This morning we visited the Nanjing Kindergarten. It took special qualifications to get your child in this group of healthy, happy, boisterous four and five year olds. We sang songs with them then went throuh the school and view all their activities from building Logo buildings to finger painting - they and we all wore our coats - there was no heat in the school and the windows were all open and all were bundled up to keep out the cool 50 degree weather. A city tour including Dr. Sun Yatsen's Mausoleum (I didn't climb all the 362 steps up to the mausoleum but could see it from below) and the Ming Tomb Avenue. Then lunch in the area and free time to shop and meet in McDonald's in a couple of hours. A Kentucky Fried chicken sign with the Colonel smiling at you - was near McDonald's - but I swear he had an orential slant in his grin. McDonald's apple pie tasted just like at home. FF member, Bob Bryan, had his shoes shined by an insistant boy about 10 years old - he followed Bob across the street to in front of McDonald's where Bob persuaded him to let him shine his(the boy's) shoes - this brought traffic to a standstill as a large crowd of courious on-lookers gathered to see what what was happening with the "big nose foreign devil" (Chinese name for white guys). FF member Myron Colber (a retired music teacher), seized on the moment and led the members there in several songs for the crowd - like "You Are My Sunshine." The shoe shine boy followed us back to the bus and finally persauded me to get a shine.
While sitting in a window seat at McDonald's a poorley dressed woman with a boy, about 10 years old came up to the window and indicated the boy was hungry - and I guess they wanted to come in for a meal for the boy. I thought I would buy the kid a big-mac and raised my camera to get a picture of the two whereupon they wheeled and disapeared into the croud. FF member, Joan Bennett, and I were paired to have dinner in a chinese home. We met our hostess,MsWang Yongmei, in the hotel lobby and took a cab to her apartment on the sixth floor of abuilding only about a mile from the hotel. She told us to call her "Mei" (May), since her Chinese name probably would be to hard to remember. She is an English teacher at the Jinling Vocational College. She had a husband who was out of town for a few days, so a colleague(Harold), joined her to meet us and have dinner with us. Mei had a very neat house and set out at once to make dunplings for our evening meal. She mixed the ingredients, kneeded the dough until it was a perfect circle which she then cut into little pieces to make into dunolings.
Mai was busy with dinner but Harold was easy to talk to - he set up Mai's computer so I could sende-mails to my friends back in the states while she was working on the dumplings. I inserted the Kansas friendship Force web page for her and showed it to Harold - she was too busy with the dumplings to have more than a peak. We trades e-mailaddress. She was using tiny shrimp in her dumplings and I told her I couldn't eat shrimp - so she made some with veggies only - one of the veggies is grown along the banks of the Yangtze River. It was sort like small bamboo shoots. Harold helped with the dumplings - in addition we hadsliced beef, bamboo shoots and something that looked like spinach in a thin soup - and of course beer. Mai is 37. Harold teaches business management. they have never heard of "Chop-Suey" or "Fortune Cookies." They would like to come to the US but the governmant will not let their most educated go - they may not return. As a guift I gave Mai a FF cook book and a Kansas post card book. She gave me and Joan Benneteach a pillow slip wth a Cinese design on it. I showed her my family pictures, Mai has been to Sidney Australia and to Brisbane - getting visas were no problem for these trips. She did not have cablr TV - although it was available - said it cost too much. She and Harold took us in a taxi back to the hotel and would not let us pay the fare. In the hotel CNN was available (the Asian version).
In Beijing Jeinglun Hotel - an old 4 star hotel - but adequet. But don't drink the water! Each room contained bottled water for drinking and brushing your teeth. Natives don't drink the warer wither - they boil it. Our guide told us she does not drink the water, but she does brush her teeth with tap water. The schedule allowed us a nights rest beforebeing bussed the next day for a sight seeing tour of Beijing. Avibrant city with a lot of building and infrantructure which would compare with any modern city of the world. It seemed to me their biggest problem might be pollution - dust from the dessert, smoke stacks bealching volumes of yellow=white smoke and the millions of vehickles contributed to the pollution - and the constant breeze did not seem to wipe it away.
