Archive for September, 2007

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Shanghai, China

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

September 23 & 24:  Shanghai originally was a sleepy fishing village that sat in the shadows of Suzhou on the banks of the Huangpu and Yangtze Rivers and today just might be the most spectacular city in the world while at the same time a city of enormous contrasts. Shanghai has a population of over 17 million, 3.8 million of which are floating on the rivers. The Bund on the west bank has the appearances of a European capital with large stone buildings facing the river. Starting in the 1930’s the city grew as a major port and investment center controlled by European and American capitalists. As Shanghai grew the city attracted Chinese farmers looking for work and a better life which they found in the factories, and docks. The westerners, having built “their city”, feared this huge influx of Chinese into “their city” would jeopardize the quality of life that they had built for themselves so they created a system that divided the city into zones that would result in segregated and separate societies, these concessions continue into present Shanghai as a city of multiple architectural styles.
In 1949 the Communist, which controlled the Peoples Liberation Army under Mau Zedong, took control of the country and for the next forty years Shanghai’s commercial power vanished. The Bund fell in disrepair. Most of the foreign companies located in Shanghai moved their offices to Hong Kong. Much of China’s history in the form of antiquities left with the foreigners. Under Mau the power of China was redistributed and Shanghai took on the look of most Communist cities. Then in 1992 the government authorized the redevelopment of Shanghai by lowering taxes and encouraging investment which resulted in the Shanghai of today which grows at a rate of 9% to 15% each year. The new foreign investment resulted in the building a new district, Pudong on the east side of the river, consisting of tall glass office buildings huge hotels, shopping malls and wide streets. In the daylight Shanghai is amazing; Nanjaing Street has every kind of store that you can imagine, from high fashion to McDonalds and KFC. When you look closer you find that one block behind the high fashion stores are thousands of Chinese living just as they did one hundred years ago. Ten years from now most of that will all be gone.

The only way to really appreciate the size and scope of Shanghai and Pudong is at night, the lights on the skyscrapers and the Bund look like something created for a movie set. We had dinner with Michael and Marcia and Jerry and Jennifer on the 56th floor of the Grand Hyatt in Pudong, across the river from Shanghai. We all had Kobe steak, imagine that, and wine and celebrated a wonderful month of travel and new friends. It is fitting that our journey ended in Shanghai for as the Buddhist temples, rice patties, and mud houses are a reminder of the past Shanghai stands as a window through which you can see China’s future.
China is a lot of things; 1.5 billion people, a country on a mission, a diverse population, beautiful landscape, air pollution, sanitation problems, friendly hard working people, people working in harmony for the betterment of all, and an economic force of which the world has never seen before. I went to China believing that is was a third world country, a developing nation. I returned believing that China will see its 2008 Olympic slogan, “One World One Dream”, come to fruition.
September 15:We made it home Tuesday evening at 10:20 pm. Wednesday night we went out to dinner with Ron and Avie and Albert and Sue, we went Chinese. Nita and I showed off our newly acquired chopstick skills.

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Suzhou, China

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Suzhou
September 22: Suzhou is a city of seven million people known as the Venice of China, maybe someday but not really. The city is known for its gardens and old luxury homes, we toured one of those homes today and viewed the gardens. Later in the day we went to a silk factory and learned how silk in made from the silk worm, to the mulberry tree, to the mill, to cloth. It was quite interesting and educational; of course this was all followed by a huge gift shop selling everything silk. We finished the afternoon with a boat ride through the city’s canals taking us into old town. Nita and I and Michael and Marcia then caught a cab and went to the city center and commingled with the locals out for a day of shopping. Four two hours we only saw two other Caucasians in the streets. For those two hours we were the attraction. Mothers brought their children to us to practice their English, people wanted to shake our hands to touch us, a boy put on a demonstration of his inline skating skills to entertain us. We went into stores that were not normally visited by foreigners and communicated our needs with the aid of sign language and the few words of Chinese that we could speak. Back at our hotel we found a Chinese wedding reception going on, our guide Rosie in Urumqi had educated us on the courting and wedding procedures of the Chinese so it was neat to see the customs unfold. Tomorrow morning we leave for two days in Shanghai.

