Well, I know that I just finished the China blog, but I better write a little about our trip to Malaysia. Otherwise it could be after Christmas before I get around to it!
Sometime last summer I was hunting around on the internet. I ended up on the Answers in Genesis website. I ordered a few books and then I saw an ad for the “All-Asia Creation Conference” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Well!”, I thought, “We could go up for that and see a little of Malaysia while we’re there. Could be fun.” So I signed us all up and Erin took the week off from work.
The conference started on Tuesday afternoon and ended Thursday at lunch. We decided to go up on Monday in order to have a little more time to tour around. So Monday lunchtime we got in the car and headed for the boarder. (No, unfortunately, there are no longer any Taco Bells in Singapore. Sigh.) We got through the Singapore checkpoint without any trouble. We drove across the bridge into Malaysia and arrived at the Malaysian checkpoint. This was our first encounter with the fact that Malaysia has FAR fewer signs in English than Singapore. We missed the fact that we were supposed to stop at this little bitty hut on the side of the road and pick up some immigration forms. Oops. Then we realized that we’d pulled into the lane for “Malaysian passports only”. Oops again! Boy were we starting to look like first-timers! (Lots and LOTS of people live in Malaysia and work in Singapore, so many many people cross this boarder daily.) But the young man at the window was very nice. (Also, we were almost the only car coming through there at lunchtime on Monday. We went through the less crowded checkpoint, not the ‘normal’ one.) He told us we could park alongside there and Erin walked back to the little hut and got the forms. So it took a little longer, and caused some chuckles from the staff, but we did get into Malaysia.
We stayed on the highway for several hours. Frankly, I’d heard so many things about Malaysia that I wasn’t expecting the road to be very good. But it was as smooth or smoother than any interstate (Mississippi and Louisiana not withstanding). So I was impressed.
I have to say, that if there is one thing that Americans are truly experts at, it has to be the family road trip. We can DO this! Before we left Singapore, I went down to Subway and bought us all a sandwich. We figured that Malaysia was like Singapore and hadn’t exactly caught on to the drive-through. I was right. They did have very nice rest areas with gas stations and restaurants and vending machines and prayer rooms (it’s a Muslim country – I think they’re government mandated). We’d been warned that Malaysia is much more high crime than Singapore. (A lady had recently been killed when a guy tried to snatch her purse but it didn’t come off over her head/shoulder and she was dragged under a car. We were told this was not uncommon and we shouldn’t even wear a bag out in pubic since tourists were such a target. Same person told us that when they were in a grocery store, the clerk was attacked by a machete-wielding thief.) So we were cautious about stopping at the smaller rest areas. Anyway, the rest area where we stopped was pretty nice except for the flies. Whoo! When we opened the car door several dozen flies came pouring in. It took us a long time to get all those flies out as we drove down the highway.
Well, before long we came to a toll plaza. We couldn’t read any of the signs, but we recognized the ‘car’ picture, so we took that lane. Turns out you have to have a “Touch and Go” card to proceed further. So we paid 5rm (Malaysian Ringgit) which is about $1.75 for the card and loaded it with 30 ringgit ($10) for the tolls ahead. That was fine for a while. We stopped for a 1.8 ringgit toll, and maybe another one. The Touch and Go system was fast and easy. But as we got close to Kuala Lumpur, we hit a toll plaza that had choices for the Touch and Go lanes. We never did figure out the difference. But that toll was 80 rm! ($25) oops. The lady had to come over and take some cash from us. Fortunately, we’d hit the atm at the rest area. We immediately pulled in to a gas station and topped up our TnG card. We had no idea if there were more $25 tolls ahead. Turns out you pay that when you come into the city, and again when you leave. The tolls inside the city were much cheaper- $.60 usually. So now we know, and now we have our little card, so we’re ready to go back. We even know about the little unmarked hut – so we’re pro’s. :-D
The gps took us right to our hotel. We were staying in the hotel that was hosting the conference. We lucked out and got adjoining rooms! Woo-hoo! That’s twice that has happened to us in Asia.
http://www.summithotelusj.com/index.php
The hotel is connected to a shopping mall. We decided that it was so close to suppertime that we didn’t want to go touring around in rush hour traffic. (It was bad.) So we checked in and then went over to the mall for supper. We looked around at the supper choices. Everything was so cheap!! The prices LOOKED like American prices – but they were in Ringgit. So a double cheeseburger meal at McDonald’s was 8Rm, but think about it – that’s $2.50! What?!? Light bulbs coming on about all our friends doing their shopping in Malaysia! So yes, we ended up eating at McDonald’s. I tried to talk them into eating at a local food place right next door to the McD’s but no. After supper we walked around the mall. We tried to find A. some dress pants because he’s growing out of his and we haven’t found any for normal price in Singapore. (I could go to a dept. store and pay $100 – yeah. Right.) No luck on that. H. and I did find some really nice skirts and dresses. It was wonderful to shop in a Muslim country because most of the clothing was modest! Woo-Hoo. We each bought like 6 or 7 skirts and I got 2 dresses. The skirts we bought were in the $10 price range and the dresses were $20. Wow. O. found a shirt he liked – it was a Germany polo shirt. He really likes that shirt.
Anyway, we shopped ‘till the boys were ready to drop. Then we went back to the hotel.
The next morning we got up and decided to go visit the Batu Caves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batu_Caves
We turned on the gps and didn’t really anticipate much trouble finding this major tourist destination. Well, I didn’t anticipate trouble. Erin had been told that K-L and gps don’t mix. It wasn’t easy. First of all, the map, the gps, and the actual road signs almost NEVER agreed on the name of the road. Granted, we don’t read Malay, but the names weren’t even close! The gps thought we were on E5, the map said halaysemsia or something, and the road sign said Jalan Malalalalalal (Yeah, I’m making that up.) We eventually just went by the picture on the gps. That mostly worked, but it was still frustrating because the gps would say to keep right, but there was no road in the real world that corresponded to the picture on the gps. But we got close enough that we could see signs pointing to Batu Caves, and then I saw this HUGE cliff and just drove towards it.
The base of the area was covered in tourist shops. Then there’s a long path with (pigeon poo covered) handrails that leads to the bottom of the stairs. I guess the path is for the festival days when the place is very crowded. It wasn’t that crowded when we were there, so we just walked right through. One nice thing is that the caves are free. But you have to climb the 272 steps to get to the top. It really wasn’t too bad. There were lots of monkeys around to distract you from the climb. At the top, you enter the first cave, which is huge. It’s more like stadium-size than cave-size. Inside there are more tourist shops and some stairs leading down. You go down and cross 50 yards or so and then up another set of stairs to get to the back of the cave. In the back there is a Hindu temple. But if you can block out the Hindu stuff and the tourist junk and just focus on the cave itself, it’s really cool. I’ve never seen anything like it.
On the way back down, we saw a sign for the “Dark Cave”. Ooh, that could be fun. So we decided to check it out. We just barely had time to take the 45 min. tour and make it back to the hotel in time for the start of the Creation Conference. The tour guide issued us all a mini flashlight and we proceeded into the cave. You could smell the bats from the entrance. She said that’s how the cave was discovered – an American guy (no less!) found the caves in the 1800’s. (K-L didn’t really exist until the 1800’s when tin was found there and mining began.) So we stayed on the guano-free path through the cave. (It was covered in places to keep you from being uh… rained on.) One room had a lot of roaches. I was wearing sandals. Hmmmm. Not my favorite part, but I kept my light on the path and managed not to get crawled on. Yea. We didn’t actually get to see a trap-door spider. I was disappointed about that, but we didn’t have time to do the scientific tour of the back part of the cave (you have to reserve in advance and it involves crawling for like a half a mile). We did see some cool formations and centipedes that you can only see in the Batu Caves. Their scientific name includes ‘batuense’ – so they are ONLY there. Cool.
Well, we had to rush out after the tour. We didn’t even have time to shop!! But with the road signs and gps, we barely got back to the hotel before the conference started.
I won’t go into too much detail on the Conference – but it was very good. Ken Ham is the guy who made the Creation Museum and basically started the Answers in Genesis group. Some of his main points are that while evolutionists accuse us of having a pre-determined ‘starting point’ (which we do and shouldn’t deny – it’s the Word of God), evolutionists also have a pre-determined starting point – millions of years. Most evolutionists are not willing to give up this pre-determined thinking no matter what evidence is shown. (“Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.” That’s our favorite quote, and Mr. Ham can say it really really fast.) We saw several presentations with proof for creation from biology. The speakers were very good. We ended up buying several books, including a pre-packaged box. The prices were much cheaper than even in the U.S. and no shipping! Woot! One night there was a very interesting guy:
http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/travel/fastest_time_to_visit_245_countries_Benny_Prasad_set_world_record_112047.html
http://bennyprasad.com/artist/pressrelease/index.html
We didn’t sit in on all the sessions of the conference – particularly the “creation ministry in Korea” and a couple of others. We knew the kids just couldn’t handle that much sitting. So we tried to swim in the hotel pool, but it was storming. We ended up going back over to the mall and doing some book shopping. The prices were comparable to US prices for books, but that made them a bargain for Singaporeans – and no shipping! So we bought the latest installments for the 39Clues, Brisinger, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and a lot more. It’s a good thing there’s no such thing as ‘book smuggling’ or we’d be in jail forever – We took back so many books from K-L!!
The food at the hotel was so-so. I’ve had much better Malay food here in Singapore. So we ended up eating at the KFC one meal, and at the mall restaurant for another meal.
Thursday morning, we went to the first session of the conference and then drove over to the Petronas Towers. This was the main tourist attraction in K-L for Erin and me, and probably the kids too. For six years they were the tallest buildings in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Towers
We had almost as much trouble with the gps that day as we had on Tuesday. But the good news was, the towers are visible from very very far away, so we knew when we were headed in the right direction. We eventually made it. BUT, the towers were temporarily closed to tourists. WAH!!!! Bummer!!! Now we have to go back. ☺
The towers sit on top of a large mall. Inside the mall is a Petronas (btw Petronas is an oil company) Science Center. H.’s friends had told her not to miss it, so we got some lunch at Pizza Hut (yes, they have Papa John’s in K-L, but we just weren’t up for THAT adventure again!!). After a small lunch (we all split a medium pizza – so no one got full), we decided to do a ‘dessert tour’ to sort of reward the kids for their excellent behavior during the conference. We each had a donut and some gelato. Later the kids and Erin topped it all off with an Auntie Anne’s pretzel. Then we went up to the museum. The kids are still going on and on about how we have to go back and spend more time in that museum. I didn’t think it was much better than the Singapore Science Center, but apparently they did. It was very hands on. Part of my problem was that evidently about 5 hours earlier I’d gotten hold of some local water. So I got the grand tour of the museum’s bathrooms. Not very fun. As we were coming out of the museum we could see the skies turning black. We grabbed some sandwiches for the trip home and ran for the car. Sure enough, a monsoon sat in and we drove the first two hours home (It takes about 5 hours total.) in pouring rain. We re-negotiated the $25 toll and re-entered Singapore around 9 p.m. We were all worn-out, but we had a fun trip and learned some new stuff in the process.
Friday, November 25, 2011
China -Part 3 The conclusion!
O.k. I’m finally sitting down to finish this blog – it’s the day after Thanksgiving!
So on Monday, October 17, we finished our tour of Chongqing and boarded the President No.2 ship.
http://www.yangtze-river-cruises.com/ships/president-no2.html
In Chongqing there is a host of men called ‘stick men’ who will carry your luggage for you. I’d say 90% of these guys are what we’d call retirement age or more – much more. Most of them use a pole across their shoulders and put one suitcase hanging from each end of their pole. They must be very very strong to carry this stuff up the hills of Chongqing!! Our guide warned us that these guys could be very insistent, so we let him do the bargaining for us. He also told us not to relinquish our backpacks and small things to them, or they’d try to charge us a fortune for those. We went through the gate and boarded a small cable car. It was basically a cable car-type car, but it was on rails on the ground, not suspended from overhead wires. The floor of the car stayed level while the car moved down the sloped bank of the river. Everything went smoothly and all our luggage arrived on board before we did. We got our room situation all sorted out. The rooms were actually larger than what I’d expected for a tourist cruise ship. We ended up paying a little more to get a large room for the boys so they’d have room to walk around the mattress on the floor. (The rooms had either a double bed, or 2 twin beds.) Our rooms were next door to one another, but not adjoining.
The boat itself was pretty nice. My overall opinion of it is that 15 years ago it was REALLY nice. But in between now and then it hasn’t had a lot of re-decorating or maintenance. It wasn’t worth complaining about, but it wasn’t exactly the 4 star interior that they advertised. The crew was fabulous and more than made up for the tired interior. Each day we received a printed itinerary listing the activities on the boat as well as the optional shore excursions. The paper always said in bold print, “Don’t buy poor quality food and drinks from vendors ashore.” I mean, just because they’re less than half what you’d pay on the boat doesn’t make them poor quality. A can of coke is the same, right? Several of the Chinese passengers bought fruit ‘ashore’ anyway. We had our lime sherbert ice cream oreos to fall back on. –At least till we opened them and realized how gross they were.
A word about the Yangtze River: It is the third longest river in the world and is about 4 thousand miles long. It is only called the “Yangtze River” by foreigners. The Chinese call it Chang Jiang. One theory on why we call it the Yangtze, is that there was a mix up when Westerners asked the name of the River. The interpreter thought they were asking about a village. So we call the river by the name of the village those guys were looking at. Oh well. No wonder they think we’re a little “different”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_River
The first night, we walked around the ship exploring and then went to bed, tired. We wanted to stay up and watch the lights on shore slip past, but we were beat. In one day we’d toured a bit of Xian, flown to Chongqing, toured Congqing for half a day, and boarded the boat. I think we all slept well. ☺
Tuesday, October 18: We woke up to find that the boat had stopped moving. When we looked out the window, all we could see was the side of the next tourist boat. We had stopped at the “ghost town” of Fengdu. My first thoughts on seeing the river in daylight were “it’s pretty brown and has a lot of trash in it.” Not exactly romantic. We went down to breakfast, which was a buffet. It was a good mix of Western and Eastern foods. We all got plenty to eat. At the end of the buffet they even had some little cookies. I guess they figured Westerners eat a lot of sweets, so they probably like them at breakfast too.
