Boog's Blog

IBTC Xi’an culture and warriors

Partly cloudy

Good morning
Chinese do not say good morning. Nodding of head.

Thank you
Chinese do not applaud after a show, we have seen this non event after each of the two shows to date. Our guide explained that saying thanks you is a western learned behavior. If her mother gives her something she now says thank you and her mother says, why do you say that? Several other similar examples.

Crime
No guns. Crime is low but exists of course. Police constantly advise be careful. Thefts under 5000 yuan rarely investigated.

Visit to the three excavations.
Qin dynasty. Unification, great Wall, money standardized, first dynasty. Warriors for afterlife. In addition to the wikipedia article we took about 1000 pictures which will be on Flickr. Editing in the future. Referred to as the eighth wonder of the world. Had about three hours to wander. Not rushed.

Tourist lunch but we got to see noodle making. Not the super fine type of demonstrations – thickness suitable for eating.

University visit. Lecture on Chinese writing and calligraphy, past and present. Xi’an international university.

The campus is functional but very uninspiring. Buildings are not decorated, white walls, some paint peeling. Classrooms appear very formal. Understandable as this particular university was originally built for Russian study probably with Russian money.

Excellent lecture on the structure of constructing words, phrases, new words, how the tourist translation business is managed and attempts to train and standardization signage

One error when using Google for translation : system fault.

Dinner : one unusual dish was the black sticky rice, with dates, sugar, soy bean paste, cashews. Slightly sweet.

BTC X’ian

Rain then sunny

Grand mosque visit in the minority district, Muslim of course,followed by a walk in the bazaar and sampling of the street breads. Lots of interesting foods but we had a planned Muslim restaurant meal ahead of us.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Xi’an

Many many stalls were cracking walnuts with a hammer and then throwing them into a large mixer filled with course salt. Bagged and sold. We purchased a bag of shelled ones. A bit different than Californian ones. Less crisp and a little less sweet. Difficult but good.

Lunch followed a drum concert and wander about the drum tower a ming dynasty building in the center of the city. Excellent furniture and drum exhibition.

Lamb broth soup, a meat centered meal, veggies but fewer than we have become accustomed to.

Then off to a non-tour event. We asked our guide to take us to a jade factory. An experience in itself. Learned the rules of jade evaluation and had a chance to handle the wares. Bangles from $10 to $10000. A good lesson.

Dumplings for dinner at a pre show event. Tang dynasty history show. History and culture.

Dumplings are a speciality of this area. Unfortunately they were mediocre at best. Tasted as if they were reheated. Much better in San Francisco. They did look good.

One type stood out. Walnut filled. Walnuts are grown locally.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Xi’an

BTC Luoyong to X’ian

Might be called partly cloudy

High speed train to X’ian. Reaches 200 mph but takes a while to get to full speed. Train is somewhat of a local making a number of long stops.

Another large station, as Libby has pointed out most in China seems to be on a grand scale, with just a few travellers unlike the crowds of Beijing station.

The landscape has become rolling hillsides with terraced farming, wheat. The pictures will not do justice to the mixture of greenery, plum trees, and wheat fields.

The agricultural area is referred to as the yellow soil plateau. East to west there are three plateaus. Tibetian at 17000 feet, yellow soil at 4000 feet, third runs to the China Sea. The third level includes Henan province and is the main agricultural region.

We climb to the yellow soil plateau, covered with loess.

We pass one of the five sacred mountains of China, Huashan mountain, near Huaxian.

Then onto X’ian, home of the qin dynasty, first to rule all of eastern china.

We arrived via a large agriculture plain dotted with small farming villages, still muchly traditional. Elevated roads are built over the first, roads that look like bridges over lakes, think NOLA and ponchitrain. The outskirts slowly become what is now common to see, urban blight, houses and areas abandoned or planned for industry or housings in future. Very ugly. Little respect for the land. Have seen this in Zuhai 25 years ago, little has changed in this aspect.