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Guilin, China

Friday, September 21st, 2007

We flew to Guilin this afternoon. Guilin is a city of 700,000 people whose main industry is tourism, the landscape is support to be the best in China. Tonight Nita and I went for a massage, $13.00 for an hour. The girl spent at least 10 minutes on my head, it was great; I had the full body and Nita had the foot massage. We think we’ll flip tomorrow night. There’s a market next to our hotel that has an open air food court serving snails, big spiders, scorpions, and snakes; we may try to catch dinner tomorrow before we get the massage, at least it won’t be rice and noodles.


September 19: More than 200,000 residents of Shanghai, have been evacuated in preparation for Typhoon Wipha, a storm that could become a super typhoon. “The impact and damage from Wipha could be extraordinary, and gales and waves caused by it could be the strongest this year.” Winds are predicted to top 114 mph when the eye of the storm makes landfall in Shanghai early this morning. Chinese officials are doing all they can to minimize damage and loss of life, hoping not to relive the devastation of Typhoon Winnie that claimed 236 lives in 1997. We are hearing nothing about Wipha here in Guilin, all my information comes off the internet. Our itinerary calls for us to travel to Shanghai on Friday.
September 19: As Brice Cannon and Zion National Park are to the US, Guilin is to China. Millions of years ago this area was under water and the water receded and came back many times washing away the loose bottom and leaving large limestone towers and mountains creating a magnificent landscape. Guilin’s sister city is Orlando, Florida and like Orlando Guilin’s number one industry is tourism. It first came to the attention of the western world with Richard Nixon’s visit in 1971 and called Guilin “The Pearl of China”, and has continued to be a favorite of the Carters, Clintons and George and Barbara Bush.
This morning we visited a kindergarten and interacted with four to seven year old Chinese children, all were fun loving and energetic. Our guide explained that there was no schooling in China from 1966 through 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, but education is now one of the government’s major priorities making it available to all children. In 1976 there were no college graduates, today 20% of the youth graduate from college. The country’s one child policy has helped in this effort in that parents want, and are willing to sacrifice to get their “little emperor” the best of everything. Later in the day we went to Reed Flute Cave. Inside the cave is a spectacular world of various stalactites, stalagmites, stone pillars and rock formations created by carbonate deposits. The cave is illuminated by colored lighting along a 240-meter-long passage. This cave puts Mammoth and Carlsbad to shame. In ten years this city will be another Disney World type destination and Guilin will be another Orlando. Tonight we are going to Cormorant Fishing. Plans are to go onto Shanghai on Friday.
September 20: Cormorant Fishing involves a fisherman, a bamboo pole boat, and four cormorant birds. A cormorant is a big bird, it looks like a vulture with a 12 inch neck. The fishing is done at night, the boat has two kerosene lanterns on the front, the fisherman poles his boat down the river and the birds dive in, swim underwater searching for fish. The Cormorants can stay underwater for about forty seconds swimming in front of the lighted boat. If they find a fish they grab it in their beaks and surface, they then attempt to swallow their catch but because the fisherman has put a wire necklace tight around their neck there are unable to swallow the fish past the necklace. The fisherman calls the bird back to the boat and squeezes the fish up the birds neck out its mouth and into his catch basket. This goes on all night, we cruised alongside for forty-five minutes in a boat taking pictures and cheering the cormorants and the fisherman on.

After the fishing we toured the city and the city lights. Most of these people work during the day and have no air-conditioning at home so they come downtown, the city looked like the Galleria the day after Thanksgiving, the lighting is dramatic to accent the Chinese architecture and the natural beauty of the limestone towers within the city. This morning we cruised down the Li River for five hours to Yangshou, a small village of twenty thousand.

September 20: Today we traveled four hours down the Li River to Yangshuo, a village of 20,000. Our boat was one of one hundred that made the daily trip through the pectoris river basin.  Betty, your right they do wash the dishes in the river water, they also cook the rice in the river water but the snake wine takes care of all that. From the river we got a view into life in rural China. Each boat carried about 70 passengers thus each day Yangshuo grows by 30% with the influx of new tourists. The streets are full of shops, hotels, and venders while surrounded by the green limestone towers.
This afternoon we were picked up by a eight passenger golf cart and taken into the rural country side. As the road turned from asphalt to dirt it was like passing into the seventeenth century. We went into a village of about eighty people who lived off the land just as they had four hundred years ago, with water buffalo, rice patties, back breaking labor, community toilets, cooking over fire and dirt; take away limited electricity, the one dish TV and it’s 1658 in China. Each farmer works about one fifth of an acre, a extended family might control one acre of land and produce seven thousand pounds of rice a year. They sell their rice for 1.25 Yuan per pound. The feudal system is gone and the farmers have their own leased land, but the changing world is coming on fast. Currently 80% of all Chinese live off the land, the governments goal is to reduce that to 50% by 2020. Children are being educated, factories are being built and population growth is being brought under control.
After dinner we went down the city main street to do some sight seeing and shopping with Michael and Marcia. I quickly discovered that I could get their price divide it by four, counter their price at one forth and be prepared to walk out holding at that price. I never got out the door without making a purchase. We had a great time and made some good purchases.
September 21: Today was a travel day, two hour bus ride back to Guilin, a two hour flight to Shanghai, and a two hour bus ride to Suzhou. This was our first day of rain, tomorrow we go to the gardens, the silk factory and a boat trip.