After breakfast we got in our groups for the shore excursion. They grouped us by our travel companies. So we were in a group with all the other Travel China Guide customers who spoke English. We were a group of 15 or so and we had our own shore guide.
The shore guide led us off the boat and up the steps on the bank of the river. There was another cable car there. But it wasn’t necessary, because the river is now high enough that there aren’t very many stairs to get to the top.
Maybe this is a good place to talk about the changes in the river over the last 10 years. Most people have heard of the Three Gorges Dam Project. This is very controversial outside of China. In China, you don’t find a lot of people who will speak out against it. Maybe because it’s a communist country and bad things can happen to you if you oppose the government too vocally, but it seemed like most people just didn’t care one way or another. Some facts: China is becoming more and more technology dependant. We’re talking about millions and millions of people needing electricity. Right now, the skies in China’s big cities are very terribly polluted from the coal power plants. So getting electricity from hydro power seems like a great idea. And it is. But there are down sides – big down sides. 1.3 million people were displaced when the waters rose behind the dam. That’s a LOT of people. Also, China’s dam failure rate is much higher than the rest of the world. Let’s hope this one is well built!! Of course everything we heard was positive: “Look at the new village of XYZ, isn’t it nice how the government built all those new houses for those people? Such a pretty new town!” In fact, they did get nice new houses out of the deal, and the towns were probably a lot nicer than what they had. BUT what about the history of your family being in that town 40ft. under water? The waters covered a LOT of history and beauty. I can’t attest to what is under the water, but it was very clear that the height of the river was a new thing that everyone was still getting used to.
Anyway, we went up the stairs and walked a bit to the gates of Fengdu. Then we boarded a tram (think parking lot tram at Disney World or Dollywood) that took us halfway up the hill. Clearly, they are used to fat and/or old American tourists. The expectation was that we would have to go pretty slowly up the hill. I’m proud to say the Percells (even the little one) made it with no problems. Several people in our group were griping about the steep hill. Wah for them.
Once we were up the hill, we entered Fengdu proper. This is the place the Chinese say your spirit comes to after you die in order to be judged. We didn’t see any spirits around there, only tourists. (I doubt the spirits buy as many souvenirs….) Anyway, there are some cool temples and statues up there. Our guide told us that there are three tasks to complete on the way into the temple. I think if you do well on all three it proves you’re a worthy person. The first task was to properly cross a bridge. You were to cross the bridge in 3 or 5 steps. If you were a married person, you should cross with your spouse in the required number of steps while holding hands. Girls start with left foot and boys start with right foot (or maybe the other way around) I think this is to cement your marriage for all eternity or something. The picture is worth a thousand words. You’ve got me chuckling at the idea of the whole thing, Erin looks like he’s about to roll his eyes (he wasn’t, he just didn’t realize there was a camera), and the ‘ancient guard’ with the fan who looks so thrilled to be there. LOL.
The second task was to step over a door frame without touching it. I was busy taking pictures during the explanation, so I didn’t hear all of it, but we all succeeded at that one too. (A. claims he intentionally failed all three tasks just to be ornery. I don’t remember.) The third task was to balance on a small stone for three seconds. It was fairly easy unless your foot was bigger than the stone (i.e. all the grown-ups).
After the ‘tests’ we entered into the temple. Sure enough, there a few Chinese people in there praying to the ‘gods’. There were some colorful statues in there, and we enjoyed looking around. I missed the intended exit, so I didn’t see the ‘torture chamber’ where the evil spirits meet their doom. Erin and H. said it was pretty gruesome. After the tour, we made our way back down the hill and through the line of gift shops. H. walked away from a medium-good deal on a very cool dragon kite because she truly didn’t have that much money. The guy ended up chasing her down to give her a better deal. So she got to protect that kite for the rest of the trip (it was too fragile to put in the suitcase). It was worth it though, because it is really cool. AND she got a good deal on it. It looks good hanging in her room.
We got back on the boat, and sailed on down the river. We had an excellent lunch – all the food on the boat was good. They brought out several courses of all sorts of excellent Chinese dishes. We got full at every meal onboard the ship! We were seated with 7 other China Travel Guide customers. We enjoyed getting to meet other folks from the US, Australia, and Germany.
The next stop was for an optional tour of the Shi Bao Zhai Pagoda. H. and I decided to try it, but the boys had clearly had enough pagodas. H. and I were the only English speakers going on this optional tour, so we had our own private tour guide. ☺ We got off the boat and walked up to the gate of the new town. It was neat to walk through one of the newly built towns. The government had done a good job laying out the town. They had a nice new community center and several other ‘gathering places’ for the residents. In fact, it looked like more ‘town’ than the current population required. There were some displays there that we stopped to look at. One of them had some Chinese currency from the Chiang Kai Shek era. Note that it was printed in the U.S.
The government also had to build a large retaining wall around the base of the island that the Shi Bao Zhai Pagoda sits on. Otherwise, the water would flood the base and bottom floors of the pagoda and most likely wash it away. Climbing up the pagoda was not easy. Parts of the climb were vertical. For the top floor there was a ladder. The top floor could only hold about 4 or 5 people comfortably. But you really can’t tell that from the penultimate floor. So after we got up there, people just kept climbing up. The Chinese people up there with us were telling them ‘no more room’, but they came on anyway. It was like being in an elevator. Finally someone got the message and we could start to work our way down. We made our way back to the boat just in time for supper. Supper/Dinner that night was the “Captain’s Welcome Reception” which makes it sound like a big deal. Everyone had a complimentary glass of wine at their seat. The captain came in and made a toast, but we just toasted with our water – the waitress thought we were quite strange. :-P Anyway, the poor captain! You could tell he was uncomfortable being in the dining room with all the customers. They made him pose with each group. (When it was our group’s turn, several other tourists came up to snap a picture of our group. I’m certain that it was the Car Wreck effect in action because the little car wrecks were the only kids onboard and ours was the only group that other people wanted photos of.) Anyway, the Captain’s expression was clearly, “I’d rather be back on the bridge!” But he did smile and shake hands with everyone. The crew did a short show including a funny skit about a fake statue. The kids loved it. They also did some traditional Chinese dancing. I sort of felt sorry for the dancers. They were college-age kids trying to make some money on a tourist boat and as part of the deal they had to dress up in these ancient (but kinda goofy to a college kid) outfits and dance for a bunch of old fogey tourists. It made it a little better that most of the old fogeys were Chinese old fogeys but still. You could tell that the boys were not really getting into the dancing thing.
After the show we went back to our rooms and hit the sack.
Wednesday, October 19: There was another optional tour this morning, but we all decided to stay on board. One of the best parts about cruising down the river was the slow pace. There were many hours of just relaxing on the deck watching the scenery go by. Of course we couldn’t do that when we were docked, but it was nice to have a morning with no plans. It was a welcome break from the rush-rush of touring Beijing and Xian. Shortly before lunch, the announcement came on that we were about to enter the first of the three gorges. This one is called “Qutang Gorge”. I have no idea how beautiful it was before the dam, but it was certainly beautiful enough for us!! Unfortunately, it started to rain right as we were sailing into the gorge. It didn’t matter to me though. I put my rain jacket on and went out to take pictures. It was pretty cold standing out there in the wind and rain, so after a while it DID start to matter and I came inside to take more pictures. My pictures aren’t very good because of the weather (the ones I took inside have the reflection of the lamps on the windows), so check out the pictures here:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/picture/yangtze/qutang_gorge/:
We heard that before the dam, sailing through the gorges was tricky. But our trip through was very smooth. Or else the captain was just that good. But it looked like smooth and easy sailing. We really enjoyed the scenery in spite of the weather. Well, most of us did. At one point I looked inside to see the boys sitting at a table playing Nintendo. I had to put a stop to that! They were not so happy. They said, “It’s a mountain, mom”. I said, “Yes. It is, and I’m not bringing you back to see it, so you better enjoy it the first time!”
After we’d passed through the Qutang Gorge, there was a scheduled demonstration of Chinese painting and calligraphy. H. and I went in to watch. The man did an excellent finger painting in about 10 minutes. It was really cool. Then he did some calligraphy based on the character for dragon. He drew it in five different styles of writing from most ancient to modern. After the demonstration, I bought his ‘sample’ for $15. I thought it was a steal! I had it framed after we got home. Like I said before, I know just enough about calligraphy to know how difficult it is. This guy wrote this like it was nothing. I’m so impressed. Another day H. and I went to a demonstration of snuff bottle painting. This is such a unique thing. The girl painted the bottles from the inside! She has special brushes because they have to fit through the narrow neck of the bottle. These things were beautiful. I wish I could’ve afforded more. I bought one small bottle that is actually a toothpick holder. It has a wider mouth than the others, but it is still cool. Check out some pictures here:
http://www.chinasnuffbottle.com/snuff-bottle/snuff-bottle-products/snuff-bottle-firstgrade-2.htm
Not long after Qutang Gorge, you come to the second gorge, Wu Gorge. I don’t have my pictures labeled, so I honestly don’t know one gorge from the next. But here are some pictures online:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/river/yangtze_attraction/wu_gorge.htm
After Wu Gorge we had lunch and then the boat stopped at Badong for an excursion down the Shennong Stream. First we got on a ferry boat and rode for an hour or so down the side stream. It was very beautiful scenery – at least as good as the gorges. The ferry had a couple of little shops on board – little souvenirs and some snacks. The souvenir shop lady had her son with her. He looked like he was about 3. At first he was very shy. I don’t think he’d seen a lot of Westerners before. But eventually my kids were able to coax him out from behind the counter to play. He still got kind of skittish if I looked at him, but he was willing to play with the kids. They all really enjoyed making him smile or laugh. The ferry dropped us off at the sampan dock where we were loaded on the little boats. We took a sampan upstream for about 30 more minutes. There were four guys rowing and one man handling the tiller. When we got near the turn around point, two of the men rowing our boat jumped out and pulled our boat from the shore for a while. Before the river rose so much, this area was full of rapids. It was necessary then to pull the boats from the shore. I’m not sure why they do it now, except that it’s a tourist photo op. I don’t know about you, but many times I feel kinda weird when people do unnecessary and difficult things just so tourists can take pictures. These guys were already working up a good sweat by rowing us up the river. At least it wasn’t summer time. In the summer time they wear only loin cloths. Ewwww. I bought a set of postcards of the scenery – but one of the postcards is a (from behind) picture of the loin-cloth-toting rowers pulling the boat on the shore…
On the way back downstream to the sampan dock, our boat was passed by the boat behind us. It quickly became a contest to see which boat would get back first. Our guys were giving them a run for their money when one of ‘our’ oars snapped in half! Got to give them an A for effort!
Clearly we didn’t win the race, but we still got back to the ferry in a timely manner. ☺ Back on the Ferry I tried again to get a good picture of the scenery as we went back downstream. One of the interesting things I tried to photograph was this “hanging” coffin. This picture is MUCH better than mine:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&gid=685&pid=34754&orderby=dateD
In fact, I couldn’t see it that well with my own eyes. My pictures turned out so blurry, I’m not even going to put them on FB.
After the Shennong Stream excursion, our cruise ship pulled away from Badong and we headed for the third gorge. But first we would have our supper aka “The Captain’s Farewell Banquet” which was exactly like the “Captain’s Welcoming Dinner” the night before – except the food was different. The Captain came in and made a short speech and then was allowed to go back to driving the boat. After supper we had the ‘talent show’. When the talent show idea first came up the kids were all excited about joining. Well, the boys were all excited. No way was H. going to participate! A. wanted to tell some jokes. O. wasn’t real sure he wanted to be in it, so at some point I told him that if he would do his Kung Fu, I would read a poem in 6 languages. Apparently he thought that was a good idea. So for the talent show, a couple of other passenger groups got up and did some Kareoke. Then our family had a turn. Erin helped A. do a short skit which was well received by the English speakers. (The crew’s translator missed some of the punch line, so I don’t think the Chinese speakers got it.) Then O. did his Kung Fu routine. This is what the crowd had come to see – cute kid doing martial arts. They went nuts. Here was a Car Wreck on stage!!! The flashes from the cameras were constant. The Chinese and Western passengers applauded like mad. The girl organizing the show had some clue that this would be popular, because when we went to sign up, she said, “Can you do more than just 3-5 minutes?” So O. decided to combine the one routine that he knows with the first part of the routine he’s learning, then he repeated the first routine. When it came to the part of the routine where he does the cartwheel there was much “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing from the audience. (Honestly, his cartwheel is neither “ooh” nor “ahh” worthy – yet.) Well, after that ‘bringing down the house’ performance, it was time for the fascinating poetry reading. [sarcasm!] I had bought a book of Chinese poems in Beijing and I translated one of the shorter poems into French, Spanish, and German (the book had it in Chinese and English). Then for fun, I also re-wrote it into “East Tennessean”. I read all 6 versions. The English speakers liked the “East Tennessean” version – especially my kids, so that made it worth it.
I had just gotten over being nervous about all that when the talent show was over and the crew said it was time for some games. The night before we’d seen a game of musical chairs for the passengers. They chose a mix of Chinese and Westerners for the game. It came down to One Western guy, One Western woman, and one Chinese woman. Then the Western woman volunteered her seat to the Chinese woman so she’d be out. That left the Western man and the Chinese woman. The music stops and for 45 hilarious seconds each tried to get the other to take the chair. It was the most fun game of musical chairs I’ve ever seen! Eventually the woman “won” the ‘no, you take it’ because the man took the chair. Great fun.