We could not visit Tian An Men Square because they are busy giving it a face lift for the bigcelebration of 50 years rule of the Communist Party. In fact, all over china they are busy "fixing up" for the celebration. We did get to go to the forbidden City - adjacent to Tian An Men Square - to view where past governmente held coure - once forbidden to common people. The imaginary beasts at the entrancecaught my eye - they resembled lions but not quite. The male beast's left paw was on top of spherewhich represented the world of dominance over it - while the right paw of the female beast was resting on the stomach of a baby beast who was getting fed out of the claws of the female beast. The Forbidden City complex contained about a mile - in a straight line - of these structures where past rulers dominated - also a lot of tourists - mostly Japanese and Chinese with tour guides with the little pennet flags and bull horns to keep tract of their group. The day ended with a Peking Duck dinner at Quan Ju De Roast Duck Dinner - a must for all tourists.
Today was the day to visit The Great Wall. Us and about a milloin other tourists! We visited the wall at Badaling. I had heard it was a big climb to get up yhere, but at Badaling they had built a cable car to the top about eight years ago and we were very glad - except the pure in heart who insisted on climbing up to it. The wall is about 1500 miles long and has been restored in places for the tourists - I was glad to to find a postcard - shown on the web site - of the wall unrestored.
Then it was off to a Cloisonne factory - the only one in the world where they do this kind od art. We saw the workers attach tiny pieces of copper shapes to vases then fill in the spaces with colored liquid ceramic and then fire it at 1200 degree furnaces - for a splended art piece. I bought some Cloisonne "worry balls" - and a Buddha for my wife's Buddha collection. This evening we were entertained bu a Chinese opera - memorable was two fellows ina darkend room trying to do in each other with big knives and two girls doing an increatable stick routine. Incidrntly there are 35 McDonall's in Beijing - and the average income of the 1.2 billon Chinese is $150 a year. All meals were serves on lazy susans at tables of eight or ten of us. Platters of food was placed on the lazy susans and you spun it to your selection which included; cabbage, sweet and sour pork, "fake lobster," whole fish in a bean curd bowl, sweet and sour chicken wings, cucumber salad, fried wonton skin, bean curd with celery, green bean with sesame oil, mixed vegatable soup, chicken with pineapple sause, beef with onion, fried bean curd, stir-fried spinach, stir-fried bamboo shoots, shreaded pork and for dessert were cake ands assorted fruits and all the beer you wanted - Chinese of course. Chop sticks were provided and most used them - some requested forks.
We flew to Nanjing and checked into a 5 star hotel, the Nanjing Dingshan Hotel. The furnature was of heavy cherry wood and the other appoinments were first class. The key card to open the door was also needed to get electricity to the room by putting it in a slot inside the room by the door - so when you left and removed your card from the electricity slot all the lights in the rooom would go off. We met with the mayor of Nanjing who gave us all a box containing four small cases. Nagjing means "South Captiol" while Beijimg means "North Capitol." Nanjing had 12 million people - 10 million permanent and two million mobile. Gasoline is about $2 a gallon. Guide from CYTS (China Cyts Tours Co. Ltd), Shi Yang, said we could call her "Grace" since her real Chinese Name would be too hard to remember. I found it easy to remember and always called her Shi Yang (she-young). She was 24, pretty, and you could understand every word she said. She related many stories aboutChinese caulture and answered all questions we had and knew her job very well. She joked with the group and was pleasent at all times and accompanies us every where and always counting to see if anyone was missing, I predict she will not remain a tour guide long but will rise in the corporate world some day. "Jack" - not his real Chinese name - was our guide for the host: JICEC(Jingsu International Cultural Exchange Center) in the Jian Province from March 29 through April 2.
We all met in Toyko for the flight to Beijing, China, on March 25, 1999. Of the 26 hours of travel time it took me to get to Beijing, the 11 hours from San francisco to toyko were the toughest - especially since I acn;t sleep on a plane. Beijing was hard to get into since there was some mix-up on our group visa. But it gave me time to become aquainted with a guard at the gate - he admired my boeing watch with the flying Boeing 747 second hand - we both smiled when he discovered it was made in China!
Beijing is the seat of the goverment - China is about the size of the U.S. and stretches from east to west but the goverent has decreed that it is all in the same time zone, so it makes it simple to keep tract of the time. Also you need not worry that you may get a better exchange rate for your money at one place or another - the Goverment has control over that - the Goverenment has control over that and is the same everywhere. In addition, the goverenment owns everything! If you wanted to buy a place to live, you tell the goverment for how long you want the place - and a price is set. Say you wanted a place for 20 years - so after 20 years the property reverts back to the govertment and you must again negotiate with the Goverment to buy the property. You cannor sell "your property"to someone else - it always belongs to the Goverment. The same with automobiles - they are leased to you from the Goverment - you really never really own them.All business are leased to you from the government. How is all od this enforced? The Peoples Police. The Chinese has a standing army of 4,000,000 and a peoples police Force of 600,000. They are in the process of reducing the army to 3.5 million which they boldly tell the world - but what they don't broadcast to the world is that they are increasing the People's Police bu 400,000 (according to the wall Street Journal). The local piloce(not the Peoples Police which is directed by Bijing and local court system takes care of local problems - but if a local problem gets out of hand Beijing may send in the Peoples Police to settle the matter.
Leave Nanjing for Huaxi (wa-she) to meet our hosts for the over night home stay. At the Golden Pagoda, Huaxi Village, Bob Bryan, with whom I was paired for the home stay, were introduced to our hostess, Ms. Jinda. She spoke no English but our interpreter explained to her that we were her guests. She had ridden a three wheeled bicycle with a small carrying area to the Golden Pagoda to meet us and show us the way to her home in the Huaxi Village. The Huaxi Village is an area of about 20 acres, with 350 households, 1500 people Huaxi group Corporation, containing over 50 corporations. They produce iron steels, woolen, chemical, aluminum shape materiel material and belt pipes and was declared one of the largest first grade town corporations in the country. Huaxi is a tourist center in JiangNan Garden.
At her home, shown on the web page, she carried our “overnight luggage” into the house. Our student interpreter followed us from the Golden Pagoda where he was assigned to us for our 24 hour stay with the family. We noticed that the family took off their shoes upon entering the house - we started to do the same when the interpreter said we did not have to remove our shoes. We were shown our room - a large room about 15’ by 40’ with twin queen sized beds with the bedding folded up in the middle of the bed. We made our beds and went downstairs to become acquainted with the family. The furniture was exquisite - dark hard wood, like mahonogy or cherry and very ornate. The TV was on in the living room, very loudly, being operated by their 10 year old son. Ms Jinda and her 97 year old mother-in-law were in the kitchen preparing the dinner - making dumplings and other Chinese dishes.
The father Mr. Zhu, 58, a well dressed and well groomed business man arrived home from work and joined us in the living room. Said the reason he was accepting FF guests was to learn about other people. While the rest of the family ate in the kitchen, Mr. Zhu ate with us in the dining room. Besides the dumplings, we had whole fish floating in a bed of bean curd, sweet and sour pork, rice, tomatoes, cucumber slices, chicken legs, beer, and etc.. There was too much food. Also the dumplings were not crisp as in Nanjing.
Finished day off with a “Fellowship Party with Villagers” - School kids entertained - Bob and I were tired and went “home” to bed. Bob Snores. I was glad I had my swimming earplugs to keep his noise out.
Host’s bathroom did not have a shower and my drinking water was running low so I didn’t brush my teeth or shave. For breakfast Ms. Jinda fixed fried eggs - they were were so done they were crisp and brown - other dishes were cooked in a wok. Our table and chairs in the dining room were not in keeping with the fine quality of the other furniture in the rest of the home - as though the wobbly table and fold up chairs were there special for their guests - I suspect they always ate in the kitchen when no guests were there. Walked to the Golden Pagoda, only about a half-mile from the host’s home, and went to the top for a beautiful view of the Village. The outlines of the Village could clearly be seen through the early morning fog. At a gift shop at the top I got Yvonnie a string of Chinese pearls.
