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May 31 Yangshou
Those are called Karst mountains, they are fabulous, and you can’t see squat. The weather reminds me of a rain forest in that the air (All of it) is filled with a hot wet mist that periodocially condenses into rain.
I was better this day but not well and the heat and humidity was pretty debilitating so I couldn’t get around much but this is as good a place as any to just hang loose.
Everybody’s having fun!
Getting to Shanghai all worked tickety-boo and I’m sitting here now in my room with a/c, tv, a great shower and an internet connection. A little too cush maybe? To make up for the lux I do have to walk to the fourth floor as the building does not have an elevator!
I decided to try and avoid eye contact going down, but no luck. People called out to me ‘Helllooo’ and ‘Welcome to China’ and ‘How are youuu?!’ So I ended up with twenty more cool pix.
Another one of those views.
Tomorrow will be a nice long travel day. If everything goes exactly as planned I’ll be in Yangshuo tomorrow night, or I could be in Guilin if one thing goes wrong, or in Kunming again if another thing goes wrong, or even still here. I’m entertained just thinking about it!
We shared the river with a flotilla of tourboats. One after the other after the other they just kept coming, we hugging the banks or taking their wake.
Then there are all those pictures from up at the viewing locations which I am sparing you.
Although there were signs all over the place about don’t mess with the environment there were crowds of people, some with big baskets of bottles on their backs, some with pails as these guys, all taking water from the lake.
They had arranged in advance for a private guide and this boat, a barge-like thing with sliding windows and a sliding roof.
We took the public bus to a town about 30 minutes up river where a woman met us, walked us to her restaurant where her husband walked us to his nephew’s boat, who did the trip and then took us to his parents ferryboat to return us back to the original woman’s restaurant. Very all in the family!
We were the only guests on the boat, and travel aboard made us all recall fondly our expectations of The African Queen.
June 3 Yangshou and travel to Shanghai
Today it’s an outing on the river with the boys before the trip to Shanghai.
More. It was really tough to choose which to put in so I basically just went for the ones that were most in focus.
I then had to take a nice rest what from all that socializing afterwhich I spent the late afternoon here, at yet again another tourist attraction. I haven’t even told about them all because it’s all the same. You pay a bunch to look at re-created/re-furbished/re-concieved history in a park like setting.
This is as clear as Jade Dragon Snow Mountain has shown herself to me.
This guy, like the fellow with the cormorants, are a bit like props, just hanging around waiting for tourists to happen-by and then get money for taking their picture.
Personal Capitalism at work.
More of my ongoing efforts to make Chinese brush paintings without having to go to the bother of learning how.
Once the photo thing got started Every Single One who passed me waved or smiled and then it seemed to me they would look disappointed if I didn’t snap them because I had snapped the people before them so I ended up with maybe thirty shots of people waving and smiling.
May 28 Lijiang
ALL the ladies use umbrellas when they promenade the Old Town. It must be a giveaway with the tour groups. And it’s not because of rain but rather the relentless sun.
And also I think because it has now become something stylish that Everyone does.
The plan was to hit the countryside with motorscooters and a guide. First, not reeealy knowing how to start the thing I about took out the whole rank of scooters after which I instead of Jim rode with the guide…
Gorgeous, no? That’s a bamboo grove in the middle distance.
This pic definately needs brightening or new color or something which, bad as it is, he’s still a dang cutie. He and the woman he was with were exchanging these photo-ops like they All do Everywhere.
So I just had to settle down and buy some food. Waaay too much food, all very very tasty and all new to me so that was a great delight.
The community around here is more than 60% Naxi people (pronounced Nashee) and their food, language, clothes, customs, etc. are all unique from ‘main land’ Chinese.
This is Naxi food including: a local stewed tofu specialty with a thick sauce and yummy ginger, then there is ‘fried pea jelly salad’, dark gelatinous bits with a flavorful tempura like coating, and then a ‘Naxi pancake’ with sheets of crisp oily tasty dough and a sweet and spicy filling that I have no idea what it was.