Well tonight the game was ‘chop stick skills’. Guess who got picked? Yeah. Me. Apparently I’m pretty intimidating as a chop stick user, because the next few people chosen refused to leave their chairs. Finally another Western woman agreed to take me on. The contest involved moving slick flat-sided marble pieces (think Pente playing pieces – but flat on both sides) from one bowl to another bowl 15 feet away with also slick chop sticks. I did o.k. – I moved about 8 pieces and then my nervousness combined with my neurological tremors took over and I couldn’t pick up any more pieces. It’s a shame, because the other woman beat me by 4 I think. As it turns out, the prize was a big cocktail drink. So I’m quite happy to lose on that one!! ☺
Next they put on some music and tried to encourage people to get up and dance. They had songs like the chicken dance and hokey pokey. Finally when they put the limbo music on, O. and A. decided to join in. O. said, “It’s just lame that NO ONE is dancing!” A. did a perfect knee slide under the bar that made the crowd cheer. A couple of the teenage boys from the crew did a good job of getting under the bar in the correct way.
They played a few more songs and then I looked up and saw concrete buildings close by and said, “Ooh, I think we’re going into the locks!” So we all ran up to the top deck to take pictures. It was so neat to float into the lock above the street lamps and then sink down to 30 feet below them. It was also fun to see the huge doors open and close. They had a neat system for tying the ships to the side of the lock. The guys would toss a loop around the peg which was recessed in the wall of the lock, then as the water went down, the peg would also float(?) down, so that the tension on the rope remained constant. We stayed up on deck through the first two or three locks. They told us it would take 3 hours to go all the way through and we were pretty tired. I finally went down to bed around 11p.m. (Yes, if you know me, you know I must’ve really enjoyed going through the locks to stay up that late.)
Thursday, October 20: The next morning we went on our shore excursion to the Three Gorges Dam. When I was looking for a tour of China I asked Erin what he wanted to see in China. He said, “I’m sure I’ll like whatever you pick, but if we could, I’d like to see the dam.” Well, that’s the first time he’s EVER shown any advanced interest in seeing anything in any country we’ve visited. So I made sure we had a chance to see it. (Don’t get me wrong, he enjoys seeing the things that we get to see, it’s just that he’s not picky about what we go visit.) Erin clearly enjoyed the locks and the dam. You don’t get to actually walk on the dam itself or go inside it, but it was fun to go look at it up close. You could walk to the top of a little hill for a bird’s eye view. From up there you could see the dam, the locks, and the ship elevator that they’re still working on. Even for a non-engineer it was very cool. The whole dam is like a mile and ½ long (7,766 ft.) so with the fog it was difficult to see the end of it.
After the dam, we went back to the ship and entered the third gorge, XiLing Gorge. This one was very nice. Then we ate lunch and quickly packed up our bags. After lunch we disembarked at YiChang (population 4.15 million). Our guide picked us up and we drove to the Yi Chang museum. Frankly, by this time even I was getting a little tired of ancient Chinese artifacts. Which is sad, because the little museum had a good collection. They were even selling some of the real deals in the gift shop (with govt. permission) to fund the museum. I couldn’t afford any, but they were neat none-the-less. On the way to the Yi Chang airport, our guide did his best to show us interesting things about his hometown. But 4 of us went to sleep in the van! I forced myself to stay awake. It wasn’t easy because we had all stayed up past our bedtimes the night before and we’d already been touring ½ the day. The guide said that this was normal for the groups getting off the boats. Everyone is tired from going through the locks the night before. He was a very nice guy. He showed us pictures of his little girl.
So we caught our flight to Shanghai (population over 23 million!). Our new guide, (can’t remember her name right now), picked us up at the airport and took us straight to the hotel. Boy did the guys luck out! Their room was huge! The girls’ room wasn’t shabby by any means, but not huge. We stayed at the Ya Fan Long Men Hotel. http://www.bwlongmen.com/en/index.htm
Once again, we asked the guide if there was a Papa John’s in Shanghai. She said, Oh sure there’s one at an area called “Xian Tian Di”. So we took a taxi there and walked around. Trust me, there’s no Papa John’s there. We asked a couple of times, but no one acted like they’d even HEARD of Papa John’s. It was a much more swanky part of town than you’d think a Papa John’s would be in, so we weren’t very surprised. So, we took a taxi back to the hotel. –Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Apparently, the taxis aren’t allowed to take 5 passengers at a time. The first one didn’t seem to mind, but the second guy was ready to refuse to take us when he saw O. getting in on my lap. Erin pulled the “what? I’m a stupid tourist and don’t understand why you’re objecting” card (“yes, 5, we have 5 people, we need to go to …..” which worked, although the driver grumped about it more than once. We weren’t really ready to split up in such an unfamiliar city. We got back to the hotel, and the girls just didn’t care about food anymore, we just wanted to sleep. The boys ordered some room service. They ordered pasta which turned out to have mushrooms in it, so they didn’t enjoy it as much as they’d hoped. So we all went to bed feeling defeated by Papa John’s once again. Sigh.
Friday, October 21: Our last full day in China. We started out at the Shanghai Museum. It was a cool museum, and another one of those places that I’d liked to have had a whole day to explore. It was divided into rooms for porcelain, bronze, coins, silk, etc. We only had about 2 hours there, so we only saw a few rooms. Even though I was kinda tired of ancient Chinese artifacts, I still enjoyed the museum. After that we went to lunch at a Western buffet. I didn’t enjoy that as much as the kids did, but they had an excellent dessert buffet. Here’s the quote from the itinerary:
A luxurious western buffet lunch will be
specially served for you today, since we believe that you may
have quite enjoyed the Chinese food during the tour and begin
to miss your western meal.
This was simply untrue. I asked the guide if we could go to a Chinese restaurant, and she replied that this meal was already paid for at this restaurant. Bummer. The kids enjoyed it, so it was o.k. Now that I’m back in Singapore, I really miss the Chinese food we had there. I’ve got to get out and find some places here that are as good. It’s hard though, because everything here is primarily seafood.
After lunch we went to the YuYuan Gardens. This place was awesome. I really loved the architecture. The place was designed by a man in the late 1800’s to honor his parents. Clearly he had a lot of money. I really wanted to stay in this area much longer. Not only were the gardens very very cool, but there was a restaurant there that my Chinese teacher had recommended (She knows how I love the steamed bau!). Also, the shopping was cheap cheap and not fancy – i.e. right up our alley!! But alas, our schedule didn’t permit us to stay as long as we’d like. I’d like to go back, though!
Next we went over to the Bund area. We walked along the river looking at the architecture. This is the area of the ‘International Settlement’ that was THE place in the world to be during the 1920’s. Having read a history of the Opium wars, I had some interest in seeing some of the buildings. We didn’t take time to see all the ones that I wanted to see, but again, we didn’t have time. Next time! ☺
By then, it was 5 p.m. – quittin’ time for our driver. So he dropped us off at a mall where our guide ASSURED us there was absolutely 100% certain a Papa John’s Pizza restaurant. In fact, she took us down there herself! Hooray!!!! Finally we scored some Papa John’s!!! Woo-Hoo!! It’s not a myth! They do actually serve yummy yummy pizza in China. We invited our guide to join us and she did. We’re glad she did, because there was some confusion about the garlic/butter sauce. We did eventually get some, though. She thought it was weird. I guess only foreigners ask for the sauce. ☺ We had enough leftovers that we took nearly an entire pizza back to the hotel. But it wasn’t from lack of trying! Before we went back to the hotel, our guide had gotten us some tickets to the acrobatic show. I’d seen some Chinese acrobats perform at a circus, or on t.v., but this show was a modern twist on the traditional show. I thought they did an excellent job. We weren’t allowed to take pictures. This video is very similar to one segment of the show. The show we saw they had four or five poles, so more guys were up in the air at one time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HT-sYnGILE&feature=related
The guys in the video may well be the same ones we saw. The theater looks very similar. They also had trampoline artists and unicyclists, and all sorts of other acrobats. It was an excellent way to end our time in China.
After the show, we went out and caught a cab (no questions about 5 people) back to the hotel.
Full of Papa John’s pizza and happy from the acrobat show, we all slept happily. Ahhhh.
The next morning we woke up and I nearly cried at the prospect of having to throw away our leftover Papa John’s. I really really tried to eat some for breakfast, but cold pizza (no microwave) just isn’t my thing at 7 a.m. I ate one piece and then gave up. Sigh. Ah well. It was still worth it. ☺
The guide picked us up at 8 a.m. or so and we went to the airport to catch our plane back to Singapore. Yes, the girls and Dad got their Dunkin’ Donuts upon landing.
So, if you ever do get to go to China, I highly recommend “China Travel Guide”. Their prices were comparable, and the service was excellent. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed the entire trip. We all agreed it was our best family vacation ever.
So on Monday, October 17, we finished our tour of Chongqing and boarded the President No.2 ship.
http://www.yangtze-river-cruises.com/ships/president-no2.html
In Chongqing there is a host of men called ‘stick men’ who will carry your luggage for you. I’d say 90% of these guys are what we’d call retirement age or more – much more. Most of them use a pole across their shoulders and put one suitcase hanging from each end of their pole. They must be very very strong to carry this stuff up the hills of Chongqing!! Our guide warned us that these guys could be very insistent, so we let him do the bargaining for us. He also told us not to relinquish our backpacks and small things to them, or they’d try to charge us a fortune for those. We went through the gate and boarded a small cable car. It was basically a cable car-type car, but it was on rails on the ground, not suspended from overhead wires. The floor of the car stayed level while the car moved down the sloped bank of the river. Everything went smoothly and all our luggage arrived on board before we did. We got our room situation all sorted out. The rooms were actually larger than what I’d expected for a tourist cruise ship. We ended up paying a little more to get a large room for the boys so they’d have room to walk around the mattress on the floor. (The rooms had either a double bed, or 2 twin beds.) Our rooms were next door to one another, but not adjoining.
The boat itself was pretty nice. My overall opinion of it is that 15 years ago it was REALLY nice. But in between now and then it hasn’t had a lot of re-decorating or maintenance. It wasn’t worth complaining about, but it wasn’t exactly the 4 star interior that they advertised. The crew was fabulous and more than made up for the tired interior. Each day we received a printed itinerary listing the activities on the boat as well as the optional shore excursions. The paper always said in bold print, “Don’t buy poor quality food and drinks from vendors ashore.” I mean, just because they’re less than half what you’d pay on the boat doesn’t make them poor quality. A can of coke is the same, right? Several of the Chinese passengers bought fruit ‘ashore’ anyway. We had our lime sherbert ice cream oreos to fall back on. –At least till we opened them and realized how gross they were.
A word about the Yangtze River: It is the third longest river in the world and is about 4 thousand miles long. It is only called the “Yangtze River” by foreigners. The Chinese call it Chang Jiang. One theory on why we call it the Yangtze, is that there was a mix up when Westerners asked the name of the River. The interpreter thought they were asking about a village. So we call the river by the name of the village those guys were looking at. Oh well. No wonder they think we’re a little “different”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_River
The first night, we walked around the ship exploring and then went to bed, tired. We wanted to stay up and watch the lights on shore slip past, but we were beat. In one day we’d toured a bit of Xian, flown to Chongqing, toured Congqing for half a day, and boarded the boat. I think we all slept well. ☺
Tuesday, October 18: We woke up to find that the boat had stopped moving. When we looked out the window, all we could see was the side of the next tourist boat. We had stopped at the “ghost town” of Fengdu. My first thoughts on seeing the river in daylight were “it’s pretty brown and has a lot of trash in it.” Not exactly romantic. We went down to breakfast, which was a buffet. It was a good mix of Western and Eastern foods. We all got plenty to eat. At the end of the buffet they even had some little cookies. I guess they figured Westerners eat a lot of sweets, so they probably like them at breakfast too.
After breakfast we got in our groups for the shore excursion. They grouped us by our travel companies. So we were in a group with all the other Travel China Guide customers who spoke English. We were a group of 15 or so and we had our own shore guide.
The shore guide led us off the boat and up the steps on the bank of the river. There was another cable car there. But it wasn’t necessary, because the river is now high enough that there aren’t very many stairs to get to the top.
Maybe this is a good place to talk about the changes in the river over the last 10 years. Most people have heard of the Three Gorges Dam Project. This is very controversial outside of China. In China, you don’t find a lot of people who will speak out against it. Maybe because it’s a communist country and bad things can happen to you if you oppose the government too vocally, but it seemed like most people just didn’t care one way or another. Some facts: China is becoming more and more technology dependant. We’re talking about millions and millions of people needing electricity. Right now, the skies in China’s big cities are very terribly polluted from the coal power plants. So getting electricity from hydro power seems like a great idea. And it is. But there are down sides – big down sides. 1.3 million people were displaced when the waters rose behind the dam. That’s a LOT of people. Also, China’s dam failure rate is much higher than the rest of the world. Let’s hope this one is well built!! Of course everything we heard was positive: “Look at the new village of XYZ, isn’t it nice how the government built all those new houses for those people? Such a pretty new town!” In fact, they did get nice new houses out of the deal, and the towns were probably a lot nicer than what they had. BUT what about the history of your family being in that town 40ft. under water? The waters covered a LOT of history and beauty. I can’t attest to what is under the water, but it was very clear that the height of the river was a new thing that everyone was still getting used to.
Anyway, we went up the stairs and walked a bit to the gates of Fengdu. Then we boarded a tram (think parking lot tram at Disney World or Dollywood) that took us halfway up the hill. Clearly, they are used to fat and/or old American tourists. The expectation was that we would have to go pretty slowly up the hill. I’m proud to say the Percells (even the little one) made it with no problems. Several people in our group were griping about the steep hill. Wah for them.
