Chongqing, China and River Cruise on the Yangtze River

On arriving in Chongqing, we met our guide and went to the zoo to see the giant pandas. It was lunchtime, so we were able to see several of the precious and childlike animals up and eating. They eat (bamboo leaves) and sleep, eat and sleep. My picture count keeps going up and up, and I do have lots of panda pictures, they are that irresistible. We also saw some absolutely beautiful gold fish and a couple of China tigers. After touring the city, we boarded the Yangzi Explorer for a three day ride through the Three Gorges region to the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.  Taking 40,000 workers over ten years and spanning 1.3 miles it is the largest civil construction project to date.  It provides only 1% of China's massive electrical requirement.  More importantly, it controls flooding on the massive river and dramatically improves shipping.  Prior to that shipping upstream was through some class 4 rapids and the boats were pulled by porters, who worked naked and wore long grooves in the stone wall as their ropes came around corners.  During the building 1.3 million people were relocated, most to new cities above the high water mark.  The water level is managed up and down 30 meters (90+ feet) to accommodate the summer floods coming from the melting snows in the Himalayas.  The scale of this project is almost impossible to understand.  As mentioned before, relocation is a common event here as no person is allowed to own land and only rents it from the government, so when they want to use your land, they do.

Our first day out we stopped in Fengdu, a relocation village where the Chinese built a community for farmers whose homes were taken when the dam was built. We visited the home of a relocated family, a market, and a nursery school where the children were at recess, and we played games with them and listened to their songs. The next day we cruised through the Qutang Gorge and the Wu Gorge before disembarking and transferring to sampans powered by the Tujia boatmen. That night we went through five docks that lowered us about 30 meters each time,  one lock greater than the elevation on the Panama canal system, a process that took three hours. When the water is low the first lock is unnecessary.  It was eerily exciting to stand on deck and see and feel the boat drop.

Nansuo Village, Hu County, China

   Early the next morning, we departed for Nansuo Village in Hu County to spend the morning with a local farmer and his family. Hu County is famous in China for its "farmers' paintings" themed on figures, animals, flowers, and the beautiful rural scenery of the county. Our host, Mr. Zhang Qingui, is one of the most famous painters, having his work on exhibit nationally. He walked us through his village where he is currently painting murals on the walls of a street that will become the new entrance to the town, then took us up to his gallery where he painted a picture for us and let me try painting one. He proceeded to complete my picture and sign it with his and my names in Chinese. Wow. Meanwhile, his wife and family were preparing lunch for us, a sumptuous meal using all the local vegetables in savory sauces, a cold, spicy noodle dish and a wonderfully fragrant noodle soup.

   That night we went to a famous dumpling restaurant where the dumplings are all in different shapes representative of their fillings. Later we walked through a newly constructed Central Park that was lit by trees wired with multi colored lights all leading to the town's Buddhist pagoda. At the end of the park, many people were ballroom dancing in one area and line dancing in another. Such a lively night scene!
  

One of Mr. Zhang's Town wall murals

Mr. Zhang

Dave and the dragon

Dumplings

The city center at night

Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an

   Truly one of the great wonders of the world is the Terracotta Army of Xi’an.  We spent a whole morning with some special viewing privileges at the museum constructed over the site discovered in 1974 by a local farmer digging a well. ( We saw him today, the Chinese government has given him the concession for the guide books and most days he is available to sign them.)  They were built to guard the approach to tomb of the emperor of the Qin Dynasty, whose actual tomb is several km away. There were 7000 life size pottery warriors, and horses, and chariots arranged in battle formation with the flanks facing outward. They are in partial restoration and about 700 have been restored.  It took 700,000 workers about 40 years to build. Dug in the ground and covered with a wooden roof and buried.  Only shortly after the death of the emperor, conquerors invaded the site and smashed the army, took away the bronze armaments and set fire to the wood which collapsed and buried the army as rubble.  Only after identified in the 70’s have archeologists started the massive task of excavating the site and reassembling the warriors and horses.  Large museum buildings have been erected over the site and approx 1.5 million foreign and 30 million natives visit the site each year. What you see are the restored warriors, the rubble and some unexcavated ground.

