declipsechina

To China for an eclipse - for an adventure...

2009-08-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

Mike (http://www.silkroadstans.blogspot.com/) and Curtis (http://curtisbryantmusic.com/news.html), two seasoned travelers, head to the Middle Kingdom for the July 2009 solar eclipse, billed as the longest of the 21st century. Below is a chronology of their three-week travel adventure, which took them from Shanghai, to Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, and through some of the ancient capitals of past Chinese empires: Xi'an (Chang'an), Luoyang, Kaifeng and Nanjing, and finally back by rail to Shanghai.

Sun, July 19

Mike

Uneventful plane ride from Atlanta to Shanghai. Nearly went over the North Pole, actually crossed the Arctic and Siberia. We arrived in Shanghai on time. Everyone at the quarantine tables was wearing masks. Got through that and customs routinely.

The maglev into town (50 yuan = $7.30 US) took 8 minutes to cover 30 km. Then subway 8 stops on two lines got us to Hailun Rd Station, somewhat more than 1 km from the hotel (Hengsheng Peninsula Intl Hotel). And what a walk it was. In 30 minutes of walking with our backpacks, we soaked through our shirts and underwear. The temperature seems to be 37 (97) and it is stifling hot.

We have a smallish 4 star room on the 12th floor of the hotel. At 4 PM, we just sacked out for 2 1/2 hours.

Now (evening) we are walking through the Bund. What a Zoo. All the buildings on the Pudong (east side of the Pu River) are spectacularly lit up. The crowds are mostly Chinese, with some tourists. And the hawkers ... worse than anything I saw in Beijing.

As usual, the Internet at the hotel was 10 Y per 10 minutes. This Net cafe is 3 Y per hour.
The sun has set, and the temps are somewhat cooler - perhaps down to 91 or so. I think we are going to either be very sticky and sweaty, or we are going to run out of clothing very quickly.

It has been bright, sunny and HOT.

Curtis

We had a nice flight. We flew just west of the Hudson Bay, north over Ontario and Manitoba and close to the North Pole -- within 100 miles or so -- then came south over Siberia, the Eastern corner of Mongolia and down to Shanghai, arriving on time 15 + hours after takeoff. One view over the polar ice cap could have been a close-up of a flyover of Jupiter's moon Europa, of course without the clouds. There were some really interesting mountain ranges in Siberia, very desolate.

We took the maglev train from the airport, which briefly reached a speed of 430 kilometers per hour. Then, we got on the subway line, taking the #2 and #4. And then, we walked about a mile, and sweated about a quart, to our hotel, where we checked in totally drenched.

Anyhow, the hotel is quite comfortable, but walking anywhere is really, really hot. You are probably glad you're not here after reading this.

We got a good nap.

The walk along Shanghai's "Bund" district is wild. Lots of hawkers, selling laser lights and other junk. We are now going to look for a bite to eat, and hopefully get a real night's sleep.

We are now in an internet cafe in Shanghai, and it is 8:15 PM here -- 12 hours ahead of you! This computer is a little hard to use because most of the letters have been worn off the keys. I am stumbling over the keyboard as though in the dark.

It is now 93 degrees, feels like 108, already dark at 8:30 PM.

Our first full day in Shanghai

2009-08-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

Mon, July 20

Mike

Weather: scattered clouds with temp probably 37 (maybe 38).

We got a slow start, with a long breakfast with some Finnish Swedes visiting Shanghai to see the eclipse. We took a bus (910) to Old Town, where Curtis negotiated for and bought a silk sports jacket, to be delivered on 7 Aug. We walked slowly through Old Town, along streets with food and markets. We bought buns and a fried rice (?) bread, along with lots to drink. Went into Temple of the Town City, where there are numerous Buddhist shrines. I bought a green bean ice cream bar.

Still, by 1 PM, we were close to collapse, because of the oppressive heat. We went into a movie theater and determined that Harry Potter movie was running at 1 PM, and then several times later, including 3:45 PM. So we headed over to the Shanghai Museum. After long wait to get into the museum, which was free, we toured the fourth, third and second floors: coins, ceramics, calligraphy, painting, furniture, jade, etc. spanning 8000 years. There was even a room with Silk Road coins that would have made any Persian museum proud.

We headed back to the movie theater, where we saw the brand new Harry Potter movie. The admission was pretty steep (80 Y), but the drinks outside the theater were cheaper than could be had on the street. Curtis got a large Coke (he was really tired of the green tea drinks) and I got a coconut drink (really tasty).

We were out at 6 PM. We had seen a 123 bus at the hotel and there was a 123 bus here, so we walked down the street trying to find the bus stop. After walking close to 1/2 km, we passed a 168 Motel (where my Silk Road friends Ile and Mirco are supposed to be staying), only to determine that there are maybe 8 168 Motels in Shanghai. Caught a crush loaded 123 bus, only to determine that the stop was at least 1/2 km north of the hotel.

Back to our hotel room. Accosted by the same woman who had bothered us last night (beer?... tea?... massage?) They are super aggressive here.

Back out for dinner. Two streets over is a restaurant row. We saw a Hunan restaurant and a Chogqing restaurant (is that different from Szechuan?) only to settle on a Uighur restaurant (8 sticks of lamb kebab, a potato in vinegar sauce place, a naan bread, and two large Xinjiang beers, all for 63Y).

It is now 9 PM, and we are at a really crowded internet cafe around the corner.

We did a wash last night of everything we had worn, and it looks like the same again tonight. The temperature last night was 93 (feels like 108) at 8 PM. Tonight it was 95 (feels like 107) at 9 PM. Rain is predicted for tomorrow night (1/2 inch expected) with 90% chance of rain on Wed (eclipse day).

Curtis

Well, I got signed in after all...

In a different wangbao (Internet Cafe) tonight, but very smokey and full of kids playing games, keyboards in better shape but too dark to see letters against the black. Good thing I can mostly speed type, except when I am thinking too hard about it.

I went to a tailor who specializes in silk this AM and ordered a new raw silk jacket. Interesting how hard it is to find. Lots of regular silk, but raw silk is uncommon. I'll pick it up on our return leg. Then we walked some back streets with open markets and noshed a few snacks on way to the Shanghai Museum. Nice exhibits, especially coins and porcelain. Then after the museum we went to a cinema and saw the current Harry Potter movie with Chinese subtitles. They don't show previews and they cut off the credits before the composer came up (guess I can go on imdb.com to find out). The theater was really, really cold, but I could not complain. They sold cokes in plastic bottle, no ice, but the price was right (3.2 Yuan). But the movie was 80 Y (about $12?).

Then we took a bus back to the hotel. Weather was clear and HOT. I wore my safari hat, which Mike thought looked ridiculous, but it keeps the sun off, and that's fine with me. Some of the locals wear anything to keep the sun off, but the most common protective gear is the parasol. It is interesting to be the only foreigners riding the buses. We get stared at by interested folk who don't commonly see Westerners on the public transportation. But the buses are air conditioned and only cost 2 Y (about 30 cents).

We got dinner at a Uighur restaurant, lamb kebob with nan bread and a potato dish in a red bell pepper vinegar sauce, soft shoe string style, hence easy to eat with chopsticks. It was yummy.

I hit a key that put me on Chinese letters。Oops。Anyhow, I am hoping to get a swim tomorrow if I can

Getting acclimated to Shanghai in Summer

2009-08-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Tues, July 21

Mike

The heat is too much; we are just going at half pace. Curtis stayed at the hotel to get in a swim. I went out to Ohel Moshe Synagogue and took the "expensive" tour. The synagogue wasn't much (built in 1927), but from 1939 to 1945 when the Japanese ghettoized the Jews in Shanghai, it was the center of a neighborhood of 25000. In 1949, all foreigners were expelled, and that was that for the Jewish community of Shanghai.

I got over there by walking 1+ km to the Metro and going two stops. On the way, I stopped in a magazine shop and found a map of Shanghai with all of the bus info (in Chinese, of course). So on the way back I took the 22 bus three stops. The bus stops are so far apart that sometimes it is a huge inconvenience to even try to take the bus.

I got back to the hotel at 11. Curtis finished his swim at 11:45. We finally got moving at 12:30. Took a bus to People's Square, and then walked several blocks to Shanghai Book Store. What an amazing place. The store fills 7 huge floors. We wandered through several of the floors - finally found Harry Potter on floor 6 - Youth Reading. Volume 1 (Sorcerer’s Stone) was behind an employee's door. It is really thin (only 190 pages) but I am assured it is complete, so I am bringing it back for the collection.

By now it is 2:30 PM. We are exhausted, but are walking back to the hotel. We got sustenance for the walk by buying two 50 cent hot dogs. Curtis also found a small 70c (4.5Y) bottle of rotgut bai jiu (white spirits). Halfway there we found an Internet cafe, where we now find ourselves.

It was sunny this AM, with blue skies. Now it is completely overcast. Maybe the prediction of rain tonight and all day tomorrow is really going to happen. Too Bad, So Sad.

Dragon eats sun, clouds eat dragon...

2009-08-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

Wed, July 22 ECLIPSE DAY

"And now... for the very first time on record... the [2009 Shanghai]... ECLIPSE OF THE SUN" (Monty Python's Previous Record)

Mike

At 5 am, we got up, saw some breaks in the clouds, and decided to check out and go to Jiaxing. We were slow and didn't check out until 7:15 AM, after breakfast. By the time we got to the train station, it was too late to get to Jiaxing. So we waited at the Shanghai South Railway Station. Saw the sun a few times through the clouds, but then things got thicker and thicker. 20 min before totality it started to rain, fairly hard. The sky got totally dark during totality, but it was raining pretty hard.

Slowly back to town where we went to the museum of the First Communist Party Conference in 1921. Who do we see there but Electra Yourke and Todd Thompson from the 2008 Tropical Sails eclipse trip to Xinjiang. (http://www.silkroadstans.blogspot.com/) We discussed the weather and ascertained that it had gotten to 40 (104) on Monday PM while we were watching Harry Potter - the hottest in 75 years in Shanghai.

Afterward, we walked through the rain for a while. Finally gave up, to go back to the hotel. We had some lunch - two scrambled egg pastries as street food, and then into a cheap cafeteria, where we had 4 different dishes, including the special Shanghai buns, and a beer, all for 21 Y.
Changed some money, relaxed in the lobby with some other Americans, and then about 3:30 PM, took two buses to the airport, arriving around 4:45 PM. Checked in, discovered the plane to Kunming was delayed until 6:15 (from 5:45).

Dinner on the plane was rather adventurous, with lotus root and beef with rice, and a 100 year old egg-mushroom salad.

We took a taxi to the hotel - oh, the Kunming traffic jams, even at 10:15 at night!

Curtis

In short, our eclipse experience today was rather grim. We had heavy overcast, turning to rain. Even so, the sun broke through for a few seconds several times as the eclipse was starting, so we got a couple of glimpses through the welding glass and shared the ephemeral view with a few passers-by in the park. Then it started raining just before totality, so Mike and I hung out under the glass subway entrance with some others and experienced the darkness for about 5 minutes, watching the cars turn on their headlights to continue their way with the inconvenience. The buses in Shanghai had a time lapse loop of the eclipse on their video screens, shot from somewhere that had better weather. Oh well, "The best planned lays of mice and men" as someone once said...

We had a nice flight out of Shanghai on China Eastern Air Lines. Food on the plane was actually good.

We have just gotten checked in to our hotel in Kunming. Kunming is dry and cooler than Shanghai, actually quite pleasant. We are planning to go to the "Stone Forest" tomorrow for a day trip. You can probably get some idea of it by googling "Stone Forest Kunming." There are images of it all over the airport, so it appears to be THE major attraction for this area.

Yunnan Province

2009-08-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

We will spend the next six nights in Yunnan Province in China’s southwest. Kunming, the capital is called “the City of Eternal Spring” because, at 23º N and 1,900 meters above sea level, it has moderate temperatures year round. It was the home of allied operations in China during the World War II. At the terminus of the Burma Road, and later the Ledo Road connecting Yunnan to Assam in India, Kunming was an essential supply center in the effort to push back the Japanese occupation. One of my uncles was stationed in Kunming in 1945 as an army medic. I wonder if I will cross any of the same streets he once crossed.

We will follow in the path of part of the old Burma Road as we venture westward by bus from Kunming to Xiaguan (The old allied route cuts south here) and on to Dali, medieval capital of the Nanzhao kingdom, which was independent from Han control until both were conquered by the Mongols. Then we will continue our exploration northward to Lijiang and meet Jinsha Jiang (the Yangtse River) where it passes through the Tiger Leaping Gorge. (Notes by Curtis)

Kunming and The Stone Forest

2009-08-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

Thurs, July 23

Mike

Got up, ate a nondescript breakfast. We arranged with Tony Deng of China Kindness Tours to meet with him between 5 to 6 PM.

We took a bus to the bus station (right next to the railway station). Then, a 2 hr ride to Shilin (石林; literally "Stone Forest") - one hour to get 4 km or so to the highway, and the other hour on the highway.

The Stone Forest is a region of karst stone formations. Trails have been built throughout the park. We took the trail to the Lotus Tower and found ourselves on a narrow, exposed, slippery trail. Fantastic stone formations - sort of reminds one of Cappadocia, but here there is limestone karst, not basalt.

Back to Kunming - again the horrendous traffic.

Met with Tony around 5:50 PM. He is arranging Dan Oppliger's 2009 Tropical Sails eclipse trip, so he knows they saw the eclipse. Tony took us to dinner and ordered 7 dishes, local specialties of Kunming and Yunnan: 1. steamed pork chicken soup (qi4 quo1 ji1); 2. duck stomach (ya1 zhen1) crispy like pieces of pork; 3. fried goat cheese (ru3 bing3) like saganaki but without the liquor - salt and pepper instead; 4. rice cake with scallion (er3 kuai4); 5. beef with ginger and pepper; 6. steamed green pumpkin; 7. crispy potato (gan1 bei4 yang2 yu4) shredded potato, julienned and fried in a cake. Beer was Lan2 cang1 jiang1 (Mekong River beer). There was way too much food, but wow.
After dinner, Tony drove us back to the hotel. Now, to sleep.

Chinese cheese info:
http://www.ethnorema.it/pdf/numero%201/BRYAN%20ALLEN%20and%20SILVIA%20ALLEN.pdf

Curtis

We really enjoyed the Stone Forest (Shilin). It had incredible passageways that were quite tricky to negotiate, but really awesome vistas. I took bunches of photos. Our weather was quite pleasant, too, which was a good thing because some of the stone pathways could be disastrous under wet conditions. There are many otherworldly rock formations, some of which are given "pet" names for obvious reasons. The park attracts many tourists, and near the bus station you run into the usual onslaught of tour hawkers, and people selling all kinds of trinkets, including some very nice embroidery and other folk arts and crafts. These have their own unique local style based on traditions of the Yi and Sami people, ethnic minorities with long roots in this part of Yunnan Province.

After our return bus ride, Mike caught up with his travel agent friend Tony, who generously took us to a good local restaurant that offers Yunnan dishes. Most incredible was fried goat cheese similar to Greek saganaki. Also crispy duck stomach--very much like crisp bacon.

Tomorrow, after we do a little touring around Kunming itself, we’re planning on taking a bus to Dali. Tony says there is almost no damage in the old town from the recent earthquake. Also similar reports from travelers we have run into.

Birds & Flowers, then bus to Dali

2009-08-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Fri, Jul 24

Mike

We spent close to an hour trying to book a hotel in Dali. We finally convinced the hotel staff to make a phone call for us. Two different calls to two different hotels in Lonely Planet – “mei you” (full). So we gave up, and took a bus to the Bird and Flower Market. As we got off the bus, I bought my second umbrella. The first was over $7, but it fell apart pretty quickly. This one is $10, so we'll see. The market was not much: a couple of open air pet stores, including one with a dish of bugs, presumably to feed the pets. Hardly any flowers at all.

We walked the km to Green Lake Park. On the way, we passed the old Chinese medicine pharmacy in Kunming. Green Lake is kind of pretty, with abundant lotus in the water, and lots of people on the walkways.

We took two buses back to the train station, where we each had a bowl of Crossing the Bridge Noodles (8 Y apiece). Sort of like pho. The base seems to be a chicken noodle soup with chili oil. Into it are thrown some meat, tomatoes, veggies, etc.

By now it is close to 1 PM. There are many internet cafes near the train station, so we visit three of them. One is closed, and the other two require a Chinese identity card: no foreigners allowed. So we took the bus back to the hotel, from which we had checked out. We went up to the internet in the business center (20 Y per hour) but no one was there to collect the money. We searched ctrip.com, found a hotel, and took the number back to the front desk. They made the call. We had a reservation, and moreover the 260 Y room was only 180 Y ($27).

