China Continued

I think the last time I actually wrote something about my travels I left off while I was in Beijing; so I'll pick up leaving the same.  Makes sense, right?

From Beijing I headed over to Xi'an, one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.  It has a recorded history older than 3100 years.  And it also happens to be near where they discovered the treasure of Terracotta Warriors.  If you haven't heard of them you have certainly seen them in a movie or two.  Here's a couple of pictures to jog your memory.

 

This is one of the must see sights if you were to ever visit China.  You'll either be amazed or appalled by the fact that so many were made and so meticulously so.  I understand that there were over 700,000 workers at various times building the estimated 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits.  Oh yeah, there are also acrobats and musicians in the pits; have to keep the dea Emperor entertained.

From Xi'an I traveled down the Yangtze River and was able to tour the Three Gorges Dam.  The Discover Channel has a show on the building of this dam from time to time and it is every bit as big as portraited.  When moving through the "locks", watching the doors open and close is really quite entertaining, well, at least for the first set of doors anyway.  Massive, massive doors!!

The Yangtze River had its moments also but its nothing to write home about.  I've seen just as beautiful scenery if not more so along the Colorado.  Enjoy.

 

From here I kind of get lost, literally.  I knew where I was going, Kunming, but once I got there I was so far away from either Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong that I could find no one that could speak any English.  I'm sure there were some Chinese around Kunming that could speak some English but my problem is I couldn't find even one that could at least point me in the right direction.  Needless to say Kunming was a big waste of time for me.  I spend 3 days walking the streets and not much else.

I will tell you I did find some great street food so I guess you can say it was a complete waste.  And it doesn't matter what city you are in, Shanghai, Beijing or far out West Kunming there are always food vendors on the street.  I'm pretty sure the food isn't of the "sterile" variety but just have them cook it well and you should be just fine.  I never once got sick.  In fact, knocking on wood, I still haven't been sick since starting my travels.  Must have someone really special looking out for me from above.

My last stop before heading to Wuxi where I would be working for at least 5 months was Hong Kong.  I had two reasons for going to Hong Kong, one was sightseeing but the others was since I came to China on a Tourist VISA I had to exchange it out for a Work VISA.

I guess I picked the right day to go to the Chinese Consulate because I just walked right on in; no waiting at all.  I was able to get most everything I needed but had to come back three days later to actually pick up the VISA.  When I came back three days later, wow!, the line was around the block.  Since I was "returning" to simply pick up my VISA and pay for it I was able to stand in a second but much, much shorter line and we had priority on going in first.  How lucky could I have been.  If I would have had to stand in the other line I would have never made my flight to Shanghai.  I think it had something to do with giving them money - the shorter line was for those picking up and paying for their VISAs.

Hong Kong didn't impress me too much.  If you like tall building, well then it just might be your kind of town.  Otherwise it is pretty much a taller, more squished Shangai but much more expensive.  I would have to venture a guess that Hong Kong prices are about the same as prices in the USA, seriously.  They do have all the modern conveniences and most people if not everyone of the people spoke some English.  And the subway system is not unlike the ones in Beijing and Shanghai, if you can read you can get around.  Really, everything is printed in both Chinese and English - subway signs, street signs, etc.  Pretty much the same as Beijing and Shanghai.  Over all, Shanghai is still my favorite city of all the ones in China I visited.

So, except for my stay in Wuxi this has been my travels in China.  Now where to?

Sugar and Eggs

Hello anyone and everyone that might be reading this.  I'm taking a different approached to my post today and sharing some insight on what I have been seeing here in China of late.

Yesterday I went into the store - grocery store - to buy a few items.  Two of those items were sugar and eggs.  This was the second time in as many days I went shopping for sugar.  I was luck this time in that I was able to grab one bag of sugar before the lady in front of me had grabbed them all.  Well, actually I reached into her cart and grab one she had already taken.  She already had about 20 in her cart.  I just smiled and walked away; an advantage of not understanding everything some is saying.

Next on the list was eggs.  I walked to the area of the market where they sell eggs and I found I was in luck in that a shipment of eggs had just come in.  That is until I looked at the line to buy the few eggs they had.  I am not kidding when I say the line wrapped around the store.  No way I was going to get any eggs today.  So I made plans to go to the "open market" to see if they had eggs.  When I got there about 4 hours later they did indeed have eggs - they were just selling them for 5x what I had paid for them just two weeks ago.

