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.