China Revisited

"When are you leaving?" Walt asked.

I looked up with a jerk, saw that it was 2:20 p.m., checked my calendar and saw that I was supposed to have Sheila at the vet's office at 2:40. I was still in my pajamas.

It's been that kind of day. A week or so ago, I put in some time and got half of the pictures from China up on Flickr, but I OD on that stuff quickly. What with putting a journal book together, and doing a bunch of other things with the photos, including a slide show to show to a friend at lunch this week, I really was sick of looking at our photos, to tell you the truth.

But I heard from the woman who runs the Internet Users Group here in town. Shortly before we left for China (and she left for England), I worked with her and the group teaching them how to make slide shows. This is the follow-up meeting and she has invited people to come and bring their slide shows.

I told her that if she didn't have enough shows, I could bring China pictures to show. She said that she had her own trip pictures and if nobody else volunteered, we could both run our slides.

But to put together a slide show of a small percentage of the pictures, I had to finish sorting them and getting the good ones up on Flickr.

I pretty much worked the entire day and managed to get up another 4 days worth of photos. I have two more days to go and will get that all done tomorrow.

Then I can start thinking about which photos I want to use for a coffee-table type of book. It's darn expensive coming home from one of these trips! LOL.

Sheila and I got to the vets with 1 minute to spare. I don't get a lot of one on one time with Sheila and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with her again. As she gets older, she has really taken on the role of guard dog, so she spends all of her awake time either looking out the front window, or lying on the patio, not asleep, but taking stock of all the sounds and smells that come to her. Rarely do I ever see her sleeping during the day.

But she was very excited to be going out alone with me. She sat by the car and waited until I opened it for her, and then sat in her spot in the back seat with her nose out the 2" of window that I open for her. We took her camping in the days before Lizzie came to live with us, when she was an only dog, and she took her place in that spot and didn't move for the entire 2+ hour drive into the mountains. She is a very loyal guard dog.

The appointment went well and she now has all her vaccinations up to date. She was such a good girl that I decided to buy her a hamburger. We went to Jack in the Box and I got a plain hamburger--just meat and bun. I broke it up into little pieces for her and put it on the back seat, but she wouldn't eat it because that would mean leaving her guard place at the window, so I found a place to park and fed it to her. She was thrilled. A whole hamburger all to herself.

We came back home again and I went right back to China until time for Jeopardy and then putting together a pizza for dinner. After dinner I finished off the last batch of photos I was working on and then we headed out to the theatre.

This was opening night for the Davis Musical Theater company's production of Peter Pan, a new production of the show that opened DMTC's history 29 years ago. Walt worked tech for that show and when, in his opening remarks from the stage, Director Steve Isaacson reminisced about that very first show, he called out to Walt, in the audience, to make sure he remembered too, about painting the set for the last act while the first act was going on.

When the show was over, I had a piece of opening night cake and chatted with the costumer and Walt got a tour of the rigging for all the flying scenes. Two other member of the company came to talk with me about China, so I was quickly back in China mode again.

With luck, I will have all of the photos fit to print on Flickr by tomorrow and I won't have that hanging over my head any more.

Taking My Jet Lag on the Road

We've been home for several days now and yesterday I was actually awake most of the day, except for falling asleep during a Clint Eastwood movie and dreaming I was his daughter and needed to get a flashlight from him so I could cross a body of water and win $1 million. I couldn't even watch the end of the movie because the DVD stuck and I had to send it back to Netflix.

But anyway, I decided that I was sufficiently recovered that I could take the day to drive down to my mother's, have lunch, and tell her about our trip. It was a lovely day when I started out. The weather report earlier had shown a bit of rain traveling across the state, but nothing major.

So much for weather reporting. I drove into three HUMONGOUS squalls where the rain was so heavy that I could not see the road in front of me. There was lightning and thunder and one was so bad that I got off at the next offramp and just sat there and waited for it to pass (it took about 5-10 minutes for each squall to pass through).

When I got to my mother's house, she was surprised because they had only had sprinkles there. Guess it built in intensity as it moved east!

We had a very nice visit. I told her all about China, gave her the gifts I'd bought for her, modeled my new jacket (which she loved), and we had lunch.

After lunch, I showed her a slide show I'd put together for her. Only about 150 pictures out of the hundreds I took, but I knew that she would be interested in only the VERY highlights. She was impressed with the Terracotta Warriors and I'm sorry I didn't include more of them in the show.

