the midnight before the procedure, by the time they kicked me out at around 2:30 in the afternoon I was starving. I was all for hitting Ferry Street for some Paella, but since this would have ultimately meant subjecting Michelle to rush hour traffic, we decided to just head back to Rockaway and a sandwich at an excellent little place called "Potbelly's" in Rockaway Borough.

Anyway, that was my adventure in lieu of an eleven-day cruise. Can't say that their buffet and casino were very good - come to think of it they didn't have a buffet and casino.

Oh well.

Playing Davy Crockett

Went with my nephew Mark last week to a shooting range in Sussex County to do some target shooting with muzzle loading rifles. These were essentially Civil War technology - a rifled musket which was loaded with powder and bullet through the muzzle using a ram rod and the powder initiated by a percussion primer which was on the outside of the firing chamber.

We used two weapons. One was true Civil War technology in that the primer went on a nipple at the right side of the gun and was struck by an external hammer. Although, unlike a standard issue 1860's Springfield musket, it also had a hair trigger set up. That is there were two triggers. One when pulled, set up the second trigger to fire with very light pressure which made for better accuracy.

The other weapon was a modern muzzle loader with a sliding mechanism with the nipple for the primer located at rear center of the barrel. When you fired, a slide came forward striking the primer and providing a gas seal. This weapon also had a scope.

I should add that the purpose of these weapons is not to re-create the Civil War or the Revolution. They are made to take advantage of State hunting laws which provide for a separate muzzle-loading hunting season.

Now unlike Mark who does hunt (mainly deer which, when he gets one, gets butchered and helps to feed his family - he is not a "trophy" hunter) I have never hunted and probably never will, but I do enjoy target shooting and am also a history buff. So the muzzle loaders were right up my alley.

I am proud to say that after the first few shots that got me used to the upward kick of the guns, I managed to actually hit the target most of the time.

Loading the guns each time was something of a procedure which was no problem done at leisure on a firing range, but I don't think I would have liked to have been a Yankee soldier trying to do it with a thousand pissed-off Confederates charging at me.

Anyway, I am looking forward to going again sometime and also to doing some skeet shooting which Mark also does on occasion.

All Hail the Granulate!

Yes, I do know how to spell "Graduate". Anyway, this past month our nephew Joe received his BA from Franklin and Marshall College. And, guess what? After four years of playing football and some pretty hearty partying, he still managed to graduate Cum Laude.

We went to Lancaster PA, the site of F&M College, with Joe's Mom and Dad, his sister Melissa, and his grandparents Frank and Helen. We all stayed at the "Lancaster Arts Hotel" which I described in the post on Joe's last football game. The graduation was on Saturday, as I said, but we stayed from Friday until Sunday for the general festivities.

Friday night, a group of parents of Senior football players got together for a dinner at a local restaurant. We attended with Joe, his Mom and Dad, his sister Melissa and his grandparents. The dinner was nice but the highlight came at the end when Joe gave a video presentation made up of photos taken over the years of himself and his buddies on the team. The photos ranged from some of the guys as kids to their wild ski trips as teammates and of course, the climactic last win against Gettysburg College last November.



The next morning we headed to the F&M campus for the graduation itself. We were joined by Joe's girlfriend Eileen, who had flown in late the night before from Massachusetts where she teaches high-school history. It was a nice day, partly cloudy with a mild breeze and not very hot - perfect for an outdoor graduation.



There were the usual honorary awards given and so on which I won't go into here. However, the commencement speaker was very interesting. He was a gentleman by the name of David Greene who is the National Public Radio White House correspondent. It happens that his mother had been a professor at F&M and he grew up right in Lancaster, so he was delighted to be asked to speak there.



Mr. Greene told a number of interesting anecdotes about the White House assignment and also spoke of things which happened while he was on the campaign trail following Clinton, Obama and McCain around the country.



Finally came the awarding of the undergraduate degrees which were handed individually to all 450-odd seniors. We were pleasantly surprised (though not too surprised) when Joe's degree was awarded Cum Laude. He received a BA in Business Organizations and Society with a minor in Economics.