We were bussed to a “middle” school where the students were just pouring out and were doing their exercises - visited an English class where the students were very orderly and responding to the teacher’s questions - then the teacher allowed them and the FF members to converse, one-on-one. Many wanted our autographs. There were 1050 students in the school - all neatly dressed - no baggy pants or shirt tails hanging out!
Visited Huaxi woolen mill, within the Village complex, for a short time - saw a lot of spinning spindles, and of course the gift shop. Back to host’s house for lunch then on the bus for Suzhou (Sue-Joe) and the 5 star hotel, New City Garden Hotel. The controls for the lights, TV, radio, heat and air conditioning were on the night stand, same as the other five star hotels we stayed at in China. To a near-by restaurant for dinner - lazy susan and beer as usual.
Then to the Suzhou Master of the Nets Garden. It was a series of rooms around a large pond where we saw different performances in each room - such as a high pitched opera singer - groups playing Chinese instruments and a flute player by the big pond. Lots of tourists going through the garden - it was dark and FF member, Barbara, stepped into ankle deep water she thought was pavement. On the bus for Suzhou we could see many fields of canola - a yellow flowered long stemmed weed(?) used to make oil.
On the bus for Shanghai - stopped in Suzhou to visit a silk factory. Saw the silk cocoons being unwound for the silk and of course visited the gift shop. To Shanghai and the beautiful five star hotel, the Shanghai Jianguo Hotel. Had a beautiful view from my 17th floor room - from the busy eight lane street below, two reserved for bicycles only, to the tall buildings of Shanghai. Never quite clear enough to take a picture from the window - smog or fog or the combination of both always there. Walked a few blocks from the hotel down the street, through a tunnel to the other side to a first class department store - where you could buy any thing a well stocked US department store would have. Lots of people and more people - Chinese of course, in the city of 12 million.
When FF was in Shanghai in 1985, a Wichita member of that group, Emzy Oakes, met a Chinese man with whom he has had contact for the last 14 years. He told him, “Perry,” that I would be in Shanghai on the 2nd. Perry met me in the lobby and we talked and he gave me a gift for Emzy - it looked like a pair of squirrel cages. “Perry” was not his Chinese name - he had fought the Japanese back in the 30s - he had ridden his bicycle for two hours to get to the hotel - he was the first Chinese I saw that had gray-white hair. He was 78 years old.
Called home - so that wife, Yvonnie, could say that she had heard from me and I was ok.
Toured old Shanghai and the Yu Yuan Garden. Lot of tourists - shore line of Yangtze on Nanjing road - across the river you could see the new Hyatt and the Pearl radio and TV tower.
To Children’s Palace, where children go on Saturdays for extra schooling in many subjects: violin instruction, tuba, drawing, according, dance, calligraphy and etc.. To the jade factory to see them transform a raw piece of jade into a beautiful piece of jewelry - bought Yvonnie a pendant I was looking for - quarter size, donut shape, with a Chinese character inside. Brought a small piece of raw jade home.
This evening we saw a very entertaining show - “Shanghai Acrobatic” - a girl spinning umbrellas and blankets, girl with a lot of cards forever coming to her hands and a guy juggling a jar. Bought Buddha, dragon. and turtle from street vendor.
Visited the Jade Buddha Temple - a lot of tourists- a lot of Buddha worshipers lighting incense sticks and praying in front of the Buddhas. The jade Buddha was impressive.