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Cruising the Yangtze River

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Today we stopped at Feng Du which is a city of eight hundred thousand people, all who have been displaced by the dam project. It’s an entire new city; across the river the government build what I will call a Buddhist Disney World to provide jobs for the Feng Du people. The city is a new city finished in 2003, our guide a young 23 year girl was delighted with the results of the displacement but admitted that her grandmother longs for her old life on the farm rather then the three bedroom two bath high-rise apartment. We also passed numerous cities along the river with new plants and new apartment buildings, and it seemed like each city had it’s own barge building company. Apparently there is more product being produced along the river then there are barrages to move the product. We saw one barge full of huge containers all labeled COSCO. Both Nita and I are enjoying the relaxed pace of the river boat trip but it will only last one more day. The scenery is magnificent, it reminds me of my raft trip down the Grand Cannon, but this is green and the walls are not as high. Tonight Nita, “the blond”, was chosen out of the audience to play in an on stage version of musical chairs. Some big butt Frenchman, pushed her out of the chair and she missed going into the final three.
September 16& 17: The highlight of Sunday was the Boat Tracker Excursion. We boarded a ferry and were taken up a tributary of the Yangtze River where a group of five oarsman paddled the eighteen of us in a pee-pod boat to the origin of this particular river. The display of man strength and endurance would make any top athlete wither. These 135 lb. men pulled their makeshift oar for forty five minutes without stopping against the river current, turned the boat and rowed back with the current for twenty minutes. Until 1992 these men did this as that had for the preceding 500 years, naked. In 1992 the local government felt that the western tourist would be offended and made the men wear shorts.
The Three Gorges cruise offered spectacular scenery, relaxing tranquility, and commodore with a new group of friends. We toured the Dam Project in a heavy fog and light rain. The engineering and the scope of this project is a display of how a developing country can work together to advance the standard of living of a nation through cooperation. Over one million people lost their homes so that 1.5 billion could have a better life, the decision was made the work was done and the country moves on to its next project. After lunch we boarded a bus for a four hour ride to Wuhan which is located in the South Central part of China. The country side was full of agriculture; mostly cotton, rice and fish farms. What was missing was any form of farm machinery, all the work is done by man and beast, water buffalo. Living in Alabama I thought I had seen a lot of cotton, on our 250 mile journey today I saw more cotton then I have seen in the twenty-four years I have lived in Alabama.
September 18: As we drove through Wuhan our guide pointed out plots of land being farmed in 20 foot by 100 foot patches. “These farmers are allowed to grow their crops and sell them without paying any taxes.” Further in towards the city she pointed out a group of single family homes. “These are farmers’ homes; they were given to the farmers in 1996 so that a developer could develop their farm plots into high-rise apartments. Soon the developers will buy their homes from the farmers for 2 million Yuan so that they can develop the land into commercial property. So the farmers went from making three thousand Yuan per year to multi millionaires in twelve years. They like the new China.” We visited a regional museum in Wuhan and saw the advancements of the bronze age to include a musical presentation of the Bronze Bells.

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Chengdu, China

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

September 13:  This morning we boarded a one hour forty minute flight to Chengdu, a city of 11 million, known as “the Land of Abundance” for its fetal soil and abundant agricultural production. The real reason for coming to Chengdu is the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center.