Joe and Eileen

Joe with his Dad, Mom, and Melissa

Afterward, we went to lunch with a group of the football parents and then returned to our hotel to get ready for an evening cocktail party being given by the parents of another of Joe's buddies.


At that point Joe's Mom and her parents had to head back to New Jersey so they could attend their granddaughter's College graduation on Sunday in Connecticut.



We attended the cocktail party with Joe, Eileen, Joe's Dad, and Melissa. Afterward, we went to a party at Joe's frat house for a while, but then us old folks were pretty much partied out and wandered back to the hotel.



One funny thing that happened was on the way from the cocktail party which was in a pub in downtown Lancaster to the frat house, Michelle, Melissa and Eileen rode with two of the parents who had their car, while Joe, his Dad, and a couple of his buddies were transported in style in the back of a U-Haul truck by another of Joe's friends. It was pretty funny.



The next morning we went for breakfast and then we went to Joe's house to pick up his belongings to bring home to New Jersey. Fortunately, we had three SUVs and a car, so we were pretty much able to get everything back.



And so, another young person enters the real world.

A Night at the Avante-garde

Recently we were invited by our friend Paul to join him at a performance given by his nephew, William Brittelle. This young man is what I would call an Avant-garde composer. He has composed a piece of performance art/rock opera which he calls "Mohair Time Warp".


The venue for the performance was called "Joe's Pub" (named for Public Theater founder Joseph Papp) and it is one of the performance spaces at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street in New York City. It is one of their smaller more intimate spaces apparently and one can actually order drinks and from a limited food menu. It does have excellent acoustics. Not that I'm an expert on this but Paul has been a musician his whole life and confirmed that the acoustics were good.


We ordered burgers and cokes and settled down to await the performance. First up was an artist named Corey Dargel. He and his group performed a series of quirky love songs. You may read more about him here: http://www.joespub.com/component/option,com_artists/task,view/Itemid,40/id,2378

Then it was the turn of Paul's nephew Bill with his work. He was backed by a nine piece band of professional musicians. Bill wrote the entire piece himself and scored it for each individual instrument. There was also a professional orchestral conductor leading the musicians. Bill's singing technique is unusual in that he actually lip syncs to his own previously recorded voice. This was necessitated by a vocal cord injury he sustained while singing with another group and which precludes him singing live. However, he has managed to turn this necessity into an art form in its own right.

The lyrics to his songs (there were several which made up the whole of "Mohair Time Warp") were sort of stream of consciousness and apparently chosen somewhat also for the sheer sound of the words. I would personally describe it as a musical in the style of James Joyce.

We had a very enjoyable time and it was great being exposed to an art form that I had not experienced before.

Bill has a CD of this performance out by New Amsterdam Records:
https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Album/Mohair_Time_Warp

The "Mohair Time Warp" site is here: http://www.mohairtimewarp.com/
To watch the videos and/or listed to the audio clips you will need to disable any pop-up blocker on your browser.

And finally, a very positive article on Bill's work in "Time Out New York", which includes a You Tube video: http://66.111.110.102/newyork/articles/opera-classical/29236/read-my-lips

China VII - The Long Way Home

At some ungodly hour of the morning on the last day of our trip we were up and on our way to the Shanghai airport for our flight back to Beijing and our transfer to the flight back home to New York.

Ah, another joyous 13 hours on a 747!

About halfway through the flight to N.Y., a number of us from our tour grew bored and gathered in an open area near one of the plane's tourist class galleys and killed time shooting the breeze about our trip and experiences in China. At one point a gent in a business suit wandered over and joined in the conversation. He was a really interesting guy.

Now back in the 20's and 30's a Westerner who had spent a long time in China and was familiar with the country and its people was known as "an Old China Hand". This fellow was the modern day version of that.

He spent some thirty years in China working as an investment banker assisting the Chinese government in privatization efforts and creation of new enterprises. As such he had a lot of experience with the creation of the "New" China which we had just dashed through.

His basic take on the Chinese was that they were ambitious, intelligent, willing to learn and were rushing into the future. Thirty years ago, when he started in his business, the Chinese had the brains but not the money, now they have both and there's no stopping them. All in all, he had great respect and regard for the Chinese people.

