The last train to Beijing

Our last train trip in China is a short hop from Datong to Beijing. Just 6 hours, but our kind travel agent still arranged for us to have a soft sleeper. What a guy! Thank you Young Fan for a great trip around China!

We like the soft sleeper. Plenty of room to spread out and of course sleeping. Some get to fit in more of that than others...
We arrive to Beijing in the early afternoon and find our hotel in a nice quiet residential neighbourhood. Soo we made a bee line for the hoards at Tienanmen Square and were not disappointed.
What a madhouse! Of course in a good Chinese way! After braving the inferno that was the square we found a quiet tree lined sidewalk on one edge of the square to sit and enjoy some ice cream with 50,000 other people.
Got to admit though for all of the foreigners that are supposed to be decending on the city we see barely a one.

Datong and the Yungang Caves

Datong is full of interesting stuff most of them the largest, We visit the 9 dragon screen. The largest in China. There used to be a palace in Datong like the Forbidden city and it was destroyed a few hundred years ago. I bet they are kicking themselves for that one! Anyhow the screen remains and it is a doozie. Funny though it is just sitting there in the middle of the city. No real park or other monuments surround it.
Not too far away is the Shang Huayuan temple, built in 1062, the largest temple room in China. It did seem pretty big....
Finally we trekked out to the Yungang caves. It is a huge complex more than 2 k in length. It is full of caves with Buddhas inside, anywhere from 20 meters in height to 2 centimeters.
The caves were built by an emperor in the 5 century A.D. This particular man was the grandson of another emperor who had a beef with the local monks and had mercilessly killed many of them. The grandson fearing the bad karma and having become quite devote in the interim, looked for a protected area to dedicate to Buddha.

Good stuff on the way to Taiyuan

We left Pingyau after the big party and made a couple of stops on the way to TaiYuan. The first was the "Hanging Monetary". It was pretty impressive as far as elevated 1300 year old monasteries go. Apparently it was elevated many times over history as the level of the river rose. Recently however a dam has been built to control the water level.
The building is very thin and narrow pressed against the side of the cliff. Tourists are aloud to go all over the building and in my opinion many of the poles were dangerously rickety!
Luckily we survived to view other dangerous tourist attractions, like this humongous stone cabbage in the lobby of our hotel in TaiYuan. Yeah, you can see how the children are effected by it.
In the morning we were off to our final destination before Beijing, the Wooden Pagoda and Datong.

The Wooden pagoda is the oldest wooden pagoda in China. It is 9 storeys tall and more than 1,000 years old. It is also blessed by a huge Buddha inside.

Happy Birthday Evita!

We celebrated Evita's birthday in Pingyau at a lovely restaurant. We had a nice lunch followed by presents and the most AMAZING cake of all time. This photo does not do justice to the massive flame that erupted out of the middle of the lotus flower decoration. All of the petals of the flower began as a pretty pink flower bud, After lighting the...dare i say fuse, the middle of the flower napalmed the ceiling while daintily lighting all of the candles on the rest of the decoration. Sweet!
The cake tasted as good as it looked and, Evita raked in various trendy Pingyau prezzies for the three year old set.

Hop skip and a jump to Pingyao

Relativly speaking that is! We took a regular day train 6 hours north west from X'ian to Pingyao. The small town was on a major trade route for north eastern China, and is the home of China's first bank. The town fell into obscurity at the end of the 19th Century, with the arrival of European banks and the shif to a more industrilized economy. Lucky for Pingyao!
Consequently none of the old buildings nor the ancient wall were ever torn down. The wall with the city inside is intact, all of the Ming dynasty buildings, little allyways and of course the requsite passle of temples.

We stayed at this beautiful hotel. All of the rooms were decorated in Ming dynasty style with a large (about 8x10 feet) elevated bed, and cool furniture that you could bring into the bed with you. All that plus A/C and hot water. The movie "Raise the Red Lantern" was filmed down the road! We loved waking aroudn the streets, there were plenty of bikes and these golf cart things that were popular to cart people around in. (Just like they had in the Ming dynasty i am sure!)

Terra Cotta Warriors

Who says you can't take it with you? The first emperor to unite China made so many enemies during his life time that we wanted to make sure some one had his back in the afterlife, to the tune of more than 7,000 warriors, horses and weapons. All larger than life size, no two faces alike.


The first pit was found by two farmers in 1974, and over 1,000 warriors have been fully restored. The rest lie under a clay layer that formed over their 2,200 years of rest, waiting to be carved out. The tomb of the same Emperor also is nearby, supposedly huge and full of goodies. The Chinese have never opened the it. Go figure.