Once we were up the hill, we entered Fengdu proper. This is the place the Chinese say your spirit comes to after you die in order to be judged. We didn’t see any spirits around there, only tourists. (I doubt the spirits buy as many souvenirs….) Anyway, there are some cool temples and statues up there. Our guide told us that there are three tasks to complete on the way into the temple. I think if you do well on all three it proves you’re a worthy person. The first task was to properly cross a bridge. You were to cross the bridge in 3 or 5 steps. If you were a married person, you should cross with your spouse in the required number of steps while holding hands. Girls start with left foot and boys start with right foot (or maybe the other way around) I think this is to cement your marriage for all eternity or something. The picture is worth a thousand words. You’ve got me chuckling at the idea of the whole thing, Erin looks like he’s about to roll his eyes (he wasn’t, he just didn’t realize there was a camera), and the ‘ancient guard’ with the fan who looks so thrilled to be there. LOL.
The second task was to step over a door frame without touching it. I was busy taking pictures during the explanation, so I didn’t hear all of it, but we all succeeded at that one too. (A. claims he intentionally failed all three tasks just to be ornery. I don’t remember.) The third task was to balance on a small stone for three seconds. It was fairly easy unless your foot was bigger than the stone (i.e. all the grown-ups).
After the ‘tests’ we entered into the temple. Sure enough, there a few Chinese people in there praying to the ‘gods’. There were some colorful statues in there, and we enjoyed looking around. I missed the intended exit, so I didn’t see the ‘torture chamber’ where the evil spirits meet their doom. Erin and H. said it was pretty gruesome. After the tour, we made our way back down the hill and through the line of gift shops. H. walked away from a medium-good deal on a very cool dragon kite because she truly didn’t have that much money. The guy ended up chasing her down to give her a better deal. So she got to protect that kite for the rest of the trip (it was too fragile to put in the suitcase). It was worth it though, because it is really cool. AND she got a good deal on it. It looks good hanging in her room.
We got back on the boat, and sailed on down the river. We had an excellent lunch – all the food on the boat was good. They brought out several courses of all sorts of excellent Chinese dishes. We got full at every meal onboard the ship! We were seated with 7 other China Travel Guide customers. We enjoyed getting to meet other folks from the US, Australia, and Germany.
The next stop was for an optional tour of the Shi Bao Zhai Pagoda. H. and I decided to try it, but the boys had clearly had enough pagodas. H. and I were the only English speakers going on this optional tour, so we had our own private tour guide. ☺ We got off the boat and walked up to the gate of the new town. It was neat to walk through one of the newly built towns. The government had done a good job laying out the town. They had a nice new community center and several other ‘gathering places’ for the residents. In fact, it looked like more ‘town’ than the current population required. There were some displays there that we stopped to look at. One of them had some Chinese currency from the Chiang Kai Shek era. Note that it was printed in the U.S.
The government also had to build a large retaining wall around the base of the island that the Shi Bao Zhai Pagoda sits on. Otherwise, the water would flood the base and bottom floors of the pagoda and most likely wash it away. Climbing up the pagoda was not easy. Parts of the climb were vertical. For the top floor there was a ladder. The top floor could only hold about 4 or 5 people comfortably. But you really can’t tell that from the penultimate floor. So after we got up there, people just kept climbing up. The Chinese people up there with us were telling them ‘no more room’, but they came on anyway. It was like being in an elevator. Finally someone got the message and we could start to work our way down. We made our way back to the boat just in time for supper. Supper/Dinner that night was the “Captain’s Welcome Reception” which makes it sound like a big deal. Everyone had a complimentary glass of wine at their seat. The captain came in and made a toast, but we just toasted with our water – the waitress thought we were quite strange. :-P Anyway, the poor captain! You could tell he was uncomfortable being in the dining room with all the customers. They made him pose with each group. (When it was our group’s turn, several other tourists came up to snap a picture of our group. I’m certain that it was the Car Wreck effect in action because the little car wrecks were the only kids onboard and ours was the only group that other people wanted photos of.) Anyway, the Captain’s expression was clearly, “I’d rather be back on the bridge!” But he did smile and shake hands with everyone. The crew did a short show including a funny skit about a fake statue. The kids loved it. They also did some traditional Chinese dancing. I sort of felt sorry for the dancers. They were college-age kids trying to make some money on a tourist boat and as part of the deal they had to dress up in these ancient (but kinda goofy to a college kid) outfits and dance for a bunch of old fogey tourists. It made it a little better that most of the old fogeys were Chinese old fogeys but still. You could tell that the boys were not really getting into the dancing thing.
After the show we went back to our rooms and hit the sack.
Wednesday, October 19: There was another optional tour this morning, but we all decided to stay on board. One of the best parts about cruising down the river was the slow pace. There were many hours of just relaxing on the deck watching the scenery go by. Of course we couldn’t do that when we were docked, but it was nice to have a morning with no plans. It was a welcome break from the rush-rush of touring Beijing and Xian. Shortly before lunch, the announcement came on that we were about to enter the first of the three gorges. This one is called “Qutang Gorge”. I have no idea how beautiful it was before the dam, but it was certainly beautiful enough for us!! Unfortunately, it started to rain right as we were sailing into the gorge. It didn’t matter to me though. I put my rain jacket on and went out to take pictures. It was pretty cold standing out there in the wind and rain, so after a while it DID start to matter and I came inside to take more pictures. My pictures aren’t very good because of the weather (the ones I took inside have the reflection of the lamps on the windows), so check out the pictures here:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/picture/yangtze/qutang_gorge/:
We heard that before the dam, sailing through the gorges was tricky. But our trip through was very smooth. Or else the captain was just that good. But it looked like smooth and easy sailing. We really enjoyed the scenery in spite of the weather. Well, most of us did. At one point I looked inside to see the boys sitting at a table playing Nintendo. I had to put a stop to that! They were not so happy. They said, “It’s a mountain, mom”. I said, “Yes. It is, and I’m not bringing you back to see it, so you better enjoy it the first time!”
After we’d passed through the Qutang Gorge, there was a scheduled demonstration of Chinese painting and calligraphy. H. and I went in to watch. The man did an excellent finger painting in about 10 minutes. It was really cool. Then he did some calligraphy based on the character for dragon. He drew it in five different styles of writing from most ancient to modern. After the demonstration, I bought his ‘sample’ for $15. I thought it was a steal! I had it framed after we got home. Like I said before, I know just enough about calligraphy to know how difficult it is. This guy wrote this like it was nothing. I’m so impressed. Another day H. and I went to a demonstration of snuff bottle painting. This is such a unique thing. The girl painted the bottles from the inside! She has special brushes because they have to fit through the narrow neck of the bottle. These things were beautiful. I wish I could’ve afforded more. I bought one small bottle that is actually a toothpick holder. It has a wider mouth than the others, but it is still cool. Check out some pictures here:
http://www.chinasnuffbottle.com/snuff-bottle/snuff-bottle-products/snuff-bottle-firstgrade-2.htm
Not long after Qutang Gorge, you come to the second gorge, Wu Gorge. I don’t have my pictures labeled, so I honestly don’t know one gorge from the next. But here are some pictures online:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/river/yangtze_attraction/wu_gorge.htm
After Wu Gorge we had lunch and then the boat stopped at Badong for an excursion down the Shennong Stream. First we got on a ferry boat and rode for an hour or so down the side stream. It was very beautiful scenery – at least as good as the gorges. The ferry had a couple of little shops on board – little souvenirs and some snacks. The souvenir shop lady had her son with her. He looked like he was about 3. At first he was very shy. I don’t think he’d seen a lot of Westerners before. But eventually my kids were able to coax him out from behind the counter to play. He still got kind of skittish if I looked at him, but he was willing to play with the kids. They all really enjoyed making him smile or laugh. The ferry dropped us off at the sampan dock where we were loaded on the little boats. We took a sampan upstream for about 30 more minutes. There were four guys rowing and one man handling the tiller. When we got near the turn around point, two of the men rowing our boat jumped out and pulled our boat from the shore for a while. Before the river rose so much, this area was full of rapids. It was necessary then to pull the boats from the shore. I’m not sure why they do it now, except that it’s a tourist photo op. I don’t know about you, but many times I feel kinda weird when people do unnecessary and difficult things just so tourists can take pictures. These guys were already working up a good sweat by rowing us up the river. At least it wasn’t summer time. In the summer time they wear only loin cloths. Ewwww. I bought a set of postcards of the scenery – but one of the postcards is a (from behind) picture of the loin-cloth-toting rowers pulling the boat on the shore…
On the way back downstream to the sampan dock, our boat was passed by the boat behind us. It quickly became a contest to see which boat would get back first. Our guys were giving them a run for their money when one of ‘our’ oars snapped in half! Got to give them an A for effort!
Clearly we didn’t win the race, but we still got back to the ferry in a timely manner. ☺ Back on the Ferry I tried again to get a good picture of the scenery as we went back downstream. One of the interesting things I tried to photograph was this “hanging” coffin. This picture is MUCH better than mine:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&gid=685&pid=34754&orderby=dateD
In fact, I couldn’t see it that well with my own eyes. My pictures turned out so blurry, I’m not even going to put them on FB.
After the Shennong Stream excursion, our cruise ship pulled away from Badong and we headed for the third gorge. But first we would have our supper aka “The Captain’s Farewell Banquet” which was exactly like the “Captain’s Welcoming Dinner” the night before – except the food was different. The Captain came in and made a short speech and then was allowed to go back to driving the boat. After supper we had the ‘talent show’. When the talent show idea first came up the kids were all excited about joining. Well, the boys were all excited. No way was H. going to participate! A. wanted to tell some jokes. O. wasn’t real sure he wanted to be in it, so at some point I told him that if he would do his Kung Fu, I would read a poem in 6 languages. Apparently he thought that was a good idea. So for the talent show, a couple of other passenger groups got up and did some Kareoke. Then our family had a turn. Erin helped A. do a short skit which was well received by the English speakers. (The crew’s translator missed some of the punch line, so I don’t think the Chinese speakers got it.) Then O. did his Kung Fu routine. This is what the crowd had come to see – cute kid doing martial arts. They went nuts. Here was a Car Wreck on stage!!! The flashes from the cameras were constant. The Chinese and Western passengers applauded like mad. The girl organizing the show had some clue that this would be popular, because when we went to sign up, she said, “Can you do more than just 3-5 minutes?” So O. decided to combine the one routine that he knows with the first part of the routine he’s learning, then he repeated the first routine. When it came to the part of the routine where he does the cartwheel there was much “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing from the audience. (Honestly, his cartwheel is neither “ooh” nor “ahh” worthy – yet.) Well, after that ‘bringing down the house’ performance, it was time for the fascinating poetry reading. [sarcasm!] I had bought a book of Chinese poems in Beijing and I translated one of the shorter poems into French, Spanish, and German (the book had it in Chinese and English). Then for fun, I also re-wrote it into “East Tennessean”. I read all 6 versions. The English speakers liked the “East Tennessean” version – especially my kids, so that made it worth it.
I had just gotten over being nervous about all that when the talent show was over and the crew said it was time for some games. The night before we’d seen a game of musical chairs for the passengers. They chose a mix of Chinese and Westerners for the game. It came down to One Western guy, One Western woman, and one Chinese woman. Then the Western woman volunteered her seat to the Chinese woman so she’d be out. That left the Western man and the Chinese woman. The music stops and for 45 hilarious seconds each tried to get the other to take the chair. It was the most fun game of musical chairs I’ve ever seen! Eventually the woman “won” the ‘no, you take it’ because the man took the chair. Great fun.
Well tonight the game was ‘chop stick skills’. Guess who got picked? Yeah. Me. Apparently I’m pretty intimidating as a chop stick user, because the next few people chosen refused to leave their chairs. Finally another Western woman agreed to take me on. The contest involved moving slick flat-sided marble pieces (think Pente playing pieces – but flat on both sides) from one bowl to another bowl 15 feet away with also slick chop sticks. I did o.k. – I moved about 8 pieces and then my nervousness combined with my neurological tremors took over and I couldn’t pick up any more pieces. It’s a shame, because the other woman beat me by 4 I think. As it turns out, the prize was a big cocktail drink. So I’m quite happy to lose on that one!! ☺
Next they put on some music and tried to encourage people to get up and dance. They had songs like the chicken dance and hokey pokey. Finally when they put the limbo music on, O. and A. decided to join in. O. said, “It’s just lame that NO ONE is dancing!” A. did a perfect knee slide under the bar that made the crowd cheer. A couple of the teenage boys from the crew did a good job of getting under the bar in the correct way.
They played a few more songs and then I looked up and saw concrete buildings close by and said, “Ooh, I think we’re going into the locks!” So we all ran up to the top deck to take pictures. It was so neat to float into the lock above the street lamps and then sink down to 30 feet below them. It was also fun to see the huge doors open and close. They had a neat system for tying the ships to the side of the lock. The guys would toss a loop around the peg which was recessed in the wall of the lock, then as the water went down, the peg would also float(?) down, so that the tension on the rope remained constant. We stayed up on deck through the first two or three locks. They told us it would take 3 hours to go all the way through and we were pretty tired. I finally went down to bed around 11p.m. (Yes, if you know me, you know I must’ve really enjoyed going through the locks to stay up that late.)
