Hong Kong

Aberdeen harbor sampan

We were in Hong Kong Oct 21-24 and again, just overnight, on Oct 30-31 for the flight home. While there, we toured the city on foot and by bus, visiting a temple, Victoria Peak, Aberdeen harbor, the Temple Street night market, and bid a tearful farewell to our tour group and guide.

Two systems. The first thing you notice when traveling from the rest of China to Hong Kong is that you cross a border. Hong Kong is part of China, but has retained most of its systems, including immigration, customs, and currency. The electrical plugs change to UK-style. Google can be reached. In addition to those differences, we'd moved into the Cantonese belt in China, where the names are different and strangely more familiar to my eyes, as most Chinese Americans came from southern, coastal China.

On our own. We had more time on our own in Hong Kong. And it seemed we were finally ready, too. It helps that there is more Pinyin signage and it also helped that the subway was excellent. We visited the fabulous Hong Kong Museum of History and wandered into restaurant nearby for a light lunch. It was a little awkward, as we were the only tourists in there and there was no English anywhere. We did have a few tasty dishes, but I'm sure they looked like weird selections to the completely-polite and solicitous waitstaff.

More to see. I can see returning to Hong Kong. It's modern, dynamic, and diverse. While I was ready to return home on our brief return to the city from Phnom Penh, I found myself wishing for a few more days, or a quick dash to something nearby. We'll have to figure out an excuse for another visit.

Flickr has an album of photos.

The Yangtze

This post covers Oct 17-21, when we flew to Chongqing, sailed on the Long River, bused to Wuhan, and flew from there to Hong Kong. Along the way, we cruised through three gorges, had a home visit with a family that had been relocated from the flooded river bottom, and toured the Three Gorges Dam.

The River. The river, which has several names along its length (Yangtze is the name for the last segment, at the coast, used in the title for its familiarity), was a fascinating few days. Everywhere we were on it was part of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir. The dam flooded many towns and displaced over a million people. New towns were built to house them, not all of them high rises. Our home visit was with a relocated farmer and was in a two story building with spacious rooms. I loved the gorges and the history along the way. And the Goddess Stream trip was an unexpected delight.

The countryside. The country along the river side was very green and, for a good part of it, very rugged. We also got a good look at varied country on the four hour bus trip from just upriver of Yichang to Wuhan. This included forested hills, lots of agricultural land, and some broad river valleys.

Apartment layout

The developers. Upon arrival in Wuhan, our tour guide rerouted the bus into a street under all sorts of development -- subway station, road resurfacing, and apartment development. It was the apartments that she was interested in. We'd been talking about housing for the entire trip -- how much has gone up, how expensive it is, and how a new space comes with nothing but roof, walls, and windows. So, we all trouped into the sales office for a new apartment complex (she'd spotted it from the highway). They were very nice to give us a tour and talk to us about their plans, which included a school next door.

While we were in there, a woman was signing an agreement to purchase an apartment for her fourteen year old son, because that's what's done. Now, this young man is in better shape to get married. The apartment was expensive for a teenager, but it was expected to be more expensive later, so the argument is to buy early. We learned this because our tour guide, in her inimitable way, just asked. The mother agreed that house buying is a bubble, but with prices always going up, it was hard to hold off. And, besides, with prices always going up, it's a good investment! It was a very interesting, unplanned, "learning discovery" experience.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Lhasa

I was happy to have been able to visit Lhasa Oct. 14-17, as part of our trip to China. It's not always possible, but our timing was excellent. The start of the Nineteenth Party Congress meant that we had to leave, but it didn't affect our itinerary. Other groups there did have a shortened visit. Our plane flying in was more than half empty and the flight out was completely full. We visited the Potala Palace, had a home visit, and toured the Johkang Temple, the Sera Monastery, and the Papungka Monastery.

The terrain. Lhasa is situated in a broad valley at just under 12,000', surrounded by dry, brown hills rising to over 16,000'. The valley is home to the wide and braided Lhasa River that flows east and then south to join the Brahmaputra River, which flows to the Bay of Bengal. The city sprawls across the flat valley bottom, not quite filling it. In contrast to the enormous and concentrated cities we'd already visited, this city seems small, almost intimate. It was very sunny and the air was dry, so that it was warm in the day, even though we were at elevation.

The people. Tibetans look and dress a little differently from Chinese. I was struck by a few instances of dress and hair style that reminded me of pictures of people who live in the Andes. I have no theory about that. As in China proper, people were friendly and interested to see us tourists.

Security. We were reminded of the sensitive nature of Chinese possession of Tibet before the visit, which was made only more sensitive by the approaching Party Congress. The photos don't show this, but the plaza of the Johkang Temple was patrolled by police, soldiers, and fire fighters in flak jackets, and all of the market streets surrounding it had police checkpoints controlling access. 

The plaza below Potala Palace, with the "Tibet Peaceful Liberation Monument," has all sorts of propaganda images on walls and fences, highlighting the beauties and benefits of the Chinese nation. They clearly were political, and perhaps not particularly clever, since none of the people depicted looked like Tibetans.

Security was tighter at this airport than any others on the trip, with an explosive swab at the door to the departures hall. A squad of soldiers marched through as we were waiting to check our bags.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Chengdu

Our Oct 12-14 visit to Chengdu gave us a visit to People's Park, a metro ride, an opera demonstration/performance, a visit to the Chengdu Panda Base Breeding Center, as well as a chance to wander in the hotel's neighborhood and to get some rest.

Pandas. The core of our time in Chengdu was the pandas. The Chengdu Panda Base Breeding Center is a zoo, breeding center, scientific facility, educational exhibit, and tourist attraction. In its spacious and attractive grounds, it houses scores of giant pandas and a number of red pandas. We saw adult pandas eating and -- literally -- hanging out in trees, slightly more active juvenile pandas, and baby pandas, barely able to lift their heads from the ground. All of them were adorable.

One of the adults was interested in something other than eating pre-cut bamboo sticks. It stalked into the shrubs in its enclosure, broke off a six foot branch, and dragged it to the back of its space to push around and chew on. It displayed remarkable strength and agility in doing so.

Here, as with the terracotta soldiers, I was impressed by the commitment to the pandas and their conservation. When they started this work, almost nothing was known about how pandas reproduced. With the increase of knowledge, they are able to return some pandas to the wild, in growing reserves in the mountains.

Three Kingdoms. One of my preparations for this trip was to listen to a podcast recap of a 14th century historical novel called "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms." It recounts the history, somewhat novelized, of the Three Kingdoms period, which took place in the 60-100 years before 280 AD. The podcast had about 100 episodes by the time we left for China and I caught up by listening to five, twenty-five minute episodes a week. I highly recommend The Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast.

Chengdu was the capital of the main focus of the novel, the Kingdom of Shu. I was thrilled to see statues, in our hotel's lobby, of the four heroes of Shu: Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei. It was a cool, accidental connection with actual history and a story that I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Xi'an

Taiji master and students

Our October 8-12 visit to Xi'an included a bullet train ride (300 kph/190 mph) from Beijing, a Taiji demonstration, a jade factory, the Small Wild Goose Pavilion, where we received calligraphy instruction, Xi'an's impressive town wall, the Great Mosque, the world-famous Terracotta Soldiers, a school visit, a rural village market, and lunch with village residents.

Pillows. Our hotel in Beijing included the usual two pillows, but one of them was strange -- heavy and lumpy, as if it were filled with gravel. Turns out it was filled with buckwheat husks. The first night I tossed it on the floor. But the second night I gave it a try (the other, synthetic pillow, was too fat for my comfort. I liked it. It was firm but malleable and helped me to a good night's sleep. The hotel in Xi'an did not provide a buckwheat pillow and I found I missed it. So, I bought one when I returned home and have been using it ever since.

Terracotta Soldiers. As someone remarked later in the Chengdu airport, visiting the Terracotta soldiers is one of the China tourist cliches. I saw the traveling exhibit in Seattle a couple of decades ago, but there's nothing like the real thing. I was impressed by the scale of the ancient project and the pride and care that's gone into the modern project. It's both a major visitor center and an active archeological dig.

City wall

City Wall. Xi'an is one of the few cities in China that includes a largely-intact ancient city wall, built originally in the 14th century. The top is a walkway as wide as a two-lane street that stretches for over eight miles. Sadly, we only had a few minutes to travel it.

Home visit. We traveled about an hour out of town to a rural village for a visit and a meal. We were hosted by two families and had a fine time visiting the market, trying out our "Chinese," and helping to make lunch. Both hostesses were friendly and interesting. Their houses were quite nice, spacious, two stories, with tall ceilings and nice finishing.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Beijing

Our first stop in China was Beijing, October 4 through 8. While there, we toured the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Lama Temple, had a home visit, and had our introduction to Chinese food.

Olympic Village tower

Buildings. The drive into Beijing took us, at first, through ranks of anonymous housing towers. As we got more into town, commercial buildings appeared more frequently and they were in no way duplicates. The variety of those buildings was amazing, an enormous variety of towers, in all shapes and configurations, reflecting an exciting energy and creativity.

Crowds. Our first venue was the Summer Palace, in the northwest, where we got our education in queues and moving in crowds in China. The weather was nice and the place was teeming. It was not possible to avoid bumps and it quickly became clear that bumps were part of the experience. There was no shock or withdrawal or apology, just bump and move on. I have to admit that it does save time and reduces the potential for conflict.

Tiananmen. It's a huge square, flanked by the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. There was even a large portrait of Sun Yat-sen, facing Mao's portrait across the square. Security was clearly present -- fencing, bag checks, cars, uniforms. In addition, it seemed to me that plainclothes guys were hanging around us from time to time, staring at nothing, but within earshot of our conversations. We'd been warned to be discreet.

