Ta’ain to Qingdao

Our last day in Ta’ain. We thought we’d take the minibus to the mid-point of Tai Shan and walk down but were confronted with hordes of touts and minibuses that didn’t look anywhere close to full. So, we decided to walk (until we gave out) up the mountain. After the standard line of vendors hawking cheap plastic souvenirs, we got to the path up the mountain. It was actually quite lovely, a path through beautiful forests filled with steles. We walked to “Entrance Hall Land” and decided that $10 was a bit much for the privilege of continuing the march uphill. We found a small local restaurant and, with our picture book, ordered some lunch.

Then, it was time for another Chinese train experience. The double decker train to Qingdao was quite nice and filled with quiet Chinese people that actually read newspapers (the first people in China that we’ve seen reading anything!). It was a great ride. We had a romantic dinner- noodles in styrofoam with a bottle of wine. We did have to get a bit creative when the train ran out of cups. John bought some canned drink with a top that came all the way off, dumped out the contents and we had our bottle of Tsingtao red wine served in an aluminum can.
The railway station at Qingdao was reminiscent of Ta’ain…lots of touts pushing their hotels on you. When we finally got to our hotel and realized it was completely empty, John negotiated a 40% discount off our room rate. The clerk who originally quoted the rate wasn’t too happy. At the end of our trip, we’re not making too many new Chinese friends….

Qufu

A day in Qufu, but first we had to get there. We were directed to the train station where there were waiting minibuses to take us to Qufu. Unfortunately, it was the “fill the bus before you leave” principle and we waited for 1-½ hours for our 1 hour and 15 minute bus ride. Then, to add insult to injury, we had to pick up every one on the road to Qufu (along with all their baggage). The road was lined with cheap souvenir stands selling stone carvings and massaggee chickees sitting on chairs plying their wares. Between the hawkering and smoking and the cramped quarters, it was a relief to get off the bus even though it was pouring rain. We planned our exit first and found the long distance bus station and got the bus schedule. Then, we stopped for a quick lunch at the Confucius Mansions Hotel (where “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?”) It was another lunch of kung pao chicken (it seemed to be the only thing that is universally understood across China).
We took a taxi (all of the meters in Qufu were broken..) to the Confucian Forest. It was an amazing site- the cemetery of the family of Confucius. It was filled with pine and cypress trees and was surrounded by a wall 10 km long.

We got to see the grave of Confucius himself, a simple grass mound enclosed by a low wall. Nearby his sons were buried. The forest was spectacular and very beautiful- but the touts were horrifying. Old women would try to sell you trinkets, following you for what seemed like forever, grabbing at your arm. We tried the umbrella defense (using our umbrellas to shield our faces). For the huge line of vendors on the approach to the forest, John invented the echo defense. Since they only know “Hello”, we simply echoed “Hello” to their “Hello”. Since there was nothing else they could say, it became a contest of who would stop saying it first.
Our next stop was the Confucius Temple, which started out as a simple memorial hall and mushroomed into a complex 1/5th the size of Qufu. There were huge extensions made during the Ming and Qing dynasties, making it a full kilometer long. In between the temple building were gnarled pines and cypress trees and more than 1000 steles. The columns of the Dacheng Hall had dragon-coiled columns that were so beautiful it was said that they had to be covered with silk when the Emperor came to Qufu lest he felt that the Forbidden City paled in comparison.

Next to the Temple was the Confucius Mansions, dating from the 16th C Ming Dynasty. The mansions were a maze of 450 halls and represent the most aristocratic lodgings in China. The descendants of Confucius were treated like royalty (with servants and 180 course meals). The last inhabitant (the last Kong) to live in the Mansions was the 77th generation. He fled to Taiwan in the 1940’s.
T

he rain started again, so we decided to try our luck with the long distance 3:20 bus. We got our tickets and got on the bus...and waited and waited and waited. About an hour later, we finally left with our group of hawkering companions (one of them peeled his boiled egg and left the peel on the floor). Another public transportation memory builder.

We decided to try the Overseas Chinese Hotel for dinner and were horrified by the feeling of “State run institution”, so we headed back to our hotel. The hotel parking lot was filled with black Audi’s and drivers. Inside the restaurant, the tables were packed with party men drinking beer and hard liquor and eating tons of food. The restaurant concept was unusual. You went to a wall of plates covered with plastic wrap, picked your food from the selection and it was cooked to order. We actually picked well and had a spectacular dinner (more kung pao chicken) and all for a mere 26 yuan.

Note- the proletariat took over China and the children of these people have formed a new ruling class- the children of peasants are now running the show in China. You can see it in their dress, their mannerisms and the horrifying behavior (loud talking and hawkering and belching)

Nanjing to Ta’ain

Our early a.m. start for the 5:35 train to Ta’ain. Since we were boarding a train in progress, we had no idea what to expect when we arrived at the sleeper compartment. The conductor made a quick switch in our seats (since there was already someone in our assigned seats). We woke the two people in our compartment up, but only briefly. The Asian sleep gene kicked in and they were out again within minutes. We actually got a bit of sleep and then tried to tiptoe around the compartment as the woman in the lower berth slept and slept. At about 9:00, we were beginning to wonder if she was dead. She finally got up and she was the perfect compartment mate- completely quiet and unassuming. She spent most of the day sleeping.

When we got to Ta’ain and departed from the train station, we were surrounded by touts trying to get sell us their taxi and hotels services. People were everywhere and you got a sense of a town not benefiting from the economic boom of China. We checked into our hotel and went to CITS (Completely Inept Travel Service). We rousted a guy from his TV program and tried to get some answers from him about guides and trains. It was painful. The Chinese anticipatory gene is completely absent. You have to think for them. We finally got information about the train to Qingdao and got his commitment to go to the train station to buy two tickets and at 4:00, as promised, he arrived with the tickets in hand.