 
There are only 1600 Giant Pandas in the wild; that is up from 1000 five years ago due in great part to the efforts of the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center. The Panda eats one type of bamboo which is being threatened by the panda, who eats 60 pounds a day, and the destruction of the habitat by the growing cities. In addition the panda are very lazy and do not appropriate well on their own so the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center has made efforts to make it easer for the Pandas to commingle in the wild thus reducing inbreeding within the small panda communities. There are 70 Pandas at the Research Center that are easily seen and photographed and the facility is beautifully laid out, we totally enjoyed our visit and I burnt a lot of pixels. We were able to see five baby pandas ranging in age from six months to two weeks old.

Last night we went to a traditional Tea House and enjoyed a very colorful show that included Changing Faces and Spiting Fire, and Hand Shadow Show. If I could learn to do the hand shadows I could replace videos as my grandchildren’s favorite form of entertainment. The show was a variety show displaying various Chinese instruments, puppetry, and skits, while enjoying tea and peanuts.

Tomorrow we will board our ship to see The Three Gorges Dam project. We will enter at Chungging, which I am told is the largest city in the world at 35 million, but it does not appear as such on any recent lists because none of the lists have been compile in the past five years. In 1994 it was listed at 9.4 million, it’s growing that fast, through migration and by expanding boarders.
September 14: The day started with a four and half hour bus ride from Chengdu to Chungging the largest industrial center in Southeastern China. We drove through miles of agricultural areas including rice patties and duck ponds for Peking Duck. The Chinese farmer does not own his land but leases it from the government for up to 99 years the lease payment is made to the government by selling part of their crops to the government at a highly discounted price. Recently many of the farmers are having to turn their land back over to the government as the cities expand and need the farm land for factories and housing. The farmers are bought out of their lease and provided with new housing, usually in a high-rise apartment complex, and offered retraining. This works out well of the young but not so well for the older farmers.On our way to Chunging we stopped for lunch in Dazu and then went to the Baoding Rock Carvings.
If your ever in the Dazu area this is a must see. On the way to the carvings we took a four lane toll road, which couldn’t be more then seven years old. On each side of the highway the rice farmers were spreading their rice harvest on the right lane for drying, so the four lanes turned into a two lane. When we neared the Carvings the road turned into a two lane concrete road climbing a hill, here again the farmers spread their rice on one of the lanes, even on the curves. No one seemed to mind and no one drove on the rice, we just squeezed by each other.
The rock carvings were started in 1130 by Buddhist monks, the carvings are intricate carvings depicting the principals and history of the Buddhist Religion. They have taken full rock walls maybe 90 feet long and 30 feet high and carved Bodhisattva, these are spirits that help the people in this life find their way into the next life, and Buda almost like a cartoon strip to tell their stories. I was amazed at the similarity of the stories and fables of the Buddhist religion and Christianity.

We arrived in Chunging around seven PM, and everyone on the bus thought we were driving into 2050 in some futuristic movie. This city looks like it exploded out of the ground and was reaching for the heavens. I have never seen so many new high-rise buildings with 35 million people running in every direction. What makes it even more bazaar is that just outside the city you see thousands of little firms with rice patties, white ducks, and water buffalo on the side of the hills, then you drive through a three mile long tunnel and WHAMM there’s Chunging. It’s a hilly area so unlike Chengdu there are few bicycles and scooters for people to get around, just cars and buses thus a lot of air pollution. We boarded the President Six and will start our cruise down the Yangtze River tomorrow morning.
September 15:  The President 6 is quite nice, now it’s not a Caribbean cruise ship with young Ukrainian girls polishing the brass, in fact there is no brass, but the room is adequate and the food is some of the best we have had thus far on our trip. What is fascinating is what is happening along the Yangtze River. The Chinese government is building a hydroelectric dam which is five times the size of the Hoover Dam and will be the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. The project, The Three Gorges Dam, started in 2003 and will be completed in 2009, will cost $22.5 billion, and will produce 3% of Chinas electricity needs. As a result the river behind the dam will raise sixty-five feet and will displace 1.3 million people, mostly farmers.