I  share this little tidbit of information only because I have been reading from various news sources of what many are saying will be an impending food shortage worldwide.  I don't know how true or whether it will actually affect the USA but I've already tried to live in a manner of being safer than not.  If you don't have any sort of food supply in your home I'd suggest at least buying a larger quantity of the staples and grains.  Again, better safe than sorry and those items will store almost forever.

Anyway, my few words of warning.  Save some food for me too since I really can't store food here.

Till next time stay safe and stay warm.

China - Beijing

Beijing from Shanghai - late July 2010

Beijing is definitely a much more interesting city if only because it is has a greater historical context when it comes to China but I'd never want to live here.  It has a long way to go before it even begins to be at the level of modernization of Shanghai.

When visiting Beijing, or Peking of old, there are many places to visit.  Of those several sights are a must see, at least for me.  These were the Forbidden Palace, The Great Wall which has close proximity to Beijing, Olympic Village and  Tiananmen Square.

The Forbidden City is vast.  You'll only really understand how big if you've been there.  You can get lost very easily.  It kind of reminded me of how I felt when I visited the UCLA campus when I went there right out of high school.  I couldn't believe how big it was at the time.  Now compared to so many other campuses it doesn't seem so big.  This, I can't imagine another "inner city" being so big.  It truly was built and is a city within a city, meant solely to keep the outside world from seeing in as much as to keep the Emperor isolated from the outside world.

I've attached a picture of one of the roof corners of the center palace.  If you count the number of smaller dragons you'll count 11, the most any building in China has signifying its importance.  The most I've counted in other buildings I think is 9 and that was only once in the Bell Tower in Chengdu (I think).

One of the more interesting buildings in the Forbidden City is the The Hall of Clocks and Watches.  Inside you will find an enormous collect of clocks from all over the world as it was known then.  The most fascinating of all the clocks is the Water Clock made in 1799.  The clock is made up of four bronze pots, all identical in size and arranged vertically.  The water in one pot drops into each succeeding pot with the water level gathering at the bottom indicating what time it is by a float placed in the bottom bath.

 

One of the more beautiful sights was the Nine Dragon Wall.  You can find "nine dragon walls" in several places in China but I think this or the one in Behai Park is the original.  Here is the story:

"Nine Dragon Screen (east of Baohe Hall in the Forbidden City) is a 3½-meter-high and 29.4-meter-long screen made of 270 multicolored glazed tiles. Nine five-clawed dragons romp on a sea against a blue and green background of rolling clouds and seas.

The screen was erected in 1771. The third dragon from the left is a different color from the others. According to one story the tile that contained this dragon was not ready when the screen was scheduled to be unveiled. Since the craftsmen were told they would be beheaded if the project wasn’t done in time a carpenter made a wooden dragon that looked like the original and glued it into place. Fortunately the Emperor didn’t notice and no one lost their head."

 

The Great Wall I must say was my biggest disappointment.  Not only was the weather really, really crappy during the couple of days I had planned on seeing the "wall" but there was trash everywhere.  I can imagine a group boy scouts making this a major undertaking for someone's Eagle Scout Project.  Ha!  Now if they only had Boy Scouts in China?!?

Olympic Village was interesting and except for the Track Stadium, the Water Cube and the garden area its not much more than an empty sports complex.  Makes you wonder whether hosting an Olympics is worth all of the effort.  I suppose in the end if you made money during the Olympics then it all works out and you now have a vast tourist attraction.  The Water Cube is really neat though.

Tiananmen Square obviously has the most modern historical meaning to the Chinese people than anything else you can see here in China.  If you can remember the scene where the tank was about to run down a Chinese dissident then you'll remember why there square holds so deep a meaning for those fighting for a freer political system here in China.  Here's the story in case you missed it taken from Wikepedia:

"The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in much of the world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China (PRC) beginning on 14 April 1989. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.

The protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang, an official known for tolerating dissent, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu's funeral, 100,000 people had gathered at Tiananmen Square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included Communist Party of China members and Trotskyists as well as liberal reformers, who were generally against the government's authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered in Tiananmen Square to begin with but then later in the streets around the square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.