May 26 and 27 Lijiang
Finally I find myself in Lijiang early the 26th after that unexpected overnight in Kunming. I had been thinking about staying in a real hotel and given the circumstances of my arrival it seemed even more appealing. So here I am in the Grand Lijiang Hotel, 40 bucks agent rate. With a TV and room service and everything.
Lijiang is actually a fairly big place but it is famous for its spring-like climate and for its Old Town, all the building being as they were 800 years ago having survived many earthquakes entirely intact.
That seems true, that the buildings could very well be 800 years old but every single one of them is now filled top to bottom side to side front to back with stuff for sale. This picture does not do justice to anything about it but it is unlikely I’ll venture back in there for another shot as the experience was terrifying.
Shanghai is an amazing place I think from a couple of days of taxis, buses, and a lot of walking. One thing, there is a very high percentage of English in the signs so for the most part you know what you’re looking at.
And it was the 100% case that if I stopped to study my map someone would come up and offer to help. Every Single Time. I quit looking just for kicks because I felt bad about bothering people!
An entirely modern Shanghai shopping palace. You could be in Dallas or Copenhagen. No difference At All. Except maybe only slightly more chopsticks in use in the food court, but That’s It.
This is a different place, more like the garment district than a modern Mall. I have a shot like this from almost every city and town. I forgot to check in the Mall. Dang. I was about to conclude that every mannequin in China had a Western face.
At this restaurant they were playing English language music, a quite lovely country-jazz-ish singer-songwriter. It was nice here – big comfy padded chairs with a great view of the street.
Looks like Chinatown USA. It’s called Old Town here and is what you’d expect with the tea house and garden being the focal points and the surrounding streets refurbished into a tourist area with historical presentations, shops, and restaurants.
At least three times a day someone will take my arm to join their group photo or thrust their baby up to give me a kiss while someone snaps a pic. I am of course an excellent choice for such requests since I snuggle up real good and generate gales of giggles and ‘sank yous’.
In various combinations these girls took my picture about five times.
Lunch. A bowl of noodles soaked in chilies and chili oil. On the menu this dish showed a ‘one pepper’ in the scale of zero to three. Pheww!
Ya know, you read about a place and you just never know.
I pictured this famous tea house described as in the middle of a lake, to be in the middle of an actual lake, but no, and the gardens associated with it, I pictured ok, that’s a nice garden, but no. The tea house was interesting and modest while the garden was interesting and vast.
June 6-7 Suzhou and Hangzhou
I left my BigBag in Shanghai and with just a few things took the train to Suzhou, then to Hangzhou for the night, and then back. Suzhou is about an hour away in one direction and Hangzhou is about three hours in another. All the train tickets cost less than breakfast at the Peace Hotel.
When you’re walking along the way, minding your own business, and you see a crowd of people chowin’ down and at the same place you see a line at a window, then you want to be in that line. Yummy!
This is here as an example. In the modern parts of Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai you cannot pitch a stick without hitting a US chain restaurant. The seemingly most popular? KFC. Ol’ Colonel Sanders’ face is far far more in evidence than that of our ol’ Chairman Mao.
And of course look-down-look-up and there’s a McDonalds. And these guys, Starbucks, lines ’em up everywhere, speaking to my theory that you mustn’t get started since Starbucks is clearly addicting and the cost too, even here, makes you think it must be a controlled substance!
This was my last day in China and I wandered around, went across the river to Pudong, stopped to eat about seven times, saw Star Wars, strolled down Nanjing Lu, and not once did I remove the camera from its case. How curious!
Tomorrow I pack-up and am off to Japan for a week. Were it not that summer is coming on strong and everywhere every day is hotter than the previous, I’m sure I could happily stay in China for another month!
A view in Yu Garden.