By 2 p.m., I had begun to realize I was going to either have to leave to drive home or take a nap before I left. The problem with taking a nap was that by the time I woke up, I would be right smack in the middle of rush hour, which I want to avoid at all costs (though somehow "rush hour" doesn't seem nearly as bad as it did before we went to China!)

So by 2:30, I was in the car, had my audio book going and I was getting on the road. Midway across the "you can't turn around or get off here" highway 37, which connects Highway 101 with I-80 I realized that I desperately needed something to help me stay awake,

On that drive, I know where all the fast food joints are and I decided to stop at McDonald's in Vallejo, but I still needed to take a break before that, so pulled off at a marina where I saw this sign...

There's got to be a story behind that. How do you lose a boat? You notice there is no description whatsoever. Maybe finding lost boats is a common occurrence among boat people. I don't know.

That stop perked me up a bit and I was able to continue on to McDonald's to get my sure-fire picker-upper, an Iced Mocha. They asked if I wanted chocolate or caramel...well, "mocha" kinda means chocolate and coffee. I like the iced mocha, which almost always wakes me up because you get the caffeine and the sugar and that dollop of whipped cream on top.

Only this was the worst iced mocha ever. Though I had specified chocolate, they put an anemic drizzle of caramel on the top (and no chocolate IN the coffee, so it just tasted like unsweetened iced coffee--and weak coffee at that) and then instead of the whipped cream dome that they should use, they jammed down a flat lid on top of it, smashing what little whipped cream they had squirted on there. If I'd been macho, I'd have gone back and insisted they do it again, but I just meekly took what I had been given and drove on, though without the sugar (this is the only time I take sugar in my coffee), it didn't give me the jolt I was looking for.

So by the time I was about 20 minutes from home, I was really, really fighting sleep. I could barely focus in front of me. In fact, I came home on alternate roads instead of I-80. I knew I needed to stop for groceries, but I couldn't even think of that. I desperately needed to sleep before I did anything.

I practically fell through the front door, gave the dogs their treats and plopped into the recliner, where I slept for about an hour. Then I was OK and went out to the store.

When I came home, the TV was broadcasting news about the raging storm, with funnel clouds threatening to touch down here and there.

It's one thing to live in a tornado area, where homes have storm cellars; it's another to live in a place where all homes are built on cement slabs with no cellar whatsoever.

But the threatened cloud has passed away, finally -- taking the internet with it. My connection seems to be gone with the wind. I have no idea how long it's going to take to get it back.

That Raveled Sleeve of Care

Jet lag? Who me?

Lessee. I went to sleep around 10 p.m. last night, woke up at 3:30, went right back to sleep. Slept until about 6. Got up and had breakfast, fiddled around on the computer a bit, decided I needed more sleep, went right back to sleep, woke up at 12:30, got up for half an hour, went back to sleep and woke up at 5:30. I've definitely been knitting up that raveled sleeve of care!

I've had no lunch. I'm waiting for someone to bring me a menu so I know what to order for dinner.

I have not taken a photograph today, which seems weird.

But I eventuallyfound the kitchen table, which was heaped high with non-clothes stuff from my suitcase. Still looking for all those barf bags from all those airplanes that I planned to use for envelopes!

I manage to group all the things together into little bags for the gifts that we're giving.

I discovered we bought waaay more postcards than I expected, which is OK because I will send them to pen pals and Postcrossing people over the next few months, as well as keep some for me.

We also bought more books than I realized, but such great photographic memories of gorgeous places like the Li River and the 3 Gorges. I took some good photos of all those places, but nothing beats a professional photographer and a clear day!

I scanned the photo from the Great Wall, so it's more clear now, and tried to identify everyone so I can remember them in years to come. I'm missing a few names, but I think I got most people numbered.


The two people sitting between Jen and Roni in front were the parents of the girl left to Jenna, on the right (Char thinks her name was Wei). They were Chinese and only spoke Chinese, so we didn't get a chance to know them. I didn't know Nancy and Ed very well either, but took their picture at the Terra Cotta warriors. She gave me her e-mail address and it is somewhere in all of Walt's little pieces of paper. I hope he finds it so I can e-mail them the photo.

Dallas was quite a character, though sometimes his humor bordered on being offensive, but he was a fun guy...and Mike (on the far right), who is from England, was a sweetheart and a real gentleman. I'm also sorry that we did not exchange contact information with Marie and Jim, with whom we probably spent the most time during the ship part of the trip, but I kind of had the feeling that we were good ship friends for Marie and she really didn't want to continue any sort of off-ship friendship (unlike Sharon and Brian, who have invited us to come and stay with them in London!)