We headed for a leisurely walk through town. We happened on the Dai Temple, a pilgrimage spot on the road to Tai Shan and site of huge sacrifices to the god of Tai Shan. It was a huge area enclosed by high walls. It was quite impressive.

We watched the tourists playing a game of luck- they are blindfolded (or close their eyes) and go around a rock 3 times then try to find their way to a cypress tree, 20 steps away.
We wandered our way to a Peking Duck restaurant recommended in LP. The only way to find the place was by finding the plaster duck by the door.

The menu was all in Chinese, but they knew we were looking for the 50-yuan duck (the LP suggestion). For about $6, we had beers and an entire duck served to us. We grabbed a motorcycle cab back to the hotel.

City tour of Nanjing

Another 3rd grader experience- a city tour of Nanjing in group mode. We hopped on the bus and found ourselves facing a Chinese family of 5. Our guide had the wonderful task of translating everything for two groups. It was another rainy day, and our first stop (one of 5 “attractive spots” we would visit) was the Qinhuai River, the area called Fuzimao. It was once centered on the site of an ancient Confucian temple. The area today was like a Chinese Quincy Market…restaurants, tacky souvenir shops, a McDonalds and KFC.

We got back in the bus heading to the Presidential Office (Xuyuan Garden), a site that wasn’t even in our guidebooks. It turns out that it was a royal garden in the Ming Dynasty and after the Revolution of 1911, it acted as the palace of the provisional government of China. It had a fascinating exhibit of the history of the site (some English).
Back on the bus and we picked up a huge group of Chinese men from the Western provinces (obviously party men in for a boondoggle).

From there, we headed to the eastern part of town to Dr Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum. Visiting the mausoleum is something of a pilgrimage for many Chinese. He is recognized by the Communists and the Kuomintang alike as the father of modern China. He died in 1925 (sometimes the difference between a great man and a failure is that great men die on time…).

The tomb itself is at the top of a huge stone staircase (392 steps) leading to his crypt.
We couldn’t miss Linggu Park and the famous Beamless Hall. Built in 1381, it was built entirely of bricks, without beams. Inside was a memorial to those who died in the 1926-28 revolution.

Our next stop was lunch. We opted not to share our lunch with the others on the tour and ended up at a table with the original 5. By this time, John had dubbed the older woman, Peppermint Rice Patty. She was a hawkering, crude woman who bossed her husband around mercilessly. While we waited for our standard kung pao chicken to be served, we heard what sounded like our dog sucking on her skin (the noise that drives both of us crazy at night) and realized that the sounds were coming from our table companions. They were wolfing down their food, making horrifying sucking sounds. The man next to John would fill his mouth with food and with cheeks swollen like a squirrel, continue to pile more food into his mouth.. At the next table, the party group was devouring plates of food and one guy was wiping his hands on the drapes. John dubbed it our “peasant lunch”.

After our hysterical lunch, we thought we were ready for the last two scenic spots, when they threw an USO (unscheduled or undesired shopping opportunity) at the Crystal Factory. We skipped the Chinese tour and did a quick circle around the showroom- with 40 salesgirls watching our every move.

After a painful wait, we got the group together with their purchases in tow and headed for another scenic spot, Xuanwu Lake Park. It was surrounded by hills and the city walls and filled with 50’s-esqe theme park sites (a monorail, dragon statues, paddle boats).

Finally, we got to our last stop, the Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge.

This was one of the great achievements of the Communists (complete with hero art showing the proud people holding their Little Red Books high). It opened in December 1968- one of the longest bridges in China. It’s a double-decker bridge with a 4500-meter road on the top and a railway line below. They say that the bridge was completed by the Chinese after the Russians marched out and took the designs with them in 1960.

Our tour was done and we bid farewell to Peppermint Rice Patty and our uncouth friends. We decided to pick up some food for our room and found the GE (Golden Eagle) Department Store. On our way up the escalator to the 6th floor of this modern, sophisticated department store, we watched a young mother position her child over the stainless steel trashcan so she could pee. They truly aren’t very far removed from the rice fields.

We had some wine in the room and spent our last evening at Henry’s Home Café pigging out on spags and lasagna. What a treat- eating Italian food, listening to a Chinese guy singing Peter, Paul and Mary songs on his guitar and watching Tom and Jerry cartoons on TV.
We decided that China is the land of surprises. Who would have guessed that this country with a history going back 5000 years would have trashed their own history and be caught in a 50’s time warp?

Nanjing

Public transportation has made our traveling much less hectic, since our comings and goings are gated by train or bus departures. With two days in Nanjing, we decided to make this a slow day. We slept in, arranged for a city tour for tomorrow and our hotel for Ta’ain. Then we headed to the Memorial of the Nanjing Massacre. The exhibits document the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against the civilian population during their occupation of Nanjing in 1937. The museum was quite moving. They had photos taken by Japanese army photographers of executions and mass graves. They had a viewing hall built over a mass grave of massacre victims.
Lunch was at Henry’s Home Café…pizza and good Western food- although the waiter drove John absolutely crazy.