Kite flyers line The Bund early in the morning. And all along the way you find folks having a constitutional. When they passed by that group of runners all looked like retirees.
Suzhou is famous for its dozens of magnificent gardens. I’m just not getting a feel for it in the pictures. I couldn’t get it at that huge garden in Shanghai either.
These are not gardens in the Victoria Gardens sense. Mostly the garden is filled with buildings, pavillions, colonnades, and walls, sometimes with little space between them, where you stand or sit inside and admire a small view framed by a feature of the building.
There are also inticate stone paths that lead from place to place, the more circuitous the better, plus water features, arching bridges, rock formations, and mirrored surfaces abound.
More kite flyers.
I like how this old guy came up to give the kids some pointers and they were sweet about listening.
Hangzhou is famous for this lake. It was very overcast and even rained some. All around the lake are good views, lawns and benches, restaurants and hotels, etc.
Then there are causeways that cross the lake, leading to islands with more gardens, pavillions, boat rides, and food of course.
‘And on the far side of the river, casting the shadow of Shanghai’s future over its colonial past, are the modern towers of the city’s remarkable economic boom.’
Reading about the history of Shanghai – I think it is among the most interesting stories I’ve heard here.
Following is a link to a few concise paragraphs from Lonely Planet’s Shanghai history and there’s plenty more to read about if that peaks your interest.
This garden is known for its big trees. I liked this one especially. It was more peaceful than most since it seems to be absent from group itineraries, the trees make it shady and cool, and the rustle of the leaves is very soothing.
And there were numerious groups performing many styles of exercise… What a bunch of cuties!
As these gardens were originally built as private residences the buildings were used for living spaces, study halls, meeting rooms, etc. This is looking through a back window.
June 4-5 Shanghai
I had a heat crisis on the 4th and had to go back to the hotel early and just chill, so to speak, so for the 5th I got out at 5:30am, to see if that helped.
Here it is about 6am on The Bund, Shanghai’s most famous promenade. ‘On the near side of the river is Shangai’s signature citscape, a long wall of colonial-era European buildings erected by foreign governments, trading houses, and expatriate millionaires mostly during the 1920s and 1930s.’
The big downtown construction projects are all pretty much finished in the late 90s and now new building is happening across the river. For this reason, unlike in Beijing where downtown is one giant effort to create the most possible dust, here the air quality seems to be better. I should check that out though since I just made it up!
I also ran across many streets in the old hutong style like Beijing’s but ‘inside’ the traffic pattern, as well as semi-modern housing blocks like this one, and then the huge apartment towers too. It’s a complicated place!
The apparently senior men wear some special decorations for the occasion.
Nothing that can’t be solved with time (take a bus) or money (pay for the extra flight). I must be getting lazy since I chose to kick in the extra bucks.
This was the view out my window leaving Tibet to show how much luck has to do with getting a good shot. Maybe I should have pressed to change seats. Actually I’m kind of regreting not having done that.
The crowd gathers and the monks take their seats.
Many white-folk-tourists and Chinese officials occupied the roofs and it was photophoto Snap City up there.
Maybe he’s a yak, but then maybe he’s a water buffalo?
From Lhasa I flew off to Chendu in the certain knowledge that there are two flights with plenty of seats always available, direct to where I want to go – Lijiang. Upon arrival in Chendu come to find out all the flights to Lijiang are just now cancelled indefinately because there is some technical thing.. with accepting night landings and all the Chendu flights land at night.
So a reshuffle takes me to Kunming for a few hours sleep before connecting on to Lijiang.
This was from yesterday’s big event and these are young monks not yet ready to participate with their elders. You see a section of the chanters on the floor below.
Once they finish the chanting they all come out here to another courtyard for a ritual of burning.
May 21 travel day Xi’an to Tibet
This process took all day and I’d like to report that my new suitcase is working out very well Knock On Wood. I can manage myself around all those stairs and checking this and checking that…
Families from all over the country are gathered here and the city people are noticeably different in dress and demeanor from the villagers.