Thursday, October 20: The next morning we went on our shore excursion to the Three Gorges Dam. When I was looking for a tour of China I asked Erin what he wanted to see in China. He said, “I’m sure I’ll like whatever you pick, but if we could, I’d like to see the dam.” Well, that’s the first time he’s EVER shown any advanced interest in seeing anything in any country we’ve visited. So I made sure we had a chance to see it. (Don’t get me wrong, he enjoys seeing the things that we get to see, it’s just that he’s not picky about what we go visit.) Erin clearly enjoyed the locks and the dam. You don’t get to actually walk on the dam itself or go inside it, but it was fun to go look at it up close. You could walk to the top of a little hill for a bird’s eye view. From up there you could see the dam, the locks, and the ship elevator that they’re still working on. Even for a non-engineer it was very cool. The whole dam is like a mile and ½ long (7,766 ft.) so with the fog it was difficult to see the end of it.
After the dam, we went back to the ship and entered the third gorge, XiLing Gorge. This one was very nice. Then we ate lunch and quickly packed up our bags. After lunch we disembarked at YiChang (population 4.15 million). Our guide picked us up and we drove to the Yi Chang museum. Frankly, by this time even I was getting a little tired of ancient Chinese artifacts. Which is sad, because the little museum had a good collection. They were even selling some of the real deals in the gift shop (with govt. permission) to fund the museum. I couldn’t afford any, but they were neat none-the-less. On the way to the Yi Chang airport, our guide did his best to show us interesting things about his hometown. But 4 of us went to sleep in the van! I forced myself to stay awake. It wasn’t easy because we had all stayed up past our bedtimes the night before and we’d already been touring ½ the day. The guide said that this was normal for the groups getting off the boats. Everyone is tired from going through the locks the night before. He was a very nice guy. He showed us pictures of his little girl.
So we caught our flight to Shanghai (population over 23 million!). Our new guide, (can’t remember her name right now), picked us up at the airport and took us straight to the hotel. Boy did the guys luck out! Their room was huge! The girls’ room wasn’t shabby by any means, but not huge. We stayed at the Ya Fan Long Men Hotel. http://www.bwlongmen.com/en/index.htm
Once again, we asked the guide if there was a Papa John’s in Shanghai. She said, Oh sure there’s one at an area called “Xian Tian Di”. So we took a taxi there and walked around. Trust me, there’s no Papa John’s there. We asked a couple of times, but no one acted like they’d even HEARD of Papa John’s. It was a much more swanky part of town than you’d think a Papa John’s would be in, so we weren’t very surprised. So, we took a taxi back to the hotel. –Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Apparently, the taxis aren’t allowed to take 5 passengers at a time. The first one didn’t seem to mind, but the second guy was ready to refuse to take us when he saw O. getting in on my lap. Erin pulled the “what? I’m a stupid tourist and don’t understand why you’re objecting” card (“yes, 5, we have 5 people, we need to go to …..” which worked, although the driver grumped about it more than once. We weren’t really ready to split up in such an unfamiliar city. We got back to the hotel, and the girls just didn’t care about food anymore, we just wanted to sleep. The boys ordered some room service. They ordered pasta which turned out to have mushrooms in it, so they didn’t enjoy it as much as they’d hoped. So we all went to bed feeling defeated by Papa John’s once again. Sigh.
Friday, October 21: Our last full day in China. We started out at the Shanghai Museum. It was a cool museum, and another one of those places that I’d liked to have had a whole day to explore. It was divided into rooms for porcelain, bronze, coins, silk, etc. We only had about 2 hours there, so we only saw a few rooms. Even though I was kinda tired of ancient Chinese artifacts, I still enjoyed the museum. After that we went to lunch at a Western buffet. I didn’t enjoy that as much as the kids did, but they had an excellent dessert buffet. Here’s the quote from the itinerary:
A luxurious western buffet lunch will be
specially served for you today, since we believe that you may
have quite enjoyed the Chinese food during the tour and begin
to miss your western meal.
This was simply untrue. I asked the guide if we could go to a Chinese restaurant, and she replied that this meal was already paid for at this restaurant. Bummer. The kids enjoyed it, so it was o.k. Now that I’m back in Singapore, I really miss the Chinese food we had there. I’ve got to get out and find some places here that are as good. It’s hard though, because everything here is primarily seafood.
After lunch we went to the YuYuan Gardens. This place was awesome. I really loved the architecture. The place was designed by a man in the late 1800’s to honor his parents. Clearly he had a lot of money. I really wanted to stay in this area much longer. Not only were the gardens very very cool, but there was a restaurant there that my Chinese teacher had recommended (She knows how I love the steamed bau!). Also, the shopping was cheap cheap and not fancy – i.e. right up our alley!! But alas, our schedule didn’t permit us to stay as long as we’d like. I’d like to go back, though!
Next we went over to the Bund area. We walked along the river looking at the architecture. This is the area of the ‘International Settlement’ that was THE place in the world to be during the 1920’s. Having read a history of the Opium wars, I had some interest in seeing some of the buildings. We didn’t take time to see all the ones that I wanted to see, but again, we didn’t have time. Next time! ☺
By then, it was 5 p.m. – quittin’ time for our driver. So he dropped us off at a mall where our guide ASSURED us there was absolutely 100% certain a Papa John’s Pizza restaurant. In fact, she took us down there herself! Hooray!!!! Finally we scored some Papa John’s!!! Woo-Hoo!! It’s not a myth! They do actually serve yummy yummy pizza in China. We invited our guide to join us and she did. We’re glad she did, because there was some confusion about the garlic/butter sauce. We did eventually get some, though. She thought it was weird. I guess only foreigners ask for the sauce. ☺ We had enough leftovers that we took nearly an entire pizza back to the hotel. But it wasn’t from lack of trying! Before we went back to the hotel, our guide had gotten us some tickets to the acrobatic show. I’d seen some Chinese acrobats perform at a circus, or on t.v., but this show was a modern twist on the traditional show. I thought they did an excellent job. We weren’t allowed to take pictures. This video is very similar to one segment of the show. The show we saw they had four or five poles, so more guys were up in the air at one time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HT-sYnGILE&feature=related
The guys in the video may well be the same ones we saw. The theater looks very similar. They also had trampoline artists and unicyclists, and all sorts of other acrobats. It was an excellent way to end our time in China.
After the show, we went out and caught a cab (no questions about 5 people) back to the hotel.
Full of Papa John’s pizza and happy from the acrobat show, we all slept happily. Ahhhh.
The next morning we woke up and I nearly cried at the prospect of having to throw away our leftover Papa John’s. I really really tried to eat some for breakfast, but cold pizza (no microwave) just isn’t my thing at 7 a.m. I ate one piece and then gave up. Sigh. Ah well. It was still worth it. ☺
The guide picked us up at 8 a.m. or so and we went to the airport to catch our plane back to Singapore. Yes, the girls and Dad got their Dunkin’ Donuts upon landing.
So, if you ever do get to go to China, I highly recommend “China Travel Guide”. Their prices were comparable, and the service was excellent. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed the entire trip. We all agreed it was our best family vacation ever.
Friday, November 11, 2011
China Blog Part 2 Xian/Chongqing
Remember to open another window and view the pictures from my FB page as you read. I don't have the patience to add pictures here. sorry.
So we took a 2 hour flight to Xi’An (pop. 8 million or so). The city name means “Western Peace”. Our guide, David met us at the airport and took us to the Green Mosque. The Green Mosque area (it contained several buildings over a few acres) was not as crowded as many places we went in Beijing. There has been a mosque there since something like 742. Islam came to China from the trading on the Silk Road. Xian is the starting point for the Silk Road. David told us that Xian occasionally gets dust storms blowing in from the Gobi dessert.
After the Mosque, we went to the city wall. Xian’s city wall is really cool. It is about 40ft. high, and between 50 and 60ft. thick at the base. We got to the wall just in time to see a short show with some guys dressed up in Ming era costume. Some young people played drums and others did a little swordplay. One guy was very enthusiastic and when we swung his sword, the blade came out and went flying across the courtyard! I think it was thin and not sharp, but still! After the show, we went up to the top of the wall. It was such a beautiful day! The sky was crystal blue and the temperature was perfect. (Looking at some of the pictures, the sky looks grey. I’m not sure why that is. Most of the pictures show the beautiful sky. I remember it being gorgeous, and we certainly weren’t there long enough for clouds to blow in.) Such a break from the heat and humidity of Singapore! We decided to rent bikes. Everybody got a bike, except O shared a two-seater with me. These were some seriously old rental bikes. We tested the brakes and seats and off we went. O got his balance enough that he could take some pictures with my camera as we were moving. What fun! The kids were loving it. We don’t have a good place to ride bikes here like we did in Texas. The ‘old folks’ were enjoying the slow pace of just meandering around the city wall. The bricks themselves were quite bumpy on a bike. There were lots of small pot-holes, and I did my best to avoid them, but if you watch the video, you’ll see how it was.
After the City Wall, our guide took us to our ‘family visit’. We really didn’t know what to expect for this. Big family? Rich? Poor? Kids? Seafood? Weird food? So we were all a bit nervous I think – well, I was anyway. We arrived at what looked very much like a Singapore HDB. (Normal housing for 85%+ of Singaporeans) So, I felt a little relieved off the bat. Inside, the apartment was very nicely decorated. The wood floor was beautiful. We started to take our shoes off like we do at home and the hostess and guide both started in on us with “no need! No need!” I tried to explain that we do that at home and we didn’t want to mess up her floors (we’d already tracked in a bunch of foot prints from the city wall dirt). We were ineffective. So, after we left she had to re-clean her floors. From the conversation and translations with our guide, David, we learned that our hostess was married and had one son. Her husband and son were at a family wedding – on her side of the family!! I said, “We’ll eat quickly so you can go too.” She said basically, ‘nah, I’d rather be here – I see enough of them.’ She had originally rescheduled to Saturday from Sunday, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. (No idea what was more important than a wedding that she had on Sunday.) We asked David, and found out that this is like a part-time job for her. So that also made me feel better about the whole deal. She offered the kids some candy (not her first rodeo!) and drinks, and then showed us around the apartment. I don’t know if they are just neat-freaks, or if everything was crammed in closets, or if they just don’t have as much JUNK as we do, but everything was so neat and clean. But other than being twice as neat as my house, their house was what any of my friends and family would consider a normal middle class apartment. David said that it was considered a large apartment, and it was good-sized. He said that she had started doing the hostess job because her husband was laid off shortly after they signed the mortgage (lease?) and they were having trouble making ends meet.
Well, let me just tell you….. this woman could go get a job as a caterer anywhere in the world. All she’d have to do is offer the food she served us. Oh Boy!! We ate like starving people. She had Kung Pao chicken, sweet and sour pork, fried rice, green beans, corn, fish, and probably something else I’m forgetting. It was one of the best meals we had in China – and that’s saying something. I wish I’d taken pictures of some of the feasts we had while there – including at her house. During lunch, we said something about the food we missed from the States. David mentioned some of the fast food from America that they had in Xian, including “Papa John’s”. Well, that got everyone’s attention! The kids and Mom were instantly interested in learning more. David could tell that Erin thought this was ridiculous, so he said, “Well, in Xian, Papa John’s is a hamburger place.” The kids and Mom were disappointed.
After lunch, our guide and driver took us back to our hotel. It was about 3p.m. by the time we got there. The rest of the day we were on our own. We really didn’t know what we wanted to do. Part of me was so full and happy that a nap sounded great. But more of me was thinking, ‘this is the only time I’ll get to be here, it seems a waste to stay in the hotel the rest of the day.’ So we decided to go out and find the Wal-mart that we’d seen out the van window. “Let’s just walk down there and back, maybe we’ll see something for supper on the way. Let’s not stay out too long, but I don’t want to sit around here ‘till bed time either.” I had paid close attention, so I knew how to get there. But stupid me, I decided to ask at the front desk to make sure. The clerk said, “No, there’s not one there, but there is one down to the south-east.” Well, I took her word for it. We decided to get a taxi. But we quickly learned that no taxi would stop. Then we saw our guide, David, walking toward us. He was still waiting for a bus home. Three p.m. is rush hour, apparently. The bus would come, but it would be too full for more passengers, so he was waiting and waiting. He told us that we would have a terrible time trying to get a cab at this time of day, so he recommended we just walk. So we did and he said he’d go with us part of the way. We walked down to the middle of town – the Drum Tower, and then on past that to the South-east side of town (Our hotel was near the North-west corner.). They had told us that the Wal-mart was behind such and such mall. Well, we accidently walked past that mall. When we came to a major road that was labeled on our map, we knew we’d come too far. (-Almost to the other side of the walled part of town!) A very friendly man tried to convince us to take the bus back, but we were not brave enough to try that – not knowing where which bus went or what stop to get off, etc. So we started walking back. We were so tired! By this time, we’d been walking for more than 2 hours! (Plus the bicycling we’d done earlier….) Erin happened to look up and see a sign that said, “Wal-Mart” with a big arrow pointing down the side street. There was much rejoicing. Actually, there was some rejoicing, some whining to ‘just go back to the hotel’, and some whining for ‘ice cream for supper’. We gave in to the thoughts of sitting down to some ice cream. Ahhh – Baskin Robbins – familiar territory! Woo-hoo! Plus, the guy at Baskin Robbins spoke pretty good English, so we were able to ask him about the Wal-Mart and the Papa John’s. David is a very convincing liar when it comes to Papa John’s and hamburgers.
[Back story: We have a couple of Dunkin Donuts stores here in Singapore, but they are not located in places that we normally visit. There is one at the airport, however, and we have usually gotten a donut before getting on the plane to go somewhere. We didn’t get to do that this time, though because we were a little late getting to the airport. We told the kids that we’d get Dunkin Donuts when we got back to Singapore.]
So, coming out of Baskin Robbins feeling rejuvenated somewhat, we started walking toward where we thought Wal-Mart would be. Having just had wonderful American ice cream (possibly for supper if we didn’t find a pizza-selling Papa John’s), I said, “Now all we need is a Dunkin Donuts!” Everyone, especially Erin was like, Hmph! But I wasn’t even finished saying the word “Donuts” when I stepped around a corner and saw this sign:
I started laughing so loud! Erin and the kids couldn’t figure out why (I was walking in the front.). I just pointed at the sign. What timing! So of course, the boys wanted Donuts. We finally said, ‘you can either have them here or when we get back, but not both’. So they each got two, ate one, and saved the other.
