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 III - Stone Boats and Hutongs

The afternoon of our first full day in China, our tour took us to the emperor's Summer Palace which is located about 10 miles from the center of Beijing. It is a series of buildings, gardens and pavilions surrounding a large artificial lake called Lake KunMing. The lake was dug by hand and once again, the leftover dirt was used to build an artificial mountain (well a hill, anyway). Supposedly the area and the presence of the lake made this a more bearable place to hang during the hot Beijing summers. Unfortunately, one of the things the Chinese didn't invent was air conditioning.

A statue of a "Kylin" a mythical beast which was supposed to represent good luck: located at the entrance to the Summer Palace.

One of the features we were told we were going to see was to be the "world's longest corridor". Well, it turns out it is really just a covered walkway about 1/2 mile long. It is, however, magnificently decorated.

"World's Longest Corridor"

One of the many, many buildings in the Summer Palace. Notice the workmen - all the Chinese National Monuments, as well as their cities were kept spotlessly clean.

Along one of the pathways we came upon a man practicing his calligraphy skills with a 3 foot long brush which he dipped in plain water and then proceeded to write on the pavement. Calligraphy has the status of an art form in China. Also, red sneakers seemed to be popular among the Summer Palace visitors that day.

A pavilion located on a small peninsula in KunMing lake

The "Tower of Buddhist Fragrance" and the artificial hill built from the material dug from the lake.

A beautiful ornate gateway near the "Buddhist Fragrance". The Chinese are very keen on gateways. The silly-looking red lantern on a stick which will occasionally show up in some of our other pictures was carried by our tour guide to ensure that we could always find him.

The Stone Boat

The Summer Palace was largely destroyed by fire in the 1880's. However, our old friend the Dowager Empress, AKA the Dragon Lady, liked the area so she had it rebuilt and made it her main hangout. The story goes that one day she decided that it would be cool to ride around Lake KunMing on a boat. A suitable craft was procured but when she took her first boat ride she found to her dismay that boats have a habit of moving up and down and side to side. This did not set well with her tummy. Sooo... She commanded her minions to build her a boat that did not move and the result was the stone boat we see above, firmly embedded to the lake bottom. She would often spend hours on this - essentially artificial island - enjoying boating without all the inconvenience. Note the carved paddlewheels on the side.

After seeing and duly photographing the Stone Boat, and buying some souvenirs, it was time to move on.

Next on our agenda was a tour by "rickshaw" (actually pedicabs) of something called a "Hutong". Hutongs were and are the old traditional neighborhoods of Beijing, they have streets which are narrow alleyways, too narrow for automobile traffic (in fact the alleys are also referred to as Hutongs). They are formed of traditional-style one or two story residences which surround an inner courtyard and usually house an extended family. Most of these neighborhoods are long gone, replaced by wide streets and high-rises, but a few of them have been kept in an effort at historic preservation.

Our tour group sets off through the Hutong

Our tour was via pedicab and we were taken to a traditional indoor market which consisted of a series of stalls run by independent vendors selling meat, seafood, produce, spices etc. We also were shown a traditional courtyard home (complete with ghost-proof high thresholds). The funniest thing were the street vendors on bicycles who kept pace with our pedicabs trying to sell us souvenirs. Well, this tour wrapped up after about an hour or so, and it was back to the hotel, a quick dinner, and bed.

Next: Climbing the walls

China Part II - Sex and the Forbidden City

Having discussed the 2008 Olympics and China's air quality problems, I guess I'll get back to our sightseeing.

So, after we walked all the way to the other end of Tianimen Square, we came to the main entrance to the "Forbidden City" this is actually the palace complex of the former Chinese emperors and while it was once forbidden to commoners and non-official people it is now a national monument and tourist attraction. Anyone who has managed to sit through the rather boring but history-laden film "The Last Emperor" has seen the Forbidden City since much of the movie was filmed there.