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Lhasa, Tibet

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

September 10, 11 & 12:  Lhasa, Tibet is different, the peoples faces, the smells, the sounds, the monks, the food, the Buddhist religion, the artwork; it all comes together to construct an unforgettable memory. Everyone made the trip, but not everyone is up to the 12,000 foot experience of Lhasa, headaches and general exhaustion abound. Our hotel is in the center of old town which is a bustling market place full of venders and buyers and thousands of devout Buddhists. Most of the merchandise looks the same but different from where we have been, thus far we have not chosen to buy anything other then take a mile hike to a superstore, Wal-Mart like, and stock up on snacks, Nita found chocolate. I had my best meal of the trip last night at the Snowland Restaurant, Yak Steak in mushroom sauce with french fries and steamed veggies; the Chinese food is growing old.
Today we ascended the steps to the Potala Palace which dates back to the 7th century. I am estimating it was a 600 step climb, in this altitude it was not easy, 13 of our 18 attempted and all 13 made it to the top and back down. The Potala Palace is the centerpiece of the city and thousands of devout Buddhist climb the steps each day to make offerings and say prayers at numerous shrines. We moved through the many rooms side by side with the worshipers offering their Yuan and sharing their yak butter to keep the candles burning. This after noon we went to the Jokhang Temple in the center of the square, both structures are rooted in the Buddhist religion and the Deli Lama.

After two full days of exposure to the Buddhist religion and the people of Lhasa, I envy their devotion and their peace. I feel confident that not one of the thousands of people that I walked with in their clockwise march around Jokhang Temple cared what the stock market did today or were even aware that the US was fighting a war in Iraq or that gas was selling for $2.70 a gallon. Their only concern was that they were leading an honorable life and that they were properly preparing themselves for their next life, while honoring their elders and their ancestors.
Thus far Nita and I feel totally safe in the streets as we walk through the markets and stores. Betty and Able, who are traveling with us, are second generation Chinese who live outside of San Francisco. I asked then why there was so little violent crime in China, and they explained that the worst think that a Chinese can do is to bring shame onto his or her family, and to rob, kill, or rape is unthinkable. “If a Chinese man were to kill or rape another Chinese his parents would probably commit suicide in shame.”
This evening three couples found a neat bar on the second floor of a retail store overlooking the streets of old Lhasa, Michael and I tried the Tibetan Barley Spirits, it ranks in the top three worst drinks I have ever had, (Chinese Fire Water, Alabama Moonshine, Tibetan Barley Spirits) but I value all three memories. Our third day in Lhasa consisted of a visit to a Buddhist Monastery and more climbing and more yak butter. I have seen more Buddhist monks in these last three days then in the preceding 63 years, but I do have a better understanding of the Buddhist religion. As I moved through the monastery I stepped aside to allow an older women and monk pass before me. As the monk passed he poked me in the belly and smiled. At the time I took it as a message from God to lose some weight, but I was later told that as one reaches full enlightment is the Buddhist Religion and attains Buda status a tummy is desired if not expected. It made me feel better about myself.
We as a group have decided that although the Chinese government does not approve of the Buddhist practices here in Lhasa they recognize that this place is a big tourist draw so they are going to allow it to exist and have built a $10 billion fast train system from Beijing to make it easier for you to get here.

This evening Marsha, Michael, Nita and I went back to our neighborhood bar, a third floor fire trap overlooking Jokhang Temple and the adjoining streets. Sitting next to me was a young Frenchman surfing the internet. I asked “How are you connected?” “This bar offers free wireless.” His wife was sitting next to him talking to someone in France on a headset plugged into his computer. Down below I saw a woman and child leading a burro followed by her husband pulling a dilapidated wooden cart with all their worldly position having made a six month pilgrimage to the Jokhang Temple. What a world we live in.

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Xian, China

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Xian
September 9: Today we visited the City Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum. The City Wall was a wall, yes it is 600 years old, and yes it is 40 feet high 40 feet wide and it’s 8.5 miles encircles the inner city, but it is still just a wall. What I did find interesting was that one side of the wall you could still see the crumbling remains of some of the structures that may have been there 600 for years. The main streets were fast, crowded and active while the side streets reflected the old small village atmosphere. On the other side of the City Wall was a new city with tall buildings and green parks that reflected a totally different life.

We drove an hour to get to the Terra Cotta Museum part of the way was on a freeway then through a rural area of Xian. The streets were being swept by women with large brooms, merchandise was being transported in bicycle carts, and large buses were moving thousands of people many of them tourist. We moved into a rural area and saw what we discovered were groves of pomegranate trees. What was unique about these trees was that every pomegranate that I could see was individually raped in plastic on the tree. Our guide explained that this made the pomegranates ripen faster thus extending the time that the farmers could sell their product. Each side of the road was lined with red and green large umbrellas shielding the farmer and his product from the sun that never shines. Xian is a grey city; the air pollution is so bad that they never see blue sky and seldom directly see the sun.