 

More of Beijing

We started Sunday with a tai chi lesson in the park at the Temple of Heaven. The Chinese people are ardent exercisers and every day you will see them exercising or dancing alone or in groups, and they bring their music with them. Others in the park walk or play cards or mah Jong. It was all very festive and Dave and our guide had a hard time prying me away from it all. 

After a sumptuous lunch - oh, this Chinese food is so good - we went to the an ancient Hutong area where the streets are narrow and you are peddled around in pedicabs. We visited the home of a young woman who gives lessons in paper cutting and cooking, and practices the art of painting beautiful and delicate scenes inside snuff bottles. Later we wandered through a local market where our guide identified several spices that are regularly used in Chinese cooking. Lastly, we climbed steep stairs to the top or a drum tower where five boys banged huge drums in rhythm to indicate the time of the historical opening and closing of the gates of the city.

Our last morning in Beijing took us to the Lama Temple, one of the largest, and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world where Buddhists come to worship and burn incense. Then, before we headed to the airport for our flight to Xian, we took in some of the art in the 798 Art Zone, a thriving artistic community housed in 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings.

Summer Palace Lake

Dancing in the Park

Pedicabs waiting for passengers

Drum Tower

The Great Wall of China

The day we visited the Great Wall was spectacularly beautiful with perfect temperatures and not a Cloud in the sky. We traveled to the Mutianyo site about 45 min. from Beijing, where it would not be as crowded as the site closer to the city, and after we took the cable car up to the wall, we hiked for about two hours. What an unbelievable experience! As you can see from the pictures, the wall snakes up the mountain and you pass through watch towers with multiple rooms and windows, and where some hikers camp overnight. The trees were beginning to turn on the mountain, adding to the beauty of the area. 

Beijing, China

   The contrast in countries is enormous.  Beijing is a big city like Tokyo and its streets are relatively clean.  The air is not too bad since a front came through with a lot of wind the day before we arrived.  There is a tremendous amount of dust however.  The driving is wild.  The roads are huge but the drivers weave from lane to lane in heavy traffic just barely missing one another.  Drivers never stop for pedestrians and bikers try to cross many lanes of traffic.  No one wears a helmet and passengers, including children, just sit on the backs of the bikes. Horns honk, fortunately not loudly.  It seems to be a constant game of chicken, but someone always allows you in eventually.

   As far as the pace is concerned, it is much faster.  There are great crowds at most of the sights and pushing is very common.  Our largest was on Saturday at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  Both are huge.  Our guide will block areas so we can see or Deb can get a picture.  Where in Japan in a restaurant, the wait staff is quiet, very attentive and the food beautifully presented in very small bites and the wait staff traditionally dressed, here the restaurants are rushed, loud and the food slapped down on the table in front of you and everyone is casual to the point of poor taste.  That being said, the food is great.  We have had multiple great meals, from a farmer restaurant in village of 100 or so and no Occidentals anywhere around, to Peking Duck in one of the famous duck restaurants where they have four open oven wood fires in the middle of the city and on the 6^th floor of a high rise (how do they do that) cooking a constant stream of ducks to be presented and carved at the table.  It was an elegant setting.

   We are struggling with the Internet.  Google and Facebook are blocked so we have had to buy a VPN connection to use continue to blog.  Lucy, our Bowdoin student and her father helped us set it up.

   We have another day here and then move West.  Perhaps the pace of life will slow outside the capital.

Crown at Tiananmen Sq

Mao's Mausoleum Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City one of many buildings

Last Day in Kyoto

The troops were ready to enjoy some of the cute shops in Kyoto, so after visiting our last temple, along with scores of school children, we wandered the streets of the old district en route to the Gion district where we would have lunch. I sampled some of the sweet treats filled with fruit and bean pastes. Very different in texture and flavors. The Japanese love Kit Kats of all flavors and I had a green tea in mine. They are also very fond of green tea ice cream. On to lunch in a modern Japanese restaurant that serves miniature sushi - such a feast for the eyes!

The afternoon took the ladies to another home where we had an ikebana flower arranging class. Sitting on the floor (!) we learned about the placement of the flowers and each created our own.  The teacher would come by and say, "Oh, so beautiful!", then proceed to totally rearrange our flowers. Cute.