We also went to a workshop where they make replicas of the statues, using the same techinques that they used oh those eons ago.

Off the train into X'ian

We got off the train in X'ian, it goes on to Beijing, but we had places to see! We were back in China, home of the pagoda and yeah, truth be told a bit of haze. Our first stop was the Big Goose Pagoda, which apparently has a set of footprints and a piece of bone of Sakayamuni himself. The pagoda is of an older more Indian style before they became Chinese influenced with all of the swoops and dragons etc.

X'ian was the capital of China for hundreds of years. They walled the entire city to protect them from outsiders. The X'ian wall is intact still. The whole dang thing. It goes 14K around the center of the city. You can walk and ride bikes on top of the entire thing.

The higest train in the world

At more than 16,000 feet the train from Lhasa is in serious need of oxygen. Luckily they have it. Each cabin has four little outlets that keep you breating. Still one time when i lifted Evita down from the bunkI thought that i was going to faint. Cool!

We saw lots of Yaks, lots of snow and nomads in the middle of nowhere. The Tibetan plateau is huge and took us more than 24 hours to cross, it is full to the brim with water, like a giant sponge.You can easly see why it is the sourse of the Yangzi river (and no doubt others). We survived in our nice comfy beds with plenty of instant noodles.

After passing out of Tibet, our trip continued through the Loas Plateau, which is, made up of a yellow earth cut into terraces. The same earth is used to make the local bricks so all of the houses are yellow too. It is very dry on the mountains with crops on the rivers edge below..

Our last day in Tibet

Our last day in Tibet was a busy one, We bought a rug from Doma "come home to Doma!" Which hopefully is already on it's way to Tennessee. (You should be seeing it soon Mom!) We also enjoyed some lovely Indian Food with Nema, and a walk through a busy Tibetan bazaar.

Then we went to Saraje Collage, which is a monastery, it has the largest chanting room in Tibet, 180 pillars, it can hold three thousand monks! The collage is also home to the horse of Buddha. Supposedly a good thing to protect children. The place was sooooo packed! The line to get to the altar went around several different rooms.

The smoke from the Yak butter was intense. Nema kindly took us to the head of the line line (i felt kind of bad about that but it was hugely claustrophobic) where a monk blessed the children with two soot smudges on their noses.

Jokhang Temple

In the center of Lhasa lies the Jokhang temple the most holy of the Tibetan sites.
All Tibetans, if they are to be considered devout, are supposed to make a Pilgrimage to the Jokhang Temple once in their lifetimes. They have to circle the temple clockwise as many times as they can before entering. They also can circle the block to make their pilgrimage extra effective, and we even saw pilgrims circling the city(!). Prostrating is also a part of the process.
That is what the folks in this photo are doing. They are prostrating in front of the temple before they go in. As you can see they have special mats and stuff to make it less hard on the bones, but of course there are many who don't. Nema says that it is good to prostrate every day. No specific number but in his family they do it the number of thier age. There are also many pilgrims that prostrate the whole circuit around the temple and Nema told us of some who will prostrate their whole pilgrimage route from their village in the country and take years to get to Lhasa.
The next photo is a large prayer wheel. They might have these in India or Nepal but not China that is for sure. The Prayer Wheel is full of religious scriptures, and each turn of the wheel is like "reading" the scriptures inside. It is important to read scriptures to counter act any bad things that you have done in your life. We saw people all the time walking around with prayer wheels spinning them all the time. I don't see how anyone can be as bad as all that.

The summer palace

The Summer Palace was started by the 7th Dalai Lama who was a major mover and shaker back in the day. Apparently he was under the weather at one point and consulted an oracle who told him to look for a spring on the outside of town and bathe in it to cure his illness. He followed the instructions and was subsequently cured. The spot was developed into a retreat and later became the official summer residence of the government. It is a huge place surrounded by lovely gardens. As with everything we have seen in Tibet, it is in wonderful condition.

All of the heads of state have added to the complex, including the current Lama. When he left Tibet in 1954 he left from the Summer Palace.
The torch of the Olympic games also was conducted through Lhasa beginning on this road in front of the Palace.
Below you see the Dalai Lamas personal quarters with the a balcony for viewing performances. Nema told me that there used to be a large spring celebration here with all of the nomads from around the area and of course Lhasans camping in the gardens around the SP. Sounds like fun!