The one thing about this group is that we really did become more friendly with a lot of them than we did in Russia. I think this is partly due to tables for 8 in the dining room. In Russia, we always sat together in a table for 4, but there were no tables for 4 in China and so we got to know Marie & Jim, Sharon and Brian, and Sherry and Jen, who rotated in and out of our table.

Oddy enough, when the regular cruise ended and the extension to Hong Kong took over, only 6 from Jenna's group went to Hong Kong, but there were 22 in the group, coming from other leaders' groups. They never made any attempt to merge with us, and seemed to ignore any attempt by any of us to make friends. Even when we went to the airport, Char, Mike, Sherry, Jen, Walt and I had our usual seats at the front of the bus and the other couple riding with us sat in the back of the bus, leaving a couple of seats between us. We saw them in the airport and they barely waved back at us. But then they were in business class and we were in economy, so that may explain something.

But that's OK...We had a good time, even if nobody outside our group wanted to get to know us.

Home

This was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice.......but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, I want to go home. And they sent me home. Oh, but anyway, Polly, I'm home! Home! And this is my room -- and you're all here! And I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And -- there's no place like home!

I'm sitting here in my pajamas, my laundry is in the dryer. I've had a McDonald's hamburger and a spoon full of peanut butter, the dogs have all been cuddled, and I'm about to catch up on TV that was recorded while we were gone, though given that I've been up more than 24 hrs, that probably isn't going to last very long! In fact if I don't finish this entry soon, I'm going to go to sleep first and finish it later. I am fading fast.

Yes, we are finally home. 15 days, so many cities I can't remember, 3 boats, 9 flights, 8 airports and we are finally unpacking our luggage back in Davis again. (That sounds like something you'd hear on Amazing Race).

The elevator reminded us what day it was when we went down to breakfast

(We are imagining a "changing of the carpet" ceremony in the lobby of the hotel, as eight employees march in with 8 rugs and remove the old one and install the new one for each day, the old ones ceremoneously rolled up to be stored for another week. I'm sorry I was never up at midnight to watch it!)

We finished our packing and met down in the lobby, where we chatted with local guide Polly for a bit until the bus arrived to take us to the airport. I could tell from the air as we walked out the hotel door that we were leaving at the right time. It was going to be the first hot and humid day we'd had.

The ride to the airport was nice, to see the harbor for the last time, and to see the bridges we had come over at night on our way in. Disneyland Hong Kong is on the same road and I loved the highway signs!

They say that Disneyland-Hong Kong is small and not riotously popular, though another is to be built in Shanghai and everyone is anticipating that.

We were at the airport in plenty of time and began to ease back into life in the U.S. with milk shakes.

Getting through security was not fun, since they unpacked EVERYTHING in everyone's carry-on and examined it. I had carefully packed something breakable in my backpack and it was removed, examined and shoved back in without any regard for anything (fortunately it escaped unscathed).

The flight was long and the movie choices were not all that good. I was unable to sleep at all and ended up watching Criminal Minds and House! Just like at home.

We drove Mike and Char home and then headed to Davis, stopping for a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger. We picked mail up at the post office before coming home. Nice thing about being away is that there is so much mail waiting for you when you get home!!!

Oh, Aunty Em...there's no place like home! But I sure had fun on this trip...

Where are the Basque Sheepherders?

I don't think I'll explain that title. I wrote it for Char. It's enough that she'll understand.

Last night was so very weird...and I am very grateful for the Internet! I was trying to shut down my computer and accidentally hit something and suddenly the picture on my screen was rotated 90 degrees!

I could still type on it, but in order to position the cursor, I had to turn the machine on its side. It seemed to have iPad wannabe syndrome. I didn't have a clue how I was going to get a journal entry designed. But I put out a "help" call to both Facebook and to Steve McMahon, DCN's wonderful guru back in Davis. When I got up in the morning I had replies from both. Steve suggested I right click on the desktop and see if there was an option for screen orientation. There was. I changed it to "normal" and I was back in business again. A couple of people on FB suggested that I might have hit ctrl-alt-arrow instead of ctrl-alt-del and that is probably what happened. In any event, I was VERY relieved that my day started out with things right in my computer world again, and very glad that I have such great, knowledgeable friends on the Internet who could help so quickly.

We kind of slept in this morning. I had a hard time sleeping so hauled out the big guns and listened to about 6 hours of John Denver on the iPod, which put me to sleep over and over again whenever I woke up. The bed didn't work for me this time, but I managed to make an almost workable "bed" out of the uncomfortable leather chair an ottoman, and a small pillow, using one of those thick hotel bathrobes for a blanket. Oh how I want to crawl into my recliner under Polly!

Instead of 6:30, we went to breakfast at 7 and had a leisurely chat over our eclectic breakfast. I don't know what Walt is going to do when we get back to Davis. He's been trying just about everything that he can for breakfast. This was his second plate this morning

Starting with the pork buns and going around clockwise there are hash browns with soy sauce, something called "pork pastry," a sausage, eggs Florentine, bacon and salmon. He says he's not going to know what to do without salmon every morning! My meal was pretty traditional, though I can't not have a chocolate croissant and today I discovered the buffet included a big bowl of macadamia nuts.

While he was eating, I was looking at the paper and decided you'd rarely see an article like this in the Davis Enterprise or SF Chronicle:

Killing of herder triggers Inner Mongolian Protests The killing of an ethnic Mongolian herder allegedly by two Han truck drivers in a dispute over a shortcut across fragile grazing land has triggered several protests in the usually quiet Inner Mongolia.

We stopped in the hotel gift shop after breakfast and I found a book (in English) for me to read, since I am about at the end of the book I borrowed from Char on the ship. Until today the only books I found were in Chinese. This is even one on my list of books to read!

I told the group that there were two things I didn't want to do today: walk and climb stairs. My knees were begging for relief. I told them I would be thrilled if they were going out and for them to have a good time and I would enjoy myself in the hotel room, working on photos from the trip (note: I have 6 days published on Flickr now...if you're interested, see the links at the bottom of this page).

They all decided to go off to a nearby museum and Walt said they'd probably be back around lunch time and we could all go to lunch together. So they went off and I had a great time sitting here trying to get photos ready for Flickr. Around noon, Walt came to get me for lunch.

Mike suggested we go to the nearby subway station which, he promised, was air conditioned and "loaded with places to eat." Well. Cool it was. "Loaded with places to eat" it wasn't. We walked and walked and walked, sometime up and sometimes down stairs. We found ONE food shop, an "herbal soup" place with the menu all in Chinese and no seats. We ended up out on the street not knowing where to go. He did find a TGIFriday, eventually, and we finally collapsed there and demanded beer. Walt had a huge Danish beer.

The menu here was real sticker shock...

...until you realize that is Hong Kong dollars. $108 Hong Kong dollars is about $15 American. I have totally lost perspective on how much things cost. Fortunately, we are leaving tomorrow.

After lunch we had to find our way back to the hotel, and managed to get lost several times. Mike's unerring sense of direction led us into places we had never seen before (and still no restaurants). It seemed like we walked forever.

They finally figured out where we were and where we wanted to be and we only had to march on and on and on until we got there.

I should have ordered room service.

Char and I limped back to the hotel, both of us ready to just lie down and be still. Mike and Walt went off exploring again...and good for them. I have lost my enthusiasm for exploring for this trip, but we certainly have done a lot of it in the past two weeks.

We had the perfect last night in Hong Kong. Walt and Mike had found an Irish pub a couple of nights ago and suggested we eat there. It was a very short walk from the hotel. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful. It had an open patio that looked out over the harbor.

There were even a couple of guys sitting there looking for all the world like a couple of ex-pats out of an Alex Guinness movie!

We sat there eating our pub grub and watching the sun set and the lights start to come on on the buildings across the harbor.

So we are ending our grand adventure. I never thought we would ever come to China and I am amazed at how much I have learned over the past two weeks. I will be processing it for weeks to come. I think the underground photo above give you a big view of how clean it has been everywhere. I decided that with several billion in population, they all need to have jobs, and many of them clean things. We found a guy on his hands and knees in the enormous lobby of the hotel in Guilin to get a small stain out of the floor. A flickering light in the hall of this hotel here was fixed within an hour or two without it having been reported. There seem to be two people to open every door for you, and another one waiting with some sort of glass cleaner to remove any fingerprints that may result from touching the door. Streets are clean. We saw the first bit of graffiti in 2 weeks this afternoon. It's probably gone by now.

Hotels seem to have entire staff whose only job is to stand and greet you. Walking from the elevator to the restaurant in Guilin we might pass four or five different people standing at several spots along the long lobby, wishing you a good morning, or a good night as we went to our room.