Out my back window, a Chinese tourist hotel.
I will be entirely silent regarding the political situation while I’m here.
(**I’m home now. While in Tibet there were signs on every computer advising that you be mindful of the rules and although the rules are not specified as such…you KNOW. No Polities, No Dalai Lama, Do Not call attention to yourself.
There is so much to say on this including how to be a tourist, what the new high-speed train will do, why is it I so enjoyed being in China but the same Chinese people here are occuping oppressors. This is very much an occupied country and it is painfully obvious that the Tibetan people are expiencing great loss. I think the movie ‘Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion’ brings this into focus.
Send me an email if you have any specific questions.**)
The main man.
Everything you see is symbolic of something. It is a very complicated religion! (But then as an outsider aren’t they all. Let’s just reflect a minute on what it takes to get a Pope…)
One thing though, all the great objects of devotion are displayed in fabulous indoor spaces and there are No Photos Allowed. Bummer for me, better for them to keep the crowds moving.
The food was really universally good and this must be one of the reasons – all fresh.
It was so cool. After the vicious sandstorm came the pouring rain followed a few miles later by swirling snow but by the time we reached town it was all quiet and crisp and cold.
These are monks from more than just the local temple gathered because the highest ranking lama still in Tibet is here on that podium in a large courtyard.
The woman you see bowing has given money to the monks and they are passing it around to those seated. For several hours this went on and the whole time the monks, and there were at least ten ranks of them, were doing that amazing low throat rumbling chant where you wonder when do they ever get a chance to take a breath.
Right down the middle of the main avenue in the capital of Tibet rolls miles of these and other military vehicles. Of course it was threatening.
The airport bus transfer to Lhasa took more than one and a half hours and during that time we drove through some very small settlements and mostly scenes like this one.
First we got hit by a sandstorm so powerful the bus was enveloped. These trees must be bred by generations to survive such harsh circumstances. See the little ones behind these – there are new plantings all along hoping probably for a windbreak for the new development no doubt planned for here.
May 23 Lhasa
Three generations of beautiful. This shot is from the Potala, once the center of religious and political life in Tibet. I’ll show a little of this place tomorrow.
What follows is one giant event that happened this afternoon. It turns out today was the last day of a major festival wherein every prayer you say counts double so as you can well suppose there was a lot of avid praying going on all around town.
Also it explains a lot of what went on yesterday, and tomorrow I’ll have to include some of this too.
May 25 Lhasa
Today was a travel day. Alllll day. Way more of the day than I intended, and tomorrow, when I show you where I am sitting right this minute, well, it’s not what I expected!
All these photos are out windows – out the bus window to the airport and out the plane window to Chendu.
A yak. I ate that yak, yak sausage and yak curry. The sausage was weird, the curry was delicious.
May 24 Lhasa
Another view looking up from the main square. It’s so Tibet, top of the world and all.
Last night there was a storm that was so fierce I spent much of the time wondering how winter must be. The lightning was so bright I had to close the drape for the first time since I started this trip.
And the thunder was not that huge clapping booming thunder we’ve come to expect. Oh no. It was rather as if a 747 was landing on your next door neighbor’s driveway and then at the last minute the pilot decides to pull out and roars over your house to come around and try the approach again.
…however upon arrival in Lhasa elevation something like 12,000 feet I was most grateful that the pedi-cab driver carried the bag up the three flights of incredibly steep steps leading to the place where I will stay for four nights.
At another temple where parents bring their children to bless their heads. The kids must have all been quite used to the procedure because they ran up to the faucet and stuck their little heads right under the water.
Here comes another one. My turn!
The most astonishing part for me was ‘the circuit’ where the pilgrims walk in clockwise motion around the complex. They walk maybe 8 wide in a fast moving river that just doesn’t let up.