PP Continued

The paintings on the inside of the entrance are the best preserved that we have seen, They represent the guards. The Palace is full of artifacts. Every Llama is buired there, in massive gold tombs. Each one bought by donations. The Tibetans use Yak butter to offer to spirits a light to find thier way to the next incarnation. Consequently there are large tray/chalise things all over the place with multipul wiks in them. The pilgrims, bring the butter from thier farms, or buy it in town and scoop it into the large candels. I could definatelly smell the animally scent of the butter. But Jim didn't notice it.

We are not alowd to take photos of the inside, so you will have to take my work for it, it is an amazing place. There are multipul chanting rooms where hundreds of Monks can do thier stuff, and huge chambers of scrolls and documnets that are more than 1000 years old.

Behind us in this photo is the current Llamas chambers (which we saw from the inside. Small and unassuming) and the balcony from which he can watch presentations on the terrace where we are standing.

The Potola Palace

I am going to post these photos now and add more later. Leave it to be said, 999 rooms and one cave are pretty impressive!

It was a perfect day to climb stairs above 12,000 feet. We actually got up to 13,000 feet when we reached the top of the palace.

The Potola Palace is the center of Lhasa. It is the former wiinter residance of the Dali Llama, that has now become little more than a museum since the Tibet has been part of China.

The Palace was started by the 33 King of Tibet about 1600 years ago. Although he was the 33 King he was the first King of consequence and really put the kingdom of Tibet on the map. He started the palace around a cave that was found on the mountain that the king used as a meditation room. He also build some basic rooms around this cave. Many of the later Kings and Llamas added to the palace untill it became the size it is today.

We had to go through a security check to get in. Then we got cracking on those stairs. Nema was kind to us stopping every 25 or so for us to catch our breath. On one of our stopps we met three Nomads. Nema spoke to them and they inpromed him that they had 60 Yaks. They had met foreigners once before. The guy on the end by Jim had a long braid with a large bead in in and a big red tassle attached to the end. When i asked to take the photo he wrapped the tassle around his head. The guy next to me lamented the fact that they didn't have thier traditional gear on for the portorate. I was happy to meet them whatever.


When we got up to the entrance to the palace it is covered with a huge cloth with "endless knots" on it. The fabric is made from Yak wool and protects the paintings that are just inside.

Beautiful Tibet!

We were met at the airport in Lhasa by our smiling guide Nema. We could not have asked for more informative and interesting introduction to Tibet. He is a devout Buddhist, and kindly presented us with prayer scarfs when we arrived. Nema started off his carer in tourism as a Sherpa carrying packs up Everest. He had climbed it many times! He loved his job and only became a guide when he and his wife started a family. Tibet is so clear and fresh such a stark contrast to the other places that we have visited. It is considered an "autonomous prefecture" by the Chinese government.
Tibetan culture is unique and singular from the Chinese culture. The language (Tibetan) is written with a 30 letter alphabet and is derived from Sanskrit. Tibetans are Buddhists, but a very different kind of Buddhism from China that mixes it liberally with Confucianism. Obviously the Dali Llama is very important to Tibetans and consequently reincarnation in general is BIG BIG BIG! Basically if you are reincarnated, you never really go to heaven until you reach Nirvana. Just re-incarnation over and over! (with hopefully some chance of enlightenment). I am telling you if any one is going to Nirvana it is the Tibetans, they were praying and visiting temples, doing prayer wheels and chanting ALL THE TIME. They are seriously spiritual!
The landscape is an inspiration to spiritually as well. Just to start off, Lhasa is at 12,000 feet. the sky is blue blue and the mountains are all around. Nema told us that on average there are 7 hours of sunlight a day. There are no trees on the mountains as they are all above the tree line, but that makes the peaks all the more impressive, as they are just huge rock masses looming overhead.

We arrived at our hotel with a few stopes along the way to see Yaks. We could all feel the altitude, and were happy for an afternoon free looking at the view from our room. Bottom photo. The Potala Palace.