We decided to splurge on Jul 28: instead of taking a 10 hour bus from Lijiang to Panzhihua, then a 14 hour overnight train to Leshan, arriving Jul 29, staying in Leshan, and then going on to Chengdu on Jul 30 -- we decided to fly from Lijiang to Chengdu the morning of Jul 28, check in to a hotel, and take a day trip to Leshan. This whole thing costs us $135 apiece in airfare, and gives us 2 extra days to see Louyang, Kaifeng, Nanjing, etc. We pressed our luck in the Kunming hotel business center, and got that reservation done also.

Picked up our luggage, and walked to the bus stop. Right next to the hotel was a health and fitness center, with a picture of an exercising woman with a clearly western face. I guess if you exercise there, you start looking like an American.

We got to the bus station just before 3 PM and bought two tickets to Dali (actually Xiaguan - the real city 7 km closer to Kunming) for 96 Y apiece. The tickets said 16:00, so we set our bags down and waited. A guy came up, said he was on the same bus, and we should quickly get on the bus. It was only 15:10, but as soon as the bus fills, it leaves. Apparently this is true all over this part of China. The time on the ticket is merely the time the bus will leave if it doesn't fill by then. We had seats 19 and 20 out of maybe 27 in total. The bus driver turned on the engine at 15:23. Something was wrong with the bus, which didn't leave until 15:50. We didn't get our tickets checked until 15:45, when we were almost out of the bus station.

Traffic is beyond impossible in Kunming (Tony had told us that if he tried to drive the 5 km to his house at 6 PM, it might take him 90 minutes). In our direction, it only took 15 minutes to get on the expressway (right next to the train/bus station). Anyway, by 16:05 we were on the expressway, and ready to drive. There was one 10-minute stop halfway to Xiaguan. After the rest stop the driver put on the TV, with two concerts from Dali (we think). The noise level was excruciating, and the screaming crowd coming through the bus TV was so loud that Curtis had to cover his ears. However, the really cute kid in front of us on the bus, who had been sleeping the first 2 hours, stood up, and watched intently the rest of the way.

We got to Xiaguan about 20:15. In the bus station, we saw dozens of sleeper buses, with their lights on, getting ready to load up. In Xiaguan, the taxi touts wanted 40 Y to get us to Dali Gu Cheng (大理古城 Dali Old City), where all tourists go (none stay in Xiaguan, unless there are exigent circumstances). We walked a few meters to the other side of the bus depot, found the local bus, and paid 2 Y apiece. We got dropped off two blocks from our hotel, Landscape Hotel. It was 21:15 or so, and they had no record of our call. They did however have a suite for 580 Y ($85). Curtis complained loudly, and they finally put us in a 460 Y room, and charged us 230 Y for a very nice room (a little small, but very clean).

We went out to dinner at Marley's Cafe. Curtis had a hamburger, with fries, and onion rings. I had the fried goat cheese appetizer, and the Bai special fried chicken. The goat cheese was not as good as in Kunming, but still tasty. The chicken was not fried at all, but stir fried in a white sauce. What made it special were the local mushrooms, the bamboo, etc. To bed at 23:30.

Curtis

We rounded off our stay in Kunming with a morning trip to the Bird and Flower Market, which turned out to be a bit grungy - road construction and some recent rain didn't help. I had hoped for something a bit more extensive, nevertheless there were interesting things going on, and it was clearly a market that caters to the locals and not to foreigners. In fact, I can't remember seeing a Western face anywhere within the market. Not a lot of flowers in evidence, but if you wanted a caged bird or music lessons on traditional Chinese instruments, or perhaps a nice big root of ginseng, well you're in the right place here. We then walked down to the Green Lake Park, which was packed with strollers and boaters enjoying some leisure time in the placid lake that was filled with lotus in bloom.

We are now in the old city of Dali, heartland of the Bai people, and are staying in the Landscape Hotel, a beautiful location built in the style of the old buildings. We are in a 3rd floor walkup, but it is quite comfortable (they serve a decent breakfast, too). Finding a wangba is much easier than it was in Kunming, and they are not concerned with passports or ID cards. Clearly they are more accustomed to Western tourists around here.

Our bus trip up here was interesting, watching the landscape get more and more mountainous. Cultivation occurs in all possible places, and you could occasionally see field hands wearing the classic farm hats weeding or carrying their loads balanced equally on two sides of a shoulder stick or sometimes a big basket held behind the neck. The highway was quite good once we got out of Kunming so the bus went at a good clip. At one point I saw a man with a goat that was nibbling on the weeds growing in the berm: the people's way to mow the grass. Field crops here seem to depend on the location of the slope. You see lots of corn (the American type) growing on the slopes along with other vegetables. Rice gets planted mostly on the bottoms, but I also saw lotus in one boggy spot. We went through a succession of tunnels, one of which was over 3 Km long.

Another thing I noticed along the way was the prevalence of colorful decorative artwork painted on the white stucco walls of houses. One of the most popular images is the lotus, which is a prominent Buddhist image symbolizing spotless enlightenment arising from the mire of human existence. Although, in this particular stretch of the road (between Kunming and Chuxiong) I noticed lots of images of dinosaurs. I found out later that this region has major excavation sites of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils. There are some dinosaur museums and theme parks in the area (Lufeng), which might have been interesting to check out if we had had more time. Ah, yes, time is always the problem when traveling....

We arrived late in Dali, but this town caters to tourists, so we had no problem finding dinner at 10 o'clock. We went to Marley's Cafe, which offers local cuisine as well as Western fare. Mike remained pure to the agenda, but I decided to go for a hamburger and onion rings. We also shared some fried goat cheese. Very satisfying to me, starved of proper bread and dairy products.

Dali and Cangshan - the Jade Green Mountains

2009-08-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Sat, Jul 25

Mike

Got up, and dressed and showered. Curtis had a small bout requiring Imodium. Then, down for breakfast and to take care of some business.

Originally, we planned to take the overnight bus from Dali to Lijiang. However, once we got to Lijiang, we realized that it only takes 3 hours from Dali to Lijiang: there is no such thing as an overnight bus. We arranged to stay in Dali another night (and keep the same room at the same rate) then take the 8:30 AM bus on Jul 26.

Curtis had arranged for the hotel to wash his two days of laundry. When we walked out of the hotel, we found a laundry across the street. So, I arranged for that laundry to clean my two days of laundry (30 Y) - supposed to be ready by 9 PM tonight (let's hope).

We found an internet cafe that didn't give a damn about Chinese identity cards (didn't even take our passport number), so we got on and booked two nights of hotel in Lijiang (Lijiang Mosuo Yiyuan House [Erma House] for 170 Y a night) for Jul 26 to 28. We also booked Shuda Mansion in Chengdu for 228 Y a night for Jul 28 to 30. We are now fully booked through Jul 30. We also bought our bus ride to Lijiang for 45 Y apiece.

All that done, we noticed that there were two cable cars up Cangshan Mountain to the west (cang means dark blue-green and shan is of course mountain). We started walking to one of them. The driver of a motorized rickshaw pulled up and convinced us to pay him 20 Y to take us to the cable car. 8 km later, we were at the other cable car. It cost 80 Y to take the cable car, and 32 Y to get off the cable car on the mountain (admission).

At the top, we got out and walked a few meters to the Qingbi Spring, a pretty waterfall. There are trails going everywhere. The standard trail between the two cable systems,named "Jade-Cloud Road" after cloud formations that appear over the Cangshan peaks, is 11.5 km, and apparently goes by some stunningly beautiful stuff. But even 2 km at 2500 m of elevation (or so), going up and down and up and down stairs, was as much as we could do. We spent a while climbing up the creek bed into what they call the Grand Canyon of Cangshan Mountains.

We descended Cangshan. On the way up, we had passed the most beautiful looking peaches, both flattish and regular shaped. I was going to buy some, but instead only bought 5 bananas. Since it was starting to rain, at 14:30 we took a taxi from higher up back to town, and didn't pass by the vendors. As it goes, we didn't see those flat peaches again.

There is absolutely no evidence of earthquake damage in Dali, so far as we can see.

In Dali: back to the hotel, and then out into town. Curtis was looking for a seamstress to mend his day pack. We found a couple, man and wife. Using a very old sewing machine, the man stitched the pack back together. He asked for 5 Y (75¢); Curtis was overly generous, and gave him 10 Y. We stopped by a tea shop and had a bottle of Feng Huang Xue Yue beer (rather ordinary) and also a cup of Yunnan coffee (15 Y). Tasty coffee, but we have learned that REAL coffee is (relatively) expensive all over the world.

We headed on to the East Gate of the city. There we climbed the walls, which were just a high berm, and walked to the SE corner. No tourists or much of anybody inside the wall in this corner. As we turned to the south portion, we were forced off the wall. So we got onto the street outside, and followed the wall, which now was a bunch of rubble, overgrown with trees. Then, we went on to a piece of fairly new wall, with a few marijuana plants nearby.

After a bit we were back at the South Gate, and it was tourist city again. There were lots of women dressed in what passes for Bai costume - it seems to be a universal costume for hotel front desk workers, tourist assistants, etc. Now, we climbed a new piece of old wall, and headed west to the Southwest corner, then north for a bit on the west wall. There, our path was blocked.

So we got down (it was 6 PM by now) and walked back to the center of town. We walked back along the mosque we had seen from Cangshan Mountain. I asked the Chinese woman there, "Masjid?" and got stares. These minarets were deceptive: the “mosque” turned out to be a hotel and maybe some other buildings. Next door was a new development that looked exactly like a huge Buddhist temple, but was clearly going to be a shopping mall. It’s funny how the cultural symbols are being expropriated by the commercial developers.

We got out of the internet at 7:30 PM. Back to the hotel for Curtis to get his laundry - mine was not going to be ready until 9 PM or so. Out for dinner. Curtis had two sticks of kebab as an appetizer. Then we went to a restaurant and had beef with peanuts (delicious), fried goat cheese (served with sugar rather than salt and pepper), hot and sour cabbage (best of the set), and some routine julienned potato dish. Way too much food. In the middle of dinner, I hopped over to get my clothes.

Back to the hotel and to bed. It’s so nice to have really clean clothes.

Curtis

This morning we made our travel arrangements for Lijiang. Then we spent a little time wandering inside the fascinating old town, watching the street vendors set up shop, and getting our bearings. Even the local produce of fresh mushrooms, eggplant and peppers was displayed in colorful arrangements worthy of its own art form. Much of the architecture in the old walled city of Dali is in the Bai style from the Ming era, with some of it surviving from the 14th century. Tourism propels the local economy, and very few vehicles are allowed onto the old cobble stone streets, giving the whole town an archaic feel. The town is also very clean. There are ancient canals that bring mountain water right into the city. Our wanderings led us up a road to the west side of town in the direction of the Cangshan mountain range, when we noticed a rickshaw heading in our direction. Clearly the savvy driver smelled tourists. After a little negotiation, he convinced us that the best way up the mountain was by a different route. He took us to the entrance for the Austrian built cableway up Cang Shan (Dark Blue-green Mountain). At the top, we climbed around on rock-hewn stairways up and down through the Cang Shan "Grand Canyon," following a natural cascading stream. Quite beautiful: lots of mosses and lichens as well as wild orchids, butterfly bushes and other flora.

This afternoon we walked around the East and South gates of Dali and followed part of the restored city walls. These survive from the Ming era and reflect the same style of architecture seen in the widely photographed sections of China’s Great Wall. At the Nán Mén (South Gate), where most of the motorized traffic comes to a halt, you can see locals dressed in traditional Bai costumes. There were some models, waiting for a photo shoot, probably for a tourism brochure and others in costume perhaps waiting to guide tours or just to go to work at some hotel. Also a man selling rides for children in a wagon drawn by some kind of big horn sheep, and tourists from all over China and Europe taking photos and enjoying the mild afternoon weather.

Tomorrow we will take a 3 hour bus ride to Lijiang and see the city in the afternoon. Then the plan is to take a tour of some kind up to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Mike has booked us ahead through the 30th for Chengdu. We decided to take an extra night in Dali (here) tonight and fly from Lijiang to Chengdu instead of taking the overnight bus trip. Saw no reason to waste a day and a half on a stinky bus.

Weather here has been nice: occasional drizzle, especially up on the mountain, generally pleasant. We’re hoping for good weather in the gorge. I imagine it will be really hot again when we reach Sichuan, but we'll deal with that when we get there.

Bus to Lijiang... finding our hotel

2009-08-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Sun, July 26

Mike

Packed, had a quick breakfast, and walked over to the place where we were to meet to get the bus to Lijiang. We were supposed to be there by 8:25 for the 8:30 bus, but we got there about 8:08 (checkout was more efficient than we had planned). At 8:12 or so, the guy we had bought the ticket from showed, and told us to walk a block or so. There we found our bus.

We were almost the last people on the bus, and were wedged into the back seats, with our backpacks on the floor of the minibus. We thought about the rule to never be the last person on the bus, but I think that each bus would have filled up in Xiaguan, and anyone getting on in Dali would be last. The ride was very pretty, but we were crushed and uncomfortable. Anyway, around noon, we pulled into Lijiang, and got out of the bus.

After asking a few questions, we walked a few hundred meters and were at the north gate to the old city. We went to the tourist info center. The staffer pulled out a map. The name of the alley on which our hotel was located was not exactly shown on the map, so the guide didn't know where the hotel was located. However, the hotel had to be near the south gate, because its address was Nanmen (south gate) St Old Alley. We took a taxi to the south gate, and started inquiring. I had forgotten to get a phone number for the hotel, so there was a lot of frustration all around. Finally, someone let me on to their computer. I typed in www.ctrip.com, and My Trips, and found the entry in Chinese. The guy copied the name in Chinese onto a piece of paper. A little after 1:00 PM, we were finally at the hotel.

The hotel manager knew who I was without even looking because we were the only foreigners registering through ctrip.com (I guess). Anyway, the hotel is very nice for 170 Y a night ($25); ctrip had indicated we were getting breakfast, but that turned out not to be true. After unpacking and hitting the bathroom, we headed out into the city.

This area is a maze of alleys and walkways; the only certainty about it is that you will get lost. We found a bank and changed some money. Then it started to rain, so into a tea shop for some white snow tea and ginger tea, and an apple pancake (strudel like, but maybe made with rice flour) and a bowl of noodle soup.

Then, up to the north gate tourist center. Eric, the fellow there, suggested staying on the south side of the river to see Tiger Leaping Gorge, instead of going on a tour bus on the north side, or attempting any part of the 22 km walk. We wanted to go back to the hotel and do some reading. Anyway, we found an internet cafe, and sent a message (which could not be sent for any one of a number of reasons and got lost).

Back through the city (from north gate to south gate is 1.5 to 2 km) where we finally decided to do the suggested trip. The proposal was 350 Y for a private driver for the day, in addition to 50 Y for admission to the park.

It is now 7 PM, and we have braved the crowds getting back to the north gate. While walking, we had some grilled potatoes on a stick, and pieces of rice sausage on a stick. Also a bag of 10 walnut cakes (cookies). All were very delicious.

Back at the north gate tourist center, Eric said he had already promised the driver to some other party, but that we should come back at 7:40 AM: he would see if we all could fit in a minivan, with the price reduced to 250 Y for the two of us, and 250 Y for the other party. We said yes.

We headed back toward the hotel, looking for a Naxi (an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas) restaurant for dinner. We stopped and bought 200 g of dried processed yak meat for next day’s hike ($6). We settled on a restaurant and had three "snacks": 1. hot and sour noodles, which turned out to be a bowl of noodle soup; 2. fried yak cheese, again coated with sugar; 3. lamb kebabs, which turned out to be 8 sticks in a peanut, pepper sauce (Yum). Ordinary bottle of beer, and Curtis had a glass of a wine, which had a spicy kick to it. He thinks it would go really well with hot and spicy Szechuan.

Back to the hotel about 9:30 PM. We got on the hotel internet and were still unable to send anything. We started talking with a fascinating Dutch couple, who had failed to see the eclipse from an island east of Shanghai. I absented myself to wash two days of clothes and then to bed.

Curtis

…3:50 PM Sunday (3:50 AM for you), in Lijiang.

The bus ride this morning went through some pretty high passes and was quite uncomfortable. Mike and I were the last passengers to board, so we were stuck in the very back: rough on my butt. It seems that when you buy a bus ticket in these parts, they tell you the departure time is 8:30, and if you show up early you might get on the earlier bus, but in a less preferable seat.