We were also assured over and over again how safe it was to walk the streets, as there is no violent crime. People cannot own guns so there is no gun violence. The country is more westernized now and I suppose it will only be a matter of time before they pick up our bad habits.

When we took our China class, the teacher pointed out that there is a great business in eye surgery, creating more rounded eyes (we passed an eye hospital...somewhere. Shanghai, I think) and that the emphasis is on a more western look, including lightening of the skin. I was intrigued by this billboard.

From the botoxed lips to the rounded eyes (which don't show clearly here) to the sun block with "whitening." It would be a shame if the things that make China special disappear with a desire to look like Westerners.

There is also more freedom of speech here, but we were warned not to ask questions at Tiananmen Square because people didn't want to answer them publicly and we were told that there were somethings we should not discuss at all (such as the Tibet situation). By the same token, we had in-depth discussion of the one-child policy and other issues and even Jenna laughed at a communist country with so many luxury automobiles.

Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot and Twitter are blocked in China. You can get Amazon.com, but you can't look at books about China on Amazon (I wanted to check out several that Char mentioned and each book brought up an error page, though looking at any non-China book did not). And the agreement I had to sign in order to use the internet says, in part, My use of the Internet service (including all communication and information placed and sent through use of the service) may be monitored for all authorized governmental purposes and the Hotel makes no guarantee of confidentiality or privacy of such communication or information transmitted by me through use of this service. I acknowledge that such communication or information may be examined, recorded, stored, copied and used for authorized purposes and the Hotel will not be responsible for the privacy of the information, e-mail addresses, registration and identification information, disk space, communications, confidential or trade-secret information, or any other content accessed or transmitted by me through use of this service.

I think I am going home with not only a better understanding of China, but also with a lot of questions that may require more in-depth reading. As with our trip to Russia, I will now be much more interested in news coming out of China.

But it was a GREAT adventure and I'm so glad we came. When I next write, I will be sitting at my desktop at home, probably with Polly yapping at me.

Another Day, Another Flight

So it was up at dawn again, down to the breakfast buffet, back upstairs to pack the last things, and then load up the bus with a new group. Six of us from Jenna's original group are going to Hong Kong, and 16 more from other groups have joined us. New people to get to know. All of us looking grumpy at the thought of yet another flight. Since we have left home we have been on Cathay Pacific, Dragon Air, China Southern, Sechuan Air, China Eastern and now China Southern again. I don't know what airline we take to Hong Kong tomorrow and we will be on Cathay Pacific again in 3 days for the flight home.

It was a 3 hour flight and I slept most of the way, waking to have my "lunch," which was a yeast roll, "chicken" (which was like round chicken hot dogs with rice), some salad-y thing with thin carrot slices, cabbage and something I couldn't identify, a package I couldn't get open, which was all written in Chinese, so I don't know what it was supposed to be, a container of vanilla yogurt, and a couple of dates.

I knew nothing of Guilin, which is in the very south of China, on the banks of the Li river. It is a small city, by China standards -- only 620,000 people (slightly less than the population of San Francisco). Its major industry is tourism. The name means "forest of sweet osmanthus" because apparently the osmanthus flowers grow in abundance here in the summer and the air is filled with the smell of the flowers.

Unlike Beijing or Shanghai, there are no high rises here. We are on the top floor of this hotel, which is one of the largest in the city, and we are on the 7th floor. The reason why there are no high rises is that the area's biggest claim to fame is the spectacular mountain ranges (I won't have photos until tomorrow) and no building can obscure a view of the mountains. This is the view from our room:

You can just barely get a feel for what we will see tomorrow.

There isn't much to report on our day today, since we were in the air most of the day, so I thought I would put in some observations and some photos that didn't fit in on previous days. First is this one:

This was on our buffet table at the jade factory and it made Char and me realize that we really miss Sherry here. She loves these shrimp so much. :)

And then there was this photo I took in one of our many traffic jams:

This was at a merge onto the freeway and just after we passed a sign (which I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of) with a "no" sign on top of a horse-drawn cart. No horses on the freeway in Beijing (though traffic moves so slowly, I don't see why not!). There was also a sign which I just loved (and also couldn't get a picture of) which showed a no sign on top of a burning car! If your car catches on fire, whatever you do, don't drive it on the freeway!

This place is such an amazing conglomeration of traffic. There are all those expensive cars, tour buses everywhere and also everywhere are people on either bikes or motor scooters. But not just bikes, bikes or tricycles that have been converted into mini trucks laden with everything from tall stacks of lumber to cases of food.

I saw an old man riding in the back of a bike last night and the bike looked like it was serving as a wheel chair.