A short video by Michelle of Tianimen Square seen from the entrance to the Forbidden City. It pans round to the gateway with the ubiquitous picture of Chairman Mao. Apparently Mao is still quite revered in China.

We entered the Forbidden City and spent the rest of the morning there. We probably walked at least 2-3 miles through the palace complex - it was enormous.

The front courtyard of the palace. The building is covered with scaffolding for pre-Olympic renovations.

The palace is actually many buildings which housed thousands of people during the heyday of the emperors. From what I gather they were mostly concubines and eunuchs.

The emperor's bed. Presumably he shared it with one of the many concubines on any given night. The concubines - sort of assistant wives - were chosen from important families throughout the empire and becoming one brought influence and prestige to your family.

One of these women in the late 19th century, who was beautiful, intelligent and apparently quite ruthless, became not only empress (i.e. #1 wife) but for the next forty years or so ruled China as the power behind the throne for a series of puppet emperors, some of whom met mysterious and untimely deaths. She was officially known as the Dowager Empress but behind her back she was called the "Dragon Lady".

This is a huge lump of crystalline quartz which was quarried and carted to the palace at the orders of the Dowager Empress. I think it's supposed to show her power or bring good luck or something - the Chinese people have traditionally been very superstitious about certain objects and symbols bringing good fortune.

One interesting thing we were told concerned the entranceways into traditional Chinese buildings. On palaces, temples etc. the entrance doors always had thresholds on the order of around six inches high. You literally have to step over them to get inside. The purpose of these is to keep out "ghosts" or evil spirits which can bring bad luck, sickness etc. The theory went that the "ghosts" did not have knee joints, so they could not step over the thresholds!

Eventually, we made our way through the Forbidden City and into the gardens at the rear of the complex.

The gardens of the Forbidden City. The rocks with lots of holes in them were brought from some distant part of China where they occur naturally - except for the ones that that area's local peasants drilled holes in when they found out there was a market for them.

A Tea-House in the Gardens

Finally, we made our way out through the rear gate of the Forbidden City and joined up once more with our tour bus which took us to lunch and thence to the Summer Palace.

The exit gate from the Forbidden City. The hill beyond with the pagoda is artificial. It was made centuries ago by hundreds of workmen with wheelbarrows (a Chinese invention). I think the dirt came from the moat around the Forbidden City.

We had a fairly decent lunch that day - all meals were served family style with Lazy Susans on the table to swivel the food around- and I'm proud to say that Michelle and I used chopsticks throughout the trip. Having got to this point in our trip with this posting, I think I will save the Summer Palace and the stone boat for the next posting.

Later.

Slow Boat to China

O.K. Some months ago, our friends Abe and Roz asked us if we wanted to join them on a nine-day tour of China. We signed up on the tour - run by Club ABC Tours - and became the third couple in our little group. The others were Abe and Roz and their friends Alex and Monica. Time to blog about the trip.

The first thing is that it's a 13-hour flight to Beijing China. We flew Air China which still uses Boeing 747's (haven't been on one of those in a while!). Now, if you've been, say, to Hawaii, you know that that's about a 10-hour flight. So how come China's only 13? They fly the shortest route possible - straight north over the Pole. It turns out that Beijing is at about the same latitude as New York and almost directly on the opposite side of the earth. So the quickest way to get there... (And I thought that Fairbanks Alaska was the furthest north I was ever going to get...)

Nevertheless, it was still about three hours longer than I ever want to be on a plane.

We left around 5 P.M. on a Monday and got to Beijing at 6 P.M. on Tuesday, their time. The time difference is exactly 12 hours so at least we didn't have to reset our analog watches. Oh well.