It took us a couple of minutes to realize that the Wal-mart was downstairs from the Dunkin Donuts, so we were in the right place after all.
This was probably the smallest Wal-mart I’ve ever been in, but many things felt familiar. I loved their little baskets on wheels. We definitely need those in the U.S. We found some lime sherbet (or ice cream?) Oreos to buy. We were the only Westerners in there, so I felt a little awkward taking pictures, but here ya go….. It being Xian and all, there was a Terracotta Warrior guarding the exit.
From there, we wanted to find the Papa John’s. It was supposed to be on the way back to the hotel. That’s the only way we got the kids to go along with looking for it. We were all soooo tired of walking! We walked back and never found the Papa John’s. It must’ve been in the food court of one of the many malls we passed. We did, however, pass the newer Wal-mart that I’d seen out the van window. GRRRRRR! That would’ve made our 4 hour walk into a one hour walk.
By the time we were 30 min. from the hotel, O needed to be carried and to find a restroom, not necessarily in that order. We did find a public restroom and while Erin took him inside, the other 2 and I sat on a bench waiting. The bench turned out to be in front of the place where the street sweepers bring their garbage carts. There was a little dog hanging out around there and he came over, gave me a sniff, said, “ewwww! You smell funny!” sneezed, and went away. The garbage ladies and I had a chuckle about that. Then we had an actual conversation in Chinese! Yea me! They asked about the kids and where we were from. They stuck to the vocabulary I knew for a while, and then they lost me. Thinking about it later, I think she was asking why we were out walking at 8:30 in that part of town (not near anything tourist-y). Or maybe she was asking about my shoes. I’ll never know.
Anyway, we got back to the hotel exhausted and went to bed.
Sunday, October 16: Terracotta Warriors Day! Fortunately, we all got plenty of rest after our ‘long march’ in Xian. We ate breakfast at the hotel and met David in the lobby. Speaking of our hotel. We really liked the hotel in Xian. It was called the “Grand New World Hotel”. They were hosting a conference called “The 2nd International Symposium on Traditional Cultare [sic?] and Eco-Cvilization” and “First Seminar of Promotion on Economics and Culture Cooperation”. Many of the delegates were dressed in traditional garb. David wasn’t familiar with who/what they were. The hotel itself was beautifully decorated. There was a giant mural (25ft. tall?) behind the lobby, and lots of beautiful paintings around. Very very nice. Also, we had adjoining rooms! That’s never happened in our travels. Hotels in Europe and Asia tend to be for 2 people at a time. It is rare to find one where 3 people can fit without bringing in a roll-away bed. So generally, we’ve been paying for the roll-away bed for the boys room, and the girls share a room. But this time, we put all the kids in the 3-bed room and the parents got to share a room –yea!
So anyway, David and the driver picked us up and we headed for the Terracotta Warriors. On the way, we stopped at a shopping opportunity (gasp!). It was at a factory that uses the same clay and techniques as the actual Terracotta Warriors. We got to watch them making some smaller figures and see the kiln where they’re dried. They had an artist there who will ‘put your face on a life-sized Terracotta Warrior’. They had some of Barak Obama, David Beckham, etc. Frankly, Western faces on Terracotta Warriors is just wrong. Funny. But wrong. Nevertheless, there were several samples there of ordinary (rich) tourists who’d had it done.
We bought some of the smaller figurines and drooled over the furniture there with the lacquer finish. Oh my oh my oh my! I so loved that stuff!! It was sooo expensive, but absolutely drop dead, smack yo mama gorgeous. One of those tables would cost the same as our entire trip for 5 people to China. Sigh. I have pictures.
From the factory we went to see the real deal. There are actually 3 buildings there that contain Terracotta Warriors. The largest building is the one you’ve probably seen on t.v. It is the size of an aircraft hangar – or maybe 2 aircraft hangars. The building itself is a marvel because there are no support columns. So, a little background on the TCW: In about 210 BC, the first Emperor of China decided (with a little persuasion from his councilors) not to bury his soldiers and servants alive within his tomb. Instead he commissioned a life-sized terracotta replica of his army. THEN he had everyone involved killed so the secret would be safe. They believe that all the artists were executed as well as anyone who knew where the tomb was. There are over 8,000 soldiers, 670 horses, 130 chariots that they know of. Most are still buried. Each of the 8,000 soldiers has a distinct face, so they believe that they were modeled on real people. All of the soldiers, horses, chariots, etc. were painted in a very life-like way. There were a couple of photographs on display that showed the paint. They were so life like it was spooky – it looked like a person half buried in the dirt! But alas, the paint faded within a few hours of being exposed to oxygen. In less then 2 days you couldn’t even tell it had been there. So before they dig any more pieces out of the ground, they’re waiting for preservation techniques to improve to the point that the paint will last. The soldiers also had real weapons in their hands.
So, one thing I didn’t realize is that these pieces were not buried in the sense of ‘we placed them in a pit and shoveled dirt on them’. No. The workers dug tunnels leading toward the tomb and placed the pieces in the tunnels. They were not surrounded by dirt – just standing there waiting for their army to be called to life (death?). Of course tomb robbers broke in to steal the weapons and smashed some figures, set some fires etc. Over time the roofs of the tunnels collapsed and most of the figures were broken. In fact, they’ve only found 4 figures intact. The ones you see in the pictures, or on tours through museums around the world are figures that have been repaired. We saw several dozen in the back of ‘pit #1’ that were in process of being fit back together.
So for nearly two thousand years no one knew these things were there. Fast Forward to 1974. A group of nine farmers were digging a well on their collective farm. They turn up a head from one of the warriors. One of the farmers decides to turn it in to the government –hoping to get a reward. He did – about $5. Then the govt. swooped in and took over the farm and started uncovering stuff. The farmers were largely forgotten. Nowadays, one of the farmers (80 something years old) sits in the gift shop and autographs books for the tourists. David said he’s normally gruff, but was in a good mood and smiled for our picture with him. He seemed to like the boys (aka car wrecks). So my kids got to meet the guy (well, one of the 9) who discovered the Terracotta Warriors. How cool is that?!?
We also went to see 2 other pits which you never see on t.v. They didn’t have the large number of figures like pit #1, but they were still very cool. You could see a chariot and horses. In those pits, the tunnels were more visible as well. You could see the tiles on the floor, and the support columns on the sides. There are a LOT more figures that they don’t want to uncover yet in the other two pits.
I don’t know if I’d call the Terracotta Warriors ‘the eighth wonder of the world’ as it was billed in our tour, but it was pretty cool. The boys both rated it right up there with the Great Wall.
For lunch we ate at the Aegean Sea (we think there are more words in the name, but can’t remember them) Restaurant. The food was very good. We ordered seconds on their beef dish. This was a good example of our guide, David, taking extra good care of us. He had been told by our travel company that we couldn’t have mushrooms and we preferred no seafood. So when the waitress brought out the fried rice, David stopped her and saw that it had shrimp in it. He told her to take it back. We said, “nah, it’s o.k. O. will eat the shrimp.” But he insisted and so she took it back. We had to wait a while to get some non-shrimp infested rice. In fact, by the time it came, we’d finished everything else and only ate some out of guilt.
After lunch, we went to the Shaanxi Ancient Civilizations Museum. This was a pretty good museum. We didn’t have as much time there as I’d like, but probably the kids had all they could take of it. ☺ (I keep saying that someday I’m going to do a tour of museums at my own pace – anyone want to come? I’m thinking 4 or 5 days for the Louvre, at least that much time for the British Museum. Same for the Smithsonian, etc.) So this museum is just full of pieces from before Christ, or before you know, Columbus. Actually, anything from the time of Columbus would probably be sneered at for being too recent. This always reminds me of how young America is.
Coming out of the museum, we saw a Papa John’s. So they do exist in China! This was nowhere near the one we were trying to find the night before.
The next stop on the tour was the ‘Big Wild Goose Pagoda’. This is a pretty neat stop, although the kids and Erin were all starting to say, “not another pagoda!”. As we went in, David handed us each a brochure that explained a little about the temple area and on the back there was some info. about the Chinese zodiac. It had a little place for a stamp. David said at the end of the tour, they would stamp your zodiac animal on there. To me, this was like ‘big whoop’. But the kids thought it was cool. There were several neat buildings in the temple complex. David asked if we wanted to go to the top, or go to the gift shop and get our papers stamped – we didn’t have time for both. At first only A. wanted to go up, and so Erin volunteered to go with him. I said I’d go and get their papers stamped. Well then, knowing that they could get their papers stamped AND see the view from the top, the other two wanted to go up as well. I have their photos from the top. David and I went and got their papers stamped, and I bought a chop of my name in English and Chinese. I watched the guy carve it by hand. I cannot even imagine trying to write Chinese Characters backwards!!! What?!? It gives me a headache to see them upside down! I really liked my chop, even if the whole paper stamping thing was just designed to get me to buy it. Maybe David gets a commission for that shop, because that was the only place he asked me if I’d like to buy one for each of the kids. Or maybe he’s just friendly like that. He was very friendly after all. ☺
After that, we hurried over to the Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Performance. We were also supposed to have dinner there, though not during the show. The show was good. The dancing was elegant. Apparently, ancient kings liked the dancers to have really long sleeves (like several feet longer than their arms). This tradition carried for several hundred years. It was cool how they sort of flowed across the stage. They also had some interesting musical acts that we all enjoyed, including several drum ensembles that I liked. The dinner was dumplings. Here’s a quote from our itinerary:
(Tips: Dumplings are a traditional local food in northern China
and are made of wheat flour with various indigenous fillings.
This has long been a favourite food of the local people, so we
have arranged for you to have a taste of this speciality today.
You will also have an opportunity to learn more about the
diversified Chinese food culture. However, we suggest you do
not expect too much from this dinner, it is just a new and
different experience during your trip.)
So clearly, the writer is not a dumpling fan, or else other tourists are stupid. I already knew I liked dumplings, so I was really looking forward to this meal. Each of the dumplings was shaped like the meat inside it. So, the duck(!) dumplings were shaped like little ducks. I only took a few pictures, because I was too busy making sure no one stole my dumplings! We all enjoyed that meal, and it was one of everyone’s favorites – right up there with the Peking duck. Yum, yum, and more yum. I’ve tried to find good dumplings since we got back to Singapore. Let me just say that frozen dumplings are terrible. My Chinese teacher is promising to teach me how to make them. I don’t have high hopes for my ability to learn that, but I’ll let you know.
Monday, October 17: We got up and packed our bags for Chongqing. After breakfast at the hotel, we met David and the driver. After a photo op with the little car wrecks, we headed for the airport. On the way, we stopped at the ‘Hanyangling Museum’ aka the Mausoleum of Western Han Emperor Liu Qi (who died in 141 BC). I read somewhere that this is the most underrated attraction in China. I can believe it. We were almost the only ones there. You’ll have to look at the picture to understand that the tomb is like a pyramid shape with a flat top. They have found numerous tunnels leading up to the tomb. Each of the tunnels held statues of people or animals. These were not life-sized like the famous Terracotta Warriors, but they were very detailed and cool. The kids thought it was funny that we all had to put on shoe covers before we could go in. The museum was laid out in the most cool fashion. They had put glass (well, plexi glass or plastic or something) over the tunnels, so you could walk over the artifacts and look straight down into the pits. Uber cool. Unfortunately, the lighting in there was great for artifacts – which means it was terrible for photography. Flash bad. No flash also bad. Even worse, the gift shop didn’t have any pictures. You could buy a big ol heavy book for like $50, but I didn’t want to spend that much, and I was already lugging suitcases full of small, heavy books bought in other museums and sites. Sigh. I also think I could have a career improving museum gift shop books.
The next stop was the airport. We flew 2 hours or so to Chongqing (pop. 32million plus – yes, you read that right. There’s a city in China that you’ve probably never heard of where the population is more than 32 MILLION people). The flight was over some of the biggest mountains I’ve seen. It was fascinating. Erin and I were looking out the window and trying to figure out how a human could get to some of those places. There would be a beautiful, wide valley, but no roads or rivers. Yet there were little communities in there. Beautiful scenery.
We really weren’t expecting much from our stay in Chongqing. I’d heard that it was very polluted, and the only activity we were scheduled for was a trip to the General Stilwell Museum. Really? A museum dedicated to an American general in China? Hmmm. Our new guide, Johnny, told us we could go there, or we could switch to a different attraction. Now I can’t remember the other choice, but it sounded like ‘another pagoda’ to the rest of the crew. Then he mentioned that the Gen. Stilwell Museum was across the street from the “Flying Tigers Museum”. Well, A. was hooked then!
The Stilwell Museum, is in the General’s former house. There is a lot of memorabilia there about his involvement in helping the Chinese fight off the Japanese in WWII. There were pictures of him with Chiang Kai-Shek, Madam Chiang, and also Chairman Mao. I preferred the ancient artifacts type museum, but if you like WWII and military stuff like the boys do, I think this was a breath of fresh air after ‘all those pagodas’. ☺
So then we went across the street to the “Flying Tigers Museum”. O.k. there actually were two rooms with Flying Tiger Memorabilia. (FYI: The Flying Tigers were a group of American volunteers who flew fighter planes against the Japanese in defense of China before America was officially involved in the war.) A. enjoyed looking at all that and telling us what kinds of planes were in the photos. Even the museum guide was impressed with his knowledge. (I have to mention that the American Ambassador’s son is in A.’s Boy Scout troop. He was receiving his Eagle rank in a ceremony on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier while we were in China. The entire troop was invited. A. was SOOO disappointed that he couldn’t go! He thought it would be worth skipping China to go on a real aircraft carrier. I’ve got to make it up to him someday!) So at least we got to see the Flying Tigers stuff.
