Thursday Thirteen

Things I will remember about China

1. The cruise from Guilin
2. “5 for one dolla...”
3. That exquisite embroidery
4. The welcome we received at the Viking School
5. Climbing the Great Wall
6. The woman exercising in pink pjs with a sword
7. The rugs in the Shangri-La Hotel that changed every day
8. The wonderful unseasonable weather
9. The 3 Gorges area
10. How CLEAN everything was
11. The hanging coffin we could almost see.
12. The friendships we made
13. Jenna

Now It Can Be Told

When we began planning this trip and the question of whether to take the extension to Hong Kong or not, I really didn't want to do it. I enjoyed our extension to Finland on the Russia trip because it came before the regular part of the trip. I knew myself well enough to know that by the time that official Viking trip here in China ended, I was going to want to go home, not have another 4 days to spend in Hong Kong.

But I never really said that and the others wanted to do it, so I went along with it, knowing that by the time we got to Hong Kong, I would be shopped-out and museumed-out and sceneryed-out. By the time we got to Guilin I was realizing that I had been right. I didn't want to take that flight, I wasn't much interested in yet another part of China and I wasn't looking forward to yet another flight, this one to Hong Kong. and then there was that cruise on the Li River which just sounded boring as hell. We'd already done the gorges...what could top that?

Well, if the restaurant here at the Kowloon Shangri-La served crow, I'd be eating it. What an amazing day we have had! And how glad I am that I didn't miss it!

It started, as usual, with bags out (I hadn't even opened mine, since we were in the hotel only a matter of a few hours), going to the buffet breakfast (chocolate croissants...mmm), then meeting the group in the lobby, piling aboard the bus and heading off into the countryside.

While we waited in the lobby, I took a picture of this girl, dressed in the traditional Miao people, one of the ethnic groups in this region (in the U.S., we would call them Hmong). Apparently her job is to stand in the lobby every day to greet people and have her picture taken. I think I was supposed to give her a tip, but I didn't realize that.

The drive out through the country was kind of interesting because here there were no high rises, bikes and cars seemed to be competing for who had the highest number, and we were driving through rice paddies where farmers in their straw hats were working with their water buffalo. A far cry from the hustle and bustle of Shanghai and Beijing! The road quality was terrible and at one point I was wondering if I had one of the airsickness bags I've been collecting to use as envelopes with me (I didn't).

We finally arrived at our destination, the town of Daxu, where we were to board a boat with a lot of other people and take a four hour cruise down the Li River, one of China's most famous scenic areas. Who knew? Lots of those paintings of misty mountains that you see in Chinese shops are actually pictures painted of this area.

We settled ourselves in at a table and had some tea while they brought us items from the "special menu," should we prefer to order something that didn't come with our Viking cruise meal plan.

I couldn't decide between "gross bony fish" and "stir-fried river snail."

We started on our trip down? up? the river, discovering we were in a flotilla of tour boats. The river is also filled with locals on their bamboo rafts, some of which are the persistent vendors. This guy connected his raft to our boat and tried to sell us "real" jade objects, holding them out to us and yelling up to the upper deck.

We began to see the amazing mountain peaks.

These guys from Belgium positioned themselves at the front railing and weren't moving for anything, so it was quite a challenge trying to shoot pictures around them.

Meanwhile, back in the cabin, one of the staff was offering us a local delicacy: snake wine, which they say is good for arthritis.

Mike, who will try anything, decided to buy a glass and both he and Walt tasted it.

Both were dubious, but said it tasted very strong and more like brandy than wine.

We were getting into the more spectacular part of the trip now

There were lots of named mountains, named for what they looked like. The one below, for example, is "9 horses running," which I couldn't see at ALL because I was looking at mountain shape and not the shape of the colors on the side of the mountain.

If you can make out the shape of a horse here, then you can start to find them in other parts of the mountain. Pretty cool.

Lunch turned out to be buffet...and we didn't have to order "longevity of fish."

Walt was just tickled to find himself eating French fries with chopsticks!

As we left the mountain area (and there will be LOTS of photos on Flickr when I get home), we started getting into farm country and seeing lots of farmers taking their vegetables to market.