Flew to Wuhan (a two hour flight) and boarded the cruise ship Victoria Princess. It reminded me of a Mississippi river boat but without the paddle wheel. It held 120 passengers and 130 crew and this was it’s maiden cruise after being refurbished. It had four decks, we were on the third - each room had double twin beds, a clean and attractive bathroom with a shower that bounced off the floor of the bathroom and rolled into gutters around the edge - the rooms were large - I’ve been on Caribbean cruises with smaller rooms - each room had a picture window view of the Yangtze and a TV which received a satellite signal with about six stations with about half in English - old reruns of “Lucy” and "Walker Texas Ranger” were on every night - for six days aboard the ship we had no news of the outside world. Except for breakfast, the meals were from lazy susans, with plenty of food and beer. The top deck was the party - meeting room with a bar from which you could buy a Jack Daniel's and coke for $4 US for the JD and $3 US for the coke. Most of the crew were Chinese except the Cruise directors were from the US? The Captain looked the part - straight out of the old comic strip “Terry and The Pirates” - FF member, J. J. Horton pestered the cruise director into letting a few of us go see the engine room. It had twin 12 cylinder diesels powering the twin jets. The ship drew 2.3 meters (about 8 feet) of water and scraped the bottom of the shallow Yangtze from time to time - you could see the brown silt being stirred up when this happened.
When on the way to the engine room we passed the kitchen - FF member Myron Colber and I decided not to mention the view to the others. All visible crew members were dressed in the ships attire and were always helpful - each deck even had a “monitor” who had a view of all rooms on that deck. We had sunny weather for the entire cruise - almost. 360 million Chinese live along the banks of the Yangtze - 1 out of every four Chinese. The banks were lined with all kinds of industrial plants and a number of coal mines - the surface type where you just scrape it up. Unfortunately it is “soft” coal and the belching factories using the coal produce voluminous volumes of pollution in the air.
We were traveling upstream on the Yangtze - from Wuhan to Chongqing - about 800 miles of the nearly 4,000 mile river. Numerous barges filled with coal passed us each day bringing coal to industry and ports downstream and helping to create the pollution problem of the country. Other boats similar to ours passed us filled with Chinese, some going upstream others going downstream - a busy river - all crowded between the white and red channel markers the captains had to observe or get stranded on shifting silt in the river. FF member BB was the first to get bitten by “The China Bug” (my name). It starts out with a tickling in your throat and gets you to coughing until your throat is raw, your nose runs, you get a fever (BB said his was 103), you don’t want any thing to eat - all you want is to be home and well. It lasts about three days with a lingering reminder for about 10 more days. 85 % of the group got it - all at different times after we got on the ship. Was it the pollution along the Yangtze? - or the beer? - or from the food? - none of us drank the water, except the bottled water supplied to us in our rooms, aboard the ship and in the hotels.
Ship stopped at Yueyang - and as we disembarked a band on the dock played for us - we were bussed to the Yueyang Tower, Cishi Pagoda and the Quzi and Wen Temples. Back on the ship the captain, Captain Yang, invited us to a champagne and hors d’oeurves party. The evening was topped off with a fashion show of Chinese dress of the past from the Han Dynasty with the ships crew as the models.
Lost ping pong games to guide Shi Yang - bet I could take her in a game of golf! The ship enters a lock on a dam down stream from the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) site which was built 20 years ago in anticipation of the building the TGD. Six or seven other ships, boats, sampans, etc. crowded in the lock entry before they let the water in which only took about 15 minutes to raise us all to the level of the Yangtze at that point.
We docked at Yangjia Wan port in view of the Xiling Yangtze Bridge, a new bridge over the Yangtze, just opened recently which could compare in size with the Golden Gate Bridge. After climbing about 100 stairs we boarded a bus to get a close view of the dam site. First we viewed the construction site of “The Permanent Shiplock” - needed to raise and lower ships past the dam when it is built. Next to the model center where we could view the progress on the dam and see a model of what it will look like when finished. Why are they building the dam? - because “....it will generate comprehensive benefits in flood control, power generation, navigation, water supply and so on....” The construction period for the main works is 17 years - it should be finished in 2009. “the construction of the Three Gorges Project will promote the comprehensive harnessing and exploitation of the Yangtze River and speed up the modernization process of The People’s Republic of China.” We then viewed the dam from a viewing point named the “185m Raviening stand” (their spelling). Returning back to the ship. FF member J.J. Horton fell down the concrete steps leading to the ship ramp - it was obvious he was badly hurt - the crew came up with a wooden door and used it as a stretcher to transport him up the steps to transportation to medical help. At first we thought he might be able to join us up-river at the next stop - but it was decided it would be best to fly him home to the US. The crew and guides did all in their power to work the situation.