But the main point of the “Flying Tigers Museum” was not the Flying Tigers. It was the artist group that worked there. Clearly, you’re to be lured in with the history (anyone interested in the material in the Stilwell Museum across the street is going to see the “Flying Tigers Museum Entrance” and want to check it out). So we were suckered in again. But we can’t complain. We ended up buying several things there that look excellent on my walls. ☺ And the prices were great. We watched the man paint. He could paint a beautiful painting in like five minutes. Crazy. We bought one of his paintings and two leaf paintings. (Paintings on an actual banyan leaf. Very very cool – even our Singaporean friends were impressed.) I also bought a carved purple and white jade bracelet that I really like.
Next our guide offered to take us on to the cruise ship, or to supper. We weren’t terribly hungry, but we thought we’d eat anyway because we didn’t think they’d be serving a meal on the boat that night. (We were right.) So, Johnny took us to a ‘hot pot’ restaurant. Apparently, he took us to the very best one for us. I’d heard rumors that some of the hot pot places lace their broth with opium so you’ll be a return customer. I’ve also heard that it can be so spicy that it will make you sick for days. I don’t know about all that, because we didn’t have any ill effects from the meal. A. is certain that it was his favorite meal in China. We did ask them to make it a little less hot than normal. Frankly, I think that was a mistake. Anyway…… the concept is that in the middle of the table is a burner with a pot of broth on it. Our pot was divided down the middle with a spicy broth on one side, and a not spicy chicken soup type broth on the other. Surrounding the pot on all sides were small dishes containing various kinds of raw meat. You turn your pot on and get it simmering and then put in whatever kind of meat you want. It’s all you can eat, so you can order more sausage or chicken or whatever. Johnny warned us about the ‘prickly ash’, but he didn’t show us what it looked like, and we didn’t know. He said it would make your tongue go numb. Hmmm. So we started out by putting in all the things we like, with only a little in the spicy half of the pot. Then you have to sterilize your chopsticks in the simmering liquid after touching the raw meat with them. Like I said, I didn’t think the spicy side was too hot. Others thought it was just right on the spicy. The waitress also brought out some other things like fried zucchini. I put some on my plate and later took a bite. Hmmm. That zucchini has a lemon taste to… wait a minute! My tongue is going numb! Like, been at the dentist for a filling numb! Whoa! That zucchini must have that prickly ash spice on it. So Erin and H. tried it but neither of them got anything but zucchini. I thought I was going crazy, because my tongue was uncomfortably numb several minutes later. They were making fun of me. But eventually Erin got a prickly ash seed in his mouth. Ha ha – sweet revenge. We finally figured out what they looked like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper
(See the picture under ‘culinary uses’ – it’s the pile on the left.)
So there must’ve been one stuck to the bottom of my zucchini piece. H. was the only person brave enough to try one on purpose after our descriptions of the uncomfortable yet not quite painful numbness.
After supper we walked up to the The People’s Square. It was so beautiful lit up at night. There were older couples there dancing. It was just a nice place to go in the evening to socialize.
So we really enjoyed our few hours in Chongqing. It was a welcome break from the ‘ancient-ness’ of Beijing and Xian. Our guide and driver took us down to the quay to board our ship for the cruise down the Yangtze River. I’ll hopefully finish up the China blog in the next segment about the cruise and Shanghai.
So we took a 2 hour flight to Xi’An (pop. 8 million or so). The city name means “Western Peace”. Our guide, David met us at the airport and took us to the Green Mosque. The Green Mosque area (it contained several buildings over a few acres) was not as crowded as many places we went in Beijing. There has been a mosque there since something like 742. Islam came to China from the trading on the Silk Road. Xian is the starting point for the Silk Road. David told us that Xian occasionally gets dust storms blowing in from the Gobi dessert.
After the Mosque, we went to the city wall. Xian’s city wall is really cool. It is about 40ft. high, and between 50 and 60ft. thick at the base. We got to the wall just in time to see a short show with some guys dressed up in Ming era costume. Some young people played drums and others did a little swordplay. One guy was very enthusiastic and when we swung his sword, the blade came out and went flying across the courtyard! I think it was thin and not sharp, but still! After the show, we went up to the top of the wall. It was such a beautiful day! The sky was crystal blue and the temperature was perfect. (Looking at some of the pictures, the sky looks grey. I’m not sure why that is. Most of the pictures show the beautiful sky. I remember it being gorgeous, and we certainly weren’t there long enough for clouds to blow in.) Such a break from the heat and humidity of Singapore! We decided to rent bikes. Everybody got a bike, except O shared a two-seater with me. These were some seriously old rental bikes. We tested the brakes and seats and off we went. O got his balance enough that he could take some pictures with my camera as we were moving. What fun! The kids were loving it. We don’t have a good place to ride bikes here like we did in Texas. The ‘old folks’ were enjoying the slow pace of just meandering around the city wall. The bricks themselves were quite bumpy on a bike. There were lots of small pot-holes, and I did my best to avoid them, but if you watch the video, you’ll see how it was.
After the City Wall, our guide took us to our ‘family visit’. We really didn’t know what to expect for this. Big family? Rich? Poor? Kids? Seafood? Weird food? So we were all a bit nervous I think – well, I was anyway. We arrived at what looked very much like a Singapore HDB. (Normal housing for 85%+ of Singaporeans) So, I felt a little relieved off the bat. Inside, the apartment was very nicely decorated. The wood floor was beautiful. We started to take our shoes off like we do at home and the hostess and guide both started in on us with “no need! No need!” I tried to explain that we do that at home and we didn’t want to mess up her floors (we’d already tracked in a bunch of foot prints from the city wall dirt). We were ineffective. So, after we left she had to re-clean her floors. From the conversation and translations with our guide, David, we learned that our hostess was married and had one son. Her husband and son were at a family wedding – on her side of the family!! I said, “We’ll eat quickly so you can go too.” She said basically, ‘nah, I’d rather be here – I see enough of them.’ She had originally rescheduled to Saturday from Sunday, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. (No idea what was more important than a wedding that she had on Sunday.) We asked David, and found out that this is like a part-time job for her. So that also made me feel better about the whole deal. She offered the kids some candy (not her first rodeo!) and drinks, and then showed us around the apartment. I don’t know if they are just neat-freaks, or if everything was crammed in closets, or if they just don’t have as much JUNK as we do, but everything was so neat and clean. But other than being twice as neat as my house, their house was what any of my friends and family would consider a normal middle class apartment. David said that it was considered a large apartment, and it was good-sized. He said that she had started doing the hostess job because her husband was laid off shortly after they signed the mortgage (lease?) and they were having trouble making ends meet.
Well, let me just tell you….. this woman could go get a job as a caterer anywhere in the world. All she’d have to do is offer the food she served us. Oh Boy!! We ate like starving people. She had Kung Pao chicken, sweet and sour pork, fried rice, green beans, corn, fish, and probably something else I’m forgetting. It was one of the best meals we had in China – and that’s saying something. I wish I’d taken pictures of some of the feasts we had while there – including at her house. During lunch, we said something about the food we missed from the States. David mentioned some of the fast food from America that they had in Xian, including “Papa John’s”. Well, that got everyone’s attention! The kids and Mom were instantly interested in learning more. David could tell that Erin thought this was ridiculous, so he said, “Well, in Xian, Papa John’s is a hamburger place.” The kids and Mom were disappointed.
After lunch, our guide and driver took us back to our hotel. It was about 3p.m. by the time we got there. The rest of the day we were on our own. We really didn’t know what we wanted to do. Part of me was so full and happy that a nap sounded great. But more of me was thinking, ‘this is the only time I’ll get to be here, it seems a waste to stay in the hotel the rest of the day.’ So we decided to go out and find the Wal-mart that we’d seen out the van window. “Let’s just walk down there and back, maybe we’ll see something for supper on the way. Let’s not stay out too long, but I don’t want to sit around here ‘till bed time either.” I had paid close attention, so I knew how to get there. But stupid me, I decided to ask at the front desk to make sure. The clerk said, “No, there’s not one there, but there is one down to the south-east.” Well, I took her word for it. We decided to get a taxi. But we quickly learned that no taxi would stop. Then we saw our guide, David, walking toward us. He was still waiting for a bus home. Three p.m. is rush hour, apparently. The bus would come, but it would be too full for more passengers, so he was waiting and waiting. He told us that we would have a terrible time trying to get a cab at this time of day, so he recommended we just walk. So we did and he said he’d go with us part of the way. We walked down to the middle of town – the Drum Tower, and then on past that to the South-east side of town (Our hotel was near the North-west corner.). They had told us that the Wal-mart was behind such and such mall. Well, we accidently walked past that mall. When we came to a major road that was labeled on our map, we knew we’d come too far. (-Almost to the other side of the walled part of town!) A very friendly man tried to convince us to take the bus back, but we were not brave enough to try that – not knowing where which bus went or what stop to get off, etc. So we started walking back. We were so tired! By this time, we’d been walking for more than 2 hours! (Plus the bicycling we’d done earlier….) Erin happened to look up and see a sign that said, “Wal-Mart” with a big arrow pointing down the side street. There was much rejoicing. Actually, there was some rejoicing, some whining to ‘just go back to the hotel’, and some whining for ‘ice cream for supper’. We gave in to the thoughts of sitting down to some ice cream. Ahhh – Baskin Robbins – familiar territory! Woo-hoo! Plus, the guy at Baskin Robbins spoke pretty good English, so we were able to ask him about the Wal-Mart and the Papa John’s. David is a very convincing liar when it comes to Papa John’s and hamburgers.
[Back story: We have a couple of Dunkin Donuts stores here in Singapore, but they are not located in places that we normally visit. There is one at the airport, however, and we have usually gotten a donut before getting on the plane to go somewhere. We didn’t get to do that this time, though because we were a little late getting to the airport. We told the kids that we’d get Dunkin Donuts when we got back to Singapore.]
So, coming out of Baskin Robbins feeling rejuvenated somewhat, we started walking toward where we thought Wal-Mart would be. Having just had wonderful American ice cream (possibly for supper if we didn’t find a pizza-selling Papa John’s), I said, “Now all we need is a Dunkin Donuts!” Everyone, especially Erin was like, Hmph! But I wasn’t even finished saying the word “Donuts” when I stepped around a corner and saw this sign:
I started laughing so loud! Erin and the kids couldn’t figure out why (I was walking in the front.). I just pointed at the sign. What timing! So of course, the boys wanted Donuts. We finally said, ‘you can either have them here or when we get back, but not both’. So they each got two, ate one, and saved the other.
It took us a couple of minutes to realize that the Wal-mart was downstairs from the Dunkin Donuts, so we were in the right place after all.
This was probably the smallest Wal-mart I’ve ever been in, but many things felt familiar. I loved their little baskets on wheels. We definitely need those in the U.S. We found some lime sherbet (or ice cream?) Oreos to buy. We were the only Westerners in there, so I felt a little awkward taking pictures, but here ya go….. It being Xian and all, there was a Terracotta Warrior guarding the exit.
From there, we wanted to find the Papa John’s. It was supposed to be on the way back to the hotel. That’s the only way we got the kids to go along with looking for it. We were all soooo tired of walking! We walked back and never found the Papa John’s. It must’ve been in the food court of one of the many malls we passed. We did, however, pass the newer Wal-mart that I’d seen out the van window. GRRRRRR! That would’ve made our 4 hour walk into a one hour walk.
By the time we were 30 min. from the hotel, O needed to be carried and to find a restroom, not necessarily in that order. We did find a public restroom and while Erin took him inside, the other 2 and I sat on a bench waiting. The bench turned out to be in front of the place where the street sweepers bring their garbage carts. There was a little dog hanging out around there and he came over, gave me a sniff, said, “ewwww! You smell funny!” sneezed, and went away. The garbage ladies and I had a chuckle about that. Then we had an actual conversation in Chinese! Yea me! They asked about the kids and where we were from. They stuck to the vocabulary I knew for a while, and then they lost me. Thinking about it later, I think she was asking why we were out walking at 8:30 in that part of town (not near anything tourist-y). Or maybe she was asking about my shoes. I’ll never know.
Anyway, we got back to the hotel exhausted and went to bed.
Sunday, October 16: Terracotta Warriors Day! Fortunately, we all got plenty of rest after our ‘long march’ in Xian. We ate breakfast at the hotel and met David in the lobby. Speaking of our hotel. We really liked the hotel in Xian. It was called the “Grand New World Hotel”. They were hosting a conference called “The 2nd International Symposium on Traditional Cultare [sic?] and Eco-Cvilization” and “First Seminar of Promotion on Economics and Culture Cooperation”. Many of the delegates were dressed in traditional garb. David wasn’t familiar with who/what they were. The hotel itself was beautifully decorated. There was a giant mural (25ft. tall?) behind the lobby, and lots of beautiful paintings around. Very very nice. Also, we had adjoining rooms! That’s never happened in our travels. Hotels in Europe and Asia tend to be for 2 people at a time. It is rare to find one where 3 people can fit without bringing in a roll-away bed. So generally, we’ve been paying for the roll-away bed for the boys room, and the girls share a room. But this time, we put all the kids in the 3-bed room and the parents got to share a room –yea!
So anyway, David and the driver picked us up and we headed for the Terracotta Warriors. On the way, we stopped at a shopping opportunity (gasp!). It was at a factory that uses the same clay and techniques as the actual Terracotta Warriors. We got to watch them making some smaller figures and see the kiln where they’re dried. They had an artist there who will ‘put your face on a life-sized Terracotta Warrior’. They had some of Barak Obama, David Beckham, etc. Frankly, Western faces on Terracotta Warriors is just wrong. Funny. But wrong. Nevertheless, there were several samples there of ordinary (rich) tourists who’d had it done.