Where was Dave today? He and some of the guys spent the day playing golf.

Assorted Kit Kats

Miniature Sushi

Ikebana Class

More Sushi

Japanese women on a pilgrimage to all the shrines

School Trip

Street in Gion

Kiymizu Temple

A Shinto Monk

More Kyoto, Japan

I had been looking forward to visiting the 10,000 Torii Gates and was not disappointed. On approach, it looked like another Shinto shrine with a Tori gate at the entrance, but once we were well into the property, I saw what all the fuss was about. Fushini Inari is an important Shinto shrine famous for the its thousands of vermillion torii gates which wind through the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari. While we were there, we saw hundreds of visitors including many school children. After leaving the shrine we visited a sake brewery where we were honored to visit with the owner of the brewery who, over cups of teas, explained the process of saking making and then took us into his brewery for a tasting of three of his special sakes.

Later four of us went to a cooking class in a Machiya, a Kyoto style townhome, where we prepared a typical lunch of miso soup, rice with mushrooms, cucumber salad with tiny seaweed, and teriyaki tory.  Several of the dishes were seasoned with light soy sauce, mirin, sake, and either salt or sugar and they were delicious. Our teacher was one of a group of women who are trying to preserve the arts of cooking, sushi, making, and ikebana flower arranging by giving classes in their homes.

Dave went to visit Nijo Castle (the Sho-gun castle), Sanjusangendo Temple with its 1001 full-sized buddha statues, and the Tufukuji Temple's Hojo Garden.

That evening we had a private shabushabu dinner in a ryokan with Meiko and Geiko entertainment. A Meiko is an apprentice geisha, between the ages of 15 and 20, who is schooled in the arts of song and dance, shamisen playing, and entertaining. A geisha, or geiko in Kyoto dialect, is a professional entertainer. Our Meiko was a lovely 17 year old girl who served sake, danced, and played games with our group. This was indeed one of the highlights of our trip as there only 90 geisha left in the Kyoto area.

Entering Torii Gates

Lunch

Japanese (?) Chefs

Meiko Dancing

Meiko

Kyoto, Japan

We took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Fukuoka to Kyoto the next day, flying along in comfort at 140-150 miles an hour. Upon arrival, we departed for the Ancient Nara Tour in which we visited Todaiji Temple, Nara Park, the Giant Buddha Statue, Isuien Gardens, Kofukuji Temple, and the National Treasure Hall. Whew! Todaiji Temple is a Buddhist temple complex in the city of Nara. Nara Park is home to 300 Sika deer which are regarded as messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion and are allowed to roam the grounds freely. They sell deer cookies, and when you have them in hand , the deer swarm you, nipping at your legs and trying to find paper in your pockets. It was a hoot and we all shared in the fun. After the feeding, it was on to the Great Buddha Hall which houses the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha. The temple also serves as the Japanese headquarters of the Kegon school of Buddhaism.

The Isuien Garden was a delight. It was the prettiest garden I have seen on this trip, and the leaves had just started to turn. They have a fall color burst in Japan that must rival the one in New England. That, and the cherry blossoms in the spring are very special and bring lots of visitors to the country.

Looking for food

Giant Buddha

Relaxing in Nara Park

Isuien Gardens

The Gardens

Kofukuji Temple

Fukuoka, Japan

Back to my tales...still on Kyushu Island, we took the train to its largest city, Fuokuoka, for one night on our way across Japan. Before venturing out into we city, we enjoyed a buffet lunch at a cafe owned by renowned chef, Harumi Kurihara, known as the Japanese Martha Stewart. Then, while on a walking tour of the city, temples and shrines, we came upon a sumo wrestling competition of little boys. Each match only lasted a few seconds, and at the end of the event trophies were presented. Later on, the ladies went off to shop. I stopped into a small store where they were making kimonos, and one of the ladies pulled me aside and asked if I would like to try one on. Of course I said yes, so she proceeded to wrap me up in the many layers. What fun! I said, "Now I look like an auntie." Our translator was there and snapped pics of the event, sunglasses and all.

Sumo wrestling kids

A Pagoda

Playing dress-up