We also saw little spaces -- kind of sandbars -- where apparently boats may dock and people can get off, dress in local costume and (for a fee) have their picture taken. (or maybe buy them...I couldn't tell)

We also started to see Cormorant men. Fishermen on this area of the river use cormorants to help them. They send the birds out, they catch fish and bring it back to the fisherman. They don't eat the fish because their necks are constricted in some way and they arent able to swallow them whole. Our local guide said that a fisherman will generally have a stable f some 10 birds, which live for up to 15 years, so are valuable to them.

Of course another function of the cormorants is to be used for tourists to photograph (and pay for, of course! -- I didn't pay; I took this picture from the ship as we were docking at our final destination, the little town of Yangshuo.

Yangshuo is definitely a town that derives a lot of its income from the tourist trade.

Scarves, fans, t-shirts, purses, books, postcards, graphic Kama Sutra dolls, toys, etc., etc., etc. You name it and 100 vendors have it, all trying to get you to buy from them. We did buy a couple of things, but mostly sat in our "meeting place" watching the traffic on the river and enjoying a bottle of "Great Wall Cabernet."

Finally, we all climbed aboard a golf-cart type vehicle which took us out of town and into the hotel area, where our bus was parked. Then it was back on the bus for the 40 minute ride back to the Guilin airport and from there to Hong Kong.

Now we are in Hong Kong, where Facebook works, and Walt's cell phone does not. We will have a half day tour with Jenna and our local guide (whose name is Polly!) and then be turned loose on our own for the next 2 days...and then home!

We are staying at the Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel. The Guilin Shangri-La was my favorite hotel of this trip and I was looking forward to finding a similar situation here. It's a lovely room, but not as much space as we had in Guilin. The lobby is gorgeous, but as we trudged toward the elevators, looking like some street person, I had the distinct feeling that a place where a guy who looked like an Asian Richard Deacon, with a snappy suit and a gold silk tie whose sole job it seemed to be to make sure that our elevator button got pushed was not really "our kind of place." We have moved up in the world from Motel 6, but we still aren't "Shangri-La" kinda people! But the wifi is free and even if the peanuts did cost us $9 for half a can, I was so hungry it was worth every penny.

We are Moving! We are Moving

I am writing this at 3 a.m. and we are sailing up? down? the Yangtze River. Yesterday was a very full day and I told Char at one point I was more in sympathy with the men who made the 6,000 mile march across China during the cultural revolution. But the day started at that fabulous breakfast buffet at the Ritz Carlton...

...after which we went out on the street to explore a bit and discovered several women exercising across the street. Some were doing a dance movement, two were playing badminton and another group were exercising with swords. Walking through a little park next to the hotel, we saw several men doing their own morning exercises as well. We sat and watched this woman (who has a sword in her hand, if you look closely) for quite awhile. Her movements were beautiful.

Around 9 a.m. we hopped on the bus again for a quick walk along the Bund, the area that parallels the river and gives you a wonderful view of Pudong, an area which was farmland 20 years ago!

Our next stop was at a place where they did intricate embroidery. "Intricate" doesn't begin to describe it.

This woman is working from a pattern with pieces of thread that are sometimes so fine you can barely see them.

I think this was my favorite piece...and you can't begin to appreciate the detail work in it. The fur seems like real fur and the lions' personalities seem to leap out of the frame. It cost about $18,000.

I loved each and every piece and if I were rich and had available walls, I could have brought home several of them. But I didn't buy any.

We had a dim sum lunch there, surrounded by these gorgeous works of art.

We dined with Brian and Sharon, who are from London and who have made 3 other Viking cruises, in France and Germany, previously. We had dinner with them too. Interestingly, our meals thus far all include "one free soft drink," a choice which includes beer!

After lunch, it was onto Pudong Airport for our two hour flight to Wuhan, where we were to board the ship. Wuhan, with only 7 million people, is much smaller than Shanghai (though still twice as large as San Francisco). There, too, is building everywhere, though not the explosion that you see in Shanghai. There are no true "skyscrapers" to match Shanghai's, but they are starting to build large apartment complexes and a few tall buildings downtown, yet there is still a feel of old China about it.