The Great Wall

The Great Wall. Seeing the wall and having the nearby home visit were the highlights for me. We visited a wilder part of the wall and had no crowds. It was very exciting to walk along those famous walls and see how they spanned the hills, very steeply in many places. I could have gone for miles. A few minutes away, we visited a family with a small house, garden, and apricot orchards in the hills. The woman of the house and her mother-in-law cooked us the freshest meal of the trip, with much of the food coming from their garden, which was still producing.

Pollution. The Summer Palace was under blue skies when we visited. Most of the rest of the time in Beijing, the sky was white, cloudy, and/or hazy. Even though the the skies were not sparkling, the vaunted air pollution was on vacation while we were there. There were still masks in use.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

While Angkor Wat is the marquee destination in Cambodia, Phnom Penh is a worthwhile place to visit. We had a fine time visiting in October, staying with relatives for a few days (The Plantation looks nice). There are plenty of touristy things to do. We visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center to learn about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period. The first was a school, right in town, converted to a torture prison. The second is one of the "killing fields" out in the country, and primarily served Tuol Sleng's mass execution needs. The exhibits and interpretation (in English) were unblinking, passionate, and powerful. The stupa housing the remains of the mass graves at Choeung Ek is striking and beautiful.

We also visited the National Museum, which has a great collection of fixtures from the glorious centuries of the Khmer empire, the Royal Palace, and, out of town, the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre (tiger, leopard, elephants, and giant flying squirrels bigger than our cats!). My favorite was a day-long boat ride up the Tonle Sap River to the former royal capital at Oudong, where we visited shrines and stupas on a nearby hill. Cambodia is very flat near the rivers and this hill offered enormous panoramas in every direction, fading into haze. The boat ride, on a funky but sound and comfortable old craft, was great, letting us see more rural areas and how much life is focused on the river -- fishing, bulk shipping, and whole floating neighborhoods.

The city itself was a change from China. It's smaller, built lower, and is more human-scaled than the mega-cities we visited. We also spent more time on and in the streets. In China, we traveled in buses, which put us somewhat above the traffic. In Phnom Penh, we traveled by "tuk-tuk," a small motorcycle pulling a wagon that holds four passengers. This put us right into the streets, which teemed with motorcycles, cars, and an occasional bus or truck. I loved watching the traffic flow past, through, and into itself, mostly ignoring the lanes, signs, and other controls, and doing so smoothly, safely, and without horns or shouting. Walking is trickier, since what sidewalks there are can be crowded with parked cars, vendors, and even overflow traffic from the street.

Should we return to Cambodia (which is possible, I'm told that January and February are the driest months to visit, though we had nice weather), Siem Reap and Angkor Wat will have to be on the itinerary, but Phnom Penh will be, too.

Flickr has an album of photos.

Notes on our China trip

My wife and I traveled to China in October on a tour with Overseas Adventure Travel, with a private extension to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The tour made all of the logistics easy and allowed us to see a lot more of the important sights and sites than we would have without that support. The tour necessarily insulated us from many otherwise necessary interactions with Chinese people. Our tour guide helped to balance that by initiating interactions with regular people in every city, making the trip a richer experience. Over the next week or so, I’ll post my thoughts about the trip and what we saw.

I took some pictures, but I’m not really a photographer. I’ll post the most interesting ones with subsequent posts.

This is a quick outline of the trip:

• We flew into Beijing, where we visited the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City, as well as visiting a private home, a Buddhist temple, a Chinese medicine facility, and several parks.
• We took a bullet train to Xi’an, where we toured the terracotta warriors site, a school, another private home in the country, the Muslim quarter and its Great Monastery, and the still-existing city wall.
• We flew to Chengdu, where our visit included the People’s Park, an opera performance, and, of course, the Chengdu Panda Base Breeding Center.
• We took a near empty flight to Lhasa, thankful to be able to visit so close to the Nineteenth Party Congress. We visited Potala Palace, another private home, the Jokhang Temple, and a couple of monasteries. Security was tight.
• We flew to Chongqing, where we boarded the Victoria Anna for a cruise on the Yangtze River. We passed through the three gorges, visited the home of one of the families relocated by the Three Gorges Dam, and also toured the dam itself (a fancier tourist site than Grand Coulee). The highlight was a small boat tour up one of the flooded tributaries, green cliffs dropping into smooth, green water.
• We took a bus through the pretty and interesting countryside to Wuhan, where we spent the night and flew to Hong Kong the next day.
• Our time in Hong Kong included a visit to Aberdeen harbor, Victoria Peak, and a lot of discussion of Hong Kong’s special status within China. Judy and I visited the Hong Kong Museum of History, taking the subway on our own.
• Finally, we flew to Phnom Penh, where we stayed with relatives and had a relaxing and educational visit, returning home via Hong Kong after a night in a hotel near the airport.

This was a trip that I had been preparing for and looking forward to for some time. I’ve been reading about China history and listening to public affairs, history, and literary podcasts for the past several years. As background, this was useful, but it was the tour guides that provided the most value and insight into China as it thinks of itself. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.