Ship arrived at Wushan - we went by bus to the Daning River and boarded motorized sampans to sail through the lesser gorges - the Dragon-Gate, Misty and Emerald Gorge. The sampans only drew a few inches of water, but the river was so shallow at points we could hear it scrape the rocks on the bottom while the deck crew used poles to help keep us off the rocky sides of the small stream - but we were all required to bring along our life jackets from the ship. All along it’s length, from time to time, people (mostly kids) would wade out to the slow moving boat and try to sell items to us tourists - I bought an unusual flat, round, 1/2 inch thick, 3 inch diameter solid glass object with a water lilly and two ducks raised from the surface, from an attractive Chinese girl about 20 years old. The ride was about 3 hours which included a stop on a sandbar in the river so we could collect river stones if we wanted to (I got me one). Back on the ship we enjoyed the usual dinner fare - sometimes not knowing when the last dish was arriving - as FF member, Carol Murphy, of Mesa, Arizona, so apply put it - “It’s not over till the watermelon comes.”
After dinner we were entertained by those talented crew members who could sing, play Chinese instruments, etc..
A cloudy day with a few sprinkles - we stopped at Fengdu - the ghost city. Got a good picture of a roofer laying tiles - but wasn’t to impressed with the Ghost City - maybe I am just too old! A lot of steps to climb after the cable car ride part way up to view the grotesque giant figures of ghosts? The cable car ride was the best part of the trip - it afforded a great view of Fengdu and all the shrubs and flowers on the way to the temple site. Back on the ship the captain hosts a farewell banquet featuring western cuisine - cuisine - which included skinny hot dogs - I didn’t eat any but FF member RB did and the next day
came down with food poising - from the hot dogs?
The “China Bug” got me! The Victoria Princess ship arrived at Chongqing, a city with 30,000,000 people! We were bussed to sight-see World War II memorabilia at the General Stillwell Museum. Most of the FF members were interested in the video of that part of Chinese history - the part where the General made a contribution the helping the Chinese defeat the Japanese. Then we flew to Xian and to the Xian Garden Hotel - another 5 star hotel. Had their pharmacy send me up some cough medicine labled “Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa” manufactured by the Nin Jion Medicine Manfactory in Hong Kong. It seemed to help - but not enough for me to want to go to dinner this evening. Called Yvonnie in states.
Skipped all activities for today - stayed in room all day, didn’t even feel like going for the meals. The cough medicine seemed to help - but as soon as it wore off it was back to coughing hard again. Not a fun day. No strength, fever about 103 degrees ( a guess). Bought a large travel bag from the gift shop with the name of “Walker” on it - needed it to accommodate the items I had picked up - It proved not to be a good buy since the only handle on it was torn off when it finally arrived in Wichita.
Fly to Guangzhou (Canton) on an Air Bus A300-600, a first class airplane to rival Boeings 777. It was only about 30% full. It took 2 hours to get to Canton. A city tour then a two hour train ride to Hong Kong to our hotel, the Majestic Hotel - another 5 star accommodation.
Tour of Hong Kong including going to the “Peak Tower” - which affords a good view of Hong Kong. The complex held entertainment areas, shops, movies and a museum. Then a visit to Stanley Market, a look at Repulse Bay, and a sampan ride in Aberdeen’s floating community. Stopped at “Dynasty Jewellery Manufactures” and picked up a pendant for Yvonnie that I liked better than the other one I had bought. A donut ring of jade about the size of a quarter with a Chinese word character, in gold, inside.
At 4AM watched last round of Masters Golf Tournament in hotel room. Home to the USA. It didn’t seem quite so long as going over. Would I come back to China! Sure, in about 10 years I would like to see how the “Sleeping Giant” is progressing. I think the US should quit thinking about the human rights thing and get busy seeing how we can keep up when this Giant awakens - first by increasing trade between the two countries and not insisting that they have the same kind of government that we do - it may not work for a country with 1.2 billion people. Hong Kong is about 40 years ahead of the rest of China - but the rest of China is catching up very quickly - beware!