Major industry is education. 60 universities, with 30000 students each.

Had afternoon off so off for a walk we went. Onto the Ming dynasty wall that encircles the city. Incredible. Five or six times wider that the great Wall. Bicycles for rent, 100 minutes at a time.

Concert with these and other specialists, see flickr.

Bamboo wind

Pipa, a four stringed lute

Zither, 21 strings

Erhu, two stringed fiddle

Bamboo and gourd minority people’s instrument

Xum, pottery, one of the oldest instruments in the world, over six thousand years in existence

Bamboo pipe organ, similar six thousand year history.

BTC Luoyong

Overcast

Morning in the central square. Exercises are popular and less costly than gyms. Various forms of tai chi, dancing, swords, whips, etc etc. Some pictures and short videos -hopefully on Flickr. The whip master a real treat to see.

Unfortunately the great Chinese firewall has blocked me from sending video by Google plus, you tube, wordpress,and flickr. Have to wait until after china for video..

Longmon grotto.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longmen_Grottoes

Too many pictures of ours will be on Flickr.. Editing will have to wait until return. These caves and carvings take your breath away.

Lunch, Luoyong style, with a good assortment of veggies and fungi as well as duck surpassed beijing fare. Just more flavors. QB thought the smoked pork bacon was the highlight.

Breakfast included a pho type soup area with noodles and broth plus assorted spices to be added.

Off to another agricultural village, about 200 families. Wheat and corn with children working in urban areas. Simple furniture but all the creature comforts. Much more developed than most anything I saw in Vietnam.

Spent about an hour in a village school. Mostly for them to practice English. Lack of native speakers very evident.

Szechwan dinner. Properly spicy if a bit oily. We served our beijing duck, purchased at the train station as an appetizer.

Even was a lesson on Chinese Music with some traditional instruments. Separate post as worth it. Very excellent

BTC Beijing to Luoyang via Zhengzhou

Seriously overcast.

Train ride Zhengzhou, then by bus to Luoyang (12 km from the Longmen Grottoes, cave temples), crossing the yellow river.

Clearly a travel day, 430 miles or so, most by train, through the daily life of agricultural Northern china. Leaving Hebei province(Beijing) for Henan. Also a chance to see the transportation first hand. This was not a non-stop :-).

Major cities:
-Baoding, 1000 year history, earlier capital of Hebei.
-Shijiazhuang, present capital of Hebei, not more than 80 years old, grew rapidly due to North South railroad line and, as a major junction, became a cotton center. Also has the largest big pharma plant in Northern China.
-Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, located just South of the Yellow River. It is one of the biggest railway junctions in China and now a major modern industrial city. -Luoyang, one of the six old capitals of china, 1M souls, once an imperial seat.

Agriculture is mostly wheat and corn, some cotton for the local textile economy.

Having just seen the burial mounds of the Natchez Trace, we pass them here as well. No longer legal in China, they are still in active use for ancestor reverence. Descriptions of the very involved rituals are reminiscent of the course I took at Stanford on the rural traditions of Northern China – though in that case North was closer to Mongolia.

The landscape is remarkably flat. Green wheat fields- still very short- and then industrial areas with numerous coal plants spewing mostly off white steam.

The train is non-stop running a pretty consistent 92 miles per hour. Quiet, very little rocking. Very overcrowded. Each seat filled with maybe 20 people in our car standing for the full five hour plus ride.

Sent from my iPad

Sent from my iPad

BTC Beijing

Cool and as usual overcast. Some rain.

As a side note. Google plus is blocked by the Chinese firewall on my ipad. Works fine on the Android. Some of you may even have seen the post and pics.

Hutongs. When the mongolians ran china they set their residences around a water hole and connected the residences by narrow alleys. The small alleys that connect the quadrangle houses are called Hutongs. Our visit today is to a residential Hutongs adjacent to the forbidden city. A preserved area where families live and work. The Hutongs behind our hotel are commercial.