He acknowledged that the Chinese did have some major problems (e.g. the heavy air pollution and their lack of major petroleum reserves) but he was confident that they will find solutions to them. For example, he told us of a pilot project in China to convert their abundant coal reserves into liquid fuel. Anyway, he was a very interesting guy and listening to his stories and anecdotes helped pass the time on the seemingly endless flight.

Well, we finally made a landing in JFK airport and our China odyssey was over.

In parting, I have a few observations.

While superficially China gave all the appearance of a gung-ho, all-out capitalist society, and it certainly was from an economic and business viewpoint, there was still the underlying structure of an authoritarian and somewhat rigid Communist society strictly controlled by the government. As it happens, Alex and Monica grew up in Romania in the 50's under a rigid Communist government and it was interesting to hear their take on this. They often saw subtle signs that the rest of us missed.



Another telling thing was that while the all the hotels in which we stayed carried CNN in English on TV, whenever anything was being reported about the unrest in Tibet, it was blacked out.



Then, of course, there was the way Mr. Chen, our tourguide, followed the Party line about non-discussion of politics, the official excuse for Beijing's air pollution and so on.



Hopefully, with the internet, and the coming of age of educated and tech-savvy young people this will all change.



Another thing I have been sort of negative about has been the meals we were served in China. With some exceptions (especially the Shanghai seafood we got on our own) the meals were poor to mediocre and were honestly not as good as what I have eaten in N.Y. Chinatown. In fairness, I think this was a function of the trip and the tour company. ABC tours did a good job overall, but this was something of a bargain trip and I suppose one could not expect gourmet food to be served at the tour operator's expense. Gourmet food can be had in China, but you would need to spend a lot more money (e.g. take a Tauk tour). All things considered, I'll head for Mott Street when I want Chinese gourmet.



So that was China. I'll leave you with one last picture:

A Home Depot truck in Xi'an - Not sure if Emperor Qin used Sakcrete (TM) to make his terra cotta soldiers but, hey, you never know.

See ya.

China VI - We Got Shanghaied

After about a ninety-minute flight from Xi'an, we landed in Shanghai's Pudong International Airport where a tour bus was waiting for us and our luggage. Also waiting was our local Shanghai tour guide, a charming young woman who went by the name of Maggie. She was knowledgeable about Shanghai and spoke excellent English.

On the way into town from the airport, we saw a high speed "mag-lev" (magnetic levitation) train that the Chinese had put into service in 2004. It runs 19 miles from the airport to a connection at a city subway station. The train was built in Germany, and uses a magnetic field to raise it off its track, thus eliminating friction. Its top speed is over 250 mph.

The Shanghai Maglev Train

Our first stop was at the Shanghai riverfront which is called "The Bund". The name has nothing to do with Germans but is from a word for waterfront used by Indian soldiers who served under the British in Shanghai. This section of Shanghai was once controlled by numerous foreign governments in something called "concessions" given to countries which traded with China. Each country had its area of influence and control in the city. Needless to say the Chinese only gave these "concessions" under duress - which is another way of saying large caliber naval cannon staring you in the face - and the foreign "concessions" are long gone. However, the architecture many of the older buildings in Shanghai still reflects the Western influence of days gone by.

The architecture of the modern buildings in Shanghai is an entirely different matter. It's pure Chinese - modern Chinese, not curvy roof pagodas, and is some of the most modernistic and creative I have ever seen.

Michelle and I on the Bund's riverwalk. Note the modern buildings across the river. I thought the designs were really cool.

Abe and Roz in about the same spot. The river can accommodate deep water ships and runs to the East China Sea making Shanghai China's busiest port. It is also China's largest city (around 23 million people give or take a million)

The scale of Shanghai is incredible. Think of any large bustling modern city you have ever been in and double or triple it. Besides being China's busiest port, it is also the country's commercial and financial center.

Well, after a short stay on the famous Bund, we reboarded our bus and headed to our hotel to check in and relax. The hotel was the "Equatorial" and once again was excellent.