Panda Breading Center in Chengdu

The first thing that we did in Chengdu was to go to the Panda breading center. It was a beautiful facility. We learned lots about Pandas (as would be expected!). There are about 1200 Pandas in the world. About 300 in captivity. There is a Panda Reserve about 5 hours from Chengdu at a much higher elevation. I am wondering if that is were most of the 900 other ones are. (forgot to ask). I can't imagine that there are many wild ones as it doesn't seem like they would last too long these days. Pandas have a tuff time reproducing in captivity as we have all heard.But it seems like the big barrier is that they are only in "heat" for one week a year. Which cuts the odds down pretty drastically for getting pregnant. So most of the work at the breading facility is artificial insemination. Which apparently works pretty well. If you are willing to pay for it...and the Chinese are.
It was a little disappointing when we were there as there were no new born baby pandas to see and it was sooooooo hot that all of the Pandas were inside in the air conditioning. Where as the outside Panda habitat was huge and full of plants and climbing things the inside area was a cage with a cement floor. Not too nice, but it was very air conditioned and the Pandas were frolicking around and eating lots of Arrow bamboo, the only kind that they eat. A fun Panda fact is that they can only digest 2% of the bamboo that they eat, so they have to pretty much eat all day long, and consequently what they poop out is almost the same as what they put in.
Cool. The top photo is of the "Red Panda" It is not as endangered as the Giant Panda, and apparently likes warm weather. August took the shots and wished that he could live closer to the Pandas.

Chong Qing to Chengdu

We took a short train trip to our next destination Chengdu. Home of the Panda! The train was interesting...as so many trains in China are...as it was two levels, so our seats ended up below ground level as seen by the view of our neighbours feet in the window. we started the trip by encouraging Evita to drik some yogurt out aof a bag. She was game as usual. The rest of the trip passed in relative calm after we bought a "magic cube" from a toy selling lady.

Fun in Chong Qing

Lots of good fun was to be had when our guide David helped Jim to negoatiate the purchase of a big bunch of fireworks! I don't know how many were in the roll but they went off for a long time!

Chong qing Baoding rock carvings

Our Cruise finished in Chong Qing formerly Chung King. Well guess what, the new and improved Chong Qing is the largest city in China!
At 33 million people it is also the largest city in the world. Who would have thunk it? Our guide David whipped us out of the city so fast that we didn't have much time to gawk. We instead went to the Baoding rock carvings. The rock carvings were also part of a Buddhist temple, that had been mostly out of use for and extended period, and only had been restored to accepting tourists in the 80's. The carvings date to the 12th century, and considering are in really good condition. Some of the statues are huge as you can see by the size of the person at the foot of the one. The Pagoda in the hand of that same statue is over 500 kilos. Looks like he is about to drop it on that guys head!
The reclining Buddha is equally huge, but i didn't get anyone in the shot to give perspective. TO give an idea the smaller statues in front of him are much larger than life too. Later that day we also went to the Stillwell museum and the Flying Tigers museum. I don't know anything about the Sino Japan War, but did learn that Chong Qing was bombed by the Japanese for 4 years from 1939 to 1943. We saw one of the bomb shelters, huge long tunnels into the mountain. Didn't look too pleasant!

The rest of the cruise in a nutshell

The rest of our Yangzi river cruise was taken up by many diverting activities.
We had a lovely outing on a sanpan, visited the mini Three gorges, one of the tributaries of the Yangzi. While on that trip we passed hanging coffins. Placed in caves along the river by Chinese some 3,000 years ago. The coffin in the photo has got a small bush in front of it. The cave is about 80 meters above the water level but imagine how high it was before they raised the water. The speculation is that the folks who put the coffins in these caves lowered them down from above. Jim also informed me that over 10,000 relics will be flooded then the river reaches it's final resting point.
We also went to FuLang ghost city. It is a temple to honor the place were all ghosts go, with many trails to go through to prove this and that. Also with lots of nice visual representations of what hell will look like if you don't behave well etc... The temple was built over 1,000 years ago, and had a large village next to it. Because of the flood waters the village has been moved, to the other side of the river above the 175 water mark. Now this was a large village of over 75,000 people. It was completely rebuilt (it took 10 years). Every person was given a new apartment, bigger and more deluxe. In addition 25,000 more people moved to the new city from the to be flooded country side.
Never-the-less the temple is to be saved. A huge dike was being constructed to preserve the temple. It was allot of fun. We had to go over the marriage bridge, the wealth bridge and the longevity bridge. August picked wealth, and has been spending his money ever since, Jim and I went over the marriage bridge so that we would be married in the after life and we sent Evita over the Longevity bridge. Jim also went up the long life stairs with out taking a breath (and carrying Evita). All the children had to spank the spoiled child statue so that they could learn what it is like to punish children so that they in turn would be better behaved. We have been enjoying the benefits of that ever since!

Bye Bye Bridge

This is what locals call the Bye Bye bridge, we saw photos of it were it was high above the water connecting one cliff side to the other. Now the water is just at the bottom supports, and in october when they raise the water level the last 60 meters it will be gone. A new bridge is being built now. The bottome photo is one of the markers that shows were the new water level will be. Yikes!