Someone we met a few days back said Lijiang is a little bit like Disneyworld in that there are no cars in the old town and you wind around a maze of tiny alleyways with little sense of NSEW orientation. It took a while to find our hotel because the Roman spelling on Mike's ctrip.com account was different from what it should have been (using the correct Pinyin), so nobody could understand what was written down. Anyhow, we finally found it. We're the only non-Chinese guests.

Then we walked around from the South gate section where we are staying up to the central square and back to the North gate, not much more than a kilometer; made a trip to the Bank of China where the ATM works; and then to the travel booth, to get info on the gorge. We are trying to decide: from which side of the Yangtze to view?

When we saw the wangba (internet cafe-- literally net bar), we decided to catch up on email. Nice folks here give you a cup of tea while you surf.

The locals are a bit less pushy here, which is very nice. Still, Mike ended up buying a whole bag of yellow plums from an itinerant vendor, when he really only wanted a couple. Oh well, the plums are quite good.…He also bought some yak meat jerky, which we will take up to the gorge for our lunch. It is strongly flavored with sesame oil and garlic. I wish we could find some decent bread, though.

Later, back at the hotel, I tried to get on the computer there on the second floor. It was free, but very slow, and it had a Pinyin keyboard. (See my rather frustrated attempt at sending an e-mail the next day, below.) Meanwhile we ran into a Dutch couple. Apparently we aren't the only Westerners in this hotel, after all. I struck up a conversation with Dr. Rieks Jager, who is an astronomer and was here for the eclipse as well. Also got rained out. Anyhow, Rieks and I had an animated conversation about Chinese history. I offered to share the bottle of beijou I had purchased in Shanghai, and he offered to share some Genever gin he had brought from Holland. One taste of the beijou was enough. We polished off the gin, and I abandoned the Chinese hooch, leaving it for the maid. The Jagers are going up to hike the gorge on the Shangrila side tomorrow– a 2-3 day hike. They are veteran hikers, while Mike and I have opted for the wimpy route, but again, time is our enemy. Hope to hear how their hike went at some point.

____________

Monday Night from a computer in the hotel sitting in a dark corner of the hallway:

Just a brief message from Lijiang. My computer is REALLZ slow and does not have a Z.
Anzhow, we saw the gorge from the south side todaz. That is the easier waz to view it. I have been unable to log in to mzZahoo mail, so I am trzing again. I hope zou got the message I sent zesterdaz, but in case zou did not, we are fine and are planning to take a plane to Chengdu tomorrow morning earlz. We are in good shape, but internet service is not. Well, Iäll trz to send this message. Love zou….

Tiger Leaping Gorge...Minivan Spinning Round

2009-08-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Mon, Jul 27

Mike

Woke early and got onto street about 6:40 AM. Breakfast was two glasses of tea, an apple pancake, some yak yogurt (flavored with vanilla), and an orange drink. It got us going.

Our plan was to reconnoiter at the north gate for the tour. There were food vendors there, so I tried a rice cake "burrito" (a rectangular rice cake, filled with various food items and topped with a spicy sauce, then rolled up).

We met up with Eric, the tourist guy. A few minutes later he introduced us to a French family (husband, wife, and 4 year old girl), along with the husband's sister (who had been living with her boyfriend in Shenzhen for 3 years, and so knew some Chinese). Curtis spoke a little French, and the family agreed to join us. So we paid 250 each (Curtis and I paid 250, they paid 250). Eric found us a minivan, and we were off at 8:15, in the drizzle.

The road went to the north, slowly uphill. We stopped so I could buy 6 Lijiang white snow peaches - pretty tasty. Then, we came on a lookout point over the Yangtze River and the mountains. It was cloudy and we could not see the two 5600-5800 meter mountains that span the gorge. We then headed downhill the next 20 km or so to the river. As we were going downhill, the driver lost control, skidded, and ended up in the uphill lane facing uphill. We were a little shaken, and the rest of the trip was rather slower, especially when 2 km later we saw a car that had run off the road and was tipped on its side.

Where we met the river, you can go north across the river to Qiaotou and then up to ShangriLa, or to the east along the north side of the river. This is the customary way of seeing the gorge. We continued straight, not crossing the river. This road continued for 21 km, along a wide quiet river, until it came to an entrance gate and a parking lot. It was now 11:10 AM; we agreed to meet back at 2:00 PM. Entrance was 52 Y apiece.

The trail was wide, paved, flat, and followed the river. On several occasions, because of the problem of rockslides, the trail was tunneled through the rock. As we approached the 3 km mark, the river started getting much wilder. Ahead on the north side were dozens and dozens of buses, and people walking down to the river. As we came upon this on the south side, it was clear that we had reached Tiger Leaping Gorge. The river foamed and leaped. On a canoeing scale of 1 - 5, this was a 5+++: clearly impassable by any river craft. As you stood, maybe 15 m above the river on a platform, you occasionally got splashed by the foaming waters. I took 3 10-second movies of the river on my camera.

Lunch was yak meat, walnut cakes, a peach, and a few of the plums from the first day in Lijiang. Finally, the other family came by (they had traveled the trail much more slowly). I offered the girl a peach; even though she was a picky eater, she grabbed at the peach and wolfed it down.

We all walked back, and got back to the minivan by 1:45. The rain had stopped when Curtis and I arrived at the parking lot, but now it started up again. This time we drove slowly, and made it back to town by 4:10 PM. We two went back to the hotel in the drizzle.

After 6 PM, we started out again, walking - first in a drizzle, and then in a medium hard rain. By 7 PM we reached the internet cafe, really soaked. Finally, I was able to successfully write and send the July 25 and 26 messages.

It was 8:30 PM when we finished, and Curtis absolutely insisted on pizza. We went to a place that advertised pizza, and ordered a salami pizza, a bottle of beer, and a glass of wine (for Curtis). The pizza was made “California style,” with a thin crust. I saw Naxi style fish with peanuts on the menu, so I had only a small portion of the pizza, and ordered the fish. It was truly fantastic. Total bill was 111 Y (although I think the owner miscalculated) and we left 120 Y. Truly, it was an amazing dinner.

It had stopped raining (finally!) so back to the hotel a little after 10, for packing, showering, and getting ready for a very early start to Chengdu.

Curtis

To start the day (and to get out of the rain-- light on-and-off drizzle), we had a snack at a little restaurant. I had a Lijiang pancake, which is sort of an apple strudel, with a very glutinous flour. It was yummy with some ginger tea.

Mike and I shared a minivan with some French tourists on a ride to the Lijiang side of the gorge. The ride there wound up and down over a ridge and was quite harrowing. There was a little drizzle on and off as we were above and below the clouds. At one point the driver went a little too fast on a curve and spun around, but thankfully we stayed on all four wheels. We blocked traffic for a few minutes until he got straightened out. After that he was much more cautious. A couple of kilometers down the road we saw a car that had skidded and turned upside down. Fortunately he had gone off on the inside of the road and not the cliff side. The driver called for emergency services on his cell.

The Lijiang walk is easier to arrange and much easier to negotiate. Basically a fairly wide and flat walking path of stone with several tunnels, around 3 kilometers each way. It leads to the south side of the gorge where you can walk down to the rapids at the "tiger leap" point. There is a stone tiger that you can see as you approach the last tunnel. When you walk down to the low observation deck you are about 5 meters above the water, but the spray from the torrent comes up to your feet and there is mist all in the air. Mike calls it a level 5+++ rapids. No one could survive on a raft or barrel or any such device.

I was hoping to have a few more trails to hike. The people on the other side (the Shangrila side), whom you could almost talk to if you could hear over the torrents, had to climb down several hundred stairs from a much higher road. There was a great wall of buses parked up there, and that would have been another option, but it would have required booking a Shangrila driver. So we opted for the geriatric path. Anyhow it was quite beautiful and dramatic. I will save my energy for climbing the Leshan Buddha.

On the way back we saw another truck that had been towed. The pair of vehicles was off in a ditch; at least the tow truck could call another tow truck to pull him out.

I am coercing Mike to let me go to the pizza restaurant, which imports mozzarella from New Zealand. All this Chinese food has taken a toll on my stomach the last few days - it is not really on my top ten list of cuisines. I did have some yak milk yogurt this morning. It is lightly sweetened with a little vanilla; you drink it with a punch-through straw. We also had some dried yak meat for a snack at the gorge. It was tasty, but sat a little uneasily with me. I'm trying to save my Chinese stomach for some real Sichuan food. Then I may have to hit the Imodium again.

We fly out to Chengdu tomorrow morning, so have to get up really early.

Chengdu Orientation and Disorientation

2009-08-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

Onward to Sichuan Province...

If there was any province I wish I could have spent more time in, it is most certainly Sichuan. Americans recognize the name (also sometimes by the older spelling Szechuan) and think of hot, spicy Chinese food and pandas, not necessarily in that order. These are undeniable trademarks of this ancient region, and I think Mike and I were both a little disappointed that we didn't quite find the landmark dining experience we had hoped for. As for the pandas, well that just wasn't our highest priority. If you really want to see pandas, though, the guidebooks tell you where you can get up close and even have yourself photographed hugging one – for a price. The high point of our brief stay was the day trip to Leshan and the 71 meter high Dafo, the giant Buddha. If time had permitted though, a hike up the holy mountain Emei Shan would have made my list, as well as another night in Chengdu to attend a performance of Sichuan opera.

Tues, July 28

Mike

Got up by 5:45 and ready to check out by 6:35. Everything was dark and we were locked in the hotel. We made a little noise, and someone came out to unlock us. It was drizzling, and we walked to the South Gate to catch a taxi (I had ascertained that the 3 - 8 minibus went to the place from which the airport bus left, but we were not adventuresome). The first two taxis were unwilling to run on the meter, wanting 20 Y each. Finally, a third agreed to run it on the meter, for a total of 10 Y. We got to the place from which the airport bus leaves, and discovered that the bus we needed left not at 7 AM, but at 7:20 AM. We also discovered that the fare was 15 Y apiece. No street food here - this was part of the new city. The bus left on time, and we got on the airplane to Chengdu uneventfully.

We had bulkhead seats 1B and 1E (both middles). Curtis, who had 1B, took 1A (window) and no one challenged him. As the plane was filling, a younger woman came up and asked to change places with the guy in 1D so she could speak English with me. It turned out that she was a 28 year old anesthesiologist, in her second year of residency. She was at Chengdu West Hospital, the largest hospital in the world, she said, with 4000 beds. The brunt of the earthquake injuries had been transported there in 2008. She told me that anesthesia was "ma", the same word as Chinese peppercorns.

The anesthesiologist informed me that it is currently mushroom season in Yunnan: time to savor all sorts of fresh, exotic (and expensive) mushrooms. We just hadn't gotten into that.

The plane landed, and we took the 303 bus to (sort of) downtown Chengdu. We were approx 1 km from the hotel, but no one knew where it was, because we hadn't written the name of the hotel or the name of the street in Chinese characters. We walked a block to a 5-star hotel, where the staff kindly wrote out the name of our hotel in Chinese characters, and got us a cab. We arrived at the Shudu Mansion Hotel (on Shu Wa Bei San Jie) at about 11:30 AM and checked in.

We headed out on the street for the first food of the day, and what great food. The first and the best was a rice (??) burrito around a potato filling with ma and la flavoring (2 Y). Then a rice ball, with fillings, rolled up and squeezed together, with a hot sauce (4 Y). And then: some kebabs, and finally something to drink. All told 18 Y.

We walked down the street and found a store selling maps of Chengdu, complete with the bus info. We were told that the bus to the Chadianzi Bus Station was Number 4. I wanted to go to Dujiangyan to see a city that was in the middle of the 5/12/08 7.8 magnitude tremor known as the Wenchuan earthquake (汶川大地震; Wènchuān dà dìzhèn). So, an hour later, we found ourselves in a dirty run-of-the-mill Chinese city of 500,000 people, with no visible earthquake damage (although we were told that certain temples - damaged and unrepaired - could not be visited).

We were convinced to take a bus to Qingcheng Mountain (青城山), one of the ancient cradles of Daoism. A cable car led up to a large number of trails connecting monasteries and temples on the top of the mountain. We didn't have time for much walking, so we did just a little, and took all the buses back to Chengdu.

Curtis felt our wanderings were a huge waste of time. I guess not every exploration hits pay dirt.

We got back to the Chadianzi Bus Station at 7:00 PM and back to the hotel (to freshen up) after 7:30. We went out for dinner to Longchaoshou, a famous cafeteria, not far from the hotel. We found it fairly easily, but it LOUD, bright, with lots of smoke, and no easy way to figure out what to order or how to order it.

We were right downtown, in the middle of franchise city (yes, McDonalds), so we started walking. A clerk at the Haiyatt Hotel (http://www.hiyattchendu.com/ for you SpellCheck fans) recommended some restaurants an easy taxi ride away. They finally told us to go to Yu Shuang St where there are plenty of restaurants. That destination was maybe 1.5 km away, so we started walking. On our walk, we passed a couple of hotpot restaurants, sort of like the Korean cook-your-food-in-front-of-you places, but neither of us was turned on by them.

Finally, we got to Yu Shuang St. The first restaurant looked fairly promising. We ordered a ma la beef dish, a fish with garlic dish, and two beers. We had to wait for the rice (which is apparently always ordered separately). The ma la dish was HOT, and contained FRESH peppercorns on the twig, along with the dried ones. We left about 60% on the dish, after eating everything else that was edible. The fish with garlic turned out to be eel with cucumber and garlic (interesting in that the texture of eel and the texture of cucumber are fairly similar). Neither of us was really excited about eel, so we polished off only about 60% of the eel. Still and all, it was a wonderful meal.

We took a bus back toward the hotel. Curtis guessed and, miraculously enough, we got off at Shu Wa Street, only 4 blocks from the hotel. We walked down the street, coming upon an internet cafe. I used the first 40 minutes of my hour arranging our flight to Xi'an, a hotel in Xi'an, and answering some business e-mail; my Jul 27 blog transmission (in progress) got lost.
We get up at 5:45 tomorrow to catch a 9:55 plane to Xi'an. We are staying at Botong Hotel in the old city of Xi'an.

Curtis

We made it into Chengdu this AM. The flight was good. We spent most of the day riding around in buses trying to get a grasp on this huge metropolis. We took an afternoon trip to Dujiangyan (about 60 km away). Mike wanted to see if there was any visible damage from last year's 8.0 earthquake, but we couldn't find any real signs. So we took another bus to a nearby Taoist holy mountain, but got there too late to take the cable car up. So we just walked around a little and took the series of buses back to Chengdu.

All in all, today seemed a bit scattered and unproductive from my viewpoint. Mike is always keen on learning the functionality of the local bus systems, but I just want to see interesting sights. Anyhow, I would be totally lost without his expertise and unique skills at public transportation navigation, or at the minimum, I would be paying a whole lot more.

This city is rather grungy like Kunming, but much bigger. The map in the book is misleading because of the scale. There is not much around of old Chengdu. The downtown area is modern and there is a huge city mall area with Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, etc. When we got back in town we went looking for one of the recommended restaurants cafeteria style in the mall area, but it was extremely noisy and rather too hot for comfort, so we decided to explore a bit and found a much more authentic restaurant area outside the central area.

We ate dinner at a local place that had no English menu and ordered a ma-la beef dish that was pretty good, though really overloaded with red chilies. But the numbing peppercorns (ma) were especially interesting: they were fresh and still on the stem. They look a lot like the green peppercorns we get at Zab-e-lee, but are of the numbing sort. The other dish we ordered was interesting, but not quite what we expected. Mike thought we were getting fish with ginger. It was eel and very slimy, with not much ginger, but with cooked cucumber that matched the sliminess of the eel. What is surprising here is that most of the local places specialize in hot pot dishes, which is NOT what I am interested in. Anyhow, dinner certainly was unique and mostly good.

Tomorrow: to Leshan and the giant Buddha. This I am really looking forward to.

Leshan - The Giant Buddha

2009-08-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Wed, July 29

Mike

We got up at a reasonable time today. Breakfast in this hotel (Shudu Mansion) is on the 30th floor. The clerk did say, ”san shi lou,” but we didn't believe him and went to the third (san) floor, found nothing, and only then to the 30th (top) floor.

The circular dining area (think Hyatt Regency restaurant on the top floor) likely doesn't rotate any more. Even though it was pretty cloudy, we had great views of Chengdu, including a huge new development, cleared to bedrock, where no construction had yet started. Too bad the food didn't match the environment. The food was standard Chinese breakfast, but not well executed. Rather pedestrian, and it was hard to get any tea.