The Hotel Equatorial, Shanghai

The view from our room in Shanghai

That night we were taken to a restaurant for a fairly mediocre meal. The highlight of dinner occurred when a burst of rapid explosions commenced in the alley outside the window of our dining room. Some of our tour group looked like they wanted to take cover, but Michelle and I had heard mass firecrackers before at Chinese New Year in New York so we kind of asked our guide what was being celebrated. It was a wedding. In America the fireworks usually happen at the divorce.

Firecracker string (at a new year festival). I'm pretty sure this is what was going on outside the restaurant.

After dinner, most of us in the tour group had signed up to attend an optional tour to see the world-famous Shanghai acrobatic troop. They were amazing. The young performers (including a little girl of about ten) did stunts that I would have thought impossible if I had not seen them with my own eyes. If anyone is in Shanghai I strongly recommend this show.

On the way into the theater for the acrobats there was some construction. Michelle thought this sign was cute.

The acrobats at the Shanghai Center - this picture does not do them justice, they were incredible.

The acrobatic show lasted about two hours and then we returned to our hotel. Abe, Roz, Michelle and I felt a bit hungry after the not very good dinner so we wandered out of our hotel in search of a late-night snack. Fortunately, we did not have to wander far. Just around the corner from our hotel, we found a wonderful little Vietnamese bar and restaurant. I don't remember what it was called, but we had the best, fresh, made from scratch seafood and vegetable rolls I have ever eaten. In fact, this was some of the best food we were to have while in China. Afterward, Abe insisted on taking my picture in front of a nearby massage parlor - no, we didn't go into it!

The next day, after an excellent buffet breakfast, it was off to the Shanghai Museum.

The Shanghai Museum with one of the city's many modern skyscrapers in the background

One of a number of stone sculptures in front of the museum

The museum was very good. It gave a nice overview of Chinese art and history. There was an excellent gallery of Chinese coins from ancient times. Interestingly, traditional Chinese coins had holes in the center of them so they could be carried on a string.

There was also a gallery of art from the many different ethnic minorities in China. I thought this was a nice contrast from the traditional Han Chinese art and culture we had been seeing. The "Han" being the basic core people of China who make up the vast majority of the inhabitants.

A canoe made by one of China's ethnic minorities. Interestingly, it reminds me of the canoes made by Native Indians in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

There was also a very nice gallery of traditional Chinese furniture. In an interesting side note, driving around Shanghai, we passed an Ikea store. Maggie our local guide said that in decorating her home, she preferred the modern clean-lined Ikea furniture, while her husband preferred the traditional ornate Chinese style - so they have one room of each.

Some traditional furniture in the museum gallery.

We spent most of the morning in the Shanghai museum and even then did not see everything there was to see. Finally, we boarded our bus and were taken to lunch and a silk factory.

On our way to lunch we passed this building. It is a Shanghai custom to dry your clothes by hanging them on poles outside your window. Maggie called it the "Shanghai Laundry Festival"

Lunch was a Mongolian Barbecue. This is a kind of buffet where you load a plate up with raw food and bring it to a chef who cooks it on a large round metal griddle. Supposedly the Mongolian warriors used to cook food on their round metal shields. Anyway, the food was good - as good as any Mongolian Barbecue I've had in New Jersey (and there are many in our fair state) but the line to get your food and get it cooked was ridiculous. I think every Western tourist in Shanghai was there that day.

Afterward, we were taken to a silk factory. Now the purpose of this visit, like the cultured pearl factory, the jade factory, the cloisonne factory, and the lacquered wood factory they also took us to over the course of the trip, was to get us to buy stuff. Unlike the other places, however, we: a. actually found it interesting and b. actually bought something.

Silk comes from silkworms - duh! But, I did not realize they were actually the larvae of a moth which spin cocoons and it is from these cocoons that the silk is derived. The cocoons are actually spun of a single filament of silk many hundreds of feet long. The filament is unwound and spun into a silk thread which is then woven into cloth.

A machine which pulls the filament from six cocoons at a time to make one usable silk thread. The cocoons are the white things at the bottom.

We bought something which Michelle called a duvet and I would call a comforter for our king-size bed. It is a plain cotton cover filled with pulled silk which comes from cocoons which cannot be used for thread. It is extremely light and extremely warm.

That afternoon, we were taken to a place called the Yuyuan Garden in the old section of Shanghai. It was quite pretty.