The residential Hutongs operate as a collective. One price for a visit to Soong’s museum, a rickshaw ride through the alleys, lunch at a local family house. By far and by consensus the best meal of the trip. The owner of the residence did the cooking.

Libby asked about visiting this area;now clear why.

Second stop today is the forbidden city. One fourth the size of the temple of Heaven (see two days ago). Adequately described on wikipedia.

The central questions are becoming clearer for this trip. What do you think of America? What is your source of information about America?

For the Terry Prachett fans this is, unfortunately, not about “the luggage”, maybe his greatest character. No, it is the story of preparing to take a train.

It is Friday morning as I write this. On Saturday morning we take a train to Zhengzhou on our way to Luoyang.

In a few minutes we will leave our luggage at the front door. It will be whisked away and available to us Saturday night. Take a change of cloths with us we are advised. Luggage must be sent one day ahead.

Security requirements are the reverse of the USA TSA. All liquids, creams, must be in the hand luggage. They cannot be checked. Knives in the packed luggage are ok. Luggage should be locked. If, during a security check they need to look inside they will just break the lock.

Carry onto the train is limited to 5 kg. hell, I have that much in electronics itch me 🙂

The picture below, from the hotel room, is just filler but shows the local Hutong.

Sent from my iPad

Cool in mountains north of Beijing.

Great Wall walk. Obligatory. There are four especially popular sections north of Beijing. We apparently did the most popular. Disney like entrance with parking about 15 minutes walk, and many shops away. Steep sections followed by towers before the next hilltop section. Unlike Hadrian’s wall walls intact and no mud. Also, unlike Hadrian’s it is not free. Like Hadrian’s wall it is inconceivable that armies could scale these steep hillsides.

Divine road to the 13 Ming dynasty tombs. Only one has been excavated. The 7.8 km entrance road starts with the alley of the animals because of the large sculptures guarding the entrances to the tombs. Some are mythical beasts.

Beijing opera night. Tourist performance of traditional set pieces. Most Famous scenes. Elaborate dress and makeup. Excellent martial arts,acrobatics and high register singing. Stringed instrument for accompaniment.

Cultural discussions with native speakers. Views of America, how they learn about America, Chinese education system, courses taken, and never ending comments and observations about costs, long term economic security, family as well as guns in America. Met different groups at breakfast, and lunch who fortunately had excellent English skills. Seemed genuinely comfortable with discussing how their news is "refined".

Dinner : usual assortment of dishes. OK but not memorable. However, one clear difference to Queens Chinese is the lack of ice cream and fortune cookies at the end.

One of our fellow travelers said Queens Chinese now offers wine, included, with the dinner. No wine. No ice cream and of course no queens noodles or fortune cookies.

BTC beijing

Decent amount of pollution.

Early morning view from hotel room. Hutongs, low scale historical part of the city. Many are preserved buildings from the Ming dynasty era.

There is a peaceful gray haze or morning fog over the district as I write this. Few people out yet. This is a 9 am or 8:30start city. Very peaceful before the rush starts.

After a decent breakfast Off to the temple of Heaven, the enormous prayer park, 273 hectares, for the emperor to pray. Wonderful social setting for tai chi, dancing, and a large variety of outdoor activities as well as card, majong, Chinese chess, etc. I joined in two activities. A racquet exercise, film later, and street calligraphy.

Tianamen square. Room for 500k people but not on Google maps. Sculptures, souvenirs but no food vendors.

Two hour lecture on geography, cultural diversity, one child policy, confucian way of life, customs and manners.

Very frank discussion of the upcoming problems caused by one child policy, as well as the three gorges project disruptions.
Many heartfelt concerns with hope, just hope, that the government can find some solution. The lecturer was near retirement and her pain and concerns were very evident.

The high costs of medical expenses another major concern unless one has a government job.

Peking duck dinner at bian yi fang
-Ming dynasty provenance.

.