We bought some of the smaller figurines and drooled over the furniture there with the lacquer finish. Oh my oh my oh my! I so loved that stuff!! It was sooo expensive, but absolutely drop dead, smack yo mama gorgeous. One of those tables would cost the same as our entire trip for 5 people to China. Sigh. I have pictures.
From the factory we went to see the real deal. There are actually 3 buildings there that contain Terracotta Warriors. The largest building is the one you’ve probably seen on t.v. It is the size of an aircraft hangar – or maybe 2 aircraft hangars. The building itself is a marvel because there are no support columns. So, a little background on the TCW: In about 210 BC, the first Emperor of China decided (with a little persuasion from his councilors) not to bury his soldiers and servants alive within his tomb. Instead he commissioned a life-sized terracotta replica of his army. THEN he had everyone involved killed so the secret would be safe. They believe that all the artists were executed as well as anyone who knew where the tomb was. There are over 8,000 soldiers, 670 horses, 130 chariots that they know of. Most are still buried. Each of the 8,000 soldiers has a distinct face, so they believe that they were modeled on real people. All of the soldiers, horses, chariots, etc. were painted in a very life-like way. There were a couple of photographs on display that showed the paint. They were so life like it was spooky – it looked like a person half buried in the dirt! But alas, the paint faded within a few hours of being exposed to oxygen. In less then 2 days you couldn’t even tell it had been there. So before they dig any more pieces out of the ground, they’re waiting for preservation techniques to improve to the point that the paint will last. The soldiers also had real weapons in their hands.
So, one thing I didn’t realize is that these pieces were not buried in the sense of ‘we placed them in a pit and shoveled dirt on them’. No. The workers dug tunnels leading toward the tomb and placed the pieces in the tunnels. They were not surrounded by dirt – just standing there waiting for their army to be called to life (death?). Of course tomb robbers broke in to steal the weapons and smashed some figures, set some fires etc. Over time the roofs of the tunnels collapsed and most of the figures were broken. In fact, they’ve only found 4 figures intact. The ones you see in the pictures, or on tours through museums around the world are figures that have been repaired. We saw several dozen in the back of ‘pit #1’ that were in process of being fit back together.
So for nearly two thousand years no one knew these things were there. Fast Forward to 1974. A group of nine farmers were digging a well on their collective farm. They turn up a head from one of the warriors. One of the farmers decides to turn it in to the government –hoping to get a reward. He did – about $5. Then the govt. swooped in and took over the farm and started uncovering stuff. The farmers were largely forgotten. Nowadays, one of the farmers (80 something years old) sits in the gift shop and autographs books for the tourists. David said he’s normally gruff, but was in a good mood and smiled for our picture with him. He seemed to like the boys (aka car wrecks). So my kids got to meet the guy (well, one of the 9) who discovered the Terracotta Warriors. How cool is that?!?
We also went to see 2 other pits which you never see on t.v. They didn’t have the large number of figures like pit #1, but they were still very cool. You could see a chariot and horses. In those pits, the tunnels were more visible as well. You could see the tiles on the floor, and the support columns on the sides. There are a LOT more figures that they don’t want to uncover yet in the other two pits.
I don’t know if I’d call the Terracotta Warriors ‘the eighth wonder of the world’ as it was billed in our tour, but it was pretty cool. The boys both rated it right up there with the Great Wall.
For lunch we ate at the Aegean Sea (we think there are more words in the name, but can’t remember them) Restaurant. The food was very good. We ordered seconds on their beef dish. This was a good example of our guide, David, taking extra good care of us. He had been told by our travel company that we couldn’t have mushrooms and we preferred no seafood. So when the waitress brought out the fried rice, David stopped her and saw that it had shrimp in it. He told her to take it back. We said, “nah, it’s o.k. O. will eat the shrimp.” But he insisted and so she took it back. We had to wait a while to get some non-shrimp infested rice. In fact, by the time it came, we’d finished everything else and only ate some out of guilt.
After lunch, we went to the Shaanxi Ancient Civilizations Museum. This was a pretty good museum. We didn’t have as much time there as I’d like, but probably the kids had all they could take of it. ☺ (I keep saying that someday I’m going to do a tour of museums at my own pace – anyone want to come? I’m thinking 4 or 5 days for the Louvre, at least that much time for the British Museum. Same for the Smithsonian, etc.) So this museum is just full of pieces from before Christ, or before you know, Columbus. Actually, anything from the time of Columbus would probably be sneered at for being too recent. This always reminds me of how young America is.
Coming out of the museum, we saw a Papa John’s. So they do exist in China! This was nowhere near the one we were trying to find the night before.
The next stop on the tour was the ‘Big Wild Goose Pagoda’. This is a pretty neat stop, although the kids and Erin were all starting to say, “not another pagoda!”. As we went in, David handed us each a brochure that explained a little about the temple area and on the back there was some info. about the Chinese zodiac. It had a little place for a stamp. David said at the end of the tour, they would stamp your zodiac animal on there. To me, this was like ‘big whoop’. But the kids thought it was cool. There were several neat buildings in the temple complex. David asked if we wanted to go to the top, or go to the gift shop and get our papers stamped – we didn’t have time for both. At first only A. wanted to go up, and so Erin volunteered to go with him. I said I’d go and get their papers stamped. Well then, knowing that they could get their papers stamped AND see the view from the top, the other two wanted to go up as well. I have their photos from the top. David and I went and got their papers stamped, and I bought a chop of my name in English and Chinese. I watched the guy carve it by hand. I cannot even imagine trying to write Chinese Characters backwards!!! What?!? It gives me a headache to see them upside down! I really liked my chop, even if the whole paper stamping thing was just designed to get me to buy it. Maybe David gets a commission for that shop, because that was the only place he asked me if I’d like to buy one for each of the kids. Or maybe he’s just friendly like that. He was very friendly after all. ☺
After that, we hurried over to the Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Performance. We were also supposed to have dinner there, though not during the show. The show was good. The dancing was elegant. Apparently, ancient kings liked the dancers to have really long sleeves (like several feet longer than their arms). This tradition carried for several hundred years. It was cool how they sort of flowed across the stage. They also had some interesting musical acts that we all enjoyed, including several drum ensembles that I liked. The dinner was dumplings. Here’s a quote from our itinerary:
(Tips: Dumplings are a traditional local food in northern China
and are made of wheat flour with various indigenous fillings.
This has long been a favourite food of the local people, so we
have arranged for you to have a taste of this speciality today.
You will also have an opportunity to learn more about the
diversified Chinese food culture. However, we suggest you do
not expect too much from this dinner, it is just a new and
different experience during your trip.)
So clearly, the writer is not a dumpling fan, or else other tourists are stupid. I already knew I liked dumplings, so I was really looking forward to this meal. Each of the dumplings was shaped like the meat inside it. So, the duck(!) dumplings were shaped like little ducks. I only took a few pictures, because I was too busy making sure no one stole my dumplings! We all enjoyed that meal, and it was one of everyone’s favorites – right up there with the Peking duck. Yum, yum, and more yum. I’ve tried to find good dumplings since we got back to Singapore. Let me just say that frozen dumplings are terrible. My Chinese teacher is promising to teach me how to make them. I don’t have high hopes for my ability to learn that, but I’ll let you know.
Monday, October 17: We got up and packed our bags for Chongqing. After breakfast at the hotel, we met David and the driver. After a photo op with the little car wrecks, we headed for the airport. On the way, we stopped at the ‘Hanyangling Museum’ aka the Mausoleum of Western Han Emperor Liu Qi (who died in 141 BC). I read somewhere that this is the most underrated attraction in China. I can believe it. We were almost the only ones there. You’ll have to look at the picture to understand that the tomb is like a pyramid shape with a flat top. They have found numerous tunnels leading up to the tomb. Each of the tunnels held statues of people or animals. These were not life-sized like the famous Terracotta Warriors, but they were very detailed and cool. The kids thought it was funny that we all had to put on shoe covers before we could go in. The museum was laid out in the most cool fashion. They had put glass (well, plexi glass or plastic or something) over the tunnels, so you could walk over the artifacts and look straight down into the pits. Uber cool. Unfortunately, the lighting in there was great for artifacts – which means it was terrible for photography. Flash bad. No flash also bad. Even worse, the gift shop didn’t have any pictures. You could buy a big ol heavy book for like $50, but I didn’t want to spend that much, and I was already lugging suitcases full of small, heavy books bought in other museums and sites. Sigh. I also think I could have a career improving museum gift shop books.
The next stop was the airport. We flew 2 hours or so to Chongqing (pop. 32million plus – yes, you read that right. There’s a city in China that you’ve probably never heard of where the population is more than 32 MILLION people). The flight was over some of the biggest mountains I’ve seen. It was fascinating. Erin and I were looking out the window and trying to figure out how a human could get to some of those places. There would be a beautiful, wide valley, but no roads or rivers. Yet there were little communities in there. Beautiful scenery.
We really weren’t expecting much from our stay in Chongqing. I’d heard that it was very polluted, and the only activity we were scheduled for was a trip to the General Stilwell Museum. Really? A museum dedicated to an American general in China? Hmmm. Our new guide, Johnny, told us we could go there, or we could switch to a different attraction. Now I can’t remember the other choice, but it sounded like ‘another pagoda’ to the rest of the crew. Then he mentioned that the Gen. Stilwell Museum was across the street from the “Flying Tigers Museum”. Well, A. was hooked then!
The Stilwell Museum, is in the General’s former house. There is a lot of memorabilia there about his involvement in helping the Chinese fight off the Japanese in WWII. There were pictures of him with Chiang Kai-Shek, Madam Chiang, and also Chairman Mao. I preferred the ancient artifacts type museum, but if you like WWII and military stuff like the boys do, I think this was a breath of fresh air after ‘all those pagodas’. ☺
So then we went across the street to the “Flying Tigers Museum”. O.k. there actually were two rooms with Flying Tiger Memorabilia. (FYI: The Flying Tigers were a group of American volunteers who flew fighter planes against the Japanese in defense of China before America was officially involved in the war.) A. enjoyed looking at all that and telling us what kinds of planes were in the photos. Even the museum guide was impressed with his knowledge. (I have to mention that the American Ambassador’s son is in A.’s Boy Scout troop. He was receiving his Eagle rank in a ceremony on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier while we were in China. The entire troop was invited. A. was SOOO disappointed that he couldn’t go! He thought it would be worth skipping China to go on a real aircraft carrier. I’ve got to make it up to him someday!) So at least we got to see the Flying Tigers stuff.
But the main point of the “Flying Tigers Museum” was not the Flying Tigers. It was the artist group that worked there. Clearly, you’re to be lured in with the history (anyone interested in the material in the Stilwell Museum across the street is going to see the “Flying Tigers Museum Entrance” and want to check it out). So we were suckered in again. But we can’t complain. We ended up buying several things there that look excellent on my walls. ☺ And the prices were great. We watched the man paint. He could paint a beautiful painting in like five minutes. Crazy. We bought one of his paintings and two leaf paintings. (Paintings on an actual banyan leaf. Very very cool – even our Singaporean friends were impressed.) I also bought a carved purple and white jade bracelet that I really like.
Next our guide offered to take us on to the cruise ship, or to supper. We weren’t terribly hungry, but we thought we’d eat anyway because we didn’t think they’d be serving a meal on the boat that night. (We were right.) So, Johnny took us to a ‘hot pot’ restaurant. Apparently, he took us to the very best one for us. I’d heard rumors that some of the hot pot places lace their broth with opium so you’ll be a return customer. I’ve also heard that it can be so spicy that it will make you sick for days. I don’t know about all that, because we didn’t have any ill effects from the meal. A. is certain that it was his favorite meal in China. We did ask them to make it a little less hot than normal. Frankly, I think that was a mistake. Anyway…… the concept is that in the middle of the table is a burner with a pot of broth on it. Our pot was divided down the middle with a spicy broth on one side, and a not spicy chicken soup type broth on the other. Surrounding the pot on all sides were small dishes containing various kinds of raw meat. You turn your pot on and get it simmering and then put in whatever kind of meat you want. It’s all you can eat, so you can order more sausage or chicken or whatever. Johnny warned us about the ‘prickly ash’, but he didn’t show us what it looked like, and we didn’t know. He said it would make your tongue go numb. Hmmm. So we started out by putting in all the things we like, with only a little in the spicy half of the pot. Then you have to sterilize your chopsticks in the simmering liquid after touching the raw meat with them. Like I said, I didn’t think the spicy side was too hot. Others thought it was just right on the spicy. The waitress also brought out some other things like fried zucchini. I put some on my plate and later took a bite. Hmmm. That zucchini has a lemon taste to… wait a minute! My tongue is going numb! Like, been at the dentist for a filling numb! Whoa! That zucchini must have that prickly ash spice on it. So Erin and H. tried it but neither of them got anything but zucchini. I thought I was going crazy, because my tongue was uncomfortably numb several minutes later. They were making fun of me. But eventually Erin got a prickly ash seed in his mouth. Ha ha – sweet revenge. We finally figured out what they looked like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper
(See the picture under ‘culinary uses’ – it’s the pile on the left.)
So there must’ve been one stuck to the bottom of my zucchini piece. H. was the only person brave enough to try one on purpose after our descriptions of the uncomfortable yet not quite painful numbness.
After supper we walked up to the The People’s Square. It was so beautiful lit up at night. There were older couples there dancing. It was just a nice place to go in the evening to socialize.
So we really enjoyed our few hours in Chongqing. It was a welcome break from the ‘ancient-ness’ of Beijing and Xian. Our guide and driver took us down to the quay to board our ship for the cruise down the Yangtze River. I’ll hopefully finish up the China blog in the next segment about the cruise and Shanghai.
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