An archway in the Yuyuan garden

A mass of goldfish in the garden lake

The garden was next to another "Chinatown" old fashioned shopping district. We spent the afternoon there haggling and bargaining. One thing I wanted to get while in China was a set of nice matched chopsticks with brass tips. I found a set in a small shop and Michelle proceeded to commence beating down the lady shopkeeper on the price. By the end of the haggle, they were both laughing and the woman informed Michelle that she was the best bargainer she had in the shop all day. We ended up paying about half the asking price for the chopsticks.

A crowded street in the traditional shopping district in Shanghai

That night, our last in China, we were supposed to attend a "farewell dinner" provided by the tour company. Well, we had not been really happy with most of the dinners provided by the tour, so we decided that on the last night we (i.e. Abe, Roz, Alex, Monica, Michelle and I) were going to strike off on our own and get us some good Chinese seafood. Hilarity ensued.

Michelle asked the hotel concierge for the name/location of a good Chinese seafood restaurant. He proceeded to write down the name of a place in Chinese on a couple of slips of paper and summoned us two cabs, handing one slip to each (non-English speaking) driver. After a 40-minute mad dash through Shanghai rush hour traffic the cab drivers deposited us in front of a large, restaurantish-looking building and waved us toward it. I should add that cab fares in China are very inexpensive - this ride cost us the equivalent of about three bucks.

Well we walked into this place to find a very large room containing two things: a series of shelves and tables filling one half of the hall which were covered with dishes with raw food artfully arranged on them which were apparently samples of the dishes served, complete with Chinese (but not English) labels, and, filling the entire length of the other half of the space, a series of tanks, containing live and swimming sea creatures of every variety including many I had never seen before.

And no one in sight spoke a word of English.

Well... I knew that Chinese people were fanatics about fresh seafood and had been in restaurants in Chinatown New York where you could order fresh fish from a tank - but I'd never seen anything like this. Also, there was nothing like a restaurant with tables, chairs waiters etc. in sight. This was somewhat troubling. Had we been deposited at a fish store?

On top of everything else, a young lady (again non-English speaking) was following us around with a clipboard and we got the impression that she was there to record our selections when we made them. At this point, Michelle started to get the giggles and then, Monica spotted a fish swimming in one of the tanks and pointed at it to say that it looked good. Instantly, a gentleman appeared with a net and scooped the fish out of the tank and into a plastic bag where it flopped wildly. At this point, Michelle started to totally crack up and shouted "I'M NOT DOING TAKEOUT".

Eventually, Abe found a young woman in another part of the establishment who spoke at least a little limited English. She managed to convey to us that we were to select our meals here, and then we would take an elevator to the third floor where it would be served to us in an actual restaurant setting.

The upshot was, we selected around six dishes including Monica's "take out" fish, and headed upstairs. Some more confusion ensued with our beverage orders, but since we did know the words for tea, water, and, most importantly, beer, that got sorted out.

Some of the dishes on display. The place was called the Hartung Seafood Center by the way

The fish tanks. There were everything from lobsters to razor clams to sea cucumbers (ugly looking things) and even live turtles and frogs

The meal, when it came, was excellent. There were fried dumplings which were so light you could see through them. There was excellent shrimp tempura. Monica's fish selection was steamed and served whole. She found that it was so tender that she had only to pull its tail and the backbone and all its other bones pulled right out leaving a perfectly filleted fish which was delicious. The final course, in accordance with Chinese custom, was soup. In this case it was a seafood soup with tiny, gnocchi-like dumplings. The whole meal was definitely the best we had in China and only cost us about $20 per person.

Anyway, it was a good way to end the trip and pretty funny too. I think the fact that we all maintained a good attitude regarding the language barrier and basically laughed at ourselves rather than turning into "Ugly Americans" probably made things go well. I'm sure the restaurant staff had a good laugh on us too.

Well, that was Shanghai. Next time I'll do a wrap up of the trip and talk about an"Old China Hand" we met on the plane going home.