After breakfast, we headed out on the street. The weather was overcast but dry. We caught a 43 bus to Xinnanmen Bus Station (new south gate). We could have also caught the 48 or 48X.

We bought two tickets for 45 apiece for a bus leaving right away at 10 AM. It actually left closer to 10:15. Special feature: this bus handed out bottles of water AND had motion sickness bags (tell Jake Schwartz's wife that she will be getting new specimens for her bag collection from UE Air in China and from the Chengdu Express bus).

We arrived in Leshan 2 hours later, bought a city map, walked out and got a 13 bus to the Grand Buddha Park. The 13 bus seemed to travel every single street in Leshan before finally crossing the river and stopping in front of the park. It took 45 minutes for a trip that should have been a 5 - 10 min ride.

Entrance to the Grand Buddha and to the surrounding park was 130 Y, but 65 Y for seniors. I pointed to my gray hair, and these two fat old Americans got in for 65 Y apiece. Incidentally, lots of folks have been taking our pictures. We think that it is the exotic facial hair, but we are not sure.

At the entrance to the park, there are copies of Buddhas from all over the world. This park has a 170 foot sleeping Buddha, but we didn't see it and forgot to go back at the end of a hot tiring day. We did a climb of maybe 200 feet of steps to get to a smallish seated Buddha, then around and over and down and up to get to the top of the Grand Buddha, rising 71 m from the bottom near the water. At that point, there is a walk down steps on the cliff face to get the best views.

BUT before you can walk down, you must get in line. It was 2 PM, and the line was over 45 minutes long, in one of those Disney-like fences that go back and forth accordion style. Once we got into the walk down, the crushing really started. Chinese are very bad at pushing in line and pushing into a line. Anyway, we finally got down to the bottom around 3:30.

Then we took a longish walk along the river to the Wuyou Temple, across a smallish creek, and then up and up again. At the top we arrived in time to hear the beginning of the afternoon chant. Then we headed back down across the creek.

At this point, 5:20 PM, we should have retraced the cliff walk, toured the rest of the park, caught the 13 bus, revisited the whole town again, taken the two-hour bus back to Chengdu, found a bus back to the hotel or to restaurant row, etc.

Instead…..A woman approached, and offered to take us back to Xinnanmen Station for the same 45 Y fee, departing at 5:50 PM. So we got a cold beer and sat down to drink it. We were joined by a French couple, she from Wuhan originally. They had seen the eclipse near Wuhan. She, of course, spoke fluent Chinese. They too were going to accept the woman’s offer. Eventually, we were a group of 7 that included two German guys (one of whom had been studying in Beijing for 3 years, and also spoke fluent Chinese).

Around 6 PM we piled into a minivan to get out to the road, where we were going to meet the bus. Then we were told there was a problem, and we got into another minivan to go south a little farther (away from Chengdu). Finally, we met the bus going northward, got on, paid the 45 Y each, and started off. It was now 6:30 PM apx. An uneventful ride, except that Curtis was sitting several rows further back, where the shocks were shot on the bus.

At 8:45 PM we pulled into Chengdu, but the wrong bus station. This one was maybe 10 km south of Xinnanmen. Pandemonium erupted. Finally, the driver found someone to take us into Xinnanmen in a minivan.

The driver was clearly going north, but when we recognized that we were already downtown, we had him stop and we got out. We were in an area of some restaurants, and, it turned out, only 500 meters south of our hotel. We took suggestions to go to a hot pot restaurant, but finally landed at a place where you pick out your food, and they cook it as you like, or if you wish, as they like.

We picked out a smallish fish, and said, “ma la.” We also picked out a head of broccoli, a long eggplant, and some peanuts (presumably to go on the fish). We also asked for rice. What we got were: (1) a large bowl of egg fried rice, (2) a fish fried in a ma la sauce, but not anywhere as hot as that of the night before; (3) broccoli in garlic sauce; (4) eggplant with garlic and ginger; and (5) a plate of boiled peanuts. Along with a large beer, everything was fresh and quite tasty, but not very Szechuan. Total 65 Y.

We walked back to the hotel, and then out for a late internet session, and to bed. Have to get a 5:45 AM wake-up call, because of our early-ish plane tomorrow.

Curtis

We went to see the Giant Buddha of Leshan, Sichuan today. It is a two hour bus trip from Chengdu. Weather was cloudy and a little steamy, so we didn't try to take in the view from across the river. Went straight into the park and lucked out getting senior half price tickets. No ID was requested, so I guess we both look old enough.

What an amazing place. There is an outdoor museum with huge (but small by comparison to the Dafo "Big Buddha") red limestone carvings of replicas of Buddhas from all over Asia, including the Buddha of Kamakura (Japan) and a Pakistani figure, a Thai one and a number of others in many styles, as well as a four-armed dancing Shiva. All are amazing.

Then we walked up a long stairway to encounter some more figures, including a 1,000-armed and 1,000-eyed Avalokiteshvara (Kuanyin), and finally emerged at the top of the giant Dafo, on a level with the crown of the head. From the railing you can see across to the stairway zigzagging down to the feet, with a crowded slow-moving line of tiny people. You then have to wait in a line about the length of the crowded roller coaster lines at Disneyworld or Six Flags. Eventually (about 45 min. later) you get to descend and try to do your best to get clear shots with the camera. I think I got some good ones. You can see the tour boats down at the bottom trying to hold their position in the rather turbulent water. The story goes that the giant Buddha was built in order to calm the waters at the confluence of the Min, Dadu, and Qingyi rivers. The monk and sculptor, Haitong proposed the stupendous public works project in 713 CE as a protective icon to safeguard river traffic. The public artwork had a practical side as well, because the rubble dumped into the rivers served to calm the dangerous currents.

At last, reaching the bottom, we walked across the Haoshang bridge to the nearby Wuyou Monastery, which is an active monastery. We got there in time to hear and see the monks chanting sutras. It was quite an amazing experience to realize that Buddhism and many Buddhist monuments survive today in China in spite of periods of suppression, not only by the "cultural revolution," but in prior centuries by hostile regimes that have regarded it as a foreign encroachment that somehow threatens indigenous Chinese philosophies and power structures.

We had a rougher ride back on a different bus. Not really worthy of much detail, but finally got back to the right section of Chengdu and found a restaurant where you pick out your fish and your produce, and the kitchen does the rest. It was quite good and certainly fresh. No eel. I wanted to have some nice looking crayfish, but Mike doesn't like crayfish, and they didn't have any shrimp, so we settled for some kind of lakefish. They fried it with the familiar sweet pepper and ginger sauce.

We head to Xian tomorrow by plane. Looking forward to the Terracotta Army.

To Xi'an and China's Ancient Capitals...

2009-08-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Capital Journey...

The final leg of our trip begins in Xi’an “Western Peace” (ancient Chang’an “Perpetual Peace”, also Xijing “Western Capital” and Xianyang) and makes a west-to-east path through Luoyang, Kaifeng and Nanjing, following the valley of the Huang He (Yellow River) for part of the way. Xianyang was the capital of the state of Qin during the “Warring States” period. Qin Shi Huangdi (221-206 BCE), the “First Emperor,” united China (the name China comes from “Qin”) by creating a superior military force that enabled him to defeat neighboring rival states. He did this by introducing an effective bureaucracy, legal system, standardized weights, measures and weaponry, superior roads and fortifications, including the first “Great Wall” (not the Ming wall that is the currently photographed structure). He is also noted for standardizing Chinese writing and for burning all the books that he did not approve of. The other thing Qin Shi Huang is known for is his vast burial site, a huge earthen tumulus protected by the spectacular Terracotta Army, which was only discovered in the 1980’s.

Chang’an continued as the seat of imperial power with the establishment of the Western Han Empire (206-9 BCE). It was during this period that the Chinese first began to expand westward, both for strategic reasons as well as for the rich trade that resulted from the Silk Road. Chang’an was again the center of power during the Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE) and the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) and was one of the largest cities of the world in its day. We stayed inside the old Ming walled city, from a time in which Xi’an was much smaller. Xi’an today is a rapidly growing modern Chinese city of 6,600,000, but the Ming walls, the Drum and Bell Towers, and the extensive Moslem Quarter stand out as reminders of its cosmopolitan past.

Thurs, July 30

Mike

We got up at 5:45 AM to catch a 9:50 AM flight to Xi'an. The goals were: breakfast by 6:30, check out by 7:30, to the city airport bus terminal by 8:00, at the airport by 8:45. The way it really worked was as follows:

We were up at the 30th floor at 6:35, where we were told that breakfast didn't start until 7:00. So, out onto the street to find something. At 6:40, there was a light drizzle. Right in front of the hotel was the potato "burrito" vendor, so we each had one: really good. Back up for breakfast (really just a cup of coffee and something sweet) and down to check out at 7:30, which we completed uneventfully.

Here's where it gets really wet. By7:40, it was raining heavily. Furthermore, the concierge said that no cabbie would take us only 1 km. The underlying problem is that Chengdu is woefully short of cabs - they are scheduled to add 900 this fall. However, that still probably won't solve the problem. The second problem is that the drop fee is only 5 Y (73¢). Hence, the cabbies are illegally picky and choosy.

SO we dug out the ponchos and draped them over the packs, got out our umbrellas, and left at 7:45 for the slightly more than 1 km walk to the place from which the airport bus left. What a hellish experience. Anyway we got to the departure place at 8:10, and got on the bus, which left at 8:20.

Of course, because it was raining in Chengdu, traffic was gridlocked even more than usual. Our plane left at 9:50, so there was a drop dead time of 9:20 for check in: it was not clear we were going to make it to the airport on time. However, once we got on the city expressway, it was clear sailing. On the airport bus, we started talking to two locals who were flying to Amsterdam to begin a yearlong study in Germany. We got off the bus at 9:05. Everything after that was uneventful, except that we were still soaked, and in a fairly rotten mood.

On the plane, we started talking with a gentleman from Shenzhen who travels around selling electronic crystals. We talked about food and Xi'an and China and a lot of things. Nice guy.

Xi'an was relatively cool and quite overcast, but dry. At 11:30 we got the bus into town, got off at the center, and walked the half kilometer to our hotel. We checked in, and went out for a lunch, which turned out to be two jia mo sandwiches (a small bun, sliced in half and stuffed with fried veggies and noodles) along with two glasses of something like sweet tea. 8 Y (+ 1 Y for a packet of tissues - no one has napkins or towels for the messy street food). It was now 12:45 or so.

We headed back to the hotel, where Curtis wanted to find a laundry to wash his clothes. I snitched an extra towel so I could wash and wring dry 3 days worth of my clothes. We went out on the street and started inquiring. It was “200 m this way,” “no, that way,” or “the other way.”

We wandered for quite a while. Finally, a woman in a store volunteered to leave her job and walk us to the laundry. So off we went, up the street, across the street, and into the Wal-Mart downtown, where she took us to the detergent display. No, no, we weren't washing our own clothes, we wanted someone else to wash our clothes. So, someone at Wal-Mart knew: the four of us went off another block or two to - glory be - Yi Dou Laundry. The proprietress said she could finish Curtis' clothes by noon the next day. So off we went back to the hotel.

Curtis’ laundry bill turned out to be only 42 Y. I guessed mine would be 60 Y, so why not...
While Curtis high tailed it to a Starbucks for a mocha frappucino, I went back to the hotel, then to the laundry. She requested 59 Y for my pile. I replied, "Wu shi kuai, zenme yang?" (50 Y, how about it?) She said OK, so I left my clothes also. I picked up a McDonald's 5 Y coke float with some kind of soft ice cream. I met Curtis as he was finishing his drink, and off we went.

I finally figured out the solution to our communications problem. We would take the laundry’s card, cover up the Yi Dou, and then we would have the written Chinese words for laundry in case we ever needed another one.

We walked to the Bell Tower, and determined that there was a combined rate for the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, but that the Drum Tower was closed, so we decided to postpone this one.
Off in the direction of the Muslim quarter of Xi'an. It isn't easy to get to it, but after some walking (on some main streets we hadn't intended to visit) we found an entrance.

What an active market street. A man was cooking some kind of dry rice pudding, so we had to have pudding/cake-on-a-stick. This sweet, supposedly made with eight treasure powder and with a strong hint of rosewater, was quite tasty.

After a good bit of walking, we turned left. Lo and behold: the Great Mosque, dating from 705 AD (this building was from the 1500s or so). We wandered in to the courtyard, but not into the mosque itself because there appeared to be some kind of prayer session. It was 5:50 or so, not the time for any prayer I knew, but we were not going to bother them.

By this time, we were both exhausted, and it was starting to drizzle, so we walked slowly back to the hotel.

We each took a nap (maybe 1.5 hours). It was raining quite hard now, so we were really uninterested in trying to get back to the Muslim market street. But we wanted to try Xi'an food.

We headed to the local alley for yangrou pao ma (lamb soup with rice thread and bread croutons and mushrooms, etc.). We ate one portion, divided into two (or maybe gave us each a small portion). With a beer it came to 23 Y. It was quite good, better than the one we were going to get the next day. Around the corner, we found a vendor with battered chicken on a stick for 2.5 Y (37 c). One each: lots more batter than chicken, but sooo tasty.

Internet time, and then to bed. 5:30 AM wake up call so we can get a head start on the huge Chinese crowds at Terracotta Warriors.

Curtis

This morning it was pouring in Chengdu as we checked out of the hotel and walked to the airport bus stop about a kilometer away. We asked the concierge if he could call a taxi, but he said the cabs will not take passengers to the airport bus on the meter. They want a full fare all the way (15 km) to the airport. What a rip!! So we donned our ponchos and trudged through the pouring rain and nasty puddles on foot. We slowly drip dried in the AC and made it with only a few minutes to spare to get on the plane just in time for a pleasant flight to Xi'an.

Our hotel is near the Tang era Bell and Drum Towers inside the old city. Xi'an (formerly Chang'an) has been the capital of many dynasties in China's past, including that of the first emperor, Chin Shihuangdi (the guy who commissioned the terracotta army), as well as the Former Han and the Tang empires. The "old city" today is mostly modern, but it still has the walls from the Ming period, which enclose an area much smaller than the original walls during the Han.

Once we got checked in our hotel, we went out for some street food. We found a local style of press-grilled sandwich that has a flat bread filled with some fried potatoes and sausage: sort of like sliced hot dog (the Oscar Meyer type, not the four-legged variety). It was quite tasty.

Then we decided to try to find a wet laundry to leave off our dirty clothes, both of us being weary of the routine of hanging them up in the hotel bathroom and finding them still wet after two days. In the non-desert areas, clothes just don't dry fast enough! Anyhow, we asked around in several stores on the main drag. Most of the friendly folk had no idea that a laundry existed in the area (either that or they couldn't understand what we wanted). Finally a nice store clerk thought she understood what we wanted and tried to explain to us where to go. Realizing that we might not find it, she said that she would walk us there, so the three of us set off through a downtown mall past Starbucks and McDonalds and into a Wal-Mart. This store, needless to say, had many items you would never see in the US, so it seemed possible that they might have a laundry service. After asking several clerks there, she took us back to the laundry detergent aisle.

Well, after a bit of further explanation, she finally understood that we wanted someone else to do our clothes. She again conversed with a manager, who gave some more directions. Back up to the street and another turn away we finally arrived at a dry cleaner, who also does wet laundry.

Relieved, our genteel host returned to her post and we checked on the prices for our dirty clothes. Even Mike, who is a diehard towel squeezer, went back to the hotel to fetch a load. I guess that most of the folks who work in the area don't have to deal with doing their wash near their jobs, and the communication problem is so subtle that even looking up the right words and trying to pronounce them with the indicated tones draws a blank.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the old Muslim section of town where there are street markets crowded with pedestrians, mopeds, rickshaws and cars honking at everyone else. We found the old Tang era mosque. It has the same architecture as other classic Chinese buildings with the curved tile roofs. But you can see a crescent moon symbol and Arabic script in key locations, along with the Chinese characters. It is an active mosque, and prayers were going on, even at non-traditional hours of the day.

The afternoon had been dry up to this time in Xi'an, but then a little light drizzle started, so we headed back to the hotel, quite worn out. All in all today has been a productive transitional day.

Mike and I are now at a wangba (internet cafe) near our hotel (the Hotel Botong) in Xi'an. This one is a long 2nd floor walk-up, which is not much compared to the climbing yesterday - except for the cloud of cigarette smoke that overwhelms you as you come in. Add the pollution in most of China's big cities and you are doing well to get around at all.

