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!