China V - Terra Cotta and Haggling

Our flight from Beijing to Xi'an (pronounced shee-ahn) touched down around midday and we were whisked off to the regional museum where we were given a rundown of the days when Xi'an was the imperial capital of China. It was a pretty good museum and gave a good rundown on the Silk Road which was a series of trade routes to the West. In Xi'an's heyday, Chinese silk and other goods actually were traded all the way to the Roman Empire.

The highlight of the museum however, were the artifacts from the Qin tomb. As I mentioned last time Qin was the first emperor of China who built the first "Great Wall". He also was the builder of an enormous tomb guarded by an immense army of life-sized terra cotta soldiers who were presumably to protect him in the afterlife - much in the way Egyptian pharaohs had model boats etc. placed in their tombs for the next world. The museum had a small number of the soldiers which had been brought from the tomb site and could be viewed close up. They also had a couple of bronze scale model chariots from the tomb.

The regional museum in Xi'an

The museum entrance hall with a stone lion on guard

Some of the terra cotta warriors close up. There were life-sized horses, infantry, and archers in the tomb - just as there would have been in an actual battle deployment back then.

Inside a glass case were the bronze model chariots and horses from the Qin tomb.

For our stay in Xi'an, ABC Tours provided a local guide in addition to Mr. Chen. This gentlemen was a college professor in the local university and in addition to speaking excellent English, was extremely knowledgeable about the area's history and culture.

Aside from the historical aspects, modern Xi'an was a sprawling industrial city, actually more a region. We were told that it is a "small" city - only 7 million inhabitants. The original city walls still surround the core downtown area where our hotel was located. Our hotel was a Hyatt Regency and again was excellent.

A coal-fired power plant in Xi'an

The Hyatt Regency in Xi'an

After we settled in at the hotel, we had some free time. Unlike our hotel in Beijing, this place was located on the city's main shopping street. So we decided to take a walk around and look things over. This street, Dong Da Jie, was similar to the main drag in any US or European city. There were large, rather pricey stores selling electronics, fashions, Nike sneakers, etc. The only difference was that the signs were in Chinese with a smattering of English. Actually, it reminded me of a cross between Canal Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City (Canal is in the more modern part of New York's Chinatown). There were, as there had been in Beijing, a KFC and McDonalds in prominent spots on the street. Mr. Chen told us that KFC is very popular in China because unlike Chinese-style chicken which is cut up into small pieces, the KFC offers the novelty of eating whole legs, wings etc.

The street was very crowded - it was a Saturday Night and Chinese workers usually get the weekend off - both with autos and pedestrians. A word of caution to travelers: Chinese drivers do not stop for pedestrians; unless there is a traffic light you cross at your own risk. Another minor fact: while Chinese people are on the whole very polite and courteous, if someone brushes up against you or bumps you in a public place don't expect the Chinese equivalent of "excuse me". It's not discourtesy, but simply the assumption that in a country with 1.3 billion people, people are constantly bumping into one another so live with it.

That night we were treated to a rather forgettable dinner at a local restaurant courtesy of our tour company. Afterward, we took another stroll on the main drag and then turned in for the night.

The following day we were bussed a couple of hours away to the famous Qin tomb. It was pretty amazing. The tomb is basically a national park now and consists of three separate "digs", each with its own huge, hangar-like building. The oldest of the digs stems from an incident in 1974 when a farmer was digging a new well and got hit by a piece of terra cotta warrior. He contacted the government who sent in archaeologists.

A video Michelle made of the original excavation. It gives you some idea of the scope of the excavation. There are two others just as large.

We were told that emperor Qin began the construction of the tomb some time before his death. The construction technique was to dig parallel cuts separated by wide earthen walls as you see in the video. The cuts were covered by wooden logs and woven matting which in turn was covered with earth.

Qin died before the work was finished and was interred in the tomb. The work continued, but then a peasant's revolt took place and the rebels overran the area. During the ensuing chaos, the unfinished tomb apparently caught fire. It's not certain whether the fire was accidental or deliberately set by the revolting peasants. In any case, the wooden beams burned, the tomb caved in, and two thousand years of natural erosion filled the whole thing in until it was forgotten. In the cave-in most of the terra cotta figures were crushed. So, when the tombs were excavated, the figures you see were put back together like giant jigsaw puzzles.