Shanghai to Nanjing

Time to head for Nanjing. We were getting fairly adept at getting around Chinese train stations. For the ‘soft seat’ passenger, you get your own soft seat waiting area complete with A/C and soft sofas and no competing with the throngs of people outside. We watched in horror as this 3 year old ran up and down the aisles of the lounge screaming and then to our true horror, found that she and her parents were sitting in the seats ahead of us on the train. The child was a true monster- she never stopped talking or moving and her parents did absolutely nothing to calm her down. What is to become of China as they raise an entire nation of only children?
Nanjing was one of China’s capitals, first in the early years of the Ming Dynasty and secondly as capital of the PRC in the early 20th C. Like other Chinese cities, there were lots of skyscrapers and cranes building more skyscrapers and apartment buildings.
We checked into our hotel and then tried to make our train arrangements to get out. Every soft seat was sold out- only hard seat was available. John had a brilliant idea and requested soft sleeper. Two seats were available for the 5:35 am train and we grabbed them. Then, we headed to the top of the JinLing Hotel and its’ revolving restaurant for a great view and some cold wine. We were quickly surrounded by a group of Chinese “middle managers” and their wives. It was hard to tell if they were party officials or police or just jerks, but they were collectively horrifying. The men clumped together, hawkering, talking too loud, and had a swagger of “entitlement”. Their women looked like they just came out of the fields. One of them was picking her nose at the table.
We started talking to the new chef at the restaurant, a man from Germany. He had traveled throughout Asia consulting and setting up restaurants for 5 star hotels. He was just as disgusted as we were with the hawkering and told us some great stories about dealing with the Chinese. He said that they need 16 hours of sleep and 5 meals a day. He also teased them mercilessly about the fact that they have a 3000-year-old civilization and still use two sticks to eat.
We ended our evening at their new Italian restaurant, Bella Napoli…..not great, but not noodles.

A day trip to Suzhou

We started our day feeling that we truly were living in an asylum. As we walked down the long, dark hallway from our room, we stumbled on a half-naked white guy sprawled out in the hall. He looked like a refugee from a looney bin.
We decided to be “third graders” for the day and took a group tour to Suzhou. It wasn’t terribly bad- only 9 people- four Caucasians and 5 Asians (Hong Kong and Malaysia). The drive was short, only about 1 ½ hours. Suzhou is known as the “Venice of the East” with it’s Grand Canal. Not so long ago, it was also known for it’s medieval housing, cobbled streets and tree-lined avenues. Today, it’s succumbed to the typical Chinese “urban renewal”. Most of the cities’original buildings are being bulldozed and new concrete buildings are going up in their place.
Our first stop was Tiger Hill This was another of the “Chinese tourist” sites. It was the final resting place of He Lu, founding father of the city. He died in the 6th C B.C. and his burial place is believed to be guarded by a white tiger.

At the top of the hill is the leaning Yunyan Pagoda., a 7 story pagoda built entirely of brick. It began tilting over 400 years ago. The price of a group tour is the inability to move things along and we got a rock by rock description of the entire site (sword testing rock, tiger rock…), complete with “local legends”.
From there, we headed to Hanshan Temple (Cold Mountain Temple). It was named after the poet-monk, Hanshan, who lived in the 7th C. According to legend, he adopted two boys, Cold Mountain and Pick Up and made them monks. We even got to clang the temple bell three times- for prosperity, long life and good fortune.
After lunch (an interesting selection of mystery fish, mystery fish soup and an entire carp), we went to the Garden of the Master of the Nets. Suzhou is known for its’ gardens and although this was the smallest of the cities gardens, it’s supposed to be the most beautiful. It was laid out in the 12th C and restored in the 18th.

Finally, we got to our last sight, the Grand Canal and Pan Gate. The Pan Gate is the only section of the original city wall which remains intact. At the top, you could get a sense of the complete destruction of the old city going on. One entire expanse was now filled by a huge Sheraton hotel and the rest of the old housing was already in rubble.
A group tour wouldn’t be complete without the requisite shopping experience. This time, it was the silk factory and fashion show. We politely excused ourselves and stopped for a drink while the rest of the group shopped.
By the time we made it back to Shanghai, it was raining and bleak, so we headed to JJ Mariachis for our last night of great Mexican food.

The Double Dragon Boat Cruise on the Huangpu River

Shanghai was feeling the effect of the typhoon that hit Taiwan and the rain kept us in for awhile. We had breakfast and headed to YuYuan Gardens. Originally, this was the old Chinese section of town. Today, they’ve recreated old Chinatown- complete with every form of shopping experience known to man. Even the YuYuan Gardens (admission charge) had you wandering through a maze of reconstructed Chinese buildings filled with shopping experiences.
In the afternoon, we took the ‘Double Dragon’ boat for a cruise up the Huangpu River to the Yangtse.

We got “A” cabin tickets, hoping to buffer ourselves from the masses of Chinese tourists. The cabin was quiet (two groups of Chinese families and 7 Caucasians), until a group of about 20 Chinese arrived. They had the look of ex-peasants/now Communist Party members. The women had an edge about them and it was amusing to watch them showing off their their tacky purchases. The men walked with a swagger and put out their cigarettes on the hardwood floors.

There was a certain amusement factor (especially when one of their group fell asleep and they proceeded to cover his glasses with toilet paper, put stuff on his nose and stuck a cigarette in his mouth- and he still didn’t wake up). We finally had to give up when the entire group re-grouped and the noise level was so loud it became unbearable. John found us a quiet private cabin in the B section and we enjoyed the rest of our cruise.
After that, we headed for the Badlands, a Mexican bar/restaurant and had another meal of spicy Mexican food.