Three Gorges Dam

The first day of our cruise we started out bright and early with a tour of the Three Gorges Dam. It is as we were told many times by our guide, the largest hydroelectric facility in the world. The size is menured by the number of turbines of which the 3 gores has 26, and the next largest has only 18. It was a foggy day so as you can see from the photos you can't even see the other side of the dam. It is one mile accross. The dam provides electricity for towns all the way to shanghai, and cotrols the flood plane where 450 million chinese live. Nothing is done here in small mesures, that's for sure. One of the other aspects of the dam is that it has allowed the government to "adjust" the depth of the Yangzi river up stream as well. We saw the effects of this every day of our cruise. In the past the river was quite shallow and
choppy, basically only for the smaller boats. Now it is a wide meandering thing. I don;t know the depth of the origional river but the dam is not finished and they plan on raising the water another 60 meters! All over the river you see signs for 175M which will be the final depth of the river. The Chinese government had to move1.5 million people allong the river. New "towns" are visible everywhere. They look weird suspended high on the banks waiting for the water to rise to it's final resting place.
What we saw most up close and personal was the lock that the Ship had to go through to reach the higher river level. The lock it self was huge and could hold about 8 large ships in each section. There were 5 seperate stages till we reached the top.

Victoria Empress Cruise

Now for the luxury part of our trip!!! Yeah! The Victoria line of river cruise ships is run by an American company, and hosted by an American manager. The operation is very well run and 100% first world. They run 7 ships and most were full but ours. This was great for us. There were 37 passangers and ~100 staff. Yeppers, apparently the following week they are going to be full. All of China is suffering somewhat of a slup in tourism according to most of the people that we have talked to. Most say since the Earthquake in May (which we have seen no evidence of) and the new strictor visa requirements are to blame. We arrived from Wuhan and had nice poorters carry our bags on and August and Evita immediatly had french fries and hamburgers. Yum.
Our state rooms were truly delux and the service was great. We enjoyed real western breakfast with cereal and everything and a Chinese banquet every night. Oh and HBO too. Yeah ha!

Bonsai Garden in Wuhan

I can say that one of our most popular destinations in China so far has been the Bonsai garden in Wuhan. It was a museum of sorts and we were escorted around by a sweet English speaking woman who explained to us the basics of Bonsai, which means "plant in pot". Whoa, there are only a few elements that can be in a true bonsai arrangement according to her. The tree, the pot, rocks and a pagoda. At the entrance of the Garden there was a HUGE bonsai arrangement, with a few pagodas, mountains out of rock and a river running through the whole thing. August wants to build one at Eden. So be prepared when you come visit for Bonsai Mexican style.

Guiyan Temple in Wuhan

One of the four main Buddhist monasteries in China, it has a jade stature of Sakaymuni, which to our mind from the story seemed to have been snagged from Cambodia. Who knows the real story? There were also over 500 Arhat statues, kind of disciples of Buddha that have also reached Nirvana. The Arhats had been created by a father and son team of sculptures over a 9 year period. I can't believe that i don't; have a photo of them. Many of the temples that we have gone into do not allow photos in the place where the final statue or worshiping place is. Rightly so since people are actually trying to be spiritual in spite of the many many tourists(mostly Chinese and a few gringos) milling about.
As we found in Guilin, Buddhists are fond of turtles and this monastery was no exception. The main pond (square shape vs circular shape is pool) was so full of them that August at first thought that they were rocks! Then on closer inspection.....

Yellow Crane Pavillion

One of our other stops in Wuhan is the Yellow Crane Pavallion. In the vein of many chinese buildings it had been rebuilt and moved several times. The last time being in 1983. So basically it is a new building made to look old. It has 363 stairs to the top and Jim ran the whole way up carrying Evita in his arms. She is one lucky gal!! August and I schlepped ourselves and enjoyed a tremendous view of the city from the top. Wuhan has about 8 million residents. Yeah, i had never heard of the place either. Below you see the huge tile painting of the Yellow Crane. The Yellow Crane apparently was a creature that befrended a restaurant owner, coming and sitting outside his place everyday, the restaurant became very popular and the owner lobbyied to have the pagoda built.
Below you see Evita befriending another Chinese baby. The baby in question has an old fashioned baby outfit on. Like a little hankerchie tied on the front and nothing on the back. Sure saves on daipers!