The entrance to the Qin tomb complex

A closer view of the terra cotta warriors. The faces on all the warriors are different and may have been modeled from actual people.

This is the condition the statues were in when they were first unearthed.

The whole Qin tomb excavation site with its clay army was pretty incredible and is considered by some to be the "Eighth Wonder of the World"

After touring the three tomb sites, we had lunch at the park's restaurant. As one would expect from a national park where the government wants to make a good impression on visitors, the food was pretty decent. There was a chef making hand-pulled noodles, a Chinese speciality, which were served in a hearty beef soup.

Then it was back on the bus and back to Xi'an.

That afternoon, we had some free time, so the six of us decided to catch cabs to an area that Abe read about in his guide book. It was a place near the city wall called "Culture Street" and was what our guide liked to call "Chinatown". By this he meant an old fashioned Chinese shopping district where one bargained for items in small family-run shops as opposed to the trendy stores near our hotel. Think Mott and Pell streets as opposed to Canal Street.

"Culture Street" Xi'an

On this street and the various alleys off of it, we got our first taste of bargaining Chinese-style. Almost no one spoke English, but everyone had a cheap battery calculator with a large readout. You pointed to what you wanted and the shopkeeper (usually female) entered a number and showed you. She then handed you the calculator to enter your counter offer. Of course, you entered some ridiculously low price, and she would give an Academy Award performance in Chinese the gist of which seemed to be that if she sold you that particular Tchotchke for that insultingly low price she would be obliged to sell her children for medical experiments or something to avoid starvation.

Of course, this was all a game, and in the end, a price would be agreed upon somewhere in the middle of the two positions. We would feel like we got a bargain and the shopkeeper would get to keep her children. Abe and Roz even bought some nice Chinese wall hangings for their new home from a shop down a side street that seemed to specialize in art shops.

We took a cab back to the hotel and a little while later boarded our tour bus again; this time to attend a performance of traditional Tang Dynasty music and dance and then have a Dim Sum dinner.

The Tang Dynasty ruled China from Xi'an during what were roughly Western Europe's Dark Ages. In China, however, this was a time of high culture and enlightenment which went along with increased trade both overland and maritime. This included a revival of the Silk Road and contacts with still civilized Western nations such as the Byzantine Empire as well as Persia and India.

Anyway, the performance we saw was based on traditional music and musical instruments from the Tang period along with dance from the Tang Court.

A snapshot of the Tang Dynasty dancers and musicians. Contrary to popular belief, this dynasty did not invent powdered orange drink.

Our jolly group of would-be Marco Polos at the show. Left to Right: Abe, Alex, Monica, a lamp, Roz, Michelle, and me.

The show was enjoyable and afterward we were ushered down some stairs to a restaurant for a Dim Sum dinner. Dim Sum are Chinese dumplings filled with various things: meat, seafood, vegetables. The meal was quite good, with a good variety of dumplings and other dishes.

Then it was back to the Hyatt to pack for the next day's flight to Shanghai.

Next time: we get Shanghaied

China IV - Climbing the Wall

Our second full day in Beijing, we were up bright and early for a breakfast of eggs over easy and steamed dumplings. Then it was off to the Great Wall.

Calling it "The" Great Wall is somewhat of a misnomer, as there were a number of walls built and rebuilt at varying times in China's history. The original "Great Wall" was built by Qin (pronounced "Chin"- hence the name of the country), the first known emperor of China after he conquered the other small kingdoms around his small kingdom and created a united empire in around 500 B.C.E. Supposedly, the other kingdoms already had built defensive walls around themselves so he tore down the internal walls separating the parts of his new empire while strengthening and extending the existing walls in the north - he was worried about barbarians from that direction. That wall was mostly rammed earth and was north of the stone wall we know today from the History Channel etc. and is pretty much gone now after over 2,000 years of weathering and erosion.

The second "Great Wall" - the one tourists visit today - was built in the middle of the 1400's by an outfit called the Ming Dynasty (known also for expensive vases which you probably didn't want to drop off the Wall). Even this one is slowly falling apart except for the parts that tourists visit - those sections are maintained and in some cases restored. The rest of the Wall, like Hadrian's in Britain and the Roman Colisseum, serves as a ready-made stone quarry for the locals.