Shanghai

Today was our city tour day. We wandered down the Bund to the Peace Hotel. It was originally the Sassoon House, built by one of Shanghai’s legendary immigrants (Victor Sassoon from Baghdad) It was built in 1930 and has an air of old world elegance. Unfortunately, they only had a buffet breakfast, so we walked down the main shopping avenue and found a McDonalds and pigged out on Big Macs.
The heat was insufferable, so we decided to make it a museum day. We walked to the Shanghai Museum and found a great exhibition on Inner Mongolia and the minority people. The rest of the museum was a bit tedious- Chinese coins, painting, caligraphy, furniture… But, it was A/C and worth a few hours.
Then we headed for the Bund and found the Bund Museum.
With temperatures of 100+ and 100% humidity, we decided to try our luck at O’Malley’s Irish Pub. We had a great time meeting the expats of Shanghai. One gentleman, an investment banker/venture capitalist, gave us some great restaurant recommendations. Then, we talked with the Irish entertainers and with Harv, a Canadian/Honduran who had been in Shanghai for 3 years in a joint venture building ships. He entertained us for quite some time with stories of working with the Chinese. After his years of dealing with issues of saving face and quality control, he had some wonderful tales. One of the Chinese said to him, “I’m not saying you’re stupid, you just think differently”. He had also worked with the Korean and Japanese and found the Japanese were more like polite Koreans (they get drunk at night and tell you what’s going on”). The Koreans were more hard core, but produced a quality product on time. The Chinese don’t care about on-time or quality. They get paid whether they work or not and he found that he had come to accept “good- enough” in his quality control . Interestingly, he said that the older workers were more flexible and that the younger generation were more like the Koreans. He also said that you always have to ask for more than what you want- and keep a few negotiating points ready to give away.
After Harv left, we headed to JJ Mariachis (next to Tandoor) and had some of the best Mexican food ever. The manager, from LA, was wonderful and his staff was trained to deal with Westerners.

Guilin to Shanghai

Our flight to Shanghai was empty except for one tour group and one group of Chinese men. They were obviously heading home from some kind of junket in Guilin and were so obnoxious. One of the men was spraying perfume around the plane, they all moved to different seats constantly, and in general, acted like peasants who had never been in an airplane before.
Shanghai was unlike any city we’d ever seen. The sprawl was a bit like taking Dallas and Houston and mixing them together. Everywhere you looked, there were skyscrapers and cranes building new skyscrapers. Our hotel was a funky old place just off the Bund It had a feeling of old money, but was run down enough to give you a feeling of mental asylum. The room was huge with hardwood floors, only a few pieces of furniture, high ceilings and CNN. At $35/night in Shanghai, it was a bargain.

We headed to the Jin Jiang Hotel, noted for it’s tourism services and got the info we needed for the next few days, then went up to their rooftop bar/restaurant and got a revolving view of the city.
We had read about a great Indian restaurant, Tandoor, and found our way to it. It was some of the best Indian food we’d ever had and the wait staff and management was all Indian and charming.

Li River Cruise to Yangshou

Our private speedboat cruise of the Li River started at 8:00 am It was a 52 mile journey down the Li River to Yangshou. Our driver, who couldn’t speak any English, managed to show us the various formations using a bi-lingual map. About 1/3 of the way down, we saw a huge transport terminal with 100’s of cruise ships lined up, with huge groups pouring into the boats.

This was the nightmare we avoided by spending a few extra dollars and getting our own private tour. The normal cruise boats take about 6 hours to get to Yangshou with a requisite stop at yet another cave. We sped past all the boats, waving to the groups and made it to Yangshou in 3 hours.
The river scenery was spectacular- strange and eerie rock formations covered in mist, huge groves of bamboo and local fishermen out with their nets.
Upon reaching Yangshou, we got off the boat and walked for about 1 km through rows of vendor stalls (we were fortunately too early for the vendors, so we didn’t have to go through any touting). After the vendor stalls, the town was filled with double rows of tourist buses, waiting to bus the cruise passengers back to Guilin. What a nightmare!
Yangshou is quoted as being “a legendary backpackers dream”. What’s left of it is a two street town- one lined with shops and cafes, the other lined with the locals shops. After a breakfast of banana pancakes and museli with fruit and yogurt, we walked along both streets and got terribly hot and sweaty.

The only place with A/C was an Internet café, so we spent some time catching up on email. Then, we found a great little café, the Rosewood, with a fan placed directly in front of us , and watched the people and had a cheese and tomato sandwich.
We decided to try the public bus to get back to Guilin, and got on along with hordes of locals. The bus was mercifully A/C, but stopped for every local on the road back, continuing to fill the bus with people standing in the aisles, sitting on tiny stools.
Once back in Guilin, we thought we’d check out the second restaurant recommendation of our guide, the Asian Pacific.

We walked into the entry way to find cages of animals- snakes, birds, and a solitary wild boar. The menu was obviously based on fresh food (and also had such delicasies as “dog meat casserole” and “poisonous snake steamed in clear liquid”). We decided that seeing our dinner alive was not our cup of tea.
We had some wine in our room and watched the view and headed to our favorite restaurant. After dinner, we linked up with some local police out for a night on the town with their girlfriends. We shared a few beers with them.

A day in Guilin

Another call to Mr. Long and more excuses and a sense of doom on the tickets. So, we called him back and asked him to cancel the train tickets- we would make other arrangements. Since the train was actually turning out to be a 30-hour affair, with 2/3 of it in darkness, we decided that flying wasn’t such a bad option. We decided to head to the Holiday Inn to see if we could arrange forward transportation. We found a wonderful woman at the travel department who got us plane tickets and also arranged for a ½ day city tour.
Our city tour started at 2:00 with a local guide who had a great sense of humor. He told us that Guilin meets all of the criteria for scenic beauty in China:
1. Beautiful Mountains
2. Reflecting Water
3. Fantastic Caves
4. Pretty Rocks
We got to see them all in our tour. We started at the Reed Flute Cave. Although fairly jaded about seeing a Chinese cave, we decided to venture forth with all of the Chinese tour groups.