Train to Wuhan

We took the night (soft sleeper) train from Guilin to Wuhan. The train experience was fun, the train station was CHAOS!! Seemingly there is never a time of day or a train that is not mobbed by it's occupants. All Chinese run at top speed to the train cars even though the berths are pre assigned and fixed. We still don't understand this except maybe it is a carry over from days when the seats wern't fixed and it was every mn for himself.
We arrived in Wuhan at around 8:00 in the morning bright eyed and bushy tailed to see the city. Wuhan is a big industrial like place that at one point in it's history had quite a large foreign presence du to it's position at the interection of 6 rivers. So it boasts a number of out of place European inspired buildings that used to be foreign consulates but now are hotels and the like. See bottom photo.
We went to the provincial museum first and saw thier collection of relics which include some 2 thousand year old bells. The musum sages a sho with bell replicas playing compositions from the period. It was great. They allso played "greensleaves" or something like that which was less enchanting!

Visit to a tea plantation

We visited a tea plantation while we were in Guilin. It was very interesting. I like drinking tea, so i was surprised to learn that all tea (except herbal "tea" or infusions) is made from the same plant. That is it on the left. The only thing that differentiates the tea is the leaf that is picked and the process that is used after the tea is picked. There are two main kinds of tea, fermented and non fermented. Green tea is an example of non fermented tea: and within green tea there are three of different classes. Silver needle, which is only the spike of the leaf that is just emerging and first class which is the spike plus one leaf right next to the spike on the same tiny branch and then second class which is the same as first but with two leaves. After the leaves are picked, they are wilted in this big pot thing and then if it were green tea it would be done, but other teas might be pressed and let to sit for 40 days or so of fermentation. So the main thing that makes tea different is the additives (flowers or flavors) that are put in afterwards.
Oh yea and only the least desirable tea is put in tea bags according to our guide. No Chinese person would ever drink tea that way. It is true, everywhere we have gone you see people with transparent thermos like things with large tea leaves (first class) in them. These kinds of leaves can be steeped many different times. And according to the tea ceremony that we did after the process you are supposed to wash the tea once before drinking it. Which takes out about 90% of the Caffeine. Whats the point of that??
Evita and August liked the tea ceremony, especially the "Kung Fu" style of tea drinking that we were taught.

Impressions Liu Sanjie

One of the multitude of new things on the Yangshou map is the "folk show" Impressions. It is actually preformed on the Li river and lights up 12 Karsk mountains as the background.
Although the show was all in Chinese it was beautiful to look at, and featured many of the local ethnic groups singing traditional songs. Apparently the show uses more than 600 actors, many of them local fishermen. They were all tearing around on boats and the like.
The grand finally was all of the participants with lit up costumes appearing to dance on the water. Pretty impressive.

Sights of Guilin

We were met by our guide who yanked us back to Guilin for a tour around. Our first stop Fu Bo Hill with various cool things. Below is the "thousand man bowl" This iron pot suposedly was used to cook rice and the amount could eed 1,000 men. I presonally imagine that 1,000 modern men would eat WAY more rice than that. Inside the hill was a small budist temple where you could pay money to free a turtle. The turtle symbol appears all the time in Chinese mythology as it means longevity. The Budists protect and encourage turtles in thier temples.
There was also this rock formation that if you put your hand under it you will do well on your eximanations. We all did it.

Fu Li on bikes

We had been to Fu Li on bikes when we were here before and wanted to show Cathy and Don, a "real Chinese village". We got bikes, Jim and August on a Tandem, Me with Evita in a wicker baby seat on the back. Our memory was that it was a lovely flat pastoral drive to the village.
Ha Ha!! I think that i must have a special ability to delete all negative memories from my mind. The ride was Hilly and we huffed and puffed up every grueling incline. Cathy and Don were total troopers. Look how happy they are.
When we got to Fu Li (which no one on the main drag could tell us if the place we were at was actually Fu Li) but we soldiered on. Through massive new Apartment building complexes that had been erected were lovely green fields existed before. We had a map though and it seemed that we must be in Fu Li. (before it was an almost medieval village full of farmers and naked babies.) Cycling towards the river the streets began to narrow and BOOOM, no more modern China, we were back. The tiny streets (no motor traffic) and cute old fashioned Chinese houses with courtyards and folks hanging out sitting on tiny chairs. It was great!

Yangshou: From this to this...

I have found that it is easier to post a bunch of photos and then go back and put in the text, that way if something weird happens to my internet the photos are still on there.
We arrived in Yangshou by boat along the Li river. We had been to Yangshou in the 90's with our friends Ia and Flip. We loved the small quaitness of the place and it was relaxing and easy to get around. Welllllllll.....My how things have changed! Yangshou is chock a block with shops, restaurants and tourists tourists tourists! Especially at night, the streets that had been blocked off for pedestrian traffic, were wall to wall. Never the less, it is a very scenic place, surrounded by Karsks topped by Pagodas, and lots of western food, which pleased August no end.