It is raining lightly and the forecast is for more rain tomorrow. Hopefully it will stay light during the morning when we are planning on going.

Tomorrow the Terracotta Army... Hope it doesn't pour like Chengdu.

Our planned itinerary:
Jul 31 Xi'an BoTong Hotel
Aug 1 Xi'an - train at 1533 to Luoyang, arrive 2030. To New Jianlong Hotel, Luoyang.
Aug 2 Luoyang, see Longmen Caves
Aug 3 Train to Kaifeng (TBD). See Kaifeng. Stay at Kaifeng Sunshine Hotel.
Aug 4 Trying to buy tickets on a fast train to Nanjing lv 830 arriving 1230. Hotel in Nanjing TBD.
Aug 5 Nanjing
Aug 6 Early train to Shanghai. Stay at Hangsheng Peninsula Hotel.
Aug 7 Lv at 1535 for Atlanta.
We seriously considered going through Shaolin, between Luoyang and Kaifeng, but the difficulties outweighed the rewards.

Xi'an: The Terracotta Army

2009-08-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Fri, July 31

Mike

Yesterday was Tisha B'Av, but starting the fast the night before was impossible because we couldn't get dinner before 9:30 PM, and Jul 30 was just plain inconvenient. Oh well.

Took a wake up call for 5:30. Way too early, but Curtis got up and showered. I finally got up closer to 6. We do not have breakfast in the hotel. We walked over to the north street, and waited for a bus to the train station, and waited, and waited. Finally one appeared. We got to the train station at maybe 7:30 or 7:45, and wandered around, looking for breakfast and looking for the 306 bus to take us to Terra Cotta Warriors. (7 Y)

As we were walking, we saw a McDonalds, where Curtis could get an Egg McMuffin and maybe some potatoes. We walked in and the menu was all in Chinese. It turns out that P C Lee's Restaurant has totally ripped off the entire McDonald's design, and the only hint is his picture on the front of the building. Well, none of that, and we had two small bread things from a vendor.

We finally found the 306 bus but it was a tour bus (at tour bus prices, presumably). They are even copying public transportation to deceive. We were also told we could take the 915, which we found and at 8 AM we were off.

The whole point of this exercise was to be there before the opening of the gates at 8:30 to beat the Chinese hordes. We got there at 9 AM and still beat the hordes, who were about 30 min behind us.

Entrance was 90 Y (no discounts available). As we were walking around, looking for the movie before going into the pits, we were joined by Tom and Katharina, from Belgium and Germany (Munchen), in their 20s and doing the hostel scene. Katharina, in particular, had been on the road for over 10 months.

The advice was see the movie first, then Pit 3, Pit 2, and finally Pit 1. However, we couldn't find the movie. We went into the introductory building first, went through it fairly quickly, and, realizing that the Chinese hordes were not far behind, straight into Pit 1. It is as we have seen in the pictures. The first couple of sectors are filled with the completed warriors standing in regiment row. After that are numerous covered or inactive sectors. One sector was being worked by 4 - 6 archeologists with maybe some toothbrushes or such. It must be very slow work.

Pits 2 and 3 are smaller but more chock full of stuff. There are two stories here: 1. "This is what this is about." 2. "This is the archeological proof that 1 is true." It gets confusing because both stories are being told at once.

Anyway, after about 2.5 hours we were out. We decided to get lunch, and had a very representative lunch - yangrou pao mo, the lamb soup with bread pieces and rice thread, a lamb plate, and biang biang noodles (broad noodles in a soup), along with three beers and an orange drink. We assumed that the beers were 10 apiece or less, but they charged a ripoff price of 25 Y each, so the total bill was 194 Y, when it should have been closer to 120-140 Y.

Out and down 2 km to the tomb of Emperor Qin, basically a tall mound that you climb and say that's nice and then climb down.

Back to town and to the railroad station. It started raining, and we needed to buy train tickets. Inside, the ticketing area was total chaos: 28 lines, noise and more noise. There were general announcements, all amplified, and the individual tellers also each had their own amplification.

We got in a line of maybe 12 -15. Finally, we got to the front and I succeeded in buying 2 tickets from Xian to Luoyang for 1 Aug. They had sold out 1st class (soft seats), so we got hard seats for 55 Y each. We couldn't buy the tickets from Kaifeng to Nanjing for 4 Aug because it was too far out.

By this time, the rain had stopped, and we took a bus back to the Bell Tower, and then walked to pick up our laundry - it was clean and ready (this is the laundry for which, after bargaining in Chinese, I had paid 50 Y yesterday). Back to the hotel, where we relaxed. After a while, I realized that I had brought over the clothes in a green stuffsack, and I hadn't received the stuffsack. So while Curtis meditated and then napped, I walked back to the laundry. I am so proud of myself. In my best Mandarin, I said "Yesterday I gave you one of these (showing the yellow stuffsack) - green colored. Do you have it?" Lo and behold, they reached behind the counter and gave it to me.

By dinner time it had started raining hard again, so we had dinner in the hotel, instead of trying to get back to the Muslim market street. We had chili oil noodles and a small dish of seasoned egg, with bread pieces. You take the bread slices, pull them apart and stuff them with the flavored egg mixture. Really good food, and with some tea and a local beer, only 30 Y. We had given the waitress a hard time over "what is this, what is that," so we left a 6 Y tip.

Then out to get two sticks of the breaded chicken we so like.

To the internet place, and then to bed.

Curtis

We got up early and found a city bus to the train station in Xi'an where the public buses to the Terracotta Army leave. These buses, only 7 Yuan (about $1) for the 50 km drive, just make a couple of stops along the way, as opposed much-pricier tour buses.

The hard part for us was escaping the tour bus hawkers. When we got there and purchased our tickets, again avoiding the tour peddlers, we went through the entrance and ran into two other Westerners who had come there by the economy method - Tom Jansen, a guy (traveling alone) from Belgium who had come to China on a three-week vacation and Katharina Kohlmeier, a girl from Germany who is on an eleven month adventure which has taken her to Australia, NZ, Fiji, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and now China. The two reminded me of old times, when I travelled solo in India and Africa on a 10-month adventure. Mike and I both shared travel stories with them as we viewed the Terracotta Warriors and later at lunch and on the return bus.

The Terracotta Army exhibit in Atlanta helped us quite a bit in appreciating the site. The entire dig is covered by three Wal-Mart-size buildings, so rain would not have been a problem. Actually we avoided rain today anyhow, but it was really humid with almost no wind to relieve the stickiness. Nevertheless, I think the threat of bad weather kept some of the crowds away, so viewing was pretty good - definitely better than we were prepared for, based upon the guide book descriptions.

In one section we saw some of the archeologists at work. From the dig we took a taxi (4 Y) to the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi. It is a pyramidal earthen mound with a flat top. A long stairway goes to the top, but not much else to see. There is a rather poorly tended rose garden at the bottom and a long path around the mound, which we didn't bother to traverse.

We got back to Xi'an early enough to get a coke float at McDonalds and pick up our laundry. Ahh, clean smelling, folded clothes! Then I went back to the hotel and had a nice nap while Mike came up to the wangba and caught up on the last couple of days in his email.

Then we had a light dinner at the hotel restaurant. I wanted some sesame noodles, but they had a similar but simpler dish of wheat (possibly buckwheat) noodles with chili oil and peppers and spinach (a little bland but good) and a dish of egg and hot peppers with some of the flatbread with black sesame seed that is a specialty of Xi'an. It was quite tasty.

Afterward, we went up to the street for another stick of the breaded chicken breast that is fried and really delicious. It costs only 2.5 Y. Amazing.

Tomorrow we will take a train to Luoyang, the capital of the Latter Han, sometimes called the Eastern Han as opposed to Chang'an (Xi'an), which was capital of the Former or Western Han. There we will spend Sunday at the Longmen Caves, sometimes known as the 10,000 Buddha caves. I'm really looking forward to that.

Bell and Drum Towers... Train to Luoyang

2009-08-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sat, August 1

Mike

Curtis had a hankering for McDonalds Egg McMuffin and hash browns. Since no breakfast is included in our hotel price, off we went at 8 AM (for the first time in several days, we were not getting up at 5:30 or so). On the street, I got two fried pies: one with a meat paste and one with some kind of veggies (1 Y apiece) and then a crepe with veggies in it (2 Y). In the McDonald's Curtis got his fix, and I got an iced coffee with whipped cream (9 Y) in order to sit down and eat my other goodies.

It was time for the Bell Tower. Admission was 27 Y for one attraction, 40 Y for both the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. For old folks (lao) the price was 13 Y each, so I convinced them I was old (over 65) and got both tickets for 26 Y. Into the Bell Tower at 9:10 AM, just in time to have missed the 9 AM performance of the bells and other instruments. We toured the building (a three story temple), and then walked the 200 meters over to the Drum Tower. We were 15 minutes early for the 10 AM drum performance. It was remarkable, and Curtis recorded some of it on his camera as a movie.

We were disappointed that we had not heard the Bell Tower music, so we went back and asked. They honored our ticket, and we were in time to hear the 10:30 AM performance, with bells and other instruments. One of the pieces they played was "Old Lang Syne" which, if you delete one note, is pentatonic; not clear if the Brits ripped off the Chinese, or vice versa.

The performances were absolutely superb. I believe that Curtis recorded a good bit of these. Afterwards I bought a CD of Chinese classical music for 50 Y. Hope it is as good as the original.

One of the things the vendors sell is an ocarina-like thing, on which they play "Old Lang Syne." Curtis tried it out, but couldn't quite get the hang of it, but he was enticed by the frogs, and so there are a treble and bass frog now in his pack.

The other thing we wanted to do before leaving Xi'an was to get onto the wall. It was starting to rain pretty hard, but we took the bus to the East Gate, paid the admission (40 Y for Curtis and 20 Y for old farts like me) and walked up. It was raining harder, and we were running out of time (it was 11:45, and we had to eat lunch, finish packing, and check out by 14:00), so we walked for no more than 15 minutes, got down, and took a bus back to the center.

We headed for a restaurant that Curtis had noticed fairly near the laundry. There we ordered three things: 1. Sweet pork spareribs; 2. Mixed vegetables of north Shaanxi; 3. Black tea. We were charged 20 Y for the tea.

However, we still aren't doing it right. We aren't getting rice with our meals, and we aren't getting free, or cheap, tea. What is China coming to, no rice or tea with your meal?

Anyway, the pork spareribs were cold, and were served in a sweet barbeque sauce with miniature dates. The mixed vegetables had rice thread, noodles, and some mystery meats. The whole thing was 64 Y (1 Y for the napkins), and quite tasty. We congratulated ourselves that the last three meals we have had all had different local tastes, and all were very good.

Out around 13:25, back to the hotel, finished packing, and checked out at 13:55. We were not going to take the bus in this heavy rain, and there were no taxis to be had, so we went in a motorized rickshaw (20 Y). Nobody gives these vehicles any respect: not the buses, taxis, cars, or other pedestrians, so it was a bit harrowing. But we made to the railway station around 14:30. In preparation for buying the ticket from Kaifeng to Nanjing, I had written everything out in large letters, with Kaifeng and Nanjing in the Chinese characters. It worked fine, except that there was no first class, so we will travel second class. God knows when you have to book to get first class or soft seats on these trains.

There was a woman who came up to us in the station and asked to see our Lonely Planet guidebook to try to figure out where she was going to go next. She was trying to get to Taishan Mountain. I wrote the name of the city she would have to travel to (Jinan) in Chinese characters, gave her the website cnvol.com and wished her luck.

We walked into the train station in plenty of time to get on the 1533 train from Xian. We found our seats. My assigned seat was next to the girlfriend of a boyfriend who really wanted to sit next to her, so we traded seats. I ended up in Seat 8, rather than 48. Curtis was in 47, quietly reading a book.

I quickly was surrounded by folks who wanted to speak English. The next five hours were spent in animated English conversation. One of this cast of characters was the gentleman in Seat 7. He was an English-speaking guide from Louyang who was scheduled to lead a group of 6 Brits the next week. We talked about the Urumqi accident, the Cultural Revolution, and modern China. After about an hour, he moved away. We were then joined by Curtis, a computer networking student, and a med student. Interestingly, only the computer networking student had parents who were middle class professionals; the other two Chines men came from peasant stock. All of them were virulently anti-Muslim. I haven't been to India, but China is certainly in the running for the most virulently anti-Muslim country in the world.

After about 3 hours, the computer networking student asked if he could feel my beard. Of course, I said OK. It was clear that he had been dying to do that the whole time. My beard is such a curiosity here.

Anyway, 20:35 came. We arrived in Louyang and got off the train. A taxi driver came up and asked if we needed a cab, so we followed him. We got out, into a large group of cabbies, and it became immediately clear that none of them intended to run on the meter. I sensed trouble, so we went to a different cab. The first cabbie grabbed my arm, intending to pull me violently into his cab. We started negotiating with the second cabbie ("50," "No, 5," "40," "No, 10"). Finally, a policeman watching all of this said, "15". And that was it. The price was 15, off the meter.

We got to the hotel, hungry, thirsty, and tired. We checked into the room, and then came down to eat in the hotel restaurant. What a strange place. It was a cafeteria. We picked out a cold plate of crispy fish in some kind of a sweet sauce, and cold plate of beef with a dipping sauce sort of au jus, a plate of green beens with a red pepper or two. There was "tea" on the table, but it tasted like barley juice, or something. We ordered a Louyang beer. They came and said: "No noodles?" So we ordered qi shan noodles, one of the Xi'an dishes we had not eaten. It was a huge amount of food, totalling 64 Y or so. The qi shan noodles were a large bowl of soup. All very strange, and none really outstanding.

Up to the room, where we both took showers, and I washed three days worth of clothing. To bed around midnight.

Curtis

I shot a couple of short videos of performances at the Drum Tower and Bell Tower in Xi'an. This partially makes up for missing getting to a performance of Sichuan opera in Chengdu. Just didn't have enough time.

Mike and I took a 2nd class train from Xi'an to Luoyang. They call it "hard seat," but actually it's not so bad. Mike, of course, immediately found several interesting people to talk with. We traded around seats so that we could continue conversing over most of the five hour ride.

The two guys I spoke mostly with were both students: one a Masters in medical school working towards his MD, and the other a student in computer security. He was especially interested in history and wanted a better understanding of European history, saying "American history easy. European too complex." So naturally I enjoyed sharing my own particular spin on how things developed there and enjoyed talking a bit more about Chinese history with him.

We got to Luoyang at 8:30 and negotiated for a cab to the hotel. We had time to get dinner at the hotel's restaurant. It was a rather strange cafeteria style. Let's just say it was nothing to write home about, except for the strange "tea" that they serve: looked like dishwater and kind of tasted like it too. The other odd thing is that here in Luoyang, they don't seem to serve rice with anything. No noodles, no nothing.

Longmen Caves - 100,000 Buddhas

2009-08-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sun, August 2

Mike

Strange breakfast at the Luoyang Hotel. I can eat almost anything Chinese, but there was little there that attracted me. A few buns and not much else.

Right outside the hotel was the bus to Longmen Caves. For 2 Y we rode all the way to the end. There you walk past all of the shops. We stopped at one and had a pot of tea for 10 Y (remember, no tea for breakfast) and got a map of Luoyang for 5 Y. Into the caves - admission was 120 Y, the highest yet for anything we did.

You walk south on the east side of this little river to a bridge, then cross over and walk north to a bridge, which you cross back to the entrance. We took about 3 + hours. It was so hot that at the end my shirt was absolutely soaked, and I was so short of liquids and salt that I was near heat exhaustion. We had some dried apricots and a street food "sandwich" and recovered.

These caves are spectacular: they are not like Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, where the caves are each smallish, and you see the 10 that the guide chooses to show you. On the plus side, some of the Longmen Caves are huge. One is so big that it seems to have been blown out of the side of the hill by dynamite. On the minus side, due to the Ming and Qing hostility to Buddhism, the cultural destruction that took place during the Cultural Revolution, and the decapitation that occurred when Europeans taking heads back to the museums, a lot of the Buddhas are gone. Anyway, there are thousands of caves, some very small. You see hundreds, many dozens of which still have all of their Buddhas in reasonable condition.

Somewhat fortified, but still sweat-soaked, we rode the bus back to the hotel. There we relaxed for a bit. Then over to the train station to get the ticket for Luoyang to Kaifeng. The departure timing was all wrong for us - no trains in our direction at 9 AM (Why? Well, a train leaving Luoyang at 9 AM of necessity left Xi'an at 4 AM - and who the hell wants to leave Xi'an at 4 AM). There were trains leaving Luoyang for Kaifeng at 6:30 AM and at 11:30 AM, but nothing in between. So we decided to take the bus the next day.