It was quite remarkable. It once served as an air-raid shelter for the WWII American Flying Tiger squadron. It was ¼ mile long and wet, and cool (which given the heat of Guilin, was a wonderful change). We set a fairly rapid pace with our guide (passing most of the tour groups who were going into excruciating detail on each formation). The Chinese love caves and the guides walk them slowly through pointing out every formation by name.
In between our sights, our guide had us amused with his jokes.

ABC = American Born Chinese and they call them bananas (yellow on the outside, white on the inside).

“Chinese eat anything with 4 legs except a table and anything that flies except a plate”.
After the caves, he tried to make a stop at the pearl factory- we nixed that idea and headed for more scenery. We stopped at Elephant Trunk Hill, the most famous peak in Guilin. I still had a hard time seeing the elephant and his trunk in the hillside. Then, we headed to Solitary Beauty Peak, in the walls of the Guangxi Provincial Teachers College. Our last stop was Wave Subduing Hill. Quite an action packed city tour….
We did get a restaurant recommendation from our guide so we opted for the first of his choices for dinner and had hot and spicy Sichuan cuisine. On the way up to our room, John insulted a group of French tourists by asking them if they were from Bulgaria or Italy…
Back in the room, we got a call from Mr. Long- who proudly told us that he had our 4 train tickets in one compartment. When we reminded him that we had cancelled the tickets with him, we had a fairly heated conversation- a shouting match- we won…

Arrival in Guilin

The train made its’ way to Guilin at an average speed of 50 km/hour. Everyone was very curious about the Caucasians in the sleeper car, particularly the little girl and her grandfather in the next compartment. He kept trying to engage John in conversation- in Chinese and she became my instant friend after we took a Polaroid of her father and her in the train hallway. She started to share all her snacks with me. We made it through the day on noodles, until one of our later stops when we were able to track down two cold beers from the vendors outside the train. Trying to get a cold beer in the dining car was met with a comment- “It’s cold outside, why do you need cold beer?”.
It’s funny, the Chinese can be so charming on an individual level, but collectively, it’s hard to get past the hawkering, the staring, the shoving and pushing.
We finally made it into Guilin, bypassing the city station and stopping at the new Guilin north station. We grabbed a cab and found our first choice for hotel totally booked…it was a Chinese holiday weekend. So, we opted for the high cost ($70/night) Lijiang Hotel. Our room had a phenomenal view of the city, so we decided it was worth the extra cost.
The Chinese claim that the scenery in Guilin is unlike anywhere on earth. All of the traditional Chinese paintings of mystical peaks and pillars of limestone are based on the scenery here. The city, unfortunately has been taken over by concrete and modernization, just like very other Chinese city.
Our first step in the city was to check on the status of our train tickets. Mr. Long (pronounced Lung) said that he had our tickets- and when we checked, he had gotten us four tickets- in different compartments. We explained, calmly, that we didn’t plan to spend the extra money to send our luggage in soft sleeper and that we needed to have what we originally requested, 4 seats in one compartment. We got ten minutes of excuses (Chinese holiday, difficulty in getting train tickets)- and politely told him that he needed to fix it.

From Kunming to Guilin

Another sleeper train…this time a 30-hour trip from Kunming to Guilin. The car was filled with children running up and down the halls while their parents passed out in their compartments. The train experience is truly strange. The toilets are filthy. This train had a western style toilet that was already clogged with shit by the time we got on and an Asian style toilet that fed onto the tracks. Within an hour, all the men were in their PJ’s walking around the hall and trying to stare into our compartment.
We had a full stock of food and some wine to make it through the trip. So it was time to kick back, relax and watch the scenery. Dinner was Gouda cheese from the Holiday Inn, crackers and wine. John did have to do some major surgery to replace the bulb in his reading lamp, using less than adequate tools.

Back to Kunming

Back to Kunming- this time by a 45 minute flight. It felt good to be back in the city. We picked up our train tickets for Guilin and spent the day getting organized for our train trip.
Our hotel was the meeting place for middle management Chinese- groups of 4 or 5 men alternately talking very loudly on their cell phones, nursing a cup of tea, putting out their cigarettes on the floor (with an ashtray available on the table) and hawkering into the plants. They truly are not that far removed from peasants.
We got an education in the Chinese train system. Evidently, you can only buy your train tickets in the city of origin. They don’t have any central reservation system or ability to pre-buy tickets. You buy them 3 days in advance of the date and hope for the best- except for CITS who can buy blocks of tickets.
Dinner at Wei’s again- cheeseburgers and french fries.

Lijiang

After our Dali experience, we decided that one full day in Lijiang was plenty. So, we started with a walking tour of the old town. We wandered through alleys and ended up on a dirt path that appeared to head up to the pagoda. It did get us to the pagoda and to the Palace, but there was no entry.

So, we headed back down again, passing an obviously crazed guy laying in the middle of the path with his pants zipper pulled down and a banana in his pants- he gave us a leering grin and we quickly headed down the hill.
We finally found the Mu Mansion and wandered through the grounds. It was like being in a human scale version of the Forbidden City.

We had a fairly awful dinner at Mama Fu’s and headed back to our spot by the market for cold beers. We once again ran into the Tibetan guy and his wife and had some interesting conversations. Then we headed back to our hotel for yet another frustrating encounter with their staff. We decided that we’re far better off at backpacker’s hotels.