The people all seem prosperous, and the tourist industry doesn't cause as much polution as others so that has got to be a good thing, right?

Osthmanthus??

When we arrived in Guilin our hotel was called the Osmanthus Hotel and our guide informed us that this was a very important flower here in the Guilin area. Yeah, never heard of it either! If i had an internet conection i would have looked it up and found that it was Osmanthus. So there. (i can't get rid of this underline for the moment and i keep deleting the photo since i can't read the Chinese browser instructions） Anywhoo i got arount to ordering some of the stuff in Yangshou and 和热 （ooh that is cool!) it was flowery allright! I can't say that it is better than my alltime favorite Jasmine.

On the Boat

The boat to Yangshou was great fun! It went from raining cats and water bufflow to sunny and perfect. The scenery was stupendus and the steamed rice a hit with the under 4 set. The river is lined with amazing bamboo plants. They are huge and bushy. Apparently some muckity muck in the govt was vistiting the river in the 70's and thought that it would be so much nice with some bamboo along the banks. Well that was all it took another imense Chinese project begun. The trip took about 4 hours and the bamboo on both sides never thinned.
The second photo is the kitchen of another boat that passed us. All open to the river and a bunch of kitchen staff siting around enjoying the view. Just like in Troncones!

Snake wine anyone?

Jim didn't have to be dared twice to try the snake wine offered on the boat to Yanshou. It is supposed to warm you on the inside and other dubious things. He thought that it was yummy if you like the taste of rotting snake! mmmmmm!

Guilin

Hello everyone, sorry for the long break, but the great "wired China" has not presented itself to me untill now!

We have since been all over this country, but i will go back to the beginning and start with our first day in China proper.

We flew from Hong Kong to Guilin a city in the south of China. A place famous for it's lime stone "Karsk" formations. We arrived in the evening to a airport that in 1993 was totaly empty and had only 2 taxis out front with sleeping drivers in both, now it was like touching down in Las Vegas, lit up palm trees and so much hussle and busle that we didn't recognize the place. Our guide "katarina" aka Chow,took us to our hotel and we collapsed.

The next day we were met with the typical Guilin view outside our window. Pretty much the above within a city scape. It was beautiful! The town was buzzing at 6:30 am. We got our stuff together and headed for the boat that was going to take us down the Li river to the city of Yangshou.

Chung Chau

We have now been joined on our trip by Cathy and Don Lankford, they are the life of any party and pretty darn good baby sitters to boot!

Yesterday we took the ferry out to Chung Chau, one of the out lying islands, that supposeldy was the home to some pretty scary pirates. Well if there were pirates they were good at procreating, that island was jam packed with folks! It was a 30 minute ferry ride, past many seemingly uninhabited islands. It seems that the islands shape makes for a natural harbour. There were a couple of very nice temples and a lucky banyan tree to check out. But by the afternoon a huge rain cloud chased us back to the big city.

A new Look!

August got a haircut from Raymond down at Tokyo Salon. Raymond took one hour to cut his hair into the most trendy Hong kong style available to the 7 year old set. He even got some "product"! Evita in the mean time hung out with the shampooers and charmed then all out of their bracelets and cell phone charms. Hong Kong folks love children. We have had so many nice comments and she has goten so much positive attention it is great. I think that in general the service and hospitality of Hong Kong has really changed in the years since we were here. Everyone has been universally helpful. Even going out of thier way to explain things to us or show us the way. Every restaurant that we have been into has managed a bit of English and even the girls at 7-11 were giving Evita hugs. Ya gotta like that!

Cable Cars...

What is it with cable cars these days? I can say that i have never been on one untill this summer and suddenly they are everywhere! They can't be cheap to build, the infrastructure is tremendous, so i figure they must be really really popular. Who wouldn't like to view the scenic beauty of any place from the comfort of your own sanitized buble. I don't mean to sound harsh, cuz i love em! I am just curious. Should we be building one in Troncones?
This is the view from the cable car down from the big buddha. It was an amazing ride, over 30 minutes passing cliff and water falls, finishing up with an overview of the new airport, so you can watch planes the size of toys take off as you are coming in for a landing.