So, off we went to the restored Ming Great Wall in our trusty tour bus.

No, this is not the Great Wall. It's a pseudo Disney Land that some Chinese entrepreneur partially completed before running out of financing and abandoning it. Apparently, the Chinese don't put too much of an emphasis on other people's copyright laws.

After about an hour or so driving on one of China's excellent expressways, we reached the Wall. If you've seen any photos of the Wall, you know it runs along the crest of a mountain range in the area north of Beijing. I've spoken about the air pollution problem they have previously, but it was really brought home by the fact that we couldn't see the mountains until we were almost on top of them. Contrast this with the Nevada desert where you can see mountains 50 miles away (although admittedly, the City of Las Vegas does win honorable mention in the air pollution contest).

The section of the Great Wall which we were allowed to climb. This is facing roughly westward.

The portion of the Wall which extends eastward from where we were. Note the haze.

A close up of tourists climbing the Wall's many steps. The steps were very worn and very uneven.

The spot on the Wall were we disembarked our bus was extremely popular since it is so close to Beijing. There were huge multiple bus parks and numerous tourist Tchotchke stands. The stands were even on the Wall and they included an expresso bar! It was interesting that even with the large numbers of Western tourists, at all the National Monuments that we visited, they were well outnumbered by Chinese people. They seem to be very keen on their country's history - I get the feeling probably more so than we Americans are on ours.

Michelle on the Great Wall. She thought it was almost as nice as the retaining wall she had built behind our house in New Jersey (The Great Wall of Rockaway?)

Me posing in front of some Jackie Chan-type ancient Chinese weapon replicas. "Round" people like me are referred to as "Happy Buddhas" in China. I told Michelle to rub my tummy for good luck.

A picture only an old ordnance engineer could love: one of the cannons used to defend the Wall from attackers. The Chinese invented cannons but those knob-like thingies on either side of the gun barrel are called "trunnions" (they make aiming easier and more accurate) and were borrowed back from European cannon design.

After about an hour or so on the Wall, it was time to move on. The tour bus took us to a place for lunch (not very good) and a Jade factory and showroom. Then it was back to Beijing with a stop at something called the Ming Tombs along the way. It figures the Mings would want to be buried near their wall.

A carved jade ship model which was being sold for some insane amount of money (in New York it would sell for a psychopathic amount of money)

The Ming Tombs were interesting. They had a small but nice museum as part of the complex. However, I think I probably could have done without seeing them. But, since they were on the way back from the Wall - what the hell.

The museum at the Ming Tombs

A statue of one of the Ming emperors. Don't ask me which one. Probably the guy who had the monopoly on vases. I think antique dealers secretly worship him.

I asked our tour guide how the Mings came to rule the planet Mongo and he just kind of looked at me funny...

That night, back in Beijing, we were taken out to a Peking Duck dinner. It was actually pretty good, though not as good as some I've had. The trouble with being from the New York area is one really gets spoiled foodwise. Well, anyway it was one of the better dinners on the trip. I'll discuss the topic of food on the tour at greater length in another posting. By the way, don't ask why the duck is Peking while the city (at least in this day and age) is called Beijing. It's some complicated hoo-hah involving Chairman Mao, Chiang-Kai-Shek, etc. etc.

The next day, our last in Beijing, we visited a place called the Temple of Heaven. This was where the emperor would conduct ceremonies twice a year to pray for a good harvest. Apparently the run-up to the ceremonies included a temporary conversion to both Catholicism and Judaism since the emperor was required to abstain from sex and pork for some time prior to the ceremony.

Our tour guide Mr. Chen holds his ever-popular red lantern in front of the main building of the Temple of Heaven. He was surprised to hear that there is a replica of this building at Disney World Florida. Our friend Roz is on the right under her umbrella. As far as we know, there is not yet a replica of her at Disney. But there probably will be when they build a pavilion of famous Librarians. By the way, this was the only day it rained.

The interior of the above building

From the Temple of Heaven it was off to the airport for the 90-minute flight to Xi'an.

Next: Terra cotta warriors and marketplace warriors.