The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses may be the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Work continues at this site, which is around a half a mile east of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum. Upon taking the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), Qin Shi Huang had begun to work for his mausoleum. It took 11 years to finish. It is speculated that many buried treasures and sacrificial objects had accompanied the emperor in his after life. A group of peasant farmers uncovered some pottery while digging for a well nearby the royal tomb in 1974. It caught the attention of archeologists from around the world immediately. They came to Xian in droves to study and to extend the digs. They have proven that these artifacts were associated with the Qin Dynasty (211-206 BC). Life size terracotta figures of warriors and horses arranged in battle formations blow and before you as you enter the first museum which is the size of three football fields. There are two other exhibition halls displaying additional soldiers and horses and a bronze chariot with horses. It was certainly one of the highlights of the trip so far.

We went to a dumpling dinner and magnificent Chinese musical and dance presentation tonight, but the evening was tainted as our third traveler dropped. Bruce passed out in the rear of the theater, he joins Bernice with severe diarrhea, and Jennifer who tripped over a pear basket in the hotel hall in Dunhuang and spent two days in the hospital after receiving twenty stitches in her leg. We don’t know how many of us will board the plane tomorrow morning for our flight to Lhasa, Tibet

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Jiayuanguan, China

Saturday, September 8th, 2007

Our next destination was Jiayuaguan, a six and a half hour bus ride. Halfway to Jiayuaguan we stopped for a potty break and I engaged two young Chinese men in conversation, which consisted of “Hello”.  Alex our guide stepped in and I found out that they were migrant workers who had traveled 600 miles on their bus with forty other men and woman to pick cotton. The faces of these people tell a story of hard work and hardship, but when you engage them that all goes away, they are just happy to talk to an American and have their picture taken. They will be paid 200 Yuan a week for their work and then will move on to another area hopefully to pick more cotton. Two hundred Yuan equals $22.50 for a week of back breaking work.
We are still in the Gobi Desert, a desert of gravel and little sand that consumes two providences. At the side of the road for our three hundred mile journey men and woman were shoveling the desert soil to build a culvert connecting to a distant lake to create another Oasis that will some day be a thriving Chinese city. We arrived Jiayuaguan, a city that was nothing more then a village of mud huts five years ago and is now a city of 150,000 with 30,000 working for China Steel. Two years ago the prime minister of China announced that China would no longer be dependent on foreign steel, that was just as China Steel was hitting its stride. There is nothing old in Jiayuaguan, it is a totally modern and vibrant city. As I write this I hear the music of a concert outside my window, it’s not Rock and Roll it’s classical Chinese music. These are proud hard working friendly people, Nita and I walk among them at night the only two blonds within twenty miles and a three year old Chinese child walks up and says, “Hello, what’s your name?”

Today we visited the western end of the Great Wall of China; it is anchored by a fort that was built in the 4th century. It stands as it was with little restoration because through all of China’s turbulent history none of its many warring factions came this far west into this god forsaken part of the Gobi Desert. We also visited a three room tomb of a businessman who died 1500 years ago and was buried with his wife. This tomb is thirty-six feet under the Gobi Desert in the middle of nowhere and here are eighteen Americans climbing the steps up and down to see this guys living room, dinning room and bed room; he and his wife were buried in the bed room the other two rooms contained symbolic paintings and drawings. Oh, yah this guy had three wife’s and four concubines. I assume he died first, how was it decides which of the seven women would go into the tomb. As you can see there are a lot of unanswered questions here in China.The music just changed to some kind of Chinese Hard Rock, the female singer is screaming at an erratic beat. This could be a long night.
September 8: We started the day at the Saturday market in Jiayuaguan, this is not the same as the farmers market on Findley Avenue. We got a first hand look at what we had been eating over the past two weeks. Sides of beef , pig, lamb and goat hung from hooks and people walked up and pointed to what they wanted and the proprietor cut it off. Across from the many butcher stalls were women in a squat position hovering over red three gallon buckets each containing one of the internal organs of the cow, pig, goat, or lamb egger to assist the stream of patrons. Further down the isle we found the fish display, each species swimming in a Plexiglas tank or displayed in an open case. There was a noticeable absence of ice throughout the market. Nita has yet been able to find any chocolate anywhere. The fruits and vegetables were the best I have ever seen, green onions six times larger then we grow, peppers, red and green twice the size of what we get in the states. We have come to realize that this area is not visited by many Caucasians; because we get more stares then we give.