Tian Tan Buddah

As it's claim to fame is a rather overly qualified one -- "largest sitting outdoor bronze Buddha" -- one may wonder if he or she might not be getting practiced upon by the good folks at the HK Tourism office. But 'in person' the "big Buddha" is really truly incredibly cool. It is huge and can be seen from the approach at the bottom of the mountain. It is a great day trip. We took the ferry to Silvermine bay where there were at least one million bicycles parked around the pier, left over from the days when there were no private cars on the island. We took a scenic taxi ride up and boom there it was. Of course we have to pay the price of 268 steps to the top. Evita wasn't up for it and fainted dead away. (nap time) and Jim got to carry her She woke up as soon as his foot passed the last step! Maybe it was the free ice cream that revived her...The Monks know how to inspire people!!

I have copied a paragraph from Wikipida describing the details of the statue:

The statue is named Tian Tan Buddha because its base is a model of the Altar of Heaven or Earthly Mount of Tian Tan, the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. It is one of the five large Buddha statues in China. The Buddha statue sits on a lotus throne on top of a three-platform altar. It is surrounded by eight smaller bronze statues representing gods or immortals. Like the Daibutsu in Kamakura, Japan, the Tian Tan Buddha is a image of Buddha Amitabha.
The Buddha is 34 meters tall, weighs 250 tonnes, and was the world's tallest outdoor bronze seated Buddha prior to 2007.[1] It reputedly can even be seen from as far away as Macau on a clear day.

The Tian Tan Buddha appears serene and dignified. His right hand is raised, representing the removal of affliction. His left hand rests on his lap in a gesture of giving dhana. The Buddha faces north, which is unique among the great Buddha statues, as all others face south.
In addition, there are 3 floors beneath the Buddha statue: The Hall of Universe, The Hall of Benevolent Merit, and The Hall of Remembrance. One of the most renowned features inside is a relic of Sakyamuni, consisting of some of his alleged cremated remains. There is a huge carved bell inscribed with images of Buddhas in the show room. It was designed to ring every seven minutes, 108 times a day, symbolizing the release of 108 kinds of human vexations.

One thing that i got to say to Wikipidia, we were up there for a long time and never heard the bell ring. So i was pretty vexed!
The requisite cable car ride down from the top of the mountian sorted me out though. Best one yet!!

Ocean Park

Once place that Jim and i had never set eyes on was Ocean Park. The Hong Kong equivelent to Disney, before Disney actaully came. It was a nice park. Reasonably priced and not crowded at all by any standards. They had 4 pandas, two really old ones that were sleeping and one 3 year old couple. They were frisky and rolling around and playing with each other. Very Cute.
Now i don't know anything about the evolution of OP but it is an interesting set up a tiny bit of the park is pretty close to the main part of HK, with the pandas and some small rides etc, then you get on the longest cable car that i have ever been on and go over a mountain to the other side for the rest of the park. I am getting to be an expert on cable cars and this was a fantastic one, four seperate lines that went for a mile or so up an incredible cliff face and over solid jungle. It was worth the entrance fee to the park.
The rest was the standard roller coasters and the like, but of course build in HK style on the mountain face with incredible views. The kids loved it and we got lucky when a cloud showed up and cooled us off at the highest point on the ferris wheel.

Apartment 6B

Wai On house is still standing strong with a new very classy baby blue paint job. The 7/11 in front of the bus stop is gone though. What is up with that? I was pretty sure that they only added 7/11's here. Fun fact, HK lore says that there is no other place in the world with a higher concentration of the stores. It seems to be true as on the street in front of the hotel there and two in one block!

The Peak

A visit to the Peak in Hong Kong is probably the most popular tourist trip. Today was our sunniest day yet so we made the treck. We got a late start and as we waited in line for tickets (i am pretty sure that i have not waited in a line that long to go to the peak before) Jim read that on averge 8,500 people visit the peak a day. Whoa! I mean in the early 90's there was only one restaurant up there.The second one was finished in 95. What in the world was going on up there i wondered?
Well let me tell you...QUITE A BIT! There is now a new 5 story shopping and entertainment center at the tram station. It was HUGE and full to the brim with people and shops selling little chinese outfist and hats with pony tails. It was all there, every Chinese tchotsky known to man and a few new ones! We got out of there as quick as we could and headed accross the street to the building that used to house the Peak Cafe where i had celebrated my 25th birthday... August and Evita were soooooo impressed. But they quickly changed thier tune when the ice cream came! We ran it off on the almost unused shady trail around the area. HK is so weird that way, insainly crowded in one area and then just a few meters on nothing. It was great.
Oh yea, what about that awsome view!! World class.