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!)

"I have Three"

I never say that. But we were sitting at a buffet lunch this morning with a bunch of travelers from Britain. These were people we hadn't had time to chat with previously, but we were getting acquainted and Jill asked how many children we had. I usually say "We had five" but it was obvious, since she was talking about how lucky she was because her children lived so close, that she was going to ask where our kids lived. It was just easier to say "we have three." And then I felt all teary. But it just wasn't the time or place to bring up two dead children. But for the record: we actually had five, not three.

What another full day. And I am cautiously optimistic. We are having perfect (for me) weather. Maybe no sunny days, but it remains in the 70s and today we even had some sprinkles, which I loved.

We started by checking out the Kampinski Hotel breakfast buffet. I may not have much good to say about most of the hotel, but the breakfast buffet was huge.

This is just the fruit and cereal section. All over the room there are other stations. I decided to pass on the fried squid balls (who knew squid had balls?) but Mike, who always eats from the local cuisine offerings, had some. I've actually been kind of holding back on food after some "not quite right" feelings on the ship after the 2nd day. I'm sticking more with yogurt, museli and cereal-types of things, though I did have a glass of watermelon juice (offered along with carrot juice and cucumber juice) and decided that I prefer to chew my watermelon!

After breakfast, the next big adventure started. We drove to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. I've been fascinated since Walt's mother saw them in 1984, ten years after their discovery by a farmer who was digging a well in his field. If he had dug his well one foot in another direction, they may never have been discovered at all.

location of the well

For his discovery of the 8th wonder of the world, the farmer received 1 bag of flour and was apparently happy with that. In China, the government owns all the land, so no matter what you find on your land, it belongs to the government.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this "8th wonder of the world" was created by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China who came to the throne in 246 BC at the age of 13. He only lived to 49, but in that time he united the warring tribes of China, built the Great Wall, established a unified language for the country, and had this amazing army constructed. And on the 7th day he rested. :)

There are 3 "pits," this one being the largest, and excavation will continue for years as they have only touched the tip of the iceburg. I have seen this shot many times, but more interesting to me were the pieces which are lying in state waiting to be excavated and all of their pieces put back together again before being added to the army.

(grim visage of war...)

And I hope that my children (and perhaps Char & Mike's kids) know why I'm posting THIS picture.

The thing that surprised me the most was discovering that when the statues were uncovered, they were in color. But after a day or two exposure to the air, 2000 years after their burial, the color faded. But they have pictures of some of the original statues right after excavation.

I must add as an aside here that after taking this, our second trip with Viking Cruises and hearing of others' experiences with other cruise lines, I have no desire to go river cruising with any other company. The attention to detail, the depth of knowledge, the eagerness to share their country with you, the fact that once you arrive in a country, you don't have to touch your bags until you depart and all in-country flights are handled by Viking, the troubleshooting, the meals in local eateries. Everything is first class all the way. I can hardly wait to take another Viking trip! Next time, however, I want to do it somewhere that doesn't involve as much flying as we have done. If you're coming all the way to China, you want to see all that we have seen (and will see) and the only way to do that is to fly to several different spots. But I sure am tired of flying..and I have 3 flights left to go!

Viking is the only tour group that can park on the grounds of the Terra Cotta warriors (so we didn't have to walk as far). We also arrived very shortly after it opened, so we had a relatively small crowd to contend with. By the time we left, the place was mobbed. It was also raining a little.

But we were back on the bus and headed back to the Xian airport, where we had a family style lunch at a restaurant before heading out to the plane.

Lunch included this weird stuff. I didn't try it, but Walt did. He couldn't figure out what it was either.

We are all so tired of flying, but there is no other way to get to see all this stuff. But there are "moments." As we were headed down to meet Jenna's group, Mike and Char got positively giddy finding this on display:

It's the original seismograph, developed in China. Chang Heng, astronomer royal to the Han Dynasty, invented an accurate seismograph in AD 132 -- 1600 years before anyone in the West did. It was a large bronze urn with eight dragon heads gazing outward in eight directions. Each dragon held a ball in his mouth. Around the base of the urn, under each dragon, sat a frog with his mouth open.

A delicate inverted pendulum was hidden in the urn. The slightest seismic ripple moved it. The swinging pendulum tapped a mechanism that dislodged one of the balls. The ball fell from the mouth of the dragon into the mouth of the frog below. It landed with a great clang that announced the earthquake. Knowing which frog had been fed, you could tell the direction of the quake.

Mike being a seismologist knows these things. I just liked the frogs.

Today we ended up having dinner just a couple of hours after lunch because it was the most efficient way to get us from airport to the hotel, feed us, and get all that stuff done. So we went from the airport to another family style restaurant in another hotel.

Then we made our way through the very congested streets of Beijing to our hotel. My initial impression of Beijing is that it is a much more "Western" looking city than the others we have visited (at least from what little of it I have seen so far). Jenna says that because it is a capitol city, there are stricter height limits on new buildings and older buildings are protected, so you don't see lots of high rises and they aren't tearing down as many old buildings as in Shanghai, Chungqing and other places we have visited, but it looks more like, say, downtown San Francisco instead of downtown Dubai! We are at the Regent Hotel in the heart of Beijing. Not only do we have a great room...

...but it has free Internet access!!!!!

Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall. I have been stressing about this for weeks, knowing there was NO way I was leaving China without getting on the Great Wall, but fearing that I won't be physically able to make the climb. Well, by this time tomorrow, we'll all know! Hold the good thought!

I uploaded a third set of photos to Flickr but it apparently didn't upload them all, so I'm doing a patchwork fix on it, which will take some time, but just to let you know that I hope to get a few more sets of photos uploaded in the next couple of days. (Morning PS -- it seems to not want to upload photos consistently, so I'm going to wait until I get home to upload the rest)