China is a big country and over ~20 days I, along with eight others in our small tour group, covered a lot of ground. From Beijing to Hong Kong with many stops in between, including a couple days in Tibet, we journeyed together by bus, plane and boat through a wide variety of cities, geography, and culture. The tour covered most of the major places of interest and “things to see” in China; that is an advantage of booking with a tour company, they know where to go, how to get there, can sometimes bypass long lines and most importantly have a guide who can speak English and the native language. The downsides included being on their schedule, no real flexibility and sometimes you don’t spend enough time at a particularly interesting location because you need to move on to the next attraction, other times you stay too long, like in shopping areas. That was another big downside for me; shopping is always integrated into your itinerary and Chinese tourism in general. Yes it is interesting to see how silk is produced from worm to weave, how the terra cotta warriors were made from clay to kiln or learn to tell real jade stone from fake, but the time proportions are skewed in the wrong direction. You spend 15 minutes on the process and an hour or more in the stores, and on top of that are the various village markets you visit where they hawk everything from fake Rolexes to $1 t-shirts to a bag of ants, westernized shopping malls with Walmarts and the gauntlet of stalls, street vendors and beggars at every tourist attraction you stop. China is commerce and I understand that they are just trying to make a living, but it becomes tiresome after a while.
Another potential downside when booking a tour is that you never know how large the group will be or the type of characters it will attract. Since you are with these people 12-14 hours a day; 7 days a week; at breakfast, lunch, dinner and you can’t avoid them, one annoying personality could ruin the entire trip. Our group was small, 9 including me; and since they will be reading this, we got along fabulously….. seriously we did. If I get any of the facts wrong I’m sure they will correct me. Our assemblage consisted of two couples; Grace and Terry married 38 years from New York; Lily and Johan, Aussie’s from Sydney; two old friends travelling together, Anne from Oregon and Sue from California; and 3 lone voyagers, Anneliese from California; Jim from Florida, who as you know I met earlier in Fiji and is travelling around the world for a YEAR!; and me. We were lucky in many ways, because our group was so small the tour company did not provide us with a national guide, so we met local guides at each stop along the way giving us a more independent feel; our size allowed us to move quickly and efficiently; everyone was mature and respectful to show up on time ready to go, except once when Jim’s diving watch, affected by the altitude in Tibet, told him the time was 599 and he was 7 feet underwater, that was good for laughs; and everyone was healthy and fit enough to participate in all the activities, although the altitude in Tibet did present some challenges. I was fortunate to be part of the troupe.
We began in Beijing, a large, busy, haze filled city, as were most of the places we visited. You’ll note the miasma in many of the photos, it’s not a dirty lens. One guide tried to tell us it was not smog, but fog; if that is true then China is the foggiest country in the world because it’s everywhere. It was raining the day as we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The square is huge and surrounded by very large monuments, museums, Mao’s mausoleum and government buildings, all under the watchful eye of closed circuit TV. Unfortunately we did not visit any of these; to take it all in you would need a few days. We moved across the square to the Forbidden City and entered through the “Gate of Heavenly Peace” over which hangs a large picture of Chairman Mao; it’s the iconic image you always see when they show Beijing. The Forbidden City is an immense complex of 9999 rooms although the majority are not open to the public. We moved through the city rather quickly; this is one of the places we could have used more time. We then took bicycle driven rickshaws through the Hutongs to eat lunch in a local family home. The Hutong was the traditional style homes, alleys and neighborhoods of old Beijing. They were all knocked down and recreated in the same spots, as were many of the temples. Pagodas and other buildings we visited, so is it authentic……? The home and the family were real and the home-cooked food was great.
The next day we visited the Scared Way of the Ming Tombs, not the actual tombs themselves, just the long pathway leading towards the tombs. It was like a walk in a nice park with many stone statues along the way. After an obligatory visit to a jade store, we headed to the Mutienyu section of the great wall. Our tour of Beijing continued with a visit to the Temple of Heaven. In the morning the large “park” surrounding the temple was filled with people doing tai chi, dancing, performing different forms of exercise, chess, cards, and constantly trying to sell you stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to tell normal activity from commerce, for they are well connected. For example, you watch people playing a badminton type game with rackets and a somewhat heavy ball. They toss it back and forth with graceful tai chi like movements and you believe they are just getting some exercise. The next thing you know, they have you trying it and then want to sell you the equipment. It’s interesting in the subtlety. We breezed through the Summer Palace which again was like a walk in a very nice park with temples, pavilions and a large lake we rode across in a dragon boat. Then finished with a quick photo op at the “Bird’s Nest”, the stadium created for the 2008 Olympics, before heading to the airport.