The movement lasted seven weeks after Hu's death on 15 April. In early June, the People's Liberation Army moved into the streets of Beijing with troops and tanks and cleared the square with live fire. The exact number of deaths is not known. According to an analysis by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times, "The true number of deaths will probably never be known, and it is possible that thousands of people were killed without leaving evidence behind. But based on the evidence that is now available, it seems plausible that about fifty soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians." Globe and Mail correspondent Jan Wong placed the death toll at approximately 3,000, based on initial reports by the Red Cross and analysis on the crowd size, density, and the volume of firing.

Following the conflict, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. There was widespread international condemnation of the PRC government's use of force against the protesters."

A lot has changed in China since that day in 1989.

China - Shanghai

Hello everyone, I know it has been several months since I've posted anything on my blogs but I think you can understand.  When first arrived in China most websites were blocked that would allow me to write on blogs.  Heck, Facebook and uTube as well as the site where I keep my blogs are still blocked.  But I've found away around the blocking and so here I am.  Well, at least until they, meaning China, finds away to block how I'm getting here.

Anyway, I figure I'll spend the next couple of weeks trying to catch up on my travel log although you know what my memory is like.   So here goes:

I arrived in China mid-July with my first stop being Shanghai.  I can certainly share with now that Shanghai is by far the most modern city in China.  In many ways I find it more modern than even Hong Kong.  Shanghai is a fascinating city.  One half is the old, or at least older China, and the other half is modern China.  You can see this distinction while standing on the "bund."

"The word ‘bund’ derives from an Anglo-Indian word for an embankment along a muddy waterfront and that is what it was in the beginning, when the first British company opened an office there in 1846. It became the epitome of elegance during Shanghai’s history as a city of trade. Now many attractive new constructions have been erected in addition to the historical buildings. A 771-metre long retaining wall for flood control was built. Atop the wall is a spacious walkway for sightseeing. Paved with colorful tiles and dotted with flower beds and European-style garden lights. It is a good place for a leisurely stroll and a view of the Huangpu River."

If you haven't been to the "bund" you truly haven't been to Shanghai.  It is a must and is an enjoyable walk.  Also there is a huge open-air market within walking distance where you can buy just about anything.  Seriously, anything!  Since I live in Wuxi, which is about a 40 minute train ride away I come to this market maybe once a month to browse around.  It's kind of like going garage sale hopping without a car but all of the items are new and many are knock-offs.

One thing you not find few of all over China are temples.  Kind of strange for a country that barred religion for about 30-40 years.  Almost all are some variation of Buddhism however when you're not intimate with the religion I don't think it much matters.  They all look very similar in design and all of the Buddhas, and there are thousands of different ones, all begin to look the same after a while.

One of the attractions I was sure to go to was the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.  Remember, this was my first experience in China and I have to say I've never seen so many people in one place in my entire life.  And I'm guessing I never will again.  It felt at times like all 1.3 billion were there!  Ha!  I'm finding out that the Chinese people are a kind people and are constantly trying to help me.  Either that or that want someone to bounce their English off of.  Probably a little of both.

I was able to see most of the main attraction but I must say I was quite disappointed in the USA exhibit - more like a huge advertisement than anything else.  Pretty much two films and corporate logos all over the walls and you're done.  I did enjoy the Italian, Russian and Chinese exhibits.  I know there was one other I enjoyed a lot but I can't recollect it at the moment.  I was also very fortunate to even get in the Chinese Exhibition Hall, the waiting line was literally 8 hours or more long and you had to get a reservation to even stand in line.  Not me!!!

About 9:30pm, when the last of those standing in line are about to enter I walked up to see if I could get in.  Mind you I knew nothing of the reservation scheme at the time.  When I walked up the guards (real Red Guards) came up to me asked me what I was doing.  I basically told them I wanted to get into the Chinese Exhibit and that I was a stupid American not knowing what to do.  One of the head honchos told me to go stand under this one umbrella.  About 10 minutes later he told me to move to where the line was but not int he line.  About 10 more minutes later after the last person had left the line to enter the exhibit he motioned for me to "follow that lady", and so I did.  Voila!  I'm in.  Sometimes it pays to be a "stupid American."  Enjoy the pics: