Last 2/3rds of my China blog
Apr. 30th, 2015 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteAfter nearly 2 weeks of Internet problems like you wouldn't believe, I finally have access and will try to post everything in one large dump before the technology gods wake up and shut me down again... Will edit later, as time permits.
Today, we left our hotel for a trip to Yangshuo, in the heart of another cluster of the Guilin region's famous mountains. Bus drive of about 1 hour.
The main goal of the morning was a wander through a shopping strip, but this one much more low-key than the higher-end shopping malls and strips we'd previously visited. Highlights were a tiny assembly-line machine about the size of a sewing machine that was making walnut/chocolate pastries: squirt batter into a cavity shaped like half a walnut shell, drop in a few chopped walnuts, move down a notch in the assembly line to the chocolate squirter, add more batter, then bake into a walnut shape. Yummy!
We continued down to the end of the strip, at a branch of the Li River, where we were cornered by a small flock of school girls, who wanted our names in their notebooks for a class project, plus a photo of me. (The beard and 6 feet of height still stand out even in tourist-friendly modern China.) Shoshanna scored a replacement for her Burberry knockoff scarf; also a knockoff, with a weaker color but a much softer feel.
Lunch was nothing special: decent as always, but nothing to write home about.
The afternoon was taken up by a short (hour and a half) cruise on a different branch of the Li River. Lovely rural landscapes with limestone hills and phoenix-tail bamboo clusters (the individual stems really do look like the tail feathers of a very large peacock, minus the coloration), fishing egrets, hawking swallows, and water buffalo grazing along the banks.
Last stop of the day was at a Dong minority village. Waiting for us by the parking lot was an elderly gentleman, earning a few yuan posing with his water buffalo for photos. We had time for a brief excursion into their rice paddies. One cool thing: Chinese scientists have developed a new rice cuitivar with strong enough rooting that during transplanting, it can be thrown onto the soil surface instead of formally planted beneath the surface; its roots then anchor it before it can dry out.
The big thing on the schedule tonight was a theatrical extravaganza outdoors, on the water, by a famous Chinese director, Yimo Zhuang. Everyone gathers in a waiting area about 200 m from the actual stage, separated from it by parkland forest, with video screens showing excerpts from his famous film, and music playing loudly. Presumably the idea is that you won't hear the music from the earlier show, which is going on behind the forest while you wait; we were there for the 9 PM show. The theater holds ca. 3000 people, so you can imagine it was a bit of a mob scene with everyone packed together in the waiting area, but when the time came to move to the seats, everyone moved along politely and in good order, and we got to our assigned seats in short order. They were billed by Sinorama as "VIP" seats, but really, not so much.
With white lights beaming down to help you find your seats, you can't see much of the stage area until all at once, the lights go down and spotlights turn on, and you find yourself in the middle of a natural amphitheater, surrounded by the region's typical mountains on 3 sides. There was a collective gasp from the audience as the mountains emerged from the darkness. Below, there's a large bay in the (Li?) River, and that and the land surrounding the bay forms the stage. It's breathtaking, hence the gasp.
The production itself is a mixed bag. The music ranges from the high-pitched, almost shrill female singers that I find almost painful, to something more along the lines of a composition by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Chinese cousin, which was much nicer. The story is about normal village life in the Guilin region, and particularly the local Zhuang minority, with fishermen casting nets and coming home after a long hard day on the waters. But it's also a take on the traditional folk tale of Liu Sanjie, a peasant women with a spectacular singing voice. Local custom in her village is that you gain the right to speak freely (in her case, she wanted to encourage cooperation and understanding between those who are to the manor born and their serfs) by winning a singing competition held by her village's feudal lord, who stacked the deck by bringing in three ringers, who were local scholars. Liu won the competition anyway, and the lord fell in love with her and took her prisoner. She was rescued by her lover, and they all lived happily ever after, except, presumably, the lord. The show is all done so that you see it from a distance, beautifully lit and often silhouetted by faint lighting, as if you're looking down on the scene from heaven. There's a wide color palette, much shadowy movement suggestively visible against the dark evening background, and much graceful to-and-fro-ing on the waters and the land surrounding it.
These two dyas were largely to be a single-mission excursion, since our goal was to visit the Dong people's famous terraced fields, then stop at a Miao village on the way home. Strong central government control and a lack of tolerance for public dissent notwithstanding, China does some things very right. One example is the protection they provide for ethnic ("national") minorities, who together make up something like 11% of the population of 1.3 billion. One of the first things the government did was exempt them from the national one-child policy, which provided at least some reassurance that their populations would remain stable while the majority Han population experienced a slow decline. (But a necessary decline. It's unclear whether China can sustain so many people, and something desperately needed to be done to keep the population within the ecological carrying capacity.)
A second example is that they have created "autonomous regions" for each of the major minority groups (and I believe but will need to confirm at a later date) for some of the smaller ones. This formal political recognition is not a panacea by any means, but it does provide some protection that would not be available had they remained part of larger political entities such as Han-dominated provinces. One example of how this isn't a panacea is how tourist destinations are selected among the minority communities: they don't get a say in the process, and our guide, Summer, told us that the choice focuses on accessibility, logistics (whether infrastructure can be established), and the quality of the tourism experience, not local preferences. She didn't mention whether they receive any compensation from the government, but it seems likely; at a minimum, they get certain infrastructure improvements.
Getting to the Dong village at Longshen required a long (3 hour) bus ride out of the sporadic limestone eruptions that represent the mountains around Guilin and into the surrounding regions, which have more familiar Appalachian-style mountain ranges, which are more continuous, taller, and gentler than the eruptions of the Guilin peaks. They're also called "earth mountains" because there's much more soil, unlike the largely bare Guilin mountains. They appear to be largely lateritic soils (red and nutrient-poor, with a very shallow organic layer) with many clays. But they do have soil, and enough of it that they can be terraced to create long, sloping stair-step fields. Here, at Longshen, the terraces have been worked for more than 1000 years, and it shows: the fields are clearly defined and carefully managed to support a diverse range of plants: rice, of course, but also tarot, various greens (cabbage, bok choy, etc.), and a range of fruits (including passion fruit, loquats, and bananas).
The Dong seemed tolerant of our presence, but not really welcoming, except for a few of the older women. The young men seemed particularly skeptical of our presence, though one guy in our group told us that when he sat down to smoke a cigar with one of his buddies from the tour, the two of them were invited into a local home to share (probably passion fruit) wine, to which he responded by sharing his stash of 12-year-old MacAllan whisky.
Lunch was the usual, but in a Dong rstaurant, and we made a delicious discovery: Longji chili peppers. These are hot, but not tai là le (too hot), and add a gentle burn plus lots of taste, unlike many of the really hot peppers. We bought a large bag to bring home and share.
It occurs to me belatedly that I've been assuming you know what a typical Chinese tourist dinner is like. In case you don't: The usual dinner is set at a round table with a lazy Susan in the middle. Over the course of half an hour, waiters bring in (typically) 11 dishes, one at a time. There's always a large bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, dessert (watermelon or orange most often), a couple vegetable dishes (usually some greens like bok choy or cabbage), and pork, chicken, and sometimes beef dishes. Washed down with a pot of tea and beer or soft drinks. Typically very salty, but very savory.
Shorter drive at the end of the day to our new hotel in Longshen.
Next day was primarily for travel back to Guilin, with a visit to a different minority group, the Miao, along the way. These people were far more cheerful, and seemed positively eager for our visit: they greeted us, smiling, with a choir (mostly children and young women, but a few older women too) done up in traditional festive dress and enthusiastically singing us a welcoming song. Someone suggested we return the favor, and by consensus, we chose "Oh Canada", which pleased them greatly. I guess other tour groups may be less vocal.
They led us into their village, where they showed us how they smash sticky rice with long, heavy paddles to create a glutinous mess that can be served in small round cakes, mixed with sugar to produce sweet dumplings, or deep-fried to produce snacks that one of our group described as "corn puffs and rice krispies". They're better than that, but it's hard to argue with the description. They sat us down to a nice snack of pork ribs, pickled duck, greens, peanuts, and "oil tea" (green tea with peanut oil added). To finish off, the women brought each of us a tiny cup of tea, and poured it into our mouth. On the way out, they sang a farewell song and invited us to join hands with them and dance in a circle during the song.
It always feels a bit awkward describing such visits, in the "and then we visited the next primitive but quaint and entertaining tribe" way that was parodied so well in the Doctor Doolittle Movie (in which Rex Harrison tries to communicate with the natives in childish pidgin English, only to discover they speak fluent Queen's English) or the Monty Python skit about Norwegian folk music (the Trondheim hammer dance, in which they strike the old ladies on the head with hammers and throw them into the fjords). For me, the point is to experience another people and their way of looking at things, not to leave feeling in any way superior, and it's always a pleasure learning about the different ways people meet the various challenges of living together.
One thing during this trip into the countryside that was fascinating to see was just how intensively China is expanding its national "communication" network, namely roads and rail. There's construction everywhere, with micro-factories set up near each major work site to produce crushed rock, cement, and other materials, including clay bricks from mobile kilns. Most of the roads we traveled were being widened and improved (e.g., with raised beds to allow drainage), leading to frequent traffic delays. (There are also clay quarries everywhere to mine materials to produce the bricks being used to build new homes, and huge lumber yards full of small roundwood, planks, bamboo, and what appeared to be rolls of veneer. Also barges everywhere dredging the river bed for stones, and shipping them up the hill to roadside rock crushers via long conveyor belts.)
China is also in the process of building the world's largest high-speed rail network, which currently extends 14 000 km and connects all the major population centers. It's now being extended into remote areas such as Guilin. So everywhere we traveled, there were signs of rock cuts being bored through hills, tunnels dug under mountains, and tall concrete pillars being set to raise the rails 50 or so feet above the surrounding countryside. When it's all in place, it'll be quite impressive.
Forgot to mention that we finally learned Summer's name: Xiao Xiuming. We like her a lot, and since she also gives private tours, we'd be happy to hire her if we return to this region.
Today was mostly a driving day, to get us back home, so the only official tour guide stop along the way was to visit a shrine to "three gentlemen" with different personalities, who overcame their differences to work together to defeat a common foe. Some interesting lotus ponds and a nice covered bridge, but not much exciting other than that.
We got back early enough that after unloading our bags again, we found ourselves with most of the afternoon free to do what we wanted. For us, that was to wander on our own, and specifically to return to the pedestrian shopping we'd passed through on our last night before leaving Guilin for the first time, en route to dinner at The Left Bank again. The previous time, we'd been given no time on our own because we were part of a group and our guide had to get us to and from dinner so she could send the bus driver home; this time, we wanted to do some shopping on our own.
Our hotel is across the Li River from the shopping area, and about half an hour's walk away, including time walking along the river and crossing it on a bridge. As it was a Saturday, lots of folk were out taking the sun -- and it was a very hot and sunny day indeed, ca. 28°C and humid. Thus, good people watching but sweaty walking weather. We made it to the mall, and feeling a bit thirsty, stopped at "The Irish Pub" for a shared drink to beat the heat. The waiter was a youngster with a really good grasp of English, minding the shop by himself. He proposed a local beer, Liquan, and it was a nice choice for a hot day; light and lagery. The pub was also across a narrow side street from several likely shops. Shoshanna wanted to get Alison a replacement backpack embroidered by one of the local Chinese minorities, and found a nice one that we got for a decent price, with a little haggling.
Most of the stores are trendy young-folk places, but there are many nice craft shops, spice shops, and art shops. We watched one woman chopping chilis with two cleavers, and even from some distance, it was pleasantly pungent. A second thing we wanted to bring home as a gift was Chinese caligraphy, and I thought that a good choice would be the Chinese characters that represented the equivalent of the number 18 (for Joann, Shoshanna's mom) and 36 (for Mimi, my grandmother); 18 is the sum of the numbers for the letters in "chayim" (life) in Hebrew, an important numerological thingy in the Jewish (gematria?). For Joann, it was just the basic idea that we thought would be nice, but for Mimi, it has stronger symbolism: for as long as I can remember, she's always given us a cheque for $36 for birthdays, which is twice 18. As we were walking away from the shop where we'd purchased the backpack, a gentleman walked up an introduced himself. Turns out he was a teacher of traditional painting, and yes, he'd be happy to do the calligraphy for us. For a price, of course, but not an unreasonable one. So we watched him do the calligraphy on the spot, and we came away with our gift list mostly complete.
By this time it was getting late, I was fried from the heat, and I wanted to go back to the hotel to shower and change into non-disgusting clothing before dinner. Shoshanna wanted to keep browsing and exploring, so we parted ways. On the way back, I took a detour through a side street that looked interesting. Turns out, I'd already been here 12 years ago, the first time I came to China, though I'd found the street walking from the other direction! In addition to the usual walk-in-closet-sized shops, there were a few bigger ones, including several that had spilled out onto the street on low tables: one packed with DVDs, plus a table of men's underwear and another of porno magazines, overseen by a somewhat jaded looking older woman who gave me a skeptical glance askance.
Made it back to the main drag without incident or purchase, but spotted a gap between shops that opened into what appeared to be a larger space, so I decided to have a look. Turns out it was the local meat market, a couple dozen tables staffed by white-smocked butchers with cleavers, whacking away at various corpses of food animals. From the amused looks, clearly, not a lot of weiguoren (foreigners) passed through here, but everyone was friendly. And yes, gentle reader, I survived to tell this tale: they were not in the market for (ahem) white meat of unknown origin.
Made it back to the hotel in time to shower and change, joined the rest of the group for a bus ride to dinner, hooked up with Shoshanna, and then home to the hotel and early to bed. Sadly, our flight to Chongqing the following morning would be early; we'd have to leave our bags outside our door for pickup and loading onto the bus by 6, breakfast by 6:15, and on the bus to the airport by 7:30.
One of the nice things about being on an organized tour is that you don't have to sweat the details. Summer arranged to have our bags picked up, for the hotel to open the restaurant 45 minutes early, and for our boarding passes to be waiting for us when we arrived at the airport. (Nick had left at the crack of dawn to take 2 people who were leaving the tour early to the airport, and had arranged box breakfasts for them. He accompanied them to Beijing to pick up his next tour group: a 16-hour day if he was lucky, and probably longer. It's exhausting being a tour guide.) All we had to do was stay awake long enough to get on the bus and enjoy our last views of the Guilin mountains. Summer handed us over to our new guide, Mi Nan, shook hands with everyone, and headed home to a well-deserved rest with her husband and son.
Chongqing was primarily a briefly visited way station en route to our main goal, a cruise on the Yangtze River, famed in song and story. It's China's largest city, with 8 million people in the urban core and 33 million in the immediate area; the municipality is roughly 500 km square, so apparently we'll be within the city boundaries for the first 2 days of our cruise. Our new local guide, Amy, gave us a capsule history of the city. During World War II, which the Chinese refer to as the "anti-Japanese war" and which began in 1937 for them, the Chinese government moved here to escape the Japanese army, which was feasible since the only practical route to the city was via the Yangtze River. The city became their headquarters, and a major manufacturing center for military equipment, and subsequently for commercial products once the war was over. Amy claimed that Chongqing is famous for three things: its beautiful women (they traditionally rank in the top 3 spots in national beauty contests), its good and spicy Sichuan food, and its "hot women" (they apparently have legendary tempers).
The flight to Chongqing was uneventful, and Mi Nan shepherded us briskly through the airport and onto the bus that would take us to the cruise ships. We stopped for lunch along the way, this time at a Szechuan/Sichuan hotpot place in the middle of a ridiculously yuppified shopping area: all the famous brand names were there (Omega, Cartier, and Rolex watches; Gucci, Yves St. Laurent; Louis Vuitton... you get the picture). It being Sunday, the place was packed. Shoshanna and I are not interested in such things, so instead we just strolled and people-watched. On the way back to our rendezvous with the local guide, Amy, we spotted the local Apple store, so I had to stop in and Shoshanna humored me. It was immediately recognizable as an Apple Store, and we got to see the new solid gold Apple watch (talk about conspicuous consumption!), but far more fun than that, I got to watch a bunch of Chinese kids playing with iPads at the table Apple always sets aside for kidso. Cute!
We also stopped at a local historical heritage site on the way to the boat: the Higuang Huiguan Guild Complex, a well preserved collection of Qing (Ming?) dynasty buildings. "Cherry" was our cheerful and funny guide to the site, with a well-practiced patter: for example, she noted that the order of male and female in the yin/yang duality was easy to remember since women always come first; similarly, she noted that when men and women sit together at a formal gathering, the man's chair is traditionally on the left because "women are always right". Given the vast linguistic gap between English and Chinese, it seems likely that the latter was nothing more than a convenient mnemonic, but the quipy still amused me.
While we were seeing the sights at the guild complex, several brides and grooms were there for their wedding photos. These are apparently done before the wedding, which seems a bit optimistic, but there you have it. Both of each pair were dressed to the nines, but the groom is much less flamboyant; the bride is made up to a ridiculous extent (think porcelain doll), complete with makeup assistant to perfect her face and adjust her wardrobe. They stay for hours until all the photography is complete, and hold their poses for minutes at a time while the photographer composes the perfect shot.
Last stop for the day was our cruise ship, the (Shi Ji Zuan Shi according to the name on the bow but "Century Diamond" according to the English name across the top of the ship), from the New Century line. Five decks above the waterline, and a capacity of 250 passengers. This is closer to my idea of a suitable cruise than the city-sized ocean-going ships, though I'd still prefer a cruise with fewer than 100 people. Unlike previous meals, which were set entirely by the restaurant, these were buffets, so you could pick from a decent selection and have as much of it as we wanted. I foresee a serious diet in my future once we're home again.
Cruise ships, no matter the price of entry, all share a common goal: fleece the captive audience. For example, the price of a standard local beer onboard is more than twice the already inflated price we'd paid previously in restaurants aimed at tourists. To subvert the system, we bought a couple beer on the dock to hold us over until we could get into town during one of those times when the ship was docked to allow shore excursions. Still inflated compared to store pricing, but a tolerable markup.
Life on a small cruise ship is pleasant, not least because we get to unpack and keep our luggage in one place for several nights in a row. Our ship is quite comfy and moderately luxurious; it's well soundproofed, the shower is close enough to full size that I'm not bumping the sides each time I move, and the bed is comfortable (even though it's two singles pushed together). Each room has a balcony, and though it's tiny, it's nice to have some privacy and to be able to watch the scenery sliding past without butting heads or elbows with other passengers.
The food is good to excellent, and they even have occasional dumplings and stuffed buns. Of course, there's way too much food; even though I'm trying to restrict myself to one full plate per meal, it's definitely going to be serious diet/exercise time once we're home. The staff is all friendly, bilingual, efficient, and very appreciative of my efforts at Chinese. The only real drawback is no Internet for 5 days; it's available in theory, but in practice, it's bloody expensive (see above re. fleecing the tourists), and we were warned to expect load times of up to 15 minutes for a simple Web page. Not worth it, imho.
The scenery is lovely. The Yangtze is the third-longest river in the world, running nearly 8500 km from its source below the Himalaya, on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau, to its terminus in Shanghai. We're upstream of the Three Gorges Dam, so we're very much seeing the post-flooding results; water depths are 100 m or more, and whereas the width of the river formerly ranged from 50 to 100 m, there are now few patches less than 100 m wide. Most of the rock is limestone, rising as high as 1500 m above the river, and it's deeply incised by the region's high rainfall (more than 1000 mm annually, and often much more). Water levels vary greatly during the year. Currently, after the dry winter season, the water is a good 5+ m below peak levels, and there's a clear "bathtub ring" and vegetation line that marks the high-water point, so lots of exposed bare rock. Even on the steepest slopes, vegetation clings tenaciously; on gentler slopes, it's as dense as shag carpet, and a rich green.
We're currently experiencing temperatures pushing 30°C, and depending on which guide you listen to, temperatures reach 40 to 48°C in full summer, accompanied by relative humidity greater than 80%. Blech. I wouldn't last a day under those conditions.
As elsewhere, the natural beauty is interspersed with eruptions of urbanism, much of it new construction. Because of the steep hillsides, the cities soar uphill, densely stocked with both shorter residential complexes (say, 5 to 10 stories) and taller ones (20+ stories). Soaring bridges -- mostly elegant cable-stayed structures but also a few suspension bridges -- cross the Yangtze at each city, connecting it to other cities further up- or downstream. Again, I'm endlessly amazed at the amount of construction that has been achieved and that is still ongoing. Barges bearing materials dredged from the river or produced from dredgings and minings along its banks are in constant motion moving up and downstream.
There are also scattered peasant villages everywhere, many established high (maybe 100 m and sometimes much more) above the river. The residents must have thighs that would make a gym queen proud just so they can go about their daily business. I'm reminded about the traveler's joke (Twain? Swift? Herodotus?) about the mountain people who evolved to have one leg shorter than the other so they could move efficiently along the slopes. (No, the notion doesn't bear close examination. Still funny imho.)
Our first tour activity was the Shibaozhai red pagoda, 12 stories and 99 steps up to recapitulate the journey to heaven. It's a pleasant building, nicely vegetated and shaded and in better repair than many Chinese antiquities. (One of our guides mentioned that large parts of southwestern China escaped the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution by grace of their remoteness.) There's a nice view of the river and surrounding countryside from the highest point in the pagoda, which offers a panoramic view of the misty countryside.
Descending again leads one through the by now familiar shopping gantlet, since there are always shops and stalls lining the entry and egress points to any significant tourist attraction. I picked up a couple t-shirts, which are not "special" souvenirs, but because I live in t-shirts, they get used more than the special ones. (For special souvenirs, I bought a really nice painting of two carp -- symbols of prosperity -- swimming together in a pattern that evokes the yin/yang symbol. Apart from the elegance of the art, I like that symbolism for my marriage. Also the abovementioned longji hot peppers.)
After leaving the vendors behind, we did what we usually do: headed off at a right angle to the direction where all the other tourists were going, since that's where you make the real discoveries and see how people really live. We spotted a small pre-school, and stopped in for a visit; the security guard eyed us up and down, understood my Chinese explanation that we just wanted to have a look, and escorted us into the schoolyard. The kids were very cute, but we didn't disrupt the class by asking to talk with them; that seemed a bit much in the "white tourist privilege department", though in another context it might have been interesting to sit down with them and tell them about our country. I've done that before, 12 years ago, and it's one of my favorite memories of that trip: we taught an entire school how to play "duck, duck, goose", accompanied by shrill screams of delight.
Other ponts of interest: I spotted a large color poster for what appeared to be a women's drum circle, and found an excellent vantage point from which to look out over the town and river, uninfested by tourists inadvertently photobombing each other's photos. Not far away, an elderly woman was threshing what appeared to be rice on the sidewalk. And we spotted a mysterious machine whirring away unattended, doing something mysterious beside a large pile of sheets of raw fabric. Possibly they were felting it?
On the way back to the boat, we stocked up on local beer, at about 20% of the price they were charging on the boat. The best of the lot proved to be Tsingtao Stout, the only dark beer I've ever seen in China outside of a Western pub. Shoshanna didn't much like the aftertaste, but I found it pleasantly robust, while still recognizably part of the Tsingtao flavor family. (Forgot to mention: this cruise line does not confiscate shore-bought booze, but requires you to consume it in your room rather than at the dinner table. Next time, we'll bring a metal water bottle that lets us pretend to be drinking water, when in fact we're boozing it up at the expense of their alcohol monopoly.)
Before dinner that evening, we attended the Captain's welcome party. The Captain and all crew who were not needed elsewhere (e.g., on the bridge) lined up to greet us, and I shook hands with the captain and told him in Chinese how pleased I was to meet him, which made his formal mask of bored politeness slip; he was clearly surprised to meet a Westerner who knew any Chinese at all. We each received a flute of champagne for toasting once most people had arrived, and there were nice snacks (watermelon, deep-fried sesame balls with sweet bean paste, shrimp chips). Once the toasts were out of the way, five couples from the wait-staff, and Chan Gaofei, our tour director, got the party going by first waltzing around the dance floor in the lounge, then physically pulling in audience members. I was impressed by how subtly they managed to slip away to resume their regular duties (i.e., getting ready to serve us dinner immediately after the reception) once enough passengers were dancing.
Dinner continues to be good. Afterwards, we returned to our cabin and sat out on the balcony, watching dim mountain silhouettes slide past and the occasional bat flitting about after bugs, while I gave Shoshanna her nightly foot rub.
Next morning was tai chi, which we'd missed the previous day by oversleeping. Shoshanna sipped coffee while I participated. It was enough fun that I really do plan to find time to take up tai chi with the local group when I'm back home again. But it reinforced my sense that just as Chinese watercolors are usually much more ornate versions of their Japanese equivalents, so too are Chinese martial arts; Japanese variants are far more minimalist, and stripped down to their essence. Needless to say, that's a large oversimplification, and likely to have many exceptions, but it seems a fair summary.
Today we passed through two of the three big-name gorges along the Yangtze: the Qutang and Wu gorges. Both offer spectacular scenery, with soaring sheer limestone cliffs dotted with tenacious trees and shrubs growing in places it's hard to imagine them reaching, let alone colonizing. I suspect there's a good rock-climbing ecotourism business that could be established here by a suitably inspired entrepreneur, particularly given that many of these cliffs (possibly all of them) have never been climbed before.
One of the big sights along the way is the "goddess peak" and the nearby "goddess stream". The tallest peak in this area has a tiny outcropping (though only relatively so, since it's 6.8 m tall) that does resemble a woman in a kimono, particularly if you exercise what Chan described as "your Chinese imagination". The legend goes that one of the daughters of the queen of heaven, Yao Ji, came to visit this area and found it suffering from the attentions of 12 evil dragons ("long" in Chinese) who were preying on the local people. (That's unusual, because Chinese dragons are almost universally "good" spirits.) To solve the problem, she turned them all into mountains, and they lie here to this day. However, though she stayed here because of the beauty of the terrain, she remains single because she apparently can't find any man her own size to wed.
Shortly after seeing the peak, we docked and took a tour off the goddess stream, a narrow (maybe 25 m wide?) canyon surrounded by sheer cliffs. The Tujia minority lives in this region, in small and isolated villages (up to 20 families) on gentler slopes in the area. "Janine" was our guide, a sweet young thing with a beautiful speaking and singing voice. She was the only person from her village to have attended university (in Chongqing). She was uncertain about her future; though she was glad to have been able to return home, it wasn't clear she wanted to stay here forever. ("Once they've seen the big city, how are you going to keep them down on the farm?") She comes from a "longevity" village, where living past 100 is not unusual and they don't consider you to be old until you reach your 80s. She attributes this, in part, to the tea they harvest from certain trees (whose English name she didn't know) that grow only at high altitudes. From her description, this is the naturally caffeine-free yellow tea that we learned about at the tea plantation earlier in our trip. We bought a package from her, as we both enjoyed it greatly.
One of the big excitements of this part of the trip was passage through the Three Gorges Dam's ship locks: this is a series of five locks that descend ca. 125 m, taking nearly 4 hours to do so. The passage was to occur near midnight, so we went to bed early and set an alarm to wake us. The ship actually arrived early, so we missed entry into the first lock, but arrived in time to see the gates open to let us into the second lock. Locks are just a brilliantly pragmatic and clever form of engineering, and no less impressive given that their mechanism is "obvious" in hindsight. The sheer scale of the engineering is what impresses; each lock holds up to four ships at a time; in our case, two cruise ships and two barges full of sand and gravel. There are parallel lock systems; one for upstream traffic and one for downstream.
One interesting innovation to keep the ships from banging into each other while in the locks is a series of C-shaped vertical channels running up the walls of the lock: there appears to be a bollard that floats inside the channel, and the ships tie onto the bollard, which descends with the water. However, because the bollard isn't lubricated in any way, it makes a hideous metallic shrieking noise as it scrapes up and down the channel. We stayed for one complete cycle, then off to bed again.
The following day, we toured the actual dam site. One interesting difference from previous large dam sites we've seen in North America is that the dam isn't bowed in the upstream direction to provide additional strength against the weight of the water, kind of like a sideways arched bridge or egg shell; our guide told me this was done because the length (2.3 km) is too great to allow this approach. Instead, they rely on the immense weight of the concrete to hold the dam in place. There are 32 hydroelectric generators that together generate 25 GW of nominal power. However, one of the guides told us that this capacity hasn't been reached. Part of the problem is likely to be silt accumulation behind the dam, which is much worse than anticipated, and even using periodic releases of large amounts of water through the spillways isn't solving the problem.
There's also a ship elevator, the largest elevator in the world, for raising and lowering smaller ships that wouldn't efficiently use the lock system; it's expected to become operational later this year.
Apparently, the many engineers and construction workers who were employed to construct this dam have been relocated to Tibet, where there are plans to build an even larger dam/generator complex because of the energy possibilities provided by the 2-km hydraulic head. If I heard the guide right, it also appears that China has signed an agreement with Pakistan to dig a tunnel under the Himalaya to transport Persian Gulf oil to western China. The audacity of such a project makes the Chunnel seem like kids digging in a sandbox. I'm not sanguine about either of these projects given how tectonically unstable the Himalaya are; the recent earthquake that killed more than 3200 people in Tibet hit 8.1 on the Richter scale (5.1 in Nepal, unless I've got the two areas reversed), and adding the weight of countless cubic kilometres of reservoir water to the complex geology isn't likely to improve the stability. There are already serious problems in many parts of the Three Gorges Reservoir with increased landslide frequency, presumably caused by the subsidence of the bedrock under the weight of the water.
Since this was our last night on the ship, dinner was one of those 11-course table meals rather than the buffet from previous nights, though the buffet was still there for those who wanted it. Highlights were cream of pumpkin soup, spareribs, and fried buns crusted with sesame seeds and containing barbequed pork.
Today was our last day on the ship, and we went ashore formthe final time in Jingzhou. We had a 4-hour drive to Wuhan before us, from where we'll fly to Beijing tomorrow and thence home. Rather than trying to do all this tomorrow morning, the tour planners wisely decided to cut the cruise short and do the worst of the drive tonight so that we wouldn't have to wake at 3 AM to get to the airport in time. There were some concerns that since our flight home was on international worker's/labor day, a major holiday in China, there would be huge crowds at the airport. (In the event, this turned out not to be the case, and the airports in Wuhan and Beijing were not at all crowded.)
The only scheduled event for the morning was a tour of the ship's bridge, which (surprisingly) was not an extra-cost option. The bridge looks like pretty much any other bridge I've seen, though simpler in many ways. There's a tiny steering wheel, smaller than the game controllers I've seen for computers or X-Box, and twin thrust controllers for the ship's two screws. Although there's a binnacle with a magnetic compass, it's really an afterthought ("only if they lose power" according to Chan, our guide on the bridge tour); navigation is by a combination of GPS and radar. There are three 8-hour shifts per day, thus three rotating bridge crews, each of three people (officer, pilot, and presumably navigator); each crew does 4 hours on followed by 4 hours off. Apparently it takes 15 years of on-river experience before you can be promoted to captain, and any significant mistakes along the way are fatal; there are no "do-overs".
After our tour, we settled our bill (bar drinks and some laundry), then stood around in the main lobby and chatted with Hal, an older gentleman we've talked with a fair bit during the tour. Behind us, the sales staff ran a 12-foot table covered with silks and jewelry, at "20% off", trying one last effort to extract cash from the tourists. Some nice pieces, but no obvious bargains.
23 April: Yangshuo
Today, we left our hotel for a trip to Yangshuo, in the heart of another cluster of the Guilin region's famous mountains. Bus drive of about 1 hour.
The main goal of the morning was a wander through a shopping strip, but this one much more low-key than the higher-end shopping malls and strips we'd previously visited. Highlights were a tiny assembly-line machine about the size of a sewing machine that was making walnut/chocolate pastries: squirt batter into a cavity shaped like half a walnut shell, drop in a few chopped walnuts, move down a notch in the assembly line to the chocolate squirter, add more batter, then bake into a walnut shape. Yummy!
We continued down to the end of the strip, at a branch of the Li River, where we were cornered by a small flock of school girls, who wanted our names in their notebooks for a class project, plus a photo of me. (The beard and 6 feet of height still stand out even in tourist-friendly modern China.) Shoshanna scored a replacement for her Burberry knockoff scarf; also a knockoff, with a weaker color but a much softer feel.
Lunch was nothing special: decent as always, but nothing to write home about.
The afternoon was taken up by a short (hour and a half) cruise on a different branch of the Li River. Lovely rural landscapes with limestone hills and phoenix-tail bamboo clusters (the individual stems really do look like the tail feathers of a very large peacock, minus the coloration), fishing egrets, hawking swallows, and water buffalo grazing along the banks.
Last stop of the day was at a Dong minority village. Waiting for us by the parking lot was an elderly gentleman, earning a few yuan posing with his water buffalo for photos. We had time for a brief excursion into their rice paddies. One cool thing: Chinese scientists have developed a new rice cuitivar with strong enough rooting that during transplanting, it can be thrown onto the soil surface instead of formally planted beneath the surface; its roots then anchor it before it can dry out.
The big thing on the schedule tonight was a theatrical extravaganza outdoors, on the water, by a famous Chinese director, Yimo Zhuang. Everyone gathers in a waiting area about 200 m from the actual stage, separated from it by parkland forest, with video screens showing excerpts from his famous film, and music playing loudly. Presumably the idea is that you won't hear the music from the earlier show, which is going on behind the forest while you wait; we were there for the 9 PM show. The theater holds ca. 3000 people, so you can imagine it was a bit of a mob scene with everyone packed together in the waiting area, but when the time came to move to the seats, everyone moved along politely and in good order, and we got to our assigned seats in short order. They were billed by Sinorama as "VIP" seats, but really, not so much.
With white lights beaming down to help you find your seats, you can't see much of the stage area until all at once, the lights go down and spotlights turn on, and you find yourself in the middle of a natural amphitheater, surrounded by the region's typical mountains on 3 sides. There was a collective gasp from the audience as the mountains emerged from the darkness. Below, there's a large bay in the (Li?) River, and that and the land surrounding the bay forms the stage. It's breathtaking, hence the gasp.
The production itself is a mixed bag. The music ranges from the high-pitched, almost shrill female singers that I find almost painful, to something more along the lines of a composition by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Chinese cousin, which was much nicer. The story is about normal village life in the Guilin region, and particularly the local Zhuang minority, with fishermen casting nets and coming home after a long hard day on the waters. But it's also a take on the traditional folk tale of Liu Sanjie, a peasant women with a spectacular singing voice. Local custom in her village is that you gain the right to speak freely (in her case, she wanted to encourage cooperation and understanding between those who are to the manor born and their serfs) by winning a singing competition held by her village's feudal lord, who stacked the deck by bringing in three ringers, who were local scholars. Liu won the competition anyway, and the lord fell in love with her and took her prisoner. She was rescued by her lover, and they all lived happily ever after, except, presumably, the lord. The show is all done so that you see it from a distance, beautifully lit and often silhouetted by faint lighting, as if you're looking down on the scene from heaven. There's a wide color palette, much shadowy movement suggestively visible against the dark evening background, and much graceful to-and-fro-ing on the waters and the land surrounding it.
24-25 April: Dong and Miao minority villages
These two dyas were largely to be a single-mission excursion, since our goal was to visit the Dong people's famous terraced fields, then stop at a Miao village on the way home. Strong central government control and a lack of tolerance for public dissent notwithstanding, China does some things very right. One example is the protection they provide for ethnic ("national") minorities, who together make up something like 11% of the population of 1.3 billion. One of the first things the government did was exempt them from the national one-child policy, which provided at least some reassurance that their populations would remain stable while the majority Han population experienced a slow decline. (But a necessary decline. It's unclear whether China can sustain so many people, and something desperately needed to be done to keep the population within the ecological carrying capacity.)
A second example is that they have created "autonomous regions" for each of the major minority groups (and I believe but will need to confirm at a later date) for some of the smaller ones. This formal political recognition is not a panacea by any means, but it does provide some protection that would not be available had they remained part of larger political entities such as Han-dominated provinces. One example of how this isn't a panacea is how tourist destinations are selected among the minority communities: they don't get a say in the process, and our guide, Summer, told us that the choice focuses on accessibility, logistics (whether infrastructure can be established), and the quality of the tourism experience, not local preferences. She didn't mention whether they receive any compensation from the government, but it seems likely; at a minimum, they get certain infrastructure improvements.
Getting to the Dong village at Longshen required a long (3 hour) bus ride out of the sporadic limestone eruptions that represent the mountains around Guilin and into the surrounding regions, which have more familiar Appalachian-style mountain ranges, which are more continuous, taller, and gentler than the eruptions of the Guilin peaks. They're also called "earth mountains" because there's much more soil, unlike the largely bare Guilin mountains. They appear to be largely lateritic soils (red and nutrient-poor, with a very shallow organic layer) with many clays. But they do have soil, and enough of it that they can be terraced to create long, sloping stair-step fields. Here, at Longshen, the terraces have been worked for more than 1000 years, and it shows: the fields are clearly defined and carefully managed to support a diverse range of plants: rice, of course, but also tarot, various greens (cabbage, bok choy, etc.), and a range of fruits (including passion fruit, loquats, and bananas).
The Dong seemed tolerant of our presence, but not really welcoming, except for a few of the older women. The young men seemed particularly skeptical of our presence, though one guy in our group told us that when he sat down to smoke a cigar with one of his buddies from the tour, the two of them were invited into a local home to share (probably passion fruit) wine, to which he responded by sharing his stash of 12-year-old MacAllan whisky.
Lunch was the usual, but in a Dong rstaurant, and we made a delicious discovery: Longji chili peppers. These are hot, but not tai là le (too hot), and add a gentle burn plus lots of taste, unlike many of the really hot peppers. We bought a large bag to bring home and share.
It occurs to me belatedly that I've been assuming you know what a typical Chinese tourist dinner is like. In case you don't: The usual dinner is set at a round table with a lazy Susan in the middle. Over the course of half an hour, waiters bring in (typically) 11 dishes, one at a time. There's always a large bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, dessert (watermelon or orange most often), a couple vegetable dishes (usually some greens like bok choy or cabbage), and pork, chicken, and sometimes beef dishes. Washed down with a pot of tea and beer or soft drinks. Typically very salty, but very savory.
Shorter drive at the end of the day to our new hotel in Longshen.
Next day was primarily for travel back to Guilin, with a visit to a different minority group, the Miao, along the way. These people were far more cheerful, and seemed positively eager for our visit: they greeted us, smiling, with a choir (mostly children and young women, but a few older women too) done up in traditional festive dress and enthusiastically singing us a welcoming song. Someone suggested we return the favor, and by consensus, we chose "Oh Canada", which pleased them greatly. I guess other tour groups may be less vocal.
They led us into their village, where they showed us how they smash sticky rice with long, heavy paddles to create a glutinous mess that can be served in small round cakes, mixed with sugar to produce sweet dumplings, or deep-fried to produce snacks that one of our group described as "corn puffs and rice krispies". They're better than that, but it's hard to argue with the description. They sat us down to a nice snack of pork ribs, pickled duck, greens, peanuts, and "oil tea" (green tea with peanut oil added). To finish off, the women brought each of us a tiny cup of tea, and poured it into our mouth. On the way out, they sang a farewell song and invited us to join hands with them and dance in a circle during the song.
It always feels a bit awkward describing such visits, in the "and then we visited the next primitive but quaint and entertaining tribe" way that was parodied so well in the Doctor Doolittle Movie (in which Rex Harrison tries to communicate with the natives in childish pidgin English, only to discover they speak fluent Queen's English) or the Monty Python skit about Norwegian folk music (the Trondheim hammer dance, in which they strike the old ladies on the head with hammers and throw them into the fjords). For me, the point is to experience another people and their way of looking at things, not to leave feeling in any way superior, and it's always a pleasure learning about the different ways people meet the various challenges of living together.
One thing during this trip into the countryside that was fascinating to see was just how intensively China is expanding its national "communication" network, namely roads and rail. There's construction everywhere, with micro-factories set up near each major work site to produce crushed rock, cement, and other materials, including clay bricks from mobile kilns. Most of the roads we traveled were being widened and improved (e.g., with raised beds to allow drainage), leading to frequent traffic delays. (There are also clay quarries everywhere to mine materials to produce the bricks being used to build new homes, and huge lumber yards full of small roundwood, planks, bamboo, and what appeared to be rolls of veneer. Also barges everywhere dredging the river bed for stones, and shipping them up the hill to roadside rock crushers via long conveyor belts.)
China is also in the process of building the world's largest high-speed rail network, which currently extends 14 000 km and connects all the major population centers. It's now being extended into remote areas such as Guilin. So everywhere we traveled, there were signs of rock cuts being bored through hills, tunnels dug under mountains, and tall concrete pillars being set to raise the rails 50 or so feet above the surrounding countryside. When it's all in place, it'll be quite impressive.
Forgot to mention that we finally learned Summer's name: Xiao Xiuming. We like her a lot, and since she also gives private tours, we'd be happy to hire her if we return to this region.
April 26: Return to Guilin, last night before our cruise
Today was mostly a driving day, to get us back home, so the only official tour guide stop along the way was to visit a shrine to "three gentlemen" with different personalities, who overcame their differences to work together to defeat a common foe. Some interesting lotus ponds and a nice covered bridge, but not much exciting other than that.
We got back early enough that after unloading our bags again, we found ourselves with most of the afternoon free to do what we wanted. For us, that was to wander on our own, and specifically to return to the pedestrian shopping we'd passed through on our last night before leaving Guilin for the first time, en route to dinner at The Left Bank again. The previous time, we'd been given no time on our own because we were part of a group and our guide had to get us to and from dinner so she could send the bus driver home; this time, we wanted to do some shopping on our own.
Our hotel is across the Li River from the shopping area, and about half an hour's walk away, including time walking along the river and crossing it on a bridge. As it was a Saturday, lots of folk were out taking the sun -- and it was a very hot and sunny day indeed, ca. 28°C and humid. Thus, good people watching but sweaty walking weather. We made it to the mall, and feeling a bit thirsty, stopped at "The Irish Pub" for a shared drink to beat the heat. The waiter was a youngster with a really good grasp of English, minding the shop by himself. He proposed a local beer, Liquan, and it was a nice choice for a hot day; light and lagery. The pub was also across a narrow side street from several likely shops. Shoshanna wanted to get Alison a replacement backpack embroidered by one of the local Chinese minorities, and found a nice one that we got for a decent price, with a little haggling.
Most of the stores are trendy young-folk places, but there are many nice craft shops, spice shops, and art shops. We watched one woman chopping chilis with two cleavers, and even from some distance, it was pleasantly pungent. A second thing we wanted to bring home as a gift was Chinese caligraphy, and I thought that a good choice would be the Chinese characters that represented the equivalent of the number 18 (for Joann, Shoshanna's mom) and 36 (for Mimi, my grandmother); 18 is the sum of the numbers for the letters in "chayim" (life) in Hebrew, an important numerological thingy in the Jewish (gematria?). For Joann, it was just the basic idea that we thought would be nice, but for Mimi, it has stronger symbolism: for as long as I can remember, she's always given us a cheque for $36 for birthdays, which is twice 18. As we were walking away from the shop where we'd purchased the backpack, a gentleman walked up an introduced himself. Turns out he was a teacher of traditional painting, and yes, he'd be happy to do the calligraphy for us. For a price, of course, but not an unreasonable one. So we watched him do the calligraphy on the spot, and we came away with our gift list mostly complete.
By this time it was getting late, I was fried from the heat, and I wanted to go back to the hotel to shower and change into non-disgusting clothing before dinner. Shoshanna wanted to keep browsing and exploring, so we parted ways. On the way back, I took a detour through a side street that looked interesting. Turns out, I'd already been here 12 years ago, the first time I came to China, though I'd found the street walking from the other direction! In addition to the usual walk-in-closet-sized shops, there were a few bigger ones, including several that had spilled out onto the street on low tables: one packed with DVDs, plus a table of men's underwear and another of porno magazines, overseen by a somewhat jaded looking older woman who gave me a skeptical glance askance.
Made it back to the main drag without incident or purchase, but spotted a gap between shops that opened into what appeared to be a larger space, so I decided to have a look. Turns out it was the local meat market, a couple dozen tables staffed by white-smocked butchers with cleavers, whacking away at various corpses of food animals. From the amused looks, clearly, not a lot of weiguoren (foreigners) passed through here, but everyone was friendly. And yes, gentle reader, I survived to tell this tale: they were not in the market for (ahem) white meat of unknown origin.
Made it back to the hotel in time to shower and change, joined the rest of the group for a bus ride to dinner, hooked up with Shoshanna, and then home to the hotel and early to bed. Sadly, our flight to Chongqing the following morning would be early; we'd have to leave our bags outside our door for pickup and loading onto the bus by 6, breakfast by 6:15, and on the bus to the airport by 7:30.
April 26: Flight to Chongqing, Yangtze River cruise
One of the nice things about being on an organized tour is that you don't have to sweat the details. Summer arranged to have our bags picked up, for the hotel to open the restaurant 45 minutes early, and for our boarding passes to be waiting for us when we arrived at the airport. (Nick had left at the crack of dawn to take 2 people who were leaving the tour early to the airport, and had arranged box breakfasts for them. He accompanied them to Beijing to pick up his next tour group: a 16-hour day if he was lucky, and probably longer. It's exhausting being a tour guide.) All we had to do was stay awake long enough to get on the bus and enjoy our last views of the Guilin mountains. Summer handed us over to our new guide, Mi Nan, shook hands with everyone, and headed home to a well-deserved rest with her husband and son.
Chongqing was primarily a briefly visited way station en route to our main goal, a cruise on the Yangtze River, famed in song and story. It's China's largest city, with 8 million people in the urban core and 33 million in the immediate area; the municipality is roughly 500 km square, so apparently we'll be within the city boundaries for the first 2 days of our cruise. Our new local guide, Amy, gave us a capsule history of the city. During World War II, which the Chinese refer to as the "anti-Japanese war" and which began in 1937 for them, the Chinese government moved here to escape the Japanese army, which was feasible since the only practical route to the city was via the Yangtze River. The city became their headquarters, and a major manufacturing center for military equipment, and subsequently for commercial products once the war was over. Amy claimed that Chongqing is famous for three things: its beautiful women (they traditionally rank in the top 3 spots in national beauty contests), its good and spicy Sichuan food, and its "hot women" (they apparently have legendary tempers).
The flight to Chongqing was uneventful, and Mi Nan shepherded us briskly through the airport and onto the bus that would take us to the cruise ships. We stopped for lunch along the way, this time at a Szechuan/Sichuan hotpot place in the middle of a ridiculously yuppified shopping area: all the famous brand names were there (Omega, Cartier, and Rolex watches; Gucci, Yves St. Laurent; Louis Vuitton... you get the picture). It being Sunday, the place was packed. Shoshanna and I are not interested in such things, so instead we just strolled and people-watched. On the way back to our rendezvous with the local guide, Amy, we spotted the local Apple store, so I had to stop in and Shoshanna humored me. It was immediately recognizable as an Apple Store, and we got to see the new solid gold Apple watch (talk about conspicuous consumption!), but far more fun than that, I got to watch a bunch of Chinese kids playing with iPads at the table Apple always sets aside for kidso. Cute!
We also stopped at a local historical heritage site on the way to the boat: the Higuang Huiguan Guild Complex, a well preserved collection of Qing (Ming?) dynasty buildings. "Cherry" was our cheerful and funny guide to the site, with a well-practiced patter: for example, she noted that the order of male and female in the yin/yang duality was easy to remember since women always come first; similarly, she noted that when men and women sit together at a formal gathering, the man's chair is traditionally on the left because "women are always right". Given the vast linguistic gap between English and Chinese, it seems likely that the latter was nothing more than a convenient mnemonic, but the quipy still amused me.
While we were seeing the sights at the guild complex, several brides and grooms were there for their wedding photos. These are apparently done before the wedding, which seems a bit optimistic, but there you have it. Both of each pair were dressed to the nines, but the groom is much less flamboyant; the bride is made up to a ridiculous extent (think porcelain doll), complete with makeup assistant to perfect her face and adjust her wardrobe. They stay for hours until all the photography is complete, and hold their poses for minutes at a time while the photographer composes the perfect shot.
Last stop for the day was our cruise ship, the (Shi Ji Zuan Shi according to the name on the bow but "Century Diamond" according to the English name across the top of the ship), from the New Century line. Five decks above the waterline, and a capacity of 250 passengers. This is closer to my idea of a suitable cruise than the city-sized ocean-going ships, though I'd still prefer a cruise with fewer than 100 people. Unlike previous meals, which were set entirely by the restaurant, these were buffets, so you could pick from a decent selection and have as much of it as we wanted. I foresee a serious diet in my future once we're home again.
Cruise ships, no matter the price of entry, all share a common goal: fleece the captive audience. For example, the price of a standard local beer onboard is more than twice the already inflated price we'd paid previously in restaurants aimed at tourists. To subvert the system, we bought a couple beer on the dock to hold us over until we could get into town during one of those times when the ship was docked to allow shore excursions. Still inflated compared to store pricing, but a tolerable markup.
26-28 April: Yangtze River Cruise
Life on a small cruise ship is pleasant, not least because we get to unpack and keep our luggage in one place for several nights in a row. Our ship is quite comfy and moderately luxurious; it's well soundproofed, the shower is close enough to full size that I'm not bumping the sides each time I move, and the bed is comfortable (even though it's two singles pushed together). Each room has a balcony, and though it's tiny, it's nice to have some privacy and to be able to watch the scenery sliding past without butting heads or elbows with other passengers.
The food is good to excellent, and they even have occasional dumplings and stuffed buns. Of course, there's way too much food; even though I'm trying to restrict myself to one full plate per meal, it's definitely going to be serious diet/exercise time once we're home. The staff is all friendly, bilingual, efficient, and very appreciative of my efforts at Chinese. The only real drawback is no Internet for 5 days; it's available in theory, but in practice, it's bloody expensive (see above re. fleecing the tourists), and we were warned to expect load times of up to 15 minutes for a simple Web page. Not worth it, imho.
The scenery is lovely. The Yangtze is the third-longest river in the world, running nearly 8500 km from its source below the Himalaya, on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau, to its terminus in Shanghai. We're upstream of the Three Gorges Dam, so we're very much seeing the post-flooding results; water depths are 100 m or more, and whereas the width of the river formerly ranged from 50 to 100 m, there are now few patches less than 100 m wide. Most of the rock is limestone, rising as high as 1500 m above the river, and it's deeply incised by the region's high rainfall (more than 1000 mm annually, and often much more). Water levels vary greatly during the year. Currently, after the dry winter season, the water is a good 5+ m below peak levels, and there's a clear "bathtub ring" and vegetation line that marks the high-water point, so lots of exposed bare rock. Even on the steepest slopes, vegetation clings tenaciously; on gentler slopes, it's as dense as shag carpet, and a rich green.
We're currently experiencing temperatures pushing 30°C, and depending on which guide you listen to, temperatures reach 40 to 48°C in full summer, accompanied by relative humidity greater than 80%. Blech. I wouldn't last a day under those conditions.
As elsewhere, the natural beauty is interspersed with eruptions of urbanism, much of it new construction. Because of the steep hillsides, the cities soar uphill, densely stocked with both shorter residential complexes (say, 5 to 10 stories) and taller ones (20+ stories). Soaring bridges -- mostly elegant cable-stayed structures but also a few suspension bridges -- cross the Yangtze at each city, connecting it to other cities further up- or downstream. Again, I'm endlessly amazed at the amount of construction that has been achieved and that is still ongoing. Barges bearing materials dredged from the river or produced from dredgings and minings along its banks are in constant motion moving up and downstream.
There are also scattered peasant villages everywhere, many established high (maybe 100 m and sometimes much more) above the river. The residents must have thighs that would make a gym queen proud just so they can go about their daily business. I'm reminded about the traveler's joke (Twain? Swift? Herodotus?) about the mountain people who evolved to have one leg shorter than the other so they could move efficiently along the slopes. (No, the notion doesn't bear close examination. Still funny imho.)
Our first tour activity was the Shibaozhai red pagoda, 12 stories and 99 steps up to recapitulate the journey to heaven. It's a pleasant building, nicely vegetated and shaded and in better repair than many Chinese antiquities. (One of our guides mentioned that large parts of southwestern China escaped the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution by grace of their remoteness.) There's a nice view of the river and surrounding countryside from the highest point in the pagoda, which offers a panoramic view of the misty countryside.
Descending again leads one through the by now familiar shopping gantlet, since there are always shops and stalls lining the entry and egress points to any significant tourist attraction. I picked up a couple t-shirts, which are not "special" souvenirs, but because I live in t-shirts, they get used more than the special ones. (For special souvenirs, I bought a really nice painting of two carp -- symbols of prosperity -- swimming together in a pattern that evokes the yin/yang symbol. Apart from the elegance of the art, I like that symbolism for my marriage. Also the abovementioned longji hot peppers.)
After leaving the vendors behind, we did what we usually do: headed off at a right angle to the direction where all the other tourists were going, since that's where you make the real discoveries and see how people really live. We spotted a small pre-school, and stopped in for a visit; the security guard eyed us up and down, understood my Chinese explanation that we just wanted to have a look, and escorted us into the schoolyard. The kids were very cute, but we didn't disrupt the class by asking to talk with them; that seemed a bit much in the "white tourist privilege department", though in another context it might have been interesting to sit down with them and tell them about our country. I've done that before, 12 years ago, and it's one of my favorite memories of that trip: we taught an entire school how to play "duck, duck, goose", accompanied by shrill screams of delight.
Other ponts of interest: I spotted a large color poster for what appeared to be a women's drum circle, and found an excellent vantage point from which to look out over the town and river, uninfested by tourists inadvertently photobombing each other's photos. Not far away, an elderly woman was threshing what appeared to be rice on the sidewalk. And we spotted a mysterious machine whirring away unattended, doing something mysterious beside a large pile of sheets of raw fabric. Possibly they were felting it?
On the way back to the boat, we stocked up on local beer, at about 20% of the price they were charging on the boat. The best of the lot proved to be Tsingtao Stout, the only dark beer I've ever seen in China outside of a Western pub. Shoshanna didn't much like the aftertaste, but I found it pleasantly robust, while still recognizably part of the Tsingtao flavor family. (Forgot to mention: this cruise line does not confiscate shore-bought booze, but requires you to consume it in your room rather than at the dinner table. Next time, we'll bring a metal water bottle that lets us pretend to be drinking water, when in fact we're boozing it up at the expense of their alcohol monopoly.)
Before dinner that evening, we attended the Captain's welcome party. The Captain and all crew who were not needed elsewhere (e.g., on the bridge) lined up to greet us, and I shook hands with the captain and told him in Chinese how pleased I was to meet him, which made his formal mask of bored politeness slip; he was clearly surprised to meet a Westerner who knew any Chinese at all. We each received a flute of champagne for toasting once most people had arrived, and there were nice snacks (watermelon, deep-fried sesame balls with sweet bean paste, shrimp chips). Once the toasts were out of the way, five couples from the wait-staff, and Chan Gaofei, our tour director, got the party going by first waltzing around the dance floor in the lounge, then physically pulling in audience members. I was impressed by how subtly they managed to slip away to resume their regular duties (i.e., getting ready to serve us dinner immediately after the reception) once enough passengers were dancing.
Dinner continues to be good. Afterwards, we returned to our cabin and sat out on the balcony, watching dim mountain silhouettes slide past and the occasional bat flitting about after bugs, while I gave Shoshanna her nightly foot rub.
Next morning was tai chi, which we'd missed the previous day by oversleeping. Shoshanna sipped coffee while I participated. It was enough fun that I really do plan to find time to take up tai chi with the local group when I'm back home again. But it reinforced my sense that just as Chinese watercolors are usually much more ornate versions of their Japanese equivalents, so too are Chinese martial arts; Japanese variants are far more minimalist, and stripped down to their essence. Needless to say, that's a large oversimplification, and likely to have many exceptions, but it seems a fair summary.
Today we passed through two of the three big-name gorges along the Yangtze: the Qutang and Wu gorges. Both offer spectacular scenery, with soaring sheer limestone cliffs dotted with tenacious trees and shrubs growing in places it's hard to imagine them reaching, let alone colonizing. I suspect there's a good rock-climbing ecotourism business that could be established here by a suitably inspired entrepreneur, particularly given that many of these cliffs (possibly all of them) have never been climbed before.
One of the big sights along the way is the "goddess peak" and the nearby "goddess stream". The tallest peak in this area has a tiny outcropping (though only relatively so, since it's 6.8 m tall) that does resemble a woman in a kimono, particularly if you exercise what Chan described as "your Chinese imagination". The legend goes that one of the daughters of the queen of heaven, Yao Ji, came to visit this area and found it suffering from the attentions of 12 evil dragons ("long" in Chinese) who were preying on the local people. (That's unusual, because Chinese dragons are almost universally "good" spirits.) To solve the problem, she turned them all into mountains, and they lie here to this day. However, though she stayed here because of the beauty of the terrain, she remains single because she apparently can't find any man her own size to wed.
Shortly after seeing the peak, we docked and took a tour off the goddess stream, a narrow (maybe 25 m wide?) canyon surrounded by sheer cliffs. The Tujia minority lives in this region, in small and isolated villages (up to 20 families) on gentler slopes in the area. "Janine" was our guide, a sweet young thing with a beautiful speaking and singing voice. She was the only person from her village to have attended university (in Chongqing). She was uncertain about her future; though she was glad to have been able to return home, it wasn't clear she wanted to stay here forever. ("Once they've seen the big city, how are you going to keep them down on the farm?") She comes from a "longevity" village, where living past 100 is not unusual and they don't consider you to be old until you reach your 80s. She attributes this, in part, to the tea they harvest from certain trees (whose English name she didn't know) that grow only at high altitudes. From her description, this is the naturally caffeine-free yellow tea that we learned about at the tea plantation earlier in our trip. We bought a package from her, as we both enjoyed it greatly.
One of the big excitements of this part of the trip was passage through the Three Gorges Dam's ship locks: this is a series of five locks that descend ca. 125 m, taking nearly 4 hours to do so. The passage was to occur near midnight, so we went to bed early and set an alarm to wake us. The ship actually arrived early, so we missed entry into the first lock, but arrived in time to see the gates open to let us into the second lock. Locks are just a brilliantly pragmatic and clever form of engineering, and no less impressive given that their mechanism is "obvious" in hindsight. The sheer scale of the engineering is what impresses; each lock holds up to four ships at a time; in our case, two cruise ships and two barges full of sand and gravel. There are parallel lock systems; one for upstream traffic and one for downstream.
One interesting innovation to keep the ships from banging into each other while in the locks is a series of C-shaped vertical channels running up the walls of the lock: there appears to be a bollard that floats inside the channel, and the ships tie onto the bollard, which descends with the water. However, because the bollard isn't lubricated in any way, it makes a hideous metallic shrieking noise as it scrapes up and down the channel. We stayed for one complete cycle, then off to bed again.
The following day, we toured the actual dam site. One interesting difference from previous large dam sites we've seen in North America is that the dam isn't bowed in the upstream direction to provide additional strength against the weight of the water, kind of like a sideways arched bridge or egg shell; our guide told me this was done because the length (2.3 km) is too great to allow this approach. Instead, they rely on the immense weight of the concrete to hold the dam in place. There are 32 hydroelectric generators that together generate 25 GW of nominal power. However, one of the guides told us that this capacity hasn't been reached. Part of the problem is likely to be silt accumulation behind the dam, which is much worse than anticipated, and even using periodic releases of large amounts of water through the spillways isn't solving the problem.
There's also a ship elevator, the largest elevator in the world, for raising and lowering smaller ships that wouldn't efficiently use the lock system; it's expected to become operational later this year.
Apparently, the many engineers and construction workers who were employed to construct this dam have been relocated to Tibet, where there are plans to build an even larger dam/generator complex because of the energy possibilities provided by the 2-km hydraulic head. If I heard the guide right, it also appears that China has signed an agreement with Pakistan to dig a tunnel under the Himalaya to transport Persian Gulf oil to western China. The audacity of such a project makes the Chunnel seem like kids digging in a sandbox. I'm not sanguine about either of these projects given how tectonically unstable the Himalaya are; the recent earthquake that killed more than 3200 people in Tibet hit 8.1 on the Richter scale (5.1 in Nepal, unless I've got the two areas reversed), and adding the weight of countless cubic kilometres of reservoir water to the complex geology isn't likely to improve the stability. There are already serious problems in many parts of the Three Gorges Reservoir with increased landslide frequency, presumably caused by the subsidence of the bedrock under the weight of the water.
Since this was our last night on the ship, dinner was one of those 11-course table meals rather than the buffet from previous nights, though the buffet was still there for those who wanted it. Highlights were cream of pumpkin soup, spareribs, and fried buns crusted with sesame seeds and containing barbequed pork.
April 30: last day on the ship and tour, travel to Wuhan
Today was our last day on the ship, and we went ashore formthe final time in Jingzhou. We had a 4-hour drive to Wuhan before us, from where we'll fly to Beijing tomorrow and thence home. Rather than trying to do all this tomorrow morning, the tour planners wisely decided to cut the cruise short and do the worst of the drive tonight so that we wouldn't have to wake at 3 AM to get to the airport in time. There were some concerns that since our flight home was on international worker's/labor day, a major holiday in China, there would be huge crowds at the airport. (In the event, this turned out not to be the case, and the airports in Wuhan and Beijing were not at all crowded.)
The only scheduled event for the morning was a tour of the ship's bridge, which (surprisingly) was not an extra-cost option. The bridge looks like pretty much any other bridge I've seen, though simpler in many ways. There's a tiny steering wheel, smaller than the game controllers I've seen for computers or X-Box, and twin thrust controllers for the ship's two screws. Although there's a binnacle with a magnetic compass, it's really an afterthought ("only if they lose power" according to Chan, our guide on the bridge tour); navigation is by a combination of GPS and radar. There are three 8-hour shifts per day, thus three rotating bridge crews, each of three people (officer, pilot, and presumably navigator); each crew does 4 hours on followed by 4 hours off. Apparently it takes 15 years of on-river experience before you can be promoted to captain, and any significant mistakes along the way are fatal; there are no "do-overs".
After our tour, we settled our bill (bar drinks and some laundry), then stood around in the main lobby and chatted with Hal, an older gentleman we've talked with a fair bit during the tour. Behind us, the sales staff ran a 12-foot table covered with silks and jewelry, at "20% off", trying one last effort to extract cash from the tourists. Some nice pieces, but no obvious bargains.