Dali to Lijiang

At last, the bus to Lijiang. We had to hike our bags up the hill to the bus station and got on our express bus (2 ½ hours). This bus had an on-board bathroom and about half way into the trip, the smell was horrendous. The poor people across from the door looked pained. Even though nature was calling, I opted to avoid the bus box toilet and waited until we got to Lijiang. What a mistake! The local bus terminal toilet was the typical 6 holer with short concrete blocks between the holes in the floor. This toilet had obviously not been cleaned in a long time. The smell was atrocious, but even worse were the small white maggots crawling everywhere…on the walls, on the floor, in the toilet hole.
We headed to a hotel recommended by some Americans and found ourselves in front of this palace-like building. They told us that they had paid 260 yuan even though the published rate was 580 so we bluffed our way into the same rate. It took about 20 minutes of discussion among the reception staff (who was more interested in our story and who these American’s were than in trying to solve our problem) and several layers of management. Finally, we got to our room and dumped our bags and headed into town.
We got a bit lost (since our hotel was new and not on any map) so we had a taxi driver drop us off in town. We ended up in the residential section of the old town and got a flavor of the city.

It was a charming maze of cobbled streets, old wooden buildings, gushing canals….a true taste of old rural China. Then, we hit the marketplace and we saw that the Chinese have also managed to “theme” Lijiang. Once again, the hordes of vacationing Chinese tourists were being led around by minority guides (and having their pictures taken with costumed minorities with pained looks on their faces).

Lijiang itself was actually quite lucky. In 1996, an earthquake of over 7 on the Richter scale hit the city and leveled most of the new construction buildings. Amazingly, the older structures survived and Unesco placed it on the World Heritage sights. The Chinese are now building new construction in the old style (with indoor plumbing and modern conveniences, of course).

The city is home to the Naxi minority group. They are descended from Tibetan nomads and lived in matriarchal families. Women still seem to be in control. Everywhere you look, the women are running the show- from shop owners to construction workers. The men, on the other hand, spend their days walking their birds, taking their birds to the river to bathe and occasionally taking care of the children. Even the language has matriarchal influences. Nouns enlarge the meaning of a word when the word for female is added and decrease when the word for male is added (i.e. stone plus female = boulder, stone plus male = pebble). The Naxi also created a written language over 1000 years ago using a series of pictographs.
After exploring the alleyways and side streets and getting a sense of the town layout, we found a little café to sit and watch the scene. We watched the locals bring their wash down to the canals and wash their clothes. Then we saw people washing their hair and throwing the remains from the plates at the restaurant….and then after seeing a few “brown trouts” floating along with the clothes, we saw the people from the restaurants washing their vegetables in the same water (oftentimes right next to the people washing their clothes. We started to seriously question our decision to be vegetarians in this particular town.
We were starting to see the same Caucasian tourists as we all made the tourist loop through the same sights. We met an interesting Swiss couple (who told us horror stories of getting sick on their long distance train-your worst nightmare). While sitting with a cold beer, we ran into a bald French man travelling with his bright red haired Aussie girlfriend. He gave us his unbiased views of China, Japan, and the sights we should see, in typical French arrogant style. Then we ran into a wonderful couple from NY. He was Tibetan and she was American. They were trying to get into Tibet and having a difficult time since the Chinese don’t want overseas Tibetans back in the country. They also shed a lot of light on the construction in China. According to them, the funding for all the construction is coming from the Chinese government and they are building with no demand. We still don’t understand it. There will be bill coming due….
We had dinner at a cute little place- with no cold wine and not much on the menu, but a great dog that kept us amused through dinner.

And yet another day in Dali

We woke this morning with the realization that we had one more day in this exciting town. We stretched out our breakfast at the Sunshine Café as long as we could To make the day seem at least quasi-interesting, we decided to take a cable car to the monastery on the mountainside. We took a 4-yuan horse and carriage ride to the chair life with a wild driver. John was making strange noises (bombing sounds) and weird faces and the driver seemed to love it. We took pity on the poor horse and got off half way up the hill to the chairlift. The Chinese families didn’t seem to have the same concern for their horses. We saw families of 7 in one carriage riding up the hill while the horse stumbled and strained. China is truly an animal lovers nightmare.
The chairlift took a full 23 minutes to get to the top. It was the slowest chairlift ever. We amused ourselves by saying Ne- Hao (Hello in Chinese) to all the Chinese tourists going down. At the top, the so- called monastery was a Disney-esque creation, obviously re-built after the Cultural Revolution.

The panorama of the city was beautiful and the viewing platform was filled with …what else- Chinese tourists and families- eating. The Chinese seem to spend most of their days eating noodles (or fruit or sunflower seeds) and in between bites, chattering to their friends. Whether they’re sitting around or playing mah-jongg they’re always talking. They are some of the most social people we’ve ever seen.

We walked around a bit. At each level of the monastery, there were more little stalls filled with bowls of vegetables and fruit and cages of chickens, rabbits, and pigeons. We watched “lunch” being prepared- some kind of recently killed bird being washed and cleaned while his buddies in the nearby cage looked on.
We took the slow chairlift back down (watching the X-er’s going up saddled with their bicycles).

China road scene--Dinner!

Once again, we had some sitting around time. This time we were approached by a local English teacher with 6 of his students. The students get very little chance to practice speaking their English so he takes them in small field trips to talk with tourists. They were 16 years old and extremely shy. They each had a rehearsed speech about themselves and then he tried to force them to ask and answer questions. They had quite a good grasp of English and evidently do quite well with writing/reading but are very fearful of making a mistake when they speak. John told them that my Chinese name was “Emei” or “goose”.
After an hour or so, we escaped from the students and did some more people watching. We stuck up a conversation with a local tout with great self-taught English. He told us about the “massage chickies” and the beauty parlor fronts for prostitution rings.
Our last night of Shepherd’s Pie and white wine. It was definitely time to leave Dali.