We left the Gobi Desert at 2:15 pm boarding Shanghai Air for a two hour flight to Xian a city of seven million people, the Silicon Valley of China, whose main crops are corn and wheat, and produce much of China’s coal, natural gas, and oil. Xian is one of the birthplaces of the ancient civilization in the Yellow River Basin area of the country. During Xian’s 3,100 year development, 13 dynasties placed their capitals here. Xian is recognized as an equal to Athens, Cairo, and Rome as one of the four major ancient civilization capitals. This evening we visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda; it is called Big Wild Goose Pagoda according to ancient stories of Buddhists, one day, they couldn’t find meat to buy. Upon seeing a group of big wild geese flying overhead, a monk said to himself: “Today we have no meat. I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some meat today.” At that very moment, the leading wild goose broke its wings and fell to the ground. All the monks were startled and believed that Bodhisattva showed his spirit as an order for them to be more pious. They built a pagoda where the wild goose fell and from that day forward stopped eating meat. Hence it got the name “Big Wild Goose Pagoda”. Tomorrow we will be visiting some of its other ancient sites. Xian like Beijing is a big city with big city problems, air pollution, traffic, poverty on the streets, but little crime beyond pick pockets. It is apparent that crime is not tolerated in China, there are no such things as prisoner’s rights, and their courts are swift and severe.

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Dunhuang, China

Friday, September 7th, 2007


September 5 & 6:  I woke up on my birthday on a train sailing through the Gobi Desert, destination Dunhuang, China. Although Dunhung is a city of only 150,000 it is a much more westernized city then Turpin. This is because the people in Dunhuang are Hans and the people in Turpin and Urumqi are Muslin. Dunhuang is also in the Gobi Desert, but the Gobi Desert is not a desert of sand but of dirt and gravel. So a sand dune is not common. The Singing-Sand Dune is five kilometers (about three miles) away from the city of Dunhuang. As we approached it on our bus the mountain looked like a golden dragon winding its way over the horizon. The sand had many colors ranging from red to yellow, green, black, and white as the sun set. It is said that when a strong wind blows, the fast shifting sand roars; but when the wind is a light breeze, the sand produces gentle, dulcet sounds like music. There must have been a thousand camels here with a very definite enterprise system. Older men sold tickets to ride the camels, 60 Yuan or $9.00, they passed the customers off to the herder who might own twelve camels, he then put together a group and handed the riders to a young woman who would lead the string of 12 camels on the hour walk to the top of the dunes and back. At eight o’clock as their day drew to an end the moneys started changing hands from the ticket seller down to the lead girls and the stable hands. This created a lot of shouting and calling but it never got anywhere close to violence it just seemed to be a part of the daily ritual. Our guide Freddie, his American name, told me that an elementary school teacher makes 25,000 Yuan while a dentist will make 125,000 Yuan; Freddie’s wife was a dentist. I think the ticket seller at the camel concision beats them both. James, our tour guide, found out it was my birthday, he started the evening meal with a toast with what smelled like turpentine and tasted like grain alcohol and turpentine, he called it Chinese Fire Water. The evening ended with a beautiful cake with red roses and other flowers sculpted in icing and Happy Birthday Kerry written on it. The Chinese have not mastered sweets, the icing although beautiful had no taste. Again James came with the Fire Water.

The next morning we went to the Magao Grotto. The Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang, popularly renowned as the Thousand Buddha Caves, were carved out of the steep, rough rocks stretching about 1,600 meters along the eastern side of Mingsha Hill. Construction began in 366 AD. and continued for the ensuing 10 or so dynasties. In 1900, a noted Taoist priest, Wang Yuanlu, discovered a cave at the site which contained more than 50,000 sutras, documents and paintings of nearly 10 dynasties ranging from the 4th to the 11th century. The Mogao Grottoes is where the Buddhist from India first established a presence in 400AD. Inside the caves were magnificent Buda’s, mostly life sized one over 36 meters tall.