Motor scooters often carry several passengers.

I saw a scooter with a baby under a year old strapped to a plank of wood in the back and a mother who seemed to be driving her children to school on her scooter in Shanghai.

The 2-3 wheeled vehicles are ridden by the young and the old and they all compete for space with the cars and the buses (whose drivers drive them like they were driving VWs!) I don't know how they don't all crash into each other, except that there are fabulous bike lanes, which are very wide (enough for a bus to drive down, if necessary) and separated from the main traffic by islands of greenery (the right lane, where the bikes are, is a typical bike lane)

The traffic problem is only going to get worse. In the paper this morning it says that Beijing has seen rapid growth in the number of new drivers, with an annual increase of about 600,000. Imagine that. In Beijing they annually license 600,000 new drivers, almost the population of San Francisco. Every year! They are hoping to create good drivers and say that new drivers in Beijing will have to take an oath to drive in a civilized way before they get their licenses.

The front page of this morning's paper says "motor vehicles with last numbers are not allowed on roads: Today 2 and 7, Tuesday 3 and 8." So I guess this is another way they are trying to cut down on traffic.

You know, until I came to China, as the mother of 5, I thought the "one child" policy was really unfair.

I wondered, with all the changes that have taken place in China in the last 20 years, if they were lightening up on that policy now. There are all sorts of "allowances" now -- families in the country (where children are needed to help work on farms), families with twins or mentally handicapped children, and families where a child dies are allowed to have a second child, but there is a steep fine if you just ignore the policy.

Having been here now and seen how HUGE this country is, how congested the streets are, how massive the high rise block houses are, how the highways are gridlocked and how the country is so impacted by a population of more than 1.3 billion, I now understand the policy better than I did before and wonder if this is going to be a hope for China to cope with its rising population. Jenna says she misses not having had a sibling, but she feels the policy is a good one, and necessary for China. She also said something that I had never thought of before. With the one child policy, in one generation you have completely wiped out the concept of "cousins," and what a sad thing that would have been for me, missing the experience of having cousins in my life.

But here in Guilin things aren't so bad. Tomorrow we will take a bus tour down the Li River and see a real small town and then head back to the airport for our flight to Hong Kong.

I am cautiously optimistic. Out of China and in Hong Kong, where Facebook is Big Business, I might actually be able to check in to Facebook! And apparently all those photos I uploaded to Flickr ARE there from Day 3, so I'm uploading more from the day we visited the school.

In All My Glory

OK. Let's get it over with. Here I am in all my hatted, wheelchaired finery.

Feeling very silly, but boy by the end of the tour, I felt like a right down regular royal queen! I think it was when we were in the inner city that I realized that the royal family probably got carried everywhere too and I was going to stop being self-conscious about it. I had a GREAT helper, whose name I never did find out. That kid pushed me everywhere, stopped when I started taking a photo and turned the wheelchair so I had the best angle, found shade for me to sit in, pointed out English signs, and followed Jenna everywhere. While others in the group were sweating and panting and looking for something to lean on, I was delightfully cool and comfortable...and had my own chair!

As for the hat, I took it off a couple of times when there was a wind that threatened to blow it off my head and I realized how cool it kept me, despite looking so stupid.

So what can I say about Tiananmen Square? It's big. Really big. And it's filled with people (tho Jenna says this was a "normal" day and that we should see it when it is really crowded). In my wheelchair, I got a feel for what it was like to be one of the crowd. We also passed an impossibly long line that snaked all over the place--people standing in line to visit Mao's tomb.

(and this is the end of the line!!!)

Jenna says that is there every day that the mausoleum is open (I can't remember how many days a week it is opened).

We also had my wheel chair pusher take what will probably be on our Christmas card this year.

(Must find a communist country for next year, since we have Moscow from last year.) Speaking of communist countries, though, Walt went out of our 5-star hotel today and walked around the block and found the following auto dealerships: Lamborghini, Bugatti, Aston-Martin, Range-Rover, Mercedes Benz, Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Hummer, and a place with a RAM pick-up. As I said, this is a country of contradictions!

When we reached the end of Tiananmen Square, we went across the street to enter the Forbidden City. It was just the same as all the photos I've seen, though somehow a bit more "tired" than I expected. Still, impressive.

Jenna says that if the emperor were born in one room and changed rooms every night, he would be 27 years old before he returned to the room in which he was born. It's that big. Someone was surprised that there was no greenery and Jenna explained that nothing in the Forbidden City could be taller than the emperor and since trees grow tall, they could not have any. Also, would-be assassins could hide in bushes. So the whole city, except for a small garden, is without any foliage whatsoever.