Curtis found an ATM, and then across town to the Old City, where there is supposed to be a Night Market.

We got the night market in full steam, and ate all sorts of street food, filling up for less than 25 Y: some skewers, some beer, some crunchy things, some buns, etc. Back on the bus to the hotel. Then on the internet. Bought a couple of beers and a couple of waters and finally caught up on the liquid, and to bed.

Curtis

Breakfast at the hotel was even stranger than last night's dinner. We asked for tea and received a reply of "Mei you" (pronounced "may yo" = "don't have"). The only beverages available at breakfast were hot orange juice (had that in Chengdu as well) and hot, watery soy milk. Not my cup of tea. We fared no better with coffee: "Mei you."

On to the Longmen Caves. Finally, at the entrance to the grottos, we found some tea and enjoyed a large pot of it before going in.

These are not caves in the sense of the caves we saw in Europe; rather, they are niches carved out of the side of the stone mountains on two sides of the river. The largest carvings are huge, featuring a giant Buddha surrounded by four Bodhisatvas. They call ONE of the galleries "The Cave of 10,000 Buddhas." Many of those figures are very small (several inches high). All in all, there may be over 100,000! Unfortunately many of the figures have been decapitated by vandals during less friendly times. Also, some have been removed entirely and now sit in European and American museums. Nevertheless, this is quite an impressive site.

We came back to town quite exhausted. Mike thought that we might have gotten low on salt because of the high heat and humidity. It was our first sunny day in about a week, but really hot. After a second shower and a brief rest, we took a bus over to the old part of the city. Not much historic content, but interesting side streets with open markets and some pretty good street food. Not close to the street food in Chengdu, though.

That pretty much sums up the day. Tomorrow we will try to find a bus to Kaifeng. The train schedule doesn't jibe well with our plans, so bus should be fine since it is a fairly short stretch. We will stay the night and then will take a fast train to Nanjing. We are planning to stay there for two nights before returning to Shanghai.

Kaifeng for a day...

2009-08-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Mon, August 3

Mike

Slow start. We both got up and realized that it was Imodium time for both of us. Could have been the "sandwich" at the caves (which had uncooked veggies in it), or any of the street food at night, but it was time for two pills each. It worked, and we were on the way. The hotel breakfast was just as bad this morning as the morning before. Wonder why?

Took the bus to the train station and walked across the street to buy 2 tickets to Kaifeng. It was before 10 AM, but the tickets (52 Y apiece) were for 10:45 AM. We were some of the first on the bus, so we got good seats, BUT the bus did not fill by 10:45, so we slowly left the bus station, finally leaving at about 10:52 AM. The bus leaves the town on local roads, picking up a few passengers, and some delivery items on the way. Finally, close to an hour later, over some bumpy local roads, we were on the limited highway.

The distance from Luoyang to Kaifeng is only a little more than 200 km (maybe as much as 225 km). Since I was sitting in the front seat, I got to see how much the driver paid for the tolls. The driver's "highway cost" was 105 Y (apx $15.50 for 125 miles). This was almost exactly the price of Curtis's and my bus tickets (50 apiece, with 2 purchase fees), so we know that it takes 2 fares to "pay" the tolls on a public bus ride. It probably takes another 6 fares to pay for the gas, and another 6 fares for the upkeep of the vehicle....so there is not a whole lot of profit in this enterprise.

The bus trip was scheduled to run 3 hours. At about 2 PM, we were at the bus station in Kaifeng, right next to the train station and south of the walled city. It was starting to rain. We were accosted by a motorized rickshaw driver who agreed to take us to the hotel for 8 Y. Why not? So we showed him the name of the hotel and the address we had copied in our best imitation of Chinese characters, and off we went.

Our driver found the street easily enough, and it was only 400 m long (or so), but no hotel. So up we went, and took a u-turn, and back, and u-turn again.... Finally, he realized that our destination had a different name, and was set back in an alley. Soon we were checked in.

It was now close to 3 PM. Time for a quick snack of soup and a beer. We returned the beer because it was oxidized (turns out that ALL the local beer in Kaifeng is oxidized - they deliberately brew it that way). It was now time to see Kaifeng.

We walked toward the small Muslim quarter of Kaifeng, which 800 years ago was apparently also the Jewish quarter, and walked through. We finally got to the site of the old synagogue, of which nothing remains. We took a motorized rickshaw to the Old Guanlin Temple, an active Buddhist temple with plenty of buildings.

Then a half hour later, we walked back to the main north-south street and took the 3 bus to the end of the line to see the Iron Pagoda. Admission to the park was 20 Y. It was raining, but in we went. We got to the pagoda, which cost 10 Y to climb: 55 m high, 168 steps up a narrow unlit steep staircase. I might not have done it, but the guys there told us in pantomime that we were too old and too fat to climb it. Soo, of course, up we went. It was sweaty work, but we did it.

Down to the street and back to the hotel.

At 8 PM we went out - and what a delight. The whole street was filled with temporary restaurants, dozens of them. Hundreds and thousands of people eating away, with street musicians and huge amounts of noise. Anything you ever wanted (or didn't want) on-a-stick, ready to be cooked. Fare of course included octopus, whole fish, squid, and innards; also, some kind of beetle or roach or cricket. There were several people cooking bread and/or skewers in a tandoor oven.

I finally settled on my meal - 10 sticks of lamb, a stick of hot green peppers, and a stick of eggplant, along with one of those oxidized beers. Then we went for Curtis' meal: a Big Mac and fries and a Coke.

Back to the room at 10:00 PM, where we struggled to make the A/C work and went to bed.

Postscript: China has tandoor ovens, and all sorts of portable and fixed ovens, all of them called "huolu" - "fire stove."

In Dali, we met a couple who introduced us to the concept of Fire Stove Cities. These are cities in China so torrid that they are called furnace cities. She said that the three traditional fire stove cities in China are Wuhan, Chongqing, and Changsha. Since then, we have talked to many who have included Nanjing among the fire stove cities. Only God knows why we visited China in late July when the temperatures are so impossible and it rains nearly every day.

The US Army developed the concept of "90-90-90." At 90 degrees F with 90% humidity, you fall out with heat exhaustion in 90 seconds. This means that you cannot climb out of a waterfall in Vietnam in the hot summer. "90 + 90" corresponds to a heat index of 87 degrees F, which is thus the maximum in which a human being can survive. Well, in Wuhan this summer, the heat index on several days reached 82 degrees F, just 5 degrees short of being automatic heat exhaustion for the entire population. We didn't go to Wuhan - but on Monday, July 20th, it hit 104 degrees in Shanghai with reasonably high humidity, which is PLENTY HOT ENOUGH.

So why did we go to China in late July? It was something about an total eclipse of the sun that we did not see because of the rain. Of course, some of the folks in Wuhan dodged the clouds and saw the eclipse.

Curtis

Both of us had a bout of the General Tso's revenge this morning, so we took the Imodium Express. We left Luoyang on the bus, headed for Kaifeng. The ride was a mostly bumpy 3 hours, but fortunately the bus wasn't quite full, so I lucked out with a seat all to myself.

Kaifeng is a somewhat neglected stop on the way back east. Nevertheless, in its heyday, it was the capital of the Song dynasty before the Jurchen sacked it and splintered off the norther part of the empire. At one time, it had communities of Jews and Christians as well as Moslems, and today still has a sizeable Islamic population. Much local food features flatbreads cooked in a sort of tandoor oven, as well as kabobs.

The city is quite dirty, and a slow drizzle just made it worse. Nevertheless we managed to make it to a beautiful Buddhist temple and to the so-called Iron Pagoda. The pagoda gets its name because of the dark glaze on the tiles; it is built of bricks. There is no iron in it except the gates in the windows, which prevent anyone who dares to climb it from having a deadly mishap. After some argument with the gatekeeper, who claimed that we were either too big or too old to climb the stairs, we managed to purchase half-price tickets, and they loaned us a flashlight.

The stairway lights stop after the first round. Mike counted 168 steps to the top, which is not an observation deck. It just gets narrower and narrower until you finally reach a stone with a carved Buddha figure. Then you turn around and make your way back down. The steps are really steep -- worse by far than the ones going down to our laundry room in the basement. I was climbing with hands and feet and holding on to the low hanging brick ceiling on the steep way down, but we had to do the climb just to prove ourselves to the gate keeper. At least it was a good enough effort to thoroughly soak my shirt in the high humidity, even though the temperature wasn't that high.

Then we made it back to the hotel and went to the night market, which was right outside on the street. Much local food features flatbread, as well as kabobs. Mike had the nerve to graze, but I stuck to my guns. I was on my second strike against Chinese food after having to consume the Imodium remedy this morning. In the night market we saw all kinds of fish, organs, crickets (or something like that with exoskelletins). What I did not see was the goat's eyes, though the book says you can find them there, too.

I stuck to my guns and, after Mike had a dish of rather greasy lamb kabobs, he sat patiently with me as I thoroughly enjoyed a burger with cheese and delicious french fries and a Coke at McDonalds. I have found a new appreciation for this cuisine which I have not sampled in the US for at least 7 years or more. It was much better than I ever remembered.

Train to Nanjing

2009-08-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

Tues, August 4

Mike

Got a good early start. Curtis had his breakfast at McDonalds. I ate two peaches I had bought in the market in Luoyang and had been carrying. Nothing on the street interested me.

We caught a taxi to the train station (taxi was 6 or 7, motorized rickshaw was 8 - go figure.) Got to the train station about 7:45 AM for our 8:30 train, which turned out to be a 8:23 train. Glad we didn't cut it closer. We sat in the waiting room, and then when the crowd got up, we got up. We were in car 4, so they put us in the line for car 4. Everything is so tightly calibrated that the door for the 4th car in the train opens exactly where the people who are going to get in car 4 are standing.

Curtis had seats 75 and 76, which were not adjacent, but window seats in adjoining rows. Anyway, the seating was already screwed up, so we took seats 74 and 75. The Chinese woman in 73 said fine, and when someone later came to sit in 74, she waved them off and protected our seats.

We were in 2nd class on the fast train (203 km/hr). This train goes from Kaifeng to Nanjing in 4 hrs 7 minutes. Others do the same trip in 9 hours or so. The only difference between 1st class and 2nd class is 1st class has 85 seats per car, and 2nd class has 100 seats per car. The seats are exactly the same with the same configuration, but you get an extra 17 or 18% leg room. Anyway, it is a moot question, because nobody seems to be able to buy 1st class tickets. Goodness knows how early you have to reserve to have a chance at them. Certainly more than 4 days, perhaps as much as 30-90 days.

On the train I bought a bag of popcorn that the vendor popped for me. 8 Y - just like in America, except that the popcorn is not salted and buttered, but has a sweetish taste with a hint of licorice.

We got in just at 12:30. We took the time at the train station to buy our Nanjing - Shanghai tickets. We picked out a couple of trains at 9 AM or so, each taking 3 + hours. Curtis stayed with the bags, and I got in the long line. As I waited, they flashed the available seats on all trains from 7 Aug - 13 Aug. Lots of categories alreadly sold out. I explained that I wanted two tickets on D115 at 9:15 (or so) on Aug 6. "Mei you" - sold out. How about D 131 at 9:35 or so on Aug 6. Also sold out. We went up to the fast trains, and finally found two 2nd class seats on D5311, leaving at 9:03 and getting in at 11:15 or so to Shanghai. 93 Y (instead of 46 Y). This took well over 30 minutes, but it was done. Heaven forfend you should show up like at the bus stations and ask for 2 tickets on the next train.

The hotel was on the west side of old Nanjing about 5 - 6 km away, and the subway ran from the train station to the center of town, about 1 km from the hotel. So we went into the subway. To get tickets, you go to the machines, press the name of your intended station, put in the money, and it drops two plastic tokens and some change. You wave the token at the gate to get in, and drop the token in the slot to get out. The trains are clean and beautiful. Line 1, the north-south line, seems to be no more than several years old. Line 2, the east-west line, is under construction. We badly needed it. There is to be a station near our hotel, and near 2 or 3 of the tourist sites we were to visit.

From the downtown station, Xinjiekou, we took a cab - 10 Y - to the hotel. It is spacious, and a little on the seedy side, but once the hotel staff showed out how to make the A/C work (oops, it was unplugged), everything was fine. The hotel key is required to allow the electricity into the room. You enter the room, put your hotel key into the slot, and the lights come on. No key, no lights (except that in Xi'an, the cleaning crew kept the A/C on by stuffing a fake key-like piece of paper into the slot). So Curtis permanently "borrowed" the fake key. We had A/C all afternoon in Nanjing, and a beautiful cold room when we came back later.

Several errands later, it was well past 2:30 PM. We decided to go to the Nanjing Museum, which unfortunately closed at 4:30 PM. At the hotel desk, they pulled out the map, and we figured out that the 5 bus went there. So we walked out, found a map of the city, with bus routes thereon, found the 5 bus, and were on our way. I was very proud when we got off, right across the street from the museum. However, it was now 3:30. The museum was free, but we had only 45 minutes to race through as they were turning out the lights behind us. A very nice museum, rather like the Shanghai Museum, with rooms on ceramics, jade, lacquer, porcelain, etc.

After the museum, we noted that the guidebook said that Shiziqiao off Hunan Lu was a street of restaurants. Hunan Lu was a stop on the subway, so we took the 5 bus back to Xinjiekou, and then 3 stops north to Shiziqiao. As we were walking, we noted that qiao sort of means alley, and we found an alley that the guy said was Shiziqiao. So in we went - almost no restaurants, but I was really hungry. So I stopped at a soup place, picked out chinese cabbage, lettuce, tofu, and some sort of small meat ball. They threw it all in the soup and served it - 3 Y. I didn't know you had to specify noodles also to get noodles, so I had soup without noodles. Spicy and garlicky and reasonably tasty, for an appetizer.

Back onto Hunan Rd. One block down was the real Shiziqiao. Restaurant on restaurant after restaurant. Too many decisions. We settled on a sit down place that turned out to be NE China food (Heilongjiang or Manchurian). They seated us at a table for 8 that already had a young couple and a family sitting. The husband, wife, and daughter all spoke English, and they helped us order eggplant with potatoes and peppers and a second dish with beef with cumin. Really tasty, just what we wanted. We decided on Punjabi food for the next night.

Afterwards for internet. The new word for internet is no longer "wang ba" (Internet cafe). It is now "wang luo" (fishingnet sewingnet). Got to be up to date in Kansas City.

Subway and walk the km back to the hotel. Did the last 2 shirts (last washing) and to bed.

Curtis

We took the fast train (avg. speed of about 180/k/p/h) from Kaifeng this morning. We arrived in Nanjing this morning. Nanjing was yet another of China's old capitals, at least for a brief time during the beginning of the Ming dynasty.

Feeling much better, we had an excellent dinner in the restaurant district off Hunan Street. After making an exhaustive search, I spotted a place that was full of clientele, and saw that some were having rice (which has been a scarcity for the last several days). We went in, to what turned out to be a Manchurian restaurant (Harbin city in Heilongjiang province). The restaurant has only large round tables, so you get seated wherever there is a spot. We lucked out, and were seated with a family that spoke some English. They helped us with our selection of beef and onions with cumin and eggplant, potatoes and peppers stir fried. Everything was delicious, so I am again at peace with Chinese cuisine, or at least at a comfortable truce.

In and around Nanjing

2009-08-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

Wed, August 5

Mike

Slowish start this AM. Breakfast was reasonably bad - except that when we asked if they had any tea, they brought a whole pot for the table. And then, unasked, they brought two fried eggs, which we gobbled down.

This morning's agenda was to go to the top of Zijinshan (Purple Gold Mountain): a 448 km mountain to the east of Nanjing, but right in the city. Since the base is 51 km elevation, think of something twice as tall as, and twice as big around as, Stone Mountain. However, this mountain has no exposed granite; it is forested everywhere. There is a "cable" to the top, reachable by the 20 bus.

We got started before 9 AM. I thought the 20 bus ran by the hotel, but it did not. We took the 68 bus, which has a stop about 1 km from the base of the cable, at which we could transfer to the 20. Everything was fine, until the 68 bus didn't stop at the appointed stop, or the next. By the time it stopped, we had gone close to 1 km past our intended stop. The map showed a shortcut to the 20 bus, so we walked on it. Everything was fine, until we hit a tunnel, and realized that the 20 bus was on the road over the tunnel. By the time we got to our intended stop, we had walked over 2 km. Anyway, by 10:20 the 20 bus came along.