Our favorite sign at Cafe de Jack:

Another day in Dali

Another day in Dali…..granola and yogurt and fruit for breakfast and another walk around town. We were starting to be able to read between the lines in the guidebooks. Anytime you start to see terms like “tune out, take a vacation from travelling, banana pancakes, happily dawdle”, you can assume that it’s a quaint town that’s been overtaken by backpackers and there is very little to do other than sit, read books and watch people (while nursing one cup of tea) for hours.
The main drag is called Huguo Lu” or “foreigners street”. We spent time as aging backpackers, watching the scene and reading. Relaxing is not something we do very well. Finally, it was time for a beer, so we headed to Café de Jack. I headed across the street to try to get a chop (stamp) made for Mom. While I was busy trying to get “Lila” translated into Chinese and pick out a stamp, a street fight was happening on the sidewalk next to me.
Evidently some Japanese tourist had ripped off a passenger in a taxi and the taxi driver was punching him out in front of a large group of people. Half of the crowd was using sign language and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. It turns out that deaf-mutes ran the two massage parlors on either side of the chop shop. What a sight! After all the excitement, the police came by and we once again got the full account- in sign language.
Too much excitement for us, and we headed inside for another Shepherds Pie. This time, we got served one pie and waited and waited. It turned out that they ran out of potatoes and instead of letting us know, they had sent one of the staff to search other restaurants for potatoes. They truly don’t think like we do- and they hate to say “no”. .
We settled for one pie and then headed to the Tibetan Café to have a glass of wine and watch the scene. Once again, this tiny town was crowded with groups of Chinese tourists (as always, about 30 of them clumped together following a minority woman in costume carrying a yellow flag).
Notes:
The Bai minority group dominates Dali. They have a custom of the “pillow race”. The bride and groom leave their wedding ceremony for their home. Once they reach the threshold, they race to the bedroom and the one who grabs the pillow first rules the house.
John’s comment on minority people: “Hi, I’m me and you’re small and dirty with interesting clothes”.

Kunming to Dali

Our express bus to Dali. It was definitely time to leave Kunming. The 5-½ hour ride was on a Volvo bus, with Chinese style seats and a uniformed “bus attendant” whose main job was passing out spitting bags and a bottle of water. She also served the most important function- keeping the driver awake, which she did by a constant chatter for the entire 5 ½ hours. Chinese drivers are your worst nightmare. This one was fairly good, but even with that high praise, he still varied his speed constantly- with speed changes completely unrelated to road conditions.
We landed in Old Dali and found a taxi to take us to our hotel, the Jin Yuan. Staffed by cute little minority women dressed in traditional clothes, we checked into our double room. We dropped our bags and took to the streets of Dali. Touted in magazines and books as “Shangrila”, we soon found ourselves scratching our head in wonder. What was the attraction?

Photos courtesy of Flickr

The town basically consisted of two streets of Western cafes (serving banana pancakes and museli for breakfast, burgers and pizza for dinner), street vendors (selling the same stuff), massage parlors and shops. The one claim to fame is that they’re still housed in the old style buildings. We wandered through the town and found “Mr. China’s Son” café. It was opened by an old gentleman who wrote an English language account of his experiences during the Cultural Revolution. We bought his book and continued our walk.

We stopped at Café de Jack and got a cold beer and settled there for the evening. Dinner was wonderful. Two Dutch girls were dining on this cheese-covered dish which turned out to be Shepherd’s Pie, Dali style. It was their second night having the same thing-so we decided to give it a try. It was so good- mashed potatoes over some kind of veggie filling covered with melted cheese and baked. Real comfort food.

Kunming- The Stone Forest

Our excursion to the Stone Forest. Chen arrived with our driver and her burgundy minivan. We headed off to the Forest, about 120km SE of Kunming. We passed hundreds of street vendors selling “duck dinners”. Their offering consisted of anywhere from 2-20 ducks hanging from their necks, skinned and ready to roast.
We made a stop on the road and when we tried to get going again, the van wouldn’t start. Our driver, a constantly smiling, non-English speaking Chinese woman, proceeded to crank the starter over and over again. The problem was obviously an ignition system failure and John pleaded with her to stop cranking the engine. He finally convinced her to push it to the closest on-street mechanic (some guy working on a truck). He took off the distributor cap and she got back into the car and, with a maniacal smile, continued to try to start the engine- with the distributor cap off. John was beside himself, imagining us stuck in the middle of no-where with a burnt out starter engine. With the help of the local mechanic, we finally go it started and proceeded to the Stone Forest.

The sight was a huge collection of gray limestone pillars, split by rain, water and eroded to forms (which, of course, the Chinese have named- “Moon Gazing Rhino”, “Everlasting Fungus”). It was basically an over-rated Chinese tourist attraction filled with 1000’s of Chinese tour groups following guides dressed in minority clothing donning yellow flags. It had the feeling of a tacky tourist sight in Florida or the Wisconsin Dells. We ventured to the viewing platform, fought our way up with the other Chinese tourists and called it quits.