From Beijing we flew to Xian, one of the many flights we would take over the course of three weeks. Xian is home to the famous terra cotta warriors. Of course we started with a visit to a terra cotta warrior workshop to see how the warriors are made and to pick up a few of our own to take home. The terra cotta warriors are a great archeological find and a very fascinating place to visit. Like the Great Wall, the scope is astounding. There are thousands of warriors, horses, and military commanders contained in three different “pits” excavated at the site; one for the infantry, one for the archers and the third a command post. Row upon row of individually sculptured clay soldiers stand in battle formation silently ready to defend the emperor from his enemies. They were built for the first emperor of China over 2000 years ago. Today they all look like reddish clay, but when created they were beautifully painted with vibrant colors which must have been quite a sight. Most were in pieces due to vandalism by the succeeding dynasty and the collapse of the roof structure that protected them when it was set afire. It’s amazing how the restorers put them back together from piles of fused clay pieces; about 1100 have been completed so far with enough work left to last a lifetime.
Food was included in our tour and meals were a great way for us to socialize and get to know one another better. That evening had a most fabulous dim sum dinner, seventeen courses of scrumptious dumplings; with each course the dough packet uniquely shaped to identify the delectable contents contained within its artistic gastronomic wrapping. It was probably the most delicious meal we had the entire trip. I’ve said it before that timing means a lot when travelling; be at the right place at the right time and your experience can be enhanced a thousand fold. If we had arrived at our hotel just three days earlier we could have witnessed the sudden collapse of a very large building across the street.
We finished our time in Xian with a trip to the Wild Goose Pagoda, a visit to the 7th century great mosque and walk through the Muslim Quarter. No minarets, but a mosque constructed in Chinese architecture with a large prayer room facing west, the direction of Mecca. The Muslim Quarter was a local neighborhood, full of life, with narrow streets, little shops, stores and street food vendors selling local dishes and delicacies with smells and aromas that would challenge the nose of a bloodhound. Lily bought some fried quail eggs on a stick and shared them; pretty tasty. Sure there was some of the typical touristy kitsch, but this area is frequented by the community and where they shop for much of their daily needs.
From Xian we flew to Guilin to visit the Dragon Spine rice terraces of Long Sheng and cruise the Li river. After breakfast I took a walk along the riverside and saw the usual morning exercise routines being performed by countless individuals; people swimming, bathing, fishing and doing laundry in the river; rafts made of bamboo and the modern counterpart made with PVC pipes bent at the ends in the same traditional manner as their wooden ancestors; and a lady walking her chickens. It was a 2 hour bus ride to the entrance for the Dragon Spine terraces, followed by a 40 minute, somewhat hair-raising, shuttle bus ride along a narrow, switchback road which brought us most way up the mountain. The rest of the way to the top would be by foot through several villages hugging the sides of the mountain slope. The women in this area have a tradition of only cutting their hair once when they are sixteen years old and save that hair, along with all the hair from the brushes they use throughout their lives. They wrap their long hair around their heads forming what you might call a hair hat. It’s very unique look. The villages are big on growing hot peppers, you can see them drying in the sun everywhere and can buy jars of them chopped up for making spicy dishes. Here you can also buy dried lizards, snakes and ants; all used for making wine. I saw the biggest bag of ants, in fact the only bag of ants, I’ve ever seen on our way to the top. We saw the ant wine being sold at the airport and tried the snake wine on our Li river boat trip; tasted like tequila only with a bigger worm. It was very hot and humid as we made our way to the top. You could have gotten a ride in a sedan chair like some colonial bureaucrat, hauled up the mountain by two sinewy porters, but that just seemed barbaric; although I did see one lady who seemed to be enjoying the ride; the men carrying her didn’t. There are also hotels in the villages where you can stay for days and hike the hills but the only way to get your luggage up there is by carrying it or more likely having one of the village people carry it for you. We saw several men carrying good sized pieces in baskets on their backs, but the one that stunned us all was the sight of a petite, old woman hauling a suitcase the size of a small refrigerator, or Brian’s London armoire (inside joke), up steps with an incline and at an altitude that left some folks just moving their body mass breathless. I felt sorry for her and embarrassed by the person who owned that anchor of a travel bag and had the nerve to let grandma tote it up the mountain for them. The view from the top provided a splendid view of the agricultural architecture of the step-like terraces.
We completed our stop in Guilin with a 50+ mile cruise down the serpentine Li river through Chinese topography of bamboo forests and towering peaks. The scenery is very beautiful even though there were about 20 large, diesel spewing riverboats moving like a conga line down the shallow meandering waterway spoiling the serenity of the space. Add to that the hundred other water craft; bamboo rafts, fishing boats and floating grocery delivery vessels, and you’ve got the marine equivalent of a ring road in Beijing. How come you never see that in the iconic images of China? Despite all that, the panoramas are amazing but unfortunately I think they will be lost forever due to overuse, lack of environmental controls and dubious conservation.
More on China to come. Next up Pandas and the Potala Palace.
Explore the world.
norb-posted by emelia
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