Before boarding the bus, we went to a bell concert at the Hubei Provincial Museum. In 1978, while preparing a building site, a grave was discovered. Nobody gave it much thought until more artifacts had been unearthed and then they began to excavate. It was the grave of Marquis Yi of Zeng, who died in 433 BC. He was not particularly famous, but he was buried with this huge collection of musical instruments, and the bodies of the concubines who were murdered so that they could play music for him in the afterlife. It was one of the most significant and best preserved graves of that era and the bells were in wonderful condition and are kept preserved in the museum.

Replicas of the bells and other instruments found at the site, however, are used for concerts and we were treated to a concert by several of the musicians.

After 3 Chinese numbers, one of which was a very haunting piece played on an instrument that sounded somewhat like an ocharina, the concert ended with a rousing rendition of "Ode to Joy," showing that the bells can also be used for more modern than ancient musical numbers!

Char and I left the tour of the museum at one point to look for a Happy Room and finally found an infamous squat toilet.

Fortunately there were also Western style toilets in the same place. But there was no toilet paper in the stalls. I had my trusty Kleenex package with me, so I was fine, but when I went to wash my hands and dry them on the "paper towels," I discovered that the towel holder actually held toilet paper and you were apparently supposed to take your paper before you entered a stall. Calculate carefully.

With the sun setting over Wuhan...

...we finally made our way to the river and boarded the Viking Emerald. We were met with drummers and a lion dancer, and a host of ship staff greeting us all the way down the gangplank and onto the ship.

We are very pleased with our room, which has its own private balcony where we will be able to sit and watch the world pass (and from which, I have been told, we will be able to reach out and touch the 3 Gorges Dam as we pass through the locks).

Dinner the first night did not disappoint (remembering all those amazing dinners in Russia) and we have requested the table served by Joly and Cherry for the rest of the time we are here--a nice window table.

We ended the night checking out the internet room, delighted to find it unoccupied, until I realized that was because there was no internet access at all. So I don't have a clue when this will be posted, but perhaps at this hour of the night (3:30 as I finish this), there is a chance of connecting.

Now to sneak upstairs in my stocking feet and try...

The Happy Room

I may have difficulty calling it a "bathroom" again, since Jenna, our tour guide, keeps referring to it as "the happy room," which we all seem to be doing now.

What a long, full day it has been, but what fun! This entry is going to be very long, and full of photos with lots, lots more on Flickr. Be glad you can read it while sitting down...my feet are still tired (but happy).

So we started with the breakfast buffet here at the hotel. Reports I'd been getting were that it was fabulous and they weren't kidding. Whatever you wanted, Western or Eastern or in between, they had it. This was Walt's breakfast:

I ask...where else can you get eggs Benedict (on a bagel), pot stickers, fried noodles and hash browns in one breakfast? He went back for some soft tofu that looked like it was dropping blood, several steamed buns, an egg roll, and that white thing with black specks on it, which I thought I understood the cook to say was "chicken fruit." It's a melony-thing with a mild flavor.

And I loved how they serve honey:

The whole honey comb set on a stand with a spigot that drops into the little bowl on the right.

When breakfast was finished, we got our stuff together and went to the bus, for our first meeting with Jenna, our tour guide, and the rest of our group, who will be with us, now, to the end. Shanghai is a very modern city, with skyscrapers of which the people are very proud. Jenna explained that most of the new buildings you see have been built in the last 20 years. There is a great move to get rid of the old and to replace it with the new. You see huge building projects all over the city, and architects seem to have been given the opportunity to do the odd and the unusual because all of these new buildings are definitely unique.

Our first stop, though, was Old Shanghai, which has been preserved as it was during the Ming Dynasty. Parenthetically, let me say here that the problems we Americans have is that we have never been "conquered." In Russia last year and here in China we heard so much about regime change and how it affected the people. It's difficult to keep all the Dynasties straight, let alone how it affected the citizens. I look at the people in China today, compared to my mental image of the days of Mao, when they all dressed in somber garb, a uniform for the entire country. I suspect the Chinese youth today can't hope to relate to the memories of their parents and/or grandparents.

But someone recognized the value of the old, and so they have preserved pockets of Old Shanghai. Naturally, the very first thing we saw in "old" Shanghai was an old friend.