I will say that Club ABC did a decent job of running the tour. Their guide, Mr. Chen, met us at the airport as we cleared customs, led us to a nice modern tour bus, and saw to our luggage and hotel check-in. The tour group consisted of about 30 people, all Americans. Over the next few days we were happy to find that on the whole, our fellow tourists were fairly nice and easygoing people. This is always a plus. In an interesting reminder of China's non-democratic status, on our way to our hotel, our tour guide very politely requested that we not discuss or ask questions about political matters on the tour. Of course he was referring to the unrest currently ongoing in Tibet and the connection to the upcoming Beijing Olympics. The 2008 Olympics are really huge in Beijing - they are practically rebuilding the city for them.

Well, totally exhausted since we had had no sleep for some 24 hours, we arrived at our hotel. It was called the "Capital Hotel" and, like the other two hotels we were to stay at on our tour, it has a 5-star rating. The only problem we found was that the beds were extremely hard. Unfortunately, this is the custom in China. Chinese people prefer very hard beds, so the best hotels have hard mattresses. Otherwise, the place was great.

The Capital Hotel, Beijing

After a quick bite to eat, we collapsed onto our hard bed and passed out til' morning.

The tour included a free buffet breakfast every morning. So the next morning, before boarding our tour bus for the day's adventures, we charged downstairs to stuff our faces. The breakfast spread in the Capital Hotel (and indeed in the other two hotels they put us up in) was excellent. It included among a vast array of things, the makings of a reasonably decent American-style breakfast and always some fresh fruit. It was interesting looking at the Chinese breakfast selections - apparently the Chinese people eat soup for breakfast. After being sufficiently fortified with food and caffeine, we boarded our bus and off we went.

The first stop was Tianimen Square of fame and infamy. They walked us along the edge of the square and pointed out various sights to us. The public was not allowed to actually walk in the square, ostensibly because there was a Communist Party congress going on at the time, but I rather suspect it had more to do with government paranoia about the Tibet situation.

The Great Hall of the People in Tianimen Square - where the Party congresses are held

A little further along the same sidewalk from the view above, we came to an electronic countdown sign to the 2008 Olympics:

Olympic Countdown Clock

The 2008 Olympics are the biggest thing to hit Beijing since Ghengis Khan. They are literally rebuilding the city, including major skyscrapers and other projects. People are being moved out of surrounding villages to make way for Olympic construction work. Although, in fairness, the government's not just dumping people on the street - they're being given apartments and reimbursement. We were shown two massive constructs for the Olympic venues: a stadium nicknamed "the bird's nest" for its innovative design and a huge aquatic swimming pool building for the water sport competitions.

The "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium - the picture was taken through the bus window causing the streakiness in the fore ground. However, note the general haziness in the distance. Beijing has a serious air pollution problem.

The Olympic water sports venue - note the exterior is painted to look like water

Apparently, the Chinese government is counting on the 2008 Summer Olympics to signal to the world that they "have arrived" as a serious and civilized member of the world community. Needless to say, anything which could tarnish this impression makes them very paranoid. Thus the concern over image issues with the Tibet crisis.

Personally, I think they have an issue closer to home which will not make them look very appealing to their Olympic visitors. China, and especially Beijing, has a severe air pollution problem. Our tour guide (being beholden to the government for his job - I don't blame him) gave us a song and dance about the haziness being due to "all the construction for the Olympics". The truth is more problematic. China has very little oil but lots of coal - so their basic industry runs on coal (they even still use steam railway locomotives in some areas). Homes are heated with coal. In addition, the number of automobiles and trucks in China has grown massively and added a mix of hydrocarbons to the coal smoke. Finally, in a peculiarity of Beijing, just over the mountains to the northwest (maybe 200 miles or less) lies the constantly encroaching Gobi desert. So, on top of everything else, Beijing is subject to sandstorms.

Now, I'm not an athlete, but if, after three days in the city, the air quality was beginning to bother me, what will it do to somebody, say, running a marathon?

The Chinese government are supposedly working like crazy to improve the air quality for the games, but I have my doubts.

Next: The Forbidden City and the Summer Palace