Highlight on the tour for many was the stop where we were supposed to "look around" one of the concubine areas, but we had mango popsicles instead!

Shortly after that I found this sign and decided I need to post it on the door to my office at home.

After a small buffet lunch at another hotel dining room, we went to our afternoon tour, the Summer Palace, about 20 miles northwest of Beijing. It is the largest and best-preserved imperial garden in China. Its Chinese name, YiHeYuan, translates as 'Garden of Nurtured Harmony' or 'Garden for Maintaining Health and Harmony'. (The Chinese are great at naming things!) Jenna told us that the "bad news" was that the place was 4x the size of Tiananmen Square...but the good news was that 3/4 of it is water. The palace was built during the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). Between 1279 and 1368, Kublai Khan had the lake enlarged and constructed canals to bring water to Beijing. In 1860 the Anglo-French forces invaded Beijing and burned many of the buildings at the Summer Palace and in 1886 the Dowager Empress CiXi embezzled funds from the Navy and restored the gardens. She also built herself a huge marble boat.

The boat doesn't float and was used just for parties. We rode out to see it in one of the dragon boats on the lake.

We wandered around a bit (followed by the vendors who will NOT leave you alone). For some reason I started missing Polly.

We had two hours after our return to the hotel to rest and change for our final dinner. This was the biggie--the Peking Duck dinner followed by the Peking Opera. This event (which is optional and costs a bundle) has been the subject of many negative comments on Cruise Critic. Not enough duck. Terrible opera. Etc., Etc.

Well, our experience could not have been more positive. We were at Liyuan restaurant where the chef came and showed us how he carves his Peking Duck.

We had a whole table full of food in addition to the duck and the pancakes it was served with.

The duck was delicious, but we were all so full we left some on the table when we headed to the theater to see two short operas. On the way in we stopped to watch a guy putting on his makeup.

They presented two classic Chinese Opera stories, Death of Yu Ji and Havoc in the Dragon's Palace, one a love story and the other a funny, acrobatic form of opera

The only negative comment I had was about this group of women sitting in front of us who laughed and made fun of it all the way through. It's not something I would like to sit through every night, but I certainly enjoyed it tonight! And when will I ever have the opportunity to see Peking Opera in Beijing again?

The last thing we did as a group was to drive past Tiananmen Square with all its lights lit up.

We all stood around hugging each other goodbye--that didn't happen on our Russia cruise. Bags out tomorrow at 7 and we fly to Guilin. Now to see how I can pack all this junk I bought into the full suitcases I already had, knowing that there are 4 more shopping days until we go home!

I don't have a clue what sort of internet access (if any) I'll have in Guilin tomorrow night, but hope that it will be OK in Hong Kong.

I Hit the Wall

I hit the wall today, and not in a bad way.

Yes, I climbed the great wall. Now, bear in mind that the Great Wall is over 3,000 miles, so my little piece was not exactly spectacular. It wasn't even as spectacular as Walt's or Mike & Char's. But it was better than some others in our group. And it was a personal best for me.

First of all, you have to know that getting there is almost more difficult than the climb itself. This was how we drove for about an hour.

But you finally begin to see the wall and it's as amazing as you expected.

...and you think "holy shit! what have I gotten myself in for!"

But you are thrilled to be there with Viking. Once again, that relationship proved extremely beneficial. Most people have to park in a parking lot a 40 minute walk from the wall. Viking knows which palms to grease and is able to park right AT the wall. I looked at these people...

...and realized that if I had to climb uphill forty minutes before I even SAW the wall, I would have turned back right then. But we parked as close as is humanly possible to park to the Badaling Gate. Yay, Viking! Yay, Jenna! Also the weather could not have been more perfect. It was in the 70s and there was a breeze, plus the sky was clear, which gave us perfect picture taking weather. Jenna says it was one of the most perfect days she can remember at the Great Wall this year. Thanks, God. Thanks, Dave, Paul, Gilbert and anybody else who helped make the day so perfect...and please note that NONE of the people in these pictures raptured today.

We assembled in front of the entrance and went in to meet at a little plaza. The steps up were so high again I had misgivings about this whole venture. We were there to take a group photo. Since I don't have a scanner here in China, I just took a picture of it.