The "cable" does not have not enclosed cable cars, but open two seaters, exposed to the air. Not for the agoraphobic. We bought round trip tickets, and got on. A slow leisurely ride over the woods, maybe 30 minutes to the top.

You get off by taking your feet off the bar, lifting the metal piece in front of you, and jumping out of the way. The top was FOGGY. We walked around a little, and then got on to go down. Halfway down, we got off: yell "xia che" (getting off), lift the bar. and jump off. A longish walk and we were at the observatory (in foggy, polluted Nanjing??). The observatory contained a museum: some ancient Chinese astronomical and navigational tools, a 2000-year-old reproduction of a globe with the Chinese stars on it (the original was destroyed in 1900 when the Europeans sacked Beijing), and a star map with the Chinese constellations. Very interesting. We had been looking for this at the Nanjing Museum the day before, and only later realized that it was here.

Down to the bottom. Slow but serene.

Caught the 20 bus all the way across town to within 3 blocks of the Nanjing Massacre Museum. Two pieces of spicy chicken on the street, and then to the museum.

To understand this museum, you have to understand a little Chinese history. The Qing dynasty was a weak dynasty by the 19th century, finally collapsing in 1911 with the installation of Sun Yatsen as ruler of the country. All through the 19th century, the western powers and Russia and Japan had been eyeing colonizing China. They had been biting off small pieces here and there: Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Qingdao, etc.

Japan had taken a port in 1874, and some more in 1895. At some time it took Korea. When the Europeans were too busy with the First World War, the Japanese really went to work. Sun Yatsen died in 1925, leaving a chaotic country, with the Koumintang in control of parts, and the emerging communists nipping at their heels. In 1931, Japan grabbed NE China, Manchuria. In the summer of 1937, they started attacking Shanghai. From July 1937 to November 1937, they fought around Shanghai, and finally took in early November 1937. They then turned their sights on Nanjing. The people of Nanjing started to flee, but the government obligingly vacated the place, and locked the populace inside the old Ming walls, telling them to "be strong like jade, not weak like tile."

Needless to say, the Chinese troops were inadequate for the job. Nanjing fell to the Japanese on December 12, 1937. The Japanese, who had apparently been rough on those Shanghaiese who remained, really turned on the people of Nanjing with a vengeance. A few foreigners, including a German Nazi named John Rabe, attempted to set up a 4 sq km area (near the site of our hotel) which would be a "Safety Zone." It succeeded only incompletely. Over the next 6 weeks or so, the Japanese raped tens of thousands of women, and killed over 300,000.

However, in addition being a museum of the classic holocaust type, this museum also has an anti-Japanese, pro glory-of-China message. Chairman Hu Jintao wrote in 2004: "This is a good place to carry out patriotic education. We must never forget the partiotic education of the young, and this tragic history must also never be forgotten."

I don't think that you can understand modern Chinese politics without visiting this museum.

Out of the museum at about 4:30 PM. We could not find the 4 bus to go back to the hotel, and so we took a taxi for 2 km or so.

We relaxed at the hotel, then out to the restaurant. By this point in time, my pants and undergarments were soaked from all the day's sweating. Everything chafed badly. I did not have the foresight to change clothes, so things were painful.

Anyway, back to Shiziqiao. This time, to Punjabi Restaurant, which turned out to be an expensive, very good Indian restaurant (total bill 207 Y). Then, an hour and a half on the internet (during which time I again lost a substantial piece of text I was writing). Back to the hotel to watch a little TV, pack, and sleep.

Curtis

Today we went to the Purple Gold Mountain and took the "ropeway" cable car up to the top. It is an open two-seater like the one in Cochin, but the incline is gradual and the path is several kilometers. It takes right at 30 minutes to reach the top.

The mountain is not that high, 448 meters. On the first peak, halfway up the ropeway, is a stop where you can get off to see the observatory museum. Some of the displays are just color blowups of popular Hubble shots of nebulae and such for school kids, but they have several spectacular old astrolabes, quadrants, and armillary spheres of bronze. The big sphere is more than a meter in diameter, and has all the stars linked together in the patterns recognized by Chinese astronomy. With the connecting lines, it is very hard to recognize the well-known western patterns. Fascinating.

Then this afternoon we went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. It was a very moving tribute with many photos, records, artifacts and dioramas depicting the tragic rape and slaughter of over 300,000 Chinese civilians by the invading Japanese forces in 1937. Suffice it to say that it is a must see, on the level of the Vietnam Memorial and other holocaust museums.

Mike and I just finished a delicious dinner in the same neighborhood we were in last night off Hunan Rd. When we were looking around yesterday we spotted a sign for a Punjabi restaurant, and looking in the window saw what appeared to be meats and vegetables being fried at the table in the style of some Korean and Japanese restaurants. Puzzling over this, Mike wondered if there was any relation to Indian food, or if this was some kind of very foreign spin, in the way Hot Wok Restaurant spins Chinese food for Indians. So we thought we'd check it out.

It turns out that the sign was for another restaurant one door further down the alley. The food was actually Punjabi, with a few substitutions to make it more suited to Chinese taste. The restaurant actually used Thai rice instead of basmati (because that variety doesn't appeal to Chinese taste) but otherwise the food was, to my great happiness, quite authentic. They made their own panir and nan, and managed to find cow's milk and butter for the nan and masala tea, all made to perfection.

Mike cringed at the prices. A meal for 2 of yellow dal, rice pulao with cumin seed, saag panir, and lamb vindaloo (which was medium hot and totally delicious), butter nan, plus two Tsingtao beers and masala tea brewed in the milk, came to 207 Yuan (a grand total of about $30).

In my mind it was a bargain, especially for the penultimate night in China. Tomorrow we can get cheap Chinese. Our meal for two last night cost less than a Starbucks tall frappuccino and a brownie! --my dessert self-indulgence in the steamy weather.

Speaking of Starbucks: when in China, it is a safe place to go for a clean restroom. The coffees, desserts and the prices are exactly the same as in the US, and you can feel safe about the ice, if ice is something you have a hankering for. Boy howdy do I.
Another little tip about Chinese hotels came our way back in Xi'an. When you take a hotel room in China, you are given a magnetic credit card-like room key (which not only opens the door, but also must be inserted into a slot in order to have lights and AC). When you go out with your key, the lights and all turn off. But when we came back to our room after a walk the second day in Xian, we noticed that the maid who cleaned up the room had left the air running. She did so by inserting a flattened-out toothbrush box (most hotels provide their customers with toothbrushes, along with soap and such).

So, we learned that the lights and AC do not require the magnetic strip, only something to trip the switch. This is very useful information, since turning off the AC in this weather leaves the room very hot, and it takes an hour or longer in some cases for the room to cool back down. Our trick is to turn off all the lights, but leave the AC on at a reasonable temp, so that it doesn't have to work so hard when you get back to the room. This is probably more energy efficient anyway.

We leave tomorrow early to catch another fast train to Shanghai. I am looking forward to leaving China's fire stove oven climate for the much more tolerable summer heat in Hotlanta. Hope to get back into more swimming, too.

Fast train to Shanghai

2009-08-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

Thurs, Aug 6

Mike

We recevied our wakeup call at 6:00AM. After we finished packing, we went down for breakfast, which was supposed to begin at 7:00. Brealfast was all set out, and about a dozen kitchen girls were finishing their breakfasts. They took note of the Americans (probably the only foreigners at the hotel), and brought out a pot of coffee with milk, 4 fried eggs, a plate of bread with jam, and a plate of watermelon. Wow, what service.

We were out of the hotel at 7:30. We grabbed a cab for the 1 km walk to the subway station. One the way, we saw a vendor with Hami melons, but didn't stop. Perhaps the only Hami melons we saw on the whole trip. We headed into the subway, and took the train to the station, arriving about 8:15 AM for our 9:03 train. We went into the waiting room, where we talked for a few minutes with a Chinese guy from Singapore. He had also lived in the States, so his English was excellent.

Train D5411 starts in Nanjing and terminates in Shanghai, with 4 stops in between. There is another train (D5413) starting in Nanjing and terminating in Shanghai, with stops in between, leaving 5 minutes later. My guess is that none of the stops duplicated each other. Our train did not stop in Suzhou; presumably the other one did. Total time of trip: 2:36.

Toward the end of the trip, we began talking with a guy from Shanghai who had been in Nanjing the day before, delivering a brand new offset color printer to a customer.

As we approached Shanghai, it started raining (for a few minutes, quite hard).

We were looking for a taxi on arrival. There were 5 taxis, all beckoning for us to take them - with a fence in between that we couldn't figure out how to cross. So we walked to the correct taxi queue. When it started, there were maybe 20 groups ahead of us.

In 10 minutes or so, the taxis had come up and pulled off, and we were in a taxi. We handed over the card for Hengsheng Peninsula International Hotel, and we were on our way.
We found that it did little good to try to pronounce the words or even show someone the pinyan. What was needed was the Chinese characters themselves. Even the Chinese can't easily figure out what the pinyan stands for without the characters - too much ambiguity.

The taxi crossed over on Hainan Road. We approached the Wusong Road turn, The taxi was in the left lane; I pointed right, and the taxi driver pointed to a sign saying "no right turn." So we waited for a left turn signal, made the left turn onto Wusong, then a right turn, another right turn onto Hainan in the opposite direction, then a left turn onto Wusong, now finally going in the right direction. This screwball set of turns cost us 5 Y in taxi fare, and about 5 minutes of time.

We checked into the hotel a little after 12:30.

Our first piece of business was to get some lunch. Off to Zhapu St a few blocks away - this is the food street right near the hotel. We went to the Shanghai food cafe, and got some sesame noodles and some Shanghai buns. The sesame noodles are called "Chinese-style noodles" on the English menu and "leng mian" (cold noodles) on the Chinese menu. They are wheat noodles, in a sesame oil/tahini paste, with just a touch of chili oil. We had been searching for this dish all through China, since we had last had them at this restaurant 16 days before. The buns were classic Shanghai buns, cooked so that each contains a small burst of soup inside the bun, in addition to the little bit of meat. Just to finish up, we also ordered a dish of "fish-flavored rice" (rice covered with a brown sauce), some tea, and a bottle of beer. All for 21 Y.

Back to the hotel. Chowhound.com had a blog entry for a restaurant called Yang Yang in the French Concession just north of the American Consulate (but no phone number or address). I asked the conceirge for info as to where it was, since the blog stated that most taxi drivers knew where it was. Our conceirge had no inkling. He went off for 15 minutes to try to find some info on the internet. He came back with some info about a Yang Yang restaurant on Guangyuan Road about 5 km away off in the north suburbs - clearly not this Yang Yang.

It was now 2:30 PM: time to retreive the silk jacket that Curtis that had bought the first day. Onto Bus 910 to the silk merchants building, where the beautiful jacket was ready and waiting. Then a bus and a walk (bus stops are never where you want them to be - you stand up to get off at the next stop, and the bus then goes 5 more blocks before it stops) to the book section of Fuzhou Street.

We found the Foreign Language Bookstore, and another bookstore, and then, finally, the huge Shanghai Bookstore. I had been tasked to purchase Chinese language versions of the Dr. Seuss books. The youth section of this huge bookstore was on the 6th floor. We asked the workers about Dr. Suess or "The Cat in the Hat." Asked a couple of kids. Total blanks. Finally, a worker who had somewhat better English went to the computer. "Cat in the Hat" was in the bookstore's computer, but seemingly only as an English book. And it was out of stock. Ditto for "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." The other titles we could think of weren't even in the computer. The only conclusion we could draw was that "Cat in the Hat" had never been translated into Chinese (Later research on the internet suggests that it was translated in 2006 by Rongrong Ren, and published by the Shanghai Translation Co., but if it hadn't been picked up by the Shanghai Bookstore, this huge place, it wasn't much in circulation.). So, as a consolation prize, I bought the Chinese translations of "Peter Pan," "The Wizard of Oz," and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," each for 6 Y (88 Cents).

By now it, was well past 4:30 PM: time to visit the French Concession, the upscale SW part of old Shanghai. Remember that, beginning in the mid-1800s, like Hong Kong, Macao, and many others (Qingdao, Tainjin ??), Shanghai was a foreign-dominated city. The various foreign powers had just divided up the city: this was the French part.

We didn't know where to start, but we were vaguely looking for Yang Yang Restaurant, just north of the American Consulate. So we took subway #1 line to Hengshan station, just south of the American Consulate. After walking a couple of blocks, we got to Guangyuan Road. What a coincidence - that was the road that the concierge found way on the other side of town. Since most taxi drivers were supposed to know of this place, we asked about 5 different people, including a policeman, with no luck. We looked down Guangyuan Road, which was decidedly non-commercial, and then looked at the map. We discovered that we had walked SW from the station, rather than NE. We reversed course, and began walking back toward the station. By now, it was starting to get dark.

We walked along past all sorts of upscale restaurants - a Brazilian churrascaria, an Italian ristorante with $20 dishes, a Turkish restaurant, etc. We turned up a block:lo and behold, the American consulate, with its big walls and policemen guarding the gate. Of all the restaurants, we decided on one that had roasted ducks in the window and crispy pork dishes on the menu. Delicious meal.

It was now 8 PM. If we took the subway and a bus back to the hotel, Curtis would have time to get in a nice swim before the pool closed at 10 PM. We went into the Hengshan station and bought two tickets to the Hailun Rd station. Taking the #1 train north 8 stops to the Shanghai Railway Station stop, we could transfer east (clockwise) on the #4 loop train (2 stops to Hailun Rd station). It was also possible to take the #1 train southwest 2 stops to the Shanghai Indoor Stadium stop, where we could transfer to the #4 train counterclockwise (11 stops to Hailun Rd station). The latter choice seemed silly.

After heading north on the #1 train to the Shanghai Railway Station stop, we discovered that, with a one-trip card, there was no free transfer to the #4 line. If we had a permanent card, we could have transfered. We left the station, and had a heated argument in English with the gate people, and later afterward with the customer service people. Goodness knows how much they understood of what we were saying. They certainly understood that we were foreign visitors. They certainly understood that there was no free transfer from the #1 to the #4 line (didn't everybody?). They probably understood that we were trying to get from the 1 to the 4 line without paying again. It was doubtful whether they understood that we thought we were deceived by the ticket dispenser and all of the maps.

Eventually (maybe after 15 minutes?) we were given double-stamped pieces of paper which we were to present at the #4 line gate to get in. Without knowing whether we were just being mollified with a useless piece of paper, we started the LONG walk (15 min?) between stations. We got to the entrance to the #4, where they accepted the paper and let us in. They even let us out at Hailun St with this piece of paper.

2 lessons: First, taking the #1 SW and then the #4 counterclockwise 11 stops was the right way to go. Second, those 5 Chinese characters on the subway map, which said "Transfer only with a permanent card," were important words to understand.

Anyway, we got to the hotel at 9:15 PM, and Curtis managed to squeeze in a half swim (20 min) instead of the usual 40 min.

Some preliminary packing, and to bed.

Curtis

We arrived in Shanghai early in the afternoon, and after checking in got a quick lunch at a little dive that we remembered having cold sesame noodles. I am beginning to think that this may be a Shanghai dish, because we haven't seen anything remotely like it on our circuit. Then we went down to pick up my new tailored raw silk jacket, which fits great. Nice to have a new all-purpose casual jacket. We then browsed some bookstores for Chinese books Mike was looking for, and made our way over to the "French Concession."

We wandered around the French Concession for a while trying to locate one of the restaurants that Carol found on a blog about food in Shanghai. No luck. Either the information was badly misspelled or downright fictitious, but both the neighborhood and the restaurant name were unknown to locals. We did find an excellent Cantonese restaurant and enjoyed a delicious "half" duck served with homemade duck sauce, mixed vegetables (snap peas, lilly pods and celery, stir fried al dente) and a combination pork: crispy pork rind, pork roast with crispy rind and Chinese ham served with dipping hoisin, sugar and hot mustard. This was probably the best Chinese food for me all trip, with the possible exception of the dinner we had with Mike's friend Tony in Kunming.

Our return flight...and some thoughts...

2009-08-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

Fri, August 7

Mike

Slow start today: down for breakfast a little after 8:00 AM. Somewhat after 9:00 AM we headed to the internet cafe for a last message. At 9 AM (and only then), the internet cafe is not crowded, and there is not a lot of smoking going on.