We were headed to Yuyuan Garden, finished in 1577 (during the Ming dynasty) and made for the builder's parents to "enjoy a tranquil and happy time in their old age." Ahhh..those Chinese. They know how to value their elders!

On the bridge leading to the garden, Jenna explains that there are 9 zigs and zags in the bridge because 9 is a lucky number, the Chinese believe (we knew that from our China class!).

These lions guard the entrance to the garden. Lions are very big around here and you usually see them in pairs, one male and one female. I just loved the female of this pair because she has such a maternal look on her face as she plays with her baby.

This is just one small part of the garden, which is as big on its rock formations as it is on its flowers and trees.

I'm kinda liking this dragon fence to erect between us and Mr. McCoy at home! Think that might keep him from being angry with the dogs?

We had 15 minutes to wander around the shop area in Old Town, but I wasn't interested in buying anything, so we kind of stuck close to Jenna, except for going off the the Dairy Queen to get a smoothie!

Our next stop was a silk carpet factory. All the rugs are made by hand and watching these women work was fascinating.

The rugs were beautiful, but all I could imagine was Polly's first day on a $7,000 rug. Definitely not my cuppa tea! (lots more pictures of the rugs are on the Flickr page for this day). When I showed interest in a teeny panda rug (because I wanted to take a picture of it)...

...a salesperson was right there to offer me a good deal on it. When I said I wasn't interested, she started her spiel until I mentioned the magic word: dogs. After that she left me alone! The one thing I was really surprised to learn is that a silk carpet rug changes color if you spin it around. It must be the light hitting the nap at a different angle. Our carpet guide showed us with several rugs and the color changed every time. Pay thousands of dollars for a rug and it does tricks for you!

We had lunch in the cafeteria here and I was surprised that even Char had not heard of Mongolian BBQ, which I have from time to time in Sacramento.

It was time to get back on the bus and head for our next stop, the Shanghai Museum...

...where we spent two hours looking at jade, porcelain, native costumes, furniture, the history of money in China, and a host of other things. I particularly liked the jade.

I loved the plain look of the dove box, the whimsy of the mother goat playing with her kids, the humor of the fisherman, and the intricacy of the boy with a fungus (the boy is at the very top and the fungus makes up the rest). Char was less impressed with the jade but loved the porcelain. I was less impressed with the porcelain, though did like this 11th century gay pride vase.

I bought my first tsatskes in the gift shop here and we were 8 minutes late getting back to the bus because of it. Bad me! I don't wear a watch and since I'm in China, I don't have my cell phone to use as a time piece. But nobody scolded us. We were dropped at the hotel for our "free time" (all 2 hrs of it)...not enough for a nap or to do anything (note all of you chiders--I had two hours free in my room and I did not open the computer!). I sat and read, Walt did go wander the neighborhood, which he loves to do.

At 5, we went the the Ocean Hotel's restaurant where we had...omigawd...the most delicious feast! The food just kept coming and coming.

At one point I looked up and saw the reflection on the mirrored ceiling, so here's what it looks like from above:

We had eleven different main dishes and two desserts and I would be hard pressed to say which I liked the best. Suffice it to say, nobody walked away hungry!

And then it was off to the acrobat show, which I'd heard such good things about. I had hoped to take pictures, which many people have done, but they requested no cameras, and as a conscientious theater critic, I obeyed. So no photos from this event. A few months back, I reviewed a show called Cirque dreams. This was very similar. Judging by the age of most of the performers, I am wondering if, like the ballet we went to in St. Petersburg, this is the top of the student groups. It was Ed Sullivan on steroids (I think I may have used that phrase in my previous review!) They did rope tricks, twirled plates, jumped through hoops, spun yo-yo like things and balanced on impossibly high structures (though the fear factor is gone because the balancer is tied to a rope). And it ended with a spectacular 7-motorcycle race around a giant hamster ball-like structure. That was very cool. As a jaded reviewer, I found it OK, but nothing spectacular. But it was definitely entertaining.

Now we are settled in for the night and in the morning we will walk the Bund after breakfast and then fly to Wuhan, where we board the Viking Emerald for our Yangtze experience.

We are having a fabulous time! I don't have a clue if I can post tomorrow, but hold the good thought! Now I'm going to visit the happy room and then go to sleep.