Kunming

A bit of travel arrangements in the a.m. to get our bus tickets to Dali and a day trip to the Stone Forest. Based on the recommendation of the Dutch guy at Wei’s, we fortunately found a little Chinese spitfire- running her own travel business. Chen was about 4’10”, but a bundle of energy.
Successfully having arranged our way out of town (our first step upon arrival in any town), we headed to Green Lake (Cuihu) a pretty little lake and park filled with Chinese people enjoying the day.
Kunming is called the City of Eternal Spring- and the weather was spectacular. Pleasantly warm and sunny every day- with no need for A/C. What a wonderful change from the sweatboxes of the north
From the lake, we took a taxi to the bird market and wandered through what’s left of the old city. Even the 400-year-old Nancheng Mosque was ripped down in 1997 to put up the most god-awful looking mosque. It had the look of a Las Vegas Casino.
As we walked, John spotted what appeared to be a revolving restaurant and we headed for the top of a local Chinese hotel. We found an empty restaurant with a lone waitress who figured out “cold beer” and started up the revolver for us. We had our own personal 360 of Kunming.
Like all other Chinese cities, a look around finds tons of office and hotel towers, either recently built or under construction. We took out binoculars to look into some of the completed buildings, only to find them completely empty. Meanwhile, the old parts of the city were being bulldozed to make way for additional offices and hotels. They are trashing their own past.
From our vantage point, we saw yet another revolver and decided to check it out on our way back to the hotel. It was in a 5 star hotel and we were, once again, the first guests. We had a sparkly waitress anxious to practice her English, so we got a bottle of wine and once again, John convinced them to start the revolver. We only had about an hour before the entire place filled with Chinese families. We ordered a few things to eat (most of the menu items were intestines and other disgusting parts of animals).
We raced home in a pouring rainstorm. At least it got the urine off our shoes after our train ride.

Kunming

We got into Kunming and checked into the Camellia Hotel. It was a “budget choice” at 180 yuan for a double (plus backpacker dorms at 30), but the lobby was marble floors, with bellmen, English-speaking reception staff and a beautiful atrium with plants and a bar.
We did a quick walk around town for our typical restaurant tour, stopped at the Holiday Inn for some cold wine and found Wei’s Pizzeria. Wei’s was run by a Dutch man and had cold wine, pizza, lasagna and lots of Westerners crowding in.

From Chengdu to Kunming

Today was errands day. We managed to get our visas extended. The process turned out to be fairly simple, but time consuming. First the requisite paperwork to hand to the clerk who disappeared into a back room, only to emerge 30 minutes later with another piece of paper that we had to take to the nearest bank to pay the extension fee. Then after more stamping and signing at the bank, we returned to get our passports back, complete with one-month extension.
Then we headed off to get our box of Tibetan souvenirs sent back to the States. The DHL equivalent (next day service) was $285- which far exceeded the value of our trinkets and dirty clothes. So, our wonderful taxi driver got us to the Chinese Post and we got it on a slow ship for $150.
One last stop at the ATM to get more cash. It still amazes me that you can put in your debit card and get money from halfway around the world in seconds.
We decided to make one last stop at our favorite Sichuan restaurant and decided to try some new dishes. The waitress suggested chicken and chilies. What we got was a literally a bowl of chicken parts and chilies that looked as if they’d been blown through a propeller…complete with the chicken head staring out from the top of the bowl. Needless to say, we left it for more adventurous diners.
We anxiously headed to the train station for our soft sleeper experience. Once again, our new friend was a godsend- getting us to the soft sleeper lounge (where they looked at us a bit strangely when we showed them 4 tickets for 2 people) and helped us lug our bags through the station and onto the train. It was heaven to lock the door and kick back to get ready for our journey. Soft sleeper is such a wonderful way to travel. We stretched out, put our bags on the top bunks, set out our munchies and watched the scenery go by.
The train line itself was amazing. In a total of 660 miles, there were 427 tunnels and 991 bridges. It was built by slave labor during the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution”

Leshan and the Grand Buddha

We got our train tickets to Kunming- 4 tickets in soft sleeper. Then, we headed off for Leshan and the Grand Buddha. The Buddha, largest in the world, was 71 metres high and carved into a cliff face overlooking the confluence of the Dadu and Min Rivers. Dafo, as he’s called, has ears 7m long and you can have a picnic on the nail of his big toe.

The project was started in 713 AD by a Buddhist monk called Haitong who organized the funding and hired the workers. It took 90 years to complete, Haitong didn’t live to see its’ completion. He did gouge out his own eyes in an effort to protect funding from disappearing into the hands of officials.

To get the full effect, we hopped a local tour boat from Leshan that made its way for a full view of Dafo from the water. After a few minutes of hovering in front of the statue, the boat let us off on land. From there, it was a series of staircases, mostly up, to get to the head of the statue.

Along with 1000’s of Chinese tourists pushing their way along, we climbed down the narrow staircase opposite the head for the climb down his side. John didn’t mention that the rickety staircase was built into a sandstone hill and that the weight of all the tourists couldn’t possibly be good for its’ long term survival.

After heading all the way down, we had the uphill climb back to the parking lot to look forward to. As we huffed and puffed along, drenched with sweat, we watched the well-dressed Chinese tourists (many women in dresses and heels) walking along not breaking a sweat. We decided it is definitely the diet- or they simply don’t have sweat glands.
It felt so good to get back to our A/C taxi and head to the Holiday Inn. I’m sure they were impressed with the sweaty Caucasians entering their marble lobby. But, cold wine and burgers waited for us at the restaurant.

Chengdu - Encounter with the Pandas

We took the morning and went to the Panda Breeding Center outside Chengdu. 80% of the world’s 1000 remaining giant pandas live in Sichuan Province.

They set up the China Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in 1990 to breed both the giant panda and red panda. In the morning, they have a regular feeding and it was amusing to watch them roll around and eat their bamboo shoots. John was particularly amused when one of them took a dump on the bench in his cage and then sat in it.

More errands followed- a box to send home with our Tibetan treasures, a visit to the train station to inquire about tickets to Kunming. It’s been so wonderful to have our taxi driver/now friend to help us navigate through the mess of China. Without him, we would have been lost.
Lunch at the Shu Feng Yuan restaurant.