There are also pilgrims who go the extra mile so to speak, by crawling and various other methods the more difficult, the more valuable.
This is a nunnery. You can tell because the buildings are painted colorfully and there are plants all around. (I just made that up…)
The nuns were doing daily prayers when I got there and the chanting was extraordinary to hear – so different from the men in tone but similar in outcome.
I spent the rest of the day at what they call the spiritual heart of Tibet, the Jokhang Temple, one block away from my hostel (built in the mid-seventh century by Songzain Gambo for the Tang Princess Wen Cheng and Nepalese Princess Bhrikuti).
It is a fairly large complex of shrines and galleries filled with images, door carvings, and many treasures of Tibetan art.
Can’t forget the Shopping!
And not just tourist shopping. Bus loads of Tibetans from the countryside came in to do the pilgrimage and then loaded the buses, every single inch inside and piled high on the roof with their purchases from town.
A few words about the Pentoc Guesthouse where I’ve been staying in Lhasa. These are the community rooms where guests gather and is also a full service cafe. All the food was exceptionally delicious. I saw their hall of a kitchen and found it even more remarkable!
This was the place most like camping out in that the toilet was down one flight of stairs and the shower was down another. The room was perfectly nice and hey, it cost $10.
My room was on the third floor which was more like up five flights of very steep steps and I felt the altitude every time I made the direct assent. I’m toying with the idea of going for a hotel at the next place since my average cost per room night so far has been $15. We’ll see!
So when I saw this hand written sign it looked like maybe a cafe that is so small as to not have to meet the signage requirement. So I made a motion for food and pointed at the sign. The woman nodded, went inside and came out with a tray of cut-up sausages and offered me one.
So I ate it. It had to be yak something because it was plenty big different, chewy, dense and dark, made with bits of meat I suppose, in a vast array of browns. I thanked them heartily but did not go in!
This is the Sera Monestary just a few miles outside town where more than 5,000 monks once lived and now there are around 500.
May 22 Lhasa
All the signs in Lhasa are in this style, with first writing in the Tibetan language, and then with mathematical precision, just so much bigger in Chinese, and then English might follow especially if it is a tourist enterprise.
The Potala from on top of the main temple. The building itself is a gigantic warren of amazing rooms, the sitting room of this Dalai Lama, the shrine to this manifestation of Buddha, a great scholar’s library, and on and on.
Our main man is now handed all sorts of items which he tosses into the fire to the chants and chiming of the monk’s bells.
Note the two large basins containing yellow liquid. This is yak butter and is used everywhere throughout the temples, to burn as a special offering. You can tell the most important places by how slippery the floor is with yak butter.
This temple contains the most revered image in Tibet and going through there with the throngs of avid devotees was – actually I haven’t digested this experience yet.
From the river of pilgrims.
I’ll find out more about the symbolisms today as I have a guide for a tour of the Potala, the onetime winter residence of the Dalai Lama.
It’s so cool how when you happen to glance up you see the magnificent surrounding mountains.
And on many of the outside walls are these prayer drums that the faithful spin as they walk past.
And the main tourist plaza was full of them. This place separates the Bell Tower to the west and the Drum Tower to the east.
May 20 Xi’an and The Army of Terra Cotta Warriors
A shot from an overpass in Xi’an where I was re-aquainted with the fact that many before me have written Sci-Fi best sellers exploiting the fact that breathable air will become our most valued asset and people will eventually pay about Anything to get it.
May 19 Xi’an
Another overnight train and an early check-in and off to check out the streets.
Yet again another city where the air quality was painfully bad and I despaired of finding anything to spark my interest. Oh foolish one! This kite chain was 180 meters long.
I took the morning to ride public transportation to the History Museum, then to the Terracotta Warriors and back.
The overriding principle of Chinese public transportation is that there is always room for one more. And in fact from my many forrays into public transportation it is true, there always IS (and cheerfully I might add) room for one more.