Aren't we a fine looking bunch? Actually we are a fine looking bunch! This has become a really cohesive group and I like everybody. I have exchanged e-mail addresses with a few and handed out my internet card to a couple. We didn't feel like this about our Russia Group.

Then we were on our own for two hours to do what we wanted. You could go to the left, which was steeper, but less crowded or to the right, which was more crowded, but less steep ("less steep" being a relative term, of course!) Char and Mike opted for the less crowded, steeper way. I figured that crowds were the least of my problems and I was going to go for the less steep way (which was pretty damn steep anyway!). You walk up a path and then pass through a multi-chambered tower and then move on to the next section. I loved the towers because it sucked all the cool air from outside and blew it through the stone structure.

Walt took my picture as we emerged the other side of the first tower.

Walt said that he figured this was where I would turn back, but I was determined to reach the second tower, which is behind his head, to the left a little bit.

And I did!!

It was good I stopped here because the next section really started to get steep and, as it was, my knee was killing me before I reached the bottom....going down is definitely more difficult than going up!!! Walt made it to 30 steps from the top (two more towers worth), but encountered gridlock with nobody going up and nobody coming down, so he figured he'd better go down or risk missing the bus.

Those of us who made it back to the gift shop while the others were still climbing had our own little club going. Best purchase was made by Marie for her husband Jim. As "Cowboy Jim Woodruff," Jim played halfback for Ol' Miss from 1957-59 and caught a 43 yard touchdown pass in the 1960 Sugar Bowl. He then went pro with the Edmonton Eskimos. He and Marie are from Florida and the nicest people. Today Jim was wearing an ol' Miss shirt and Marie bought him the perfect hat to match it.

After we left the Great Wall, we drove some distance to a jade factory, where we saw craftsmen shaping jade objects

and had an overly long talk about jade (it was only overly long because the room was like an oven) and then were led through the very large shop area to where we were going to have lunch, another family style one (Char and I are starting to miss peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!). When we were finished, we went to visit the "happy room" and discovered we had our choice:

Needless to say, we chose the one on the right--we didn't even have to get toilet paper before entering the stall, because there was an honest-to-goodness roll right inside the stall!

As we walked back into the shop area, there was an absolute phalynx of salespeople waiting to follow us around and "assist" us. This one woman followed Char and me as we looked at way too expensive earrings and when we finally found a pair (each) that we liked, she pounced and made the sale--then asked if we wanted to check out some of their antiques! NO! Go AWAY!!!!

Next came "The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs." This is the burial grounds for 13 of 15 Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, though their tombs are somewhere off in the hills. The "Sacred Way" is the path they carried the bodies on the way to their ultimate burial. It is a path lined with statues of guardian animals and officials.

The Spirit Way, or Sacred Way, starts with a huge stone memorial archway lying at the front of the area. Constructed in 1540, during the Ming Dynasty, this archway is one of the biggest stone archways in China today.

In the middle of it is a giant tortoise. Legend says that if you pet the turtle's backside, you will have good luck. Walt, as a loyal terrapin went for the front side instead.

The walk down The Sacred Way is about half a mile and I was keeping up, slowly (though not the last in the pack). Jenna wanted to talk to me about tomorrow, the day we tour Tiananmen Square at The Forbidden City. She has been talking all week long about how grueling it is. Tiananmen Square is the largest urban square in the world and can "easily" hold 1 million people. Problem is that there is just the square and no shade, and no place to sit, and no place to return to the bus. What's more, when we have finished Tiananmen Square we then walk directly to the Forbidden City, which is even larger. Jenna thinks they should hire a wheelchair and a pusher for me.

I am embarrassed to get into a wheel chair simply for being fat and unable to keep up. My alternative suggestion was to just skip this day of the trip, but Jenna said I'd come all this way and I really should see these important historical sites. So ultimately, I agreed to hire a wheelchair and a pusher and Walt and Char promise to make fun of me and take my picture while I'm being suitably embarrassed. HOWEVER, the way my feet feel right now I don't know that I could make it to the bus let alone a place that measures 1/2 mile x 1/3 mile!

On the way back to the hotel (another crawl in traffic) the driver took us to see the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics. We saw "the birdsnest"...

and the "bubble building" that hosted the water sports.

But this was the part I liked the best

We had dinner in the hotel and before we went in, Jenna sat at a table and autographed all the books on the Great Wall we had purchased (with our photo in it).

Now it's off to the shower before bed since there won't be much time in the morning.

(I just found out that my horoscope for today says "Today you seem to be attracted to anything that allows you to lose yourself in a crowd of people." Duhhh!)