Boog's Blog

BTC Chongching. Double happiness

Warm and sunny

Early plane ride to Chongching and the giant pandas.

With mountains on all sides it was heavily bombed by japan but not occupied. Remained the capital from 1937 to late 1945. Now the area has 32 millions with 10 millions in the inner city. Has invested very heavily in trees and pollution control equipment. Very hot, very humid summers and cold humid winters. Buildings looking like they are growing as we fight the traffic from the airport.

Hilly city,sitting between two rivers, yu and yangtze, providing many jobs for porters, bamboo stick men, to carry even daily shopping home. Easy city to get a job in restaurants or porters and start you climb from the village to business or education prosperity.

First a tour of the old city with its outdoor markets. Traditional Szechwan lunch, nice mixture of warm to very warm to hot dishes. Some items from the south, canton area.
Pandas in the zoo were not so nice to see. The zoo is of a style we used 50 years ago. More like large caged pens. Many photos will be on Flickr.

Short lecture on Chinese painting and methods, mostly as an introduction to the art gallery and their hope for some sales.

Hot pot dinner – both a mild and spicy broth. Then off to the ship. We start a 800 km trip on the Yangtze. Chongching looks exciting all lit up-from the ship before it gets going. Safety talk first as one can easily understand.?

BTC Xi’an university

Sunny warm

Day started with a lecture on Chinese history, from neolithic times, Oracle bones and onto lao-zi (600-500 bce) and dao, the way, also the time of confucian thinking.

Good story about Clinton in Xi’an visit. View of affairs and strange American views. Of course he can have concubine.

Confucian, good heart, replaced by legality, iron fist.

Skipped over Qin and Han to Sui and Tang. Imperial exams start, from 600 ad until 1905. Lasted 1300 years.

Power follows exams. "When you get power even your dogs and chickens will rise."

Foot binding starts 100 years after Tang dynasty and does not end until 1911. In Tang dynasty heavy women were preferred, plump was good.

Iron rice bowl, cultural revolution smoothed over.

Majong may have migrated to Nyc via the Jewish community in Shanghai.

A walk around the university after the talk. A student was assigned to us; she to practice English. After a tour of the student cafeteria (wanted to see the regional foods, we even sampled some), where each booth is rented for 24000 yuan a year and students seem to eat a high percentage of noodles and pizza equivalent) got to ask my two prepared questions. As a side note students eat here, a la Carte, for about 15 yuan a day. Use student cards to charge for food.

Where do you learn about America? Foreign speaker’s corner and US
newspapers such as the nyt. Another, American movies.

What do you think of America? Freedom. This is the usual answer. Dissected this time it meant, you can carry guns, choose and criticize you leaders and sex (meaning live together before marriage)

The museum visit was marginal except for the Tang dynasty horses-a polo playing ruling class. A bit bigger than the Asian museum in San Francisco. One interesting facet was the students, maybe 15,doing clay sculptures copying relics.

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