Back to the hotel. Checked out at 11. We took a taxi 1.5 km to the Hailun Station, and then repeat what we did on July 19, in reverse - #4 line to

the #2 line to the Maglev. We arrived at the airport at about 12:15 PM. It's a long walk from the Maglev to the airport proper. Once inside, we zipped up our backpacks securely inside their Osprey stuff sacks and attached the TSA-approved locks - at least Curtis attached his lock. I couldn't find mine.

It was maybe 12:45 PM by then. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 3:35 PM. Delta has one plane a day out of Shanghai (a 777). So, for one hour a day, there is a huge check-in line, then quiet. We (of course) were in the middle of a long queue, which took at least 50 minutes to pass through. By 1:30 PM, we were checked in.

Curtis had about 50 Y remaining. He couldn't find a Starbucks at the airport, so he ordered an expensive mocha frappucino (which he pronounced unsatisfying). I left China with about 70 Y in my pockets.

On our plane were two retired American teachers from Alabama. They had come for four weeks in rural China, to help local language teachers polish up their English. The rest of the plane seemed to be filled with Chinese college students going to the US to start the school year.

I was assigned seat 50G (aisle) and Curtis was in 50J (window). Our (vain) hope was that the intermediate seat would stay vacant. No such luck. Already sitting in 50H was a 25 year old guy from Chengdu who was going to North Carolina State (in Raleigh) for his PhD. He had pretty good English. He said he had perfected his English watching "Friends" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" on the Internet. He was also familiar with "May 35th" (the Tiananmen Square protests of June 4, 1989) and the “Grass Mud Horse” (an anti-censorship song that uses a homonym in Chinese 操你妈 cao ni ma, a vulgar phrase implying intercourse with your maternal parent) and a whole lot of other stuff that it is more or less suppressed in China. We had a great time telling him about the food he was going to get in the US, and trying to introduce him to what he was going to experience the next 5 years (if his studies took that long).

Curtis

We are trying to get in a quick stop at the wangba in Shanghai before checking out of our hotel. Our reservation was in top shape when we got here. No problems.

First flight info: We are on Delta Flt#18, leaves here 3:35 PM and arrives Atlanta 6:10 PM. Only 2 1/2 hours! -- except add 12 to that for the crossing of the international date line. I hope I can get some sleep. At least going westward we will see some night time.

I had a nice Western breakfast at the hotel: omelet with ham, peppers, onion, and cheese. Mike still dipped into stuff like tofu: not really to my liking for breakfast. But I felt that my mind and my stomach were now ready for the Pacific crossing...

Our return flight had some interesting moments. I asked one of the stewardesses if we would be returning by the polar route, and she replied that she thought we would be flying over Japan and then the Aleutian Islands. Then as I settled in my seat and booted the in-flight monitor, it displayed a projected path right over Korea, North Korea! "That has to be a mistake" someone said, and true to the original word, we headed out to sea and in the direction of Japan. The sky was a little hazy, but mostly clear, and you could see quite a lot of detail. I'm pretty sure we went right over Nagasaki. After dinner we had a few hours of night as we crossed the International Date Line. Of course, I was too wired to get any quality sleep. Above the clouds I could see the full moon and right next to it, Jupiter. I stared at this same orb that had so perfectly eclipsed the sun two weeks ago, even if our view was obscured by the clouds, and somehow everything seemed right and in some kind of cosmic order.

Here are a couple of travel tips that I meant to add to our blog of things to know about getting around in China.

CROSSING THE STREET:
At big intersections in China's cities, you will see the ribbed white crosswalks that you associate with European cities (think Abbey Road album cover). You might presume that when the "walk" light comes on, it is now safe to cross. Think again, and look! Now, all the left turners, including buses, etc. jockey for position. After that, here come the bicycles and mopeds. It is always a game of cat and mouse.

At one such intersection in Xi'an, after noticing that cars and busses were usually careful not to run over old ladies, I formulated the Boy Scout Rule of crossing the street: Look for Grandma. Get parallel. Then, cross. Seems to work pretty well, since we are still alive to write this email.

SUBWAY CONNECTIONS:
At least in Shanghai, which has multiple subway lines that intersect, you might think that (like New York or Paris) you could change from the #1 to the #4 train. Not necessarily!

We found out last night that some of the maps are deceptive: you actually have to exit the platform and buy a new ticket to enter the platform for a different train. This is also true at the Shanghai railway station stop, which is quite annoying.

But there is a trump card that you can play as long as you don't try it too often.

The UNHAPPY FOREIGN TOURIST RULE: If you complain and say in sign language that you are almost out of money and that the maps are misleading, you just might create enough of a stir that a manager from the ticket office will give you a little slip of paper with a stamp on it. He will then let you out through a gate (since the machine swallowed your card). You can now take your certificate to the gatekeepers at the other line, and they will let you in. Worked for us.

However, it still took an hour and fifteen minutes to get back to hotel from the French Concession.

DEALING WITH CHINA'S 3 H's

After walking around Shanghai our first day and discovering that sweat had permeated everything I was wearing (including my wallet, money belt, and their respective contents) I devised a way to keep my important papers and money dry. During the hot, hazy and humid summer months, keep your wallet and your passport inside a zip-lock bag. Just fold it to shape, squish out the air, and put it back in the money belt or wherever you keep it, and your important papers will not turn into papier-mâché.

CARRY EXTRA NAPKINS

Napkins are sometimes hard to come by, so when you do, reserve an extra and carry it out with you. Very useful after consuming street food, and even in sit-down restaurants. It seems that you are expected to be so expert with chopsticks that you never have to use a napkin, even though much of Chinese cooking consists of finger food, and it is perfectly acceptable to use your fingers at the table. While on the subject of table manners, it is also perfectly acceptable and much more practical to pick up your rice bowl or soup bowl and shovel down your rice or sip your soup. And as for those really, really long noodles, it is perfectly good manners to bite them off mid-strand, letting the rest fall back into the bowl. Just don't wear a white shirt that you prize too highly. And carry a third napkin if you plan to eat soup, and you have a mustache.

NOT EVERYONE WHO SPEAKS TO YOU IS A HAWKER

It is easy to get annoyed at the hawkers in the big cities, selling everything from laser pens and junk souvenirs to massages and call girls, but don't always assume that everyone who calls out "Hallo!" is trying to get your money. The Chinese people are genuinely friendly, and yes, sometimes genuinely curious. They want to know where you are from, why you have come to China; they are often ready to help with directions or information. There is a natural curiosity about foreigners: you must know that many Chinese would just love to see the rest of the world, something that is still very difficult for most of the native born. They also have a great sense of humor and are not unwilling to find the amusing twist in their own circumstances. And if there is a sense of wariness in the background about getting too careless with speech over certain topics, there is much less feeling of the need to avoid foreigners than I heard of in past decades. If you smile, a smile will be returned. Just keep to your destination, and don't buy a tour on the street.

Some final thoughts on our China adventure...

2009-08-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

Sun, August 9 BACK IN THE US

Mike

The "2 1/2 hour flight" (leave 3:35 PM Shanghai, arrive 6:10 PM Atlanta) actually took 14 1/2 hours. We got in uneventfully, ready to try to adjust for the jet lag and get back to normality.

When, back in Atlanta, I unloaded my carry-on bag, I finally found my stuffsack's TSA lock at the bottom.

By my calculations:

Total cost of trip: $1066 (airfare to and from China); $186 (visa and costs to obtain visa); $490 (3 internal flights); $1040 (all else, including hotels, railroad tickets, tourist attractions, food, gifts, etc.).

The test of a good traveling companion is in part whether you are on speaking terms at the end of the trip. But more important it is what each brings to the other's experience and understanding.

Curtis brought three invaluable strengths to the trip. First, as a Buddhist, he brought an intimate knowledge of the history and practice of Chinese Buddhism, which informed the organization of the temples and pagodas, and brought meaning to the sculpture and the various Buddhas and supporting Buddhist sculptures.

Second, his knowledge of Chinese history was crucial to my understanding of what I was seeing. Before the trip, I knew that in 221 BC the first emperor Qin began his rule, that he unified the country, but that roughly 15 years later he died, and there were lots of dynasties thereafter. That is not very sophisticated, and Curtis' detailed knowledge helped keep things in place. We visited four former capitals of China - Xi'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, and Nanjing. Knowing when each was the capital, trying to picture what China might have been like when Kaifeng was the capital, say, is a crucially important factor in coming away with much of anything.

Third, his taste buds are much better than mine. I experience the same thing compared to my daughter, who is trained as a chef, and can really taste things. I just don't have the same experiences. It is important to have someone able to tell me what I am tasting. For example, in Chengdu, he pointed out that the texture of the cucumber mimicked the texture of the eel. Of course, some times, like in Kaifeng, Curtis told me that the local beer was badly brewed, for very specific reasons, but I drank it anyway, noting that it tasted a little different from the other brews we had had.

If I go back in several years, with my wife, (not in July or August) I may see some of the same things, but it won't be the same trip. I thank Curtis for the trip he made for me.

TRAFFIC AND TRANSIT

Chinese cities tend to be huge. The Lonely Planet guidebook routinely does not include information on cities in China with less than 1 million people, unless there is some overriding tourist draw. Recall that our fast train stopped 4 times between Nanjing and Shanghai, and not one of those cities was in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

Furthermore, before 1990, even the largest cities had not a whole lot of car traffic - huge numbers of bicycles, motorized bicycles, taxis, pedicabs, motorized pedicabs, etc. That (of course) began to change rapidly, and now China has a LOT OF AUTOMOBILES, and is poised to get a WHOLE LOT MORE. THAT MEANS TRAFFIC AND LOTS OF IT.

Before 1990, according to the best information I can get off the internet, there were only 3 subway lines in China - two in Beijing from 1969 and 1987, and one in Tianjin from the early 1970s.

At some point in the mid 2000s, the whole country changed. The word came down that cities should build subways, and so they did.

Beijing and Shanghai were the first to change.

Beijing started to build, and had three lines by the mid 2000s. It opened two more for the Olympics, plus a line to the Airport (before 1977, only Chinese could ride the subway, and then only with letters of introduction from their employer). One more is to open next month (9/09), bringing the total to 7. Beijing has plans for 24 lines, some of which are already under construction.

Shanghai really did it big. It opened its first line in 1995. It opened 3 more by 2003, and a fifth in 2005. Then in 2007, it opened 3 more, and extended 2 lines. In 2010, for the WorldExpo, it will open 4 more, and extend 3. If you have kept track, this comes to 12 lines, which puts Shanghai up there with London, New York, Paris, and Moscow. Shanghai has plans for 18 lines, some of which are already under construction.

Of the cities we visited, Shanghai, Kunming, Chengdu, Xian, and Nanjing all have subway lines under construction. Nanjing will open its second line soon; the other three are working on their first lines. Everywhere we went, there was construction in the city. At least 20 cities in China are building subway lines now. Of course, in China, you don't need an environmental impact statement; the subway planning group announces where the subways will go, and construction begins. (I don't know this to be a fact, but it sure seems that way. What European or American city is working on 7 subway lines at once? We all know of cities where the construction takes decades or more - e.g., the Second Ave Subway in Manhattan.)

There is a race in China between the car and the viability of public transit. China's cars get much better mileage than American cars. Comparatively, cars are not so expensive to purchase, but the license plate, without which you cannot operate the car, may cost in the $5000 - $10,000 range. Also, there are really high tolls on the good highways.

It seems that, with very high living densities, very few places to park the car, and impossible traffic (even now), urban car ownership is a no-win proposition. We found that buses and subways (where they exist) come along pretty much whenever you need them, and take you nearly anywhere you need to go.

In most cities in the world, the car is winning, at the expense of public transit. Maybe in China public transit, and specifically, separate grade public transit, will win.

WIND FARMS

There is another issue in China - energy - that has spawned a huge race. China has enormous needs for energy. Hence, it has been building coal plants - maybe 500 per decade. The result has been that air is not breathable in some parts of China - especially Beijing. That is a problem. So China is closing down some of the worst coal plants, and building much more efficient plants. But they are also building wind farms. Lots and lots of wind farms.

NYTimes Jul 14, 2009:
"This year, China passed the United States as the world's largest market for wind energy. It is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece . . .By comparison, T. Boone Pickens delayed his plans to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas, once promoted as the world's largest."

China being China, you don't get to complain that the nearby wind farm cuts off your view of the sky, or interferes with your television reception. If you don't like it, suck it up. An edict comes down, and China gets wind energy.

Wind power, water power, and cleaner coal plants have come to China. Will China ever become green? Hard to say. It is so far down the curve.

The race is on, and the watching is very interesting.

Curtis

Today, Nancy and I went to see "Julie and Julia," a marvelous film built around the career of Julia Child and a present day blogger, Julie Powell, who straightened out her life and career under JC's inspiration. Not very far into the film, the issue of butter and all of its praises came up. How true, how totally true, I thought. Along with cheese, butter was the other dairy product I sorely missed in China was butter.

For me Chinese cooking is amazing in the tremendous variety of foods that are harmonized into a world class cuisine, all of which is, at its core, done without dairy products. In a similar way, Chinese music is amazing in being able to express tremendous variety while using only the five notes of the pentatonic scale.

But give me the diatonic (7-note) scale any day of the week, and give me butter!

After the movie, we tried to make it to the Oakwood Cafe for some long-missed Southern food, but were just a few minutes too late. They close at 8:30. So we turned around and did an encore trip to Taqueria La Oaxaqueña, enjoying the uniquely New World expressions of corn and peppers... and cheese. I thought: I will have to add Mexican to the list of cuisines I gave to Mike's and my seat mate, Li Zhong, on our return flight. Li Zhong is not lactose intolerant, and is also a fan of hot pepper, hailing from Sichuan, so he certainly should enjoy the heritage of Mexico, the Meso-Americas and the South, which contributed both corn and pepper to Chinese cuisine. That's right. There was no corn, potato or pulpy pepper -- hot or mild -- in Chinese, Thai or Indian food before Spanish traders started plowing the Pacific with their Manila galleons.

So for me, now I am back in my element. A world of diatonic and chromatic scales, cheese, butter and good wines. A world where I can sip water from a water fountain and brush my teeth without feeling the need to have a plastic water bottle at my side. A world where the sky is usually more blue than yellow and the night reveals more than one shining object, where you can occasionally find a quiet place with no other people, no din of honking horns and construction equipment, only the rhythm of frogs and crickets.

This said, China was a marvelous place to visit. For me, China provided closure to a long-held desire to see the land that gave birth to Taoism, Chan Buddhism, and many of the technologies that enable us to write and mass distribute this communication (consider that paper, printing, explosives, standardization, and the compass all were developed in China). The elusive land of silk and jade beyond the mountainous backbone of Asia.

Our visits to some of first centers of Chinese Buddhism were immensely inspiring. Traveling the road connecting the ancient capitals Chang'an (Xi'an), Luoyang, Kaifeng, and Nanjing was a path I long dreamed of following. Seeing some of the mountains and fantastic rock formations that inspired Chinese painting and hearing traditional music in the Bell and Drum towers was an unforgettable experience.

Thirty-seven years ago I was in Kathmandu, less than 100 Km from the Nepal-Tibet border (by the crow), when I learned that the United States had lifted official restrictions on travel to Mainland China. One of the first things I did when I returned to New Delhi was go to the American Embassy and ask them to officially remove the prohibition from my passport. The request was answered by the clerk drawing a thick line through the words Mainland China with a permanent black marker.

But the symbolism was great. Of course I never made it to China on that trip, nor could I have gotten there from across the Tibetan frontier at that time, but I always hoped that someday I would be able to finish the journey to the land on the other side of the great mountain range.

This trip was indeed a dream come true. My China adventure.

Final thoughts on our China adventure...

2009-08-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sun, August 9 BACK IN THE US

Mike

The "2 1/2 hour flight" (leave 3:35 PM Shanghai, arrive 6:10 PM Atlanta) actually took 14 1/2 hours. We got in uneventfully, ready to try to adjust for the jet lag and get back to normality.

When, back in Atlanta, I unloaded my carry-on bag, I finally found my stuffsack's TSA lock at the bottom.

By my calculations:

TRAFFIC AND TRANSIT

In most cities in the world, the car is winning, at the expense of public transit. Maybe in China public transit, and specifically, separate grade public transit, will win.

WIND FARMS

Wind power, water power, and cleaner coal plants have come to China. Will China ever become green? Hard to say. It is so far down the curve.

The race is on, and the watching is very interesting.

Food and Drink Chengdu: Map of China Through Sichuanese Eyes

2009-08-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Food and Drink Chengdu: Map of China Through Sichuanese Eyes