 At one point James shared his personal feeling about what China is going through. He said that, “China is going through a big change, five years ago I could not say what I am about to say with out loosing my job or worse. All we used to know about the United States came to us through Radio Free Europe and much of it was censored. In the early 90’s the Chinese stopped censoring and we started to understand the Capitalist System. We recognized that your lives were better then ours and we needed to change, but we can’t change to fast or we will end up like Russia, and we don’t want that. The way we are changing now may be hard because we don’t have all the freedoms that you have, but we will and are children and grandchildren will.” Then he said something that set me back. “You have Jesus, we have Confuses. Confuses gives us guidance and from our families and ancestors we gain strength.”
The food here varies with each Providence, the North is salty, the East is sweet, the West is spicy, and the South is strange. This is what I was told by our Beijing guide. Each meal is served at a large round table seating nine, in the center is a Lazy Susan that the servers set bowls of food on and you take what you want and put it on your plate. The largest plate I have seen so far is 5 inches, between the small plates and chopsticks you don’t end up eating all that much. The food in Urumqi and Turpin was mostly lamb, chicken and fish (Carp, Yes brothers they eat carp) and a lot of vegetables and rice. It looks a lot like the Chinese food that you get in the US but the parts are all separate and you mix them together as you like. Here in Dunhuang, we’re eating more chicken, beef and pork.
I came to China wanting to get to know China, out here in inland China I think we are seeing China as few have, as we travel we are usually the only fifteen Caucasians among thousands of native people and tourists. (Two of our group are Chinese from San Francisco and one Taiwanese who now lives in Washington D.C.)
September 7: Last night we had the worst dinner so far. Michael one of the men in our group is a doctor, he was able to identify the knuckle sized meat in one dish as cartridge. He explained that the Chinese like to experiment with texture in their meals. I hope this trend doesn’t make it to the US. After dinner we attended a floorshow of Chinese music and dancing. It was put on by a troop of young Chinese girls and boys ranging in age from sixteen to eighteen; they were very professional the costumes were bright and flashy, and the girls were beautiful. The highlight for me was the girl with a thousand hands and the singing Chinese cowboy.

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Turpin, China

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

In Turpin we were able to see what I thought much of China would look like, stone and mud huts, people moving goods by donkey pulled carts or bicycle carts, women washing clothes in the stream, and poverty. After dinner eight of us left our castle like hotel, with brick walls and a marble driveway, and walked down the street past the surrounding huts to a village center in Turpin. This is where the city people meet to eat and socialize every night. The warm air was filled with the smell and smoke of the men cooking goat head, mutton, chickens, and vegetables over charcoal fires as more people arrived on their motorcycles and bikes. I talked with two young men; one was attending the University in Urumqi and the other in Shanghai and found them to be content with their lives but wishing to learn at the University and move to the big cities. One would be studying business and finance and the other information technology. I turned to find a gathering of people watching our conversation and straining to see the digital pictures that one of my companion was taking. An older man dressed in the traditional cap and heavy coat, even though it was 95 degrees at eight in the evening, wanted to touch me and have his picture taken with me. The young boys told him that the Americans would send him the picture over the internet. Jan, one of our group who speaks Chinese told me that the old man said, “I have a daughter, you marry and take to US with you.”
In the morning I could see and smell a wood smoke hanging over the city from our four story castle surrounded by tens of thousands mud huts cooking breakfast over an open fire, while off in a distance was a cell phone tower and high voltage power lines. We spent the afternoon at the Bizaklin Caves dating back to the 10th century. This is where the Buddhist Monks came to get their live in harmony before they pass on to the next existence. They were in a bad state of repair having been destroyed by Muslims when they invaded in the 13th Century.

The day ended with a visit to the Kerez Water System. In the 1400’s the Emperor decided that he needed to help the nomad people by creating an oasis in the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Tienson Mountain range. They knew that the melting snow from the mountains was creating underground streams, so they needed to find the streams and create a channel for the water to feed to the oasis. The Chinese men dug wells until they hit water, then turned their digging horizontal and continued to dig underground towards the waters source. Every 50 meters they would dig another well down to the water so as to make it easer the get the dirt out from the channel below. Where they started their digging near the future Oasis they were digging twenty meters down to find eater, by the time the reached the main source at the foot of the mountain they were eighty meters below ground level. This digging went on for two hundred years. When they were done they had over 5000 water sources, the longest being 12 miles the shortest a quarter of a mile. The Kerez Water System is still in use today providing water to grow grapes and meeting the people’s needs.

We boarded a train at 10:43 pm for an over night trip to Dunhuang, an eleven hour trip, I wouldn’t recommend it, but it was our only option.

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